Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polymer coatings for biomedical applications: a review

Abstract This review surveys some of the recent literature concerning the use of polymer coatings for a variety of biomedical applications. These have been grouped into six broad categories: orthopaedic materials, cardiovascular stents, antibacterial surfaces, drug delivery, tissue engineering and biosensors. These, to some extent overlapping, sections have been ordered such that the literature generally progresses from polymer coatings on metallic to non-metallic substrates. Polymer coatings can bestow a wide range of functionalities due to their various properties, such as antiwear characteristics, mechanical strength, corrosion protection, electrical conductivity, biocompatibility and surface chemistry. The review period is from 2011 to the present (mid-2013).
Melanization of mycorrhizal fungal necromass structures microbial decomposer communities

Mycorrhizal fungal necromass is increasingly recognized as an important contributor to soil organic carbon pools, particularly in forest ecosystems. While its decomposition rate is primarily determined by biochemical composition, how traits such as melanin content affect the structure of necromass decomposer communities remains poorly understood. To assess the role of biochemical traits on microbial decomposer community composition and functioning, we incubated melanized and non‐melanized necromass of the mycorrhizal fungus Meliniomyces bicolor in Pinus‐ and Quercus‐dominated forests in Minnesota, USA and then assessed the associated fungal and bacterial decomposer communities after 1, 2 and 3 months using high‐throughput sequencing. Melanized necromass decomposed significantly slower than non‐melanized necromass in both forests. The structure of the microbial decomposer communities depended significantly on necromass melanin content, although the effect was stronger for fungi than bacteria. On non‐melanized necromass, fungal communities were dominated by r‐selected ascomycete and mucoromycete microfungi early and then replaced by basidiomycete ectomycorrhizal fungi, while on melanized necromass these groups were co‐dominant throughout the incubation. Bacterial communities were dominated by both specialist mycophageous and generalist taxa. Synthesis. Our results indicate that necromass biochemistry not only strongly affects rates of decomposition but also the structure of the associated decomposer communities. Furthermore, the observed colonization patterns suggest that fungi, and particularly ectomycorrhizal fungi, may play a more important role in necromass decomposition than previously recognized.
A generalized profile function model based on artificial intelligence

A generalized profile function model (GPFM) provides an approximation of individual profile functions of the objects (trees) in a region. It is shown in this paper that this generalized model can be successfully derived using artificial computational intelligence, that is, neural networks. The generalized model (GPFM) is obtained as a mean value of all the available normalized individual profile functions. Generation of GPFM is performed by using the basic dataset, and verification is done by using a validation data set. As an example of the application of the proposed GSPM in volume computing, 42 objects from the same region are considered. Statistical properties of the original, measured data and estimated data based on the generalized model are presented and compared. Testing of the obtained GPFM is performed also by regression analysis. The obtained correlation coefficients between the real data and the estimated data are very high, 0.9946 for the basic data set and 0.9933 for the validation dataset.
Camera-based Obstacle Classification for Automated Reach Trucks Using Deep Learning

This paper focuses on the classification of obstacles that are widely present in warehouse environments using an RGBD camera. Our approach applies depth segmentation to detect obstacles which are classified using a Convolutional Neural Network and a Support Vector Machine. Our system is evaluated on real-world data captured from an automated reach truck in a warehouse environment.
Coseismic Movement and Seismic Ground Motion Associated with the 31 March 2002 off Hualien, Taiwan, Earthquake

On 31 March 2002, a M L = 6.8 earthquake (called the “331 earthquake”) occurred in northeastern Taiwan off Hualien. The shock lasted over 30 seconds across the entire island of Taiwan. The earthquake caused a few centimeters of coseismic deformation, and a few centimeters of ground motion in the northern and eastern parts of Taiwan. All of these displacements have been recorded by the Taiwan Continuous GPS Array (TCGA), and estimated by two different post-processing methods, namely the daily solution and the kinematic positioning algorithm. Precise evaluation of the coseismic deformation and capturing instantaneous ground motion at a level of just millimeters requires rigorous computational procedures. In this paper, a completely regular algorithm to estimate the crustal deformation in the Taiwan area has been applied to acquire coseismic deformation as a result of the 331 earthquake. A set of high sampling rate (1 Hz) data from the TCGA has been used to study simultaneous ground motion during the 331 earthquake. Using over 18 months of data and 100 stations of the TCGA, the coseismic deformation due to the 331 earthquake can be precisely estimated, and instantaneous ground motion can be observed in that portion of the TCGA network where stations with high sampling rate observations are situated. Since the coseismic deformation can be acquired precisely and the instantaneous ground motion can be computed by continuous GPS observations and integrated with seismic data, these results can aid the study of seismology and earthquake geodesy.
Filtering Aggression from the Multilingual Social Media Feed

This paper describes the participation of team DA-LD-Hildesheim from the Information Retrieval Lab(IRLAB) at DA-IICT Gandhinagar, India in collaboration with the University of Hildesheim, Germany and LDRP-ITR, Gandhinagar, India in a shared task on Aggression Identification workshop in COLING 2018. The objective of the shared task is to identify the level of aggression from the User-Generated contents within Social media written in English, Devnagiri Hindi and Romanized Hindi. Aggression levels are categorized into three predefined classes namely: ‘Overtly Aggressive‘, ‘Covertly Aggressive‘ and ‘Non-aggressive‘. The participating teams are required to develop a multi-class classifier which classifies User-generated content into these pre-defined classes. Instead of relying on a bag-of-words model, we have used pre-trained vectors for word embedding. We have performed experiments with standard machine learning classifiers. In addition, we have developed various deep learning models for the multi-class classification problem. Using the validation data, we found that validation accuracy of our deep learning models outperform all standard machine learning classifiers and voting based ensemble techniques and results on test data support these findings. We have also found that hyper-parameters of the deep neural network are the keys to improve the results.
Surface Tension – Driven Flow ▶ Capillary Flow Surface Tension – Powered Self-Assembly ▶ Capillary Origami Surface-Modified Microfluidics and Nanofluidics

Fluid phenomena in micrometeror nanometer-sized channels are governed by coupled principles from fluid mechanics, surface chemistry, electrochemistry, and electrostatics. The smaller length scales compared to traditional fluid mechanics provide several new and interesting phenomena due to significant enhancement of the surface-area-to-volume ratio, which makes surface-mediated flows important to the overall field of microfluidics and nanofluidics.
Improved sizer for time series

SiZer (SIgnificant ZERo crossing of the derivatives) is a scale-space visu- alization tool for statistical inferences. In this paper we improve global inference of SiZer for time series, originally proposed by Rondonotti, Marron and Park (2007), in two aspects. First, the estimation of the quantile in a confidence interval is theoretically justified by advanced distribution theory. Second, an improved non- parametric autocovariance function estimator is proposed using a differenced time series. A numerical study is conducted to demonstrate the sample performance of the proposed tool. In addition, asymptotic properties of SiZer for time series are investigated.
Emission Spectroscopy and Radiometric Measurements in the NASA Ames IHF Arc Jet Facility

Plasma diagnostic measurement campaigns in the NASA Ames Interaction Heating Facility (IHF) have been conducted over the last several years with a view towards characterizing the flow in the arc jet facility by providing data necessary for modeling and simulation. Optical emission spectroscopy has been used in the plenum and in the free jet of the nozzle. Radiation incident over a probe surface has also been measured using radiometry. Plenum measurements have shown distinct radial profiles of temperature over a range of operating conditions. For cases where large amounts of cold air are added radially to the main arc-heated stream, the temperature profiles are higher by as much as 1500 K than the profiles assumed in flow simulations. Optical measurements perpendicular to the flow direction in the free jet showed significant contributions to the molecule emission through inverse pre-dissociation, thus allowing determination of atom number densities from molecular emission. This has been preliminarily demonstrated with the N2 1st Positive System. Despite the use of older rate coefficients, the resulting atom densities are reasonable and surprisingly close to flow predictions.
Interactive comment on “Inferring the effects of sink strength on plant carbon balance processes from experimental measurements” by

The manuscript uses a data-assimilation technique to combine an essential but well thought model of carbon balance and plant growth with observations of photosynthesis, maintenance respiration, changes in biomass and NSC obtained in seedlings of Eucalyptos tereticornis planted in containers of different volumes and freely in the soil. The original experiment of Campany et al 2017 reproduced indeed different degrees of sink limitations. The data-assimilation technique allows the authors to infer time dynamics of model parameters (e.g., allocation fractions) and to quantify the relative
Optimization of Lipase Production in Solid-State Fermentation by Rhizopus Arrhizus in Nutrient Medium Containing Agroindustrial Wastes

Rhizopus arrhizus is a potential microorganism for lipase production. Solid-state fermentation is used for microbial biosynthesis of enzymes, due to advantages, such as high productivity, utilization of abundant and low-cost raw materials, and production of enzymes with different catalytic properties. The objective of the research is optimization of the conditions for lipase production in solid-state fermentation by Rhizopus arrhizus in a nutrient medium, containing agroindustrial wastes. Biosynthesis of lipase in solid-state fermentation by Rhizopus arrhizus was investigated. The effect of different solid substrates, additional carbon and nitrogen source, particles size and moisture content of the medium on enzyme production was studied. Response surface methodology was applied for determination of the optimal values of moisture content and tryptone concentration. A procedure for efficient lipase extraction from the fermented solids was developed. Highest lipase activity was achieved when wheat bran was used as a solid substrate. The addition of 1% (w/w) glucose and 5% (w/w) tryptone to the solid medium significantly increased lipase activity. The structure of the solid medium including particles size and moisture content significantly influenced lipase production. A mathematical model for the effect of moisture content and tryptone concentration on lipase activity was developed. Highest enzyme activity was achieved at 66% moisture and 5% (w/w) tryptone. The addition of the non-ionic surfactant Disponyl NP 3070 in the eluent for enzyme extraction from the fermented solids increased lipase activity about three folds. After optimization of the solid-state fermentation the achieved 1021.80 U/g lipase activity from Rhizopus arrhizus was higher and comparable with the activity of lipases, produced by other fungal strains. The optimization of the conditions and the use of low cost components in solid-state fermentation makes the process economicaly effective for production of lipase from the investigated strain Rhizopus arrhizus.
ISOLATION AND MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF PROTEOLYTIC AND LIPOLYTIC BACTERIAL ISOLATES FROM THE MARKET VEGETABLE WASTES

Microbial enzymes are diversified in their properties and substrate specificity, which make them attractive biotechnological tools for various industrial applications. These enzymes are widely derived from plants, animals because they are more stable than their corresponding plant and animal enzymes, their production is more convenient and safer. The aims of this study were to isolate and characterize proteolytic, lipolytic microorganisms from vegetable market waste tanks through morphological, biochemical tests and to confirm the bacterial species through 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The isolation of microorganisms is done by standard plate assay method. The molecular phylogeny of isolated strains shows similarity with Bacillus species. The first strain isolate showed sequence identity with Bacillus pumilus and the second isolate showed sequence similarity with Bacillus altitudinis. The isolates have good proteolytic, lipolytic activity and might have the potential application in several industrial processes. The production of protease and lipase as a metabolite indicates the potential of these isolated cultures for application in large scale production and recovery of proteins and lipids.
Testing for Household Resilience to Food Insecurity: Evidence from Nicaragua

The main goal of this paper is to develop a methodology to quantitatively assess resilience to food insecurity. The developed methodology is applied to Nicaraguan rural households hit by Mitch Hurricane in 1999. The results show that the proposed resilience index is a good predictor of households’ food security. The proposed resilience index highlights small landowners and agricultural wage workers as less resilient vis-a-vis other livelihood groups. Moreover this paper shows how a resilience index can be used in policy impact evaluation.
Effect of Marjoram Oil on the Clinicopathological, Cytogenetic and Histopathological Alterations Induced by Sodium Nitrite Toxicity in Rats

2 Abstract: The present study aimed to investigate the potential effect of marjoram oil in alleviating hematological, serum biochemical, chromosomal and histopathological alterations induced by sodium nitrite toxicity in rats. For this purpose, forty adult male rats were divided into four groups (10 rats each);Group (1): received distilled water and served as a control, Group (2) was daily administered marjoram oil at a dose of 0.5 ml/kg b.wt. by stomach tube for 2 months, Group (3) was daily administered sodium nitrite at dose of 30 mg/ kg b.wt. by stomach tube for 2 months and Group (4) was concurrently administered sodium nitrite and marjoram oil with similar doses that mentioned before. The obtained results indicated that sodium nitrite possesses a deleterious effect on blood cytology, induce oxidative damage, hepato-renal dysfunction, chromosomal abnormalities and histopathological alterations. The administration of marjoram oil in conjugation with sodium nitrite minimized the hazard effects of sodium nitrite, it improved RBCs count, PCV, Hb concentration and WBCs count. It increased the level of serum total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and diminished the level of serum malondialdehyde (MDA). Moreover, it decreased the elevated activities of AST, ALT and ALP, cholesterol, BUN, creatinine and glucose concentration and elevated the values of total proteins and albumin in comparison to sodium nitrite group. In addition, marjoram oil ameliorated the genotoxic effect of sodium nitrite as it reduced the frequency of chromosomal aberrations and improved the histopathological changes in liver, kidney and spleen in comparison to sodium nitrite intoxicated group.
The Steps of Slovenian Organisations on the Way to Business Excellence

The Steps of Slovenian Organisations on the Way to Business Excellence This research was carried out among the winners of the Slovenian business excellence prize (PRSPO), finalists and those who received special diplomas as a recognition level reached by applicants in implementing the business excellence model. Based on the findings of the research, we defined eight steps that organizations can consider as a guide on the path towards excellence. The purpose of the study was to examine how the previous winners of the PRSPO began their journey towards excellence, which were the key factors, what problems they encountered and how they managed to win the diploma or award. The analysis of the survey showed that the ISO 9001 standard is considered a first step towards the Slovenian business excellence award - in fact, it is a prerequisite for further improvements in the organization. The second step involves top management commitment and support for the introduction of excellence into business processes. The top management, in cooperation with all the employees, defines the areas for improvement and also confirms the method of implementation, both conceptually and financially. It is also necessary to take environmental aspects into consideration, which is provided by a third step along with the introduction of the ISO 14001. Once an organization defines the processes, it begins to introduce the business excellence model in the fourth step and carries out the self-assessment process. The key opportunities for improvement identified by the self-assessment process are further introduced in the business. In doing so, the organization can use various quality management approaches (the fifth step) and the first application for the PRSPO. In the sixth step, the organization encourages its employees to follow continuous education and innovation and, in the seventh step, participates again in the competition for the Slovenian business excellence award. As the required business excellence level is achieved, the organization receives the award for business excellence (PRSPO).
Spore consumption and life history of Zearagytodes maculifer (Broun) (Coleoptera: Leiodidae) on Ganoderma, its fungal host

Spore consumption and aspects of the life history of Zearagytodes maculifer (Coleoptera: Leiodidae) were studied on the bracket fungi Ganoderma cf. applanatum and G. australe in the Waitakere Ranges, New Zealand. Eggs, the four larval instars and their duration are described. The 25-day development time found (egg to adult) is short compared with other mycophagous beetles inhabiting bracket fungi. Numbers of larvae and adult beetles found on hosts were only weakly associated with season, and both larvae and adults were active in winter. Rate of spore consumption did not depend on larval instar, or which fungal species was host. However, fewer larvae and adult beetles were found per sporocarp on G. australe, whose ingested spores appeared to be less easily broken. The impact of Z. maculifer on host fitness appeared to be neutral as larvae consumed a very small proportion of discharged spores.
Testing Behavioral Hypotheses in Signaling Games ∗

In this paper, we introduce an equilibrium concept for signaling games, called Focused Hypothesis Testing Equilibrium (HTE). This equilibrium notion incorporates Ortoleva’s (2012) theory of belief updating on zero-probability events via selecting and updating hypotheses. Hypotheses are beliefs about strategies. If an equilibrium message is observed, the hypothesis that the sender plays his equilibrium strategy is selected and updated by Bayes’ rule. However, if an out-of-equilibrium message is observed, this hypothesis is rejected. Then, a new hypothesis about a strategy that generates the observed message is selected and updated via Bayes’ rule. Each Focused HTE is a Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium (PBE). Conversely, we show that each PBE is a Focused HTE, providing a novel justiﬁcation for PBE beliefs. Hypotheses provide a useful tool to reason about off-path beliefs. We impose different behavioral restrictions on hypotheses and use stronger equilibrium notions as reﬁnement criteria for PBE. We compare our reﬁnements with the Intuitive Criterion. Our strongest reﬁnement concept justiﬁes off-path beliefs that are immune to the Stiglitz-Mailath critique of the Intuitive Criterion.
Towards Improved Adaptive Random Testing for Programs with High Dimensional Input Domains and Failure-Unrelated Parameters ∗ †

Adaptive Random Testing (ART), an enhancement of Random Testing (RT), aims to both randomly select and evenly spread test cases. Recently, it has been observed that the effectiveness of some ART algorithms may deteriorate as the number of program input parameters (dimensionality) increases. In this paper, we analyse various problems of Fixed-Sized-Candidate-Set ART (FSCS-ART) (one ART algorithm) in the high dimensional input domain setting, and study how FSCS-ART can be further enhanced to address these problems. We propose that FSCS-ART algorithm incorporates a filtering process of inputs to achieve a more even-spread of test cases and better failure detection effectiveness in high dimensional space. This solution A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC’07) (Kuo et al. 2007). This research project is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia Contact author. Email: dkuo@ict.swin. edu.au Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong
Bacteriology of Adenoids in Children with Adenoid Hypertrophy despite Mometasone Furoate Administration

Abstract Introduction: Topical nasal corticosteroids have been reported to be an effective nonsurgical alternative treatment to control nasal symptoms related to adenoid hypertrophy, but not in all patients. The current study investigates the bacteriology of adenoids in children with non-reduced adenoid size despite mometasone furoate (MMF) administration. Methods: The patients were randomly divided into two groups: the MMF-administered group and the non-MMF administered group (N-MMFA) afterwards, the MMFadministered group was classified into subgroups according to endoscopic grading as reduced and non-reduced adenoid size. N-MMFA and MMF-administered with non-reduced adenoid size groups (MMF-A/N-RAS) underwent adenoidectomy and the deep bacterial flora of adenoid core specimens taken from these patients were cultured. Results: No significant differences were detected in terms of the mean number of organisms isolated per patient in MMF-administered but non-reduced adenoid size group and non-MMF administered group. On the other hand, the variety of bacterial species was decreased in MMFadministered but non-reduced adenoid size group when compared to non-MMF administered group. The study groups did not differ in the occurrence of semi quantitative growth. This study demonstrates that MMF has no significant effect on reducing the bacterial load of adenoids in children with MMF-A/N-RAS.