Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Flurbiprofen-Loaded Stealth Liposomes: Studies on the Development, Characterization, Pharmacokinetics, and Biodistribution

Flurbiprofen (FP) is a phenyl alkanoic acid derivative and a family of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug used in the treatment of arthritis. The aim of this study was to prepare a new parenteral formulation for FP that can prolong the biologic half-life of the drug, improve its therapeutic efficacy, and reduce its associated side effects targeting the inflammation due to arthritis. PEG-anchored (stealth) and non-PEG-anchored liposomes were prepared by thin film hydration technique followed by extrusion cycle and characterized for in vitro and in vivo. Stealth liposomes (SLs) exhibited increase in percent encapsulation efficiency (68%) and percent drug retention during release studies in 24 h (71%) with good stability for a period of 1 month at −20°C and 4°C (refrigerated temperature) compared with other liposomes. The maximum percent edema inhibition (58%) and significant analgesic effect of 13 s were determined for SLs. The pharmacokinetic parameters after i.v. administration to arthritis induced rats were determined and compared with non-SLs. The marked differences produced for SLs over those of non-SL (conventional) formulations with an increase in area under plasma concentration time curve, t1/2 , mean residence time, and reduced clearance. The drug localization in liver, spleen, and kidney were significantly higher for non-PEGylated liposomes than the SLs. Nearly 3-fold increase in drug concentration was measured in arthritic paw when compared with the other liposome formulations. Thus SLs may help to increase the therapeutic efficacy of FP by increasing the targeting potential at the site of action.
Deciding deadlock-freedom of daisy-chain protocols by fair reachability analysis

A relief strategy called fair reachability analysis [5, 7, 11] is extended for the verification of daisy-chain protocols, which are defined in the communicating finite state machine model as networks of n ≥ 2 processes with a bidirectional, serial link structure. Fair reachability analysis is shown to decide the deadlock detection problem for daisy-chain protocols whose fair reachable global state space is finite. A sufficient condition for this finiteness is also given.
The Human Capital Effect of General Education Development Certificates on Low Income Women

This study examines the impacts of the General Equivalency Diploma (GED) certificate and other secondary and post-secondary credentials on labor market outcomes for women. It uses data from the NLSY Mother and Children file and the Washington State Family Income Study (FIS). Correcting for sample selection and endogeneity bias of welfare recipiency, we find that one cannot distinguish between secondary dropouts, GED recipients, and secondary graduates in hours of work. Results on hourly wage rates are mixed. For the FIS sample, GED recipients, secondary graduates, and secondary dropouts earn the same wage. For the NLSY, GED recipients fare better than dropouts, but worse than secondary graduates. Job experience explains the wage gap between GED recipients and graduates, but its explanatory power is dominated by controlling for years of education or AFQT. Differences in years of education and AFQT scores are responsible for the observed wage differences among GED recipients, secondary graduates, and secondary dropouts.
Stereotype Threat in the Marketplace: Consumer Anxiety and Purchase Intentions

How do consumers react when they believe that a transaction partner will view them through the lens of a stereotype? We predicted and found that being aware of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs (e.g., gender) made consumers sensitive to whether service providers were in-group versus out-group members and lowered purchase intentions when the provider was an out-group member. We observed stereotype threat effects across diverse marketplace settings: financial services (experiment 1), automobile repairs (experiment 2), and automobile purchases (experiment 3). Furthermore, we found that reluctance to purchase from out-group (vs. in-group) members was caused by heightened anxiety. The presence of a soothing scent, as a situational factor to alleviate anxiety, mitigated stereotype threat effects on marketplace decisions.
Illumination of Murine Gammaherpesvirus-68 Cycle Reveals a Sexual Transmission Route from Females to Males in Laboratory Mice

Transmission is a matter of life or death for pathogen lineages and can therefore be considered as the main motor of their evolution. Gammaherpesviruses are archetypal pathogenic persistent viruses which have evolved to be transmitted in presence of specific immune response. Identifying their mode of transmission and their mechanisms of immune evasion is therefore essential to develop prophylactic and therapeutic strategies against these infections. As the known human gammaherpesviruses, Epstein-Barr virus and Kaposi's Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus are host-specific and lack a convenient in vivo infection model; related animal gammaherpesviruses, such as murine gammaherpesvirus-68 (MHV-68), are commonly used as general models of gammaherpesvirus infections in vivo. To date, it has however never been possible to monitor viral excretion or virus transmission of MHV-68 in laboratory mice population. In this study, we have used MHV-68 associated with global luciferase imaging to investigate potential excretion sites of this virus in laboratory mice. This allowed us to identify a genital excretion site of MHV-68 following intranasal infection and latency establishment in female mice. This excretion occurred at the external border of the vagina and was dependent on the presence of estrogens. However, MHV-68 vaginal excretion was not associated with vertical transmission to the litter or with horizontal transmission to female mice. In contrast, we observed efficient virus transmission to naïve males after sexual contact. In vivo imaging allowed us to show that MHV-68 firstly replicated in penis epithelium and corpus cavernosum before spreading to draining lymph nodes and spleen. All together, those results revealed the first experimental transmission model for MHV-68 in laboratory mice. In the future, this model could help us to better understand the biology of gammaherpesviruses and could also allow the development of strategies that could prevent the spread of these viruses in natural populations.
A model qualification method for mechanistic physiological QSP models to support model‐informed drug development

Mechanistic physiological modeling is a scientific method that combines available data with scientific knowledge and engineering approaches to facilitate better understanding of biological systems, improve decision‐making, reduce risk, and increase efficiency in drug discovery and development. It is a type of quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) approach that places drug‐specific properties in the context of disease biology. This tutorial provides a broadly applicable model qualification method (MQM) to ensure that mechanistic physiological models are fit for their intended purposes.
Robust feature matching for robot visual learning

Affine-invariant feature matching plays an important role in many robot vision applications, such as robot visual navigation, object detection, visual tracking and visual SLAM, etc. In the early stages, invariant keypoints are used to detect the affine transformation. But the accuracy is very low. In recent years, some people introduce SIFT method into robot vision field, which greatly enhances the accuracy. But it is too time-consuming to meet the requirements of real-time robot vision applications. In this paper, we propose a novel learning-based feature matching approach to address the problem. First, it uses a fast algorithm to extract keypoints. Then, our method identifies keypoints that belong to different objects or background by color and texture representation. The keypoints are clustered into corresponding groups. At last, a two-stage multilayer ferns classifier is trained to recognize the local patches and get the estimate of viewpoint. We test our approach on public datasets and apply it in a visual SLAM application. The result demonstrates that our method can provide robust and powerful matching ability. Even on some difficult matching cases, it also performs remarkably well. Further more, because there is no need to compute descriptors for the image, our method is very fast at run-time.
INNOVATION PROCESS FOR HALAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN FIRMS

The Halal global market is promising a rapid and sustained growth (Berry 2008; Sungkar et al., 2008). In fact, only for Halal food industry, the amount of international trade has exceeded 2.1 trillion USD in 2006 (Berry 2008; Riaz and Chaudry 2004). The reasons of the prompt growing are multiple, but mainly due to (1) the rapid spread of the Islamic faithful worldwide, (2) the increasing spending power of the Islamic people. Despite the importance this market has on the global scene, few studies are available, discussing in-depth the phenomenon from the managerial and innovation management perspectives. Inspired by this opportunity, we attempt to explore in depth the innovation process leading companies from Haram to Halal products in the food industry. A multiple case study of four Italian companies has been developed in order to explore their innovation process and to understand how it has been reviewed to fit the Islamic requirements. The specific product and process solutions adopted by the companies have been analyzed as well as the related managerial and organizational implications and innovation changes implemented. In Italy, so far, only few isolated initiatives shed a first light on the Halal theme and the landscape appears very embryonic.
Gene therapy for cancer through adenovirus vector-mediated expression of the Ad5 early region gene 1A based on loss of IGF2 imprinting

Loss of (genomic) imprinting (LOI) of the insulin-like growth factor 2 gene (IGF2) is a common epigenetic abnormality in many human cancers. IGF2 imprinting is regulated by differentially methylated domains (DMD) in the imprinting control region that is located between IGF2 and H19 on human chromosome 11. In the present study, combined expression of adenoviral vectors (Ad-EGFP and Ad-E1A) driven by H19 enhancer-DMD-H19 promoter complex was investigated and their effects on the tumor growth were assessed in vitro and in vivo. When infected with Ad-EGFP, the cancer cell lines with the LOI, such as HRT-18 and HT-29 cells, had the expression of the EGFP protein, whereas three cancer cell lines with the maintenance of imprinting (MOI) (HCT-116, MCF-7 and GES-1) had weak expression of EGFP. Furthermore, the expressed Ad-E1A significantly decreased cell viability and induced cell apoptosis only in HRT-18 and HT-29 cells in vitro, and effectively suppressed tumor development in HRT-18 and HT-29 xenograft in nude mice. It is concluded that this gene therapy vector is effective in the suppression of the growth of human colon cancer cells in vitro and in vivo, and that cancer gene therapy based on loss of IGF2 imprinting may prove to be a novel therapeutic option.
Young Lives Working Paper 119. The Effect of Lengthening the School Day on Children's Achievement in Ethiopia

Many developing country schools have four-hour school days and teach two groups of children each day. Governments are considering lengthening the school day, at great expense, to improve school quality. Advocates of the shift system argue the reform is unnecessary, as evidence from developed countries suggests increasing instructional time only improves achievement scores by small amounts. This paper is the first study of the e ect of a large increase in instructional time in a low-income country. In 2005, the Ethiopian federal government directed school districts to abolish teaching in shifts and lengthen the school day from four to six hours. Districts implemented the reform at di erent times, creating exogenous variation in instructional time. I use a di erence-in-di erence specification controlling for time-invariant unobservables at school level on a unique longitudinal dataset. For eight-year-old children, a longer school day improved writing and mathematics scores, but had no significant e ect on reading. However, e ects are larger among better-o children: children who are not stunted, children from richer households and children in urban schools. The exception is that the reform has larger positive e ects on girls than boys. The reform thus improves achievement on average, but may exacerbate gaps between wealthier and
An Emotion-based Adaptive Behavioural Model for Simulated Virtual Agents

Present invention relates to a phase difference detection type focus detecting device which includes a pair of image forming lenses and a photo sensor array and detects the focus deviation in accordance with the positions of a pair of formed images respectively formed on the photo sensor array by the pair of image forming lenses. In such focus detecting device, the pair of image forming lenses are integrally molded of a plastic material, such that the change of the distance between the pair of image forming lenses due to the temperature change causes the error of the focus deviation. The error is made to zero by the detection of the ambient temperature and the compensation of the data basing on expansion or contraction of the plastic material with temperature.
Edge-grafting theorems on permanents of the Laplacian matrices of graphs and their applications

The trees, respectively unicyclic graphs, on $n$ vertices with the smallest Laplacian permanent are studied. In this paper, by edge-grafting transformations, the $n$-vertex trees of given bipartition having the second and third smallest Laplacian permanent are identified. Similarly, the $n$-vertex bipartite unicyclic graphs of given bipartition having the first, second and third smallest Laplacian permanent are characterized. Consequently, the $n$-vertex bipartite unicyclic graphs with the first, second and third smallest Laplacian permanent are determined.
Interactions between the Native and Second-language Phonetic Systems

Many studies in the past decade have shown that “earlier is better” as far as learning a second language (L2) is concerned. That is, individuals who began learning their L2 in late adolescence or early adulthood (“late bilinguals”) usually resemble native speakers of the L2 less than individuals who began learning their L2 in childhood (“early bilinguals”) do. Early bilinguals have been shown to resemble L2 native speakers to a greater extent than late bilinguals in terms of sensitivity to the grammatical properties of the L2 (Flege, Yeni-Komshian & Liu, 1999; DeKeyser, 2000) as well as in terms of the online processing of L2 sentences (Liu, Bates & Li, 1992; McDonald, 2000; Guillelmon & Grosjean, 2001). Other studies have shown similar differences in the production and perception of L2 speech. For example, early bilinguals generally have milder foreign accents in the L2 than late bilinguals do (Flege, Munro & MacKay, 1995a; Flege, Yeni-Komshian & Liu, 1999). Also, early bilinguals have been found to produce and perceive L2 vowels more like L2 native speakers than late bilinguals do (Munro, Flege & MacKay, 1996; Flege, 1992; Flege, MacKay & Meador, 1999; Piske, Flege, MacKay & Meador, 2001; Flege, Schirru & MacKay, submitted), to produce and perceive L2 consonants more accurately than late bilinguals do (Flege, 1991; Flege, Munro & MacKay, 1995b; MacKay, Meador & Flege, 2001; MacKay, Flege, Piske & Schirru, 2001), and to recognize L2 words presented in noise more effectively (Meador, Flege & MacKay, 2000).
A reliability indication method for constant-time admission control test

Admission control test aims at determining whether an arriving task can be scheduled together with the tasks already running in a system, so that it can prevent system from overload and collapse. Although a number of schedulability tests have been studied, they are incomparable if the determination conditions are different. In order to keep high system utilization, the problem of choosing a reliable test attracts our attention. In this paper, we introduce a concept of test reliability to evaluate the probability that a random task set can pass a given test, and define a reliability indicator to show the test reliability. The proposed method is applied in several existing admission control tests. Results show that this method can be used as a criterion to compare the performance of different tests. The most applicable condition can be selected among several alternatives using the reliability indicator, if system parameters are determined in advance.
Communication costs for parallel volume-rendering algorithms

The computational expense of volume rendering motivates the development of parallel implementations on multicomputers. Parallelism achieves higher frame rates, which provide more natural viewing control and enhanced comprehension of 3D structure. Although many parallel implementations exist, we have no framework to compare their relative merits independent of host hardware. The article attempts to establish that framework by enumerating and classifying parallel volume-rendering algorithms suitable for multicomputers with distributed memory and a communication network. It determined the communication costs for classes of parallel algorithms by considering their inherent communication requirements. <<ETX>>
An approach to empirical Optical Character Recognition paradigm using Multi-Layer Perceptorn Neural Network

In this paper we are represent the architecture of Optical Character Recognition that converting from visual character to the machine readable format. To present this architecture, several stages are associate like take the character input image, preprocessing the image, feature extraction of the image and at last take a decision by the artificial computational model same as biological neuron network. Decision making system by the Artificial Neural Network associated with two steps; first is adapted the artificial neural network throughout the Multi-Layer Perceptron learning algorithm and second is recognition or classification process for the character image to comprehensible for the machine in a way that what character is it. Our proposal architecture achieved 91.53% accuracy to recognize the isolated character image and 80.65% accuracy for the sentential case character image.
A configurable architecture for the generalized hough transform applied to the analysis of huge aerial images and to traffic sign detection

Object recognition in huge image data sets or in live camera images at interactive frame rates is a very demanding task, especially within embedded systems. The recognition task includes the localization of a reference object and its rotation and scaling in a search image. The Generalized Hough Transform (GHT) is known as a powerful and robust technique to support this task by transforming the search image into a 4D parameter space. However, the GHT itself is very complex and demanding towards computational power and memory consumption. This paper presents a novel hardware architecture to perform a complete 4D GHT at interactive frame rates in an FPGA. The architecture is configurable in order to allow a trade-off between performance, accuracy and hardware usage. The proposed architecture has been implemented in a low-cost Zynq-7000 FPGA and successfully evaluated in two practical applications, namely groyne detection in aerial images and traffic sign detection.
Towards Resolving Morphological Ambiguity in Arabic Intelligent Language Tutoring Framework

The current paper deals with the relation between language resources and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) systems: language resources are essential in the development of CALL applications, during the development of the system resources are created, and finally the CALL system itself can be used to generate additional resources that are useful for research and development of new (CALL) systems. We focus on the system developed in the project DISCO (Development and Integration of Speech technology into COurseware for language learning): we describe the language resources employed for developing the DISCO system and present the DISCO system paying attention to the design, the automatic speech recognition modules, and the resources produced within the project. Finally, we discuss how additional language resources can be generated through the DISCO system.
A Partial Workload Offloading Framework in a Mobile Cloud Computing Context

Mobile devices have become increasingly prevalent in recent years, leading the public to reassess their expectations in terms of user experience. As a result, industry has progressively turned to utilizing hardware components, such as GPUs (graphics processing units), which are traditionally present on computers. Despite their sophistication, mobile devices lack the capacity to execute resource-intensive tasks quickly and efficiently, and the state of the art is to leverage heterogeneous cloud resources to augment mobile devices. However, network transfer costs drastically limit the advantage of this approach. While performing computing tasks on a heterogeneous system is a well-studied area, how to offload workload onto a heterogeneous cloud in the presence of an unstable network remains an outstanding problem. This paper presents the design and implementation of a workload offloading framework that transparently mitigates the network transfer cost and takes advantage of a heterogeneous resource-rich cloud for speeding up mobile devices' GPGPU computations. Our approach is based on an adaptive method that partitions the workload and maps the processing elements to heterogeneous local and remote resources. By partitioning the tasks, our system increases the utilization of mobile and server resources while reducing the amount of data to transfer over the network. Our results show that adaptive partitioning can have a significant impact on the performance of benchmarks, even in a dynamic environment.
Price Stickiness and Customer Antagonism

Managers often state that they are reluctant to vary prices for fear of "antagonizing customers. " However, there is no empirical evidence that antagonizing customers through price adjustments reduces demand or profits. We use a 28-month randomized field experiment involving over 50,000 customers to investigate how customers react if they buy a product and later observe the same retailer selling it for less. We find that customers react by making fewer subsequent purchases from the firm. The effect is largest among the firm's most valuable customers: those whose prior purchases were most recent and at the highest prices.
Policy Networks under Pressure

Policy networks - a critical review policy networks and policy change - a meso-level analysis moving beyond meso-level analysis classifying policy reforms and new policies Danish and Swedish nitrate policies agricultural policy reforms in the European Community and Sweden cohesion of agricultural policy networks farmers' structural power in parliament and state structures conclusion - a defence of policy network analysis.