Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of the turbulence models for modelling of bubble column

This paper presents an Eulerian two-fluid modelling of the gas-liquid flow in a bubble column. The influence of the bubble size, turbulence models and the grid size on the gas hold-up and the axial liquid velocity were evaluated. The results for the gas hold-up and liquid axial velocity shows good agreement with experimental data from literature. The modelling results suggest that the two-phase k-ε turbulence model is more appropriate for bubble column operating at high gas loading (of approx. 30% hold-up) and the assumption of a monodispersed bubble size is adequate for bubble column simulation.
A framework of conversational recommender system based on user functional requirements

Specifying requirements based on technical features of the product are frequently difficult for most customers in purchasing a multi-function and multi-feature products. A more natural way to identify customers' needs is by asking what they really want to use with the product they are looking for. To address this issue, we propose a framework of conversational recommender system that is based on user functional requirement. This framework covers ontology structure and interaction mechanism that can explore user's preference from their functional requirements. The ontology is composed of three different interacting hierarchical classes: functionality requirement class, component class and product class. Interaction in this system is performed through question-answering dialogue, product recommendation and explanation, similar to the interaction between customer and professional sales support.
Role of Enteropathogenic Escherichia Coli in Paediatric Diarrhoeas in South India

Background: Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli(EPEC) is a major cause of diarrhoea in children below 5 years of age. Serotyping is classical method for identification of EPEC strains. But serotypic markers are rarely sufficient to reliably identify the strains as Escherichia coli. Introduction of PCR methodology which depends on detection of virulence factors has provided a practical and rapid way of detecting diarrhoeagenic Esch.coli. Multiantibiotic resistant EPEC strains are a common phenomenon with world wide extension. Moreover for the selection of appropriate therapy of dirrhoeas, knowledge of local antimicrobial therapy pattern plays an important role. Objectives: To study the role of EPEC in Paediatric diarrhoea by both Serogrouping and Molecular characterisation by PCR and to analyse the antibiotic susceptabililty patterns of EPEC strains in our area. Materials and methods: Prospective study of stool samples collected from children with diarrhoea and without diarrhoea who were below 5 years of age was conducted from May to November 2011. Escherichia.coli isolates were identified by Microscopy, Culture and Biochemical reactions. Among the Escherichia coli isolates, EPEC isolates were identified by Serogrouping. Escherichia coli isolates were also subjected to Molecular characterisation by Multiplex PCR assay and those isolates which showed pathogenic genes were futher serotyped. Antibiotic susceptibility pattern of EPEC isolates was determined by CLSI guidelines. Results: Among the Escherichia coli isolates 36.8% in the diarrhoeal group and none of them from the nondiarrhoeal group were identified as EPEC by serogrouping. 73.3% of the EPEC isolates were below 2 years of age and no much difference in the sex distribution was observed. Mild to moderate dehydration and feccal leuckocytes were seen in 59.9% and 56.6% of isolates respectively. High resistance to Nalidixic acid, Ampicillin, Cotrimoxazole, Ciprofloxacin and Norfloxacin was observed in the diarrhoeal group and resistance to only ampicillin was seen in the nondiarrhoeal group. In the diarrhoeal group 38.8% of Escherichia coli were EAEC and no other diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli group was found by molecular characterisation. In the nondiarrhoeal Escherichia coli strains, 46.6% showed EAEC genes. EAEC strains in the diarrhoeal group belonged to multiple serotypes, the most common serotype being ONT and in the nondiarrhoeal group, 85.7% were of a single serotype, the most common isolate being O153. Among the Escherichia coli isolates which agglutinated with EPEC polyvalent antisera, 33.3% were positive for Enteroaggregative genes. (Table 1). Conclusion: EPEC is still an important pathogen in paediatric diarrhoeas. O serogrouping can still be relied upon for detection of EPEC. Dehydration is one of the clinical features of EPEC diarrhoea. Fluoroquinolones should only be prescribed in children as second line antibiotics. EAEC are present in classical ‘ O ’ serogroups. Serotype O 153 has an increasing potential for asymptomatic carrier state in children below 5 years of age in our area.
Implementing ambient assisting technologies in elder-care: Results of a pilot study

The residential lighting conditions of elders are an important but frequently neglected aspect that may directly or indirectly infl uence important health and wellbeing parameters. Within the EU-funded project Ambient Lighting Assistance for an Ageing Population (ALADIN) a new adaptive lighting device that is capable to adapt to psycho-physiological parameters of an elderly person has been developed and pilot-tested under real life conditions. The main outcome criteria of this pilot study comprise wellbeing, life quality, mental and physical fi tness as well as sleep quality. The system was installed in the habitations of twelve subjects and evaluated for three months in a fi eld-test with technological support provided on demand. Results indicated a signifi cant increase of wellbeing, life quality and mental fi tness. However, these results may not only be attributed to the infl uence of the lighting system. Social contacts due to participation in the study and the introduction of new technologies might also be responsible for the positive outcome concerning wellbeing and life quality. Therefore, the potential of ambient assisting technologies for improving the lives of the elderly could be further developed by embedding them into social settings and facilitating social contacts rather than understanding them as technological stand-alone solutions.
Predictive manoeuvre generation for automated driving

This paper focuses on the problem of trajectory planning in an autonomous guidance application for one-way, two-lane roads. The problem is formulated in a receding horizon framework, as the minimization of the deviation from a desired velocity subject to a set of constraints introduced to avoid collision with surrounding vehicles, and to stay within the lane boundaries. As well known, this formulation can result in planning algorithms with prohibitive computational complexity, thus preventing real-time implementation. To avoid this limitation, the paper shows how the structured environment of one-way roads, can be exploited in order to formulate a low complexity receding horizon problem that can be efficiently solved in real-time. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated in simulations considering overtake manoeuvres.
Real-Time Capable System for Hand Gesture Recognition Using Hidden Markov Models in Stereo Color Image Sequences

This paper proposes a system to recognize the alphabets and numbers in real time from color image sequences by the motion trajectory of a single hand using Hidden Markov Models (HMM). Our system is based on three main stages; automatic segmentation and preprocessing of the hand regions, feature extraction and classification. In automatic segmentation and preprocessing stage, YCbCr color space and depth information are used to detect hands and face in connection with morphological operation where Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is used for computing the skin probability. After the hand is detected and the centroid point of the hand region is determined, the tracking will take place in the further steps to determine the hand motion trajectory by using a search area around the hand region. In the feature extraction stage, the orientation is determined between two consecutive points from hand motion trajectory and then it is quantized to give a discrete vector that is used as input to HMM. The final stage so-called classification, Baum-Welch algorithm (BW) is used to do a full train for HMM parameters. The gesture of alphabets and numbers is recognized by using Left-Right Banded model (LRB) in conjunction with Forward algorithm. In our experiment, 720 trained gestures are used for training and also 360 tested gestures for testing. Our system recognizes the alphabets from A to Z and numbers from 0 to 9 and achieves an average recognition rate of 94.72%.
Effect of a Web-Based Sexual Health Enhancement Program for Women with Gynecologic Cancer and Their Husbands

Abstract Objectives: This study examined the effects of a web-based sexual health enhancement program on of women with gynecologic cancer and their husbands. Methods: Twenty-one couples attended the program for 4 weeks and 22 couples were assigned to a control group. Results: The experimental group reported significant improvements in the sexual function of the women with gynecologic cancer (effect size [ES] = .75; p < .001) and in the marital intimacy of husbands (ES = .59; p = .015). Conclusions: Therefore, our results can help provide interventions for patients and their husbands to identify and resolve sexual problems after gynecologic cancer treatment.
Screening corrections to the Coulomb crystal elastic moduli

Corrections to elastic moduli, including the effective shear modulus, of a solid neutron star crust due to electron screening are calculated. At any given mass density, the crust is modelled as a body-centred cubic Coulomb crystal of fully ionized atomic nuclei of a single type with a polarizable charge-compensating electron background. Motion of the nuclei is neglected. The electron polarization is described by a simple Thomas–Fermi model of exponential electron screening. The results of numerical calculations are fitted by convenient analytic formulae. Theyshouldbeusedforpreciseneutronstaroscillationmodelling,arapidlydevelopingbranch
Chinese acceptance of mistreatment by in-relation offenders can be neutralized by triggering a “group” collectivism perspective

ABSTRACT Examining the effect of culture on workplace revenge, we predict and find that people in a Chinese cultural context are more likely than people in an American cultural context to adjust their response to mistreatment based on being, or not being, “in relation” to the harm-doer. Specifically, Chinese people are more likely to let a harm-doer off the hook if they have a prior relationship with him or her, while Americans are less likely to do so. However, this Chinese sensitivity to relational status with the harm-doer ceases to be a factor if they receive a stimulus that shifts their perspective from relational collectivism to group collectivism. Implications for Chinese management and society are explored.
Inhibition of SREBP Transcriptional Activity by a Boron-Containing Compound Improves Lipid Homeostasis in Diet-Induced Obesity

Dysregulation of lipid homeostasis is intimately associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Sterol regulatory-element binding proteins (SREBPs) are the master regulators of lipid biosynthesis. Previous studies have shown that the conserved transcriptional cofactor Mediator complex is critically required for the SREBP transcriptional activity, and recruitment of the Mediator complex to the SREBP transactivation domains (TADs) is through the MED15-KIX domain. Recently, we have synthesized several boron-containing small molecules. Among these novel compounds, BF175 can specifically block the binding of MED15-KIX to SREBP1a-TAD in vitro, resulting in an inhibition of the SREBP transcriptional activity and a decrease of SREBP target gene expression in cultured hepatocytes. Furthermore, BF175 can improve lipid homeostasis in the mouse model of diet-induced obesity. Compared with the control, BF175 treatment decreased the expression of SREBP target genes in mouse livers and decreased hepatic and blood levels of lipids. These results suggest that blocking the interaction between SREBP-TADs and the Mediator complex by small molecules may represent a novel approach for treating diseases with aberrant lipid homeostasis.
The degree of nonholonomy in distributed computations

A network of locally interacting agents can be thought of as performing a distributed computation. But not all computations can be faithfully distributed. This paper discusses which global linear transformations can be computed in finite time using local weighting rules, i.e., rules which rely solely on information from adjacent nodes in a network. Additionally, it is shown that the degree of nonholonomy of the computation can be related to the underlying information exchange graph. The main result states that the degree of nonholonomy of the system dynamics is equal to D - 1 where D is the diameter of the information exchange graph. An optimal control problem is solved for finding the local interaction rules, and a simulation is performed to elucidate how optimal solutions can be obtained.
Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks with Heterogeneous Agents

This article proposes a model to analyze the transporttion networks with heterogeneous agents, who contribute to congestion differently. This is the generalization of homogeneous model. It turns out that the optimum from social planning is high dependent of the distribution of the driving technique possessed by agents in the networks, both for its mean value and variance. However, the optimum from selfish view is only dependent of the mean value of driving technique. Price of anarchy analysis displays that there is more great area to operate profitably for social planning under the heterogeneity, comparative to that under the homogeneity. Because of difficulty of technique recognization for the social planner, as a signal to coordinate selfish agents to get social optimum, charge must be changed with the distribution of the driving technique possessed by agents in the networks.
AMPA Exposures Induce Mitochondrial Ca2+ Overload and ROS Generation in Spinal Motor Neurons In Vitro

The reason for the selective vulnerability of motor neurons in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is primarily unknown. A possible factor is the expression by motor neurons of Ca2+-permeable AMPA/kainate channels, which may permit rapid Ca2+ influx in response to synaptic receptor activation. However, other subpopulations of central neurons, most notably forebrain GABAergic interneurons, consistently express large numbers of these channels but do not degenerate in ALS. Indeed, when subjected to identical excitotoxic exposures, motor neurons were more susceptible than GABAergic neurons to AMPA/kainate receptor-mediated neurotoxicity. Microfluorimetric studies were performed to examine the basis for the difference in vulnerability. First, AMPA or kainate exposures appeared to trigger substantial mitochondrial Ca2+ loading in motor neurons, as indicated by a sharp increase in intracellular Ca2+after addition of the mitochondrial uncoupler carbonyl cyanidep-(trifluoromethoxy)phenyl hydrazone (FCCP) after the agonist exposure. The same exposures caused little mitochondrial Ca2+ accumulation in GABAergic cortical neurons. Subsequent experiments examined other measures of mitochondrial function to compare sequelae of AMPA/kainate receptor activation between these populations. Brief exposure to either AMPA or kainate caused mitochondrial depolarization, assessed using tetramethylrhodamine ethylester, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, assessed using hydroethidine, in motor neurons. However, these effects were only seen in the GABAergic neurons after exposure to the nondesensitizing AMPA receptor agonist kainate. Finally, addition of either antioxidants or toxins (FCCP or CN−) that block mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake attenuated AMPA/kainate receptor-mediated motor neuron injury, suggesting that the mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake and consequent ROS generation are central to the injury process.
The Supporting-Cell Antigen: A Receptor-Like Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase Expressed in the Sensory Epithelia of the Avian Inner Ear

After noise- or drug-induced hair-cell loss, the sensory epithelia of the avian inner ear can regenerate new hair cells. Few molecular markers are available for the supporting-cell precursors of the hair cells that regenerate, and little is known about the signaling mechanisms underlying this regenerative response. Hybridoma methodology was used to obtain a monoclonal antibody (mAb) that stains the apical surface of supporting cells in the sensory epithelia of the inner ear. The mAb recognizes the supporting-cell antigen (SCA), a protein that is also found on the apical surfaces of retinal Müller cells, renal tubule cells, and intestinal brush border cells. Expression screening and molecular cloning reveal that the SCA is a novel receptor-like protein tyrosine phosphatase (RPTP), sharing similarity with human density-enhanced phosphatase, an RPTP thought to have a role in the density-dependent arrest of cell growth. In response to hair-cell damage induced by noise in vivo or hair-cell loss caused by ototoxic drug treatment in vitro, some supporting cells show a dramatic decrease in SCA expression levels on their apical surface. This decrease occurs before supporting cells are known to first enter S-phase after trauma, indicating that it may be a primary rather than a secondary response to injury. These results indicate that the SCA is a signaling molecule that may influence the potential of nonsensory supporting cells to either proliferate or differentiate into hair cells.
Developing an integrated biosocial theory to understand juvenile delinquency: from the social, cognitive, affective, and moral (SCAM) perspectives

Biosocial theory has made considerable progress in explaining juvenile delinquency and making explicit references for juvenile justice policy during the past decades. However, because biosocial theory aims to identify multiple risk factors, it makes juvenile justice practice and develop delinquency prevention programs difficult. This paper proposes an integrated biosocial theory from the social, cognitive, affective, and moral (SCAM) perspectives to understand juvenile delinquency and facilitate the development and improvement of prevention and intervention programs. The article briefly summarizes the background and the key concepts of the chosen criminological theories and the logic of theoretical integration. Then it articulates the four aspects of the integrated biosocial theory and how it can contribute to criminology in details. Lastly, the paper identifies its potential limitations and provides practical implications.
Disrupted hepatic adiponectin signaling impairs liver regeneration of steatotic rats.

BACKGROUND Individuals with non-alcohol fatty liver disease (NAFLD) exhibit impaired liver regeneration in a clinical setting and animal experiments. Adiponectin signaling is recognized as an important pathway of lipid metabolism, energy expenditure, anti-inflammation, and cellular proliferation. We herein investigate hepatic adiponectin signaling in dietary steatotic murine models undergoing hepatectomy, which has never been explored. METHODS Sprague-Dawley rats fed with a normal diet (normal), high fat diet (HF), and a methionine-choline deficiency diet for 1 week (MCD 1W) and 5 weeks (MCD 5W), were used. The animals underwent 70% hepatectomy and were thereafter sacrificed at indicated time points. RESULTS MCD 5W and HF displayed decreased Ki-67 labeling index and restituted liver mass compared to normal. Hepatic adiponectin, as well as TNF-α, of MCD5W and HF were increased compared to normal; whereas adiponectin receptor type 1 (AdipoR1) and adiponectin receptor type 2 (AdpoR2) were reciprocally decreased when compared to normal. PPARα, a downstream molecule of AdipoR2 axis, was decreased in MCD 5W compared to normal. Adenosine monophosphate- activated protein kinase (AMPK), a downstream molecule of AdipoR1 axis, was inactivated soon after hepatectomy in normal; whereas activation of AMPK persisted until day 3 after hepatectomy in MCD 5W and HF. CONCLUSIONS Reciprocal expression of adiponectin and its receptors in steatotic rats represents a unique form of adiponectin signaling disruption, which might be associated with impaired liver regeneration.
Number skills mobile application for down syndrome children

Down syndrome (DS) children seem to have difficulties in learning numbers compared to reading. They need customized learning in numbers due to their slower pace of learning. Unfortunately, there is limited theory to guide DS children to learn and master in mathematics. With the advancement of technology, the learning style of special children has been improved from time to time from the paper and pen method, to the use of computer application such as courseware to the latest technology such as mobile application in smart phones and tablets. As for now, there is no personalized mathematics learning mobile application for DS children. The objectives of this paper are to report on the development of a mobile application on learning the basic numbers for DS children and to evaluate the user acceptance on the developed mobile application. The study will be focusing on the DS children with moderate level of IQ who are learning to recognize basic numbers. The method used to achieve the objectives is Rapid Application Development (RAD). The mobile application was developed using Eclipse Android Development Tool (ADT). An observation has been conducted to 5 DS children who have different level of IQ. The finding shows that the mobile application is really suitable for DS children who have moderate level IQ.
Relationships between Categorical Perception of Phonemes, Phoneme Awareness, and Visual Attention Span in Developmental Dyslexia

We tested the hypothesis that the categorical perception deficit of speech sounds in developmental dyslexia is related to phoneme awareness skills, whereas a visual attention (VA) span deficit constitutes an independent deficit. Phoneme awareness tasks, VA span tasks and categorical perception tasks of phoneme identification and discrimination using a d/t voicing continuum were administered to 63 dyslexic children and 63 control children matched on chronological age. Results showed significant differences in categorical perception between the dyslexic and control children. Significant correlations were found between categorical perception skills, phoneme awareness and reading. Although VA span correlated with reading, no significant correlations were found between either categorical perception or phoneme awareness and VA span. Mediation analyses performed on the whole dyslexic sample suggested that the effect of categorical perception on reading might be mediated by phoneme awareness. This relationship was independent of the participants’ VA span abilities. Two groups of dyslexic children with a single phoneme awareness or a single VA span deficit were then identified. The phonologically impaired group showed lower categorical perception skills than the control group but categorical perception was similar in the VA span impaired dyslexic and control children. The overall findings suggest that the link between categorical perception, phoneme awareness and reading is independent from VA span skills. These findings provide new insights on the heterogeneity of developmental dyslexia. They suggest that phonological processes and VA span independently affect reading acquisition.