Problematic Images Research Articles

Analysis and Correction of Inappropriate Image Duplication: the Molecular and Cellular Biology Experience.

We analyzed 960 papers published in Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) from 2009 to 2016 and found 59 (6.1%) to contain inappropriately duplicated images. The 59 instances of inappropriate image duplication led to 41 corrections, 5 retractions, and 13 instances in which no action was taken. Our experience suggests that the majority of inappropriate image duplications result from errors during figure preparation that can be remedied by correction. Nevertheless, ∼10% of papers with inappropriate image duplications in MCB were retracted (∼0.5% of total). If this proportion is representative, then as many as 35,000 papers in the literature are candidates for retraction due to inappropriate image duplication. The resolution of inappropriate image duplication concerns after publication required an average of 6 h of journal staff time per published paper. MCB instituted a pilot program to screen images of accepted papers prior to publication that identified 12 manuscripts (14.5% out of 83) with image concerns in 2 months. The screening and correction of papers before publication required an average of 30 min of staff time per problematic paper. Image screening can identify papers with problematic images prior to publication, reduces postpublication problems, and requires less staff time than the correction of problems after publication.

Supplemental Material for Problematic Images of Science in Undergraduate Psychology Textbooks: How Well Is Science Understood and Depicted?

Supplemental Material for Problematic Images of Science in Undergraduate Psychology Textbooks: How Well Is Science Understood and Depicted?

Problematic images of science in undergraduate psychology textbooks: How well is science understood and depicted?

Problematic images of science in undergraduate psychology textbooks: How well is science understood and depicted?

Testing Hypotheses on Risk Factors for Scientific Misconduct via Matched-Control Analysis of Papers Containing Problematic Image Duplications

It is commonly hypothesized that scientists are more likely to engage in data falsification and fabrication when they are subject to pressures to publish, when they are not restrained by forms of social control, when they work in countries lacking policies to tackle scientific misconduct, and when they are male. Evidence to test these hypotheses, however, is inconclusive due to the difficulties of obtaining unbiased data. Here we report a pre-registered test of these four hypotheses, conducted on papers that were identified in a previous study as containing problematic image duplications through a systematic screening of the journal PLoS ONE. Image duplications were classified into three categories based on their complexity, with category 1 being most likely to reflect unintentional error and category 3 being most likely to reflect intentional fabrication. We tested multiple parameters connected to the hypotheses above with a matched-control paradigm, by collecting two controls for each paper containing duplications. Category 1 duplications were mostly not associated with any of the parameters tested, as was predicted based on the assumption that these duplications were mostly not due to misconduct. Categories 2 and 3, however, exhibited numerous statistically significant associations. Results of univariable and multivariable analyses support the hypotheses that academic culture, peer control, cash-based publication incentives and national misconduct policies might affect scientific integrity. No clear support was found for the “pressures to publish” hypothesis. Female authors were found to be equally likely to publish duplicated images compared to males. Country-level parameters generally exhibited stronger effects than individual-level parameters, because developing countries were significantly more likely to produce problematic image duplications. This suggests that promoting good research practices in all countries should be a priority for the international research integrity agenda.

Animals, Zoos and Brothels

This work reflects on the use of the animal in recent Mexican literature, based on the contributions of Mauricio Montiel Figueiras (Guadalajara, 1968) and Alberto Chimal (Toluca, 1970). Especially, it emphasized that the approach of these writers has to do with the idea that, considering the weight of a tradition (the one inaugurated by Juan José Arreola, in the middle of the last century), they conceive a problematic image of fauna related to the crisis of the modern spaces and the perversions to which it gives rise. So that the objective of the present article is understand the way that in their books Los animales invisibles (2009) y La torre y el jardín (2012), respectively, both display an alteration of animality, strengthening that literary representation that emphasizes the vulnerability of non-human beings and, equally, questions the rational criterion used by man after legitimizing his development and well-being.

Dialectical Images

This paper aims at investigating the textual relations that link media and consciousness in The Arcades Project of Walter Benjamin. The paper builds-up a constellation of terms (history, nature, time, media, myth, habits, attention and distraction), a plot of motifs that composes an organic pattern and provide a problematic image of the self.

Improved partial differential equation‐based enhancement for underwater images using local–global contrast operators and fuzzy homomorphic processes

This study describes improved partial differential equation (PDE)-based formulations for combined global and local contrast operators for underwater image enhancement. The algorithms remove the limitations of conventional closed-form approaches and the problem of optimal stopping time of earlier PDE-based approaches. Main features include improved simultaneous combination, augmentation and control of various individual local and global processes, guided by optimisation of multiple image metrics. This ensures optimal operation of the algorithms in terms of visual and numerical results and proposed approaches ensure faster and fully automated processing of various images. Additional contributions include the incorporation of a colour space converter, fuzzy homomorphic and post-contrast enhancement processes for certain problematic images. Experimental comparisons indicate that the improved approaches yield better results than several of the proposed works from the literature for underwater image enhancement.

Privacy and Autonomy: On Some Misconceptions Concerning the Political Dimensions of Privacy

One of the most influential views in privacy scholarship is that privacy protects individual autonomy. On the early liberal view, the exercise of autonomy requires detachment from social and political life and privacy facilitates it. This view of privacy still informs current legal and political practice. As this view of privacy presupposes a tension between privacy and society, it is responsible for the underrating of privacy in legal and political practice. Over the last decades, liberal reflection on autonomy has shifted from the early liberal understanding of autonomy as calling for detachment from social life to the idea of autonomy as socially embedded. This development has brought about a corresponding adjustment in the liberal concept of privacy: privacy has come to be seen as a social rather than merely an individual interest. The social turn in thinking about privacy has gone a long way to change the problematic image of privacy in legal and political practice. It has not gone far enough, however, to draw conclusions regarding the political relevance of privacy. I argue that we should understand autonomy as politically embedded. Revised along these lines, privacy has a political value: when we claim privacy, we do not make a claim to withdraw from political life, but rather make a claim to protect certain forms of political engagement.

Automated identification and reduction of artifacts in cine four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) images using respiratory motion model.

Four-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) images are often marred by artifacts that substantially degrade image quality and confound image interpretation. Human observation remains the standard method of 4DCT artifact evaluation, which is time-consuming and subjective. We develop a method to automatically identify and reduce artifacts in cine 4DCT images. We proposed an algorithm that consisted of two main stages: deformable image registration and respiratory motion simulation. Specifically, each 4DCT phase image was registered to the breath-holding CT image using the block-matching method, with erroneous spatial matches removed by the least median of squares filter and the full displacement vector field generated by the moving least squares interpolation. The lung's respiratory motion trajectory was then recovered from the displacement vector field using the parameterized polynomial function, with fitting parameters estimated by combinatorial optimization. In this way, artifacts were located according to deviations between image points and their motion trajectories and further corrected based on position prediction. The mean spatial error (standard deviation) was 1.00 (0.85) mm after registration as opposed to 6.96 (4.61) mm before registration. In addition, we took human observation conducted by medical experts as the gold standard. The average sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the proposed method in artifact identification were 0.97, 0.84, and 0.89, respectively. The proposed method identified and reduced artifacts accurately and automatically, providing an alternative way to analyze 4DCT image quality and to correct problematic images for radiation therapy.

Problematic Images: Some Pitfalls Associated with the Use of Iconography in Seventeenth-Century French Theatre History

The study of iconography is now firmly established as a key strand within the discipline of theatre studies. This essay examines its development, focusing primarily on the theoreticians of the 1990s and 2000s, and its evolution from a sub-strand of art history to an academic endeavor in its own right. As Christopher Balme has noted, by the late 1990s theatre iconography had established a canon of problematic documents, which did not lend themselves to easy interpretation for a variety of reasons. However, as a natural consequence of the research interests of the scholars involved, the areas covered were necessarily circumscribed. The aims of this essay therefore are to bring some seventeenth-century French problematic images and the questions they raise to the attention of a wider public, situate them in relation to previous and ongoing conversations within the discipline, and discuss the particular challenges they present. It opens with a brief survey of the development of the study of theatre iconography, followed by a discussion of a single emblematic image. The remainder of the essay examines examples of theatre architecture, frontispieces, and special effects: the first two because they are of particular relevance to French seventeenth-century theatre history; and the last because it is an area that has previously been little explored. Finally, the essay concludes with some thoughts on the particular problems that surround the use of images by scholars and students today.

Migrants' Health in Iran from the Perspective of Social Justice: a Systematic Literature Review.

This paper presents a systematic literature review of studies that shed light on the health of migrants in Iran from the perspective of social justice. A systematic search was conducted in PubMed and Iranian databases, including IranMedex, Magiran, and SID, in June 2012. All studies that were published until June 2012 describing the health status of migrants - including refugees - in Iran were included. The search results were categorisoyed according to an adapted version of the six dimensions of well-being in Madison Powers' and Ruth Faden's theory of social justice in health. They consisted of access to health care, health, respect, self-determination and attachment, personal security, and social determinants of health. The majority of papers mentioned issues related to infectious diseases (100 papers, 60.2%). Only a few papers mentioned socioeconomic status and access to health services, education, and work. Infectious diseases and high population growth among migrants and the problematic image of migrants as "threat" to the Iranian population's health appear to be the most prominent results in our search. It is imperative to combat the high numbers of infectious diseases among migrants in Iran while simultaneously making efforts to change the public image of migrants as a health and social service threat to Iran. Data concerning social and ethical issues of migrants' health in Iran is scarce, and thus, future research is necessary using other methods and sources.

The Prevalence of Inappropriate Image Duplication in Biomedical Research Publications.

ABSTRACTInaccurate data in scientific papers can result from honest error or intentional falsification. This study attempted to determine the percentage of published papers that contain inappropriate image duplication, a specific type of inaccurate data. The images from a total of 20,621 papers published in 40 scientific journals from 1995 to 2014 were visually screened. Overall, 3.8% of published papers contained problematic figures, with at least half exhibiting features suggestive of deliberate manipulation. The prevalence of papers with problematic images has risen markedly during the past decade. Additional papers written by authors of papers with problematic images had an increased likelihood of containing problematic images as well. As this analysis focused only on one type of data, it is likely that the actual prevalence of inaccurate data in the published literature is higher. The marked variation in the frequency of problematic images among journals suggests that journal practices, such as prepublication image screening, influence the quality of the scientific literature.

Problematic images found in 4% of biomedical papers

Giant survey suggests journals should pay more attention to detecting inappropriate duplications.

Breast image pre-processing for mammographic tissue segmentation

During mammographic image acquisition, a compression paddle is used to even the breast thickness in order to obtain optimal image quality. Clinical observation has indicated that some mammograms may exhibit abrupt intensity change and low visibility of tissue structures in the breast peripheral areas. Such appearance discrepancies can affect image interpretation and may not be desirable for computer aided mammography, leading to incorrect diagnosis and/or detection which can have a negative impact on sensitivity and specificity of screening mammography. This paper describes a novel mammographic image pre-processing method to improve image quality for analysis. An image selection process is incorporated to better target problematic images. The processed images show improved mammographic appearances not only in the breast periphery but also across the mammograms. Mammographic segmentation and risk/density classification were performed to facilitate a quantitative and qualitative evaluation. When using the processed images, the results indicated more anatomically correct segmentation in tissue specific areas, and subsequently better classification accuracies were achieved. Visual assessments were conducted in a clinical environment to determine the quality of the processed images and the resultant segmentation. The developed method has shown promising results. It is expected to be useful in early breast cancer detection, risk-stratified screening, and aiding radiologists in the process of decision making prior to surgery and/or treatment.

New masculinities in Chinese and Japanese combat films

Abstract Through an analysis of popular combat films and television shows, this article argues that there has been a transformation in the representation of the hero-soldier in both China and Japan. Using theories of masculinity and nationalism, it suggests that recent Chinese films reveal a turn towards hybrid heroism-victimhood, increased focus on the emasculation of Japanese soldiers, and tensions between the market and the state. Meanwhile, Japanese films illustrate continued differences between the ambiguous mainstream and the straightforward nationalism of the right, albeit with an overall trend towards the rehabilitation of the problematic image of the soldier. Such shifts in the imagining of the soldier-hero demonstrate the ways in which Chinese and Japanese discourses on national identity have changed over time.

Moralising female identity in Cameroon in the 1990s: female prostitution and the song “you gu cry”

Between the 1970s and early 1980s, when Cameroon was still at the juncture of promising social plenitude, popular music genres like Makossa were a mere auditory art instead of a profit-making activity as we have in Cameroon today. Popular music at that time was simply “music for the ears”, meant to produce emotional sounds, pleasant to listen to. Bars, night clubs and streets were common environs where dancing took place as the physical expression of pleasure from music. The explosion of early music such as Makossa did not match the precarious marketable opportunities at that time. As a result, music appeared as a hobby, and not because singers derived income from its production. The themes focused on varying social experiences and problems, from love and emotional pathos to (im)morality. As such, one is tempted to assert that singers hardly expressed demur or outright lampoonery against public transgressions such as corruption, prostitution or swindling, as is the case nowadays. The themes were far less what we find in contemporary Cameroonian literate culture, namely cinema, media and popular music. This paper focuses on Misse Ngoh's popular song titled “you gu cry” as a medium of social reform through the beguiling fantasies of a female archetype, Mary, in Cameroon in the nineties. The paper contends that though this song produces laughter, rendering it a humorous piece with potential enough to entertain, the same humour turns out serious, handling prostitution and women involved in this activity in a very negative way. This is achieved when Misse Ngoh, using his female archetype Mary, constructs a problematic image of females in the Cameroon urban sphere. Taking these into consideration, Cameroon popular music as seen from Misse Ngoh's “you gu cry” takes on a different significance. Finally, in the iconography of Mary, this paper sets out to explore the agency of females who were baffled within the intricacies of urban life and modernity in the nineties. It examines the challenges of the new urban spaces (as notorious corners of prostitution) that such women chose.

79 Diagnostic Accuracy of Myocardial Fractional Flow Reserve for Reversible Perfusion Abnormalities in Patients with Recent Non-ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction

BackgroundMyocardial fractional flow reserve (FFR) has uncertain validity in patients with recent myocardial infarction and the use of FFR in this setting is controversial. We performed a prospective study to...

Postdevelopment Television? Cultural Citizenship and the Mediation of Africa in Contemporary TV Drama

Despite well-established critiques from African and Africanist scholars, problematic images and narratives of Africa as a site of disease, famine, and conflict continue to circulate formulaically in mainstream first-world media. Meanwhile, many recent complex humanitarian emergencies in African countries have failed to garner significant attention from mainstream Western media and their audiences. This article examines how these power-bearing patterns of representation and omission can be complicated, contested, and disrupted in contemporary TV drama that takes recent African crises as its subject matter. We focus on six episodes of the hospital drama ER set in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur region of Sudan. Our analysis of the textual strategies deployed in these episodes and of online audience engagements with them enables us to explore what happens when Africa is brought into the regimes of narrative complexity increasingly associated with television drama in the new media ecology. ER's engagements with African conflict innovatively articulate key aspects of the cultural politics of postdevelopment and postcolonialism in ways that challenge familiar Western media tropes of the “troubled continent” and destabilize the wider knowledges that sustain them.

"Counting Coup" on Children's Literature about American Indians: Louise Erdrich's Historical Fiction

Louise Erdrich's children's novels "count coup" on previous attempts to render American Indian life, especially those found in beloved books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and others. Through intertextual connections, she revisions stereotypical images of American Indians that have, until more recently, pervaded children's literature. Analyzing Erdrich's novels within the framework of Catherine Rainwater's counting coup paradigm suggests a way to negotiate the problems posed by classic texts rather than eradicate them altogether, allowing American Indian texts to triumph over the problematic images while celebrating more culturally-sensitive depictions, thus finding a place alongside of, not just in response to, canonical children's texts.

Out in the outback: Queering nationalism in Australian film comedy

ABSTRACTThe ‘ocker film’ was one of the defining subgenres of the revitalized Australian cinema of the 1970s. Characterized by bawdy humor and roguish escapades, these picaresque films satirically perpetuated an image of folksy Australian masculinity that countered and antagonized a queered image of British masculinity. To this end, these popular comedies rebuked the lingering British cultural influence in Australia while underscoring its distinctive humor and cultural identity, albeit one that was often sexist, anti-intellectual, and homophobic. In the 1990s, a series of Australian film comedies took up (and took on) the ocker tradition to revise this problematic image of Australian masculinity. In this essay, I argue that The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliott, 1994) re-appropriates and revises the ocker tradition, especially its pervasive heteronormativity. Though it falters in its treatment of women and ethnic minorities, Priscilla promotes a message of diversity that queers what I call the ‘andronationalism’—that is, masculinized nationalism—touted in the ocker film tradition to envision a more modern and more inclusive image of Australia.