Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessGeriatrics
Veronika Keppner, Sebastian Krumpoch, Robert Kob et al. · 2023 · BMC Geriatrics
Abstract Background The risk of older adults being injured or killed in a bicycle accident increases significantly due to the age-related decline of physical function. Therefore, targeted interventions for older adults to improve safe cycling competence (CC) are urgently needed. Methods The “Safer Cycling in Older Age” (SiFAr) randomized controlled trial investigated if a progressive multi-component training program related to cycling improves CC of older adults. Between June 2020 and May 2022, 127 community-dwelling persons living in the area Nürnberg-Fürth-Erlangen, Germany aged 65 years and
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s12877-023-03816-2 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEducation (General)
Rahmah Johar, Rahmah Johar, M. Ikhsan et al. · 2025 · Frontiers in Education
Mathematical communication skills are essential for helping students grasp mathematical concepts. Fostering students’ knowledge of Islamic values can also encourage them to relate mathematical topics to real-world situations, particularly in worship, enhancing their mathematical communication. Therefore, an innovative teaching approach is crucial to improving students’ mathematical communication and understanding of Islamic values. This study investigates the integration of these concepts within mathematics through the contextualized framework of Qurban. The study explores how an interactive w
View details →DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1633056 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Chunliang Li, Tianze Cao, Sanyuan Zhao · 2026 · arXiv
Visual Autoregressive (VAR) modeling inefficiently applies a fixed computational depth to each position when generating high-resolution images. While existing methods accelerate inference by pruning tokens using frequency maps, their binary hard-pruning approach is fundamentally limited and fails to improve quality even with better frequency estimation. Observing that VAR models possess significant depth redundancy, we propose a paradigm shift from pruning entire tokens to adaptively allocating per-token computational depth. To this end, we introduce DepthVAR, a training-free framework that dy
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessAgricultural and Biological Sciences
Denis Boyer, Peter D. Walsh · 2010 · arXiv
Thanks to recent technological advances, it is now possible to track with an unprecedented precision and for long periods of time the movement patterns of many living organisms in their habitat. The increasing amount of data available on single trajectories offers the possibility of understanding how animals move and of testing basic movement models. Random walks have long represented the main description for micro-organisms and have also been useful to understand the foraging behaviour of large animals. Nevertheless, most vertebrates, in particular humans and other primates, rely on sophistic
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Adam Byerly, Daniel Khashabi · 2024 · arXiv
Self-consistency (SC) improves the performance of large language models (LLMs) across various tasks and domains that involve short content. However, does this support its effectiveness for long-context problems? We challenge the assumption that SC's benefits generalize to long-context settings, where LLMs often struggle with position bias, the systematic over-reliance on specific context regions-which hinders their ability to utilize information effectively from all parts of their context. Through comprehensive experimentation with varying state-of-the-art models, tasks, and SC formulations, w
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Lin C, Mei YM, Yan Y et al. · 2026 · Head & face medicine
AIM: To evaluate the adjunctive clinical efficacy of manual root planing following ultrasonic subgingival debridement (SD) in the treatment of generalized severe periodontitis. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty-nine patients diagnosed with…
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s13005-026-00622-0 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Fırat Öncel, Matthias Bethge, Beyza Ermis et al. · 2024 · arXiv
In the last decade, the generalization and adaptation abilities of deep learning models were typically evaluated on fixed training and test distributions. Contrary to traditional deep learning, large language models (LLMs) are (i) even more overparameterized, (ii) trained on unlabeled text corpora curated from the Internet with minimal human intervention, and (iii) trained in an online fashion. These stark contrasts prevent researchers from transferring lessons learned on model generalization and adaptation in deep learning contexts to LLMs. To this end, our short paper introduces empirical ob
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessDiseases of the blood and blood-forming organs
Edvan de Queiroz Crusoe, Fabiana Higashi, Maria Paula Nalesso Camargo Padilha et al. · 2014 · Revista Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia
Background: Induction therapy followed by high-dose chemotherapy and autologous transplantation is the standard treatment for suitable patients with multiple myeloma. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess whether induction therapy with thalidomidecontaining regimens was associated with improved results compared to vincristine, doxorubicin, and dexamethasone, and whether cyclophosphamide, thalidomide, and dexamethasone were associated with better results than thalidomide and dexamethasone. Methods: The records of 152 patients who underwent autologous transplantation at this institution
View details →DOI: 10.5581/1516-8484.20140008 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSurgery
Eiji Nomura, Takatoshi Seki, Kentaro Yatabe et al. · 2024 · World Journal of Surgical Oncology
Abstract Background Elderly gastric cancer patients (EGCPs) require treatment according to not just the stage of their cancer, but also to their general condition and organ function, and rather than full treatment, the appropriate amount of treatment is necessary. Methods A total of 425 patients who underwent gastrectomy for primary gastric cancer in our institution between April 2013 and March 2020 were classified by age into two groups: elderly patients (EP, age ≥ 80 years, n = 89); and younger patients (YP, age < 80 years, n = 336). The preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative condit
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s12957-024-03488-1 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessDiseases of the digestive system. Gastroenterology
Olga Maria Nardone, Giulio Calabrese, Alessia La Mantia et al. · 2025 · Therapeutic Advances in Gastroenterology
Background: Managing extraintestinal manifestations (EIMs) in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients remains challenging due to considerable heterogeneity in diagnostic criteria and the lack of a standardised definition and validated diagnostic pathways. Delays in recognising and treating EIMs can lead to significant disease progression. Therefore, early detection and treatment are crucial. Objectives: We aimed to assess the effectiveness of a dedicated immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) clinic in reducing EIM diagnostic delays and improving patients’ outcomes. Design: A single-c
View details →DOI: 10.1177/17562848251323529 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Piyawat Lertvittayakumjorn, David Kinney, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran et al. · 2025 · arXiv
Generative large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated gaps in diverse cultural awareness across the globe. We investigate the effect of retrieval augmented generation and search-grounding techniques on LLMs' ability to display familiarity with various national cultures. Specifically, we compare the performance of standard LLMs, LLMs augmented with retrievals from a bespoke knowledge base (i.e., KB grounding), and LLMs augmented with retrievals from a web search (i.e., search grounding) on multiple cultural awareness benchmarks. We find that search grounding significantly improves the LLM p
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessOrthopedic surgery
Michał Maciejewski, Piotr Janusz, Michalina Dudkiewicz et al. · 2023 · Chirurgia Narządów Ruchu i Ortopedia Polska
Introduction. Radial neck fractures in children are rare and account for 1-3% of all childhood trauma. Severe displacement of the fracture can lead to a higher incidence of complications, such as limited range of motion (ROM), pain, instability, neurovascular trauma, premature physeal closure, cubitus valgus, radial head overgrowth, avascular necrosis and improper ossification. The treatment outcome depends on the injury type, treatment method and presence of complications.Aim. The purpose of the study was to assess the outcome of patients treated with elastic-stable intramedullary nailing (ES
View details →DOI: 10.31139/chnriop.2023.88.3.4 Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Zixian Huang, Kaichen Yang, Xu Huang et al. · 2026 · arXiv
A widely adopted strategy for model enhancement is to use synthetic data generated by a stronger model for supervised fine-tuning (SFT). However, for emerging reasoning models like Qwen3-8B, this approach often fails to improve reasoning capabilities and can even lead to a substantial drop in performance. In this work, we identify substantial stylistic divergence between teacher generated data and the distribution of student as a major factor impacting SFT. To bridge this gap, we propose a Teacher-Student Cooperation Data Synthesis framework (TESSY), which interleaves teacher and student model
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSurgery
Samah Abdelfatah Eshiaty, Shimaa Abdelsattar, Dina Sweed et al. · 2023 · Egyptian Liver Journal
Abstract Background Early detection of biliary atresia (BA) is a great challenge providing the main useful way to improve its clinical consequence. Promising metabolomics provides an effective method for determining innovative biomarkers and biochemical ways for improving early diagnosis. This study aimed to determine the benefit of serum and urinary potential bile acid metabolites in the differentiation of BA from non-biliary atresia (non-BA) cases using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Fourteen bile acids metabolites were measured quantitively by MS/MS in serum and urine samples from 102 ch
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s43066-023-00244-0 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Saikat Mondal, Chanchal K. Roy · 2025 · arXiv
High-quality answers in technical Q&A platforms like Stack Overflow (SO) are crucial as they directly influence software development practices. Poor-quality answers can introduce inefficiencies, bugs, and security vulnerabilities, and thus increase maintenance costs and technical debt in production software. To improve content quality, SO allows collaborative editing, where users revise answers to enhance clarity, correctness, and formatting. Several studies have examined rejected edits and identified the causes of rejection. However, prior research has not systematically assessed whether acce
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessScience
Hans IJzerman, Jaap J. A. Denissen · 2019 · Royal Society Open Science
We report a replication and extension of a finding from Studies 1 and 2 of Van Lange et al.'s influential paper (Van Lange et al. 1997 J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 73, 733–746. (doi:10.1037/0022-3514.73.4.733)), which showed an association between Social Value Orientation (SVO) and attachment security. We report a close replication but with measures of attachment that are considered superior in comparison to measures used by Van Lange et al., due to subsequent psychometric improvements. Psychometric analyses indeed showed that our attachment measures were reliable and valid, demonstrating theoretica
View details →DOI: 10.1098/rsos.181575 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine (General)
Martins MJ, Martins CPMO, Castro-Alves LJ et al. · 2018 · Journal of Pain Research
Marcelo J Martins,1 Caroline Paiva Matos Oliveira Martins,2 Lucas J Castro-Alves,3 Gabriel Nascimento Jesus,4 Guilherme Oliveira Campos,5 Breno Barbosa Cerqueira Sacramento,4 Leonardo Ferrari Borges,6 Carlos Augusto Bastos Mello,6 Rodrigo Leal Alves,5 Norma Sueli Pinheiro Módolo7 1Department of Anesthesiology, São Paulo State University (UNESP), São Paulo, Brazil; 2Department of Anesthesiology at Federal University of Bahia, Bahia, Brazil; 3Department of Anesthesiology, Santo Antonio Hospital, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil; 4Department of Anesthesia, Bahia University of Medicine
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine (General)
Madeleine M. Southey, Trent Rees, Margaret Rolfe et al. · 2019 · Addiction Science & Clinical Practice
Abstract Background Residential opioid rehabilitation aims to improve the mental health and quality of life of opioid users through abstinence and residential program participation. This study aimed to determine the depression, anxiety, stress and quality of life amongst maintenance to abstinence (MTA) program residents. Secondary study aims were to assess the personal characteristics of MTA clients, addiction and risk taking behaviours, factors associated with program completion, as well as to assess the reliable change in participants’ mental health and quality of life on exit. Methods Retro
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s13722-019-0132-x Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Hongyu Zhou, Yinan Zhang, Aixin Sun et al. · 2025 · arXiv
Multimodal recommendation systems are increasingly popular for their potential to improve performance by integrating diverse data types. However, the actual benefits of this integration remain unclear, raising questions about when and how it truly enhances recommendations. In this paper, we propose a structured evaluation framework to systematically assess multimodal recommendations across four dimensions: Comparative Efficiency, Recommendation Tasks, Recommendation Stages, and Multimodal Data Integration. We benchmark a set of reproducible multimodal models against strong traditional baseline
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering
Haoyang Li, Yuchen Hu, Chen Chen et al. · 2024 · arXiv
Deep neural network (DNN)-based speech enhancement (SE) usually uses conventional activation functions, which lack the expressiveness to capture complex multiscale structures needed for high-fidelity SE. Group-Rational KAN (GR-KAN), a variant of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KAN), retains KAN's expressiveness while improving scalability on complex tasks. We adapt GR-KAN to existing DNN-based SE by replacing dense layers with GR-KAN layers in the time-frequency (T-F) domain MP-SENet and adapting GR-KAN's activations into the 1D CNN layers in the time-domain Demucs. Results on Voicebank-DEMAND sho
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Àlex Miranda-Pascual, Javier Parra-Arnau, Thorsten Strufe · 2026 · arXiv
Sampling is renowned for its privacy amplification in differential privacy (DP), and is often assumed to improve the utility of a DP mechanism by allowing a noise reduction. In this paper, we further show that this last assumption is flawed: When measuring utility at equal privacy levels, sampling as preprocessing consistently yields penalties due to utility loss from omitting records over all canonical DP mechanisms -- Laplace, Gaussian, exponential, and report noisy max -- , as well as recent applications of sampling, such as clustering. Extending this analysis, we investigate suppression as
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessVeterinary medicine
ali kargarirezapour, somayye ghobadi, afshin zakeri · 2013 · Āsīb/shināsī-i Darmāngāhī-i Dāmpizishkī
Glucans derived from yeast cell wall are promising alternatives to antibiotics, as they have been shown to improve growth performance and stimulate the immune system of immature broilers. In this study we evaluated the effect of different levels of yeast beta-glucan (YBG) on some blood parametrs of broiler chickens. In a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design (the first factor: YBG levels: 0, 0.04 and 0.08% of basal diet and sex as a second factor) 144 day old chicks (72 male and 72 female) were selected and allocated to different treatments (three replicates of each treatm
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Hanbing Liu, Haoyang Li, Xiaokang Zhang et al. · 2025 · arXiv
Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has proven effective in complex reasoning tasks like math word problems and code generation. However, when applied to Text-to-SQL datasets, it often fails to improve performance and can even degrade it. Our investigation reveals the root cause: unlike math and code tasks, which naturally integrate Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning with DPO, Text-to-SQL datasets typically include only final answers (gold SQL queries) without detailed CoT solutions. By augmenting Text-to-SQL datasets with synthetic CoT solutions, we achieve, for the first time, consistent and
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSports medicine
Alison Bulow, Judith E Anderson, Jeff R S Leiter et al. · 2021 · International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy
# Background Adolescent females are at much greater risk for ACL injury than their male counterparts when participating in the same sports. Preventative and pre-operative rehabilitation neuromuscular (NM) exercise programs are often recommended to improve knee function and reduce injury rates. The effectiveness of perturbation-based NM training program has been established in an adult population but has yet to be investigated in the at-risk adolescent female population. # Purpose To determine the effectiveness of a perturbation-based NM exercise program in a group of physically active adolesce
View details →DOI: 10.26603/001c.25685 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics
Oliver J. Hines, Christian L. Hines · 2026 · arXiv
Gradient boosted decision trees require a stopping rule to avoid overfitting. The standard rule monitors a validation loss and stops if the loss fails to improve for a fixed patience period. However, the patience parameter has no interpretable scale and validation losses can be noisy or implicitly defined by a user-specified gradient. We propose ScoreStop, a gradient-based early-stopping rule that casts the stopping decision at each iteration as a test of the null hypothesis that the current predictor is the population risk minimizer. We use a functional score test, computed on validation data
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSurgery
Eric R. Bain, Bistees George, Syed H. Jafri et al. · 2024 · Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery
Abstract Background Patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) and left ventricular (LV) dysfunction demonstrate improvement in left ventricular injection fraction (LVEF) after aortic valve replacement (AVR). The timing and magnitude of recovery in patients with very low LVEF (≤ 25%) in surgical or transcatheter AVR is not well studied. Objective Determine clinical outcomes following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) and surgical aortic valve repair (SAVR) in the subset of patients with severely reduced EF ≤ 25%. Methods Single-center, retrospective study with primary endpoint of LV
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s13019-024-02724-9 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Martin Amft, Natalia V. Skorodumova · 2011 · arXiv
The present density functional theory study addresses the question whether the presence of H2O influences the catalytic activity of small gold clusters, Au1-4/MgO(100), towards the oxidation of carbon monoxide. To this end, we studied the (co-)adsorption of H2O and CO/O2 on these gold clusters. The ground state structures in the presence of all three molecular species, that we found, are Au1O2/MgO and Au2-4CO/MgO with H2O adsorbed on the surface in the proximity of the clusters-molecule complex. In this configuration the catalytic activity of Au1-4/MgO is indifferent to the presence of H2O. We
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessDiseases of the endocrine glands. Clinical endocrinology
Yea Eun Kang, Sorim Choung, Ju Hee Lee et al. · 2017 · Endocrinology and Metabolism
BackgroundSlit2 is a new secreted protein from adipose tissue that improves glucose hemostasis in mice; however, there is no study about the serum levels and precise role of Slit2 in human. The aim of this study is to explore the serum level of Slit2 in human, and to identify the role of Slit2 in diabetes mellitus (DM).MethodsThe participants of this study consist of 38 subjects with newly diagnosed DM, and 75 healthy subjects as a control group. Serum Slit2 levels were measured using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Relationship between circulating Slit2 and diabetic related factors was
View details →DOI: 10.3803/enm.2017.32.3.383 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Zelu Deng, Yujie Zhong, Sheng Guo et al. · 2021 · arXiv
This work aims at improving instance retrieval with self-supervision. We find that fine-tuning using the recently developed self-supervised (SSL) learning methods, such as SimCLR and MoCo, fails to improve the performance of instance retrieval. In this work, we identify that the learnt representations for instance retrieval should be invariant to large variations in viewpoint and background etc., whereas self-augmented positives applied by the current SSL methods can not provide strong enough signals for learning robust instance-level representations. To overcome this problem, we propose InsCL
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Arijit Sehanobish, Charles Lovering · 2026 · arXiv
We study the \textit{parameter placement problem}: given a fixed budget of $k$ trainable entries within the B matrix of a LoRA adapter (A frozen), does the choice of which $k$ matter? Under supervised fine-tuning, random and informed subsets achieve comparable performance. Under GRPO on base models, random placement fails to improve over the base model, while gradient-informed placement recovers standard LoRA accuracy. This regime dependence traces to gradient structure: SFT gradients are low-rank and directionally stable, so any subset accumulates coherent updates; GRPO gradients are high-ran
