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19,875 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures · Negative / Null Result Report. 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 Report

A Survey of Social Engineers that did not Collect Enough Data

Adrian Dana Austin · 2022 · Engineering and Technology Journal

In The context of Information technology and Cyber Security a nexus of computers and humans occurs as Social engineering. Defenders would like to know how this group interacts with users to gain access to secure information. The purpose of…

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Negative / Null Result Report

The Maintain Your Brain online multidomain intervention for dementia risk reduction: end‐user evaluations of what did and did not work and why

Anne‐Nicole S. Casey, Tiffany Chau, Megan Heffernan et al. · 2023 · Alzheimer's & Dementia

Abstract Background Dementia prevalence is increasing, and risk reduction is a priority. Online interventions that are useable and acceptable to people seeking to reduce their dementia risk are needed. We aimed to assess and explore…

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Negative / Null Result Report

Abstract 080: Challenges Associated with The Embolic Protection Device (epd) And Perioperative Events Between Those Who Did and Did Not Receive Epd During Carotid Artery Stenting

Y. M. Lodi, V. Reddy, T. Wang · 2024 · Stroke: Vascular and Interventional Neurology

Background In CREST trial 96.1% of the patient in carotid artery stenting (CAS) group had EPD and with a 4.1± 0.6 incidence of stroke. Despite the use of EPD, CAS has more cerebral ischemic events (CIE) compared to CEA. Additionally, the…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

A New Bound for the Brown--Erdős--Sós Problem

David Conlon, Lior Gishboliner, Yevgeny Levanzov et al. · 2019 · arXiv

Let $f(n,v,e)$ denote the maximum number of edges in a $3$-uniform hypergraph not containing $e$ edges spanned by at most $v$ vertices. One of the most influential open problems in extremal combinatorics then asks, for a given number of edges $e \geq 3$, what is the smallest integer $d=d(e)$ so that $f(n,e+d,e) = o(n^2)$? This question has its origins in work of Brown, Erdős and Sós from the early 70's and the standard conjecture is that $d(e)=3$ for every $e \geq 3$. The state of the art result regarding this problem was obtained in 2004 by Sárközy and Selkow, who showed that $f(n,e + 2 + \lf

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Designing quantum experiments with a genetic algorithm

Rosanna Nichols, Lana Mineh, Jesús Rubio et al. · 2018 · arXiv

We introduce a genetic algorithm that designs quantum optics experiments for engineering quantum states with specific properties. Our algorithm is powerful and flexible, and can easily be modified to find methods of engineering states for a range of applications. Here we focus on quantum metrology. First, we consider the noise-free case, and use the algorithm to find quantum states with a large quantum Fisher information (QFI). We find methods, which only involve experimental elements that are available with current or near-future technology, for engineering quantum states with up to a 100-fol

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Counting Square-full Solutions to $x+y=z$

D. R. Heath-Brown · 2026 · arXiv

We show that there are $O(B^{3/5-3/1555+\ep})$ triples $(x,y,z)$ of square-full integesr up to $B$ satisfying the equation $x+y=z$ for any fixed $\ep>0$. This is the first improvement over the `easy' exponent $3/5$, given by Browning and Van Valckenborgh. One new tool is a strong uniform bound for the counting function for equations $aX^3+bY^3=cZ^3$.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

A new upper bound on the smallest counterexample to the Mertens conjecture

John Rozmarynowycz, Seungki Kim · 2023 · arXiv

We report the finding of the new upper bound on the lowest positive integer $x$ for which the Mertens conjecture \begin{equation*} \left| \sum_{1 \leq n \leq x} μ(n) \right| < \sqrt{x} \end{equation*} fails to hold: $x < \exp(1.017 \times 10^{29})$, an improvement over previously known $\exp(1.59 \times 10^{40})$ due to Kotnik and te Riele [7].

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

WiFi-based Global Localization in Large-Scale Environments Leveraging Structural Priors from osmAG

Xu Ma, Jiajie Zhang, Fujing Xie et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Global localization is essential for autonomous robotics, especially in indoor environments where the GPS signal is denied. We propose a novel WiFi-based localization framework that leverages ubiquitous wireless infrastructure and the OpenStreetMap Area Graph (osmAG) for large-scale indoor environments. Our approach integrates signal propagation modeling with osmAG's geometric and topological priors. In the offline phase, an iterative optimization algorithm localizes WiFi Access Points (APs) by modeling wall attenuation, achieving a mean localization error of 3.79 m (35.3\% improvement over tr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Model-Agnostic AI Framework with Explicit Time Integration for Long-Term Fluid Dynamics Prediction

Sunwoong Yang, Ricardo Vinuesa, Namwoo Kang · 2024 · arXiv

This study addresses the critical challenge of error accumulation in spatio-temporal auto-regressive (AR) predictions within scientific machine learning models by exploring temporal integration schemes and adaptive multi-step rollout strategies. We introduce the first implementation of the two-step Adams-Bashforth method specifically tailored for data-driven AR prediction, leveraging historical derivative information to enhance numerical stability without additional computational overhead. To validate our approach, we systematically evaluate time integration schemes across canonical 2D PDEs be

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Incorporating intrinsic compressibility effects in velocity transformations for wall-bounded turbulent flows

Asif Manzoor Hasan, Johan Larsson, Sergio Pirozzoli et al. · 2023 · arXiv

A transformation that relates a compressible wall-bounded turbulent flow with non-uniform fluid properties to an equivalent incompressible flow with uniform fluid properties is derived and validated. The transformation accounts for both variable-property and intrinsic compressibility effects, the latter being the key improvement over the current state-of-the-art. The importance of intrinsic compressibility effects contradicts the renowned Morkovin's hypothesis.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

PluriHopRAG: Exhaustive, Recall-Sensitive QA Through Corpus-Specific Document Structure Learning

Mykolas Sveistrys, Richard Kunert · 2025 · arXiv

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has been used in question answering (QA) systems to improve performance when relevant information is in one (single-hop) or multiple (multi-hop) passages. However, many real life scenarios (e.g. dealing with financial, legal, medical reports) require checking all documents for relevant information without a clear stopping condition. We term these pluri-hop questions, and formalize them by 3 conditions - recall sensitivity, exhaustiveness, and exactness. To study this setting, we introduce PluriHopWIND, a multilingual diagnostic benchmark of 48 pluri-hop que

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Custom Memory Design for Logic-in-Memory: Drawbacks and Improvements over Conventional Memories

Fabrizio Ottati, Giovanna Turvani, Marco Vacca et al. · 2023 · arXiv

The speed of modern digital systems is severely limited by memory latency (the ``Memory Wall'' problem). Data exchange between Logic and Memory is also responsible for a large part of the system energy consumption. Logic--In--Memory (LiM) represents an attractive solution to this problem. By performing part of the computations directly inside the memory the system speed can be improved while reducing its energy consumption. LiM solutions that offer the major boost in performance are based on the modification of the memory cell. However, what is the cost of such modifications? How do these impa

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Efficient Reinforcement for Visual-Textual Thinking with Discrete Diffusion Model

Yoonjeon Kim, Yuhta Takida, Chieh-Hsin Lai et al. · 2026 · arXiv

RL-based post-training has been widely adopted to enable interleaved visual and textual reasoning in unified multimodal models capable of both text and image generation. However, most existing approaches are built upon autoregressive (AR) unified models, which require full image regeneration during visual reasoning. In this work, we demonstrate that multimodal discrete diffusion models are effective alternatives to AR models for reinforcement learning in interleaved reasoning, owing to their ability to perform efficient visual rollouts via localized visual editing rather than full image-token

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Trade-off Between Minimal Instability and Larger Improvements over Deferred Acceptance

Taylor Knipe, Josue Ortega · 2025 · arXiv

The celebrated Efficiency-Adjusted Deferred Acceptance mechanism (EADA) improves the efficiency of the DA algorithm via consented priority violations. Notwithstanding its many merits, we show that EADA can improve only two students when an alternative mechanism that Pareto-dominates DA could benefit all but one student. This shortfall in the number of students improved is not exclusive of EADA but extends to all setwise minimally unstable mechanisms, i.e. those that generate a set of blocking pairs that is never a strict superset of that of another mechanism. The incompatibility between number

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative result measurements in mesoscopic systems

S. A. Gurvitz · 2003 · arXiv

We investigate measurement of electron transport in quantum dot systems by using single-electron transistor as a noninvasive detector. It is demonstrated that such a detector can operate in the ``negative-result measurement'' regime. In this case the measured current is not distorted, providing that it is a non-coherent one. For a coherent transport, however, the possibility of observing a particular state out of coherent superposition leads to distortion of a measured current even in the ``negative-result measurement'' regime. The corresponding decoherence rate is obtained in the framework of

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Disposition Distillation at Small Scale: A Three-Arc Negative Result

Hari Sadasivan · 2026 · arXiv

We set out to train behavioral dispositions (self-verification, uncertainty acknowledgment, feedback integration) into small language models (0.6B to 2.3B effective parameters) through a four-stage all-MIT distillation pipeline, with follow-on experiments on inference-time attention-head interventions and a frozen-base confidence-gated sidecar. An internal draft reported +33.9-point MCAS and +15.3-point HumanEval gains on a Qwen3-0.6B student; a second-pass sanity check falsified both numbers before publication. The HumanEval delta was a truncation artifact (n_predict=512) that inverted to -8.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative results for approximation using single layer and multilayer feedforward neural networks

J. M. Almira, P. E. Lopez-de-Teruel, D. J. Romero-Lopez et al. · 2018 · arXiv

We prove a negative result for the approximation of functions defined on compact subsets of $\mathbb{R}^d$ (where $d \geq 2$) using feedforward neural networks with one hidden layer and arbitrary continuous activation function. In a nutshell, this result claims the existence of target functions that are as difficult to approximate using these neural networks as one may want. We also demonstrate an analogous result (for general $d \in \mathbb{N}$) for neural networks with an \emph{arbitrary} number of hidden layers, for activation functions that are either rational functions or continuous splin

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

On the negative-result experiments in quantum mechanics

Kenichi Konishi · 2023 · arXiv

We comment on the so-called negative-result experiments (also known as null measurements, interaction-free measurements, and so on) in quantum mechanics (QM), in the light of the new general understanding of the quantum-measurement processes, proposed recently. All experiments of this kind (null-measurements) can be understood as improper measurements with an intentionally biased detector set up, which introduces exclusion or selection of certain events. The prediction on the state of a microscopic system under study based on a null measurement, is sometimes dramatically described as ``wave-fu

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

A Negative Result on Cross-Model Activation Transfer in a Pythia Multi-Hop Setting

Peiyan Zhang, Jason Xin · 2026 · arXiv

Recent work shows that language models can transmit behavioural traits through hidden signals in generated data during training. We ask whether a different activation-mediated channel is viable: can one language model communicate a useful intermediate reasoning state to another at inference time through a post-hoc linear activation bridge, rather than through a textual or structured-token relay? We test this question in a controlled Pythia-160M to Pythia-410M multi-hop reasoning setting. A linear translation layer learns a strong normalized-space map between sender and receiver hidden states,

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Distilling Self-Consistency into Verbal Confidence: A Pre-Registered Negative Result and Post-Hoc Rescue on Gemma 3 4B

Jon-Paul Cacioli · 2026 · arXiv

Small instruct-tuned LLMs produce degenerate verbal confidence under minimal elicitation: ceiling rates above 95%, near-chance Type-2 AUROC, and Invalid validity profiles. We test whether confidence-conditioned supervised fine-tuning (CSFT) with self-consistency-derived targets can close the gap between internal information and verbal readout. A pre-registered Phase 0 protocol on Gemma 3 4B-it with a modal filter restricting training to items with correct modal answers produced a negative result: AUROC2 dropped from 0.554 to 0.509 due to label-entropy collapse in the training targets. An explo

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Differentiable Energy-Based Regularization in GANs: A Simulator-Based Exploration of VQE-Inspired Auxiliary Losses

David Strnadel · 2025 · arXiv

This paper presents an exploratory, simulator-based proof of concept investigating whether differentiable energy terms derived from parameterized quantum circuits can serve as auxiliary regularization signals in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We augment the Auxiliary Classifier GAN (ACGAN) generator objective with a Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE)-inspired energy term computed from class-specific Ising Hamiltonians using Qiskit's EstimatorQNN and TorchConnector. All experiments are performed on a noiseless statevector simulator with only four qubits, using a deliberately simple

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Pac-learning Recursive Logic Programs: Negative Results

W. W. Cohen · 1995 · arXiv

In a companion paper it was shown that the class of constant-depth determinate k-ary recursive clauses is efficiently learnable. In this paper we present negative results showing that any natural generalization of this class is hard to learn in Valiant's model of pac-learnability. In particular, we show that the following program classes are cryptographically hard to learn: programs with an unbounded number of constant-depth linear recursive clauses; programs with one constant-depth determinate clause containing an unbounded number of recursive calls; and programs with one linear recursive cla

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative Results for Software Effort Estimation

Tim Menzies, Ye Yang, George Mathew et al. · 2016 · arXiv

Context:More than half the literature on software effort estimation (SEE) focuses on comparisons of new estimation methods. Surprisingly, there are no studies comparing state of the art latest methods with decades-old approaches. Objective:To check if new SEE methods generated better estimates than older methods. Method: Firstly, collect effort estimation methods ranging from "classical" COCOMO (parametric estimation over a pre-determined set of attributes) to "modern" (reasoning via analogy using spectral-based clustering plus instance and feature selection, and a recent "baseline method" pro

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