F1000 recommendations as a new data source for research evaluation: A comparison with citations

F1000 is a post-publication peer review service for biological and medical research. F1000 aims to recommend important publications in the biomedical literature, and from this perspective F1000 could be an interesting tool for research evaluation. By linking the complete database of F1000 recommendations to the Web of Science bibliographic database, we are able to make a comprehensive comparison between F1000 recommendations and citations. We find that about 2% of the publications in the biomedical literature receive at least one F1000 recommendation. Recommended publications on average receive 1.30 recommendations, and over 90% of the recommendations are given within half a year after a publication has appeared. There turns out to be a clear correlation between F1000 recommendations and citations. However, the correlation is relatively weak, at least weaker than the correlation between journal impact and citations. More research is needed to identify the main reasons for differences between recommendations and citations in assessing the impact of publications

Reliability-Based Design of Reinforced Concrete Raft Footings Using Finite Element Method

In this study, a FORTRAN-based reliability-based design program was developed for the design of raft footings based on the ultimate and serviceability design requirements of BS8110 (1997). The well-known analysis of plate on elastic foundation using displacement method of analysis was used in conjunction with the design point method. The design point method was adopted for designing to a pre-determined safety level, T. Example of the design of a raft footing is included to demonstrate the simplicity of the procedure. It was found among other findings that there is a saving of about 64% of longitudinal reinforcement applied at the column face using the proposed method as compared with the BS8110 design method. Also, the depth of footing required using the proposed procedure was found to be 47% lower than in the deterministic method using BS8110. Also, considering a target safety index of 3.0 was found to be cheaper than considering a target safety index of 4.0 for the same loading, material and geometrical properties of the footing. It is therefore concluded that the proposed procedure is quite suitable for application

Querying Schemas With Access Restrictions

We study verification of systems whose transitions consist of accesses to a Web-based data-source. An access is a lookup on a relation within a relational database, fixing values for a set of positions in the relation. For example, a transition can represent access to a Web form, where the user is restricted to filling in values for a particular set of fields. We look at verifying properties of a schema describing the possible accesses of such a system. We present a language where one can describe the properties of an access path, and also specify additional restrictions on accesses that are enforced by the schema. Our main property language, AccLTL, is based on a first-order extension of linear-time temporal logic, interpreting access paths as sequences of relational structures. We also present a lower-level automaton model, Aautomata, which AccLTL specifications can compile into. We show that AccLTL and A-automata can express static analysis problems related to "querying with limited access patterns" that have been studied in the database literature in the past, such as whether an access is relevant to answering a query, and whether two queries are equivalent in the accessible data they can return. We prove decidability and complexity results for several restrictions and variants of AccLTL, and explain which properties of paths can be expressed in each restriction.Comment: VLDB201

Computing a Nonnegative Matrix Factorization -- Provably

In the Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) problem we are given an $n \times m$ nonnegative matrix $M$ and an integer $r > 0$. Our goal is to express $M$ as $A W$ where $A$ and $W$ are nonnegative matrices of size $n \times r$ and $r \times m$ respectively. In some applications, it makes sense to ask instead for the product $AW$ to approximate $M$ -- i.e. (approximately) minimize \norm{M - AW}_F where \norm{}_F denotes the Frobenius norm; we refer to this as Approximate NMF. This problem has a rich history spanning quantum mechanics, probability theory, data analysis, polyhedral combinatorics, communication complexity, demography, chemometrics, etc. In the past decade NMF has become enormously popular in machine learning, where $A$ and $W$ are computed using a variety of local search heuristics. Vavasis proved that this problem is NP-complete. We initiate a study of when this problem is solvable in polynomial time: 1. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for exact and approximate NMF for every constant $r$. Indeed NMF is most interesting in applications precisely when $r$ is small. 2. We complement this with a hardness result, that if exact NMF can be solved in time $(nm)^{o(r)}$, 3-SAT has a sub-exponential time algorithm. This rules out substantial improvements to the above algorithm. 3. We give an algorithm that runs in time polynomial in $n$, $m$ and $r$ under the separablity condition identified by Donoho and Stodden in 2003. The algorithm may be practical since it is simple and noise tolerant (under benign assumptions). Separability is believed to hold in many practical settings. To the best of our knowledge, this last result is the first example of a polynomial-time algorithm that provably works under a non-trivial condition on the input and we believe that this will be an interesting and important direction for future work.Comment: 29 pages, 3 figure

Probabilistic methods for wind turbine blades

The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) has as a key purpose to elevate cooperation between national research institutes to a new level, from ad-hoc participation in joint projects to collectively planning and implementing joint strategic research programmes. The RES directive and the SET Plan enforce a high rate of deployment of wind energy, on- and offshore for the European Union’s member states leading to a high challenge for research in the two priority areas: Integration and Offshore. Wind energy was therefore at an early stage identified as an area for a joint research programme where the key players are the national wind energy research institutes but open to and encouraging universities to participate in the activities

Review of "Internet Addiction among Cyberkids in China" by Qiaolei Jiang

Internet-related addictions constitute a large share of the global cost of mental health-related disorders, diseases, treatment and issues that are estimated to be worth mor than $2.5 trillion in 2019. While focusing on the People's Republic of China (or mainland China) the 2019 publication of "Internet Addiction Among Cyberkids in China: Risk Factors and Intervention Strategies" by Qiaolei Jiang is indeed a welcome addition in the fields of mental health, cyber-psychology, behavioural disorder, and internet addiction treatment

Durability Analysis of Concrete Bridge Deck Exposed to the Chloride Ions Using Direct Optimized Probabilistic Calculation

Durability of reinforced concrete structures is a deeply discussed problem recently. Concrete structures in the external environment are very often affected by chloride ions from de-icing salt or sea water. Chloride ions penetrate through the concrete cover layer of the reinforcement and can cause eventually the corrosion of the steel. However, when estimating the durability of the structure, it is not sometimes possible to express the parameters by constant values; therefore, the probabilistic methods come in handy. Then, the variability of inputs and outputs can be expressed by histograms. Two probabilistic approaches were applied in this task – Monte Carlo simulation with Simulation-Based Reliability Assessment method, which is widely used for such type of problems, and the Direct Optimized Probabilistic Calculation, which is still relatively new type of approach. The result is a comparison of mentioned methods in terms of accuracy on the model of one-dimensional chloride penetration with time independent diffusion coefficient by using the Fick’s Second Law of Diffusion