Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive fuzzy neural control of mean arterial pressure through sodium nitroprusside infusion

This paper presents an adaptive modeling and control scheme for drug delivery systems based on a generalized fuzzy neural network (G-FNN). The proposed G-FNN is a novel intelligent modeling tool, which can model the unknown nonlinearities of complex drug delivery systems and adapt on line to changes and uncertainties in these systems. It offers salient features, such as dynamic fuzzy neural topology, fast online learning ability and adaptability, etc. System approximation formulated by the G-FNN is thus employed in the adaptive controller design for drug infusion. In particular, this paper investigates the automated regulation of mean arterial pressure (MAP) through the intravenous infusion of sodium nitroprusside (SNP), which is atypical application in automation of drug delivery. Simulation study demonstrates the ability of the proposed approach for estimating the drug's effect and regulating blood pressure at a prescribed level.
Gallstone disease and quantitative analysis of independent biochemical parameters: Study in a tertiary care hospital of India

INTRODUCTION: Gallstone disease (GSD) represents a significant burden for health-care systems worldwide and is one of the most common disorders among patients presenting to emergency rooms with abdominal discomfort. This study was aimed to know the association of biochemical parameters and development of GSD. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a case–control study from January 2013 to December 2013 among patients attending outpatient department of general surgery at a tertiary care hospital of Delhi, North India; we recruited 120 cases and the same number of controls in the study. Data collection for both cases and controls was done on a self-designed pretested interview schedule and all the patients were investigated for relevant biochemical parameters. Logistic regression was used for univariate and multivariate analyses to find out different correlates and analyze the independent effects of these correlates on GSD. RESULTS: We have included 120 cases and the same number of age- and sex-matched controls in the study and final analysis. Almost 70% of the cases were females and 30% were males. In multivariate logistic regression, we have found maximum significant association with serum total cholesterol (odds ratio [OR]: 1.013, confidence interval [CI]: 1.003–1.024, P = 0.041) followed by low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (OR: 1.017, CI: 1.001–1.034, P = 0.04) and triglycerides (OR: 1.009, CI: 1.001–1.018, P = 0.049). Fasting blood sugar (P = 0.18), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (P = 0.07), aspartate transaminase (P = 0.21), alanine transaminase (P = 0.29), and total bilirubin (P = 0.13) were not found to be independently associated with GSD. CONCLUSION: Biochemical parameters such as plasma total cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol level were independently associated with GSD.
Self-assembled polymeric micelles as powders for pulmonary administration of insulin

ix Resumo. xi List of figures . xix List of tables . xxv Abbreviations . xxix Chapter 1 State-of-art . 1 1. Drug delivery systems: innovation and technology . 2 1.1. Nanotechnology in the development of drug delivery systems . 4 1.1.1. Lipid-based nanoparticles . 7 1.1.2. Polymer-based nanoparticles . 9 1.1.3. Polymeric micelles . 10 1.2. The role of amphiphilic polymers in the development of drug delivery systems.13 1.2.1. Synthesis of copolymers . 16 1.2.2. Characteristics of copolymers and copolymer-based structures . 17 1.2.2.1. Stimuli-responsiveness . 17 1.2.2.2. Self-assembly: the crucial phenomenon . 17 1.2.2.3. Hydrophilic surface: stability and functional role . 20 1.3. Safety of nanocarriers . 21 2. Therapeutic peptides and proteins . 22 2.1. Properties . 22 2.2. Stability and formulation challenges . 23
Successes and Failures of Digital Libraries

A current pulse generator is presented which allows a 35 A current amplitude with a rise tone of 150 ps to be achieved. The generator is based on an avalanche transistor matrix. The front of the pulse is further sharpened by employing sub-nanosecond diode recovery and super-fast switching of another diode. P U B L I S H E R : Institute of Electrical Engineers R E S O U R C E F O R M A T : text/xral RESOURCE TYPE: text LANGUAGE: en [BSKgfil
Pharmacotherapy for psychologists: Prescribing and collaborative roles.

Takes a comprehensive look at how pharmacotherapy is reshaping the practice of psychology. It argues the benefits of extending prescriptive authority and chronicles the experiences of prescribing psychologists. It also explores emerging issues, such as the need to maintain a psychological orientation while integrating medication management with psychotherapy, the need to build and maintain strong relationships with physicians, and the evaluation of drug research.
A Study on the Relation between the Demographics of Human Resource Managers in Turkey and Characteristics of their Companies

The demographics of HR managers have been a matter of discussion for a long time. Most frequently encountered comments include; those that work in the field of HRM are generally female, those that have a Bachelor’s Degree in business administration or economics, psychology, the humanities or law and those that have Master’s Degree, have more work experience or those that are transferred from other companies are mostly employed in HRM. A more in-depth analysis may be obtained by the comparing the demographics of HR managers with the characteristics of their organizations. In this context, the purpose of the study is to first determine the demographics of HR managers and whether there is a relation between the demographics and the characteristics of their organizations in Turkey. The data were obtained through “using available information” on corporate websites, various databases and social networking sites. The findings of the study show that there is relation between the demographic factors of human resource managers such as gender, education background, total work experience, and the way that they are appointed to their current position, and the characteristic factors of their organizations such as segment, sector, partnership, year of establishment, and legal status.
Taxonomy of coccids (Hemiptera: Coccidae: Coccus L.) associated with Crematogaster ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the stems of Macaranga plants (Euphorbiaceae) in Southeast Asia.

The Southeast Asian soft scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccomorpha: Coccidae) associated with ants of the Crematogaster borneensis-group (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) and living in the hollow stems of Macaranga plants (Euphorbiaceae) are revised taxonomically. Ten species of the genus Coccus L. are recognised: seven were described previously and three new species are described herein. The species are: Coccus caviramicolus Morrison, C. circularis Morrison, C. heckrothi Gullan Kondo sp. n. , C. lambirensis Gullan Kondo sp. n. , C. macarangicolus Takahashi, C. macarangae Morrison, C. penangensis Morrison, C. pseudotumuliferus Gullan Kondo sp. n. , C. secretus Morrison and C. tumuliferus Morrison. All of these species are described or redescribed and newly illustrated based on the adult females, and a key to distinguish the species is provided. We designate a lectotype for C. macarangicolus. The first-instar nymphs of all species are morphologically extremely similar and therefore only the first-instar nymph of C. macarangae is described and illustrated. Seven of these species currently are known only from Macaranga, but C. macarangae, C. secretus and perhaps C. pseudotumuliferus have been recorded from the hollow stems of several other ant-plants and a few non-myrmecophytes. The Coccus species from Macaranga are closely related to C. hesperidum L. , the type species of the genus, and therefore are retained in the genus Coccus even though the adult females exhibit a few morphological differences from C. hesperidum. The species of Coccus from Macaranga appear to be parthenogenetic because no male nymphs or adults have been found, despite extensive collecting.
Novel Low Power and Low Transistor Count Flip-Flop Design with High Performance

The paper proposed a new design of static SET flip-flop for low power applications. In this work, comparative analysis of existing architecture for flip-flops along with the proposed design is made. The comparison is done on the basis of power and power delay product, transistor count is also included. Due to continuous increase in integration of transistors and growing needs of portable equipments, low power design is of prime importance. The proposed design has the best power and the second best PDP than the existing architectures. Proposed FF has the least transistor count hence reducing the manufacturing cost and area. All simulations are performed on TSpice using BSIM models in 130 nm process node. The simulation results show that for all supply voltages, proposed FF has the best power consumption, second best PDP and the lowest transistor count. So this design is best suited for low power and high performance portable applications. Keywords: Transmission Gate, Short circuit current, Edge Triggered , Optimization
Learning to Argue in Mathematics: Effects of Heuristic Worked Examples and CSCL Scripts on Transactive Argumentation

A previous study has shown that both CSCL scripts and heuristic worked examples implemented in a CSCL environment were effective to fostering students' acquisition of argumentation skills in the context of mathematical proof tasks (Kollar, et al. 2012). This paper investigates the extent to which transactive argumentation during the collaborative learning process can be evoked by both means of instructional support and to what extent transactive argumentation mediates their effects on students' knowledge about argumentation. We present process measures from a 2x2-factorial experiment with the factors CSCL script and heuristic worked examples conducted with N=101 prospective math teacher students. Results show that both means of instructional support induced transactive argumentation in the collaborative learning process. The self-generated transactive argumentation, but not the partner-generated transactive argumentation mediated the effects of both types of instructional support on students' development of argumentation knowledge. Nevertheless, the learning partners mutually influenced their transactive argumentation.
New Framework for Cross-Domain Document Classification

Abstract : Automatic text document classification is a fundamental problem in machine learning. Given the dynamic nature and the exponential growth of the World Wide Web, one needs the ability to classify not only a massive number of documents, but also documents that belong to wide variety of domains. Some examples of the domains are e-mails, blogs, Wikipedia articles, news articles, newsgroups, online chats, etc. It is the difference in the writing style that differentiates these domains. Text documents are usually classified using supervised learning algorithms that require large set of pre-labeled data. This requirement, of labeled data, poses a challenge in classifying documents that belong to different domains. Our goal is to classify text documents in the testing domain without requiring any labeled documents from the same domain. Our research develops specialized cross-domain learning algorithms based the distributions over words obtained from a collection of text documents by topic models such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). Our major contributions include (1) empirically showing that conventional supervised learning algorithms fail to generalize their learned models across different domains and (2) development of novel and specialized cross-domain classification algorithms that show an appreciable improvement over conventional methods used for cross-domain classification that is consistent for different datasets. Our research addresses many real-world needs. Since massive number of new types of text documents is generated daily, it is crucial to have the ability to transfer learned information from one domain to another domain. Cross-domain classification lets us leverage information learned from one domain for use in the classification of documents in a new domain.
Determination of Trace Amounts of Boron in Steel by Reversedphase High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Azomethine-H as a Precolumn Derivatizaion Agent

The determination of trace amounts of boron in steel by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is described. As a derivatizing reagent for the HPLC determination of boron, 8-hydroxy-1-(salicylideneamino)-3,6-naphtalenedisulfonic acid (azomethine-H) was used with a spectrophotometric detection. A peak of boron-azomethine-H chelate was resolved from other peaks using an acetonitrile–water (29 + 71 m/m) eluent containing 8 ×;10^–3 mol kg^–1 tetrabutylammonium bromide and 5 ×;10^–3 mol kg^–1 acetate buffer (pH 5.0). The lower determination limit (10σ) of boron was 3.3 ×;10^–8 mol dm^–3 for a solution injected into HPLC, which is translated to 0.09 μgB/g when 0.1 g of a steel sample was subjected to the analysis. The analytical results of certified steel samples were in good agreement with the guaranteed values. The addition of ethylenediamine- N,N,N′,N′ -tetraacetate as a masking agent for the iron(III) matrix with the optimized eluent enables one to achieve the direct determination of trace amounts of boron in such steel sample solutions without any tedious matrix removal or preconcentration.
Visualizing Topics, Time, and Grades in Online Class Discussions

We present a series of visualizations of online discussions that combine topic modeling with other dimensions of the discussion contributions, to help faculty assess and improve learning from discussions. After applying probabilistic latent semantic analysis (pLSA) to calculate the relative conceptual distance between discussion posts, we projected posts or collections of posts into a two-dimensional space. By color-coding points according to their temporal position in the course or according to the author's final grade, we captured patterns in students' contributions that connect the topic modeling factors to more intuitively familiar characteristics. We consider how some possible qualitative features of the discussion may be represented in the topic space and outline future work to develop these tools further.
The impact of perceived quality on assisted living residents’ satisfaction with their dining experience

The purposes of this study were to explore factors associated with residents’ dining experience in assisted living facilities and to investigate the influence that these factors had on perceived quality and residents’ satisfaction with their dining experience. Food quality, service quality, mealtime customization, and dining room environment were the four constructs explored. Focus groups were conducted with residents of three assisted living facilities to determine attributes of the constructs that were important to them. A total of 22 residents participated in the three focus groups. A questionnaire developed by Huang was revised to include measurement items identified in the focus groups. The questionnaire was distributed to residents of 16 randomly selected assisted living facilities within a 110 mile radius of the research institution. Of the 492 residents in 16 facilities, 246 completed the questionnaire for a response rate of 50%. Residents evaluated the attributes on a 5-point likert scale (1-strongly disagree; 5-strongly agree). Service quality (4.03) and dining room environment (3.97) attributes were rated significantly higher than food quality (3.64) and customization attributes (3.42). Resident satisfaction also was evaluated on a 5-point scale (1-very dissatisfied; 5-very satisfied). Residents were satisfied with the overall dining experience (3.94) and the overall facility (3.97). Residents were less satisfied with food served (3.67) or the amount of choices they had at meals (3.58). Residents were satisfied with services (3.95) and the dining room atmosphere (3.98). Satisfaction with services and the dining room atmosphere were significantly higher than food served and amount of choices at mealtimes. Residents’ perceptions of food quality, service quality, level of customization, and dining room environment had a positive influence on their satisfaction with the overall dining experience. Residents’ perceptions of food quality had a positive influence on satisfaction with the food served, service quality impacted satisfaction with services, level of customization effected satisfaction with the amount of choices, and dining room environment influenced satisfaction with the dining room atmosphere. Administrators, foodservice directors, and dietitians employed in assisted living facilities can use the results to improve the dining experience for residents and ultimately improve residents’ quality of life.
Genetic inhibition of PKCε attenuates neurodegeneration after global cerebral ischemia in male mice

Global cerebral ischemia that accompanies cardiac arrest is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Protein Kinase C epsilon (PKCε) is a member of the novel PKC subfamily and plays a vital role in ischemic preconditioning. Pharmacological activation of PKCε before cerebral ischemia confers neuroprotection. The role of endogenous PKCε after cerebral ischemia remains elusive. Here we used male PKCε‐null mice to assess the effects of PKCε deficiency on neurodegeneration after transient global cerebral ischemia (tGCI). We found that the cerebral vasculature, blood flow, and the expression of other PKC isozymes were not altered in the PKCε‐null mice. Spatial learning and memory was impaired after tGCI, but the impairment was attenuated in male PKCε‐null mice as compared to male wild‐type controls. A significant reduction in Fluoro‐Jade C labeling and mitochondrial release of cytochrome C in the hippocampus was found in male PKCε‐null mice after tGCI. Male PKCε‐null mice expressed increased levels of PKCδ in the mitochondria, which may prevent the translocation of PKCδ from the cytosol to the mitochondria after tGCI. Our results demonstrate the neuroprotective effects of PKCε deficiency on neurodegeneration after tGCI, and suggest that reduced mitochondrial translocation of PKCδ may contribute to the neuroprotective action in male PKCε‐null mice.
Furoxans and tocopherol analogs–furoxan hybrids as anticancer agents

We determined the antiproliferative and nitric oxide (NO)-releasing activity of furoxans and tocopherol analogs–furoxan hybrids by tandem Griess/resazurin/sulforhodamin B assays in HeLa, 253J, T24, and HepG2 cancer cells. In addition, to investigate the NO implications in the inhibition of cell growth, cells were pretreated with the NO scavenger hemoglobin and the genotoxic damage was determined. The compounds 1 and 3 emerged as good anticancer agents for bladder cancer treatment. The NO-releasing activity of these compounds appears to be necessary to obtain the antiproliferative effect. Although compound 1 exerted a DNA damage mechanism of action, compound 3 seemed to act in a different way. The low toxicity levels against normal cell line HaCaT point them out as a very promising scaffold for the further design of new anticancer agents.
Observer memories may not be for everyone

ABSTRACT Six studies explored the preponderance of people who experience third-person perspective observer memories during autobiographical memory retrieval. The concept of first-person field versus observer memories has been extensively used in the areas of cognitive, social, and clinical psychology. An implicit assumption is the idea that most people use both of these perspectives. What varies are the circumstances that bias people to use one perspective over another for a given autobiographical memory. We challenge that assumption across six studies by showing that, while there are some people who report to regularly have observer memories, there are also those that report to rarely or never have them. These reports were found to be related to levels of reported dissociative experiences. We discuss how this difference in the experience of observer memories may also reflect other innate characteristics, and may correspond to predispositions for various pathologies, including depression, social phobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Early Experience of Robotic-Assisted Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting

Purpose: Robotics facilitates minimally invasive cardiac surgery, and has been used to perform portions of coronary artery anastomoses via minimal thoracotomy incisions. This report shares our early experience of robotic-assisted coronary artery bypass grafting. Methods: The robotic-assisted endoscopic coronary artery bypass grafting of the left internal thoracic artery to the left anterior descending artery was performed by using the da Vinci robotic system. Two robotic instruments and one endoscopic camera were placed through three small ports. A robotic system was used to harvest the left internal thoracic artery; anastomoses were performed directly through a left anterior minimal thoracotomy under off-pump coronary artery bypass. Results: Between January 2005 and September 2005, the new instrumentation was used in 10 patients. The mean age of the patients was 59 years, and mean left ventricular ejection fraction was 62%. Two of the 10 patients received double coronary artery bypass grafts. They had a radial artery graft bridging the left internal thoracic artery to the diagonal branch through a small left anterior thoracotomy. No major complications were encountered in the postoperative period, except for one patient who was admitted because of left-side pleural effusion. The median length of stay in the intensive care unit was 2.2 days. The mdian postoperative hospital stay was 7.1 days. Conclusion: The results from this prospective clinical trial in our hospital showed favorable short-term outcome with no adverse events. Robotic assistance enables us to perform totally off-pump endoscopic coronary artery bypass.
EFFECT OF VISUAL CUES AND OUTCOME FEEDBACK ON PHYSICS PROBLEM SOLVING IN AN ONLINE SYSTEM

With the progressive development of the educational technology, online learning systems are becoming a prominent feature in education today. We conducted a study to explore the effects of visual cues and outcome feedback on learning experience of students in an online environment. Our study was a follow up study to a previous research, which demonstrated the effectiveness of visual cues and feedback to improve physics problem solving. The participants (N=164) were enrolled in an algebra-based introductory level physics course at a U.S. Midwestern University. Participants completed a sequence of conceptual physics problems in an online environment. The study used a between subjects 2 × 2 quasi experimental design. Two groups of participants received visual cues and two did not receive cues. Two of the groups of participants received outcome feedback and two did not receive feedback. The effect of visual cues, feedback and their combination on the correctness of students’ responses to the online questions was analyzed. Implications of the study for online learning systems are discussed.