Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biosynthesis of Gold Nanoparticles Using Litsea cubeba Fruit Extract for Catalytic Reduction of 4-Nitrophenol

This work describes a simple single-step method for green synthesis of colloidal gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) using Litsea cubeba (LC) fruit extract as a reducing as well as stabilizing agent simultaneously. Major parameters affecting the formation of LC-AuNPs, including gold ion concentration, reaction time, and reaction temperature were optimized using ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) measurements at a characteristic maximum absorbance of 535 nm. The functional groups responsible for reducing gold ions and capping AuNPs were examined by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the crystalline nature of AuNPs. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) measurements showed that the biosynthesized LC-AuNPs were mostly spherical with an average size of 8-18 nm. The nanoparticles also demonstrated excellent ultrarapid catalytic activity for the complete reduction of 4-nitrophenol to p-aminophenol in the presence of NaBH4 within 10 min with a reaction rate constant of 0.348 min-1.
Response to the Cold Stress Signaling of the Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis) Elicited by Chitosan Oligosaccharide

Cold stress caused by a low temperature is a significant threat to tea production. The application of chitosan oligosaccharide (COS) can alleviate the effect of low temperature stress on tea plants. However, how COS affects the cold stress signaling in tea plants is still unclear. In this study, we investigated the level of physiological indicators in tea leaves treated with COS, and then the molecular response to the cold stress of tea leaves treated with COS was analyzed by transcriptomics with RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq). The results show that the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, peroxidase (POD) activity, content of chlorophyll and soluble sugar in tea leaves in COS-treated tea plant were significantly increased and that photosynthesis and carbon metabolism were enriched. Besides, our results suggest that COS may impact to the cold stress signaling via enhancing the photosynthesis and carbon process. Our research provides valuable information for the mechanisms of COS application in tea plants under cold stress.
Apple Peel Biochemical Changes after Foliar Application of Combined Boron and Calcium I. Phenolics and Physico-Chemical Attributes

Post-full bloom foliar applications of boron in combination with calcium (B+Ca) suppress fruit sunburn-browning incidence in apples (Malus domestica). However, the mode-of-action is not yet explained and hence, protocols to exploit this seemingly cost-effective peel physiology augmenting approach compared to usual methods (shade-netting, overhead cooling and kaolin application which attenuate excess fruit heat-load), cannot be fully developed or promoted justifiably among growers. Apple fruit sunburn-browning disorders are rampant worldwide, partly because of climate change as well as high cost and inefficacy of the established methods. However, knowledge of B+Ca effect on apple peel physiology may unravel the mode-of-action, paving the way for commercialization of this novel approach. In this study, B+Ca effect on apple peel phenolics and selected fruit physico-chemical attributes was investigated, using studies conducted at two farms for two seasons in Western Cape, South Africa. Four foliar treatments varying in B, Ca and inclusion of zinc (Zn), were applied on ‘Cripps Pink’, ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Granny Smith’ apples in 2014/15 (only ‘Cripps Pink’) and 2015/16 (all cultivars) in randomized complete block design experiments with five replications. Fruit peel samples for quantitative determination of total phenolics and total flavonoids analyses were collected at different fruit maturity stages. Significant (p 0.05) interaction (treatments and fruit maturity stages) effect was observed for total phenolics (‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Granny Smith’ only) and total flavonoids (all cultivars). Physico-chemical attributes (fruit diameter, size and total soluble solids) were only evaluated in ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Granny Smith’, and no significant differences among treatments occurred. Since no clear treatment differences in apple peel phenolic patterns were observed, other appropriate biochemical aspects like photosynthetic pigments should be investigated among such foliar B+Ca treatments.
Electric Hindrance and Dipole Moments in 2-Aminopyridine Nitration

The different isomer yields observed in many aromatic electrophilic substitution reactions can be explained by steric hindrance. However, this is not the case when there are drastic differences in the reaction yields of the isomeric products obtained. This is generally due to the presence of other factors, for instance, electric rejection between two positive charges in the reaction stage. Thus, a very important point to bear in mind is electric hindrance, a new theoretical concept. We have taken as an example 2-aminopyridine nitration. We provide an extended theory on this subject, which is in accord with the observed regiochemistry and with the reaction yields of the isomeric products obtained. Dipole moments were also taken into account. We discuss too the 2-nitraminopyridine rearrangement in acidic medium. The theoretical discussion is also in accord with reported trans-nitration experimental results. Our proposals were contrasted too with the findings from thermolysis and photolysis experiments carried out with 2-nitraminopyridine.
Membership status, social exclusion, and regulatory focus

ABSTRACT Previous work suggests that being socially excluded can influence people’s regulatory focus motivations (i.e., promotion and prevention). In the current work, we extend past findings and further explore whether different social exclusion experiences (ignore vs. explicit exclusion) activate regulatory focus motivations differentially as a function of an individual’s initial membership status (i.e., member vs. non-member) within an excluding group. We expect that when people are ignored or explicitly excluded from a group in which they were never initially included (i.e., non-member), social exclusion should activate a promotion focus. Across two studies, we found partial support for the membership status perspective. Implications for regulatory focus and social exclusion literatures are discussed.
Therapeutic Yoga Is Feasible for Informal Caregivers: A Multi-Method Pilot Study

ABSTRACT An informal caregiver (ICG) is an individual who provides care (unpaid) to a person with a disability or disease. ICGs report the extreme time spent as an ICG lowers their availability to participate in leisure. Research involving ICGs who participated in leisure resulted in lower depression levels, perceived stress, and burden. Studies involving ICGs who participate in yoga may experience health improvements, but due to the small number of studies involving ICGs feasibility aspects need to be further addressed. ICGs attended an 8-week therapeutic yoga program that examined feasibility components. The feasibility questionnaire implemented at the end of the study resulted in high scores indicating the majority of participants felt the yoga study was feasible. Three qualitative feasibility categories (i.e. programmatic aspects, safety concerns, and care recipient separation) emerged from the focus group/individual interviews. Future studies should replicate a similar structured yoga program to strengthen the positive feasibility results.
Systematic review of mixed methods in the framework of educational innovation

En el ambito de la investigacion, los metodos mixtos usan combinadamente datos cuantitativos y cualitativos para un acercamiento con la «realidad». En la literatura reciente de los estudios sociales y educativos, se ubica un crecimiento de publicaciones que integran tecnologias digitales y metodos mixtos y, con ello, se presenta la oportunidad de generar un aporte original de posibilidades para investigar la innovacion educativa. El objetivo de este articulo fue analizar las caracteristicas de estos estudios y las tendencias de nuevas contribuciones para la educacion. Para lograrlo se realizo una revision sistematica de literatura (SLR) de 311 articulos publicados, de enero 2010 a enero 2020, en las bases de datos Web of Science (WoS) y Scopus. Se trabajo con nueve preguntas que exploraron tres temas: caracteristicas, tecnologias y disenos con lineas de innovacion educativa. La validacion se dio con los criterios de la Universidad de York: inclusion y exclusion, pertinencia y descripcion de datos, asi como evaluacion de pares en el analisis. Los hallazgos dan cuenta de redes de co-terminos, identificacion de innovaciones educativas y tipos de disenos que estan siendo trabajados en lineas de investigacion de innovacion educativa. Se concluye que el enfoque de metodos mixtos aporta con una combinacion interceptadas de estrategias y procesos para abordar la complejidad del fenomeno de la educacion, con compresion holistica, interdisciplinar y cambio en la forma de hacer investigacion en nuestros tiempos.
Systematic Literature Review of Information Security Compliance Behaviour Theories

The paper aims to identify behavioural theories that influence information security policies compliance behaviour. A systematic review of empirical studies from eleven online databases (ACM digital library, Emerald Insight, IEEE Xplore digital library, Springer link, Science direct, Scopus, Web of Science, Oxford academic journals, SAGE journals, Taylor & Francis and Wiley online library) are conducted. This review identified 29 studies met its criterion for inclusion. The investigated theories were extracted and analysed. Total of 19 theories have been identified and studied concerning to security policy compliance behaviour. The result indicated that the most established theories in information security compliance behaviour studies are the Theory of Planned Behavior and Protection Motivation theory. Meanwhile, General Deterrence Theory, Neutralization theory, Social Bond Theory / Social Control Theory are used moderately in this research area. Less explored theories are namely Self Determination Theory, Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory, Involvement Theory, Health belief model, Theory of Interpersonal Behavior, Extended Parallel Processing Model, Organisational Control Theory, Psychological Reactance Theory, Norm Activation Theory, Organizational Behaviour Theory, Cognitive Evaluation Theory and Extended Job Demands-Resources. The results from this review may guide the development and evaluation of theories promoting information security compliance behaviours. This will further contribute in the development of an integrated theory of information security compliance behaviour.
Detection of runs of homozygosity in Norwegian Red: Density, criteria and genotyping quality control

ABSTRACT Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are long, homozygote segments of an individual’s genome, traceable to the parents and might be identical by descent. Due to the lack of standards for quality control of genotyping and criteria to define ROH, Norwegian Red was used to find the effects of SNP density, genotyping quality control and ROH criteria on the detection of ROH. A total of 384 bulls were genotyped with the Illumina HD-chip containing 777,962 SNP markers. A total of 22 data subsets were derived to examine the effects of SNP density, quality control of genotyping and ROH criteria. ROH was detected by PLINK. High SNP density led to increased resolution, fewer false-positive ROH segment, and made it possible to detect shorter ROH. Considering the ROH criteria, we demonstrated that allowing for heterozygote SNP could generate false positives. Furthermore, genotyping quality control should be tuned towards keeping as many SNP as possible, also low minor allele frequency SNP, as otherwise many ROH segments will be lost.
surface roughness,metal removal Effect of Wire Diameter, Feeding Rate, Pulse (on/off) Time on Surface Roughness and Metal Removal Rate for Cr-Mo Steel (SCM425H) During Wire Electrical Discharge Machine (WEDM) Cutting Operation

Increase the demand to produce complex shapes with high quality and dimensional accuracy such as production aerospace, cars, die sinking has been leading to increase the demand to use the non- traditional cutting operations such as wire electro-discharge machine (WEDM) rather than using the traditional operations. An idea to understand the effect of wire diameter, wire feed, pulsing (on/off) time on surface roughness, and metal removal rate of Cr-Mo steel during wire electrical discharge machining was investigated. Two Steel alloy samples with dimensions of (60 x50 x 20)mm were cut into four rectangular spaces with (5x10x20)mm at one side of each sample using wire cut (EDM) machine with a wire diameter of 0.25 mm and feeding rate 2 m/min for sample 1 and a 0.3 mm diameter and 3 m/min feeding rate for sample 2. Pulse (on, off) time was (110, 50), (112, 52), (115, 55), (116, 57) corresponds to space 1, space 2, space 3, and space 4 in both steel block. Surface roughness and metal removal rate measurements were estimated. The results showed that wire diameter, feeding rate, and pulse (on, off) time is proportional with metal removal rate, while reversed with surface roughness. The wire diameter of 0.3 mm and a feeding rate of 3m/min enhanced better surface quality and productivity. Pulse (on, off) time is the most effective parameter. Best duration time was recorded at the values (116, 57).
Synthesis and Crystallographic Characterization of X-Substituted 2,4-Dinitrophenyl-4′-phenylbenzenesulfonates

Treatment of 2,4-dinitrophenol with sulfonyl chlorides in the presence of pyridine results in the formation of undesired pyridinium salts. In non-aqueous environments, the formation of the insoluble pyridinium salt greatly affects the formation of the desired product. A facile method of producing the desired sulfonate involves the use of an aqueous base with a water-miscible solvent. Herein, we present the optimization of methods for the formation of sulfonates and its application in the production of desired x-substituted 2,4-dinitrophenyl-4′-phenylbenzenesulfonates. This strategy is environmentally benign and supports a wide range of starting materials. Additionally, the intermolecular interactions of these sulfonate compounds were investigated using single-crystal x-ray diffraction data.
Spray Freeze-Drying as a Solution to Continuous Manufacturing of Pharmaceutical Products in Bulk

Pharmaceutical manufacturing is evolving from traditional batch processes to continuous ones. The new global competition focused on throughput and quality of drug products is certainly the driving force behind this transition which, thus, represents the new challenge of pharmaceutical manufacturing and hence of lyophilization as a downstream operation. In this direction, the present review deals with the most recent technologies, based on spray freeze-drying, that can achieve this objective. It provides a comprehensive overview of the physics behind this process and of the most recent equipment design.
Automatic segmentation of nuclei from pap smear cell images: A step toward cervical cancer screening

Cervical cancer is identified as the fourth most recurrent cancer among women across the globe. The cancer is treatable, if identified at the early stage. Pap smear test is the most common and the best tool for initial screening of cancer. Pap smear cell level image analysis is an open issue. The limitation of the analysis is due to the complexity of the cell structure. The smear cell image is composed of cytoplasm and nucleus. The shape and structure of the nucleus determines the cancer prevalence. Segmentation of nucleus is an important step in cancer detection. There are various methods developed for nucleus segmentation. The article proposes multithresholding algorithm to segment cytoplasm and nucleus region from the background. Morphological operations are used for correcting the segmented output. Support vector machine classifier is used for classifying the smear cell as normal or abnormal based on the extracted features of the segmented output. The obtained accuracy of the classifier, sensitivity and specificity for single smear cell are 99.66%, 99.85% and 99.17%.
Enhancement of Aqueous Solubility and Dissolution Rate of Etoricoxib by Solid Dispersion Technique

Etoricoxib (EXB) is a highly selective cox-2 inhibitor which belongs to the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). EXB is a class II drug according to the biopharmaceutical classification system (BCS), which possess a very low aqueous solubility in water. In the present study, many trials were made to improve the aqueous solubility and dissolution rate of EXB by solid dispersion technique. Eighteenth EXB formulas were formulated as a solid dispersion using a variety of hydrophilic polymers (as carriers) including poloxamer 407 (PXM 407), poloxamer 188 (PXM 188) and polyethylene glycol 4000 (PEG 4000) at different drug: polymer ratios (1:1, 1:3 and 1:5). These formulas were prepared by two methods; solvent evaporation and fusion method. The prepared formulas were evaluated for practical yield percent (PY %), drug content, saturated solubility and release rate, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and powder x-ray diffraction (PXRD). It was found that the solubility was affected by the polymer type and the method of preparation. The polymers (as carriers) used to prepare EXB- solid dispersion showed improvement in the solubility in the following descending order; PXM 407>PXM 188> PEG 4000. The optimum formula (SD15) composed of the drug: PXM 407 at a ratio of 1:5 was prepared by solvent evaporation showed 7.76 folds (676.40%) solubility improvement as compared to pure EXB. The optimum formula showed a release rate of 99.8% through the first 15 min. The advance characterization of the selected formula indicated the possible transformation of the drug to the amorphous state. Keywords: EXB, Solid dispersion, PXM 407, PXM 188, PEG 4000.
Psychophysiological Methods: Options, Uses, and Validity

The field of media psychology, born from classic media effects research, prioritizes a mechanistic approach to investigating the processes underlying the effects we observe in response to media messages. The field has pioneered content analytic methods and developed many self-report techniques to study these processes. However, no mechanistic explanation of media psychological phenomena can be achieved without integrating the biological processes that give rise to those effects we can observe. The role of psychophysiology in media psychology is to provide theories and measures for physiological processes that underlie or result from psychological phenomena. Why should we engage in psychophysiological research? Psychophysiological methods are tools for capturing and untangling the mind–body interactions that are the causes and effects of the phenomena that media psychology strives to explain. For example, what we commonly call “surprise” involves cognitive activity, such as noticing an unexpected event, and physiological and behavioral effects, such as widening pupils, a change in heart rate, or a startling of the body. Obviously, in order to be surprised, the senses must first notice something, such as the unanticipated loud sound of a gunshot in a movie. This information then prompts cognitive processing in the central nervous system that subsequently orchestrates a cascade of physiological, subjective psychological, and behavioral effects. As for surprise, similar arguments can be made for most psychological phenomena associated with media: Suspense, horror, inspiration, and various other cognitive–emotional constructs all consist of complex, interwoven interactions between central and peripheral nervous system reactions that constitute psychological processes. A comprehensive scientific explanation of these phenomena therefore cannot be achieved via self-report measures alone, but requires an integrative strategy that captures data from physiological, subjective, and behavioral channels. A psychophysiological approach is thus indispensable for assessing and analyzing these processes, and the methods have never been more readily adaptable to advance media theory and research. Although physiological psychology has a longer history, the field called psychophysiology became formally established in the 1960s. Since then, advances in biology, measurement technology, and computing enabled multichannel measurements of various peripheral responses. Within media psychology, well-known work by Zillmann and colleagues relied on psychophysiological measures of heart rate and skin conductance (Zillmann, Johnson, & Day, 1974), and psychophysiology is prominently featured
Indoor Localization System Based on Bluetooth Low Energy for Museum Applications

In the last few years, indoor localization has attracted researchers and commercial developers. Indeed, the availability of systems, techniques and algorithms for localization allows the improvement of existing communication applications and services by adding position information. Some examples can be found in the managing of people and/or robots for internal logistics in very large warehouses (e.g., Amazon warehouses, etc.). In this paper, we study and develop a system allowing the accurate indoor localization of people visiting a museum or any other cultural institution. We assume visitors are equipped with a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) device (commonly found in modern smartphones or in a small chipset), periodically transmitting packets, which are received by geolocalized BLE receivers inside the museum area. Collected packets are provided to the locator server to estimate the positions of the visitors inside the museum. The position estimation is based on a feed-forward neural network trained by a measurement campaign in the considered environment and on a non-linear least square algorithm. We also provide a strategy for deploying the BLE receivers in a given area. The performance results obtained from measurements show an achievable position estimate accuracy below 1 m.
Netnography and a summative content analysis approach to market research

With organisations like Facebook restricting how their application programming interface (API) can be used and scholars questioning the legality and ethics of web scrapping (i.e., the use of technology in the automatic extraction of data from the Web) more discussions around a qualitative Netnographic approach is needed. This paper addresses these issues by reflecting on the application of a passive summative content analysis method to Netnography and how it can be used in marketing research. It focuses on the rollout of smart meters (meters that allow consumers and service providers to monitor power consumption), which the UK Government has now delayed because of a poor uptake. As such, it contributes to the marketing domain’s theory and knowledge and provides a possible set of solutions that the UK Government and energy providers could consider to increase engagement. The study starts by providing an overview of the literature within Netnography and its use as a qualitative methodology. It then demonstrates, step by step, how a summative content analysis approach can be applied to Netnography, using NVivo as the platform of analysis. The case study utilises Mumsnet (UK’s biggest network for parents, with approximately 10 million unique visitors and 100 million-page views per month) as the forum for analysis. Threads over a six-month period were considered. The key themes identified can be explained as: smart meters were not transferable between energy providers; users were concerned about being hacked; the connecting signals did not always work; and such meters were not compulsory. The study demonstrates how effective and efficient Netnography can be in market research. It also provides some clear guidance on how copyright issues should be addressed.