Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drug release from liquisolid systems: speed it up, slow it down

Introduction: Today, the properties of many new chemical entities have shifted towards higher molecular weights and this in turn increases the lipophilicity hence decreasing aqueous solubility. The low solubility of drugs usually has in vivo consequences such as low bioavailability, increased chance of food effect and incomplete release from the dosage form. Areas covered: The present review discusses the advantages of the liquisolid technology in formulation design of poorly water soluble drugs for dissolution enhancement and highly water soluble drugs for slow release pattern. Expert opinion: With the advent of high throughput screening and combinatorial chemistry, it has been shown that most of the new chemical entities have a high lipophilicity and poor aqueous solubility, hence poor bioavailability. In order to improve the bioavailability, the release rate of these drugs should be enhanced. Although there are multiple technologies to tackle this issue, they are not cost effective due to the involvement of sophisticated machinery, advanced preparation techniques and complicated technology. As the liquisolid technology uses a similar production process as the conventional tablets, this technology to improve the release rate of poorly water soluble drugs will be cost effective. This technology also has the capability to slow down drug release and allows preparing sustained release tablets with zero order drug release pattern. The excipients required for this technology are conventional and commonly available in the market. The technology is in the early stages of its development with extensive research currently focused on. It is envisaged that the liquisolid compacts could play a major role in the next generation of tablets.
Constraint-Based Cooperative Control of Multiple Aerial Manipulators for Handling an Unknown Payload

This paper presents the planning and control synthesis of cooperative aerial manipulators to carry an unknown object together. The online parameter estimation algorithm is designed to estimate the unknown physical parameters of the common payload such as mass and moment of inertia, without the need of multiaxis force/torque sensors. Based on the augmented adaptive sliding mode controller with the estimated physical parameters, the desired trajectory of each aerial manipulator is generated to track the desired trajectory of corresponding end effector. In order to carry an unknown object safely considering the actuation limit of the hexacopter, we use the task priority to satisfy the unilateral constraints determined by the allowable flight envelope. To validate our approach, the experimental result on a successful transportation by using multiple custom-made aerial manipulators is shown. This result suggests that the proposed approach can be utilized for safe cooperative aerial transportation.
Effect of reduced body weight gain on the evaluation of chemopreventive agents in the methylnitrosourea-induced mammary cancer model.

These studies examined whether the small to moderate reductions in body weight gain (< or = 15%) affect mammary carcinogenesis. Beginning 1 week prior to methylnitrosourea (MNU) administration (experiment 1), rats received diets supplemented with 4-hydroxyphenylretinamide (4-HPR) (782 mg/kg of diet) and retinyl acetate (328 mg/kg of diet) or underwent food restrictions. Rats were administered an i.v. dose of MNU (50 mg/kg body wt) at 50 days of age. Although the final body weights were similarly depressed by 4-HPR (8%) and by retinyl acetate (11%) from rats fed ad libitum, the kinetics of inhibition were quite different. Whereas 4-HPR caused an acute decrease in body weight at the time it was administered, the effect of retinyl acetate was more chronic. At 110 days after the administration of MNU, the average number of mammary cancers per rat was 4.9 for rats fed ad libitum, 1.3 for rats fed 4-HPR, 3.1 when body weights were matched to 4-HPR-treated rats, 1.9 for retinyl acetate and 3.2 when body weights were matched to retinyl acetate. Experiment II was performed to determine the minimal degree of acute body weight gain reduction that would alter MNU-induced mammary carcinogenesis. Body weight gain depressions of 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15% were initiated at 43 days of age by dietary restrictions and MNU was administered at 50 days of age. At 120 days after MNU, the percentage decreases in mammary cancer multiplicity in the various groups were 14, 15, 41, 44 and 55%, respectively. These data demonstrate that moderate reductions (9-15%) in body weight gain, in particular when occurring during the initiation and early promotion stages can greatly affect cancer multiplicity.
Managing uncertainties through scenario analysis in strategic environmental assessment

Planning for the future is uncertain, and scenario analysis is a method of coping with the uncertainties of future plans. This paper addresses how to deal with future uncertainties by using scenario analysis as a possible approach for conducting a strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Although scenario-based approaches have been linked to strategic planning and SEA, this paper for the first time proposes how a combined approach may be implemented using specific tools and methodologies and, further on, it also implements the first three stages of the six stages proposed for the ‘scenario-based strategic planning’ approach. This work is an attempt to standardize SEA and scenario analysis as a combined approach. The three stages are tested within the Tourism Development Plan of the Iranian province of Gilan, which has been selected as a case study.
Direct evidence for the existence of dairying farms in prehistoric Central Europe (4th millennium BC)

The molecular and isotopic chemistry of organic residues from archaeological potsherds was used to obtain further insight into the dietary trends and economies at the Constance lake-shore Neolithic settlements. The archaeological organic residues from the Early Late Neolithic (3922–3902 BC) site Hornstaad-Hörnle IA/Germany are, at present, the oldest archaeological samples analysed at the Institute of Mineralogy and Geochemistry of the University of Lausanne. The approach includes 13C/12C and 15N/14N ratios of the bulk organic residues, fatty acids distribution and 13C/12C ratios of individual fatty acids. The results are compared with those obtained from the over 500 years younger Neolithic (3384–3370 BC) settlement of Arbon Bleiche 3/Switzerland and with samples of modern vegetable oils and fat of animals that have been fed exclusively on C3 forage grasses. The overall fatty acid composition (C9 to C24 range, maximizing at C14 and C16), the bulk 13C/12C and 15N/14N ratios (δ13C, δ15N) and the 13C/12C ratios of palmitic (C16:0), stearic (C18:0) and oleic acids (C18:1) of the organic residues indicate that most of the studied samples (25 from 47 samples and 5 from 41 in the δ13C18:0 vs. δ13C16:0 and δ13C18:0 vs. δ13C18:1 diagrams, respectively) from Hornstaad-Hörnle IA and Arbon Bleiche 3 sherds contain fat residues of pre-industrial ruminant milk, and young suckling calf/lamb adipose. These data provide direct proof of milk and meat (mainly from young suckling calves) consumption and farming practices for a sustainable dairying in Neolithic villages in central Europe around 4000 BC. † Revised version of a paper presented at the 9th, Symposium of the European Society for Isotope Research (ESIR), 23 to 28 June 2007, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Learning from Nationally Determined Contributions

National governments have submitted emission mitigation pledges under the Paris Agreement that vary considerably in their form, level of required emission mitigation, elaboration of non-emission goals, and implementation strategies. As a result, domestic emission mitigation programs necessary to deliver on the Paris pledges will diverge in the degree to which that mitigation will be achieved at least cost. This paper explores both what we learn from how national determined contributions (NDCs) diverge from least-cost policies and the implications for comparing mitigation effort. The NDCs can reveal a country's preferences over climate policy, economic development, and other priorities. Modeling analysis of the NDCs can highlight opportunities for (i) measuring the revealed cost of institutional and political constraints that limit least cost implementation; (ii) mitigating climate change alongside other policy objectives; (iii) policy learning over time. We undertake two case studies based on global energy-economic models to illustrate how implementation of NDCs may deviate from least-cost implementation. In the first case study, we employ the WITCH model to assess how the non-emissions goals in NDCs may constrain implementation in a way that increases costs related to cost-effective emissions abatement. In the second case study, we employ the DNE21+ model to assess how countries' stated domestic implementation policies may diverge from a cost-effective domestic mitigation policy. These modelling analyses serve to illustrate how comparing mitigation implementation can then be represented by a bounding exercise that develops both conservative and generous estimates of mitigation effort.
Risk and Return Trade-Offs in Lifetime Earnings

This paper documents differences in lifetime earnings risk across occupations due to wage risk, employment risk, and midcareer occupation changes, which can mitigate other shocks. Total lifetime earnings risk varies considerably across starting occupation, and riskier occupations pay more in expectation. The average worker would give up at least 9% of total lifetime earnings in the least certain occupation to reduce the riskiness of that occupation to the level of the safest starting occupation. The insurance value of occupational mobility is quantitatively important. With mobility, workers absorb only 60%, on average, of negative occupation-specific wage shocks.
Risk-spreading and bet-hedging in insect population biology.

In evolutionary ecology, risk-spreading (i.e. bet-hedging) is the idea that unpredictably variable environments favor genotypes with lower variance in fitness at the cost of lower arithmetic mean fitness. Variance in fitness can be reduced by physiology or behavior that spreads risk of encountering an unfavorable environment over time or space. Such risk-spreading can be achieved by a single phenotype that avoids risks (conservative risk-spreading) or by phenotypic variation expressed by a single genotype (diversified risk-spreading). Across these categories, three types of risk-spreading can be usefully distinguished: temporal, metapopulation, and within-generation. Theory suggests that temporal and metapopulation risk-spreading may work under a broad range of population sizes, but within-generation risk-spreading appears to work only when populations are small. Although genetic polymorphisms have sometimes been treated as risk-spreading, the underlying mechanisms are different, and they often require different conditions for their evolution and thus are better treated separately. I review the types of evidence that could be used to test for risk-spreading and discuss evidence for risk-spreading in facultative diapause, migration polyphenism, spatial distribution of oviposition, egg size, and other miscellaneous traits. Although risk-spreading theory is voluminous and well developed in some ways, rarely has it been used to generate detailed, testable hypotheses about the evolution of risk-spreading. Furthermore, although there is evidence for risk-spreading, particularly in facultative diapause, I have been unable to find any definitive tests with unequivocal results showing that risk-spreading has been a major factor in the evolution of insect behaviors or life histories. To advance our understanding of risk-spreading in the wild, we need (a) explicit empirical models that predict levels of diversifying risk-spreading for several insect populations in several environments that vary in uncertainty, and (b) tests of these models using measurements of phenotypes and their fitnesses over several generations in each environment.
Delirium as a predictor of long-term cognitive impairment in survivors of critical illness

Objective:To test the hypothesis that duration of delirium in the intensive care unit is an independent predictor of long-term cognitive impairment after critical illness requiring mechanical ventilation. Design:Prospective cohort study. Setting:Medical intensive care unit in a large community hospital in the United States. Patients:Mechanically ventilated medical intensive care unit patients who were assessed daily for delirium while in the intensive care unit and who underwent comprehensive cognitive assessments 3 and 12 mos after discharge. Measurements and Main Results:Of 126 eligible patients, 99 survived ≥3 months after critical illness; long-term cognitive outcomes were obtained for 77 (78%) patients. Median age was 61 yrs, 51% were admitted with sepsis/acute respiratory distress syndrome, and median duration of delirium was 2 days. At 3-mo and 12-mo follow-up, 79% and 71% of survivors had cognitive impairment, respectively (with 62% and 36% being severely impaired). After adjusting for age, education, preexisting cognitive function, severity of illness, severe sepsis, and exposure to sedative medications in the intensive care unit, increasing duration of delirium was an independent predictor of worse cognitive performance—determined by averaging age-adjusted and education-adjusted T-scores from nine tests measuring seven domains of cognition—at 3-mo (p = .02) and 12-mo follow-up (p = .03). Duration of mechanical ventilation, alternatively, was not associated with long-term cognitive impairment (p = .20 and .58). Conclusions:In this study of mechanically ventilated medical intensive care unit patients, duration of delirium (which is potentially modifiable) was independently associated with long-term cognitive impairment, a common public health problem among intensive care unit survivors. (Crit Care Med 2010; 38:1513–1520
End-to-end real-time traffic scheduling in TDD-based wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we describe the formatting guidelines for ACM SIG Proceedings. Recently time division duplex based wireless mesh networks (TDD-based WMNs) are emerging as a crucial technology for wireless multihop networks and broadband wireless access (BWA). Supporting real-time traffic in TDD-based WMNs is difficult and one of the main challenges is to provide strict end-to-end time delay guarantee from source node to destination node. In this paper, the cross-layer framework is proposed considering routing schemes, queueing model and resource scheduling schemes. Furthermore, an end-to-end realtime traffic scheduling algorithm is proposed. In the algorithm, a number of control slots are reserved for transmitting real-time routing messages to guarantee delay requirements while data reservation is fulfilled during the process of routing path discovery. Numerical results show that the proposed scheduling algorithm achieves low time delay and can satisfy real-time delay requirements.
Inhibition of HCV replication by cyclophilin antagonists is linked to replication fitness and occurs by inhibition of membranous web formation.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Replication of hepatitis C virus (HCV) requires host cell factors, such as cyclophilin A (CypA). CypA binds to HCV's nonstructural protein (NS)5A to promote replication of viral RNA. CypA antagonists, such as cyclosporines, are potent inhibitors of HCV replication. NS2 modulates sensitivity of HCV to cyclosporines. We investigated why cyclosporines require NS2 to increase their inhibitory effect and how they block HCV replication. METHODS We determined replication fitness and sensitivity of various HCV replicons, containing or lacking NS2, to cyclosporine and other direct-acting antiviral agents. We also analyzed the effects of cyclosporine on membranous web formation by electron microscopy. RESULTS NS2-5B replicons of genotype 2a (JFH1), but not genotype 1b, had increased sensitivity to cyclosporine. This difference was lost with replication-attenuated NS3-5B JFH1 RNAs, showing that cyclosporine sensitivity is linked to reduced replication fitness of NS2-containing HCV RNAs. Fitness also determined sensitivity to a nucleoside analogue and an NS5A inhibitor, but not to telaprevir. Cyclosporine blocked de novo formation of the membranous web, but had little effect on established membranous replication factories. This block was prevented by cyclosporine resistance mutations in NS5A. CONCLUSIONS Cleavage at the NS2/3 junction is a rate-limiting step in replication of particular HCV isolates and determines their sensitivity to CypA inhibitors. These drugs target de novo formation of the membranous web and RNA replication.
Scattering From Axisymmetric Dielectric Scatterers: A Hybrid Method of Solving the Surface Integral Equations

Scattering of EM waves from homogeneous dielectric scatterers is formulated in terms of two surface integral equations, for the components of the total electric and magnetic fields that are tangential to the surface of the scatterer. Two equivalent systems of such equations may be used, corresponding to the two types of Maue's integral equations for perfectly conducting scatterers. The appearance of surface divergence terms of both components in the dielectric case, in addition to the unknowns themselves, causes serious complications when the method of solution is based on some kind of division of the scatterer surface into patches; these complications become particularly apparent in the process of evaluating the locally dominant self-patch contribution to the surface integrals. They can be effectively avoided if a third equivalent system of surface integral equations is used, arising from a proper summation of the original two systems; then, the two singular Green functions that appear in the surface divergence terms are replaced by their non-singular difference and this, followed by a further transformation of these critical terms, results in the complete elimination of the surface divergence terms. The self-patch contribution can then be evaluated analytically and this helps reduce the size of the matrix, via which the values of the tangential field components at the patch centers are calculated. Scatterers of considerable electrical size, for instance spheres with ka of the order of 10 or 15, can then be treated with moderate size matrices. Numerical results for spheres, sphere-cone-spheres and other shapes are obtained and compared with results from other methods. Apart from spheres, results for other shapes are very rare and limited to small sizes in the literature.
Directing human attention with pointing

Pointing is a typical means of directing a human's attention to a specific object or event. Robot pointing behaviours that direct the attention of humans are critical for human-robot interaction, communication and collaboration. In this paper, we describe an experiment undertaken to investigate human comprehension of a humanoid robot's pointing behaviour. We programmed a NAO robot to point to markers on a large screen and asked untrained human subjects to identify the target of the robots pointing gesture. We found that humans are able to identify robot pointing gestures. Human subjects achieved higher levels of comprehension when the robot pointed at objects closer to the gesturing arm and when they stood behind the robot. In addition, we found that subjects performance improved with each assessment task. These new results can be used to guide the design of effective robot pointing behaviours that enable more effective robot to human communication and improve human-robot collaborative performance.
Color flow doppler ultrasonography: Comparison with peripheral arteriography for the investigation of peripheral vascular disease

Using arteriography as the gold standard, Color flow Doppler ultrasonography was evaluated with regard to its ability to detect peripheral vascular occlusive disease and hemodynamically significant stenosis in patients having peripheral arteriography. One hundred legs in 51 patients were compared at seven arterial segments for disease. Color flow Doppler ultrasonography correctly detected 84 occluded segments, and demonstrated a sensitivity and specificity for patency vs occlusive disease of 95% and 99%, respectively. One hundred and thirty hemodynamically significant lesions (occlusions plus significant stenosis) were correctly identified with color flow Doppler ultrasonography, with a sensitivity and specificity of 92% and 97%, respectively.
Validity and reliability of the Fagerstrom Test for Cigarette Dependence in a sample of Arabic speaking UK-resident Yemeni khat chewers.

BACKGROUND The Fagerstrom Test for Cigarette Dependence (FTCD) (formally FTND) is widely used for measuring physical dependence on nicotine. OBJECTIVE To explore the cross cultural validity and reliability of FTCD amongst Arabic speaker cigarette consumers who chew khat leaf, a stimulant green leaf. METHODS The psychometric properties of the FTCD were assessed in a subsample (91 regular cigarette smokers) of purposively selected 204 UK-resident Yemeni khat chewers recruited during random visits to khat sale outlets. Data were collected via a structured face-to-face interview. Data analyses included descriptive tests and factor analysis. RESULTS Two factors were obtained by a principle axis factor analysis and these were termed as urgency of restoring the level of nicotine after abstinence during sleeping and maintaining the level of nicotine during waking. The internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha coefficient) of the whole FTCD is low (.68) as well as for the two subscales (.60) and (.62) respectively. CONCLUSION The psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the FTCD scale in this sample of Yemeni khat chewers who smoked regularly confirmed what has been established in other cultural settings. The findings of this study have yet to be cross validated amongst other appropriately representative sample of Arabic speakers.