Generalization bias in science

Many scientists routinely generalize from study samples to larger populations. It is commonly assumed that this cognitive process of scientific induction is a voluntary inference in which researchers assess the generalizability of their data and then draw conclusions accordingly. We challenge this view and argue for a novel account. The account describes scientific induction as involving by default a generalization bias that operates automatically and frequently leads researchers to unintentionally generalize their findings without sufficient evidence. The result is unwarranted, overgeneralized conclusions. We support this account of scientific induction by integrating a range of disparate findings from across the cognitive sciences that have until now not been connected to research on the nature of scientific induction. The view that scientific induction involves by default a generalization bias calls for a revision of the current thinking about scientific induction and highlights an overlooked cause of the replication crisis in the sciences. Commonly proposed interventions to tackle scientific overgeneralizations that may feed into this crisis need to be supplemented with cognitive debiasing strategies against generalization bias to most effectively improve science

Automated On-Demand Generation Of Patient Summary Documents

Patient summary documents provide crucial information about a patient, like allergies and adverse reactions, which are necessary for an efficient and safe treatment and offer a quick overview of the patient’s health status. Automatically generating patient summaries from Electronic Health Records (EHR) reduces the workload of medical personnel. Nevertheless, existing approaches do not take several challenges that occur in live operation into account . Based on a health standard-compliant approach, a system for on-demand generation of patient summaries was implemented and evaluated using real data. This work shows several problems which could be identified. Those problems are not covered sufficiently by current research. Possible approaches to a solution are suggested, which have to be further investigated in future work

A Comparison of Data Traffic in Standardized Personal Health Monitoring Solutions

The publication of the HL7-FHIR standard offers new possibilities for integrated applications in healthcare. Although trial implementations have only recently started, the application of FHIR in context of a Personal Health Monitoring solution is worth investigating. Most of the existing telemonitoring solutions in healthcare rely on guidelines defined by the Continua Health Alliance (CHA). This paper compares the requirements of CHA and HL7-FHIR with respect to data traffic between client devices and server side applications. Therefore an existing CHA-compliant telemonitoring solution is extended towards supporting HL7-FHIR. Both approaches were simultaneously evaluated in a live system with 68 participants. The results of the evaluation show that the FHIR approach offers the possibility of reducing data traffic in comparison to the CHA solution

Experimentelle Untersuchungen zum Innengeräusch von Fahrzeugluftreifen

Im torusförmigen Reifenhohlraum können sich stehende Wellen ausbilden, die zu sehr hohen Schalldruckpegeln führen. Zur Untersuchung dieser Hohlraummoden werden Versuche mit Impulsanregung, an einem Reifen-Innentrommelprüfstand und unter realen Betriebsbedingungen am Gesamtfahrzeug durchgeführt. Neben Grundlagenuntersuchungen zur Identifizierung der Hohlraummoden und zur Analyse verschiedener Systemzustände werden einige Anregungsmechanismen sowie wichtige Einflussfaktoren vorgestellt

How Do Android Developers Improve Non-Functional Properties of Software?

Nowadays there is an increased pressure on mobile app developers to take non-functional properties into account. An app that is too slow or uses much bandwidth will decrease user satisfaction, and thus can lead to users simply abandoning the app. Although automated software improvement techniques exist for traditional software, these are not as prevalent in the mobile domain. Moreover, it is yet unknown if the same software changes would be as effective. With that in mind, we mined overall 100 Android repositories to find out how developers improve execution time, memory consumption, bandwidth usage and frame rate of mobile apps. We categorised non-functional property (NFP) improving commits related to performance to see how existing automated software improvement techniques can be improved. Our results show that although NFP improving commits related to performance are rare, such improvements appear throughout the development lifecycle. We found altogether 560 NFP commits out of a total of 74,408 commits analysed. Memory consumption is sacrificed most often when improving execution time or bandwidth usage, although similar types of changes can improve multiple non-functional properties at once. Code deletion is the most frequently utilised strategy except for frame rate, where increase in concurrency is the dominant strategy. We find that automated software improvement techniques for mobile domain can benefit from addition of SQL query improvement, caching and asset manipulation. Moreover, we provide a classifier which can drastically reduce manual effort to analyse NFP improving commits

Photophoretic Structuring of Circumstellar Dust Disks

We study dust accumulation by photophoresis in optically thin gas disks. Using formulae of the photophoretic force that are applicable for the free molecular regime and for the slip-flow regime, we calculate dust accumulation distances as a function of the particle size. It is found that photophoresis pushes particles (smaller than 10 cm) outward. For a Sun-like star, these particles are transported to 0.1-100 AU, depending on the particle size, and forms an inner disk. Radiation pressure pushes out small particles (< 1 mm) further and forms an extended outer disk. Consequently, an inner hole opens inside ~0.1 AU. The radius of the inner hole is determined by the condition that the mean free path of the gas molecules equals the maximum size of the particles that photophoresis effectively works on (100 micron - 10 cm, depending on the dust property). The dust disk structure formed by photophoresis can be distinguished from the structure of gas-free dust disk models, because the particle sizes of the outer disks are larger, and the inner hole radius depends on the gas density.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by ApJ; corrected a typo in the author nam

Landscape and the energy transition: Comparing the emergence of wind energy

Debido al reconocimiento generalizado de la realidad del calentamiento global, cada vez hay más países inmersos en el proceso de introducir energías alternativas, como la energía eólica. En este artículo nos centramos en la transformación del espacio que se ha producido como consecuencia de estas nuevas políticas energéticas. Los paisajes constituyen la plasmación (o no) de las visiones y las decisiones políticas. Analizamos el desarrollo de la energía eólica en tres países europeos, Francia, Alemania y Portugal, desde la perspectiva de un estudio etnográfico del paisaje. Proponemos que la implementación efectiva de un futuro bajo en carbono depende en gran medida de las respectivas culturas administrativas nacionales, de las prácticas e iniciativas locales, y de la percepción del espacio a nivel local. En los tres países estudiados, identificaremos las posibles fuentes de tensión y exploraremos cómo se superan (o no) a nivel local, para así dar paso a la aparición de (nuevos) paisajes de energía eólica. Comparamos el papel de las culturas paisajísticas, las instituciones y las prácticas en el desarrollo y la resolución de conflictos sobre el despliegue de la energía eólica. Due to the global acceptance of the reality of global warming, ever more countries are in the process of implementing alternative energies such as wind power. In this article, we focus on the transformation of space as a consequence of these newly established alternative energy policies. Landscapes are the level at which political visions and policy decisions endorse (or not) their very materiality. We analyze the deployment of wind power in three European countries, France, Germany and Portugal through the lens of ethnographic landscape studies. We argue that the successful implementation of low carbon futures is highly dependent on the respective national cultures of administration as well as on local practices, initiatives and perceptions of space at the local level. In each of the countries under scrutiny, we analyze the way in which wind power and landscape issues are framed, we point at potential tensions and explore how these are overcome (or not) at the local level so as to give way for the emergence of (new) wind power landscapes. We compare the role played by landscape cultures, institutions or practices in the development and resolution of tensions over the deployment of wind energy

LION Navigator for Transfer to GEO Using Electric Propulsion

GNSS space receivers are widely used for onboard auton-omous navigation of spacecraft platforms in low Earth orbit. Navigation by GNSS up to geosynchronous altitude was made possible through the introduction of a Space Service Volume which defines signal strength up to geo-synchronous altitude. For Galileo, similar definitions are under consideration. On this basis onboard autonomous navigation for commercial communication satellites be-came a realistic possibility, too. Transfer to geostationary orbit is still fully depending on classical RF tracking by ground station for orbit determination. With electrical propulsion, the transfer duration extends to several months. As a consequence onboard autonomous naviga-tion by satellite navigation has become of commercial interest. A GNSS navigation receiver on a spacecraft on transfer orbit has to cope with extreme signal conditions from very low (at perigee) to very high (at super-synchronous apogee) altitude, which is far above the constellation satellites. At this altitude only very rare and weak signals that spill over the limb of the earth can be used. An addi-tional difficulty is the varying spacecraft orientation which is not nadir pointing, as is commonly assumed, but is varying according to the demands of optimal attitude guidance laws and power requirements. By using both GPS and Galileo together the availability of navigation signals is increased. The paper describes the design process to determine basic parameters e.g. number and orientation of receive anten-nas, receiver parameters like C/N0 thresholds, and naviga-tion procedures. Detailed simulations are presented for selected parts of the transfer arc using verified models of the navigation receiver. Finally the geostationary transfer capabilities of the space-borne LION Navigator GNSS receiver are demon-strated in a closed-loop real time test environment under RF stimulation

El Paisaje y la transición energética: Comparando el surgimiento de paisajes de energía eólica en Francia, Alemania y Portugal

National audienceDue to the global acceptance of the reality of global warming and the imperative of changing energy patterns, ever more countries are in the process of implementing alternative energies such as wind power. In this article, we focus on the transformation of space as a consequence of these newly established alternative energy policies. We analyse the deployment of wind power in three European countries, France, Germany and Portugal through the lens of ethnographic landscape studies. Landscapes are the level at which political visions and policy decisions endorse (or not) their very materiality. With this comparative approach to local realities, we highlight the differences, commonalities and potentials for the production of wind energy in different national contexts. We argue that the global demand for low carbon futures and its successful implementation is highly dependent on the respective national cultures of administration as well as on local practices, initiatives and perceptions of space at the local level. The ethnographic focus on landscape gives an insight into the practice of the implementation of new energy policies. It directs the attention to people's relations with their environment in concrete places as being crucial for the potential to transform rural spaces into alternative energy landscapes. We analyze the way in which wind power and landscape issues are framed in each of the three countries under scrutiny, we point at potential tensions and explore how there are overcome (or not) at the local level so as to give way for the emergence of (new) wind power landscapes. We then bring the case studies and local landscape processes into the perspective of the energy transition, by comparing the role played by landscape cultures, institutions or practices in the development and resolution of tensions over the deployment of wind energy.Debido al reconocimiento generalizado de la realidad del calentamiento global, cada vez hay más países inmersos en el proceso de introducir energías alternativas, como la energía eólica. En este artículo nos centramos en la transformación del espacio que se ha producido como consecuencia de estas nuevas políticas energéticas. Los paisajes constituyen la plasmación (o no) de las visiones y las decisiones políticas. Analizamos el desarrollo de la energía eólica en tres países europeos, Francia, Alemania y Portugal, desde la perspectiva de un estudio etnográfico del paisaje. Proponemos que la implementación efectiva de un futuro bajo en carbono depende en gran medida de las respectivas culturas administrativas nacionales, de las prácticas y iniciativas locales, y de la percepción del espacio a nivel local. En los tres países estudiados, identificaremos las posibles fuentes de tensión y exploraremos cómo se superan (o no) a nivel local, para así dar paso a la aparición de (nuevos) paisajes de energía eólica. Comparamos el papel de las culturas paisajísticas, las instituciones y las prácticas en el desarrollo y la resolución de conflictos sobre el despliegue de la energía eólica