Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Media Strength and pH on the Growth of Hairy Roots and Production of Gymnemic Acid from Gymnema Sylvestre

Gymnema sylvestre (Madhunashini) is one of the most important medicinal plants used as a crude drug for its preventive and therapeutic properties. Among other constituents of Gymnema, gymnemic acid is a major component responsible for biological and pharmacological actions. The present study deals with the influence of different media strength and initial medium pH on the growth of hairy roots and gymnemic acid production from Gymnema sylvestre. Higher strength of the media (1.5X) favoured the biomass production (114.64 g/L FW and 12.63 g/L DW) and gymnemic acid content (11.7 mg/g DW) in the tested range of 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 X strength. Among the different hydrogen ion concentration (pH) of 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, 5.8, 6.0 and 6.5, initial medium pH of 6.0 favoured the biomass production (102.41 g/L FW and 11.52 g/L DW) and medium pH of 5.8 favoured the gymnemic acid production (11.30 mg/g DW).
Stoichiometric imbalance-promoted step-growth polymerization based on self-accelerating 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition click reactions

A library of self-accelerating click reactions was developed based on the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of sym-dibenzo-1,5-cyclooctadiene-3,7-diyne (DIBOD) and varied 1,3-dipoles, such as diazo, sydnone, and nitrone groups. A common feature of these reactions was that the reaction of a 1,3-dipole and the first alkyne moiety of DIBOD activated in situ the second alkyne moiety, which consequently reacted with a 1,3-dipole at a much faster rate than did the original DIBOD alkyne group. Because these were polymerization reactions, a novel kind of stoichiometric imbalance-promoted step-growth polymerization method was developed specifically to prepare high molecular weight (>105 g mol−1) polymers containing five-membered heterocycles inside polymer backbones. The self-accelerating property of the DIBOD-based 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions enabled the use of step-growth polymerization to prepare high molecular weight polymers under stoichiometric imbalance conditions using an excess of DIBOD over bis-dipole monomers. The click characteristics of the DIBOD-based 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions assisted the step-growth polymerization so that polymers could be prepared under ambient and catalyst-free conditions. In addition, the varied five-membered heterocycle structures inside the backbones endowed the resultant polymers with distinctly unique properties and functions. The polymers with isoxazoline groups inside the backbones demonstrated self-degradation behavior, where higher molecular weights resulted in greater degradation. The polymers with pyrazole groups inside the backbones had excellent thermal properties: the decomposition temperature at 5% weight loss could reach 576 °C, the glass transition temperature could not be measured up to 400 °C, and the char yield at 800 °C was as high as 71%.
The effect of pramiracetam in the myelination of the hippocampus in the BALB/c mouse (Mus musculus)

Background: Pramiracetam is being used, particularly by students, to increase cognitive function and enhance learning and memory. There are currently sparse data on the effect of pramiracetam, particularly in the brain. One recent study showed that there is an increased nitric oxide synthase (NOS) in systemically administered pramiracetam. Aims and Objectives: To determine if there would be a demyelinating effect in the hippocampus that is a sign of neurological damage due to increasing nitric oxide synthase. Materials and Methods: A total of fifteen mice were given 200 and 600 mg/kg dose of pramiracetam for qualitative histological comparison of their hippocampal myelination. After administration with food of the pramiracetam for 75 days, the mice were sacrificed and the brains were then extracted intact, and sagittal sections of the brain were made and stained with the Kluver-Barrera method. Hippocampi were analyzed using a compound microscope to observe for demyelination and neuronal degeneration. Results: Based on histological analysis, there were no signs of demyelination in the hippocampus of the Mus musculus brain. This may indicate that pramiracetam does not cause demyelination that may be due to increased NO production. Conclusion: Pramiracetam may be safe to take at doses of 200600 mg/kg without any demyelinating effects in mouse.
A Wearable Underactuated Robotic Glove Driven by Myoelectric Control Input

People who have hand impairments caused by the most common neurological and degenerative musculoskeletal diseases face trouble to achieve their everyday tasks. To try to help these people, in this works is presented a prototype of a glove-like orthosis for upper limbs. It is an underactuated robotic glove controlled by myoletric input signals collected by the Myo armband. The development and its details are all described so that it can be reproduced with improvements and used as an assistive device. To the authors’ knowledge, in Brazil, there is no one similar orthosis such this one developed thus far.
Opportunistic Offloading Scheme in Heterogeneous Vehicular Network

A Heterogeneous Vehicular Network (HetVNET) is a promising network system that integrates several network protocols or systems e.g. IEEE802.11p, Short Range Communication, Third/Fourth Generation mobile networks etc. In HetVNET, wireless fidelity access points (Wi-Fi APs) must utilized by automobile end users to stabilise the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) 4G networks by way of offloading. No matter how usage of the opportunistic Wi-Fi APs to offload the LTE networks in a HetVNET system is comparatively more straightforward. This circumstances is due to the less area reached by Wi-Fi access points and weak placement strategies of access points. Many researcher have suggested that offloading schemes based on the historical wireless fidelity connection patterns noticed by an interest vehicle (IV) in making an offloading conclusion. However, based only on the historical connection patterns affects the prediction accuracy and offloading ratio of most existing schemes even when access point placement data is obtainable. This work suggested that the Opportunistic Offloading Scheme (OOS) is based on historical connection patterns and vehicular trajectory computation to predict the next accessible access point. The suggested plan is decentralised and focuses on urban scenarios whereby the likelihood of an IVto come into contact with Wi-Fi access points is high. We detect the complexity of the suggested Opportunistic Offloading Scheme in this work. The result shows that Opportunistic Offloading Scheme is linear dependent on the amount of the processed data accessible for the prediction.
Driver Fatigue Detection Using Viola Jones and Principal Component Analysis

ABSTRACT In this paper, we have proposed a low-cost solution for driver fatigue detection based on micro-sleep patterns. Contrary to conventional methods, we acquired images by placing a camera on the extreme left side of the driver and proposed two algorithms that facilitate accurate face and eye detections, even when the driver is not facing the camera or driver’s eyes are closed. The classification to find whether eye is closed or open is done on the right eye only using SVM and Adaboost. Based on eye states, micro-sleep patterns are determined and an alarm is triggered to warn the driver, when needed. In our dataset, we considered multiple subjects from both genders, having different appearances and under different lightning conditions. The proposed scheme gives 99.9% and 98.7% accurate results for face and eye detection, respectively. For all the subjects, the average accuracy of SVM and Adaboost is 96.5% and 95.4%, respectively.
Helping Underprepared Students Succeed: Minimizing Threats to Identity

ABSTRACT Although the practice of channeling students who are labeled as academically underprepared into developmental education courses has been a ubiquitous practice among community colleges, the vast majority of these students are not completing their developmental coursework, much less their desired credential. This research illustrates the experiences and challenges that students encountered in their pre-curriculum courses. The research conducted in-depth interviews with 16 students who successfully completed or were on track to complete their developmental coursework at a two-year MSI. Framed by Schlossberg’s transition theory, findings showed that being labeled as “underprepared” generated feelings of isolation, stigmatization, and a lack of control, which we argue are threats to identity that led to strong emotional and behavioral reactions. As many colleges are looking for new approaches to address the challenge of so-called student underpreparedness, we argue that the design of developmental interventions, and indeed of all community college structures, should accommodate and support students’ fledgling identities as college students.
The Suitability of Short Rotation Coppice Crops for Phytoremediation of Urban Soils

This experiment was aimed at verifying the usefulness of phytoremediation using Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) in an urban Zn-contaminated site. Besides elemental uptake and reclamation, the SRC method was applied to evaluate the additional benefits of a green infrastructure. Nine different plants with rapid growth and large biomass production were selected: three Populus clones, three Salix hybrids, and three Robinia genotypes. Annual and biennial coppicing were evaluated. Poplar clones were more productive using annual coppicing, while Salix and Robinia produced higher biomass in blocks not coppiced. Poplar had the highest phytoextraction rate during the second year, with 1077 g/ha. Salix clones S1 and S3 extracted similar quantities using biennial coppicing. After two years, the bioavailable fraction of Zn decreased significantly using all species, from the 26% decrease of Robinia to the 36% decrease of Salix. The short rotation coppice method proved to be useful in an urban context, for both landscape and limiting the access to the contaminated area. Improving the biomass yield through the phytomanagement options (fertilization, irrigation, coppicing, etc.) could make SRC phytoremediation an economic and effective solution to manage urban contaminated areas, coupling the added values of biomass production to the landscape benefits.
Evaluation and Understandability of Face Image Quality Assessment

Evaluation and Understandability of Face Image Quality Assessment. Mohammad Iqbal Nouyed Face image quality assessment (FIQA) has been an area of interest to researchers as a way to improve the face recognition accuracy. By filtering out the low quality images we can reduce various difficulties faced in unconstrained face recognition, such as, failure in face or facial landmark detection or low presence of useful facial information. In last decade or so, researchers have proposed different methods to assess the face image quality, spanning from fusion of quality measures to using learning based methods. Different approaches have their own strength and weaknesses. But, it is hard to perform a comparative assessment of these methods without a database containing wide variety of face quality, a suitable training protocol that can efficiently utilize this large-scale dataset. In this thesis we focus on developing an evaluation platfrom using a large scale face database containing wide ranging face image quality and try to deconstruct the reason behind the predicted scores of learning based face image quality assessment methods. Contributions of this thesis is two-fold. Firstly, (i) a carefully crafted large scale database dedicated entirely to face image quality assessment has been proposed; (ii) a learning to rank based large-scale training protocol is developed. Finally, (iii) a comprehensive study of 15 face image quality assessment methods using 12 different feature types, and relative ranking based label generation schemes, is performed. Evaluation results show various insights about the assessment methods which indicate the significance of the proposed database and the training protocol. Secondly, we have seen that in last few years, researchers have tried various learning based approaches to assess the face image quality. Most of these methods offer either a quality bin or a score summary as a measure of the biometric quality of the face image. But, to the best of our knowledge, so far there has not been any investigation on what are the explainable reasons behind the predicted scores. In this thesis, we propose a method to provide a clear and concise understanding of the predicted quality score of a learning based face image quality assessment. It is believed that this approach can be integrated into the FBI’s understandable template and can help in improving the image acquisition process by providing information on what quality factors need to be addressed.
Pacific Modulation of the North Atlantic Storm Track Response to Sudden Stratospheric Warming Events

Sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) events have been suggested to be followed by a surface impact, though this response varies between events. Using reanalysis data, we identify two types of tropospheric responses to SSWs: Two thirds of the SSW events are dominated by a zonally symmetric tropospheric response with an equatorward shift of the jet in the Atlantic, consistent with the canonical SSW response in the form of a negative signature of the North Atlantic Oscillation. For the remaining third of SSW events, a zonally asymmetric response is found, associated with a poleward shift of the jet in the Atlantic. The Pacific is found to contribute to the sign of the North Atlantic response, as synoptic wave propagation from the Eastern Pacific links the Pacific and Atlantic storm tracks for both equatorward and poleward jet responses.
Effects of Saffron Aqueous Extract and Its Main Constituent, Crocin, on Health-Related Quality of Life, Depression, and Sexual Desire in Coronary Artery Disease Patients: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Clinical Trial

Background: Depression and sexual problems are common in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and can influence their quality of life. Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of saffron and its main constituent, crocin, in improving mental and sexual health and ultimately quality of life in CAD patients. Methods: This double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial was carried out during 8 weeks in 3 groups, including 1 placebo and 2 intervention groups. The study sample included 58 CAD patients within the age range of 40 - 65 years, referred to Shahid Madani cardiovascular hospital, Tabriz, Iran, from April 2015 to November 2016. The intervention groups received saffron aqueous extract (SAE; 30 mg; n, 20) or crocin (30 mg; n, 19). All the groups completed the demographic questionnaire, Beck depression inventory-II (BDI-II), Hulbert index of sexual desire (HISD), and MacNew health-related quality of life questionnaire. Results: The BDI-II score significantly decreased in the SAE (pre- and post test scores, 26.10 +/- 11.98 and 21.05 +/- 9.93, respectively) and crocin (pre- and post test scores, 27.89 +/- 8.46 and 22.68 +/- 8.01, respectively) groups (P < 0.001). After adjustments for age, sex, and diagnosis time, similar results were obtained. There was no significant difference between the crocin and SAE groups in terms of total BDI-II score at the end of the study (P = 0.999). SAE and crocin had no significant effects on HISD scores (P = 0.148 and 0.317, respectively). However, they could significantly improve the total quality of life and its subscales (P < 0.001). Conclusions: SAE and crocin could improve depression and health-related quality of life in patients with CAD, whereas they had no significant effects on sexual desire.
Gas-liquid detonation synthesis of CNTs@Fe/Fe3C composites and their application as electrode materials for double-layer capacitors

Abstract The carbon nanotubes doping with Fe and Fe3C nanocrystal (CNTs@Fe/Fe3C) are successfully synthesized by the gas-liquid detonation (GLD) decomposition of CH4, O2, C10H10Fe and C10H8. The composition and structural properties of the as-obtained composites were investigated by XRD, TEM, XPS and Raman spectroscopy. The obtained composites were also applied to the electric double-layer capacitor. The results showed that the specific capacitance of CNTs@Fe/Fe3C can reach 125 F·g−1 at the current density of 100 mA·g−1 and after 10000 cycles the capacitance retention is 93.1% at a current density of 2 A·g−1.
Synonym Measurement Through Semantic Similarity Using the SOC-PMI Method

Abstract: Measurement of synonyms can be an important task in measuring word similarity. This work cannot be done syntactically, but must dig deeper about its semantics. Semantic relations can be anything, such as synonyms, antonyms, hyponymy, homonymy and polysemy. This research works on finding synonym values using the Second Order Co-occurrence Pointwise Mutual Information (SOC-PMI) method. The data used are 30 questions on the TOEFL exam. Each question consists of one word as a question and four reference answers as alternative answers. The results show very low accuracy (30%) since there are only 9 out of 30 answers that actually show the synonym. In addition, the LCS method was also tested to get a character-based similarity score. LCS method is able to achieve a higher similarity score of 43.33%. Finally, the idea of hybrid method by combining character-based and semantic-based methods can be considered in longer words to produce a fairer similarity score. Abstrak: Pengukuran sinonim dapat menjadi pekerjaan yang penting dalam mengukur kemiripan kata. Pekerjaan ini tidak dapat dilakukan secara sintaksis, tetapi harus dilakukan dengan menggali lebih dalam tentang semantiknya. Hubungan semantik dapat berupa apa saja, seperti sinonim, antonim, hiponim, homonim, dan polisemi. Penelitian ini berusaha untuk menemukan nilai-nilai sinonim menggunakan metode Second Order Co-occurrence Pointwise Mutual Information (SOC-PMI). Data yang digunakan adalah 30 pertanyaan pada ujian TOEFL. Setiap pertanyaan terdiri dari satu kata sebagai pertanyaan dan empat jawaban referensi sebagai jawaban alternatif. Hasil menunjukkan nilai akurasi yang sangat rendah (30%) karena hanya ada 9 dari 30 jawaban yang benar-benar menunjukkan sinonim. Selain itu, metode LCS juga diuji untuk mendapatkan skor kemiripan berdasarkan karakternya. Metode LCS mampu mencapai skor kemiripan yang lebih tinggi yaitu 43,33%. Akhirnya, gagasan metode hybrid dengan menggabungkan metode berbasis karakter dan metode berbasis semantik semantik dapat dipertimbangkan untuk kata-kata yang lebih panjang agar menghasilkan skor kesamaan yang lebih adil.
Laser Finishing of Ti6Al4V Additive Manufactured Parts by Electron Beam Melting

In this work, the feasibility of laser surface finishing of parts obtained by additive manufacturing (AM) was investigated. To this end, a 450 W fiber laser (operating in continuous wave, CW) was adopted to treat the surface of Ti-6Al-4V samples obtained via electron beam melting (EBM). During the tests, different laser energy densities and scanning speeds were used. In order to assess the quality of the treatment, either the as-built or the treated samples were analyzed by means of a three-dimensional (3D) profilometer, digital microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to check which and how process parameters affected the finishing. The results show that, in the best conditions, the laser treatment reduced surface roughness by about 80%.
Integrating Reservoir Geomechanics with Multiple Fracture Propagation and Proppant Placement

This paper presents the formulation and results from a coupled finite-volume (FV)/finite-area (FA) model for simulating the propagation of multiple hydraulically driven fractures in two and three dimensions at the wellbore and pad scale. The proposed method captures realistic representations of local heterogeneities, layering, fracture turning, poroelasticity, interactions with other fractures, and proppant transport. We account for competitive fluid and proppant distribution between multiple fractures from the wellbore. Details of the model formulation and its efficient numerical implementation are provided, along with numerical studies comparing the model with both analytical solutions and field results. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for the comprehensive modeling of hydraulically driven fractures in three dimensions at a pad scale.
Indicators of Oral Hygiene and Preventive Dental Care as Variables Associated with the High Severity of Caries

Objective: To identify if the presence of dental plaque, dental brushing frequency and preventive dental care are related to the high severity of dental caries. Methods: A case-control study was carried out on a sample of schoolchildren aged 6 to 12 years. We selected 677 children from public schools in the city of León Nicaragua, 283 cases y 394 controls. Using questionnaires addressed to mothers / guardians, a series of sociodemographic, socioeconomic and dental variables were collected. Through oral clinical examination, the dmft and DMFT caries indexes were determined for primary and permanent dentition. The dependent variable was the high severity of caries, which was coded as (1) “dmft + DMFT = 0” and (2) “dmft + DMFT ≥ 6”. The chi-square test and the Mann-Whitney test were used in the statistical analysis. Results: In the bivariate analysis, we observed that the associated variables (p<0.05) to high caries severity (dmft + DMFT ≥ 6) were: younger age of the child, younger age of the mother, less brushing frequency, presence of dentobacterial plaque and the pattern of dental care. Conclusions: The results of the study show that the variables related to oral hygiene, both objective measurement (presence of dentobacterial plaque) and subjective measurement (selfreport of toothbrushing frequency), are associated with high severity of dental caries. In addition, according to the pattern of dental care showed association with the severity of caries.
PM10 forecasting through applying convolution neural network techniques

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that air pollution kills around 6.5 million people around the world every year. The European Environment Agency, in turn, points out that about 50,000 people die annually in Poland due to this. PM10 pollution arises in the form of smog (smoke and fog) and is an unnatural phenomenon created by adverse weather conditions and human activity. The aim of this article is to assess the possibilities of tasking modern neural networks to predict PM10 air pollution levels in the following hours of the subsequent day. In evaluating the prediction task, several types of error are considered, and machine learning algorithms and structures are utilized as learning models. Of note, the algorithm selected for stochastic optimization is a form of convolutional neural networking and deep learning neural networking that is used in machine learning when considering Big Data issues. The obtained results were then analysed and compared with other methods of prediction. As a result of this research, the proposed convergent neural network could be used effectively as a tool for calculating detailed air quality forecasts for the subsequent 24-h period.