Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linear-dendrimer type methoxy-poly (ethylene glycol)-b-poly (ɛ-caprolactone) copolymer micelles for the delivery of curcumin

Abstract Purpose: To improve curcumin’s pharmacokinetic, in vitro cytotoxicity and release property. Methods: A novel linear-dendrimer methoxy-poly (ethylene glycol)-b-poly (ɛ-caprolactone) copolymer was synthesized through O-alkylation, basic hydrolysis and ring-opening polymerization reaction with methoxy-poly (ethylene glycol), epichlorohydrin and ɛ-caprolactone as raw materials. Its structure was characterized by 1H-NMR and GPC. The copolymer’s hemolysis and micellar encapsulation for curcumin by thin-film hydration were studied. Curcumin-loaded micelles were evaluated by use of in vitro release, FT-IR and X-ray diffraction. Curcumin-loaded micelles’ in vitro cytotoxic activities against Hela and HT-29 cells were done, and its pharmacokinetic parameters were also carried out. Results: Curcumin was encapsulated into the micelles with 92.54% of entrapment efficiency and 12.84% of drug loading in amorphous forms. The dissolubility of nanoparticulate curcumin was 1.70 × 105 times higher than that of curcumin in water. The obtained copolymer showed no hemolysis. In vitro drug release study indicated that, in all cases, the kinetics was adjusted well to the Makoid–Banakar model ( = 0.9984). In addition, data were analyzed by the Korsmeyer–Peppas model, n values were 0.43, indicating that the drug release was accomplished by the combination diffusion and polymer chain relaxation. The cytotoxicity experiment indicated that the nanoparticulate curcumin kept up its potent anti-cancer activities. The pharmacokinetic results showed that the MRT0–∞, t1/2z and AUC0–∞ of Curcumin-loaded micelles were 1.64, 6.54 and 4.67 times higher than that of CUR control solution. Conclusions: The copolymeric micelles loading curcumin might act as a delivery vehicle for CUR.
Heterogeneity of Responses to Real-Time Continuous Glucose Monitoring (RT-CGM) in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes and Its Implications for Application

OBJECTIVE To characterize glucose response patterns of people who wore a real-time continuous glucose monitor (RT-CGM) as an intervention to improve glycemic control. Participants had type 2 diabetes, were not taking prandial insulin, and interpreted the RT-CGM data independently. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Data were from the first 12 weeks of a 52-week, prospective, randomized trial comparing RT-CGM (n = 50) with self-monitoring of blood glucose (n = 50). RT-CGM was used in 8 of the first 12 weeks. A1C was collected at baseline and quarterly. This analysis included 45 participants who wore the RT-CGM ≥4 weeks. Analyses examined the RT-CGM data for common response patterns—a novel approach in this area of research. It then used multilevel models for longitudinal data, regression, and nonparametric methods to compare the patterns of A1C, mean glucose, glycemic variability, and views per day of the RT-CGM device. RESULTS There were five patterns. For four patterns, mean glucose was lower than expected as of the first RT-CGM cycle of use given participants’ baseline A1C. We named them favorable response but with high and variable glucose (n = 7); tight control (n = 14); worsening glycemia (n = 6); and incremental improvement (n = 11). The fifth was no response (n = 7). A1C, mean glucose, glycemic variability, and views per day differed across patterns at baseline and longitudinally. CONCLUSIONS The patterns identified suggest that targeting people with higher starting A1Cs, using it short-term (e.g., 2 weeks), and monitoring for worsening glycemia that might be the result of burnout may be the best approach to using RT-CGM in people with type 2 diabetes not taking prandial insulin.
Using Fixpoint Characterisations of LTL for Bounded Model Checking

Bounded Model Checking [2] is an approach to the LTL model checking problem which uses an encoding to Boolean satisfiability. The encoding as defined by Biere et al. [2] has certain shortcomings, particularly in the size of the clause forms that it generates. We address this by making use of the established correspondence between temporal logic expressions and the fixed points of functions [7], used in other model checking systems such as SMV [11].
Diffusion of Innovation - The Adoption of Electronic Commerce by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES)- A Comparative Analysis

This paper explores the issues that influence the diffusion of innovation as it relates to the adoption of e-commerce by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It seeks to identify factors facilitating and inhibiting such adoption across contexts – regional, small city and large city. This analysis is cross cultural so the impact of differing economic and cultural issues also will be identified in this research. Whilst it is generally accepted that the strategic use of information technology (IT) is vital in the marketplace, the rate of such uptake between small and large businesses varies. This research seeks to identify the reasons for this variation. It is critical to understand such factors so that steps can be taken to redress inequity of uptake that might be identified. The paper endeavours to explore factors that are needed to facilitate and encourage IT adoption and so positively influence user acceptance and use of IT innovations in SMEs. Reasons for such uptake as well as strategic approach to the adoption of e-commerce, and variations regarding same also will be considered. The paper examines existing theory as it pertains to the diffusion of innovation acknowledging the perspective of regional and urban SMEs in various cultural contexts. Empirical investigation exploring this diffusion, the rate of and approach to the uptake by SMEs is planned using a case study methodology
Efficient and Effective State-based Framework for News Video Retrival

In this paper, an efficient and effective framework is proposed for news video retrieval. Firstly, the 64-dimensional colour histogram is extracted as the feature vector. Then the pair quantizer is adopted to transfer the news video retrieval problem into multi-dimensional string matching problem, which conduces to the efficiency to the framework. Secondly, a new measurement named ‘optimal temporal common subsequence’, which distinguishes the difference caused by rich temporal characteristics including temporal order, temporal duration and temporal gap, is designed to match state-sequence, followed by the point & interval-based formal characterization of time-series and state-sequences. Thirdly, we tested the proposed measurement on news video retrieval. The performance shows the proposed algorithm is more effective for news video retrieval.
Effects of Local Habitat Variation on the Behavioral Ecology of Two Sympatric Groups of Brown Howler Monkey (Alouatta clamitans)

Although the brown howler monkey (Alouatta clamitans) is a relatively well-studied Neotropical primate, its behavioral and dietary flexibility at the intra-population level remains poorly documented. This study presents data collected on the behavior and ecology of two closely located groups of brown howlers during the same period at the RPPN Feliciano Miguel Abdala in southeastern Brazil. One group occupied a primary valley habitat, henceforth the Valley Group (VG), and the other group occupied a regenerating hillside habitat, the Hill Group (HG). We hypothesized differences in the behavior and ecological parameters between these sympatric groups due to the predicted harsher conditions on the hillside, compared to the valley. We measured several habitat parameters within the home range of both groups and collected data on the activity budget, diet and day range lengths, from August to November 2005, between dawn and dusk. In total, behavioral data were collected for 26 (318 h) and 28 (308 h) sampling days for VG and HG, respectively. As we predicted, HG spent significantly more time feeding and consumed less fruit and more leaves than VG, consistent with our finding that the hillside habitat was of lower quality. However, HG also spent less time resting and more time travelling than VG, suggesting that the monkeys had to expend more time and energy to obtain high-energy foods, such as fruits and flowers that were more widely spaced in their hill habitat. Our results revealed that different locations in this forest vary in quality and raise the question of how different groups secure their home ranges. Fine-grained comparisons such as this are important to prioritize conservation and management areas within a reserve.
On the interaction between power-aware FPGA CAD Algorithms

As Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) power consumption continues to increase, lower power FPGA circuitry, architectures, and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools need to be developed. Before designing low-power FPGA circuitry, architectures, or CAD tools, we must first determine where the biggest savings (in terms of energy dissipation) are to be made and whether these savings are cumulative. In this paper, we focus on FPGA CAD tools. Specifically, we describe a new power-aware CAD flow for FPGAs that was developed to answer the above questions. Estimating energy using very detailed post-route power and delay models, we determine the energy savings obtained by our power-aware technology mapping, clustering, placement, and routing algorithms and investigate how the savings behave when the algorithms are applied concurrently. The individual savings of the power-aware technology-mapping, clustering, placement, and routing algorithms were 7.6%, 12.6%, 3.0%, and 2.6% respectively. The majority of the overall savings were achieved during the technology mapping and clustering stages of the power-aware FPGA CAD flow. In addition, the savings were mostly cumulative when the individual power-aware CAD algorithms were applied concurrently with an overall energy reduction of 22.6%.
Fatigue and recovery during and after static loading

Subjectively assessed endurance time (ET), resumption time (RT) and perceived discomfort, pain or fatigue (PD), and objectively measured maximum force-exerting capacity were investigated for varying loads and durations of a pushing task with two repeated trials. Beyond the main results quantifying how the load scenario affected ET, RT and PD, three additional results are of note: (1) although the maximum pushing force did not change between trials, shorter ET, longer RT and higher PD indicated accumulation of fatigue in Trial 2; (2) the PD ratings showed a trend with a linear increase during loading and a curvilinear decrease during recovery; and (3) the RT and the load level for different relative loading times were found to have an unexpected U-shaped relationship, indicating lowest fatigue at the intermediate load level. These results can be used to model a more sustainable and productive work-recovery ratio. Practitioner Summary: Sufficient recovery during a work-shift is important for sustainable work. This paper presents data from an empirical study on how fatigue reactions and recovery needs vary with load level and loading time and with one repeated loading. The results enable the modelling of work-recovery ratios to ensure adequate recovery during work-shifts.
Iterative Deformable Surface Tracking in Multi-View Setups

In this paper we present a method to iteratively capture the dynamic evolution of a surface from a set of point clouds independently acquired from multi-view videos. This is done without prior knowledge on the observed shape and simply deforms the first reconstructed mesh across the sequence to fit these point clouds while preserving the local rigidity with respect to this reference pose. The deformation of this mesh is guided by control points that are randomly seeded on the surface, and around which rigid motions are locally averaged. These rigid motions are computed by iteratively re-establishing point-to-point associations between the deformed mesh and the target data in a way inspired by ICP. Our method introduces a way to account for the point dynamics when establishing these correspondences, a higher level rigidity model between the control points and a coarse-to-fine strategy that allows to fit the temporally inconsistent data more precisely. Experimental results, including quantitative analysis, on standard and challenging datasets obtained from real video sequences show the robustness and the precision of the proposed scheme.
Naturalization of European plants on other continents: The role of donor habitats

Significance Understanding which species become successful aliens outside their native range is a fundamental question in ecology, as it informs efforts to mitigate ecological and economic losses from biological invasions. For alien plants of European origin, the association with human-disturbed environments is suggested as a key factor for their establishment success following introduction to other regions, especially to similarly disturbed human-made habitats. By combining a comprehensive list of European habitats and their species composition with a database of plant naturalization records worldwide, we showed that a broad habitat range together with human-induced disturbance experienced in native-range habitats can increase a species’ chance of becoming naturalized in other parts of the world. The success of European plant species as aliens worldwide is thought to reflect their association with human-disturbed environments. However, an explicit test including all human-made, seminatural and natural habitat types of Europe, and their contributions as donor habitats of naturalized species to the rest of the globe, has been missing. Here we combine two databases, the European Vegetation Checklist and the Global Naturalized Alien Flora, to assess how human influence in European habitats affects the probability of naturalization of their plant species on other continents. A total of 9,875 native European vascular plant species were assigned to 39 European habitat types; of these, 2,550 species have become naturalized somewhere in the world. Species that occur in both human-made habitats and seminatural or natural habitats in Europe have the highest probability of naturalization (64.7% and 64.5% of them have naturalized). Species associated only with human-made or seminatural habitats still have a significantly higher probability of becoming naturalized (41.7% and 28.6%, respectively) than species confined to natural habitats (19.4%). Species associated with arable land and human settlements were recorded as naturalized in the largest number of regions worldwide. Our findings highlight that plant species’ association with native-range habitats disturbed by human activities, combined with broad habitat range, play an important role in shaping global patterns of plant invasions.
Working session: Using eye-tracking to understand program comprehension

The working session focuses on the use of eye-tracking technology to assess, understand, and evaluate tools and techniques for program comprehension. An introduction to the technology and tools of eye-tracking will be presented. A discussion of how these tools augment existing evaluation mechanism in the context of program comprehension will follow. Research directions and open problems will be a main topic.
Calf Muscle Performance Deficits Remain 7 Years After an Achilles Tendon Rupture

Background: Optimizing calf muscle performance seems to play an important role in minimizing impairments and symptoms after an Achilles tendon rupture (ATR). The literature lacks long-term follow-up studies after ATR that describe calf muscle performance over time. Purpose: The primary aim was to evaluate calf muscle performance and patient-reported outcomes at a mean of 7 years after ATR in patients included in a prospective, randomized controlled trial. A secondary aim was to evaluate whether improvement in calf muscle performance continued after the 2-year follow-up. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods: Sixty-six subjects (13 women, 53 men) with a mean age of 50 years (SD, 8.5 years) were evaluated at a mean of 7 years (SD, 1 year) years after their ATR. Thirty-four subjects had surgical treatment and 32 had nonsurgical treatment. Patient-reported outcomes were evaluated with Achilles tendon Total Rupture Score (ATRS) and Physical Activity Scale (PAS). Calf muscle performance was evaluated with single-leg standing heel-rise test, concentric strength power heel-rise test, and single-legged hop for distance. Limb Symmetry Index (LSI = injured side/healthy side × 100) was calculated for side-to-side differences. Results: Seven years after ATR, the injured side showed decreased values in all calf muscle performance tests (P < .001-.012). Significant improvement in calf muscle performance did not continue after the 2-year follow-up. Heel-rise height increased significantly (P = .002) between the 1-year (10.8 cm) and the 7-year (11.5 cm) follow-up assessments. The median ATRS was 96 (of a possible score of 100) and the median PAS was 4 (of a possible score of 6), indicating minor patient-reported symptoms and fairly high physical activity. No significant differences were found in calf muscle performance or patient-reported outcomes between the treatment groups except for the LSI for heel-rise repetitions. Conclusion: Continued deficits in calf muscle endurance and strength remained 7 years after ATR. No continued improvement in calf muscle performance occurred after the 2-year follow-up except for heel-rise height.
Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer continues to be a significant public health issue worldwide, particularly in countries where men have life expectancies long enough to clinically manifest the disease. In many countries, it remains one of the leading causes of cancer-related morbidity and mortality. Although significant progress has been made over the past few decades, many elements regarding the diagnosis and management of patients with prostate cancer remain enigmatic. In this Prostate Cancer special issue, our expert authors present and examine clinically relevant topics and look ahead to future research.
Acute calculous cholecystitis: Review of current best practices

Acute calculous cholecystitis (ACC) is the most frequent complication of cholelithiasis and represents one-third of all surgical emergency hospital admissions, many aspects of the disease are still a matter of debate. Knowledge of the current evidence may allow the surgical team to develop practical bedside decision-making strategies, aiming at a less demanding procedure and lower frequency of complications. In this regard, recommendations on the diagnosis supported by specific criteria and severity scores are being implemented, to prioritize patients eligible for urgency surgery. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the best treatment for ACC and the procedure should ideally be performed within 72 h. Early surgery is associated with better results in comparison to delayed surgery. In addition, when to suspect associated common bile duct stones and how to treat them when found are still debated. The antimicrobial agents are indicated for high-risk patients and especially in the presence of gallbladder necrosis. The use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and in some cases with antifungal agents is related to better prognosis. Moreover, an emerging strategy of not converting to open, a difficult laparoscopic cholecystectomy and performing a subtotal cholecystectomy is recommended by adept surgical teams. Some authors support the use of percutaneous cholecystostomy as an alternative emergency treatment for acute Cholecystitis for patients with severe comorbidities.
Current perspectives on RNA secondary structure probing

The range of roles played by structured RNAs in biological systems is vast. At the same time as we are learning more about the importance of RNA structure, recent advances in reagents, methods and technology mean that RNA secondary structural probing has become faster and more accurate. As a result, the capabilities of laboratories that already perform this type of structural analysis have increased greatly, and it has also become more widely accessible. The present review summarizes established and recently developed techniques. The information we can derive from secondary structural analysis is assessed, together with the areas in which we are likely to see exciting developments in the near future.
Distributed formation control of networked mobile robots in environments with obstacles

SUMMARY A distributed control mechanism for ground moving nonholonomic robots is proposed. It enables a group of mobile robots to autonomously manage formation shapes while navigating through environments with obstacles. The mechanism consists of two stages, with the first being formation control that allows basic formation shapes to be maintained without the need of any inter-robot communication. It is followed by obstacle avoidance, which is designed with maintaining the formation in mind. Every robot is capable of performing basic obstacle avoidance by itself. However, to ensure that the formation shape is maintained, formation scaling is implemented. If the formation fails to hold its shape when navigating through environments with obstacles, formation morphing has been incorporated to preserve the interconnectivity of the robots, thus reducing the possibility of losing robots from the formation. The algorithm has been implemented on a nonholonomic multi-robot system for empirical analysis. Experimental results demonstrate formations completing an obstacle course within 12 s with zero collisions. Furthermore, the system is capable of withstanding up to 25% sensor noise.
Merge : Properties and boundary conditions

The goal of a generative syntactic module is to create linguistic objects that connect sound to meaning. Therefore, a basic structure building operation is needed that combines syntactic objects into more complex objects. In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995) this operation is called Merge. At first sight, both the existence and the working of Merge are close to being trivial, but on nearer inspection this is not at all the case. The reason is that it must be interpreted within a nontrivial system of boundary conditions on its input and output. The following text is a brief explorative discussion of these conditions. Attention is paid to the organization of the syntactic work space, the notation of syntactic objects, and the idea of a strict cycle. It is shown that an evaluation of unconventional concepts such as ‘interarborial movement’ and ‘multidominance’ is almost inevitable. Three possible grammars are defined in the conclusion.
Do we practice what we preach? A qualitative assessment of resident-preceptor interactions for adherence to evidence-based practice.

BACKGROUND Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is important in training doctors for high-quality care. Yet little is known about whether ambulatory precepting incorporates the concepts and principles of EBM. METHODS The authors observed and audiotaped 95 internal medicine residency precepting interactions and rated interactions using a qualitative analytic template consisting of three criteria: (1) presence of clinical questions; (2) presence of an evidence-based process; and (3) resident ability to articulate a clinical question. RESULTS Sixty-seven of 95 audio tapes (71%) were of acceptable quality to allow template analysis. Thirty (45%) contained explicit clinical questions; 11 (16%) included an evidence-based process. Resident ability to articulate a clinical question when prompted was rated as at least 'fair' in 59 of 67 interactions (88%). CONCLUSIONS EBM was not optimally implemented in these clinics. Future research could explore more systematically what factors facilitate or impair the use of EBM in the real-time ambulatory training context.