Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECT OF TIMING OF ORAL MELOXICAM ADMINISTRATION ON PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES IN CALVES AFTER DEHORNING WITH LOCAL ANESTHESIA by KELLIE ALLEN

Dehorning is a painful husbandry procedure that is commonly performed in dairy calves. Parenteral meloxicam combined with local anesthesia mitigates the physiological and behavioral effects of dehorning in calves. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of timing of oral meloxicam administration on physiological responses in calves after dehorning. Thirty Holstein bull calves 810 weeks of age (28-70 kg) were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: placebo-treated control group (CONT) (n=10), calves receiving meloxicam administered orally (1 mg/kg) in powdered milk replacer 12 h prior to cautery dehorning (MEL-PRE) (n=10) and calves receiving meloxicam administered as an oral bolus (1 mg/kg) at the time of dehorning (MEL-POST) (n=10). Following cautery dehorning, blood samples were collected to measure cortisol, substance P (SP), haptoglobin, ex-vivo prostaglandin E2 (PgE2) production after lipopolysaccharide stimulation and meloxicam concentrations. Maximum ocular temperature (MOT) and mechanical nociceptive threshold (MNT) was also assessed. Data were analyzed using non-compartmental pharmacokinetic analysis and repeated measures ANOVA models. Mean peak meloxicam concentrations were 3.61 ± 0 . 21 μg/mL and 3.27 ± 0.14 μg/mL with average elimination half-lives of 38.62 ± 5.87 h and 35.81 ± 6.26 h in the MEL-PRE and MEL-POST groups respectively. Serum cortisol concentrations were lower in meloxicam-treated calves compared with control calves at 4 h post-dehorning (P=0.0004). SP concentrations were significantly higher in control calves compared with meloxicam-treated calves at 120 h after dehorning (P=0.038). PgE2 concentrations were lower in meloxicam-treated calves compared with control calves (P=0.001). MNT was higher in control calves at 1 h after dehorning (P=0.02) but meloxicam-treated calves tended to have a higher MNT at 6 h after dehorning (P=0.07). There was no effect of timing of meloxicam administration on plasma cortisol concentrations (P= 0.69), SP concentrations (P=0.86), haptoglobin concentrations (P=0.86), MOT (P=0.90), or MNT (P=0.99). However, PgE2 concentrations in MEL-PRE calves were similar to CONT calves after 12h post-dehorning, while MEL-POST calves had lower PgE2 concentrations for 3 d post dehorning. These findings suggest that meloxicam reduced cortisol, SP and PgE2 after dehorning but only PgE2 production was significantly affected by the timing of meloxicam administration.
Differential relationships of hope and optimism with adjustment in breast cancer patients

vii Rock, Emily E. M.S., Purdue University, December 2010. Differential Relationships of Hope and Optimism with Adjustment in Breast Cancer Patients. Major Professor: Kevin L. Rand, Ph.D. Psychological and marital adjustment are two important outcomes for patients with breast cancer. Personality traits, such as hope and optimism, may influence adjustment to adversity. It was hypothesized that patient and partner hope and optimism would differentially predict patient marital and psychological adjustment. Measured variable path analysis with 56 patient-partner dyads found that patient and partner hope equally predict patient marital adjustment, while there was a trend for patient optimism predicting patient psychological adjustment. These results suggest that hope and optimism differentially predict adjustment outcomes, and that the partner also has a role in the patients’ adjustment. Regression analyses were used to examine the hypothesis that discrepancies in patient and partner personality would result in maladjustment. No interaction effects were found predicting patient psychological adjustment. Three out of six interactions were found for patient marital adjustment. These analyses suggest that complementary personality styles among couples coping with breast cancer may result in optimal patient marital adjustment.
Anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of the stem bark extract and fractions of Ficus exasperata Vahl. (Moraceae)

Ficus exasperata is used in various ethnomedicines for the treatment of pain, inflammatory diseases, wounds and abscesses. Different solvent extracts of the stem bark of F. exasperata, which is rarely studied, were tested for anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. Anti-inflammatory activity of the extract was evaluated using the carrageenan induced foot pad eodema model in seven day old chicks. In the test for antioxidant activity, a DPPH radical scavenging assay was performed. Antimicrobial evaluation of the extract was done using the agar well diffusion and micro-dilution assays. The hydro-alcoholic stem bark extract (30-300mg/kg, p.o) dose dependently inhibited carrageenan induced foot eodema with maximum inhibition of 68.57±3.342% (300mg/kg) which was comparable to that of diclofenac (71.56±3.43% at 100mg/kg) and dexamethasone (74.53±5.21% at 3mg/kg). The extract also showed antibacterial activity against both gram positive and negative organisms. The most sensitive pathogenic strains inhibited by the extract were Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhi, Klebsiella pneumonae and Staphylococus aureus with respective zones of inhibition of 14.33±0.33, 12.33±0.33, 17.33±0.67 and 15.0±0.58mm. The MIC’s ranged between 250-1000µg/ml. The lowest MIC of 250µg/ml was recorded for Klebsiella pneumonae. The anti-inflammatory activities and antimicrobial activities of the stem bark were highest in it chloroform fraction. The activities shown by the extract in this study may be due to the presence of phytosterols, triterpenes, tannins, flavonoids and glycosides which were found in the phytochemical screening of the powdered stem bark. The present study validates the traditional uses of the plant in the treatment of inflammation and infectious diseases.
Dot-ELISA Affinity Test: An Easy, Low-Cost Method to Estimate Binding Activity of Monoclonal Antibodies

Selecting the “right” monoclonal antibody (mAb) for an immunoaffinity-based application can be tricky, as many mAb producers offer a wide range of mAb clones against molecular structures of interest. Since there are significant differences in the quality of mAb clones, and particularly in their binding activity, an easy method for quick and low-cost comparison of various mAb clones was developed. The dot-ELISA affinity test is a simple, versatile and instrumentally no demanding technique, since it requires no expensive equipment (such as an ELISA reader or chemiluminescence/fluorescence imaging system) and can be performed in any biochemical laboratory. This method is based on a previously described dot-ELISA technique that is improved with a chaotropic step using different concentrations of ammonium thiocyanate in the range 0-2 M. In this work, the dot-ELISA affinity test was optimized on Aβ peptide as antigen and anti-Aβ mAb. Such protocol was then applied to a panel of eight anti-EpCAM (epithelial cell adhesion molecule) mAbs which should be subsequently used for preparation of magnetic immunosorbent to capture circulating tumor cells (CTCs).
A Joint Routing and Channel Assignment Scheme for Hybrid Wireless-Optical Broadband-Access Networks

In this paper, we investigate mechanisms for improving the quality of communications in wireless-optical broadband access networks (WOBAN), which present a promising solution to meet the growing needs for capacity of access networks. This is achieved by using multiple gateways and multi-channel operation along with a routing protocol that effectively reduces the effect of radio interference. We present a joint route and channel assignment scheme with the objective of maximizing the end-to-end probability of success and minimizing the end-to-end delay for all active upstream traffic in the WOBAN. Performance evaluations of the proposed scheme are presented using ns-2 simulations, which show that the proposed scheme improves the network throughput up to three times and reduces the traffic delay by six times in presence of 12 channels and four network interface cards (NICs), compared to a single channel scenario.
Text Normalization for Bangla, Khmer, Nepali, Javanese, Sinhala and Sundanese Text-to-Speech Systems

Text normalization is the process of converting non-standard words (NSWs) such as numbers, and abbreviations into standard words so that their pronunciations can be derived by a typical means (usually lexicon lookups). Text normalization is, thus, an important component of any text-to-speech (TTS) sys-tem. Without text normalization, the resulting voice may sound unintelligent. In this paper, we describe an approach to develop rule-based text normalization. We also describe our open source repository containing text normalization grammars and tests for Bangla, Javanese, Khmer, Nepali, Sinhala and Sundanese. Finally, we present a recipe for utilizing the grammars in a TTS system.
Multinational Enterprises and Globalization of R&D: A Study of U.S-based Firms

This paper examines patterns and determinants of overseas R&D expenditure of US-based manufacturing MNEs using a new panel dataset over the period 1990-2001. It is found that inter-country differences in R&D intensity of operation of US MNE affiliates are fundamentally determined by the domestic market size, overall R&D capability and cost of hiring R&D personnel. The impact of domestic market orientation of affiliates on R&D propensity varies among countries depending on their stage of global economic integration. Intellectual property protection seems to matter largely for mature economies with complementary endowments. There is no evidence to suggest that financial incentives have a significant impact on inter-country differences in R&D intensity when controlled for other relevant variables. Nor is there a statistically significant relationship between the size of the capital stock of MNEs and R&D intensity of their operation across countries. Overall, our findings serve as a caution against paying too much attention by host country governments on turning MNEs affiliates into technology creators as part of their foreign direct investment policy.
Long memory in surface air temperature: detection, modeling, and application to weather derivative valuation

Three multidecadal daily time series of mid-latitude near-surface air temperature are analysed. Long-range dependence can be detected in all 3 time series with 95% statistical signifi- cance. It is shown that fractionally integrated time-series models can accurately and parsimoniously reproduce the autocovariance structure of the observed data. The concept of weather derivatives is introduced and problems surrounding their pricing are discussed. It is shown that the fractionally integrated time-series models provide much more accurate pricing as compared with traditional autoregressive models employing a similar number of parameters. Finally, it is suggested that a sim- ple explanation for the presence of long memory in the time series may be given in terms of aggre- gation of several short-memory processes.
Pay Equity Sensitivity and Person-Environment Fit

Most previous studies of Person-Environment fit have failed to use objective measures of the work environment that are independent of the person examined.  This study aims to further develop and improve the operationalisation of Person-Environment fit by investigating objective fit and by marrying concepts from Equity Theory (Adams, 1965). Equity sensitivity was measured as a personality trait by the 16PF (Cattel et al 1987) and group size (obtained from company records) was the objective measure of the work environment. On the basis of data from 257 shop-floor workers in a factory in Wales, UK, results of hierarchical multiple regression generally indicated that the relationship between sensitivity and pay satisfaction are moderated by group size such that the relationship is positive in small groups and negative in large groups.
Biotransformation of Rutin to Quercetin by Microorganisms

Quercetin is a kind of flavonoid drugs, which is produced mainly by direct extracting from Flos Sophorae or acid hydrolysing from rutin. In this study, microorganism strains that can transfer rutin to quercetin were isolated from soil, screened by TLC and re-screened by HPLC. As a result, strain D97 with the highest transformation ability was obtained. The hydrolyze enzyme was intracellular enzyme and transformation rate was 75.6% within a system comprising of 50mg wet cells in 4mL of 0.3% rutin solution and transformed for 72hr at 25°C. Strain D97 was identified as Pseudomonas sp. by integrating the 16S rDNA phylogeny analysis result and a variety of morphological, physiological and biochemical features.
The role of sport-specific play and practice during childhood in the development of adolescent Finnish team sport athletes

This study sought to understand the role of sport-specific play and practice in the development of adolescent team sport athletes in the Finnish sports development system. Participants were male, 15-year-old soccer (n = 141), ice hockey (n = 204), and basketball (n = 96) players, divided into three groups based on the amount of sport-specific play and practice experienced during childhood. Data were collected with sport-specific inventories of practice history, tactical skills, psychological skills, and sport-specific skill test. Results showed that athletes with more sport-specific play and practice during childhood had more sport-specific play and practice during adolescence, better technical, tactical, and psychological skills, and were more likely to be selected for national youth teams at the age of 15. Data highlighted the importance of sport-specific play and practice during childhood in the development of team sport performers in the Finnish athlete development system.
Past, present and futute of cyclodextrin research

Abstract The macrocyclic cyclodextrins (enzymic conversion products of starch) were discovered in 1891, and the structures were elucidated in the mid-1930s. Their industrial significance become obvious in the 1970s, and by now thousand of tons of the three cyclodextrins (alpha-, beta-, and gamma-CD) and of their chemical derivatives and inclusion complexes are produced industrially. The outer surface of these doughnut-shaped molecules is hydrophilic, but they possess an axial open cavity, which is of hydrophobic character and capable of including other apolar molecules (or their moiety) in case of geometric compatibility. This is the essence of molecular encapsulation by inclusion complex formation.
DESIGN FOR PCS ANTENNA BASED ON WIBRO-MIMO

This paper presents a design of wireless broadband (WiBro)-multi-input multi-output (MIMO) and personal communica- tion service (PCS) antenna for practical mobile phone. To decrease the mutual coupling of WiBro-MIMO antenna, it is considered on the projected ground structure. In addition, two type PCS antennas for multi-function mobile phone are designed. The proposed antennas are well resonated in each operating frequency band. The measured band- widths of 3-dimensional (3D) and 2-dimensional (2D) PCS antennas are 110 MHz and 130 MHz below −10 dB, respectively. The isolations between WiBro-MIMO and two PCS antenna are below −15 dBby 2D antenna type and −20 dBby 3D antenna type, respectively. The printed IFA has shown a better performance than modified planner IFA with spiral and shorting strip.
Collaborative filtering based on hybrid community detection

In this paper, a new collaborative filtering method for item recommendation is proposed. Item ratings and friendship information are combined to detect communities of users and define similarity among them. Friendships and items are encoded as hyperedges of a hypergraph of users from which communities are detected. The algorithm is tested on a real-world dataset from an online recommendation platform including social network features. It is shown to perform well both when the ratings in the training set are densely or sparsely distributed (hence dealing with the cold start problem). It also tends to recommend a greater diversity of items than traditional collaborative filtering
Timing analysis for 20 millisecond pulsars in the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array

We present timing models for 20 millisecond pulsars in the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array. The precision of the parameter measurements in these models has been improved over earlier results by using longer data sets and modelling the non-stationary noise. We describe a new noise modelling procedure and demonstrate its effectiveness using simulated data. Our methodology includes the addition of annual dispersion measure (DM) variations to the timing models of some pulsars. We present the first significant parallax measurements for PSRs J1024-0719, J1045-4509, J1600-3053, J1603-7202, and J1730-2304, as well as the first significant measurements of some post-Keplerian orbital parameters in six binary pulsars, caused by kinematic effects. Improved Shapiro delay measurements have resulted in much improved pulsar mass measurements, particularly for PSRs J0437-4715 and J1909-3744 with M-p = 1.44 +/- 0.07 and 1.47 +/- 0.03 M-circle dot, respectively. The improved orbital period-derivative measurement for PSR J0437-4715 results in a derived distance measurement at the 0.16 per cent level of precision, D = 156.79 +/- 0.25 pc, one of the most fractionally precise distance measurements of any star to date.
Experimental investigation on phase transformation type micropump

The phase transformation type micropump without moving parts was experimentally studied in this note. To analyze the pumping mechanism of the micropump, a simplified physical model was presented. The experimental results indicate that the pump characteristic is mainly dependent on the heating and cooling conditions. For a given system, there exist an optimal combination of heating current and switch time with which the flow rate reaches maximum. Comparing with the natural cooling, the forced convective cooling needs larger heating current to obtain the same flow rate. In our experiments, the maximum flow rate is 33 μL/min when the inner diameter of the micropump is 200 μm, and the maximum pumping pressure reaches over 20 kPa. The theoretical analysis shows that the pumping mechanism of the micropump mainly lies in the large density difference between liquid and gas phases and the effect of gas chocking.
Effect of Medications, Dietary Supplements and Psychosocial Interventions in Burning Mouth Syndrome Patients: A Systematic Review with Meta-analyses

The objective of this review is to determine the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy, oral and topical medications as well as dietary supplements to reduce pain in burning mouth syndrome patients (BMS). Methods: The Cochrane Library, Medline via PubMed and Web of Science were searched. Eligible studies were limited to randomized placebo-controlled trials on interventions used to treat BMS. Risk of bias was independently assessed in triplicate. Results: Twenty-two studies were included in this review. Fifteen reported baseline and post-treatment pain intensity, however due to the heterogeneity of the interventions subgroup analyses are presented by intervention. Subgroup analyses on the reduction of pain with alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) showed no significant difference with placebo (p=.713). However, a subgroup analysis with four studies showed ALA improved patients' symptoms significantly (RR=2.676; 95% CI 1.933 to 3.705; p .05). Pooled results with two studies each showed capsaicin (p<.001) and CBT (p=.031) significantly improved patients' symptoms. Conclusions: Low quality of evidence is available due to heterogeneity of the interventions, unclear or high risk of bias and differences in outcomes reported resulting in small number of studies included in each subgroup analysis. ALA, topical clonazepam, CBT, catuama and capsaicin should be studied further in high quality randomized clinical trials to provide recommendations for BMS patients.
A New Era in the Management of the Hepatitis C

Introduction Hepatitis C is an infection caused by the hepatitis C virus that attacks the liver and leads to inflammation. The current standard-of-care regimens include a protease inhibitor—telaprevir or boceprevir—in combination with pegylated interferon and ribavirin. Hepatitis C treatment options on the horizon hold promise for better viral clearance with less toxicity than current regimens. There are new data about new drugs, both direct-acting antivirals while minimizing intolerable side effects or adverse events. Developed new data from 4 phase 3 trials with the hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir and ribavirin show that a 12-week regimen is effective in treating HCV genotypes 1 through 6. In the Annual Scientific Meeting and Postgraduate Course of the American College of Gastroenterology, different research was presented that was drawn from 4 phase 3 studies: NEUTRINO, FISSION, POSITRON and FUSION which enrolled different types of patients, who received Sofosbuvir with Peginterferon Alfa 2a and Ribavirin for 12 or 24 weeks in treatment; for all studies, the primary end point was sustained virologic response at 12 and 24 weeks posttreatment. In all studies, sofosbuvir was well tolerated, with a low incidence of adverse events. In conjunction with the suggested brief duration of this regimen, this indicates that drug combinations should improve treatment adherence compared with IFN-based treatment. In conclusion, 2 novel direct-acting antiviral agents—sofosbuvir and simeprevir—target various components of the HCV genome. Advantages of these drugs include a high barrier to viral resistance, a shorter duration of treatment, once-daily dosing, absence of food restrictions, few clinically significant drug interactions, and similar efficacy in all genotypes.
Changes in structure and properties of starch of four botanical sources dispersed in the ionic liquid , 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride q

Ionic liquid (IL) has gained industry attention, especially in green chemistry. Researchers have utilized IL for dispersing cellulose, but no report using IL for other polysaccharides. In this study, corn, rice, wheat and potato starches were dispersed in hot water (DIHW) or IL, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride and morphology, amylopectin molecular weight (APMw) and thermal properties (TP) were analyzed. For starch DIHW, corn and potato had gelatinized aggregates, whereas rice and wheat had granular clumps. Starch heat-dispersed in IL (HDIIL) had clumps composed of < 1 lm diameter particles. Starch DIHW had little effect on APMw. Cereal starches had APMw greatly reduced by HDIIL (4-6 peaks observed). Potato amylopectin was degraded less by IL (two peaks) probably because charged phosphomonoesters covalently bonded to imidazolium rings or repelled IL chloride ions and large granule size impeded IL penetration, reducing reaction efficiency. TP showed potato starch incompletely gelatinized by HDIIL. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Efficient Localization Algorithm of Mixed Far-Field and Near-Field Sources Using Uniform Circular Array

An efficient algorithm based on high-order cumulant is addressed for the scenarios where both far-field and near-field narrow-band signals may exist synchronously. The first matrix built by four-order cumulant is utilized to estimate the two dimensional direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) using the orthogonal projection matrix of the signal subspace and the virtual steering matrix. Then, the second matrix built by four-order cumulant is decomposed to get the noise subspace using the eigen decomposition. Meanwhile, a virtual steering matrix is used to distinguish far-field signals (FFSs) from near-field signals (NFSs). And one-dimensional MUSIC algorithm is used to estimate the range of the NFSs. Compared to the TSMUSIC, the proposed algorithm can provide high resolution for the DOAs. In addition, there is higher accuracy for the DOA of NFS in the proposed algorithm than that in TSMUSIC and in TSMD. Simulation results are carried out to certify the performance of the proposed algorithm.