The perception of reproducibility in a small cohort of scientists in Europe

Reproducibility is an essential feature of all scientific outcomes. Scientific evidence can only reach its true status as reliable if replicated, but the results of well-conducted replication studies face an uphill battle to be performed, and little attention and dedication have been put into publishing the results of replication attempts. Therefore, we asked a small cohort of researchers about their attempts to replicate results from other groups, as well as from their own laboratories, and their general perception of the issues concerning reproducibility in their field. We also asked how they perceive the venues, i.e. journals, to communicate and discuss the results of these attempts. To this aim we pre-registered and shared a questionnaire among scientists at diverse levels. The results indicate that, in general, replication attempts of their own protocols are quite successful (with over 80% reporting not or rarely having problems with their own protocols). Although the majority of respondents tried to replicate a study or experiment from other labs (75.4%), the median successful rate was scored at 3 (in a 1-5 scale), while the median for the general estimation of replication success in their field was found to be 5 (in a 1-10 scale). The majority of respondents (70.2%) also perceive journals as unwelcoming of replication studies.

ALGORITHM FOR DETERMINING THE MEASURE OF EXISTENCE OF UNRELIABLE INFORMATION IN THE CONDITIONS OF INFORMATION CONFLICT

Social interaction of subjects in the modern world, in addition to positive forms, also has negative ones. One of such forms is information confrontation, the conceptual basis of which is to spread in the information space of the enemy unreliable information to influence the assessments, intentions, and orientation of the population and decision-makers. In this case, information becomes a more important resource than material or energy resources. The analysis of laws and properties of existence and distribution of information in the conditions of information confrontation is carried out. Based on the analysis of the above laws and studying the properties of information, the main features of the perception of information by the subjects are formulated. These are selectivity, attitude to certain information, authority (reputation), imaginary secrecy of receiving information. It is shown that on the basis of the formulated features of perception of information of subjects it is possible to create visibility of reliability of the information, and then no force will convince that it is specially made for the purpose of incorrect estimation, the negative orientation of the population and decision-makers. The main advantage of the proposed algorithm is that the parameters of information evaluation are used as a measure of the probability of propagation of inaccurate information. The degree of probability of dissemination of unreliable information is determined for each law of existence of information separately. The general estimation of the probability of distribution of unreliable information consists of the production of values of measures of each law in the person. Depending on the preference of a particular law for a particular type of information, the value of the measure will vary. That is, the proposed algorithm, in contrast to existing methods of evaluating information, additionally takes into account the type and class of information. The direction of further research: development of a scale of measures to assess the probability of spreading inaccurate information. Using as coefficients of the model the parameters of the developed scale of measures to assess the probability of propagation of inaccurate information. Creation of a mathematical model of distribution of unreliable information in the conditions of information confrontation.

Assessment of Proteolysis by Pyrylium and Other Fluorogenic Reagents

Aims: We aim to evaluate the potential application of amine reactive fluorogenic reagents for estimating enzymatic proteolysis. Background: Proteolytic enzymes play important roles in regulating many physiological processes in living organisms. Objectives: Assessment of protein degradation by using reagents for protein assay techniques. Methods: We have assayed samples at the start and after 30-60 minutes incubation with trypsin by Chromeo P503 (Py 1 pyrylium compound) and CBQCA (3-(4-carboxybenzoyl) quinoline-2-carboxaldehyde) as amine reactive reagents and NanoOrange as non-amine reactive dye. Results: All BSA prepared samples with trypsin have shown significantly higher fluorescence intensity (FI) versus controls (which reflects proteolysis) when assayed by Chromeo P503 (Py 1 pyrylium compound) and CBQCA (3-(4-carboxybenzoyl) quinoline-2-carboxaldehyde) as amine reactive reagents. However, same samples assayed with NanoOrange as non-amine reactive reagent did not show any significant variation between samples containing trypsin and controls. Conclusion: These results are confirming reliability of highly sensitive protein assays utilizing amine reactive fluorogenic reagents for general estimation of proteolysis.

Improving the Cavalieri estimator under non-equidistant sampling and dropouts

Motivated by the stereological problem of volume estimation from parallel section profiles, the so-called Newton-Cotes integral estimators based on random sampling nodes are analyzed. These estimators generalize the classical Cavalieri estimator and its variant for non-equidistant sampling nodes, the generalized Cavalieri estimator, and have typically a substantially smaller variance than the latter. The present paper focuses on the following points in relation to Newton-Cotes estimators: the treatment of dropouts, the construction of variance estimators, and, finally, their application in volume estimation of convex bodies.Dropouts are eliminated points in the initial stationary point process of sampling nodes, modeled by independent thinning. Among other things, exact representations of the variance are given in terms of the thinning probability and increments of the initial points under two practically relevant sampling models. The paper presents a general estimation procedure for the variance of Newton-Cotes estimators based on the sampling nodes in a bounded interval. Finally, the findings are illustrated in an application of volume estimation for three-dimensional convex bodies with sufficiently smooth boundaries.

The Influence of Social Support to the Quality of Life of Tuberculosis Patients in Depok, West Java Province, Indonesia

The quality of life of Tuberculosis (TB) patients is very important to be considered due to infectious disease is chronic that it can affect quality of life. In order to improve quality of life is by providing social support to TB patients. This study aims to discuss the influence of social support to the quality of life of TB patients. This was a longitudinal study (repeated measurements). Data collection with interviews to respondents using the WHOQOL-BREF and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). Data analysis using General Estimation of Equotion. The results showed that social support has a strong influence to the quality of life of TB patients (OR = 7.9); An influential source of social support to improve the quality of life of TB patients were family, friends and significant others. Family support provides the highest contribution with an OR of 19.7; An influential type of social support to improve the quality of life of TB patients were emotional, informational and companionship support. Emotional support provides the highest contribution with an OR of 7.4. Social support to TB patients given at the 5th month of treatment have a positive impact on the quality of life with PAR% was 70%. This study recommends improving the social support to TB patients to increase quality of life of TB patients.

Generic Tasks for Algorithms

Due to its links to computer science (CS), teaching computational thinking (CT) often involves the handling of algorithms in activities, such as their implementation or analysis. Although there already exists a wide variety of different tasks for various learning environments in the area of computer science, there is less material available for CT. In this article, we propose so-called Generic Tasks for algorithms inspired by common programming tasks from CS education. Generic Tasks can be seen as a family of tasks with a common underlying structure, format, and aim, and can serve as best-practice examples. They thus bring many advantages, such as facilitating the process of creating new content and supporting asynchronous teaching formats. The Generic Tasks that we propose were evaluated by 14 experts in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Apart from a general estimation in regard to the meaningfulness of the proposed tasks, the experts also rated which and how strongly six core CT skills are addressed by the tasks. We conclude that, even though the experts consider the tasks to be meaningful, not all CT-related skills can be specifically addressed. It is thus important to define additional tasks for CT that are detached from algorithms and programming.

Evaluation of the meat traits of lambs of polish native breeds

The research was performed on 136 male lambs at slaughter weight from mean 32 to 42 kg of the following Polish native breeds: Uhruska (UHR), Pomorska (POM), Czarnogłówka (CZGŁ), Cakiel Podhalański (CKP), Wrzosówka (WRZOS), Świniarka (SWIN), Wielkopolska (WLP) and Polish Merino old type (MST). The longissimus lumborum muscle was tested to establish it’s basic chemical composition, physical and chemical traits as well as sensory traits. The meat quality of tested breeds was high especially in terms of sensory traits. However high variability of studied traits was observed depending on the breed e.g. the average pH24 ranged between 5.58 (WLP) and 5.77 (WRZOS), intramuscular fat content ranged between 1.98% (CZGŁ) and 4.12% (WLP), meat tenderness varied from 4.2 points (POM) to 4.64 points (UHR). Somewhat dark meat colour was observed in all breeds which is worth noticing (L* from 34.86 to 38.50). According to the general estimation of tested quality traits the following breeds were on the top of the ranking: SWIN, UHR, WLP and WRZOS. Further down in the ranking the following breeds were placed: POM, MST and CKP.