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Browse the failure-mode index

21,252 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Direct numerical simulations of a cylinder cutting a vortex

Steven Soriano, Rodolfo Ostilla-Monico · 2024 · arXiv

The interaction between a vortex and an impacting body which is oriented normally to it is complex due to the interaction of inviscid and viscous three-dimensional mechanisms. To model this process, direct numerical simulations of a thin cylinder intersecting a columnar vortex oriented normally to it are conducted. By varying the impact parameter and the Reynolds number, the two regimes of interaction mentioned in the literature are distinguished: the weak and strong vortex regimes. Low impact parameters, representing strong vortices, led to ejection and interaction of secondary vorticity from

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Field localization on a brane intersection in anti-de Sitter spacetime

Antonino Flachi, Masato Minamitsuji · 2009 · arXiv

We discuss the localization of scalar, fermion, and gauge field zero modes on a $3-$brane that resides at the intersection of two $4-$branes in six-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. This set-up has been introduced in the context of brane world models and, higher-dimensional versions of it, in string theory. In both six- and ten-dimensional cases, it has been shown that four-dimensional gravity can be reproduced at the intersection, due to the existence of a massless, localized graviton zero-mode. However, realistic scenarios require also the Standard Model to be localized on the $3-$brane. In

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Multiple Purposes, Multiple Problems: A User Study of Consent Dialogs after GDPR

Dominique Machuletz, Rainer Böhme · 2019 · arXiv

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires websites to ask for consent to the use of cookies for \emph{specific purposes}. This enlarges the relevant design space for consent dialogs. Websites could try to maximize click-through rates and positive consent decision, even at the risk of users agreeing to more purposes than intended. We evaluate a practice observed on popular websites by conducting an experiment with one control and two treatment groups ($N=150$ university students in two countries). We hypothesize that users' consent decision is influenced by (1) the

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Characteristics of Quantum Magnetosonic-Wave Dispersion

M. Akbari-Moghanjoughi · 2012 · arXiv

Using the quantum magnetohydrodynamics (QMHD) model, linear dispersion of magnetosonic waves are studied in a quasineutral quantum electron-ion plasma in two distinct regimes of nonrelativistic and relativistic degeneracies considering also the plasma composition effect. It is shown that the paramagnetic spin effects of the degenerated electrons plays a key role in dynamics of magnetosonic waves. The linear wave-speed is found to have minimum value at some degeneracy parameter in such plasmas. This is due to delicate interplay between relativistic degeneracy and the Pauli spin-magnetization. I

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Bringing Everyone to the Table: An Experimental Study of LLM-Facilitated Group Decision Making

Mohammed Alsobay, David M. Rothschild, Jake M. Hofman et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Group decision-making often suffers from uneven information sharing, hindering decision quality. While large language models (LLMs) have been widely studied as aids for individuals, their potential to support groups of users, potentially as facilitators, is relatively underexplored. We present a pre-registered randomized experiment with 1,475 participants assigned to 281 five-person groups completing a hidden profile task--selecting an optimal city for a hypothetical sporting event--under one of four facilitation conditions: no facilitation, a one-time message prompting information sharing, a

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Accounting for spatiality of renewables and storage in transmission planning

Leonard Göke, Mario Kendziorski, Claudia Kemfert et al. · 2021 · arXiv

The current governance process to plan the German energy system omits two options to substitute grid expansion: First, placing renewables closer to demand instead of where site conditions are best. Second, utilizing storage instead of additional transmission infrastructure to prevent grid congestion. In the paper, we apply a comprehensive capacity expansion model based on the AnyMOD modelling framework to compare the status quo to alternative planning approaches for a fully renewable energy system. To represent spatiality and fluctuations of renewables, the German electricity sector is modelle

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Commutation Error in Reduced Order Modeling of Fluid Flows

Birgul Koc, Muhammad Mohebujjaman, Changhong Mou et al. · 2018 · arXiv

For reduced order models (ROMs) of fluid flows, we investigate theoretically and computationally whether differentiation and ROM spatial filtering commute, i.e., whether the commutation error (CE) is nonzero. We study the CE for the Laplacian and two ROM filters: the ROM projection and the ROM differential filter. Furthermore, when the CE is nonzero, we investigate whether it has any significant effect on ROMs that are constructed by using spatial filtering. As numerical tests, we use the Burgers equation with viscosities $ν=10^{-1}$ and $ν=10^{-3}$ and a 2D flow past a circular cylinder at Re

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

The Role of Model Confidence on Bias Effects in Measured Uncertainties for Vision-Language Models

Xinyi Liu, Weiguang Wang, Hangfeng He · 2025 · arXiv

With the growing adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) for open-ended tasks, accurately assessing epistemic uncertainty, which reflects a model's lack of knowledge, has become crucial to ensuring reliable outcomes. However, quantifying epistemic uncertainty in such tasks is challenging due to the presence of aleatoric uncertainty, which arises from multiple valid answers. While bias can introduce noise into epistemic uncertainty estimation, it may also reduce noise from aleatoric uncertainty. To investigate this trade-off, we conduct experiments on Visual Question Answering (VQA) tasks and

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Prompting Science Report 3: I'll pay you or I'll kill you -- but will you care?

Lennart Meincke, Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick et al. · 2025 · arXiv

This is the third in a series of short reports that seek to help business, education, and policy leaders understand the technical details of working with AI through rigorous testing. In this report, we investigate two commonly held prompting beliefs: a) offering to tip the AI model and b) threatening the AI model. Tipping was a commonly shared tactic for improving AI performance and threats have been endorsed by Google Founder Sergey Brin (All-In, May 2025, 8:20) who observed that 'models tend to do better if you threaten them,' a claim we subject to empirical testing here. We evaluate model p

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Comparing Photorealistic and Animated Embodied Conversational Agents in Serious Games: An Empirical Study on User Experience

Danai Korre · 2023 · arXiv

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are paradigms of conversational user interfaces in the form of embodied characters. While ECAs offer various manipulable features, this paper focuses on a study conducted to explore two distinct levels of presentation realism. The two agent versions are photorealistic and animated. The study aims to provide insights and design suggestions for speech-enabled ECAs within serious game environments. A within-subjects, two-by-two factorial design was employed for this research with a cohort of 36 participants balanced for gender. The results showed that both th

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

On the concentration distribution in turbulent thermals

Ludovic Huguet, Victor Lherm, Renaud Deguen et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Turbulent thermals emerge in a wide variety of geophysical and industrial flows, such as atmospheric cumulus convection and pollutant dispersal in oceans and lakes. When a buoyant fluid mass rises, or sinks, heat and mass transfers occur by the engulfment of the fresh surrounding fluid inside the thermal - a process that spans over multiple scales from macroscopic entrainment of ambient fluid to microscopic diffusive processes. Turbulent thermals are typically investigated through their integral properties (radius, depth, entrainment rate). However, mixing processes depend on the internal dist

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The Baade-Wesselink p-factor applicable to LMC Cepheids

N. Nardetto, A. Fokin, P. Fouqué et al. · 2011 · arXiv

Context. Recent observations of LMC Cepheids bring new constraints on the slope of the period-projection factor relation (hereafter Pp relation) that is currently used in the Baade-Wesselink (hereafter BW) method of distance determination. The discrepancy between observations and theoretical analysis is particularly significant for short period Cepheids Aims. We investigate three physical effects that might possibly explain this discrepancy: (1) the spectroscopic S/N that is systematically lower for LMC Cepheids (around 10) compared to Galactic ones (up to 300), (2) the impact of the metallici

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Methods Dead-EndOpen accessComputer Science

Meta-Regression Analysis of Errors in Short-Term Electricity Load Forecasting

Konstantin Hopf, Hannah Hartstang, Thorsten Staake · 2023 · arXiv

Forecasting electricity demand plays a critical role in ensuring reliable and cost-efficient operation of the electricity supply. With the global transition to distributed renewable energy sources and the electrification of heating and transportation, accurate load forecasts become even more important. While numerous empirical studies and a handful of review articles exist, there is surprisingly little quantitative analysis of the literature, most notably none that identifies the impact of factors on forecasting performance across the entirety of empirical studies. In this article, we therefor

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Secular precessing compact binary dynamics, spin and orbital angular momentum flip-flops

Márton Tápai, Zoltán Keresztes, László Árpád Gergely · 2016 · arXiv

We derive the conservative secular evolution of precessing compact binaries to second post-Newtonian order accuracy, with leading-order spin-orbit, spin-spin and mass quadrupole-monopole contributions included. The emerging closed system of first-order differential equations evolves the pairs of polar and azimuthal angles of the spin and orbital angular momentum vectors together with the periastron angle. In contrast with the instantaneous dynamics, the secular dynamics is autonomous. This secular dynamics reliably characterizes the system over timescales starting from a few times the radial p

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Anisotropies in the redshift-space correlations of galaxy groups and clusters I: Simulated catalogues

N. D. Padilla, D. G. Lambas · 2003 · arXiv

We analyse the correlation function of mock galaxy clusters in redshift space. We constructed several mock catalogues designed to mimic the selection biases inherent in a variety of observational surveys. We explore different effects that contribute to the distortion of the clustering pattern; the pairwise velocity distribution of galaxy systems, coherent bulk motions, redshift errors and systematics in cluster identification. Our tests show that the redshift-space clustering pattern of galaxy systems is highly influenced by effects associated with the identification procedure from two dimensi

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Ion-Exchange Doping of Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Angus Hawkey, Aditya Dash, Xabier Rodríguez-Martínez et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are a promising thermoelectric material with high power factors after chemical p- or n-doping. Understanding the impact of dopant counterions on charge transport and thermoelectric properties of nanotube networks is essential to further optimize doping methods and to develop better dopants. Here, we utilize ion-exchange doping to systematically vary the size of counterions in thin films of small and large diameter, polymer-sorted semiconducting SWCNTs with AuCl3 as the initial p-dopant and investigate the impact of ion size on conductivity

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Tri-Bench: Stress-Testing VLM Reliability on Spatial Reasoning under Camera Tilt and Object Interference

Amit Bendkhale · 2025 · arXiv

Verifiable geometric reasoning is a critical component for trustworthy and controllable agentic AI. Despite impressive capabilities, Vision-Language Models (VLMs) often fail under realistic scene changes. We present Tri-Bench, a compact benchmark of planar triangle problems that isolates relative geometric reasoning while stressing two deployment-critical factors: camera pose (planar vs. tilted) and scene context via object interference (10 everyday objects). To test verifiability and control, we evaluate four recent VLMs using a single, fixed prompt whose guardrail explicitly describes a surr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Exploring Gender Bias in Remote Pair Programming among Software Engineering Students: The twincode Original Study and First External Replication

Amador Durán, Pablo Fernández, Beatriz Bernárdez et al. · 2023 · arXiv

Context. Software Engineering (SE) has low female representation due to gender bias that men are better at programming. Pair programming (PP) is common in industry and can increase student interest in SE, especially women; but if gender bias affects PP, it may discourage women from joining the field. Objective. We explore gender bias in PP. In a remote setting where students cannot see their peers' gender, we study how perceived productivity, technical competency and collaboration/interaction behaviors of SE students vary by perceived gender of their remote partner. Method. We developed an onl

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Constraints on a Bianchi type I spacetime extension of the standard $Λ$CDM model

Ozgur Akarsu, Suresh Kumar, Shivani Sharma et al. · 2019 · arXiv

We consider the simplest anisotropic generalization, as a correction, to the standard $Λ$CDM model, by replacing the spatially flat Robertson-Walker metric by the Bianchi type-I metric, which brings in a new term $Ω_{σ0}a^{-6}$ (mimicking the stiff fluid) in the average expansion rate $H(a)$ of the Universe. From Hubble and Pantheon data, relevant to the late Universe ($z\lesssim 2.4$), we obtain the constraint $Ω_{\sigma0}\lesssim10^{-3}$, in line with the model-independent constraints. When the baryonic acoustic oscillations and cosmic microwave background (CMB) data are included, the constr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Trust in Generative AI for Health Information Consumption and the Effect of Learned Dependency: An Experimental Investigation

Arif Ahmed, Gondy Leroy, Agrim Sachdeva et al. · 2026 · arXiv

Background: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly used for health information, yet its influence on users' trust calibration remains unclear. Objective: This study examines whether learned dependency on GenAI influences trust in AI-generated health information and whether text highlighting reduces overreliance on incorrect outputs. Methods: Two randomized controlled experiments were conducted with 338 college students and 563 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants. Both experiments used a 2 by 2 between-subjects design manipulating information accuracy (correct versus incorre

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Propagation of controlled frontward impulses through standing crowds

Sina Feldmann, Juliane Adrian, Maik Boltes · 2025 · arXiv

Impulse propagation in crowds is a phenomenon that is crucial for understanding collective dynamics, but has been scarcely addressed so far. Therefore, we have carried out experiments in which persons standing in a crowd are pushed forward in a controlled manner. Variations of experimental parameters include (i) the intensity of the push, (ii) the initial inter-person distance, (iii) the preparedness of participants and (iv) the crowd formation. Our analysis links the intensity of an impulse recorded by a pressure sensor with individual movements of participants based on head trajectories reco

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

On the Performance of Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS) with Orthogonal and Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

Yanyu Cheng, Chongjun Ouyang, Yuanwei Liu et al. · 2025 · arXiv

This paper conducts a comprehensive performance analysis for pinching-antenna systems (PASS) under both orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission. Given the cost of waveguides, we consider a scenario where the waveguide is not deployed in all rooms, i.e., some users are beyond the line-of-sight (LoS) link service area of the PASS. Specifically, we consider a PASS where a pinching antenna in one room serves two users located in separate rooms. The wireless transmissions between the pinching antenna and the users are performed via LoS and non-line-of

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Lateral density and arrival time distributions of Cherenkov photons in extensive air showers: a simulation study

P. Hazarika, U. D. Goswami, V. R. Chitnis et al. · 2014 · arXiv

We have investigated some features of the density and arrival time distributions of Cherenkov photons in extensive air showers using the CORSIKA simulation package. The main thrust of this study is to see the effect of hadronic interaction models on the production pattern of Cherenkov photons with respect to distance from the shower core. Such studies are very important in ground based $γ$-ray astronomy for an effective rejection of huge cosmic ray background, where the atmospheric Cherenkov technique is being used extensively within the energy range of some hundred GeV to few TeV. We have fou

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Imaging method for interface rheological characterization

Nicolas Abi Chebel, Olivier Masbernat, Frédéric Risso et al. · 2008 · arXiv

The present work investigates free damped oscillations of an oil drop in water after its release from a capillary tube. Both pure heptane drops and diluted crude oil drops are considered (in the second case the interface is covered by amphiphilic species, natural components of crude oil). Shadowgraph images of the drops are taken by means of a high speed camera and the drop contour is detected by image processing. The axisymmetric drop shape is then decomposed into spherical harmonics, which constitute the eigenmodes of oscillations predicted by the Rayleigh-Lamb theory. Time evolution of each

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessAgricultural and Biological Sciences

Seasonality of primary productivity affects coastal species more than its magnitude

Carlota Muniz, Christopher McQuaid, Nicolas Weidberg · 2024 · arXiv

While the importance of extreme conditions is recognised, patterns in species abundances are often interpreted through average environmental conditions within their distributional range. For marine species with pelagic larvae, temperature and phytoplankton concentration are key variables. Along the south coast of South Africa, conspicuous spatial patterns in recruitment rates and the abundances of different mussel species exist, with focal areas characterized by large populations. We studied 15 years of sea surface temperature (SST) and chlorophyll-a (chl-a) satellite data, using spectral anal

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Ground test results of the electromagnetic interference for the x-ray microcalorimeter onboard XRISM

Miki Kurihara, Masahiro Tsujimoto, Megan E. Eckart et al. · 2023 · arXiv

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) for low-temperature detectors is a serious concern in many missions. We investigate the EMI caused by the spacecraft components to the x-ray microcalorimeter of the Resolve instrument onboard the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), which is currently under development by an international collaboration and is planned to be launched in 2023. We focus on the EMI from (a) the low-frequency magnetic field generated by the magnetic torquers (MTQ) used for the spacecraft attitude control and (b) the radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic field generated by

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessAgricultural and Biological Sciences

Impact of temporal correlations on high risk outbreaks of independent and cooperative SIR dynamics

Sina Sajjadi, Mohammad Reza Ejtehadi, Fakhteh Ghanbarnejad · 2020 · arXiv

We first propose a quantitative approach to detect high risk outbreaks of independent and coinfective SIR dynamics on three empirical networks: a school, a conference and a hospital contact network. This measurement is based on the k-means clustering method and identifies proper samples for calculating the mean outbreak size and the outbreak probability. Then we systematically study the impact of different temporal correlations on high risk outbreaks over the original and differently shuffled counterparts of each network. We observe that, on the one hand, in the coinfection process, randomizat

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Effects of electrostatic screening on the conformation of single DNA molecules confined in a nanochannel

Ce Zhang, Fang Zhang, Jeroen A. van Kan et al. · 2008 · arXiv

Single T4-DNA molecules were confined in rectangular-shaped channels with a depth of 300 nm and a width in the range 150-300 nm casted in a poly(dimethylsiloxane) nanofluidic chip. The extensions of the DNA molecules were measured with fluorescence microscopy as a function of the ionic strength and composition of the buffer as well as the DNA intercalation level by the YOYO-1 dye. The data were interpreted with scaling theory for a wormlike polymer in good solvent, including the effects of confinement, charge, and self-avoidance. It was found that the elongation of the DNA molecules with decre

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