Faulty Analysis Research Articles

Words of caution regarding T-DNA-associated mutagenesis in plant reproduction research.

T-DNA transformation is prevalent in Arabidopsis research and has expanded to a broad range of crops and model plants. While major progress has been made in optimizing the Agrobacterium-transformation process for various species, a variety of pitfalls associated with the T-DNA insertion may lead to the misinterpretation of T-DNA mutant analysis. Indeed, secondary mutagenesis either on the integration site or elsewhere in the genome, together with epigenetic interactions between T-DNA inserts or frequent genomic rearrangements can be tricky to differentiate from the effect of the knockout of the gene of interest. Mainly the case of genomic rearrangements that become balanced in filial generations without consequential phenotypical defects may be confusing particularly for studies that aim to investigate fertility and gametogenesis. As a cautionary note to the plant research community studying gametogenesis, we here report an overview of the consequences of T-DNA-induced secondary mutagenesis with emphasis on the genomic imbalance on gametogenesis. Additionally, we present a simple guideline to evaluate the T-DNA mutagenized transgenic lines to decrease the risk of faulty analysis with minimal experimental effort.

The Temporal Bias Approach to the Symmetry Problem and Historical Closeness

In addressing the Lucretian symmetry problem, the temporal bias approach claims that death is bad because it deprives us of something about which it is rational to care (e.g., future pleasures), whereas prenatal nonexistence is not bad because it only deprives us of something about which it is rational to remain indifferent (e.g., past pleasures). In a recent contribution to the debate on this approach, Miguel and Santos argue that a late beginning can deprive us of a future pleasure. Their argument is based on the claim that for birth or death to deprive a person of any value in life, the historically closest counterfactual situation that contains the value is such that the person begins to exist earlier or dies later. This is what they call the Historical Condition. However, the Historical Condition is untenable for several reasons. First, this condition substantially weakens the explanatory capacity of the deprivation account because it implies that most ordinary sorts of pleasures are not deprived by death. In addition, the Historical Condition is vulnerable to counterexamples. In particular, what they offer as a standard case of the deprivation of future pleasure due to a late beginning (what they call Seeing The Beatles), or some of its variants, can be used to falsify this condition. Finally, the Historical Condition is theoretically indefensible because it is based on a faulty analysis of deprivation.

Estimation of process steady state with autoregressive models and Bayesian inference

To improve efficiency, separations engineers will typically design process circuits containing recirculating streams, which mix one or more of the process outputs with the feed material. Doing so can improve efficiency, but will cause a delay in the system reaching steady state conditions until the recirculating load mass flows stabilize. In testing separation circuits, engineers will often test a variety of factors and complete an analysis from sample results. Knowledge of if a process is at steady state, as well as the steady state conditions of a process, is essential for a valid techno-economic analysis. However, the definition of process steady state is often poorly defined, or does not include uncertainty quantification. If the performance of a process operating under two different sets of conditions are compared, an engineer who does not test for steady state or quantify steady state conditions risks producing a faulty analysis. In this work, a Bayesian statistical method for testing if all streams are at steady state is further motivated and then derived. Then after testing for steady state, the same model is used with a prior distribution that enforces a steady state assumption to estimate steady state conditions. These methods were validated in a solvent extraction pilot plant where steady state conditions for all outflows were inferred with uncertainty quantification. Analysis is completed with functions available to the reader as part of the BayesMassBal (V 1.1.0) software package written in R.

Aplikácia tomistického princípu dvojitého účinku na hraničné bioetické situácie

Catholic moral argumentation in favour of absolute prohibition of all types of direct (intentional) abortions is vulnerable in one point, i.e. in case of therapeutic abortions. It is based on the identification of all direct abortions with a direct killing, which the author deems a wrong presupposition based on faulty analysis of an intention of action and distinction between the intention and the side-effect. Following the line of argumentation of New Natural Law Theory, this paper tries to propose modified conservative natural law position in which not all direct abortions are automatically identified with direct killing (although it admits the majority of non-therapeutic abortions involve direct killing). It criticizes the G. E. M. Anscombe?s (and D. Černý?s) objection of closeness of result or immediate result as unsound and her analysis of an example of stuck pot-holer as analogy to craniotomy. The paper presents the author?s own analysis of the stuck pot-holer example and craniotomy based on the argumentation of New Natural Lawyers, particularly of G. Grisez, J. Finnis and J. Boyle (with conviction the analysis is formally in line with conception of intention and doube-effect of Catholic moral tradition including Aquinas and encyclical Veritatis Splendor). Subsequently after the consultation with specialist, gynecologist-obstetrician, it generalizes the conclusion to all therapeutic abortions of vital-conflict type.

Real-Time Anomaly Detection Using Facebook Prophet

With sensors percolating through everyday living, it may be toted that there is an enormous increase in the availability of real-time streaming and time series data. We also see an exponential increase in number of industry applications with sensors driven by IoT and connected with data sources that change over time. This time-series data presents many technical challenges, opportunities, and threats to industries. Thus, streaming analytics to model an unsupervised machine learning system for detecting unusual/anomalous behavior in real-time must be prominently addressed. In this paper, the authors propose a real-time abnormality detection model using a Facebook prophet that addresses issues related to the improper Facebook collection of data, further leading to faulty analysis and wrong results. The proposed unsupervised model detects abnormalities in the data captured through customer order by considering day and date as constraints. The proposed model is found to be even more efficient in RMSE score. The proposed model delivered enhanced performance compared to other traditional approaches.

Rebuilding Platform Antitrust: Moving on from Ohio v. American Express

Now that the immediate fallout from Amex has cooled, this Article aims to give a first draft of its place in antitrust history and to offer a roadmap for the next stage of the evolution of platform antitrust analysis. We focus on several issues that have not been fully analyzed in the literature. First, we argue that the Court should have permitted multi-market balancing of effects across the separate markets in which the platform was active, thereby preserving the fundamental doctrine that relevant markets must be defined on the basis of demand substitution. Second, we propose standards to implement such balancing in a principled manner and explain how these standards could have been applied to the facts in Amex. Third, we highlight three significant omissions in the Court's analysis that confounded its assessment of the case and threaten to mislead future courts. In particular, we show that the Court failed to take into account that: (i) all three major card networks had parallel anti-steering rules during the period of alleged anticompetitive conduct and harm, which increased the anticompetitive harms by increasing the incentives for fee increases for each network, reducing the incentives for fee decreases by each network, and leading the Amex restraints to harm holders of other cards as well as non-cardholders; (ii) higher merchant fees caused by these parallel antisteering rules placed consumers into a prisoner’s dilemma game, which led inevitably to increased use of credit cards above the efficient, competitive level, making the volume of card transactions a poor proxy for welfare effects; and (iii) American Express’ strategy of promising merchants access to its relatively wealthy cardholders in exchange for a high access fee shared key properties of a buyer cartel, thereby suggesting that at least some of the cardholder benefits might have been characterized as cartel rents. Finally, we suggest several options for the courts and Congress to remedy the problems caused by the Court’s faulty analysis.

German Foreign Intelligence from Hitler’s War to the Cold War: Flawed Assumptions and Faulty Analysis. By Robert Hutchinson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. Pp. x+342. $34.95.

<i>German Foreign Intelligence from Hitler’s War to the Cold War: Flawed Assumptions and Faulty Analysis</i>. By Robert Hutchinson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. Pp. x+342. $34.95.

German Foreign Intelligence from Hitler’s War to the Cold War: Flawed Assumptions and Faulty Analysis. By Robert Hutchinson (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 2019) 341 pp. $34.95

<i>German Foreign Intelligence from Hitler’s War to the Cold War: Flawed Assumptions and Faulty Analysis</i>. By Robert Hutchinson (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 2019) 341 pp. $34.95

Arbitration Clauses: The Louisiana Supreme Courtts Flawed Decision in Duhon v. Activelaf, LLC. And Why the Doctrine of Unconscionability Should Be Adopted in Louisiana

Louisiana should give credit where credit is due and recognize the doctrine of unconscionability. Louisiana is the only civil law jurisdiction in the United States. In order to preserve its unique heritage, Louisiana has been reluctant to adopt common law concepts. Because of this reluctance, some beneficial concepts have been rejected or overlooked, such as the doctrine of unconscionability. Common law states use the doctrine of unconscionability to analyze contracts of adhesion, or determine the enforceability of arbitration clauses. Louisiana, on the other hand, utilizes a four-factor test outlined in Aguillard v. Auction Management Corp. The four factors are: (1) the physical characteristics of the arbitration clause, (2) the distinguished features of the arbitration clause, (3) the mutuality of the arbitration clause, and (4) the relative bargaining strength of the parties. The Louisiana Supreme Court used these factors in its decision of Duhon v. Activelaf, LLC. The court failed to use all of the factors and conducted a faulty analysis. This Article discusses how an analysis of all four leads to the conclusion that the disputed arbitration contract is not adhesionary and is valid. This Article also discusses how the doctrine of unconscionability is quite compatible with the Louisiana Civil Code. The doctrine helps fill in the gaps of existing law, which is inadequate when dealing with mass, standard-form contracting.

Comparison of two model frameworks for fiber dispersion in the elasticity of soft biological tissues

This study compares two models that are used to describe the elastic properties of fiber-reinforced materials with dispersed fibers, in particular some soft biological tissues such as arterial walls and cartilages. The two model approaches involve different constitutive frameworks, one being based on a generalized structure tensor (GST) and the other on the method of angular integration (AI). By using two representative examples, with the same number of parameters for each model, it is shown that the predictions of the two models are virtually identical for a significant range of large deformations, which contradicts conclusions contained in several papers that are based on faulty analysis. Additionally, each of the models is fitted to sets of uniaxial data from the circumferential and axial directions of the adventitia of a human aorta, both models providing excellent agreement with the data. While the predictions of the two models are comparable and exclusion of compressed fibers can be accommodated by either model, it is well known that the AI model requires more computational time than the GST model when used within a finite element environment, in particular if compressed fibers are excluded.

Surface code error correction on a defective lattice

The yield of physical qubits fabricated in the laboratory is much lower than that of classical transistors in production semiconductor fabrication. Actual implementations of quantum computers will be susceptible to loss in the form of physically faulty qubits. Though these physical faults must negatively affect the computation, we can deal with them by adapting error-correction schemes. In this paper we have simulated statically placed single-fault lattices and lattices with randomly placed faults at functional qubit yields of 80%, 90%, and 95%, showing practical performance of a defective surface code by employing actual circuit constructions and realistic errors on every gate, including identity gates. We extend Stace et al's superplaquettes solution against dynamic losses for the surface code to handle static losses such as physically faulty qubits []. The single-fault analysis shows that a static loss at the periphery of the lattice has less negative effect than a static loss at the center. The randomly faulty analysis shows that 95% yield is good enough to build a large-scale quantum computer. The local gate error rate threshold is , and a code distance of seven suppresses the residual error rate below the original error rate at . 90% yield is also good enough when we discard badly fabricated quantum computation chips, while 80% yield does not show enough error suppression even when discarding 90% of the chips. We evaluated several metrics for predicting chip performance, and found that the average of the product of the number of data qubits and the cycle time of a stabilizer measurement of stabilizers gave the strongest correlation with logical error rates. Our analysis will help with selecting usable quantum computation chips from among the pool of all fabricated chips.

Non-Linear Denoising of Images using Wavelet Transform

represent most of the Visual information efficiently. In the process of communication images are generally corrupted during coding, transmission and reception. The noise presence during image acquisition results in faulty analysis of the images. This faulty analysis leads to incorrect restoration of original image. Hence, image denoising should be perfectly performed to improve the quality of image for more precise diagnosis. Wavelet based shrinkage denoising will best restore the Visual content from noisy data. A new thresholding function for image denoising is proposed in this research paper. This proposed function is applied on the additive white Gaussian noise corrupted images using VISU, false discovery rate and translation invariant shrinkage rules. Performance of this new method is compared with existing hard, soft and SCAD thresholding functions using feature measure parameters like root mean square error (RMSE) and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). From the analysis, the new limiting function has a superior performance than all other existing thresholding functions in VISU, false discovery rate and translation invariant methods.

Apparently You Can Have It Both Ways: Should Flat Fees Be Considered Earned and Unearned at the Same Time?

Last month, the Board of Professional Conduct of the Ohio Supreme Court released an advisory ethics opinion discussing the propriety of flat fee agreements. In it, the Board reiterates the principles contained in the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct on whether a lawyer may enter into an agreement requiring a client to pay a flat fee in advance of representation and whether a lawyer must deposit such a fee into a client trust account. Because these questions are addressed in the applicable Rules of Professional Conduct or their comments, the Opinion does not actually add much to the current state of the law. Unfortunately, however, that state of the law is based on a confusing and indefensible inherent contradiction within the applicable rules. By simply repeating that confused doctrine without criticizing it, the Board missed the opportunity to take a stand against the wrongheaded state of the law and to propose a much needed change in the applicable rules. As a result, the Board’s opinion merely reiterates a faulty analysis that leads to confusion and defeats the purpose of providing clear guidance to lawyers. This short essay will discuss the issues and will provide an alternative approach to help Ohio lawyers better understand the issues they face when handling flat fees paid in advance.

Faulty Analysis in Study of Robotic-Assisted Minimally Invasive Radical Prostatectomy

Faulty Analysis in Study of Robotic-Assisted Minimally Invasive Radical Prostatectomy

Cost-Benefit Analysis at Independent Regulatory Agencies: Remarks to Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference on the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act

Although the prospect of increased rationality in rulemaking makes legislation, such as Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act (S. 1173), facially appealing, there are a number of reasons to be wary of such efforts to impose OMB-supervised regulatory review on independent regulatory agencies. For example, S. 1173 would reduce the independence of these agencies from the White House, making them more vulnerable to political pressures; would impair their ability to fulfill core statutorily-mandated functions; would delay rules; and may make many rules less rational, due to entrenched but faulty cost-benefit analysis methodologies required by OMB/OIRA.

Abnormal behaviour propagation in hybrid dynamic systems

The use of qualitative modelling of processes and tools such as Petri nets and Signed Directed Graph (SDG) allows the representation and study of dynamic hybrid systems and their abnormal behaviour propagation. These tools are important to evaluate faulty scenarios and risk analysis for open loop and closed-loop systems. This work presents a framework that allows the use of qualitative models for evaluating the effects of faults and their propagation during process operation. These techniques were applied to chemical engineering problems. In those problems, fault effects were evaluated for several operational scenarios. The introduced methodology of analysis showed to be adequate for low-dimensional processes integrating Petri nets and SDG for studying the abnormal propagation of processes during the monitoring and analysis of faulty process operation.

Quantum Thermodynamics: A Dynamical Viewpoint

Quantum thermodynamics addresses the emergence of thermodynamic laws from quantum mechanics. The viewpoint advocated is based on the intimate connection of quantum thermodynamics with the theory of open quantum systems. Quantum mechanics inserts dynamics into thermodynamics, giving a sound foundation to finite-time-thermodynamics. The emergence of the 0-law, I-law, II-law and III-law of thermodynamics from quantum considerations is presented. The emphasis is on consistency between the two theories, which address the same subject from different foundations. We claim that inconsistency is the result of faulty analysis, pointing to flaws in approximations.

Copyright Law and Political Theology: Censorship and the Forebear’s Desire

This historical exploration, treating limit moments of copyright law, illuminates correspondences among copyright, censorship, pacts between the sovereign and commercial profit seekers, and inheritance law. Relevant to all of these are powerful forebears’ desires for recognition, modeled on the theological pattern of the father God’s omnipotent Will. Failure to recognize the wide persistence of this premodern theological pattern—which contrasts considerably with the common view that copyright’s main function is to incentivize the new—may result in faulty analysis of copyright law, including fair use.The study begins with Henry VIII’s 1538 Proclamation, which initiates a nationwide booklicensing regime. The Proclamation is put into context with other concerns of Henry at that time. Additional moments treated in this study include: Venetian printing privileges in the late fifteenth century; the London Stationers’ Company as an incorporated mechanism suitable to the crown’s ideology-control projects; efforts by Ponsonby, Greville, and Walsingham to block a competitor’s licensing of a Sidney Arcadia manuscript; the intellectual property clause of the U.S. Constitution; Wordsworth’s later-in-life attempts to make endure eternally, through copyright, the atemporal moment of creation that arose from his early poetry; and Sonny Bono’s (and our own) surprising resemblance to Wordsworth. The conclusion urges joint consideration of copyright and inheritance-law policies.

Faulty Analysis Leads to Erroneous Conclusions

I read with some concern the report by Rodriguez‐Diaz CE et al. in “More than Foreskin: Circumcision Status, History of HIV/STI, and Sexual Risk in a Clinic‐Based Sample of Men in Puerto Rico”[ 1 Rodriguez‐Diaz C.E. Clatts M.C. Jovet‐Toledo G.G. Vargas‐Molina R.L. Goldsamt L.A. García H. More than foreskin: Circumcision status, history of HIV/STI, and sexual risk in a clinic‐based sample of men in Puerto Rico. J Sex Med. 2012; PubMed Google Scholar ]. The authors conducted a large random survey of men in an STI/HIV clinic waiting room in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and measured self‐reported circumcision status, various demographic and sexual risk behaviors and history of STI/HIV infection. While the intent and survey methods of the authors' study were laudable the methods of analysis and interpretation of the results left a lot to be desired. Nearly a quarter of the sample were men who have sex with men and an unknown proportion had a history of injection drug use, two well‐known routes of acquisition of HIV infection that would not be expected to be associated with protection of HIV infection by circumcision. Furthermore, the authors found that twice as many circumcised men (43.8%) reported receptive anal intercourse as uncircumcised men (20.4%), yet in their multivariable model they failed to control for that critical sexual risk behavior—the authors only controlled for place of birth and education level. Based on the author's analytic model, they report that male circumcision increased the likelihood of having HIV infection (P = 0.027) with no reported measure showing the strength of that association. Given the increased risk behaviors in circumcised men (receptive anal intercourse in particular) it is no surprise that men who had increased sexual risk for HIV infection had increased odds of infection. The finding of increased odds of infection among circumcised men is likely erroneous due to confounding. The authors should have controlled for confounding by stratifying—separating those who reported receptive anal intercourse (or same‐sex male sexual behavior) from those who did not. At the minimum they should have included same‐sex behavior status in their multivariable model.

Understanding others requires shared concepts

“It is a noble task to try to understand others, and to have them understand you (…) but it is never an easy one”, says Everett (p. 327). This paper argues that a basic prerequisite for understanding others (and also for having them understand you) is to have some shared concepts on which this understanding can build. If speakers of different languages didn’t share some concepts to begin with then cross-cultural understanding would not be possible even with the best of will on all sides. Current Anthropology For example, Everett claims that Pirahã has no word for “mother”, no words for “before’ and “after”, no words for “one”, “two” and “all” and no words comparable to ‘think” and “want”. These claims are based, I believe, on faulty semantic analysis, and in particular, on a determination not to recognize polysemy under any circumstances. As I see it, at many points this stance makes nonsense of Everett’s own data and distorts the conceptual world of the Pirahã. Since he does not want to recognize the existence of any shared concepts, Everett is also not prepared to address the question of a culture-neutral metalanguage in which Pirahã and English conceptual categories could be compared. This often leads him to imposing cultural categories of English (such as “evidence”, “tolerance” and “parent”) on the conceptual world of the Pirahã. The result is a combination of exoticism and Anglocentrism which doesn’t do justice to Everett’s long and intimate engagement with the Pirahã people and their language. Sadly, it blinds him to what Franz Boas called “the psychic unity of mankind”, reflected in the common semantic features of human languages and fully compatible with the cultural shaping of their lexicons and grammars.