Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exposure to Particles, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, and Nitrogen Dioxide in Swedish Restaurant Kitchen Workers

Aims The aim of this study was to measure the exposure to total dust, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) of kitchen workers in four different types of restaurants in Sweden (Large scale, European, Fast food, and Asian). Methods One hundred full work-shift (8 h) personal exposure samples were taken from 36 workers in 21 commercial kitchens. Most workers were sampled three times. Mass concentration of total dust was determined using standard gravimetric methods; the filters were analyzed for their content of particulate PAHs. Gas-phase PAHs were sampled using adsorbent tubes (XAD-II) placed after the filter and analyzed with high-resolution gas chromatography/low-resolution mass spectrometry. NO2 was measured using passive dosimeters. Stationary measurements in the kitchen were made in parallel with the personal sampling. Results Group geometric mean concentrations for personal exposure to total dust ranged from 77 µg m-3 (Fast food) to 320 µg m-3 (European kitchens). Individual exposure samples of total dust ranged from ~40 to 3900 µg m-3. In the Large-scale and European kitchens, the time spent frying was identified as a determinant increasing personal exposure to total dust. The within-worker variance dominated the exposure variability of total dust in Large-scale and European kitchens, whereas between-worker variance dominated in Fast food and Asian kitchens. Exposure to total PAHs was statistically significantly higher for workers in the Asian kitchens. Also, exposure to NO2 was higher in the Asian kitchens, which all used gas stoves for cooking. The stationary measurements of total dust showed lower levels than personal exposures for most kitchens, whereas for PAHs, stationary levels were closer to personal exposure levels for all kitchen types. Conclusions The results of this study increase the knowledge about exposure to air pollutants for kitchen workers of restaurant types that are common in Sweden and the rest of Europe. Personal sampling is essential for an accurate exposure assessment, and the large day-to-day variability in exposure levels points to the importance of repeated sampling.
The Influence of Polythiophene Orientation at the Heterojunction Interface on Energy Conversion in Organic Solar Cells.

KITCHEN, BRENT THOMAS. The Influence of Polythiophene Orientation at the Heterojunction Interface on Energy Conversion in Organic Solar Cells. (Under the direction of Dr. Brendan O’Connor). Organic solar cells are have the potential to provide a cost effective source of renewable energy, however many aspects of the energy conversion processes in these devices remains unknown. In this study, a planar heterojunction (PHJ) that provides a sharp interface between poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and [6,6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) is used as a model system to research energy conversion in these devices. More specifically, the molecular orientation of the P3HT is varied relative to the interface to study the effects of the orientation on the energy conversion process. Films are characterized as either edge-on or face-on by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) and near-edge Xray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy. UV-visible spectroscopy is used to determine general film order. It is found that PHJs composed of face-on P3HT layers exhibit higher open-circuit voltage (VOC) than those composed of edge-on P3HT layers. This shift is attributed to a shift in the donor molecule’s highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level relative to the PCBM acceptor’s lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) level which is consistent with theoretical studies. When compared to a BHJ, normalized by the short-circuit current (JSC), the BHJ has a higher VOC than the PHJ suggesting the energy landscape at the heterojunction interface more closely resembles the conditions at the face-on P3HT/ PCBM interface. In addition, annealing the bilayer films is used to form BHJ solar cells while maintaining the out-of-plane orientation of the P3HT. It is found that the VOC is independent of out-of-plain P3HT packing in the BHJ solar cell. © Copyright 2013 Brent Kitchen All Rights Reserved The Influence of Polythiophene Orientation at the Heterojunction Interface on Energy Conversion in Organic Solar Cells by Brent Thomas Kitchen A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Mechanical Engineering Raleigh, North Carolina 2013
Heterogeneous multicast in heterogeneous QoS networks

Supporting heterogeneous receivers in a multicast group is of particular importance in large internetworks as, e.g., the Internet, due to the large diversity of end-system and network access capabilities. Furthermore, it is the nature of large-scale internetworks which makes homogeneous quality of service (QoS) support unrealistic at least for the middle-term future. Therefore, we investigate the implications of differing multicast models in heterogeneous QoS networks. In particular, we approach the problem an edge devices faces when mapping a heterogeneous QoS multicast from an overlaid QoS system onto a system providing only a homogeneous QoS multicast. The generic solution technique we propose for this problem is called foresting. The idea of foresting is to support a heterogeneous multicast by a forest of homogeneous multicast trees. We develop different foresting algorithms and compare them by extensive simulations.
Screening of polymers for the development of mucoadhesive tablets

Mucoadhesive dosage forms are delivery systems able to adhere to a particular region of the body for extended periods of time. This can lead to several advantages, such as a reduction of the administration frequency and an enhancement of drug bioavailability. For this reason, the phenomenon of mucoadhesion is widely studied, despite not fully understood. The mucoadhesive properties come from polymers, especially hydrophilic polymers becoming adhesive once activated by moistening. The mucoadhesive polymers play the key role in determining the mucoadhesive ability of a dosage form. Hence, it is necessary to deepen the study of the polymers properties. The present research mainly focuses on the screening of different mucoadhesive polymers for the development of mucoadhesive tablets with intestinal target. Particularly, this research aims to study different factors affecting mucoadhesion in order to identify the most important one that might predict the mucoadhesive ability of the final solid dosage form. Results of research activities are summarized in five chapters: - Chapter 1 gives an overview on the phenomenon of mucoadhesion, and the methods for the detection of the mucoadhesive properties; - in Chapter 2 the methods developed for the study of tablets mucoadhesive properties are presented; - the influence of the amount of polymer on the mucoadhesive properties and on the release rate of a model drug (sodium butyrate) is analyzed in Chapter 3; - in Chapter 4 the Design of Experiment (DoE) techniques are used to develop tablets with good mucoadhesive properties and an extended-release, containing sodium butyrate or mesalazine as active ingredients; - Conclusions and proposals for the future work can be found in Chapter 5.
Recognizing online Arabic handwritten characters using a deep architecture

Recognizing the online Arabic handwritten script has been gaining more interest because of the impressive advances in mobile device requiring more and more intelligent handwritten recognizers. Since it was demonstrated within many previous research that Deep Neural Networks (DNN) exhibit a great performance, we propose in this work a new system based on a DNN in which we try to optimize the training process by a smooth construct of the deep architecture. The Output’s error of each unit in the previous layer will be computed and only the smallest error will be maintained in the next iteration. This paper uses LMCA database for training and testing data. The experimental study reveals that our proposed DBNN using generated Bottleneck features can outperform state of the art online recognizers.
Label Propagation Using Amendable Clamping

Assigning several labels to digital data is becoming easier because we can perform it in a collaborative manner with Internet users. However, some suitable labels may be missed and may not be attached to the data leading to inaccuracies in classification. In this paper, we propose a novel graphbased multi-label classifier to support the multi-labeling task. The core process of our algorithm is to update label weights of labeled data from their top-k similar data in each label propagation step. We report that our algorithm is more stable for F-scores compared to the state-of-the-art ones even though the some correct labels are missed. ACM Classification
Familiar Object Salience Affects Novel Word Learning.

Children use the presence of familiar objects with known names to identify the correct referents of novel words. In natural environments, objects vary widely in salience. The presence of familiar objects may sometimes hinder rather than help word learning. To test this hypothesis, 3-year-olds (N = 36) were shown novel objects paired with familiar objects that varied in their visual salience. When the novel objects were labeled, children were slower and less accurate at fixating them in the presence of highly salient familiar objects than in the presence of less salient familiar objects. They were also less successful in retaining these word-referent pairings. While familiar objects may facilitate novel word learning in ambiguous situations, the properties of familiar objects matter.
A study of Bayesian scheduling for M2M traffic in wireless LTE network

In the event of phenomenal growth in Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M) devices are projected to reach figure of multiple billions in foreseeable future. Operators around the world are aggressively refarming their spectrum from older network and moving quickly to Long Term Evolution (LTE) for guarantee of future-proof services. With every new M2M application being invented or deployed at this pace, unprecedented factors are unceasingly induced to existing LTE protocols which caused undesirable performance degradation. In this paper, a realistic LTE network environment are modelled and simulated with tractable M2M traffic modules to observe such impacts on conventional scheduling schemes and to identify the major causes. A prominent conventional Bayesian approach is hence adopted for revision to adapt the new M2M traffics. The results obtained shown that the proposed M2M-enabled True Bayesian Estimate (TBE-M) algorithm is capable of outperforming the conventional TBE on a great scale.
Using multispectral imaging flow cytometry to assess an in vitro intracellular Burkholderia thailandensis infection model

The use of in vitro models to understand the interaction of bacteria with host cells is well established. In vitro bacterial infection models are often used to quantify intracellular bacterial load by lysing cell populations and subsequently enumerating the bacteria. Modern established techniques employ the use of fluorescence technologies such as flow cytometry, fluorescent microscopy, and/or confocal microscopy. However, these techniques often lack either the quantification of large data sets (microscopy) or use of gross fluorescence signal which lacks the visual confirmation that can provide additional confidence in data sets. Multispectral imaging flow cytometry (MIFC) is a novel emerging field of technology. This technology captures a bright field and fluorescence image of cells in a flow using a charged coupled device camera. It allows the analysis of tens of thousands of single cell images, making it an extremely powerful technology. Here MIFC was used as an alternative method of analyzing intracellular bacterial infection using Burkholderia thailandensis E555 as a model organism. It has been demonstrated that the data produced using traditional enumeration is comparable to data analyzed using MIFC. It has also been shown that by using MIFC it is possible to generate other data on the dynamics of the infection model rather than viable counts alone. It has been demonstrated that it is possible to inhibit the uptake of bacteria into mammalian cells and identify differences between treated and untreated cell populations. The authors believe this to be the first use of MIFC to analyze a Burkholderia bacterial species during intracellular infection. © 2016 Crown copyright. Published by Wiley Periodicals Inc. on behalf of ISAC.
Preparation and characterization of novel β-chitin/nanodiopside/nanohydroxyapatite composite scaffolds for tissue engineering applications

Abstract β-chitin/nanodiopside/nanohydroxyapatite (CT/nDP/nHAp) composite scaffolds were synthesized from the combination of chitin, nDP, and nHAp in different inorganic/organic weight ratios by the freeze-drying technique. The prepared nHAp, and composite scaffolds were characterized by BET, TG, FT-IR, SEM, and XRD studies. The composite scaffolds had 50–75% porosities with well-defined interconnected porous networks. Moreover, investigation of the cell attachment and viability using MTT, DMEM solution, and mouse preosteoblast cell proved the cytocompatibile nature of the composite scaffolds with improved cell adhesion. All these results mainly illustrated that this composite could be a candidate for bone tissue engineering application.
An updated meta-analysis of 23 case-control studies on the association between miR-34b/c polymorphism and cancer risk

The association between in microRNA-34b/c gene rs4938723 polymorphisms and cancer risk remains inconclusive. This meta-analysis was performed to analyze the association between microRNA-34b/c rs4938723 polymorphism and risk for cancer development. In total, 304 studies from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Wanfang, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases were examined, and 23 studies were included in this meta-analysis. The 23 selected studies involved 10,812 cancer cases and 11,719 controls. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to measure the strength of the association. Our results indicate a significant association between the rs4938723 polymorphism and cancer risk in the overdominant model (P heterogeneity = 0.018, OR = 1.093, and 95% CI = 1.015–1.177 for CT vs. CC/TT). Using a stratified subgroup analysis, rs4938723 polymorphisms were associated with an increased risk for hepatocellular carcinoma, but decreased risk for colorectal, gastric, and esophageal squamous cell cancer. These findings indicate that the rs4938723 gene is a susceptible locus for cancer.
Testing the Effect of Metabolic Rate on DNA Variability at the Intra-Specific Level

We tested the metabolic rate hypothesis (whereby rates of mtDNA evolution are postulated to be mediated primarily by mutagenic by-products of respiration) by examining whether mass-specific metabolic rate was correlated with root-to-tip distance on a set of mtDNA trees for the springtail Cryptopygus antarcticus travei from sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Using Bayesian analyses and a novel application of the comparative phylogenetic method, we did not find significant evidence that contemporary metabolic rates directly correlate with mutation rate (i.e., root-to-tip distance) once the underlying phylogeny is taken into account. However, we did find significant evidence that metabolic rate is dependent on the underlying mtDNA tree, or in other words, lineages with related mtDNA also have similar metabolic rates. We anticipate that future analyses which apply this methodology to datasets with longer sequences, more taxa, or greater variability will have more power to detect a significant direct correlation between metabolic rate and mutation rate. We conclude with suggestions for future analyses that would extend the preliminary approach applied here, in particular highlighting ways to tease apart oxidative stress effects from the effects of population size and/or selection coefficients operating on the molecular evolutionary rate.
University of Birmingham Automated Analysis of Cryptococcal Macrophage Parasitism Using GFP-Tagged Cryptococci

The human fungal pathogens Cryptococcus neoformans and C. gattii cause life-threatening infections of the central nervous system. One of the major characteristics of cryptococcal disease is the ability of the pathogen to parasitise upon phagocytic immune effector cells, a phenomenon that correlates strongly with virulence in rodent models of infection. Despite the importance of phagocyte/ Cryptococcus interactions to disease progression, current methods for assaying virulence in the macrophage system are both time consuming and low throughput. Here, we introduce the first stable and fully characterised GFP–expressing derivatives of two widely used cryptococcal strains: C. neoformans serotype A type strain H99 and C. gattii serotype B type strain R265. Both strains show unaltered responses to environmental and host stress conditions and no deficiency in virulence in the macrophage model system. In addition, we report the development of a method to effectively and rapidly investigate macrophage parasitism by flow cytometry, a technique that preserves the accuracy of current approaches but offers a four-fold improvement in speed.
An ultra‐thin oxide sub‐1 V CMOS bandgap voltage reference

This paper presents a sub‐1 V CMOS bandgap voltage reference that accounts for the presence of direct tunneling‐induced gate current. This current increases exponentially with decreasing oxide thickness and is especially prevalent in traditional (non‐high‐κ/metal gate) ultra‐thin oxide CMOS technologies (tox < 3 nm), where it invalidates the simplifying design assumption of infinite gate resistance. The developed reference (average temperature coefficient, TC_AVG, of 22.5 ppm/°C) overcomes direct tunneling by employing circuit techniques that minimize, balance, and cancel its effects. It is compared to a thick‐oxide voltage reference (TC_AVG = 14.0 ppm/°C) as a means of demonstrating that ultra‐thin oxide MOSFETs can achieve performance similar to that of more expensive thick(er) oxide MOSFETs and that they can be used to design the analog component of a mixed‐signal system. The reference was investigated in a 65 nm CMOS technology with a nominal VDD of 1 V and a physical oxide thickness of 1.25 nm. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
On the use of biplot analysis for multivariate bibliometric and scientific indicators

Bibliometric mapping and visualization techniques represent one of the main pillars in the field of scientometrics. Traditionally, the main methodologies employed for representing data are multidimensional scaling, principal component analysis, or correspondence analysis. In this paper we aim to present a visualization methodology known as biplot analysis for representing bibliometric and science and technology indicators. A biplot is a graphical representation of multivariate data, where the elements of a data matrix are represented according to dots and vectors associated with the rows and columns of the matrix. In this paper, we explore the possibilities of applying biplot analysis in the research policy area. More specifically, we first describe and introduce the reader to this methodology and secondly, we analyze its strengths and weaknesses through 3 different case studies: countries, universities, and scientific fields. For this, we use a biplot analysis known as JK‐biplot. Finally, we compare the biplot representation with other multivariate analysis techniques. We conclude that biplot analysis could be a useful technique in scientometrics when studying multivariate data, as well as an easy‐to‐read tool for research decision makers.
Improving Volitional Competence Is Crucial for the Efficacy of Psychosomatic Therapy: A Controlled Clinical Trial

Background: Although skills of will (volitional competences), such as self-motivation or emotion regulation, are particularly necessary for patients with psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders, it is unknown whether volitional deficits can be reduced and thereby the efficacy of psychotherapy increased. We investigated the effect of a group therapy for improving volitional competence in an inpatient rehabilitation program. Methods: In a controlled clinical trial, patients from a rehabilitation clinic participated either in the volition group therapy in addition to the standard cognitive behavioral therapy (volition group, VG) or in the standard cognitive behavioral therapy (standard group, SG). Patients were tested for volitional competence, depressive symptoms, total psychiatric symptomatology, and physical complaints prior to, at the end of inpatient therapy and after 6 months of follow-up (n = 242). Results: At the end of inpatient therapy, better improvement in volitional competence was observed in the VG than in the SG [e.g. self-motivation: effect size (ES) 0.96 vs. 0.39; ANCOVA: F(1, 209) = 16.58; p < 0.001]. Patients with greater volitional improvements had a better rehabilitation outcome. In the VG, depressive symptoms as well as total psychiatric symptomatology decreased significantly more than in the SG [ES: 1.18 vs. 0.87, F(1, 207) = 4.68, p < 0.05, and ES 1.12 vs. 0.73, F(1, 205) = 4.68, p < 0.05, respectively], but not physical complaints [ES: 0.62 vs. 0.48, F(1, 207) = 1.08, n.s. ]. Conclusions: Effect size increased in patients with initially low volitional competence and high motivation to participate in a volitional training. These results might lead to a more systematic assessment and training of volitional competence.
The Authors Reply.

To the Editor—We would like to thank Dr Sabour for his interest in our research and apparently in the work of many other scientists around the world. Discussions within the community are an essential source of growth and scientific improvement, so we are more than happy to respond to his comments on our article. First, Sabour correctly highlighted that sensitivity and negative predictive value are estimates used to judge the diagnostic accuracy of a single test vis-à-vis a gold standard, exactly as we did in our study. We took the histological results (ie, negative or positive mesorectal lymph nodes at histology) for reference. Because we adopted a per-patient approach to imaging (ie, each irREFERENCES