Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toxicological studies of aqueous root extract of Euphorbia lateriflora (Schum and Thonn) in rats

The effect of administration of graduated dose of aqueous root of Euphorbia lateriflora on ALT, AST, ALP, bilirubin, total protein, creatinine and urea in rats was determined to ascertain the toxic effects on the liver and kidney. There was a significantly higher (p<0.05) ALT activity and significantly lower urea level in group administered with 100 mg/kg of aqueous root extract compared to the control. There was a significantly higher (p<0.05) ALT, AST, and level of bilirubin in group administered with 250 mg/kg aqueous root extract compared to the control. The result suggest a possible hepatotoxic effect of root extract of Euphorbia lateriflora after administration of 100 mg/kg and 250 mg/kg, there was no possible kidney malfunction. The result of the oral acute toxicity study shown that Euphorbia lateriflora have oral LD50 above 5000 mg/kg. Histopathological lesions were observed in liver and kidney after acute toxicity study. Keyword: ALT: Alanine aminotransferase, AST: Aspartate aminotransferase and ALP: Alkaline phosphatase.
DNA for nano-bio scale computation of chemical formalisms using Higher Order Logic (HOL) and analysis using an interdisciplinary approach

Bio-molecular computing, 'computations performed by bio-molecules', is already challenging traditional approaches to computation both theoretically and technologically. Often placed within the wider context ofbio-inspiredor 'natural' or even 'unconventional' computing, the study of natural and artificial molecular computations is adding to our understanding of biology, physical sciences and computer science well beyond the framework of existing design and implementation paradigms. In this introduction, We wish to outline the current scope of the field and assemble some basic arguments that, bio-molecular computation is of central importance to computer science, physical sciences and biology using HOL - Higher Order Logic. HOL is used as the computational tool in our R&D work. DNA was analyzed as a chemical computing engine, in our effort to develop novel formalisms to understand the molecular scale bio-chemical computing behavior using HOL. In our view, our focus is one of the pioneering efforts in this promising domain of nano-bio scale chemical information processing dynamics.
The LOBI Integral System Test Facility Experimental Programme

The LOBI project has been carried out in the framework of the European Commission Reactor Safety Research Programme in close collaboration with institutional and/or industrial research organizations of EC member countries. The primary objective of the research programme was the generation of an experimental data base for the assessment of the predictive capabilities of thermal-hydraulic system codes used in pressurised water reactor safety analysis. Within this context, experiments have been conducted in the LOBI integral system test facility designed, constructed, and operated (1979–1991) at the Ispra Site of the Joint Research Centre. This paper provides a historical perspective and summarizes major achievements of the research programme which has represented an effective approach to international collaboration in the field of reactor safety research and development. Emphasis is also placed on knowledge management aspects of the acquired experimental data base and on related online open access/retrieval user functionalities.
Parallel Algorithm for Computing

We describe a fast algorithm that ﬁnds a maximal vertex-induced (resp., edge-induced) subgraph of degree at most $k$ for a graph with maximum degree $ \Delta$ for $k \geq 0$ (resp., $k \geq 1$ ). These algorithms run in $O( \log^{*}n)$ time for constant degree graphs using the coloring algorithm given by Goldberg et al.
THE STUDY OF OPTICAL GAIN FOR TERAHERTZ QUANTUM CASCADE LASER USING DENSITY MATRIX METHOD

Terahertz (THz) quantum cascade lasers (QCL) are currently increasing in popularity. It is expected to become the main source of emerging terahertz radiation technology and applications. However to produce the device within the application specification is costly and time consuming. This is because the manufacturing process of the superlattice growth and the device processing and testing are long and expensive processes. Thus a prediction tool is needed to overcome the problems in designing and producing THz QCL within the needed optical expectation. The density matrix method is used to calculate the performance of this device electronically and optically. The result obtained was compared to the experimental result conducted by previous researchers. The calculation result showed that the gain is 20 when the population inversion occurs at threshold current density of 400 A cm -2 . Meanwhile a negative gain or loss occurs below 350 A cm -2 . As a conclusion, it is demonstrated that this method has a capability to explain the transport phenomena as well as to predict the performance of the THz QCL device design.
Modeling and Control of a Marine Current Turbine Driven Doubly-Fed Induction Generator

This paper deals with the modeling and the control of a variable speed DFIG-based marine current turbine with and without tidal current speed sensor. The proposed MPPT control strategy relies on the resource and the marine turbine models that were validated by experimental data. The sensitivity of the proposed control strategy is analyzed regarding the swell effect as it is considered as the most disturbing one for the resource model. Tidal current data from the Raz de Sein (Brittany, France) are used to run simulations of a 7.5-kW prototype over various flow regimes. Simulation results are presented and fully analyzed.
Sophistication and the Antecedents of Whites' Racial Policy Attitudes: Racism, Ideology, and Affirmative Action in America

A number of researchers have argued that the effects of prejudice on the racial policy attitudes and general political beliefs of white Americans may be restricted to the poorly educated and politically unsophisticated. In contrast, rather than being motivated by prejudice, the racial policy attitudes and ideological values of the politically so- phisticated white Americans should be more firmly informed and mo- tivated by the tolerant values at the heart of American political culture. These values include such things as individualism, notions of fair play, and devotion to the principle of equality of opportunity. We tested this hypothesis using white respondents from the 1986 and 1992 National Election Studies. Our evidence generally indicated that racial policy attitudes and political ideology were more powerfully associated with ideologies of racial dominance and superiority among politically so- phisticated white Americans than among political unsophisticated white Americans. Moreover, even among the sophisticated, we found that various forms of egalitarianism predicted support for-rather than op- position to-affirmative action and that support for equal opportunity is not uniformly distributed across the political spectrum.
Micro-blog Query Expansion Based on Lexical Time Distribution

Zheng Xiao Department of Computer Science and Technology, Chengdu Neusoft University, Chengdu 611844, China Abstract—This paper presents a method of query expansion based on lexical time distribution for micro-blog search. Similarity of distribution is used to measure the correlation between the extended words and the query words. A query model based on the time distribution of the words is established. The query expansion method is unable to accurately estimate the expansion words due to the short micro-blog content. The real graph on the evaluation data is retrieved by the TREC2011 and TREC2012 micro-blog. The results show that the model can effectively improve the performance of micro-blog search extension vocabulary query based on time distribution, not only significantly outperforms the classical content based query expansion model, which is better than other time using the method of query expansion.
Improved Sampling-based Alpha Matting in Images and Video

Foreground extraction technology plays an important role in image and video processing tasks. It has been widely used in various industries. To better describe the overlap relationship between foreground and background, alpha channel is introduced. It reveals the opacity property of foreground objects. Thus, fully extracting a foreground object requires determining the alpha values for pixels, also known as extracting an alpha matte. In this thesis, we propose an improved sampling-based alpha matting algorithm, which is capable of generating high quality matting results. By analyzing the weakness of previous approaches, we optimize the sampling process and consider the cost of each sample pair to avoid missing any good samples. The good performance is demonstrated even for complex images. On the other hand, extracting foreground objects from video sequences is a more challenging task since it has higher demands on accuracy and efficiency. Previous approaches usually require a significant amount of user input and the results still suffer from inaccuracy. In this thesis, we successfully extend our algorithm to video sequences and let it run in an automatic fashion. Adaptive trimap, which is vital for matting, can be automatically generated and properly propagated in this system. Our method not only reduces the user interference but also guarantees the matting quality.
Effects of Beta-alanine Supplementation and High Intensity Interval training among Recreationally Active Females

Beta-alanine is a non-essential amino acid that when combined with L-histidine forms the dipeptide carnosine. Recent research has shown that supplementary intake of beta-alanine can substantially increase carnosine content in muscle fibers and has been associated with attenuating fatigue and enhancing high intensity exercise performance. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of 4 weeks of beta-alanine supplementation combined with high intensity interval training (HIIT) on indices of aerobic and anaerobic performance, rowing performance, and body composition. Twenty-one recreationally active females (22.2 ± 2.2 yrs.) participated in a double blind, placebo controlled study and were randomly assigned to one of 3 groups: betaalanine (BA, n = 8), placebo (PLA, n = 7), or control (CON, n = 6). Prior to and following 4 weeks of supplementation all groups had anthropometric measurements done and body composition was determined using dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA). Participants also performed a graded exercise test on the rowing ergometer to determine VO2 peak, ventilatory threshold (VT), and time to exhaustion (TTE). Additionally, participants came back to the lab to complete a 1,000 m time trial (TT) to determine time for completion and peak power output (PPO). During the 4 week intervention the BA and PLA groups completed a 7 minute 1: 1 (work: recovery) HIIT protocol that was a pre-determined workload whilst consuming either 6.4 g/day of BA or PLA. All three groups showed significant improvements from pre to post testing in VO2 peak, TTE, VT, TT, PPO and a reduction in total BF% in arms (p ≤ 0.05). While several of the variables had significant interactions between groups: VO2 peak, TTE, TT, PPO, BF% legs, and BF% trunk, (p ≤ 0.05), post hoc testing revealed that peak power output was the only the variable that showed a significant difference between the BA and PLA groups as compared to the CON group during post testing (p = 0.00). The results of this study suggest that HIIT can enhance measures of aerobic capacity and increase PPO, while beta-alanine supplementation did not seem to have much of an effect on training. INDEX WORDS: Carnosine, Beta-alanine, Rowing, Time trial, Peak power output, Aerobic capacity, Ventilatory threshold EFFECTS OF BETA-ALANINE SUPPLEMENTATION AND HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING AMONG RECREATIONALLY ACTIVE FEMALES by MARY ELIZABETH YARBROUGH B.S., Georgia Southern University, 2013 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTERS OF SCIENCE Statesboro, Georgia
Comparison the Effect of Different Treatments for Breaking Seed Dormancy of Citrullus colocynthis

Citrullus colocynthis is one of the major medic plants and it has many medical values. This plant adopts in desert regions and specifically in sand dunes. Forasmuch as seeds of this plant germinate not easily, so in this research tried to study about effect of different treatments for breaking seed dormancy, germination stimulus and growth of Citrullus colocynthis seeds. The treatments were include sulfuric acid 98% in 20 and 40 minutes time intervals, potassium nitrate 0.2% within 72 hours, hot water in 90 centigrade degree during 10 minutes and scratching by sand paper. For comparing this treatments and normal germination is used distilled water for control. Experiments were performed in a completely randomized design with four repetitions and six treatments. Results of variance analysis and mean comparison showed that there are significant statistical differences (0.01 levels) between treatments for percentage and velocity of germination, length of the Root and Shoot. The maximum percentage and velocity of germination and length of the Shoot obtain in scratching by sand paper treatment and results of other treatments were in lower level than this one. According to got results determined that scratching is the most suitable method for dominance on seed dormancy of Citrullus colocynthis species.
Investment style positioning of UK unit trusts

We investigate the investment style positioning of UK equity unit trusts (mutual funds) over the 24-year period from 1987 to 2010 and assess if fund manager claims to follow a particular style strategy are evidenced in practice. Generally, UK unit trusts do not, in fact, consistently track declared styles but subject their funds to style switching or rotation. Nor do funds switch to become simple index trackers, as has widely been reported, but exhibit a mix of behaviour that we refer to as ‘market-momentum styling’. Our contribution is to offer a coherent, end-to-end picture of the evolution of investment styles over an economic cycle. In so doing we evidence that fund style positioning is subject to rotation and becomes subordinated to past portfolio performance or style momentum. Even this result is conditional as we go on to demonstrate that style investment is very likely to be driven by broader economic conditions, thereby creating market-momentum styling by default. This is arguably not a style at all and calls into question the intent behind fund ‘strategies’.
Planning of Autonomous Multi-agent Intersection

In this paper, we propose a traffic management system with agents acting on behalf autonomous vehicle at the crossroads. Alternatively to existing solutions based on usage of semiautonomous control systems with the control unit, proposed in this paper algorithm apply the principles of decentralized multi-agent control. Agents during their collaboration generate intersection plan and determinate the optimal order of road intersection for a given criterion based on the exchange of information about them and their environment. The paper contains optimization criteria for possible routes selection and experiments that perform in order to estimate the proposed model. Experiment results show that this model can significantly reduce traffic density compared to the traditional traffic management systems. Moreover, the proposed algorithm efficiency increases with road traffic density. Furthermore, the availability of control unit in the system significantly reduces the negative impact of possible failures and hacker attacks.
Multi-mycotoxin analysis by UHPLC-HESI-MS/MS: a preliminary survey of Serbian wheat flour.

The aim of this paper is to present a high throughput method for the determination of eleven Fusarium, Aspergillus and Penicillium mycotoxins in wheat flour from Serbia. Mycotoxins were extracted from samples by one-step solvent extraction (acetonitrile-water (86:14, v/v)) without any cleanup and directly injected into an ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography/heated electrospray ionization-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HESI-MS/MS) system. The chromatographic separation was achieved in only 4 min. Quantification was performed by external calibration with matrix-matched standard solutions. The method recovery, linearity, limit of detection (LOD), and limit of quantification (LOQ) were determined. The developed method has been applied to the analysis of samples of wheat flour collected from Serbian local markets.
Extruded small-core bismuth oxide glass holey fibres

We report our progress on the fabrication and characterisation of highly nonlinear bismuth oxide glass holey fibres. The measured losses for these fibres were ~3 dB/m at 1.55 µm, and the effective nonlinearity of the smallest core fibre was as high as 1100 W at the same wavelength.
Coherent control of ultracold polar molecules

This thesis presents the development of a toolbox for the coherent control of ultracold polar molecules. Such systems of molecules promise the creation of long-lived, highly dipolar quantum gases with applications spanning the fields of quantum state controlled chemistry, quantum information, quantum simulation, and precision measurement. However, the addition of vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom leads to molecular systems being significantly more complex than their widely used atomic counterparts. In this work we demonstrate full control of the quantum state down to the hyperfine level of an optically trapped sample of ultracold bosonic 87Rb133 Cs molecules, and exploit that control to begin an investigation into the collision processes which take place in an ultracold molecular gas. We create a sample of up to ∼ 4000 optically trapped molecules in their rovibronic and hyperfine ground state. We characterise the molecules by measuring their temperature, binding energy, and molecule-frame electric dipole moment. We perform spectroscopy of the first rotationally excited state with hyperfine state resolution using microwaves to determine accurate values of rotational and hyperfine coupling constants. We use coherent π pulses to perform complete transfer population between selected hyperfine levels of the ground, first-excited, and second-excited rotational states. We investigate the effect of the off-resonant light of our optical dipole trap on the rotational and hyperfine structure of the molecules. Through a combination of high-resolution microwave spectroscopy and parametric heating measurements, we characterise the polarisability of the 87Rb133Cs molecule. We demonstrate that coupling between neighbouring hyperfine states manifests in rich structure with many avoided crossings in any rotational state other than the ground state. This coupling may be tuned by rotating the polarisation of the linearly polarised trapping light. Finally, we study the lifetime of polar bosonic 87Rb133Cs molecules in our 3D optical dipole trap. We examine the lifetime of the molecules as a function of dipole trap intensity, magnetic field, and hyperfine and rotational state. Despite the chemical stability of the 87Rb133 Cs molecule, we observe lifetimes of ∼1 s corresponding to 2-body decay rates close to the universal limit.
Molecular Evolution and Positive Darwinian Selection of the Gymnosperm Photosynthetic Rubisco Enzyme

Although it was found that gymnosperm rbcL of three orders evolves under Darwinian positive selection, it is not clear whether rbcL in other gymnosperm lineages is also subject to positive selection. In this study, eleven gymnosperm groups, representing 393 species at various evolutionary levels, were used to illustrate the molecular adaptation and evolutionary dynamics of gene divergence in rbcLs. rbcL sequences were amplified from 21 Taxaceae and 10 Cephalotaxaceae species. rbcL sequences of other species were retrieved from GenBank. Selective influences were investigated using standard dN/dS ratio methods and more sensitive techniques investigating the amino acid property changes resulting from nonsynonymous replacements in a phylogenetic context. Analyses revealed the presence of positive selection in rbcLs of all gymnosperm groups. Twenty most often positively selected amino acid sites were characterized. In Taxaceae and Cephalotaxaceae, seven amino acid properties, equilibrium constant of ionization -COOH as the most significant, were found to be influenced by destabilizing positive selection. Some amino acid sites relating to these properties were found to be involved in active site, intradimer interaction, dimer-dimer interaction, and interactions with Rubisco small subunits. Moreover, removing amino acid sites that are under positive selection has significant effect on the bootstrap values of phylogenetic reconstruction. Our results suggest that the conservative rbcL evolves under positive selection in gymnosperm lineages. Several regions of rbcL have experienced molecular adaptation which fine-tunes photosynthetic Rubisco performance.
Exploring Sufficiency Conditions for Entrepreneurial Environment and Counseling Activities on Entrepreneurial Performance

This empirical study aims to explore sufficiency conditions for Entrepreneurial Resources and Counseling Activities on Entrepreneurial Performance. The study collected 111 questionnaires from entrepreneurs in Taiwan and applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) to explore the sufficiency conditions for entrepreneurial environment and counseling activities on entrepreneurial performance. In a regression analysis, there was no significant finding regarding the effects of entrepreneurial counseling on entrepreneurial performance. However, the fs/QCA analysis results show there is high causal relevance of entrepreneurial environment, entrepreneurial counseling and a combination of these two on entrepreneurial performance. Specifically, when entrepreneurial environment are available, the results (Y) of entrepreneurial performance are probably yielded. When entrepreneurial counseling is available, entrepreneurial performance can be created. Finally, when a combination of entrepreneurial environment and entrepreneurial counseling are available, entrepreneurial performance can be yielded. This study suggests that fs/QCA is a useful method to provide a calculus of compatibility and thus to contribute to an enhanced understanding of entrepreneurial environment and counseling activities on entrepreneurial performance.
MULTI-OBJECTIVE SCHEDULING PROBLEM IN A THREE-STAGE PRODUCTION SYSTEM

A three-stage production system is considered in this paper. There are two stages to fabricate and provide the parts and an assembly stage to assemble the parts and complete the products in this system. Suppose that a number of products of different kinds are ordered. Each product is assembled with a set of several parts. At first the parts are produced in the first stage with parallel machines and then they are controlled and provided in the second stage and finally the parts are assembled in an assembly stage to complete the products. Two objective functions are considered: (1) minimizing the completion time of all products (makespan), and (2) minimizing the sum of earliness and tardiness of all products ( . Since this type of problem is NP-hard, a new multiobjective algorithm is designed for searching local Pareto-optimal frontier for the problem. To validate the performance of the proposed algorithm, various test problems are designed and the reliability of the proposed algorithm, based on some comparison metrics, is compared with two prominent multi-objective genetic algorithms, i.e. NSGA-II and SPEA-II. The computational results show that the performance of the proposed algorithms is good in both efficiency and effectiveness criteria.