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Purpose This paper aims to identify the most common fungal species that grow on paper manuscripts and cause bio-deterioration. It also detects the impact of additive materials on fungal degrading and builds a wide database. Thus, it helps conservators understand this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach In total, 15 samples were collected from different paper manuscripts suffering from fungi. The achievement of the study objectives depends on using a variety of analyzes, such as a microbiological study, which indicated that three main fungi grew on the paper samples. Then, a digital microscope and an environmental scanning electron microscope were used to detect the effect of fungi on paper fibers. Fourier transform infrared microscopy was used to identify the binding medium and the X-ray diffraction method was used to measure the crystallinity index of cellulose of the paper samples. Findings Arabic gum was used as a binder medium with the samples. Aspergillus Niger, Aspergillus Fumigatus and Aspergillus Clavatus were the most common fungal species that grew on the Qur’an papers under investigation. They also caused much common damage to the paper samples. The results of the analyzes also showed that the highest crystallinity index of cellulose was in the samples that contained the lowest rate of fungal growth. Originality/value This paper highlights the relationship between fungal degradation and the multi-component nature of paper manuscripts. It builds a wide database that correlates the composition and the degradation of the Qur’an papers.

Necessary optimality conditions for a bilevel optimization problem are given in the paper by Kohli (J Optim Theory Appl 152: 632–651, 2012). Recently, the same author corrected his results in the note (J Optim Theory Appl 181:706–707, 2019). In this work, we have pointed out that some of the new modifications are wrong. We correct the flaws and present an alternative proof for the main result.

Electronic data capture is fast becoming the preferred method of collecting patient-reported outcome (PRO) data in clinical trials. Data collection can be site-based (clinical study site), and typically collected on a tablet, or field-based (subject's typical environment such as home, school, or workplace), and most often accomplished with handheld devices, such as a smartphone. While site and study subject compliance with protocol-specific data collection procedures using these devices is critical to trial success, so is the robustness of the device hardware and the software these devices use to capture the trial data. Technology failures and/or site or subject resistance to the electronic data capture protocol may lead a subject to record data on paper, which can result in undesirable data challenges. As such, both site and subject compliance issues and technology-related factors must be anticipated to adhere to the ePRO data collection plan. The objective of this paper is to provide the technology industry's best practice recommendations for optimizing ePRO data collection in clinical trials by proposing the inclusion of a planned approach to data collection that includes viable electronic backup strategies so that defaulting to a paper-based backup becomes unnecessary.

Background: Proteins in the urine of women with preeclampsia (PE) bind Congo Red dye (urine congophilia). We sought to determine the diagnostic performance of a paper-based point-of-care test detecting urine congophilia for rapid triage and diagnosis of PE. Methods: Prospective cohort study conducted in 346 consecutive pregnant women evaluated for PE in the Labour and Delivery triage unit at our institution. The Congo Red Dot (CRD) Paper Test (index test) was performed on fresh urine samples. The CRD Paper Test results were compared to an expert adjudicated diagnosis in each case. The accuracy of the CRD Paper Test was also compared to urine and serum analytes (placental growth factor and soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1) previously proposed as diagnostic aids for PE. Findings: During the first triage visit, 32% (112/346) of women received a clinical diagnosis of PE. Yet, 63% (217/346) were admitted for in-patient diagnostic work-up or delivery. The CRD Paper Test was positive in 25% (86/346) of the cases. Adjudication confirmed PE in 28% (96/346) of all cases. The CRD Paper Test outperformed measured serum and urine markers (80·2% sensitivity, 89·2% specificity, 92·1% negative predictive value, 86·7% accuracy). The pre-test, positive and negative post-test probabilities were 27·7%, 74·0%, and 8·0%, respectively. Of women who were discharged undelivered, 38% (133/346) had at least one additional triage visit and the interval between the last negative and first positive CRD Paper Test was 12 (interquartile range, [5–34]) days. Interpretation: The CRD Paper Test is a simple, non-invasive, “sample-in/answer-out” point-of-care clinical tool for rapid identification of PE. Funding: Saving Lives at Birth Program and NICHD. Keywords: Preeclampsia, Cohort study, Congophilia, Misfolded proteins, Point-of-care

The German school system employs centrally organized performance assessments (some of which are called “VERA”) as a way of promoting lesson development. In recent years, several German federal states introduced a computer-based performance testing system which will replace the paper-pencil testing system in the future. Scores from computer-based testing are required to be equivalent to paper-pencil testing scores so that the new testing medium does not lead to disadvantages for students. Therefore, the current study aimed at investigating the size of the mode effect and the moderating impact of students’ gender, academic achievement and mainly spoken language in everyday life. In addition, the variance of the mode effect across tasks was investigated. The study was conducted in four German federal states in 2019 using a field experimental design. The test scores of 5140 eighth-graders from 165 schools in the subject German were analysed. The results of multi-level modelling revealed that students’ test scores in the computerized version of the VERA test were significantly lower than in the paper-pencil version. Students with a lower academic achievement were more disadvantaged by the VERA computerized test. The results were inconsistent regarding the interactions between testing mode and students’ gender and mainly spoken language in everyday life. The variance of the mode effect across tasks was high. Research into different subjects and in other federal states and countries under different testing conditions might yield further evidence about the generalizability of these results.

Racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States experience disparities in their health and health care that arise from a combination of interacting factors, including racism and discrimination, social drivers of health, health care access and quality, individual behavior, and biology. To ameliorate these disparities, the American College of Physicians (ACP) proposes a comprehensive policy framework that recognizes and confronts the many elements of U.S. society, some of which are intertwined and compounding, that contribute to poorer health outcomes. In addition to this framework, which includes high-level principles and discusses how disparities are interconnected, ACP offers specific policy recommendations on disparities and discrimination in education and the workforce, those affecting specific populations, and those in criminal justice practices and policies in its 3 companion policy papers. ACP believes that a cross-cutting approach that identifies and offers solutions to the various aspects of society contributing to poor health is essential to achieving its goal of good health care for all, poor health care for none.

In a recently published theorem on the split common fixed point problem for strict pseudocontractive and asymptotically nonexpansive mappings, Tang et al. (J. Inequal. Appl. 2015:305, 2015) studied a uniformly convex and 2-uniformly smooth real Banach space with the Opial property and best smoothness constant κ satisfying the condition $0 0 < κ < 1 2 , as a real Banach space more general than Hilbert spaces. A well-known example of a uniformly convex and 2-uniformly smooth real Banach space with the Opial property is $E=l_{p}$ E = l p , $2\leq p 2 ≤ p < ∞ . It is shown in this paper that, if κ is the best smoothness constant of E and satisfies the condition $0 0 < κ ≤ 1 2 , then E is necessarily $l_{2}$ l 2 , a real Hilbert space. Furthermore, some important remarks concerning the proof of this theorem are presented.

Graphing is an important practice for scientists and in K-16 science curricula. Graphs can be constructed using an array of software packages as well as by hand, with pen-and-paper. However, we have an incomplete understanding of how students’ graphing practice vary by graphing environment; differences could affect how best to teach and assess graphing. Here we explore the role of two graphing environments in students’ graphing practice. We studied 43 undergraduate biology students’ graphing practice using either pen-and-paper (PP) (n = 21 students) or a digital graphing tool GraphSmarts (GS) (n = 22 students). Participants’ graphs and verbal justifications were analyzed to identify features such as the variables plotted, number of graphs created, raw data versus summarized data plotted, and graph types (e.g., scatter plot, line graph, or bar graph) as well as participants’ reasoning for their graphing choices. Several aspects of participant graphs were similar regardless of graphing environment, including plotting raw vs. summarized data, graph type, and overall graph quality, while GS participants were more likely to plot the most relevant variables. In GS, participants could easily make more graphs than in PP and this may have helped some participants show latent features of their graphing practice. Those students using PP tended to focus more on ease of constructing the graph than GS. This study illuminates how the different characteristics of the graphing environment have implications for instruction and interpretation of assessments of student graphing practices.

In this work, a fine correlation among destructive and diagnostic parameters of transformer’s paper insulation is presented. The degree of polymerization (DP) directly assesses the condition of the paper insulation strength and is measured through destructive procedure. Generally, 2-FAL, CO2 and CO are the aging products of paper decomposition and referred as diagnostic parameters. An Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) is proposed and developed to estimate the value of DP as the function of amount of diagnostic parameters. The proposed system has an advantage of diagnosing the health of solid insulation without performing destructive tests. The diagnostic parameters are taken as inputs to the system to determine the value of DP. The system uses 630 data points for training the ANFIS model and follows a ten-fold cross-validation approach. The average validation error has been determined to be. 0.0029. Further, the model’s performance has been assessed using experimental data. The optimal ANFIS model has been achieved by suitably selecting the number and type of membership function. The estimated value of DP has been found to conform to the experimental measurements for every case under test. The performance of this model has also been compared with a fuzzy inference system (FIS) model in the reported literature. The comparison shows that the ANFIS model determines the DP values with a greater degree of accuracy than the FIS model.

Objective This study examines the validity of optical mark recognition, a novel user interface, and crowdsourced data validation to rapidly digitize and extract data from paper COVID-19 assessment forms at a large medical center. Methods An optical mark recognition/optical character recognition (OMR/OCR) system was developed to identify fields that were selected on 2,814 paper assessment forms, each with 141 fields which were used to assess potential COVID-19 infections. A novel user interface (UI) displayed mirrored forms showing the scanned assessment forms with OMR results superimposed on the left and an editable web form on the right to improve ease of data validation. Crowdsourced participants validated the results of the OMR system. Overall error rate and time taken to validate were calculated. A subset of forms was validated by multiple participants to calculate agreement between participants. Results The OMR/OCR tools correctly extracted data from scanned forms fields with an average accuracy of 70% and median accuracy of 78% when the OMR/OCR results were compared with the results from crowd validation. Scanned forms were crowd-validated at a mean rate of 157 seconds per document and a volume of approximately 108 documents per day. A randomly selected subset of documents was reviewed by multiple participants, producing an interobserver agreement of 97% for documents when narrative-text fields were included and 98% when only Boolean and multiple-choice fields were considered. Conclusion Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be challenging for health care workers wearing personal protective equipment to interact with electronic health records. The combination of OMR/OCR technology, a novel UI, and crowdsourcing data-validation processes allowed for the efficient extraction of a large volume of paper medical documents produced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Computer-based testing is an expanding use of technology offering advantages to teachers and students. We studied Calculus II classes for STEM majors using different testing modes. Three sections with 324 students employed: Paper-and-pencil testing, computer-based testing, and both. Computer tests gave immediate feedback, allowed multiple submissions, and pooling. Paper-and-pencil tests required work and explanation allowing inspection of high cognitive demand tasks. Each test mode used the strength of its method. Students were given the same lecture by the same instructor on the same day and the same homework assignments and due dates. The design is quasi-experimental, but students were not aware of the testing mode at registration. Two basic questions examined were: (1) Do paper-and-pencil and computer-based tests measure knowledge and skill in STEM Calculus II in a consistent manner? (2) How does the knowledge and skill gained by students in a fully computer-based Calculus II class compare to students in a class requiring pencil-and-paper tests and hence some paper-and-pencil work. These results indicate that computer-based tests are as consistent with paper-and-pencil tests as computer-based tests are with themselves. Results are also consistent with classes using paper-and-pencil tests having slightly better outcomes than fully computer-based classes using only computer assessments., Comment: 33 pages, 1 figure, 9 tables

There are similarities between Drinfeld modules and abelian varieties. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these similarities in terms of supersingularity. More specifically, we provide explicit formulas of Hasse invariants (or, equivalently, of supersingular polynomials) for Drinfeld modules, which is a continuation of the 2013 paper by Ahmad El-Guindy and Matthew A. Papanikolas. We present several supersingular Drinfeld modules as an application.

Suicide is a major global public health issue, and in recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the problem of physician suicide. This American College of Physicians policy paper examines, from the perspective of ethics, the issues that arise when individuals and institutions respond to physician suicides and when they engage in broader efforts aimed at physician suicide prevention. Emphasizing the medical profession as a unique moral community characterized by ethical and professional commitments of service to patients, each other, and society, this paper offers guidance regarding physician suicide and the role of a healing community. The response to an individual physician suicide should be characterized by respect and concern for those who are grieving, the creation of a supportive environment for suicide loss survivors, and careful communication about the event. Because suicide is a complex problem, actions aimed at preventing suicide must occur at the individual, interpersonal, community, and societal levels. The medical community has an obligation to foster a culture that supports education, screening, and access to mental health treatment, beginning at the earliest stages of medical training.

Even fairly good students, when they have obtained the solution of the problem and written down neatly the argument, shut their books and look for something else. Doing so, they miss an important a...

Objectives This document provides an English translation of the Israeli Joint Commission's national guidelines for triaging severely ill patients during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods Four subcommittees of medical, legal, ethical-social, and religious experts developed the general principles and practical medical criteria for triaging scarce life-saving resources. Results The guidelines provide an overview of general principles as well as pragmatic medical criteria and a practical triage protocol to be followed should the healthcare system be overwhelmed due to COVID-19. Issues covered include triggers for activating the guidelines, guiding ethical, legal, and religious principles, equity in access, fair distribution, transparency, consistency, palliation, medical policy prioritization, problem-solving mechanisms, and public trust. Conclusions The Israeli consensus document and pragmatic medical triage protocol offer a societal and medical roadmap for allocating scarce resources during the COVID-19 pandemic or other disasters.

Evolutionary game dynamics is a combination of game theory and dynamical systems. Using dynamical theory, we investigate chaotic behavior in asymmetric Rock-Paper-Scissors games under imitative dynamics with two different populations. Our theoretical analysis and numerical simulations demonstrate that the dynamical system can give rise to chaotic behavior in zero-sum and positive-sum asymmetric games. However, chaos cannot occur in a negative-sum asymmetric game. In particular, the numerical simulations show that there is a limit cycle in a negative-sum asymmetric game.

Subgroup by treatment interaction assessments are routinely performed when analysing clinical trials and are particularly important for phase 3 trials where the results may affect regulatory labelling. Interpretation of such interactions is particularly difficult, as on one hand the subgroup finding can be due to chance, but equally such analyses are known to have a low chance of detecting differential treatment effects across subgroup levels, so may overlook important differences in therapeutic efficacy. EMA have therefore issued draft guidance on the use of subgroup analyses in this setting. Although this guidance provided clear proposals on the importance of pre-specification of likely subgroup effects and how to use this when interpreting trial results, it is less clear which analysis methods would be reasonable, and how to interpret apparent subgroup effects in terms of whether further evaluation or action is necessary. A PSI/EFSPI Working Group has therefore been investigating a focused set of analysis approaches to assess treatment effect heterogeneity across subgroups in confirmatory clinical trials that take account of the number of subgroups explored and also investigating the ability of each method to detect such subgroup heterogeneity. This evaluation has shown that the plotting of standardised effects, bias-adjusted bootstrapping method and SIDES method all perform more favourably than traditional approaches such as investigating all subgroup-by-treatment interactions individually or applying a global test of interaction. Therefore, these approaches should be considered to aid interpretation and provide context for observed results from subgroup analyses conducted for phase 3 clinical trials.

We present an English translation of Erwin Schr\"odinger's paper on "On the Reversal of the Laws of Nature". In this paper Schr\"odinger analyses the idea of time reversal of a diffusion process. Schr\"odinger's paper acted as a prominent source of inspiration for the works of Bernstein on reciprocal processes and of Kolmogorov on time reversal properties of Markov processes and detailed balance. The ideas outlined by Schr\"odinger also inspired the development of probabilistic interpretations of quantum mechanics by F\'enyes, Nelson and others as well as the notion of "Euclidean Quantum Mechanics" as probabilistic analogue of quantization. In the second part of the paper Schr\"odinger discusses the relation between time reversal and statistical laws of physics. We emphasize in our commentary the relevance of Schr\"odinger's intuitions for contemporary developments in statistical nano-physics., Comment: Revised version. 24 pages, 2 figures. Introduction 2 pages, Translation of the german original pag. 3-10, Commentary pag 10-22

Surface characterization is important and has many applications in the paper industry. Surface characterization requires both surface roughness and surface friction. The relationship between the two has not been fully established for paper and paperboard. It has been a common practice that only the average property and the standard deviation with the coefficient of variation (COV) are reported for surface roughness and friction measurements. This practice, however, provides few information on surface structure and can lead to wrong judgments because two samples having the same average and the COV can have different physical properties. To avoid such mistake, a new surface characterization method has been developed. To this end, surface roughness- and friction-profiles have been obtained using a latest version of Kawabata surface tester (Model: KES-SESRU, Kato Tech, Kyoto Japan). This new version uses the same stylus for both measuring surface roughness and friction under the same operating conditions. It was found that a correlation between the surface roughness and surface friction was very low. This indicates that they should be independent of each other. Therefore, both should be determined for surface characterization.

This article provides reflections on the 1962 paper by Sir Austin Bradford Hill, entitled “The Statistician in Medicine.” It discusses several key takeaways of this paper, including causal inference for big data, reproducibility and replicability in science, and integration of statistics and data science with domain science.

The variability and interdependence of local porosity and local mean geodesic tortuosity, which is a measure for the sinuosity of shortest transportation paths, is investigated at the example of the microstructure in sack paper. By means of statistical image analysis, these two morphological characteristics are computed for several cutouts of 3D image data obtained by X-ray microcomputed tomography. Considering cutouts of different sizes allows us to study the influence of the sample size on the local variability of the considered characteristics. Moreover, the interdependence between local porosity and local mean geodesic tortuosity is quantified by modeling their joint distribution parametrically using Archimedean copulas. It turns out that the family of Gumbel copulas is an appropriate model type, which is formally validated by a goodness of fit test. Besides mean geodesic tortuosity, we consider further related morphological characteristics, describing the sinuosity of those shortest transportation paths, whose minimum diameter exceeds a predefined threshold. Moreover, we show that the copula approach investigated in this paper can also be used to quantify the negative correlation between local porosity and these modified versions of local mean geodesic tortuosity. Our results elucidate the impact of local porosity on various kinds of morphological characteristics, which are not experimentally accessible and which are important for local air permeance – a key property of sack paper.

Preliminary version. The published version contains a number of small modifications.; International audience; The present paper is a companion of two translated articles by Alfred Clebsch, titled "On a general transformation of the hydrodynamical equations" and "On the integration of the hydrodynamical equations". The originals were published in the Journal für die reine and angewandte Mathematik" (1857 and 1859). Here we provide a detailed critical reading of these articles, which analyzes methods, and results of Clebsch. In the first place, we try to elucidate the algebraic calculus used by Clebsch in several parts of the two articles that we believe to be the most significant ones. We also provide some proofs that Clebsch did not find necessary to explain, in particular concerning the variational principles stated in his two articles and the use of the method of Jacobi's Last Multiplier. When possible, we reformulate the original expressions by Clebsch in the language of vector analysis, which should be more familiar to the reader. The connections of the results and methods by Clebsch with his scientific context, in particular with the works of Carl Jacobi, are briefly discussed. We emphasize how the representations of the velocity vector field conceived by Clebsch in his two articles, allow for a variational formulation of hydrodynamics equations in the steady and unsteady case. In particular, we stress that what is nowadays known as the "Clebsch variables", permit to give a canonical Hamiltonian formulation of the equations of fluid mechanics. We also list a number of further developments of the theory initiated by Clebsch, which had an impact on presently active areas of research, within such fields as hydrodynamics and plasma physics.

In this short article, we mainly give some examples to prove that the main results of Section 4 of the paper [W. S. Liao and J. Wu, Ann. Func. Anal. 6 (2015), no. 3, 191–202] are not true. Then we give the corrected matrix inequalities.

In this work, some counterexamples are given to refute some results reported in the paper by Guo and Li [8] (J Optim Theory Appl 162,(2014), 821-844). We correct the faulty in some of their theorems and we present alternative proofs. Moreover, we extend the definition of approximately pseudo-dissipative in the setting of metrizable topological vector spaces.

Although crimes and the modus operandi of perpetrators across the world change constantly, some policing tools, especially in developing countries, remain the same. This study sought to assess Kenyan police officers’ satisfaction with the use of paper maps and push-pins (manual tools) in crime analysis, and identify challenges to the adoption of computerized tools such as geographical information systems (GIS) at a time when most operations are driven by technology. A descriptive survey targeting 120 Kenyan police officers was carried out at the National Police Service (NPS) headquarters in Nairobi, but only 94 (78.3%) officers responded. The study reveals that 42.3% of respondents found manual tools to be useful in crime mapping and spatial analysis, whereas 67.8% felt that they were easy to use. The study indicates that 55.0% of respondents were satisfied with manual crime mapping and spatial analysis, mainly because it was easy to use. The study also identifies several challenges to the adoption of GIS in crime analysis. The study concludes that majority of respondents found manual crime-mapping tools to be easy to use, but less useful although still usable in the absence of alternatives. The NPS should consider implementing pilot projects of computerized crime mapping and spatial analysis to allow stakeholders to assess police operations against multiple platforms.

We consider discrete dynamical systems coming from the models of evolution of populations playing rock - paper - scissors game . Asymptotic behaviour of trajectories of these systems is described, occurrence of the Neimark-Sacker bifurcation and nonexistence of time averages are proved.

How best to estimate the accuracy of a predictive rule has been a longstanding question in statistics. Approaches to this task range from simple methods like Mallow’s Cp to algorithmic techniques l...

The prescription drug market in the United States relies on competition to keep prices reasonable. Although many policies have been implemented to spur competition and decrease costs for patients, these policies may be outdated and should be redesigned and updated to achieve success in the current prescription drug market. In this paper, the American College of Physicians (ACP) proposes that new policies should be implemented to prevent market manipulation, help lower-cost alternatives make it to the market faster, and ensure a robust and competitive market for generic and biosimilar drugs. The ACP believes these changes will have a meaningful effect on patients without shifting costs to other areas of the health care system.

Very recently Bordelles, Dai, Heyman, Pan and Shparlinski studied asymptotic behaviour of the quantity $$\begin{aligned} S_f(x) := \sum _{n\leqslant x} f\left( \left[ \frac{x}{n}\right] \right) , \end{aligned}$$and established some asymptotic formulas for $$S_f(x)$$ under three different types of assumptions on f. In this short note we improve some of their results.

P values linked to null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is the most widely (mis)used method of statistical inference. Empirical data suggest that across the biomedical literature (1990–2015)...

In 2018, the American Glaucoma Society (AGS), the world’s largest professional society of glaucoma subspecialists, convened a 12-member task force of experts to craft a position statement about microinvasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS). The main objective of this position statement is to provide a succinct overview of these procedures and to address some misconceptions about MIGS. The members of the task force were selected by the AGS Board of Directors and include AGS members with expertise in developing MIGS, teaching MIGS, performing research on use and outcomes of these procedures, and working with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies about developing criteria to evaluate the efficacy and safety of these devices. Each of the sections of the position statement was prepared by subgroups of the task force, and then the material from the various sections was aggregated, and the leader of the task force (J.D.S.) merged the material into a cohesive draft. This draft was shared with the AGS Executive Committee and other members of the AGS Board of Directors for additional input.

The environment in which physicians practice and patients receive care continues to change. Increasing employment of physicians, changing practice models, new regulatory requirements, and market dynamics all affect medical practice; some changes may also place greater emphasis on the business of medicine. Fundamental ethical principles and professional values about the patient-physician relationship, the primacy of patient welfare over self-interest, and the role of medicine as a moral community and learned profession need to be applied to the changing environment, and physicians must consider the effect the practice environment has on their ethical and professional responsibilities. Recognizing that all health care delivery arrangements come with advantages, disadvantages, and salient questions for ethics and professionalism, this American College of Physicians policy paper examines the ethical implications of issues that are particularly relevant today, including incentives in the shift to value-based care, physician contract clauses that affect care, private equity ownership, clinical priority setting, and physician leadership. Physicians should take the lead in helping to ensure that relationships and practices are structured to explicitly recognize and support the commitments of the physician and the profession of medicine to patients and patient care.

Oil paper insulation is the main insulation form of large transformers. Partial discharge(PD) in oil paper insulation will not only damage the insulation performance, but also is the precursor and manifestation of insulation deterioration. Weibull distribution parameter is an important characteristic parameter of PD. In this paper a method is proposed to extract the characteristic parameter of PD based on the three-parameter Weibull model, then gray wolf optimization algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm are used to calculate the parameters of the model. The result shows that the two algorithms can get the parameters quickly and accurately, and the model can effectively reflect the characteristics of the $H_{n}(q)$ spectrum of PD times.

Communicability functions quantify the flow of information between two nodes of a network. In this work, we use them to explore the concept of the influence of a paper in a citation network. These functions depend on a parameter. By varying the parameter in a continuous way we explore different definitions of influence. We study six citation networks, three from physics and three from computer science. As a benchmark, we compare our results against two frequently used measures: the number of citations of a paper and the PageRank algorithm. We show that the ranking of the articles in a network can be varied from being equivalent to the ranking obtained from the number of citations to a behaviour tending to the eigenvector centrality, these limits correspond to small and large values of the communicability-function parameter, respectively. At an intermediate value of the parameter a PageRank-like behaviour is recovered. As a test case, we apply communicability functions to two sets of articles, where at least one author of each paper was awarded a Nobel Prize for the research presented in the corresponding article.

In this work, we describe a new approach that uses deep neural networks (DNN) to obtain regularization parameters for solving inverse problems. We consider a supervised learning approach, where a network is trained to approximate the mapping from observation data to regularization parameters. Once the network is trained, regularization parameters for newly obtained data can be computed by efficient forward propagation of the DNN. We show that a wide variety of regularization functionals, forward models, and noise models may be considered. The network-obtained regularization parameters can be computed more efficiently and may even lead to more accurate solutions compared to existing regularization parameter selection methods. We emphasize that the key advantage of using DNNs for learning regularization parameters, compared to previous works on learning via optimal experimental design or empirical Bayes risk minimization, is greater generalizability. That is, rather than computing one set of parameters that is optimal with respect to one particular design objective, DNN-computed regularization parameters are tailored to the specific features or properties of the newly observed data. Thus, our approach may better handle cases where the observation is not a close representation of the training set. Furthermore, we avoid the need for expensive and challenging bilevel optimization methods as utilized in other existing training approaches. Numerical results demonstrate the potential of using DNNs to learn regularization parameters., 27 pages, 16 figures

The paper alluded to in the title contains the following striking result: Let $I$ be the unit interval and $\Delta$ the Cantor set. If $X$ is a quasi Banach space containing no copy of $c_0$ which is isomorphic to a closed subspace of a space with a basis and $C(I, X)$ is linearly homeomorphic to $C(\Delta, X)$, then $X$ is locally convex, i.e., a Banach space. It is shown that Kalton result is sharp by exhibiting non locally convex quasi Banach spaces X with a basis for which $C(I, X)$ and $C(\Delta, X)$ are isomorphic. Our examples are rather specific and actually in all cases X is isomorphic to $C(\Delta, X)$ if $K$ is a metric compactum of finite covering dimension., Comment: 4 pages

In this note we offer some criticism on the paper “On an identity for zeros of Bessel functions” by Baricz et al. [3] . The paper gives identities of type Stieltjes–Calogero for the sums of reciprocals of differences of fourth powers of zeros of Bessel functions. Although interesting in principle, by containing one too many sums of similar complexity the identities fail to convey the true spirit of the work of Stieltjes and Calogero. We rectify this by providing what we think is the correct type of identity for the above-said sums, in the general setup of entire functions of order

We show that attenuation X-ray microcomputed tomography (μ-CT) offers a route to extract the three-dimensional pore space of paper reliably enough to distinguish samples of the same kind of paper. Here, we consider two sack kraft papers for cement bags with different basis weights and thicknesses. Sample areas of approximately 5 mm2 with a resolution of 1.5 μm are considered, i.e. sizes that exceed sample areas of 2 mm2 for which the pore structure was previously studied in the literature. The image segmentation is based on indicator kriging as a local method that removes ambiguities in assigning voxels as pore or as fibre. The microstructures of the two samples are statistically compared in terms of descriptors such as sheet thickness, porosity, fractions of externally accessible pores and mean geodesic tortuosity. We demonstrate that a quantitative comparison of samples in terms of porosity and thickness requires a common definition of the sheet surfaces. Finally, the statistical pore space analysis based on the μ-CT scans reliably reveals structural differences between the two paper samples, but only when several descriptors are used. LAY DESCRIPTION This paper is a seemingly abundant material. Its intrinsic porosity enables a vast number of commercial applications. Particularly packing products, e.g. cement bags, often incorporate sack kraft paper due to its high porosity and its additional mechanical strength. A direct quantification of the porosity of sack kraft papers is, hence, particularly desirable. However, experimental quantification of paper porosity or its pore network properties is difficult and often highly indirect. A nondestructive statistical analysis of the 3D microstructure holds the promise to directly assess the pores. In particular, X-ray microcomputed tomography (μ-CT), frequently with sub-μm resolution, has been established as a method to study the fibre and pore structure of paper. The question arises, whether statistical analysis of the microstructure based on μ-CT imaging is sufficient to reliably distinguish between different sack kraft papers. Here, we explore whether the pore structure of paper can be extracted and statistically analysed for larger sample areas despite the fact that a larger sample size directly translates into a lower resolution of the μ-CT scan. We expect that a large sample size increases the region of interest on the basis of which samples can be better distinguished. A lowered resolution poses a severe challenge for the reliable identification of voxel data as pores or as fibres, because the contrast between paper fibres (made of cellulose) and air, which is established due to X-ray absorption, is weak. We show that we can reliably assign each voxel by using an indicator kriging as a two-step method. This method performs an initial voxel identification based on the overall distribution of measured grey values and refines the identification by inspecting the local environment of each voxel. For the pore space extracted in such a way, we can then compute quantities that are related to the geometry and connectivity properties of the pores. Furthermore, we address a paper-born challenge for such an analysis, i.e. we cannot always unambiguously tell whether a pore is located inside the paper sheet or at the surface of the paper. The way the paper surfaces are extracted from the microstructure decisively determines the final specifications of the predicted properties. A significant distinction of the samples is only possible when comparing the properties of the pore network.

The accelerated thermal aging test is an effective method to simulate insulation material degradation in oil-immersed transformers. Traditionally, cellulose paper and mineral oil are heated up together at the same temperature when a thermal aging test is conducted. However, variation occurs between laboratory results and field conditions. Temperature gradients exist in real transformers, and each part of the winding is aged under various conditions. In order to rebuild temperature gradients and conduct a thermal aging test under this condition. First, 3D models with designed U-shape wingding which can guarantee different parts aged simultaneously under different temperatures are calculated for temperature field analysis. Then a thermal aging platform with a large current generator is proposed to construct temperature gradients in a thermal aging test. The large current generator helps to heat up the copper winding. Temperature sensors are installed in the aging tank to monitoring winding and oil temperature and control temperature. The aging temperature is selected according to the standard IEC 60076-7 for the over-load condition. The degree of polymerisation of the insulation paper is measured and properties of each layer of the insulation paper are analysed. Other aging products under both traditional test and method in this study are compared.

This paper reviews several dimensions in terms of which electronic/Internet and paper voting can be compared (vote secrecy, verifiability, ballot box integrity, transparency and trust base). We conclude that, for many vulnerabilities of Internet voting systems, there exist related weakness in paper systems as well. The main reason why paper-based elections are perceived as more secure is historical experience. We argue that recent criticisms of Internet voting have unfairly concentrated on the associated risks and neglected the benefits. Remote electronic voting lowers the cost of election participation and provides the most secure means for absentee voting. The latter is something that is urgently required in the contemporary, increasingly mobile world. Hence, we need to give Internet voting a chance, even if it means risking unknown threats and learning by trial and error.

We enjoyed reading Professor Efron’s (Brad) paper just as much as we enjoyed listening to his June 2019 lecture in Leiden. One of the core values underlying statistical research is in how it enable...

In education field, the importance of education system is the part of the most significant aspect of our social orders at all levels. Thus, a student's performance can only be tested by providing them with an examination or assessment. Examinations are very crucial as it is an activity which is performed to evaluate the performances of students. Besides students performances, the quality of the examination questions prepared would also determine the quality of the students but the most important yet challenging task is the creation of the examination questions paper which is known to be very tedious, time consuming and expensive therefore it should be prepared with full focus, right formatting and with the right selection of questions.

We suggest corrections to the paper by Kanabar and Simmons and provide analyses for deriving the internal rate of return arising from a UK state pension deferral decision and for an actuarially fair deferral scheme.

The purpose of this note is to discuss how paper folding can be used to find the exact trigonometric ratios of the following four angles: 22.5°, 67.5°, 27°, and 63°.

What can be learned from data about human survival at extreme age? In this rejoinder we give our views on some of the issues raised in the discussion of our paper Rootzen and Zholud (Extremes 20(4), 713–728, 2017).

This paper deals with the functionality of membrane computing which is a vivid research area in computer science. Membrane Computing associates with the generation of new computational logics and m...

In a recent paper referred to in the title, the author used the concept of quasi self-adjointness to obtain conservation laws for a system of the ( 2 + 1 ) -dimensional Bogoyavlensky–Konopelchenko equation. Apart from the adjoint system of equations, all the results on the quasi self-adjointness and the subsequent conservation laws obtained are inaccurate. In this comment, we clarify these inaccuracies and also generate conservation laws for a potential form of the underlying equation through Noether theorem.

We give a comprehensive account of Chern's Theorem that S^6 admits no omega-compatible almost complex structures. No claim to originality is being made, as the paper is mostly an expanded version of material already in the literature. This article extends the talks that both authors gave in Marburg during the conference "(Non)existence of complex structures on S^6" in April 2017., Misprints corrected

The Multilayer Perceptron Model was developed for predicting organic matter removal from pulp and paper mill wastewater. The original database covered a period of 1,427 consecutive days and contained the most frequently measured parameters. Three models were constructed by applying the technique of Principal Component Analysis, which selected principal components, discarded original variables and excluded possible outliers. The data were randomized and divided into training, validation and testing sets. The training algorithm was the Levenberg–Marquardt type, which is an adaptation of the back-propagation algorithm. The learning rate was 0.05, and the evaluation criteria used were the mean square error and the linear correlation coefficient. A marked difference was observed in the predictive performance when the organic matter load was used as an input. The model M4, which was built by discarding the two variables pH and EC, proved to be the most suitable and the simplest model obtained. However, ...