Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE EFFECT OF HYDROXYTYROSOL (HXT) AND A LOCAL OLIVE OIL EXTRACT ON THE LEVEL OF HEPCIDIN HORMONE AND PATHOLOGICAL HISTOLOGICAL CHANGES WITH IRON DEPOSITION IN THE AORTA RESULTING FROM INDUCED HYPERLIPIDEMIA IN MALE RATS

Hydroxytyrosol (HXT) is a polyphenol present in olive oil, known for its antioxidant effects. For this, the present study was designed to examine the role of both Local Olive Oil (LOO) and HXT in improving the level of lipid profile and the hepcidin hormone and iron, as well as the histological study of the aorta in male white rats type Sprague Dawley Experimental hyperlipidemia and comparison of results with Atorvastatin (ATOR). This study used 30 male white rats that were distributed to six groups and weights close. The first group (control) was given the standard diet and the second group (cholesterol) a diet containing 2% cholesterol throughout the eight-week trial period, while the third, fourth, fifth and sixth groups were given a high-cholesterol diet for two weeks and then gavage with LOO only, HXT only, LOO + HXT and ATOR, respectively, for six weeks while continuing on the diet rich in cholesterol. The results of the study showed a significant increase (P <0.05) in the level of total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL-C) and Atherogenic Index (AI) and hepcidin hormone and a significant decrease (P <0.05) in the level of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and iron, As well as many of the imbalances histopathological in the aorta, included the deposition of Cholesterol Crystals (CC), formation of plaques (PL), Lymphocytes Infiltration (LI), and Iron Deposition (ID) in the wall layers with an increase in wall thickness In the infected animal group compared to the healthy control group. While the groups of infected animals that were Gavage with LOO, HXT, LOO + HXT, and ATOR showed positive improvement in all the above variables, LOO + HXT surpassed all treatments. Current results suggest that the synergistic effect of HXT with LOO may enhance the antioxidant system and thus reduce the negative effects of hyperlipidemia.
ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT STRATEGIES BY NATIONS AND FIRMS. INSIGHTS FROM OEET-AISSEC WORKSHOP ON TRADE WARS AND GLOBAL CRISES

Like the previous one this issue of Emerging Economies includes contributions presented at the 5 Workshop organized by OEET and AISSEC at the Department of Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis” of the University of Turin on 3 and 4 of October 2019 (https://www.carloalberto.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/10/OEET-WORKSHOP-TRADE-Program.pdf), around the topic of “Trade Wars and Global Crises: The Outlook for Emerging and Advanced Countries”.
Clustering, Connectivity and Flow Responses of Deterministic Fractal-Fracture Networks

Abstract. It is well known that fracture networks display self-similarity in many cases and the connectivity and flow behavior of such networks are influenced by their respective fractal dimensions. In the past, the concept of lacunarity, a parameter that quantifies spatial clustering, has been implemented by one of the authors in order to demonstrate that a set of seven nested natural fracture maps belonging to a single fractal system, but of different visual appearances, have different clustering attributes. Any scale-dependency in the clustering of fractures will also likely have significant implications for flow processes that depend on fracture connectivity. It is therefore important to address the question as to whether the fractal dimension alone serves as a reasonable proxy for the connectivity of a fractal-fracture network and hence, its flow response or, if it is the lacunarity, a measure of scale-dependent clustering, that may be used instead. The present study attempts to address this issue by exploring possible relationships between the fractal dimension, lacunarity and connectivity of fractal-fracture networks. It also endeavors to study the relationship between lacunarity and fluid flow in such fractal-fracture networks. A set of deterministic fractal-fracture models generated at different iterations and, that have the same theoretical fractal dimension are used for this purpose. The results indicate that such deterministic synthetic fractal-fracture networks with the same theoretical fractal dimension have differences in their connectivity and that the latter is fairly correlated with lacunarity. Additionally, the flow simulation results imply that lacunarity influences flow patterns in fracture networks. Therefore, it may be concluded that at least in synthetic fractal-fracture networks, rather than fractal dimension, it is the lacunarity or scale-dependent clustering attribute that controls the connectivity and hence the flow behavior.
Design and Analysis of Low Power, Delay Optimized Digital Buffer Based on CNFET Technology

This paper presents a complete optimal design of a buffer in CMOS and CNFET 32 nm technology node. We investigate and conceptually explain the issues of power dissipation and propagation delay in CMOS and CNFET buffers driving large capacitive loads and propose a new buffer design for improving power dissipation at optimized propagation delay. The reduction in power dissipation is achieved by minimizing short circuit power and subthreshold leakage power which is predominant when supply voltage (V DD ) and threshold voltage (V th ) are scaled for low voltage applications. The proposed buffer has been designed and simulated using HSPICE tool in 32 nm VLSI technology node. The results show that modified taper buffer design provides 5-10% reduction in power dissipation at a reasonable amount of increase in propagation delay when compared with conventional design.
Commonsense Knowledge Mining from Term Definitions

Commonsense knowledge has proven to be beneficial to a variety of application areas, including question answering and natural language understanding. Previous work explored collecting commonsense knowledge triples automatically from text to increase the coverage of current commonsense knowledge graphs. We investigate a few machine learning approaches to mining commonsense knowledge triples using dictionary term definitions as inputs and provide some initial evaluation of the results. We start from extracting candidate triples using part-of-speech tag patterns from text, and then compare the performance of three existing models for triple scoring. Our experiments show that term definitions contain some valid and novel commonsense knowledge triples for some semantic relations, and also indicate some challenges with using existing triple scoring models.
A model of latent class multinomial logit to investigate motorcycle accident injuries

The analysis of road traffic accidents will be more complicated with the existence of heterogeneity in the raw data of traffic accident. This study conducts a specific attention to unobserved heterogeneity issues by classifying homogeneous attributes of two different accident data classes. A latent class approach was used to investigate the contributing factors and their influences of motorcycle accident injury outcomes. The data set from 2010 to 2015 consisting 1061 motorcycle accident injuries on Denpasar-Gilimanuk and Denpasar-Singaraja national road networks in Tabanan Regency, Bali were employed as the case study. This study found that male motorists and head on collisions significantly influencing fatal motorcycle injuries. In addition, collisions between motorcycle and the other types of motor vehicles, day time accidents, male motorists at fault, right angle and head on collisions significantly associated with serious motorcycle accident injuries. This result may represent many primary factors which considerably diverge across a traffic accident injury observation. The contributing factors identified in this study were further discussed and some countermeasures for reducing the motorcycle accident injuries were proposed.
Ranking of Efficiency in Context-dependent Data Envelopment Analysis with Non-discretionary Data

In this paper, we use the context-dependent method for ranking decision making units (DMUs) with non-discretionary data in data envelopment analysis (DEA). This methodology partitions a set DMUs into the several levels of efficient frontier, then obtains the efficiency of each DMU against of every calculate efficient frontier. We calculate a ranking score for each DMU by this efficiency indexes. Therefore we can rank DMUs by this score.
Traffic Sign Recognition with WiSARD and VG-RAM Weightless Neural Networks

: We present two biologically inspired approaches to traffic sign recognition based on Weightless Neural Networks (WNN): one based on Virtual Generalizing Random Access Memory (VG-RAM) neurons and the other on the Wilkes, Stonham and Aleksander Recognition Device (WiSARD) neurons. Both approaches employ the same neural architecture that models the transformations suffered by the images captured by the eyes from the retina to the primary visual cortex (V1) of the mammalian brain. We evaluated the performance of both approaches on the German Traffic Sign Recognition Benchmark (GTSRB). Our system based on VG-RAM neurons achieved a performance significantly better than the one based on WiSARD neurons and was ranked fifth in the GTSRB (the third and fourth places were human classifiers) with a recognition rate of 98.42%.
Efficient Increasing of the Mutation Score During Model-Based Test Suite Generation

The purpose of the method is to increase the sensitivity of an automatically generated test suite to mutations of a model. Unlike existing methods for generating test scenarios that use the mutational approach to assess the resulting test set, the proposed method analyzes the possibility of detecting mutations on the fly, in the process of analyzing the model’s behavior space, by adding of special coverage goals. Two types of mutants manifestation are considered: deviations in the behavior of paths for (weak case) and in the observed output (strong case). A new algorithm is proposed for efficient search of a path with observable effect of a mutation.
A prospective study on impact of patient counselling on quality of life of patients with atopic dermatitis

Background: Atopic dermatitis is an acute, sub-acute or chronic relapsing skin disorder characterized by intense itching, pruritus and oozing. It adversely affects the routine activities of patients for which effective treatment is to be provided along with proper counselling. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the impact of patient counselling on quality of life (QoL). Methods: A prospective study was conducted in 108 patients recruited from the Department of Dermatology for a period of 6 months. A written informed consent was taken. Out of the 108 patients, 54 patients received tacrolimus and the remaining received corticosteroids. The collected data was analysed and presented. Data was collected by using a suitably designed proforma. Dermatology life quality index (DLQI) was used for assessing QoL. Patients were counselled regarding the disease, drugs and lifestyle modifications using patient information leaflet (PIL). Results: The current study found that patient counselling was effective for both the groups with a p value <0.05. The effect of disease in quality of life improved from severe to mild in both groups (prior to counselling QoL mean value of 2.93±0.61 shifted to 1.18±0.71 post counselling). In the tacrolimus group, QoL mean value of 2.81±0.61 shifted to 0.98±0.71 after counselling. In the corticosteroids group, a shift from a mean QoL value of 3.05±0.59 to a mean of 1.38±0.65 was observed post counselling. Conclusions: The provision of effective counselling was found to have a profound impact on improving patient’s quality of life. A transition from severe effects of the disease to milder effects of the disease on quality of life was observed.
ASCORBIC ACID AND TISSUE BROWNING IN MANGO CV HINDI BE-SENNARA FRUITS (MAGNIFIERA INDICIA L

This study was conducted to find out the relationship between ascorbic acid (AA), and internal browning (IB) incidence in Hindi Be-sennara mango fruits (Mangifera indica L.) during cold storage (4C). Ascorbic acid content in two main parts (stem and calyx end of fruit) and three sub-main parts (peels, inner and outer pulps) of the fruits were measured. Internal browning in mango fruits found to be dependant on the fruit AA content. Exogenous application of AA (5.6 mM) decreased IB incidence when the fruits immersed for 24 hour compared to these immersed in water for the same time and stored at ambient conditions for 35 days. Mango fruits pre-storage immersing in diluted AA (5.6 mM), water is absorbed throughout the peel cells causing an increase on AA content and a decrease on its concentration. The decrease of IB incidence was appeared due to such increase on AA content in inner and outer parts of the fruit. This protection of the treated fruits may be related to the consumption of the externally added AA. Therefore, it could be said that the application of AA increases mango fruit quality, through protecting the from development of IB, also, the obtained results indicated that such treatment maintain the total phenols (TP) content in fruits during cold storage constant.
STRATEGA: A General Strategy Games Framework

Strategy games are complex environments often used in AI-research to evaluate new algorithms. Despite the common-alities of most strategy games, often research is focused on one game only, which may lead to bias or overﬁtting to a particular environment. In this paper, we motivate and present S TRATEGA - a general strategy games framework for playing n-player turn-based and real-time strategy games. The platform currently implements turn-based games, which can be conﬁgured via YAML-ﬁles. It exposes an API with access to a forward model to facilitate research on statistical forward planning agents. The framework and agents can log information during games for analysing and debugging algorithms. We also present some sample rule-based agents, as well as search-based agents like Monte Carlo Tree Search and Rolling Horizon Evolution, and quantitatively analyse their performance to demonstrate the use of the framework. Results, although purely illustrative, show the known problems that traditional search-based agents have when dealing with high branching factors in these games. S TRATEGA can be downloaded at: https://github.com/GAIGResearch/Stratega
Increased Capacity for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Mineralization in Bioirrigated Coastal Marine Sediments

ABSTRACT Bioirrigation of marine sediments by benthic infauna has the potential to increase both the rate and depth of bacterial mineralization of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) by recirculating oxygenated bottom water into sediment burrows. Rates of heterotrophic bacterial production and mineralization of PAHs (naphthalene, phenanthrene, and fluoranthene) were measured in sections of sediment cores sampled from stations in San Diego Bay. Data suggest that rates of PAH biodegradation and bacterial heterotrophy were influenced by bioirrigation by benthic infauna. PAH mineralization and heterotrophic production were higher in core sections where sulfide was not detected relative to core sections containing sulfide. Depth-integrated capacity of the upper 17 cm of sediment to mineralize PAHs was 4 to 10 times higher at the station with bioirrigation coefficients that increased with depth. Remedial dredging of sediments to remove contaminant mass (and presumable lower ecological risk) will also remove benthic infauna. Removal of infauna and the subsequent lowering of bioirrigation in surface sediments would be expected to lower the capacity of intrinsic PAH bioremediation. This could cause local increases in ambient PAH concentration and consequently increase the ecological risk at the site and potentially degrade the health of the ecosystem by removing a sink for PAHs.
Evaluation of the reducing potential of PSMA-containing endosomes by FRET imaging

Aim: Ligand-targeted therapeutics are experiencing increasing use for treatment of human diseases due to their ability to concentrate a desired drug at a pathologic site while reducing accumulation in healthy tissues. For many ligand-targeted drug conjugates, a critical aspect of conjugate design lies in engineering release of the therapeutic payload to occur only after its internalization by targeted cells. Because disulfide bond reduction is frequently exploited to ensure intracellular drug release, an understanding of the redox properties of endocytic compartments can be critical to ligand-targeted drug design. While the redox properties of folate receptor trafficking endosomes have been previously reported, little is known about the trafficking of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), a receptor that is experiencing increasing use for drug targeting in humans. Methods: To obtain this information, we have constructed a PSMA-targeted fluorescence resonance energy transfer pair that reports on disulfide bond reduction by changing fluorescence from red to green. Results: We show here that this reporter exhibits rapid and selective uptake by PSMA-positive cells, and that reduction of its disulfide bond proceeds steadily but incompletely following internalization. The fact that maximal disulfide reduction reaches only ~50%, even after 24 h incubation, suggests that roughly half of the conjugates must traffic through endosomes that display no reducing capacity. Conclusion: As the level of disulfide reduction differs between PSMA trafficked and previously published folate trafficked conjugates, it also follows that not all internalizing receptors are translocated through similar intracellular compartments. Taken together, these data suggest that the efficiency of disulfide bond reduction must be independently analyzed for each receptor trafficking pathway when disulfide bond reduction is exploited for intracellular drug release.
Study the Effect of Box Grip and Back Belt on Manual Lifting Tasks for Indian Male Workers

A laboratory experiment was conducted to determine the effects of Box grip, Back belt and other different parameters on Heart rate (HR). Three male experienced industrial workers recruited as participants. Each participant performed six different lifting tasks. Three lifting frequencies (3, 6, and 9), three vertical distances (i.e. knee, waist, shoulder) and three different loads (i.e. 7, 14, and 21) a horizontal distance of 25 cm and 10 min experimental time considered. The results showed that (1) The HR was significantly lower with Back belt and more without Back belt. (2) Box grip had also significant effect on the HR the value of HR was lower with Box with slotted grip and more with Box without handle grip. (3) In case of lifting frequency the value of HR is more with frequency 9 and less with frequency 3. Both the physiological costs (HR) increased with an increase in lifting frequency. (4) HR increased with vertical distance at shoulder and decreased with vertical distance at knee. (5) The value of HR is more with load of 21 kg and is less with load of 7 kg.It is generally believed that manual lifting without Back support is more harmful for our cardiovascular system. HR increases rapidly when manual lifting is done with Box without handle grip and without Back belt support. However, the previous studies were conducted in Europe and America, and the data were obtained from the different populations. This work, therefore, aims to investigate the influence of Back belt and Box grip on HR of industrial labour during manual lifting task.
Novel Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robot for Pipe and Plant Inspection

In the last decades, the trend of replacing humans with robots has increased enormously, especially in repetitive or dangerous tasks such as inspection and maintenance. Various inspection robots have been developed so far, but usually those systems are designed for addressing very specific operations. The spread of such devices is mainly limited by the lack in adaptability to different tasks, and by the design restrictions of these robots. Instead, modular and self-reconfigurable robots have proven superior performance in different scenarios. Here, the idea of developing a modular, self-reconfigurable robot for inspection is discussed. The system consists of two modular vehicles with docking modules for reassembling into a snake robot. Thanks to its structure, it overcomes the challenges posed during pipe and plant inspections. Keywords–inspection robot; modular robots; self-reconfigurable mobile robot.
MANA: Microarchitecting an Instruction Prefetcher

L1 instruction (L1-I) cache misses are a source of performance bottleneck. Sequential prefetchers are simple solutions to mitigate this problem; however, prior work has shown that these prefetchers leave considerable potentials uncovered. This observation has motivated many researchers to come up with more advanced instruction prefetchers. In 2011, Proactive Instruction Fetch (PIF) showed that a hardware prefetcher could effectively eliminate all of the instruction-cache misses. However, its enormous storage cost makes it an impractical solution. Consequently, reducing the storage cost was the main research focus in the instruction prefetching in the past decade. Several instruction prefetchers, including RDIP and Shotgun, were proposed to offer PIF-level performance with significantly lower storage overhead. However, our findings show that there is a considerable performance gap between these proposals and PIF. While these proposals use different mechanisms for instruction prefetching, the performance gap is largely not because of the mechanism, and instead, is due to not having sufficient storage. Prior proposals suffer from one or both of the following shortcomings: (1) a large number of metadata records to cover the potential, and (2) a high storage cost of each record. The first problem causes metadata miss, and the second problem prohibits the prefetcher from storing enough records within reasonably-sized storage.
Highly conductive, twistable and bendable polypyrrole–carbon nanotube fiber for efficient supercapacitor electrodes

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are a promising candidate for flexible and wearable electronic applications. Here, we report a conductive, twistable and bendable CNT composite fiber with core–shell structure for efficient supercapacitor electrode, where the CNT bundles are coated with a thin layer of polypyrrole (PPy) (denoted as PPy@CNT). The electrochemical properties of the fiber electrode depend on the content and distribution of the PPy. The PPy@CNT fiber exhibits a high specific capacitance of 350 F g−1 and high stability in cyclic testing. The outstanding electrochemical performance originates from the high conductivity of the core–shell structured PPy@CNT composite, which makes charge transfer easily between PPy and CNTs. The PPy@CNT fiber is also stable under bending and twisting.