Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drug Delivery Systems for Imaging and Therapy of Parkinson's Disease

Background: Although a variety of therapeutic approaches are available for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, challenges limit effective therapy. Among these challenges are delivery of drugs through the blood brain barier to the target brain tissue and the side effects observed during long term administration of antiparkinsonian drugs. The use of drug delivery systems such as liposomes, niosomes, micelles, nanoparticles, nanocapsules, gold nanoparticles, microspheres, microcapsules, nanobubbles, microbubbles and dendrimers is being investigated for diagnosis and therapy. Methods: This review focuses on formulation, development and advantages of nanosized drug delivery systems which can penetrate the central nervous system for the therapy and/or diagnosis of PD, and highlights future nanotechnological approaches. Results: It is esential to deliver a sufficient amount of either therapeutic or radiocontrast agents to the brain in order to provide the best possible efficacy or imaging without undesired degradation of the agent. Current treatments focus on motor symptoms, but these treatments generally do not deal with modifying the course of Parkinson’s disease. Beyond pharmacological therapy, the identification of abnormal proteins such as α-synuclein, parkin or leucine-rich repeat serine/threonine protein kinase 2 could represent promising alternative targets for molecular imaging and therapy of Parkinson's disease. Conclusion: Nanotechnology and nanosized drug delivery systems are being investigated intensely and could have potential effect for Parkinson’s disease. The improvement of drug delivery systems could dramatically enhance the effectiveness of Parkinson’s Disease therapy and reduce its side effects.
Image representation and compression using directionlets

The standard separable two-dimensional (2-D) wavelet transform (WT) has recently achieved a great success in image processing because it provides a sparse representation of smooth images. However, it fails to capture efficiently one-dimensional (1-D) discontinuities, like edges or contours. These features, being elongated and characterized by geometrical regularity along different directions, intersect and generate many large magnitude wavelet coefficients. Since contours are very important elements in visual perception of images, to provide a good visual quality of compressed images, it is fundamental to preserve good reconstruction of these directional features. We propose a construction of critically sampled perfect reconstruction transforms with directional vanishing moments (DVMs) imposed in the corresponding basis functions along different directions, called directionlets. We also demonstrate the outperforming non-linear approximation (NLA) results achieved by our transforms and we show how to design and implement a novel efficient space-frequency quantization (SFQ) compression algorithm using directionlets. Our new compression method beats the standard SFQ both in terms of mean-square-error (MSE) and visual quality, especially in the low-rate compression regime. We also show that our compression method, does not increase the order of computational complexity as compared to the standard SFQ algorithm.
On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life

Introduction 1. On Tickling 2. First Hates: Phobias in Theory 3. On Risk and Solitude 4. On Composure 5. Worrying and Its Discontents 6. Returning the Dream: In Memoriam Masud Khan 7. On Being Bored 8. Looking at Obstacles 9. Plotting for Kisses 10. Playing Mothers: Between Pedagogy and Transference 11. Psychoanalysis and Idolatry Notes Credits Index
SPECTRAL TYPING OF LATE-TYPE STELLAR COMPANIONS TO YOUNG STARS FROM LOW-DISPERSION NEAR-INFRARED INTEGRAL FIELD UNIT DATA

We used the Project 1640 near-infrared coronagraph and integral field spectrograph to observe 19 young solar-type stars. Five of these stars are known binary stars and we detected the late-type secondaries and were able to measure their JH spectra with a resolution of R ∼ 30. The reduced, extracted, and calibrated spectra were compared to template spectra from the IRTF spectral library. With this comparison, we test the accuracy and consistency of spectral-type determination with the low-resolution near-infrared spectra from P1640. Additionally, we determine effective temperature and surface gravity of the companions by fitting synthetic spectra calculated with the PHOENIX model atmosphere code. We also present several new epochs of astrometry of each of the systems. Together, these data increase our knowledge and understanding of the stellar make up of these systems. In addition to the astronomical results, the analysis presented helps validate the Project 1640 data reduction and spectral extraction processes and the utility of low-resolution, near-infrared spectra for characterizing late-type companions in multiple systems.
A re Private Defensive Expenditures against Storm Damages A ffected by Public Programs and Natural Bar riers?

This paper combines household production with an endogenous risk framework in order to understand how ex-ante private spending by coastal households against ex-post storm-inflicted damages would evolve given the public programs and the presence of a mangrove forest. The theoretical model confirms the influence of public protection programs and the mangrove forest on private defensive expenditures based on whether the public programs serve as a possible stochastic substitute or a stochastic complement to the mangroves. The model is later applied empirically to a case study based on survey data from 35 villages comprising 500 households in the southwest coastal areas of Bangladesh affected by Cyclone Sidr in November 2007. Preliminary empirical results reveal the influence of public protective programs and the mangroves on a household’s storm protection choices. However, results also show that other controls seem to have a considerable influence and add a degree of complexity to the relationship. K ey words: Self-protection; Self-insurance; Cyclone damages; mangroves; Bangladesh JE L C lassifications: D81, Q51, Q54.
Mental Illness Disclosure Decision Making

Disclosure related to mental illness has been linked to various positive outcomes, including better mental health. However, many individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) continue to practice non-disclosure. Even though disclosure inherently occurs within the context of one’s social relationships, research has generally conceptualized mental illness disclosure as an individual level phenomenon and neglected to consider preferences concerning to whom an individual discloses and the factors that influence this decision. The current study uses the disclosure decision-making model (DD-MM) by Greene (2009) to better understand the processes of mental illness disclosure preference and selective disclosure for individuals with SMI (n = 60) using multivariate random intercept logistic regression with an emphasis on the constituent factors of disclosure preference at both individual and relational levels. The majority of participants were found to practice selective disclosure, with 68% of the participants identifying at least 1 network member to whom they could disclose. Family members and friends were central to the selective disclosure process, comprising the greatest proportion of network members who, both were and were not identified as preferred confidants. Women were found to show higher odds of preference for mental illness disclosure than men. Having lower perceived social support was associated with lower odds of disclosure preference. Among relational factors, greater relationship availability and lower dyadic tangible social support were associated with lower odds of disclosure preference. Practice and research implications of using social network analysis to get a deeper understanding of disclosure and disclosure preference are discussed, including implications for future interventions targeting stigma reduction.
Joint beamforming for multicell multigroup multicast with per-cell power constraints

This paper considers a joint beamforming design problem in the multicell multicast system with multiple groups that provide different multicast services. Inspired by previous works in the literature, we apply semidefinite relaxation (SDR) to perform joint beamforming design among the cooperating base stations. Per-cell power constraints are considered which make solving the problem challenging. We propose two algorithms to accommodate the per-cell power constraints while performing joint beamforming. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms provide better performance compared to the existing multicast methods in the multicell environment.
Finite element modeling and optimization of tube-shaped ultrasonic motors

Recent developments in ultrasonic motor design have demonstrated that small size tube-shaped motors could be fabricated at low cost. Motors with diameters between 15 and 2.5mm have been fabricated and tested. The performance evaluation of these motors is still in progress, but have already shown promising results: the smallest ones exhibit no-load speeds in the range of 70rad/s and blocked torques close to 0.9mN•m. In this paper, we review the operating principle of these devices and several implementation examples. Then, we show how the finite element method (ATILA) can be used, in combination with genetic optimization procedures, to design tube-shaped motors in various dimensions and for different performance objectives. Several design examples are presented and discussed.
Identifying the optimal energy-efficient operating points of parallel workloads

As the number of cores per processor grows, there is a strong incentive to develop parallel workloads to take advantage of the hardware parallelism. In comparison to single-threaded applications, parallel workloads are more complex to characterize due to thread interactions and resource stalls. This paper presents an accurate and scalable method for determining the optimal system operating points (i.e., number of threads and DVFS settings) at runtime for parallel workloads under a set of objective functions and constraints that optimize for energy efficiency in multi-core processors. Using an extensive training data set gathered for a wide range of parallel workloads on a commercial multi-core system, we construct multinomial logistic regression (MLR) models that estimate the optimal system settings as a function of workload characteristics. We use L1-regularization to automatically determine the relevant workload metrics for energy optimization. At runtime, our technique determines the optimal number of threads and the DVFS setting with negligible overhead. Our experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms prior techniques with up to 51% improved decision accuracy. This translates to up to 10.6% average improvement in energy-performance operation, with a maximum improvement of 30.9%. Our technique also demonstrates superior scalability as the number of potential system operating points increases.
Temperature Effect on Dielectric Breakdown and Charges Retention of Nanocrystalline Cadmium Selenide Embedded Zr-Doped HfO2 High- ${k}$ Dielectric Thin Film

Temperature influence on the dielectric breakdown and charges retention of the nanocrystalline cadmium selenide embedded high-k dielectric thin film has been investigated. The embedding of nanocrystals in the high-k stack strongly enhanced the charge storage capability. Metal oxide semiconductor capacitors composed of this kind of dielectric structure showed the two-step breakdown phenomenon corresponding to failures of the interface and the bulk high-k layers, separately. The failure process was accelerated by the rise of temperature due to increases of defect states and defect effective conduction radii. The memory window was changed with the rise of temperature due to the competitive charge trapping and detrapping mechanisms. This paper provided important information on the practical application of this novel type of memory device.
Fermentative Production of Thymidine by a Metabolically Engineered Escherichia coli Strain

ABSTRACT Thymidine is an important precursor in the production of various antiviral drugs, including azidothymidine for the treatment of AIDS. Since thymidine-containing nucleotides are synthesized only by the de novo pathway during DNA synthesis, it is not easy to produce a large amount of thymidine biologically. In order to develop a host strain to produce thymidine, thymidine phosphorylase, thymidine kinase, and uridine phosphorylase genes were deleted from an Escherichia coli BL21 strain to develop BLdtu. Since the genes coding for the enzymes related to the nucleotide salvage pathway were disrupted, BLdtu was unable to utilize thymidine or thymine, and thymidine degradation activity was completely abrogated. We additionally expressed T4 thymidylate synthase, T4 nucleotide diphosphate reductase, bacteriophage PBS2 TMP phosphohydrolase, E. coli dCTP deaminase, and E. coli uridine kinase in the BLdtu strain to develop a thymidine-producing strain (BLdtu24). BLdtu24 produced 649.3 mg liter−1 of thymidine in a 7-liter batch fermenter for 24 h, and neither thymine nor uridine was detected. However, the dUTP/dTTP ratio was increased in BLdtu24, which could lead to increased double-strand breakages and eventually to cell deaths during fermentation. To enhance thymidine production and to prevent cell deaths during fermentation, we disrupted a gene (encoding uracil-DNA N-glycosylase) involved in DNA excision repair to suppress the consumption of dTTP and developed BLdtug24. Compared with the thymidine production in BLdtu24, the thymidine production in BLdtug24 was increased by ∼1.2-fold (740.3 mg liter−1). Here, we show that a thymidine-producing strain with a relatively high yield can be developed using a metabolic engineering approach.
Critiquing workplace learning discourses: Participation and continuity at work

Abstract This article critiques some assumptions shaping the current discourse on workplace learning. It proposes that these assumptions restrict how workplace learning is conceptualised and discussed. Principally, describing workplace learning environments and experiences as ‘informal’ and that ‘informal learning’ occurs in workplaces constrains understanding about how learning occurs through work and, consequently, the development of a workplace pedagogy. As with educational institutions, in workplaces there are intentions for work practice, structured goal-directed activities that are central to organisational continuity, and interactions and judgements about performance that are also shaped to those ends. Therefore, describing learning through work as being ‘informal’ is incorrect. Instead, the structuring of workplace activities has dimensions associated with learning directed for the continuity of the practice, which also often has inherently pedagogical qualities. Moreover, the unqualified description of learning environments as being either ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ suggests a situational determinism. Instead, learning is proposed as being interdependent between the individual and the social practice. The core tension in this relationship is that between those needs for the continuity of the work practice and individuals' needs to realise their personal or vocational goals. It is proposed that considerations of learning, learning in workplaces and the development of a workplace pedagogy need conceptualising in terms of participatory practices.
An Approximate Bayesian Estimator Suggests Strong, Recurrent Selective Sweeps in Drosophila

The recurrent fixation of newly arising, beneficial mutations in a species reduces levels of linked neutral variability. Models positing frequent weakly beneficial substitutions or, alternatively, rare, strongly selected substitutions predict similar average effects on linked neutral variability, if the product of the rate and strength of selection is held constant. We propose an approximate Bayesian (ABC) polymorphism-based estimator that can be used to distinguish between these models, and apply it to multi-locus data from Drosophila melanogaster. We investigate the extent to which inference about the strength of selection is sensitive to assumptions about the underlying distributions of the rates of substitution and recombination, the strength of selection, heterogeneity in mutation rate, as well as the population's demographic history. We show that assuming fixed values of selection parameters in estimation leads to overestimates of the strength of selection and underestimates of the rate. We estimate parameters for an African population of D. melanogaster (ŝ∼2E−03, ) and compare these to previous estimates. Finally, we show that surveying larger genomic regions is expected to lend much more discriminatory power to the approach. It will thus be of great interest to apply this method to emerging whole-genome polymorphism data sets in many taxa.
Relation between measurements of cough severity

Background: In asthma, measurements of airway inflammation correlate poorly with clinical markers and airway hyperresponsiveness. While the relation between determinants of asthma severity is known, that for cough is unknown. We hypothesised that cough sensitivity changes relate to changes in cough scores and objectively measured cough frequency. Aims: To examine the relation between commonly used outcome measurements of cough severity in children. Methods: The concentration of capsaicin causing two and five or more coughs (C2 and C5 respectively), cough frequency objectively measured using an ambulatory cough meter, and parent and child recorded subjective cough scores were determined in 40 children with recurrent cough on two occasions. Results: On occasion one, log cough frequency significantly correlated with parent and child recorded log cough score (rs = 0.32, p = 0.05; and rs = 0.32, p = 0.046 respectively) and significantly negatively correlated with log C2 (rs= −0.5, p = 0.005). Subjective cough scores did not relate to either C2 or C5. On occasion two, the relation between cough frequency and C2 and C5 measures was lost, but C2 had a weak but significant relation to parent recorded cough score (rs = −0.38, p = 0.047). When the changes in the log values were determined, C5 but not C2 significantly related to cough frequency. Conclusion: In children, measures of cough sensitivity have a weak relation with cough frequency. Subjective cough scores have a stronger and consistent relation with cough frequency. These cough severity indices measure different aspects of cough. The choice of indices depends on the reason for performing the measurement.
Towards Bridging the Gap Between the Smart Grid and Smart Energy Consumption

Smart meters report power usage at 15 minute intervals and, compared to monthly power bills, provide the users with a much finer resolution time series of energy usage. However, apart from identifying times of peak energy usage, these smart meters provide little actionable data for the user in terms of reducing their power costs. Our research involves the development of an intelligent metering system that uses non-intrusive appliance load monitoring (NIALM) to identify the largest energy usage appliances in a residence or small business. The signal processing algorithms employed separate the energy used by individual appliances from the total natural gas and electricity measured at the point where the utilities enter the residence. Utility ratepayers need detailed information to effectively identify and mitigate inefficient appliances and activities. The cost to operate each specific appliance is sent, via a secure home area network, to the user’s computer and accessed via a web browser. An easy to use interactive tool has been developed to label appliances and present this data to the user. Tests have been performed in three residences to compare the performance of our load disaggregation system with that of isolated electrical power measurements from ten or more appliances. Disaggregating the total energy usage into appliance specific usage will transform ratepayers’ ability to conserve energy. Inefficient appliances can be identified, usage patterns can be shifted to lower tariffs times, failing appliances can be detected before they fail, and energy efficient measures can be implemented based on a true cost-benefit calculation.
Sex stereotyping managerial positions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how men and women sex stereotype managerial positions and how they view women in managerial roles in Egypt and the USA, in order to provide meaningful cross‐cultural comparisons.Design/methodology/approach – The study uses surveys that utilize the Schein descriptive index and the women as managers scale (WAMS) to compare perceptions on women in managerial positions in Egypt and the USA. The sample consists of 553 Egyptian and 324 American management students.Findings – The results show that in the Egyptian sample both males and females held negative views of women managers. However, in the US sample, women held more favourable views of women managers than did their male counterparts. In the Egyptian sample the English section female students had a more positive perception of female managers than their Arabic section counterparts.Research limitations/implications – The sample is limited to management students in Egypt and the USA. The Middle East includes c.
A Genome-Wide Association Study of Neuroticism in a Population-Based Sample

Neuroticism is a moderately heritable personality trait considered to be a risk factor for developing major depression, anxiety disorders and dementia. We performed a genome-wide association study in 2,235 participants drawn from a population-based study of neuroticism, making this the largest association study for neuroticism to date. Neuroticism was measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. After Quality Control, we analysed 430,000 autosomal SNPs together with an additional 1.2 million SNPs imputed with high quality from the Hap Map CEU samples. We found a very small effect of population stratification, corrected using one principal component, and some cryptic kinship that required no correction. NKAIN2 showed suggestive evidence of association with neuroticism as a main effect (p<10−6) and GPC6 showed suggestive evidence for interaction with age (p≈10−7). We found support for one previously-reported association (PDE4D), but failed to replicate other recent reports. These results suggest common SNP variation does not strongly influence neuroticism. Our study was powered to detect almost all SNPs explaining at least 2% of heritability, and so our results effectively exclude the existence of loci having a major effect on neuroticism.
Semi-supervised Structured Prediction with Neural CRF Autoencoder

In this paper we propose an end-to-end neural CRF autoencoder (NCRF-AE) model for semi-supervised learning of sequential structured prediction problems. Our NCRF-AE consists of two parts: an encoder which is a CRF model enhanced by deep neural networks, and a decoder which is a generative model trying to reconstruct the input. Our model has a unified structure with different loss functions for labeled and unlabeled data with shared parameters. We developed a variation of the EM algorithm for optimizing both the encoder and the decoder simultaneously by decoupling their parameters. Our Experimental results over the Part-of-Speech (POS) tagging task on eight different languages, show that our model can outperform competitive systems in both supervised and semi-supervised scenarios.