Search

We are witnessing increasing calls for reproducibility and replicability in HRI studies to improve reliability and confidence in empirical findings. One solution to facilitate this is using a robot platform that researchers frequently use, making it easier to replicate studies to verify results. In this work, we focus on a popular, affordable, and rich-in-functionality robot platform, NAO/Pepper, and contribute a generalized experiment project specifically for conducting language-based HRI experiments where a robot instructs a human for a task, including objective data collection. Specifically, we first describe a concrete workflow from an existing experiment and how it is generalized. We then evaluate the generalized project with a case study to show how adopters can quickly adapt to their specific experiment needs. This work provides inspiration for HRI researchers to not only provide their experiment code as supplementary material but also generalize them to benefit other researchers to advance empirical research in HRI. The generalized Choregraphe project with documentation, demo, and usage notes is available under MIT license on GitHub at https://github.com/TheRARELab/langex. We welcome questions by posting GitHub issues and pull requests to share adapted packages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are multiple arguments for and against wargames. Many scientists do not recognise the science in wargames. It is suggested that there is not enough literature relating to wargaming, for there to be any large-scale research into wargames. This is primarily because scientists often refuse to publish results, thus creating a vicious cycle where research is not published because there is not enough research being published. This ultimately deters researchers from studying wargaming in any serious fashion. Owing to this limitation, published work on the results, and protocols of wargames are scarce in scholarly research. Wargaming has considerably less academic focus with a fragmented and practical focus on design and benchmarking. This is surprising given the long history of wargaming (dating back to the early 1600's), when compared to the relatively recent history of other domains such as software engineering. To better understand the current state of research into wargaming in reference to benchmarking and validation, a scoping review (SR) was conducted. The scholarly research into wargaming reveals papers on general modelling, conflict modelling, influence modelling, evaluation of wargames, analytical tools, use of AI in wargame design, evaluation of predictive modelling in wargames, improving command and control through wargaming, and cost-benefit analysis for decision making. The initial analysis of the coverage of wargaming research, together with the limited number of papers found, indicate that there is a distinct lack of academic research into wargaming. Additionally, there is a wide variety of areas that are interested in the wargaming field, however, with no universal method of analysis or benchmarking, this limits the reproducibility of results, and the ability to judge the overall effectiveness of wargaming efforts. Wargame designers need to be able to assess wargame components to validate, compare, and predict the effects on gameplay and for decision-makers to draw conclusions with more confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The FAIR principles were introduced to enhance data reuse by providing guidelines for effective data management practices. In the broader context of research, assets encompass not only data but also other artifacts such as code, software, and publications. FAIRifying these artifacts is as essential as FAIRifying data, especially in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, where the complexity of current AI approaches makes reproducibility extremely challenging. Therefore, facilitating the easy reuse of these artifacts represents a significant stride towards mitigating this problem. The concept of FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) presents a solution to FAIRify these artifacts, treating them as FDOs. NFDI4DataScience is embracing FDOs and proposing an architecture to efficiently manage them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reproducibility crisis is the ongoing methodological crisis, where it is difficult or impossible to reproduce the results of many scientific studies. Because the reproducibility of scientific results is an essential part of science, such failures undermine the credibility of the theories and potentially call into question a substantial part of scientific knowledge. There are several ways to strengthen the reproducibility of results, such as proper reporting and dissemination, e.g., pre-registration of research, registered reports, open data, open code, open research notes, or open access. In this paper, I propose incorporating preregistration into the theses writing process for undergraduate students, which should lead to enhanced reproducibility, transparency, and openness of research results in the context of final theses. Pre-registration is a data-marked, predetermined, read-only research roadmap that, in most cases, is created before the study and published in a public repository. Preregistration increases the credibility, transparency, openness, and robustness of students' results in writing their theses. It also serves as a tremendous educational and communicative element of the thesis writing process that raises the level of student theses and demonstrates a certain level of student knowledge and skills. In this paper, I propose a timeframe for incorporating pre-registration into theses writing processes and discuss the challenges surrounding this process from the perspective of key stakeholders - policymakers, universities, theses supervisors, and students. The article also presents practical advice on where to find support and further guidance on preregistration aspects. This paper thus pioneers the idea of incorporating preregistration into the normal thesis writing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standardized metrics and methods are critical towards wider adoption of HRI technologies in real-world applications. However, the interdisciplinary nature of HRI creates an inherently decentralized research paradigm that limits the use of standardized metrics for baseline comparisons among studies. This limitation restricts both the real-world adoption and academic replicability of HRI solutions developed by the research community. To identify specific opportunities for reuse of metrics and methods in HRI, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of 1464 papers from the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and the IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (Ro-Man) over seven years. By providing a holistic perspective of the metrological tools leveraged in the current state-of-practice of HRI research, we find that a significant portion of HRI studies use custom surveys, thus limiting baseline comparison. Hence, the analysis in this work aims to advance the field of HRI by identifying specific barriers to adoption of HRI technologies in addition to proposing solutions to overcome existing limitations in the context of metrics and methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerical algorithms and computational tools are essential for managing and analyzing complex data processing tasks. With ever increasing availability of meta-data and parameter-driven simulations, the demand and the need for reliable and automated workflow f rameworks to reproduce computational experiments has grown. In this work, we aim to develop a novel computational workflow f ramework, namely MaRDIFlow, that describes the abstraction of multi-layered workflow components. Herein, we plan to enable and implement scientific computing data FAIRness i nto actionable guidelines for FAIR computational experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing amount of data generated by scientific research poses the challenge of providing an adequate infrastructure and tools that facilitate FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data access, manipulation, analysis and visualization. Often, the burden of managing the metadata associated with the original data and the analysis lies with the researchers. The open source Galaxy platform [1] is well-known for supplying tools and workflows for reproducible and transparent data analysis across scientific disciplines. It is a multi-user environment which facilitates sharing of e.g. tools, workflows, notebooks, visualizations, and data with others. There are three large Galaxy instances (US, Europe [2] and Australia) used by hundreds of thousands of researchers worldwide and that are using PBs of data. Galaxy handles the metadata transparently, releasing scientists from the burden and making it less prone to human errors. These features can be used without technical background by using a web browser or, for experts, through the Galaxy API. Galaxy is more than a workflow manager: it provides scientists with access to reference data, databases (ENA, UniProt, NCBI, PDB, Ensembl...), external repositories (FTP, SFTP, Dropbox...), data sources through standard APIs (TRS, DRS from GA4GH). Importantly, Galaxy not only uses the metadata of input data, but enriches the metadata space with analysis information. Thus, users are finally enabled to apply export mechanisms for the data, targeting external resources (S3, ENA...). Beyond, also the applied workflow invocation can be exported invoking standardized formats (RO-Crate, BioComputeObject...; [3]), effectively easing the sharing of the research artifacts, but also the details on the underlying analysis. Although easy and standardized import/export functionalities are crucial features, entire data life cycles can be mapped into Galaxy. From the users' perspective, the built-in sharing features for data, workflows, histories etc. appear much more relevant in daily research efforts, making it particularly easy to reproduce results in order to verify their correctness and enable other researchers to build upon them in future studies. In fact, one of Galaxy's key features is its emphasis on transparency, reproducibility, and reusability. All provenance information of a dataset, including versions of used tools, parameters, execution environment, is captured and can be reused or exported using standards like BCO or RO-Crate to public archives. This highest level of provenance tracking also enables traceability and can also be used to reduce the environmental impact of a data analysis. In addition to reproducibility, the Galaxy project places a strong emphasis on research data management (RDM; [4]). Beyond platform tools for data import, organization, sharing, annotation, and export, data can be stored and accessed through a variety of providers, including cloud storages like NextCloud. This allows researchers to work with large datasets without the need for local storage infrastructures. The project encourages researchers to share their data and analysis workflows with the wider scientific community, with the aim of accelerating scientific discovery and innovation by following the FAIR principles. Notably, public instances offer not only computing capacities to users, but also persistent disk space, decoupling researchers from dependencies on local capacities and technical challenges (resources, capacities, support,...). This enables democratizing data analysis in large. In practice, centralized and efficient user support is an important aspect of intuitive and borderless sharing in data science. Failures in tools or analysis procedures can be fixed for numerous users simultaneously and users can be nudged to use more efficient or correct tools. In terms of RDM in Galaxy we will put a focus on RO-Crate (Research Object Crate; [5]) as a relatively recent development, implementing to a practical extent the FAIR Digital Objects (FDO) concept. RO-Crate enables researchers to organize and package their research data and other digital resources in a way that makes it easier to share, reuse, and reproduce their work; obviously this shows a great overlap with Galaxy's principles. On the European level, ELIXIR mandates the increased usage of RO-Crate. Notably, also in the German NFDI space decisions have been made for pushing RO-Crate, with DataPLANT being an early adopter. A central mission of DataPLANT, the first-round NFDI-funded consortium for connecting plant researchers in Germany, is to provide a suitable infrastructure for data analysis. Galaxy has been widely adopted by the research community, particularly in fields such as data science, bioinformatics, and digital humanities. It has also been recognized as a key pillar of various European organizations such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The Freiburg Galaxy Team, being a central pillar for operating the European Galaxy server 'UseGalaxy.eu', is part of these efforts and also involved in further NFDI consortia. The European Galaxy server is a flagship project of the German Network of Bioinformatics infrastructure (de.NBI) and part of multiple CRCs. Since 2022 the European Galaxy community is officially part of EOSC with its own project 'EuroScienceGateway' [6], where OpenAIRE, the EOSC organization behind Zenodo, is an important partner. They bring in their knowledge graph, aggregating research data properties (metadata, links), supporting open science principles. Our talk will describe how the Galaxy platform assists researchers from diverse technical backgrounds and scientific domains throughout the entire data life cycle: data access, processing, analysis, preservation, sharing and re-use (Figure 1). We will highlight cross-connections with other popular services and sketch future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work develops a user‐centric interface for an existing blockchain‐based research transparency framework. As researchers in different disciplines may have different research data management and reproducibility needs, we first conducted an exploratory study to comprehend their motivations and expectations when managing research records. We analyzed data from a design thinking workshop with 17 participants and conducted six interviews. We have three critical components in a user‐centric interface design: 1) user‐decided autonomy, 2) a progress dashboard, and 3) research‐team management. In the future, we would like to build an scholarly information ecosystem that fosters safe research lifecycle transparency with the assistance of technology. Thus, we plan to accumulate more interview data from different fields to improve the design of the user‐centric client. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As human-robot interaction (HRI) researchers, like all scientists, we must demonstrate the reproducibility of fndings--especially across robots. We present a three-study replication efort that illustrates the challenges and opportunities for replication science in HRI. A recent human-robot trust study (Ullman & Malle, 2017) suggested that people "in the loop" with a robot via a simple button press trusted the robot (a Thymio) more than those who observed the robot complete the task autonomously. This intriguing fnding was based on a small sample n = 40) and was therefore greatly underpowered (observed power 1 - β = .35), prompting replication. To test whether the in-the-loop efect generalizes to similar robots, we conducted a conceptual replication (Study 1) using the Create robot. The efect did not replicate, despite a large sample (n = 140) and expected power of .86. This result called for a direct replication (Study 2) using the original Thymio robot. The efect again did not replicate, despite a large sample (n = 200) and expected power of .96. We then conducted an online study (Study 3) with videos of both robots to examine whether diferent expectations for each robot drove the divergent results, but the hypothesis was disconfrmed (n = 400). However, one fnding held across all studies: Participants consistently trusted imagined future robots far less in social than nonsocial use contexts (efect sizes of ds = -0.71, -0.78, and -0.79 in the lab studies; d = -0.38 in the online study). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reproducibility is an important quality criterion for the secondary use of electronic health records (EHRs). However, multiple barriers to reproducibility are embedded in the heterogeneous EHR environment. These barriers include complex processes for collecting and organizing EHR data and dynamic multi-level interactions occurring during information use (e.g., inter-personal, inter-system, and cross-institutional). To ensure reproducible use of EHRs, we investigated four information quality dimensions and examine the implications for reproducibility based on a real-world EHR study. Four types of IQ measurements suggested that barriers to reproducibility occurred for all stages of secondary use of EHR data. We discussed our recommendations and emphasized the importance of promoting transparent, high-throughput, and accessible data infrastructures and implementation best practices (e.g., data quality assessment, reporting standard). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied a scour in a drainage canal of the Cheboksary hydrosystem tailrace on the Volga river. To protect the hydrosystem tailrace from scouring, we proposed flexible stream-guiding grids that are installed in the stream and effectively affect its kinematics in the bottom area. We calculated in MathCad a system of vortices that occur when the flow runs against adjacent plates of a grid. Due to the replacement of flexible elements of a grid with flat plates that divide the flow into separate jets, it became possible to use a method for calculating kinematic characteristics based on the model of A.Ya. Milovich. We calculated flow velocities in areas before the plates, in the space between the plates, and behind the grid. The results of calculations of grid parameters in MathCad were confirmed by an experimental study based on a model of a hydrosystem spillway dam. During the experimental study based on the 1:100 scale model in a hydraulic flume, we measured the kinematic characteristics of the flow using a multi-channel thermal anemometer. The measurements were carried out according to the Froude criterion. The values of thermal equivalents of flow velocities obtained using thermal anemometers were processed with Excel built-in statistical functions. The values of dispersion, confidence probability, and Student's criterion were obtained. As a result of the experiments performed with and without installing the grid model, a significant deformation of velocity diagrams before and behind the baffle was revealed. Due to the flow deviation from the bottom, the bottom velocities were significantly reduced in the lower part of the model, in an unprotected riverbed area. In the upper part of the model, in front of the grid, the change in the area of velocity diagrams was similar to the effect of a barrier on the flow. We established the high efficiency of the proposed device and the stability of the baffling effect in relation to changes in the flow rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a data intensive field that unites researchers from many disciplines, Earth System Science (ESS) is an ideal site for examining evolving cross‐disciplinary data practices. This paper reports on results from a survey examining data sharing, data reuse, and research reproducibility practices of ESS researchers, aimed at informing improvements in data services for interdisciplinary sciences. Data reuse was found to be very high for new and comparative analyses but very limited for reproducing research. Data sharing was also strong, mostly through supplements to published papers, with moderate use of open access repositories. At the same time, there was interesting variability in both data sharing and reuse among ESS disciplines. The most pronounced challenges to reuse and reproducibility stem from limited documentation on how data are collected and managed, practices that are poorly supported by institutions, funders, and publishers. A more refined approach to "reproducibility" is needed that aligns with priorities and practices within the research community. Just as importantly, advances in data service models for ESS and other interdisciplinary fields need to account for the diverse and distributed system of repositories and build a workforce with deeper knowledge of the complex data and methods that drive integrative systems science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generalizability of empirical research depends on the reproduction of findings across settings and populations. Consequently, generalizations demand resources beyond that which is typically available to any one laboratory. With collective interest in the joint Simon effect (JSE) -- a phenomenon that suggests people work more effectively with humanlike (as opposed to mechanomorphic) robots -- we pursued a multi-institutional research cooperation between robotics researchers, social scientists, and software engineers. To evaluate the robustness of the JSE in dyadic human-robot interactions, we constructed an experimental infrastructure for exact, lab-independent reproduction of robot behavior. Deployment of our infrastructure across three institutions with distinct research orientations (well-resourced versus resource-constrained) provides initial demonstration of the success of our approach and the degree to which it can alleviate technical barriers to HRI reproducibility. Moreover, with the three deployments situated in culturally distinct contexts (Germany, the U.S. Midwest, and the Mexico-U.S. Border), observation of a JSE at each site provides evidence its generalizability across settings and populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fault-detection, localization, and repair methods are vital to software quality; but it is difficult to evaluate their generality, applicability, and current effectiveness. Large, diverse, realistic datasets of durably-reproducible faults and fixes are vital to good experimental evaluation of approaches to software quality, but they are difficult and expensive to assemble and keep current. Modern continuous-integration (CI) approaches, like TRAVIS-CI, which are widely used, fully configurable, and executed within custom-built containers, promise a path toward much larger defect datasets. If we can identify and archive failing and subsequent passing runs, the containers will provide a substantial assurance of durable future reproducibility of build and test. Several obstacles, however, must be overcome to make this a practical reality. We describe BUGSWARM, a toolset that navigates these obstacles to enable the creation of a scalable, diverse, realistic, continuously growing set of durably reproducible failing and passing versions of real-world, open-source systems. The BUGSWARM toolkit has already gathered 3,091 fail-pass pairs, in Java and Python, all packaged within fully reproducible containers. Furthermore, the toolkit can be run periodically to detect fail-pass activities, thus growing the dataset continually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the analysis of contamination of hydrosystem headraces with floating materials, we developed a system of protective facilities, including protective booms, abutments and bottom mats, guiding booms. To justify the operation of the developed facilities, automated calculations of the listed guiding and retaining facilities were performed. The main attention was paid to the experimental study of the facilities. As a result of the experimental studies, we determined values of forces in a ground sill, depending on the mass of the jam formed by floating contaminants and on the surface flow velocity. The experiments were performed in a hydraulic flume on the model at a scale of 1:100. An electronic dynamometer was used to measure the forces in the ground sill. Readings of the dynamometer were previously checked for representativeness, accuracy, reliability, homogeneity, variability and distribution. The flow velocity was measured using a hydrometric propeller, and the jam mass was measured by the weighing method. While processing the measurement results, we calculated a sample variance, standard deviation, mean error, allowable deviation and relative error of measurement series. The reproducibility of data was checked by the Cochran criterion before selecting regression equations. The regression relations constructed in the CurveExpert software environment allowed establishing the dependence of the force in the ground sill on the jam mass at different flow velocities. A correlation coefficient and a mean error were determined. The calculated characteristics showed a good convergence of the measurement results and the theoretical model. For the whole experiment, an average variance and a statistical Fisher's fitting criterion were established. It was proved that the model was adequate and described the process under study with a confidence probability of 95%. As a result of the experimental studies, we established parameters of the protective boom for effective retention of floating contaminants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature reviews play a key role in information systems (IS) research by describing, understanding, testing, and explaining the constructs and theories within a particular topic area. In recent years, various commentaries, debates, and editorials in the field's top journals have highlighted the importance of systematicity and transparency in creating trustworthy literature reviews. Although also recognized as being important, the characteristic of reproducibility of IS literature reviews has not received nearly the same level of attention. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the elements required for high quality IS literature reviews by clarifying the role of reproducibility. In doing so, we find that the concept of reproducibility has been misunderstood in much of the guidance to authors of IS literature reviews. Based on this observation, we make several suggestions for clarifying the terminology and identifying when reproducibility is desirable and feasible within IS literature reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing prevalence of Open Science has brought reproducibility to the center of discussion of the scientific community as a requirement for ensuring the transparency and correctness of a research workflow. The current publishing landscape is evolving, as shown by the emergence of notebook technologies powering a new generation of interactive Web Journals. These use state-of-the-art interactive graphical visualizations and on-demand data processing to research papers, allowing readers to trace every step of the process, from raw data to the finalized visualization. Since there are many Research Notebook technologies and interactive graphical visualization solutions to choose from, we present a summary comparative overview of Web Journals and the Notebook engines that power the interactive, data driven visualizations inside their publications. Given our focus on visualization, our metrics are the support for the most advanced, popular and widely adopted data visualization frameworks. We conclude that Jupyter Notebook is currently the best alternative for the average user, given its popularity and support, combined with broad support for powerful and high-level interactive visualization grammars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide risk models are critical for prioritizing patients for intervention. We demonstrate a reproducible approach for training text classifiers to identify patients at risk. The models were effective in phenotyping suicidal behavior (F1=.94) and moderately effective in predicting future events (F1=.63). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zinc Stannate (ZnSnO3) doped nanocomposite polymer electrolyte films were prepared with the composition PVA-CH3COONa by solution cast technique. The prepared samples were characterized by DSC and UV-visible spectroscopy. Humidity sensing parameters were also studied on the prepared nanocomposite film. DSC measurements showed the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the prepared samples was found to be 117 °C. Optical absorption of the prepared films was recorded in the wavelength ranging from 200 to 800 nm at room temperature. The prepared nanocomposite film exhibited the humidity sensing reproducibility up to ±75%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims made in many Music Information Retrieval (MIR) publications are hard to verify due to the fact that (i) often only a textual description is made available and code remains unpublished -- leaving many implementation issues uncovered; (ii) copyrights on music limit the sharing of datasets; and (iii) incentives to put effort into reproducible research -- publishing and documenting code and specifics on data -- is lacking. In this article the problems around reproducibility are illustrated by replicating an MIR work. The system and evaluation described in 'A Highly Robust Audio Fingerprinting System' is replicated as closely as possible. The replication is done with several goals in mind: to describe difficulties in replicating the work and subsequently reflect on guidelines around reproducible research. Added contributions are the verification of the reported work, a publicly available implementation and an evaluation method that is reproducible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical centres are obliged to store past medical records, including the results of quality assurance (QA) tests of the medical equipment, which is especially useful in checking reproducibility of medical devices and procedures. Analysis of multivariate time series is an important part of quality control of NMR data. In this work we proposean anomaly detection tool based on Reiteration of Hankel Singular Value Decomposition method. The presented method was compared with external software and authors obtained comparable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Scientific work is time-consuming and expensive. However, after data has been collected and reports have been written, science becomes an information problem. There are thousands of journals and funding agencies across specialized disciplines with different requirements for data transparency. Science-focused domains substantiate research findings through defined research methods and data analysis techniques, and emerging practices around data storage and code publishing now allow other scientists to see exactly how researchers come to their conclusions. These new practices not only increase transparency of the scientific process, they also enable replication and derivative research. Despite these emerging practices, the work of research transparency does not always easily enable reproducibility. At face value, the requirements (e.g., America COMPETES Act; G8 Open Data Charter, etc.) for data sharing seem straightforward: a scientist receives funding and therefore is required to share her data with other scientists. However, the physical sciences and social sciences produce different kinds of data that are more or less easily stored. Additionally, in some cases, researchers can (and should) put restrictions on who can view their data, because of ethical concerns. This panel will begin with current reasons for and methods of sharing data, including national and global initiatives, then will move into problems with open data, sharing data and reproducibility in both quantitative and qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational reproducibility is a critical first step to supporting data reuse. Incentives that encourage data reuse within an academic setting are unlikely to be compelling for students who decide not to continue in academe. The goal of this work is to identify key barriers in the most likely of scenarios with computational reuse, when a doctoral student reproduces work done by another student from the same lab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the requirements of the standard ISO/TS 16949 is conducting statistical studies for each type of measurement system, which means using Measurement System Analysis (MSA) as a method of identifying the sources of variation in the measurement process. This paper highlights the use of MSA (Measurement Systems Analysis) in a company that manufactures automotive parts and plans to attain the ISO/TS 16949 certification. MSA method is used in order to correct a problem that occurred on the surface of an automotive part, specifically by improving the device that measures the runout of a specific product. In the study a measuring deviceis used, a sample often parts and three operators, each measuring with the same principal the same part twice. Three options are selected, compared between them and the most advantageous is chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of NDE Reliability and POD has gone through multiple phases since its humble beginning in the late 1960s. This was followed by several programs including the important one nicknamed "Have Cracks - Will Travel" or in short "Have Cracks" by Lockheed Georgia Company for US Air Force during 1974-1978. This and other studies ultimately led to a series of developments in the field of reliability and POD starting from the introduction of fracture mechanics and Damaged Tolerant Design (DTD) to statistical framework by Bernes and Hovey in 1981 for POD estimation to MIL-STD HDBK 1823 (1999) and 1823A (2009). During the last decade, various groups and researchers have further studied the reliability and POD using Model Assisted POD (MAPOD), Simulation Assisted POD (SAPOD), and applying Bayesian Statistics. All and each of these developments had one objective, i.e., improving accuracy of life prediction in components that to a large extent depends on the reliability and capability of NDE methods. Therefore, it is essential to have a reliable detection and sizing of large flaws in components. Currently, POD is used for studying reliability and capability of NDE methods, though POD data offers no absolute truth regarding NDE reliability, i.e., system capability, effects of flaw morphology, and quantifying the human factors. Furthermore, reliability and POD have been reported alike in meaning but POD is not NDE reliability. POD is a subset of the reliability that consists of six phases: 1) samples selection using DOE, 2) NDE equipment setup and calibration, 3) System Measurement Evaluation (SME) including Gage Repeatability & Reproducibility (Gage R&R) and Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA), 4) NDE system capability and electronic and physical saturation, 5) acquiring and fitting data to a model, and data analysis, and 6) POD estimation. This paper provides an overview of all major POD milestones for the last several decades and discuss rationale for using Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME), MAPOD, SAPOD, and Bayesian statistics for studying controllable and non-controllable variables including human factors for estimating POD. Another objective is to list gaps between "hoped for" versus validated or fielded failed hardware. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Conference Proceedings of the Société d'Ergonomie de Langue Française (SELF) is the property of Societe d'Ergonomie de Langue Francaise and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Replacement of aged rod-end bearings, a kind of force introduction jigs, has improved reproducibility in a calibration of tensile force transducer with rotating its mounting positions. As oilless rod-end bearings get aged and their sliding bodies accumulate contamination, the bearings increasingly impart eccentric bending moment to the force transducer that is connected to the bearings. Increase of the eccentric moment results in deterioration of the reproducibility especially in calibrations of small rated capacity force transducer. By replacing the aged rod-end bearings, improvement of the reproducibility has been confirmed in calibrations of three tensile force transducers of 50 N, 200 N and 1 kN rated capacities. Improvement by replacement of aged rod-end bearings was effective for force transducers with small rated capacities, because they are more sensitive to the certain eccentric forces and moments than that with large capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims at developing an embedded giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) sensing device using balanced modulator/demodulator topologies. Its prototype compact model which is suitable for in-situ applications is fabricated by integrating the probe assembly and the processing circuits. The device measures the phase shift which in turn calibrates the magnitude of the magnetic field. Balanced modulator/demodulator topologies are incorporated for phase shift measurement which not only enhances the sensitivity of the sensing device due to the improvement of the signal to noise ratio but also improves the repeatability and reproducibility of the sensing device. The characterization results and the performance evaluations are included to demonstrate the improved performance of the sensing device. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ability to reproduce the experiments of a scientific research is one of the fundamental principles of the scientific method, as failing to reproduce it and obtain results equal (or very similar) to the original might imply that the later were wrong. In compiler and computer architecture research, reproducibility requires a researcher to be able to compile and execute software on (possibly many) computing systems in a repeatable manner. Though the source code for the studied applications, operating systems and compiler tool chains are often available, it is sometimes still impossible to exactly reproduce one experiment due to the lack of information about versioning of the code, build configuration and environmental setup. In this work we propose a database for gathering experimental setup information as well as related experimental results to enforce reproducibility and to enable results sharing among the researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we show a road map for successively dividing an asynchronously feed-backed circuitry into its substructures, and provide several intuitive and formal approaches to recompose structural behavior from its substructures. Each dividing granularity and composition provides specific information about safety, stability, reliability and reproducibility. We further classify and discuss behavioral model and stability criteria on bases of the given structural properties and present a use-case. Implementation results are given and discussed formally with respect to extracted structure-weaknesses and safety aspects. The method exhibits analog properties of the structure like multivalued information flow, propagation time and superpositions that can lead to information corruptness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We design a solid phantom with painted tongue body as a simulation of human tongue and analyze the average color distance of the phantom images to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility of this instrument. The color difference is applied as a tolerance of Precision-to-Tolerance ratio (P/T) in QS9000. The P/T ratio of total measurement is used to indicate whether the instrument is correctly built or in good condition for continuous use. We may find some confounding factors of these instruments through this examination. The result shows the unsteady condition for image capture by the instrument or operator factors such as light, vibration, operators training and so on could be adjusted or modified. The study of repeatability and reproducibility needs to be performed when a new tongue diagnosis instrument is being introduced, and could help TCM doctors to establish a standard tongue diagnosis environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most appealing features of robot-assisted-therapy (RMT) consists in the possibility to quantify the performances of the rehabilitation task proposed to the patient. The analysis of kinematics indexes, providing quantitative information about movement patterns that is not captured using clinical measures, could be used as reliable outcome measures in clinical upper limb rehabilitative settings. Few papers have actually addressed this issue and aim of the study is the assessment of the reproducibility of kinematics indexes of upper arm horizontal reaching movements in normal subjects during RMT. We studied two repeated sets of 60 reaching movements of 25° amplitude at 20–30 and 40°/s target velocity in 5 healthy subjects. Reaching movements were automatically detected and quantified by symmetry, skewness, kurtosis and smoothness indexes. Results showed agreements' limits of kurtosis and smoothness narrower than other kinematics indexes, with Bland-Altman plots rapidly increasing their scatter with higher values. This suggesting to limit their evaluation only to the average of a sequence of medium velocity reaching movements of about 30°/s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inter- and intrasubject uncertainty in functional magnetic resonance imaging examinations at cortex motor and language area was studied. The highest Z-scores were identified and mean weighted lateralisation index (LIw) were calculated using a combined bootstrap/histogram analysis by Wilke and Schmithorst within prescribed Brodmann areas (BA). LIw (with standard deviation) for right hand motor task of adults was 0,77(0,04) for BA 1-2-3, 0,88(0,02) for BA 4 and 0,71(0,04) for BA 6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extremely low acoustic impedance of polypropylene ferroelectret combined with its piezoelectric properties makes this material suitable for construction of air-coupled ultrasonic transducers for non-destructive testing. For the fabrication of transducers with a stable quality, the reproducibility of their key parameters is of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We review the literature on evidence-based best practices regarding how to enhance methodological transparency when conducting empirical research. We focus on transparency because it is a precondition for the reproducibility, replicability and, consequently, the credibility and trustworthiness of management research. We distill the large, fragmented, and often-technical literature into 68 recommendations from an initial list of 62 substantive and methodological journals in management, business, sociology, and psychology. Our recommendations address judgment calls and decisions made in each of the usual stages in the empirical research process: (1) theory (e.g., are a priori and post hoc hypotheses clearly designated as such? what are the epistemological assumptions?), (2) design (e.g., what is the sampling strategy? what is the rationale for including each of the control variables?), (3) measurement (e.g., are existing scales altered in any way? what is the justification for score aggregation?), (4) analysis (e.g., how are outliers handled? can data and syntax be made available?), and (5) reporting of results (e.g., what is the justification for handling missing data? what is the total number of statistical tests conducted?). Our recommendations provide a resource for doctoral education and training, researchers conducting empirical studies, journal editors and reviewers evaluating submissions, and journals and professional associations interested in enhancing methodological transparency in the manuscript submission and review process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An approach for the evaluation of sensor array efficiency is proposed. The reproducibility of sensor responses and the uniqueness of chemical images (CI) formed by the array are considered as dominant factors that determine sensor array functionality. The key feature of the method is representation of array response as a numerical function of sensors responses. This allow making mathematical operations with CI. The dispersion of CIs of given set of analytes can serve as a measure of their uniqueness. The coefficient of covariance in the set of measurements expresses their reproducibility. The rate of influence of both reproducibility and CI uniqueness on the discriminating ability is shown qualitatively on the example of three QCM sensor array with metal phthalocyanines sensitive coatings. The illumination of sensors surfaces in the Q-band region of Pc’s adsorption spectra was applied as a factor affecting both the reproducibility and the uniqueness of CIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]