Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The diagnostic geochemistry, relative abundance, and spatial distribution of high-calcium, low-alkali olivine tholeiite dykes in the Lower Tertiary regional swarm of the Isle of Skye, NW Scotland

Summary Dykes from four sections across the axis of the Skye regional swarm have been analysed for major elements, Nb, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, and rare-earth elements. 70 % of the dykes are characterized by relatively high CaO (11–12%), and low abundance of elements such as TiO2 (∼1%), K2O (0·05–0·20 %), Zr (30–60 ppm), with a light-rare-earth depleted chondrite normalized pattern. The remainder of the swarm comprises dykes equivalent in composition to the Skye Main Lava Series and dykes belonging to a further magma type distinguished by a flat chondrite normalized rare-earth pattern. The high-calcium, low-alkali tholeiite dykes are confined to a narrow persistent zone forming the major axis of dilation of the swarm; other basaltic dykes are axially less persistent and have a wider lateral distribution. The more evolved dykes tend to be restricted to central Skye.
Lipid-based drug delivery systems (LDDS): Recent advances and applications of lipids in drug delivery

Recently, advances in pharmaceutical research is focused on new delivery systems utilizing new devices to achieve modification of delivery time, targeting, as well as improve the in vivo solubility and hence bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs. Lipid based drug delivery systems (LDDS) consists of diverse group of formulations, each consisting of varying functional and structural properties that are amenable to modifications achieved by varying the composition of lipid excipients and other additives. LDDS has evolved, overtime, from micro- to nano-scale enhancing the efficacy and therapeutic application of these systems. LDDS are accepted, proven, commercially viable strategies for formulating challenging pharmaceutical molecules and can be tailored to meet a wide range of product requirements. Generally, most lipid drug delivery systems used as drug carriers have high stability, high carrier capacity, feasibility of incorporating both hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances and feasibility of variable routes of administration, including oral, topical, parenteral and pulmonary routes. LDDS can also be designed to allow modified drug release from matrices. LDDS could be broadly grouped into four: solid lipid particulate dosage forms, emulsion based systems, solid lipid tablets, and vesicular systems. Modifications from these four types include: lipospheres, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs), nano structured lipid carriers (NLC), lipid drug conjugate nanoparticles (LDC), self emulsifying formulations (SEFs), pickering emulsions, dry emulsions, micro and nano-emulsions, solidified reverse micellar solution (SRMS) based tablets, liposomes, herbosomes, cryptosomes and transferosomes amongst others. This work exhaustively reviewed the advances in LDDS and also drew comparison between the different types based on history, methods of manufacture, applications, advantages and disadvantages. Key words: Cryptosomes, lipospheres, lipoplexes, solid lipid tablets, pharmacosomes, virosomes, vesosomes.
Enhancement of dextransucrase activity of Pediococcus pentosaceus mutant SPAm1 by response surface methodology

In the present investigation, an optimal fermentation medium for the production of dextransucrase from mutant SPAm1 of a natural isolate of Pediococcus pentosaceus (GenBank Acc. No. EU569832) was developed following response surface method. A two-level Plackett-Burman design (PBD) and five-level Central composite design (CCD) was combined to optimize the medium composition for enhancement of the dextransucrase activity of SPAm1. A second-order model equation was suggested and validated experimentally. The model adequacy was very satisfactory as the coefficient of determination was 0.958. The optimum values for the tested variables were; sucrose 55.2 g/L; beef extract 2.3 g/L and Tween 80 8.3 mL/L. The predicted dextransucrase activity after response optimization was 15.9 U/mL, whereas the experimental value was 15.6 U/mL at 16 h of incubation, which showed a 3.2-fold enhancement over the enzyme activity (4.9 U/mL) of mutant SPAm1 given by the unoptimized medium. However, the increase in dextransucrase activity by SPAm1 after optimization of the medium was an outstanding 4.6-fold higher over that of the wild-type P. pentosaceus from the unoptimized medium (3.4 U/mL).
Interaction between a Broad-spectrum Antibiotic and Silver Nanoparticlesin a Human Gut Ecosystem

The antimicrobial properties of engineered silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have led to their wide use in diverse consumer products. Ampicillin too, acts as a broad-spectrum antibiotic and thus is prescribed for the treatment of many common infections, but with the problematic emergence of ampicillin-resistant bacteria. As a consequence, there has been some interest in the combination of these two distinct chemistries prompted by the clinical challenge of resistance. Prior to trials of combination therapy, however, it is important to understand the impact on human microbiomes. Here we investigated the effect of ampicillin and AgNPs, both individually and in a combined therapy on a human intestinal ecosystem known as a defined experimental community (DEC-60). The DEC-60 consortia was co-treated with a concentration of AgNPs (50 mg/L) known to have a minimal impact, and a broad range of the antibiotic up to the clinical dose (6 mg/L). The addition of AgNPs to sub-clinical doses of ampicillin (0.06 and 0.6 mg/L) had a significantly impact (p<0.001-0.05) on gas production (%CO2 and %N2) and changed the composition of fatty acid methyl ester signatures so that they were distinct from each individual antimicrobial, as well as un-treated control cultures. DNA sequencing, supported by multidimensional scaling analysis, confirmed the community shift and showed distinct phylogenetic distributions at different concentrations of ampicillin, depending on the presence of AgNPs. Together, these results suggest that the antibacterial efficacy of sub-clinical doses of ampicillin was increased by AgNPs, possibly due to the synergistic effect of damage to the bacterial cell walls. Not only does this analysis provide insight into AgNP toxicity, it offers some promise that combined antimicrobial therapies may have value in a clinical setting.
THE ARENS REGULARITY OF WEIGHTED SEMIGROUP ALGEBRAS

In (4), Baker and Rejali are concerned with the regularity of � 1(S, w), where S is a discrete semigroup. We study the Arens regularity of the weighted semigroup algebra Mb(S, w), for non-discrete S. We show that � 1(S, w) is regular if and only if Mb(S, w) is regular. We obtain conditions for the regularity of M � a(S, w), analogous to the weighted group algebra L 1 (G, w). It is shown that L 1 (G, w) is regular if and only if G is finite or G is discrte and Ω is 0−cluster, where Ω(x, y )= w(xy)/w(x)w(y) for x, y ∈ G. We obtain that M � a(S, w) is regular whenever M � a(S) is. Furthermore, M � a(S, w )i s
WITH PRE-MEETING VIRTUAL REALITY ENVIRONMENTS

The purpose of this paper is to explore how design reviews can be supported with pre-meeting virtual reality environments. Previous research has not systematically investigated how virtual environments can be used to communicate the design intent (to clients) and to communicate feedback (to design professionals) in advance of review meetings within real-world projects. A prototypical virtual environment that enables clients to individually navigate through and comment on a design-in-progress, aimed to be used before a review meeting, was therefore studied in two typical architectural and engineering design projects. A pattern-matching strategy was applied for the qualitative analysis of the data collected. It is concluded that theoretical expectations and pragmatic realities about the support of pre-meeting virtual reality environments for design review match (yet in varying degrees) in the areas of: exploration from a user perspective, participation in solution-finding and feedback on a design proposal. This paper thereby offers an in-depth understanding about the potential of virtual environment usages in advance of review meetings, which may help design professionals to make a more informed choice about how and why to support design reviews with pre-meeting virtual reality environments.
Finance-augmented business cycles: A robustness check

Recent literature has highlighted the importance of considering the financial cycle for the estimation of business cycles. The applied estimation approaches, however, differ widely and cyclical estimates are therefore difficult to compare. In this paper, we assess the robustness of finance-augmented business cycle estimates to different trend specifications for Japan, the UK, and the US. In line with earlier studies, we confirm that the inclusion of financial variables strongly affects the estimates of the business cycle, resulting in larger amplitudes and more persistent dynamics than traditional cycle estimates. While the dynamics of the cyclical component does not depend much on the model used, its amplitude shows strong sensitivity to the underlying assumptions of the trend model.
Identification of Salmonella Strains of Phyllosphere Food Poisoning by Melt Curve Analysis: In Silico approach

During last few decades, there have been increased incidences of outbreak of diseases due to consumption of fresh vegetables and fruits contaminated with human pathogens. Such threats warrant rapid detection test. The standard method of diagnosis relies on culture-plate and serological methods which lack discrimination and are time consuming having several drawbacks, inconsistency and are less efficient. We applied bioinformatics approaches to develop of a real- time PCR simulation for detecting Salmonella serovars which are involved in most disease outbreaks associated with phyllosphere. Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica (designated as S. enterica ) are common in plants, on surface as well as present internally in tissues. Though more than 2500 serovars of Salmonella enterica are known but the reports of serovars colonizing in plants are limited. Nucleotide sequence variation in target genes, viz. PurE, SucA, hisD, hivA and fliC were used in in silico to differentiate Salmonella serovars . A large number of reference sequences of target genes were retrieved from NCBI, and common conserved region were used for development of multiplex primer design using muPlex. Primer thermodynamic properties and secondary structure were assessed using Beacon designer. Sequences were truncated to remove sequences outside of the region bounded by the primers. We performed in silico DNA melting simulations with several Salmonella serovars using the programs umelt, and tested the utility of the programs for assay design, which will save time and cost of in vitro testing several multiple primers in RT PCR. Keywords - In Silico ; Salmonella ; Phyllosphere;Real-time PCR (RT-PCR)
Cognitive Radio Based Neighbor Identificationand Probabilistic Rebroadcast for ReducingRouting Overhead

Although more than a decade has passed from the proposal of the Cognitive Radio paradigm, in these years the research has been focused on the problem of routing in cognitive networks. This paper implements a solution by evaluating the feasibility of reactive routing for mobile cognitive radio ad hoc networks. In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), the network topology changes frequently and unpredictably due to the arbitrary mobility of nodes. This feature leads to frequent path failures and route reconstructions, which causes an increase in the routing control overhead. The overhead of a route discovery cannot be neglected. Thus, it is imperative to reduce the overhead of route discovery in the design of routing protocols of MANETs based on the idea of Cognitive Radio Paradigm. This paper focuses on a novel routing protocol-based on probabilistic rebroadcast and neighbor coverage information obtained using Cognitive radio paradigm to reduce the routing overhead . Cognitive Radio is a recent paradigm that aims at more flexible and efficient usage of radio spectrum. It allows wireless radios to opportunistically access portions of entire radio spectrum without any harmful interference to licensed users. This combined approach enables to provide better performance of routing in mobile ad hoc Networks and efficient usage of Radio Spectrum.
Education and growth: A simple model with complicated dynamics

We construct a simple model of education and growth in which young adults (children) spend a fraction of their time and old adults (parents) spend a fraction of their income on education. Both a strategic complementarity and an intergener- ational externality in the creation of human capital are present. The interactions between each pair of consecutive generations lead to rich dynamics. We show that multiple growth equilibria arise, some of them periodic and some aperiodic. We also ? nd a negative correlation between volatility and growth, without a one-way causal relationship between the two being, necessarily, present. Rather this negative correlation is driven by the structural characteristics of the economy.
Is spiral modulation really useful

The performance analysis of modulation techniques has been studied extensively. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of a new modulation technique called spiral modulation. Spiral modulation uses complex spirals in the complex plane to modulate data and form complex signals. Spiral modulation was proposed by Astrapi Corporation and the company claimed that spiral modulation is better than the conventional modulations and can exceed the Shannon limit. In this thesis, we explore the potential of spiral modulation and verify the claims by using MATLAB simulation according to the Astrapi’s spiral modulation patents. We first present the system structure and the concept of spiral modulation. Then, we focus on the bit-error rate (BER) performance analysis and the spectral efficiency analysis by using MATLAB simulation. In the BER performance analysis, our simulation results reveal that the BER performance of spiral modulation can be better than some conventional modulations when the constellation size is equal or larger than eight if the bandwidth is not taken into consideration. In the spectral efficiency analysis, we estimate the bandwidth of spiral modulation signals by using the periodogram method. The results show that the bandwidth of spiral modulation signal is not strictly limited. A spectral efficiency plane is plotted, and it shows that the spectral efficiency of spiral modulation is worse than the conventional modulation techniques. We conclude that, contrary to the claim made by Astrapi, the spiral modulation can not exceed Shannon capacity boundary on the spectral efficiency plane.
A Simple Data Assimilation System for Complex Snow Distributions (SnowAssim)

A methodology for assimilating ground-based and remotely sensed snow data within a snow-evolution modeling system (SnowModel) is presented. The data assimilation scheme (SnowAssim) is consistent with optimal interpolation approaches in which the differences between the observed and modeled snow values are used to constrain modeled outputs. The calculated corrections are applied retroactively to create improved fields prior to the assimilated observations. Thus, one of the values of this scheme is the improved simulation of snow-related distributions throughout the entire snow season, even when observations are only available late in the accumulation and/or ablation periods. Because of this, the technique is particularly applicable to reanalysis applications. The methodology includes the ability to stratify the assimilation into regions where either the observations and/or model has unique error properties, such as the differences between forested and nonforested snow environments. The methodologies are introduced using synthetic data and a simple simulation domain. In addition, the model is applied over NASA’s Cold Land Processes Experiment (CLPX), Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado, observation domain. Simulations using the data assimilation scheme were found to improve the modeled snow water equivalent (SWE) distributions, and simulated SWE displayed considerably more realistic spatial heterogeneity than that provided by the observations alone.
The Development of Members' Attitudes toward Their Unions: Sweden and Canada

This study examines two widely researched attitudes of union members—satisfaction with and commitment to their union—using 1987–88 data on 1,675 union members in professional occupations in Sweden and 476 blue- and white-collar union members in Canada. The authors find, first, that union commitment and union satisfaction are theoretically and empirically different constructs. Second, tests of a theoretical model of union attitude formation indicate that different (though overlapping) sets of factors influence union commitment and union satisfaction. One finding is that activities and processes that provide members with greater information about the union, such as new member orientation programs, newsletters sent to members' homes, and participation in union activities, effectively promote union commitment, but not union satisfaction. The results are very similar across the two samples, suggesting that they have cross-cultural generalizability.
Using five-minute bird counts to study magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) impacts on other birds in New Zealand

We used five-minute bird counts to investigate whether introduced Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) influence the abundance of other birds in rural New Zealand. Over 3 years, magpies were removed from five c. 900-ha study blocks, one in each of Northland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Wellington and Southland. Birds were counted in both the treatment blocks and paired non-treatment blocks for the 3 years of removal and also 1 year before. To minimise problems raised elsewhere with index counts we (1) selected treatment blocks and count stations using randomisation procedures, (2) used trained observers who spent equal time in paired treatment and non-treatment blocks, and (3) counted all blocks at the same time of year and only in good weather. On average, 548 magpies were removed from each treatment block each year, with magpie counts reduced by 76% relative to non-treatment blocks. Our results suggest magpies may restrict the movements of some birds (including kererü and tüï) in rural areas, but are less important than pest mammals at limiting population abundance at a landscape scale. We submit that five-minute bird counts were appropriate for our objectives, but that more research to examine their relationship to absolute densities is needed.
Production Efficiency of Broiler Farming in Thailand: A Stochastic Frontier Approach

This paper considers translog stochastic frontier model in which the effects of technical inefficiency are defined by the Battese and Coelli model, which imposed a common temporal pattern upon all broiler farms. In this study, efficiency score of broiler farms in northern Thailand were estimated. The goal of this paper was to analyze variations in the production and technical inefficiencies of Thai broiler farms in the northern region. The results showed that feed, bird stocks, operating costs, and other costs were important factors to broiler output in the Chiang Mai Province. It also showed that the socio-economic situation of farmers appears to have effect technical efficiency at the farm level. The results suggest that, there is opportunity to improve broiler production in the region by adopting appropriate management practices.
Children in stepfather families: Relationships with fathers and stepfathers1

A child who grows up in a stepfather family is generally confronted with both a non-resident father and a stepfather. We investigated relationships between such children and these two father figures, and examined associations with child adjustment. Thirty-seven 8to 12-year-old children living in stepfather families participated in the study. Our results show that boys experience warmer relationships with their non-resident fathers than with their stepfathers. For girls, no differences were found: Both relationships are positively associated with each other. We also found that boys’ social competence is associated with their relationships with their non-resident fathers, while for girls’ self-esteem their relationships with their stepfathers seems to matter most. Surprisingly, neither relationship is correlated with children’s problem behavior. 1 Hakvoort, E. M. , Bos, H. M. W. , van Balen, F. , & Hermanns, J. M. A. (2011). Kinderen in stiefvadergezinnen: Relaties met vaders en stiefvaders [Children in stepfather families: Relationships with fathers and stepfathers]. Tijdschrift Pedagogiek, 31, 68-82.
Tunable hysteresis effect for perovskite solar cells

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) usually suffer from a hysteresis effect in current–voltage measurements, which leads to an inaccurate estimation of the device efficiency. Although ion migration, charge trapping/detrapping, and accumulation have been proposed as a basis for the hysteresis, the origin of the hysteresis has not been apparently unraveled. Herein we reported a tunable hysteresis effect based uniquely on open-circuit voltage variations in printable mesoscopic PSCs with a simplified triple-layer TiO2/ZrO2/carbon architecture. The electrons are collected by the compact TiO2/mesoporous TiO2 (c-TiO2/mp-TiO2) bilayer, and the holes are collected by the carbon layer. By adjusting the spray deposition cycles for the c-TiO2 layer and UV-ozone treatment, we achieved hysteresis-normal, hysteresis-free, and hysteresis-inverted PSCs. Such unique trends of tunable hysteresis are analyzed by considering the polarization of the TiO2/perovskite interface, which can accumulate positive charges reversibly. Successfully tuning of the hysteresis effect clarifies the critical importance of the c-TiO2/perovskite interface in controlling the hysteretic trends observed, providing important insights towards the understanding of this rapidly developing photovoltaic technology.
Single-Step Adaptive Offset Min-Sum Algorithm for Decoding LDPC Codes

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with belief-propagation (BP) algorithm achieve a remarkable performance close to the Shannon limit at reasonable decoding complexity. Conventionally, each iteration in decoding process contains two steps, the horizontal step and the vertical step. In this paper, an efficient implementation of the adaptive offset min-sum (AOMS) algorithm for decoding LDPC codes using the single-step method is proposed. Furthermore, the performances of the AOMS algorithm compared with belief-propagation (BP) algorithm are investigated. The algorithms using the single-step method reduce the implementation complexity, speed up the decoding process and have better efficiency in terms of memory requirements.
A Framework for Multi-Device Application Development based on Kinect

Interactive systems set in multi-device environment continue to increase in popularity, prompting both practitioners and developers to experiment with emerging technologies. This thesis presents XDKinect — a lightweight framework that facilitates development of cross-device applications using Kinect to mediate user interactions. The main benefits of XDKinect include its simplicity, configurability and extensibility. Our framework features a time-based API to handle full-body interactions, a multi-modal API to capture speech and gesture recogniton, a settings API to optimise for specific application requirements, an API to utilise proxemic awareness information, and a cross-device communication API. A user study was conducted to investigate the potential of these features in terms of effectiveness, ease of use and possible use in the future. We show several example applications of XDKinect, as well as discussing advantages and limitations of our toolkit as revealed by the user evaluations.