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Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial
Get PDFObjectives To investigate the effects of adding high-grade quantitative evidence of outcomes of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages on further information-seeking behaviour by the use of routinely collected data.
Setting Wikipedia, Cochrane summary pages and the Cochrane Library.
Design Randomised trial.
Participants Wikipedia pages which were highly relevant to up-to-date Cochrane Schizophrenia systematic reviews that contained a Summary of Findings table.
Interventions Eligible Wikipedia pages in the intervention group were seeded with tables of best evidence of the effects of care and hyperlinks to the source Cochrane review. Eligible Wikipedia pages in the control group were left unchanged.
Main outcome measures Routinely collected data on access to the full text and summary web page (after 12 months).
Results We randomised 70 Wikipedia pages (100% follow-up). Six of the 35 Wikipedia pages in the intervention group had the tabular format deleted during the study but all pages continued to report the same data within the text. There was no evidence of effect on either of the coprimary outcomes: full-text access adjusted ratio of geometric means 1.30, 95% CI: 0.71 to 2.38; page views 1.14, 95% CI: 0.6 to 2.13. Results were similar for all other outcomes, with exception of Altmetric score for which there was some evidence of clear effect (1.36, 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.78).
Conclusions The pursuit of fair balance within Wikipedia healthcare pages is impressive and its reach unsurpassed. For every person who sought and clicked the reference on the ‘intervention’ Wikipedia page to seek more information (the primary outcome), many more are likely to have been informed by the page alone. Enriching Wikipedia content is, potentially, a powerful way to improve health literacy and it is possible to test the effects of seeding pages with evidence. This trial should be replicated, expanded and developed
Alternating-offer bargaining with endogenous commitment
Get PDFWe revisit the classical alternating-offer bargaining model, further assuming that players cannot reduce their proposals during the game. In equilibrium, players have history-dependent strategies and do not necessarily reach an agreement immediately in the first stage
The dynamics of the studies of China’s science, technology and innovation (STI): a bibliometric analysis of an emerging field
Get PDFSince 1978, alongside China’s rise as a leading country in science, technology and innovation (STI), the studies of the country’s STI have been emerging as a field attracting increasing scholarly attention. Using the bibliometric method and the data from the Web of Science (WoS), this paper seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of the studies of China’s STI. The findings show that scholarly interests in China’s STI started in 1995 and have since developed rapidly; institutions in China, the U.S. and the U.K. are main contributors to the field, contributing 50%, 27.2% and 12% of the scholarship respectively, with Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences being three major institutional contributors. Seminal works have been focused on STI issues at the macro or national, meso or industrial and regional, and micro or organizational and firm levels. A possible agenda for further research is to develop new theories based on China’s practice paying specific attention to issues including R&D expenditure, S&T performance evaluation, regional innovation ecosystem, SOEs in innovation and the role of the Chinese Communist Party in innovation
Force fields for macromolecular assemblies containing Diketopyrrolopyrrole and Thiophene
Get PDFUtilizing a force-matching procedure, we parametrize new force fields systematically for large conjugated systems. We model both conjugated polymers and molecular crystals that contain diketopyrrolopyrrole, thiophene, and thieno[3,2-b]thiophene units. These systems have recently been found to have low band gaps, which exhibit high efficiency for photovoltaic devices. The equilibrium structures, forces, and energies of the building block chromophores, diketopyrrolopyrrole, thiophene, and thieno[3,2-b]thiophene computed using our parameters are comparable to those computed using the reference electronic structure method. We assess the suitability of this new force field for electronic property calculations by comparing the electronic excitation properties computed along classical and ab initio molecular dynamics trajectories. For both trajectories, we find similar distributions of TDDFT-calculated excitation energies and oscillator strengths for the building block chromophore diketopyrrolopyrrole-thieno[3,2-b]thiophene. The structural, dynamic, and electronic properties of the macromolecular assemblies built upon these chromophores are characterized. For both polymers and molecular crystals, pronounced peaks around 0° or 180° are observed for the torsions between chromophores under ambient conditions. The high planarity in these systems can promote local ordering and π–π stacking, thereby potentially facilitating charge transport across these materials. For the model conducting polymers, we found that the fluctuations in the density of states per chain per monomer is negligibly small and does not vary significantly with chains comprising 20–40 monomers. Analysis of the electron–hole distributions and the transition density matrices indicates that the delocalized length is approximately 4–6 monomers, which is in good agreement with other theoretical and experimental studies of different conducting polymers. For the molecular crystals, our investigation of the characteristic time scale of the fluctuation in the excitonic couplings shows that a low-frequency vibration below 100 cm–1 is observed for the nearest neighbors. These observations are in line with previous studies on other molecular crystals, in which low-frequency vibrations are believed to be responsible for the large modulation of the excitonic coupling. Thus, our approach and the new force fields provide a direct route for studying the structure–property relations and the molecular level origins of the high efficiency of these classes of materials
China’s market economy, shadow banking and the frequency of growth slowdown
Get PDFThe activity of the Shadow Banks in China has been the subject of considerable interest in recent years. Total shadow banking lending has reached over 60% of GDP and has grown faster than regular bank lending. It has been argued that unregulated shadow banking has fuelled a credit boom that poses a risk to the stability of the financial system. This paper estimates a model of the Chinese economy using a DSGE framework that accommodates a banking sector that isolates the effects of lending to the private sector including shadow bank lending. A refinement of the model allows for bank lending including lending by the shadow banks to affect the credit premium on private investment. The main finding is that while financial shocks are significant, it is real shocks that dominate. The model is used to simulate the frequency of growth slowdowns in China and concludes that these are more likely to be driven by real sector shocks rather than financial sector, including shadow bank shocks. This paper differs from other applications in its use of indirect inference to test the fitted model against a threeequation VAR of inflation, output gap and interest rate
A comparative study of speculative retrieval for multi-modal data trails: towards user-friendly Human-Vehicle interactions
Get PDFIn the era of growing developments in Autonomous Vehicles, the importance of Human-Vehicle Interaction has become apparent. However, the requirements of retrieving in-vehicle drivers’ multi- modal data trails, by utilizing embedded sensors, have been consid- ered user unfriendly and impractical. Hence, speculative designs, for in-vehicle multi-modal data retrieval, has been demanded for future personalized and intelligent Human-Vehicle Interaction. In this paper, we explore the feasibility to utilize facial recog- nition techniques to build in-vehicle multi-modal data retrieval. We first perform a comprehensive user study to collect relevant data and extra trails through sensors, cameras and questionnaire. Then, we build the whole pipeline through Convolution Neural Net- works to predict multi-model values of three particular categories of data, which are Heart Rate, Skin Conductance and Vehicle Speed, by solely taking facial expressions as input. We further evaluate and validate its effectiveness within the data set, which suggest the promising future of Speculative Designs for Multi-modal Data Retrieval through this approach
Exploiting the optical reflectance behaviour of carbon fibre composites for low-cost inspection and orientations analysis
Get PDFThis work focusses on understanding and exploiting the optical reflectance behaviour of carbon fibre reinforced polymer composites for the non-destructive determination of fibre orientation and surface defects. By taking a series of images under different lighting conditions, fibre reflections have been isolated and MATLAB image analysis has been used to calculate the fibre orientations across the surface of the composite. An average peak method has been developed and validated against manual orientation measurements for two different applications: a machined scarf repair surface and a discontinuous fibre composite. The same experimental method and analysis code showed good results for both cases without modification, when at least 16 images with different directional lighting conditions are used. Hence, this low-cost approach can be applied to a diverse range of quality assurance and research applications where fibre orientations or other surface details need to be characterised. © The Author(s) 2020
Performance enhancement of direct torque-controlled permanent magnet synchronous motor with a flexible switching table
Get PDFIn this paper, a flexible switching table (FST) for direct torque control (DTC) of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) was proposed to enhance the steady-state and dynamic performances of the drive system. First, the influence of each converter output voltage vectors on the torque and stator flux deviation rates was analyzed to assess the voltage selection strategies of the conventional STs and their impact on the DTC system’s performance. Then, a new flexible ST was proposed which uses a simple algorithm to adaptively select the appropriate voltage vector for two of its states according to the system operating condition. The effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed FST were verified through a comparative evaluation with the conventional STs using experimental results obtained from a 0.75 kW PMSM drive system
Trade liberalization and the gender employment gap in China
Get PDFThis paper investigates the impact of import liberalization induced labor demand shocks on male and female employment in China. Combining data from population and firm census waves over the period of 1990 to 2005, we relate prefecture-level employment by gender to the exposure to tariff reductions on locally imported products. Our empirical results show that increasing import competition has kept more females in the workforce, reducing an otherwise growing gender employment gap. These dynamics were present both in the local economies as a whole and among formal private industrial firms. Examining channels through which tariff reductions differentially affected males and females, we find that trade induced competitive pressures contributed to a general expansion of female intensive industries, shifts in sectoral gender segregation, reductions in gender discrimination in the labor market, technological upgrading through computerization and general income growth
A review of phase change heat transfer in shape-stabilized phase change materials (ss-PCMs) based on porous supports for thermal energy storage
Get PDFLatent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) uses phase change materials (PCMs) to store and release heat, and can effectively address the mismatch between energy supply and demand. However, it suffers from low thermal conductivity and the leakage problem. One of the solutions is integrating porous supports and PCMs to fabricate shape-stabilized phase change materials (ss-PCMs). The phase change heat transfer in porous ss-PCMs is of fundamental importance for determining thermal-fluidic behaviours and evaluating LHTES system performance. This paper reviews the recent experimental and numerical investigations on phase change heat transfer in porous ss-PCMs. Materials, methods, apparatuses and significant outcomes are included in the section of experimental studies and it is found that paraffin and metal foam are the most used PCM and porous support respectively in the current researches. Numerical advances are reviewed from the aspect of different simulation methods. Compared to representative elementary volume (REV)-scale simulation, the pore-scale simulation can provide extra flow and heat transfer characteristics in pores, exhibiting great potential for the simulation of mesoporous, microporous and hierarchical porous materials. Moreover, there exists a research gap between phase change heat transfer and material preparation. Finally, this review outlooks the future research topics of phase change heat transfer in porous ss-PCMs
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