Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Formulation of fast disintegrating domperidone tablets using Plantago ovata mucilage by 3 2 full factorial design

The present work was carried out to study the disintegrant property of plantago ovata mucilage . The objective of the work was to formulate Fast disintegrating tablets of Domperidon with a view to enhance patient compliances and dissolution rate by direct compression method using 3² full factorial design. Plantago ovata mucilage (2-10% w/w) was used as natural superdisintegrant and microcrystalline cellulose (0-30% w/w) was used as diluent, along with directly compressible mannitol to enhance mouth feel. The tablets were evaluated for hardness, friability, thickness, drug content uniformity, in vitro dispersion time, wetting time and water absorption ratio. Based on in vitro dispersion time (approximately 10s); the formulation containing 10% w/w Plantago ovata mucilage and 30%w/w microcrystalline cellulose was found to be promising and tested for in vitro drug release pattern (in 0.1 N HCl), short-term stability (at 40o/75% RH for 3 month) and drug-excipient interaction. Surface response plots are presented to graphically represent the effect of independent variables (concentrations of Plantago ovata mucilage and microcrystalline cellulose) on the in vitro dispersion time. The validity of the generated mathematical model was tested by preparing two extra-design check point formulations. The optimized tablet formulation was compared with conventional commercial tablet formulation for drug release profiles. This formulation showed nearly four-fold faster drug release (t 50% 2.85 min) compared to the conventional commercial tablet formulation (t 50% 7.85 min). Short-term stability studies on the formulation indicated that there are no significant changes in drug content and in vitro dispersion time (p < 0.05). Shahidulla et al., International Current Pharmaceutical Journal, July 2015, 4(8): 415-419
Resources for Sale: Corruption, Democracy and the Natural Resource Curse

Abstract A puzzling piece of empirical evidence suggests that resource-abundant countries tend to grow slower than their resource-poor counterparts. We attempt to explain this phenomenon by developing a lobbying game in which rent seeking firms interact with corrupt governments. The presence or absence of political competition, as well as the potential costs of political transitions, turn out to be key elements in generating the 'resource curse. ' These variables define the degree of freedom that incumbent governments have in pursuing development policies that maximize surplus in the lobbying game, but put the economy off its optimal path.
The Need for Large-Scale, Integrated Studies of Biodiversity ? the Experience of the Program for Biodiversity Research in Brazilian Amazonia

Abstract Brazilian Amazonia covers around 5 million km 2 . If we could sample it regularly, with one sample for each 1 degree cell (10,000 km 2 ), we would need 500 sample sites. It is clear that financial costs limit the amplitude of biodiversity studies. As the area to be explored is so large, financial resources limited, and demands varied, a program on Amazonian biodiversity research must be cost-effective. Integrated and large-scale studies, using standardized protocols represent the only way to achieve these goals. In this review, we report on experience gathered at two model sites in Amazonia, Reserva Ducke and Alter do Chao, which were used to design the RAPELD system, which is the principle basis for the Inventory Component of the Program on Biodiversity Research (PPBio) of the Brazilian government (http://ppbio.inpa.gov.br). We address the following issues: 1) how scale, size, shape and distribution of sampling units affect the outcome of biodiversity studies, in terms of the estimation of biotic complementarity between sites, estimation of organismal abundance, and modeling of species distributions; 2) how different sampling needs, from different taxonomic groups, can be adjusted in integrated protocols; 3) how costs can be reduced through sub-sampling. Use of the method in other research sites in Amazonia is being conducted successfully, and a large network of standardized plots is being constructed (see http://ppbio.inpa.gov.br). We also show that other methodologies currently used in large-scale biodiversity studies can be integrated into the RAPELD design.
Applying the ecosystem concept in conducting urban policy and urban planning related to urban regeneration in historical centre

Urban regeneration can be defined as a public policy binding together research on network in the fields of urban policy and urban planning. Urban development and the urban planning establish the framework within which urban regeneration takes place. Through the structures of urban policy and urban planning city makes strategic choices of how to organize its regeneration activities. Sometimes the organization can be formed by the city as a private-like organization in a form of city-owned public corporation. The management of such municipality subsidiary companies falls in the sphere of political models of governance. This requires therefore a comprehensive knowledge on the hierarchies and management systems it includes. This thesis is a case study of the regeneration of the historic Torikorttelit area in Helsinki. Torikorttelit, as places for the most part, is strategically positioned and managed, and part of a bigger concept as an urban space. Therfore, there is a need to study how a city organization can nurture the formation of a successful network of ecosystem for regeneration project. This thesis examines the structure behind governing a regeneration project by a city-owned subsidiary in a historic centre. Because historic centres have political, economic and social, as well as heritage value, there is a need for interconnection of policies, people, culture, the environment and the economy. Therefore, this thesis investigates how effective is the urban governance in a regeneration project, such as Torikorttelit, in establishing, maintaining and managing a forward-going, utilitarian and relatively functioning development. Furthermore, some of the structural premise of a city-owned subsidiary as a regeneration company are studied. This thesis also examines the ecosystem concept and its applicability in a context such as this. The purpose is to present the network of participants, governance system and shared logic in the Torikorttelit development ecosystem. The research was conducted by performing a semi-structured interview study with seven interviewees. The interviewees were selected based on their position in the ecosystem which was related to the governance issues, and they also had expertise within regeneration.
A Connectedness Principle in the Geometry of Positive Curvature

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a connectedness principle in the geometry of positive curvature. In the form, this is a surprising analog of the classical connectedness principle in complex algebraic geometry. The connectedness principle, when applied to totally geodesic immersions, provides not only a uniform formulation for the classical Synge theorem, the Frankel theorem and a recent theorem of Wilking for totally geodesic submanifolds, but also new connectedness theorems for totally geodesic immersions in the geometry of positive curvature. However, the connectedness principle may apply in certain cases which do not require the existence of totally geodesic immersions.
Proactive Video Chunks Caching and Processing for Latency and Cost Minimization in Edge Networks

Recently, the growing demand for rich multimedia content such as Video on Demand (VoD) has made the data transmission from content delivery networks (CDN) to end-users quite challenging. Edge networks have been proposed as an extension to CDN networks to alleviate this excessive data transfer through caching and to delegate the computation tasks to edge servers. To maximize the caching efficiency in the edge networks, different Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) servers assist each others to efficiently select which content to store and the appropriate computation tasks to process. In this paper, we adopt a collaborative caching and transcoding model for VoD in MEC networks. However, unlike other models in the literature, different chunks of the same video are not fetched and cached in the same MEC server. Instead, neighboring servers will collaborate to store and transcode different video chunks and consequently optimize the limited resources usage. Since we are dealing with chunks caching and processing, we propose to maximize the edge efficiency by studying the viewers watching pattern and designing a probabilistic model where chunks popularities are evaluated. Based on this model, popularity-aware policies, namely Proactive caching policy (PcP) and Cache replacement Policy (CrP), are introduced to cache only highest probably requested chunks. In addition to PcP and CrP, an online algorithm (PCCP) is proposed to schedule the collaborative caching and processing. The evaluation results prove that our model and policies give better performance than approaches using conventional replacement policies. This improvement reaches up to 50% in some cases.
Improving the Bending Strength of Spur Gear Tooth through Profile Modification using Cad

Undercutting is one of the major tooth failure criteria, observed basically in 20-degree pressure angle, full depth teeth, having number of teeth less than 17 in case of spur gears. Undercutting removes the root of tooth, which causes bending of tooth, leading to tooth breakage at root portion. This work is focussed on avoiding undercutting problems by minimizing the bending stress that occurs at the root portion of the tooth. The method of Profile Modification is taken as the corrective measure to minimize the bending stress at the root. A spur gear having 14 numbers of teeth was modelled in CATIA V5 and a single spur gear tooth was considered for Finite Element Analysis as per the Lewis Model for investigating bending stress in ANSYS 16.0 Workbench.
The classification of EEG signals using discretization-based entropy and the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system

A novel feature extraction called discretization-based entropy is proposed for use in the classification of EEG signals. To this end, EEG signals are decomposed into frequency subbands using the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), the coefficients of these subbands are discretized into the desired number of intervals using the discretization method, the entropy values of the discretized subbands are calculated using the Shannon entropy method, and these are then ? used as the inputs of the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The equal width discretization (EWD) and equal frequency discretization (EFD) methods are used for the discretization. In order to evaluate their performances in terms of classification accuracy, three different experiments are implemented using different combinations of healthy segments, epileptic seizure-free segments, and epileptic seizure segments. The experiments show that the EWD-based entropy approach achieves higher classification accuracy rates than the EFD-based entropy approach.
Modeling periodic DNA microarray data by multivariate support vector regression and non-linear curve fitting

Motivation: Noise levels and cross-study variation present in geneexpression data from DNA microarray experiments create obstacles for genomic researchers. A reliable method for modeling such data is required in order to impute missing observations, to fuse multiple, similar experiments and to improve the signal to noise ratio in time-variant or cross-study experimental results. In this paper, we combine multivariate support vector regression and non-linear, periodic curve-fitting methods to model differential gene-expression in periodic microarray data. Support vector regression makes no assumptions about the distribution of the underlying data model and seeks a general, regularized solution for data sets with a low number of samples but with high dimensionality. The cleaned microarray data from this model may then be analysed further through other methods. In this paper we apply an additive, periodic model to detect regular periodicity, such as the transcription of mitotic genes during a cell’s reproductive cycle. Results: We apply these methods to a recent study of cell-cycle synchronization methods in fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, and evaluate the models in comparison to univariate polynomial and linear regression approaches common for microarray data imputation. In this study, our goals are to impute missing data points in a periodically meaningful context, to determine which genes exhibit high periodicity that is strongly synchronized with the cell-cycle and to determine the statistically most-likely activation point of each gene within the cycle. Availability: The methods implemented by the author in MATLAB (Mathworks) are freely available upon request. Supplementary material is available from the author’s website at http://www.cs. dal.ca/
Study on Nature and Extent of Damage of Corn Earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) in Maize

A field study was conducted on the nature and extent of damage of corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) in two maize varieties viz. BARI Hybrid Bhutta-5 and BARI Bhutta-7. The larvae caused damage by feeding on the ear tip at silk stage and then to kernel, the larvae were mainly confined to the ear tip and excreted faecal matter. It was found that the cob infestation rate was in linear progress and the mean cob infestation was 6.50% and 6.69% in BARI Hybrid Bhutta-5 and BARI Bhutta-7, respectively. The mean length of cob infestation was 24.90% and 25.07% and the mean number of kernel damage was 24.30 and 25.43 in BARI Hybrid Bhutta-5 and BARI Bhutta-7, respectively. The average yield loss was 0.016 t/ha in BARI Hybrid Bhutta-5 and 0.017 t/ha in BARI Bhutta-7. It was revealed from the results that BARI Bhutta-7 was more susceptible to this pest. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.3329/pa.v20i1-2.16849 Progress. Agric. 20(1 & 2): 49 – 55, 2009
Protective Effect of Chlorogenic Acid against Aβ-Induced Neurotoxicity

Beta-amyloid (Aβ) is considered as one of the major causes of Alzheimer`s disease. This study examined the neuroprotective effects of chlorogenic acid, a naturally occurring polyphenol which is distributed widely in plants, fruits and vegetables, against Aβ-induced toxicity. Aβ decreased significantly the viability of PC12 cells. This was accompanied by an increase in the intracellular calcium levels and cleaved caspase-3. In addition, Aβ induced an increase in Bax, and a decrease in Bcl-2 compared to the controls. However, a pre-treatment with chlorogenic acid rescued the PC12 cells from Aβ by attenuating the elevated intracellular calcium levels and reducing the levels of the apoptosis related proteins, including caspase-3, Bcl-2 and Bax. These results suggest that the protective effects of chlorogenic acid are, at least in parts, by attenuating the intracellular calcium influx and reducing apoptosis induced by Aβ.
CHAPTER 183 Resonant Reflection and Refraction-Diffraction of Surface Waves due to Porous Submerged Breakwaters

ABSTRACT: A wave equation, taking account of the effects of porous medium, is transformed into coupled parabolic equations. It is assumed in the theory that the mean water depth and the thickness of porous layer are slowly varying and the bottom undulation is rapidly varying compared to the wavelength of surface waves. Though we can utilize the Bragg reflection to reduce transmitted waves behind breakwaters in one-dimensional case, wave heights behind breakwaters do not always decrease due to wave refraction-diffraction in horizontal two-dimensional case. By adding a dissipation term to the coupled parabolic equations, we can calculate the wave breaking deformation.
Women's Learning and Development Across Borders: Insights from Anglophone Caribbean Immigrant Women in the United States.

The learning and development experiences of English-speaking Caribbean immigrant women in the United States were examined in a transcultural study. A heuristic phenomenological approach was used to explore how a sample of 15 Anglophone women from the British Caribbean islands who had immigrated to the midwestern, southwestern, and eastern United States were negotiating the structures that facilitate and/or hinder their development. The interviews with the women revealed that early learning and socialization created a disciplined structure and solid foundation that facilitate adult learning and development in their host country. The women acquired two forms of knowledge--indigenous knowledge and institutional knowledge--in their home country. To participate in cultural systems in the United States, the women had to renegotiate their identity, language, and conceptualization of voice. The women navigated the epistemological positions of women's ways of knowing and were not fixed in any one particular developmental phase. The findings suggested that the epistemological positions of Silent Knower, Received Knower, Subjective Knower, Procedural Knower, and Constructed Knower are not stages of epistemological development but different positions that a woman occupies as she interacts with the various systems within her sociocultural environment. The women's learning and epistemological development was driven by context, personal agency, and social capital. (11 references) (MN) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Women's Learning and Development Across Borders: Insights from Anglophone Carribbean Immigrant Women in the United States
A transformation method of OPM Model to CPN Model for System Concept Development

Modeling languages for concept development in System Engineering usually provide a static model and lack computational capability. We introduce and implement a method combing the Object Process Methodology (OPM), a holistic modeling language well suited to describe the concept model, and Coloured Petri Net (CPN), an executable modeling language supporting elaborate simulation and analysis to make the process of System Engineering more continuous. Not only the basic entities and links, but also the hierarchical properties are converted from OPM to CPN according to the rules we proposed. Application in a simple air defense system demonstrates the process develop a concept model of OPM to a preliminary simulation model of CPN by using this method. Keywords—Object Process Methodology; Coloured Petri Nets; transformation; System Engineering
Sequence to Structure Analysis of DOPA Protein from Mucuna pruriens: A Computational Biology Approach

L-DOPA, (L-3, 4-dihydroxyphenylalanine), an anti-nutritional compound is an important intermediate of secondary metabolism in higher plants and is known as a precursor of alkaloids, betalain, melanine, and others. We analyzed the amino acid sequence of DOPA protein from M. pruriens by using computational methods. The DOPA protein M. pruriens was subjected to sequence, structural and functional annotation. Functional domain prediction through Conserved Domain Database (CDD) suggested that DOPA proteins of M. pruriens contain Aspartate aminotransferase (AAT) superfamily associated with various cellular activities. The analysis of predicted secondary structure by PsiPred and SOPMA has shown that high percentage of helices in the protein structure makes DOPA more flexible for folding processes. Sub-cellular localization
A New Online Random Particles Optimization Algorithm for Mobile Robot Path Planning in Dynamic Environments

A new algorithm named random particle optimization algorithm (RPOA) for local path planning problem of mobile robots in dynamic and unknown environments is proposed. The new algorithm inspired from bacterial foraging technique is based on particles which are randomly distributed around a robot. These particles search the optimal path toward the target position while avoiding the moving obstacles by getting help from the robot’s sensors. The criterion of optimal path selection relies on the particles distance to target and Gaussian cost function assign to detected obstacles. Then, a high level decision making strategy will decide to select best mobile robot path among the proceeded particles, and finally a low level decision control provides a control signal for control of considered holonomic mobile robot. This process is implemented without requirement to tuning algorithm or complex calculation, and furthermore, it is independent from gradient base methods such as heuristic (artificial potential field) methods. Therefore, in this paper, the problem of local mobile path planning is free from getting stuck in local minima and is easy computed. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, some simulations in three various scenarios are performed and results are compared by the artificial potential field.
Free water elimination and mapping from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in chronic schizophrenia

Publication Information Colgan, Niall, O'Reilly, David, Holleran, Laurena, Ahmed, Mohamed , McDonald, Colm, & Cannon, Dara M. (2017). Free water elimination and mapping from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in chronic schizophrenia. Paper presented at the European Medical and Biological Engineering Conference (EMBEC) and the Nordic-Baltic Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics (NBC), Tampere, Finland.
Calibration of Propagation Model for Indoor Tunisian Environment

This paper presents the result of path loss measurements for an example of micro-cellular environment, which is the PALMARIUM commercial centre located at Habib Bourguiba at 900 MHz band. Measurements are taken with fixed transmitter with note book computer attached to allow data and position logging in idle mode. Base station height of 3 m is tested with mobile receiver height of 1,7 m to emulate a typical micro-cellular scenario. Obtained results are tested and compared with an Indoor empirical model. Using linear regression method, we have tried to determine the value of different parameters intervene in the model like Wall attenuation factor, beak point distance and path loss exponent. Obtained calibrated model can be used in future Indoor cellular network planning.
Numerical modelling of cavitation erosion

The goal of the work is to investigate the possibility of cavitation erosion prediction using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools only. For that purpose, a numerical process based on a coupling between CFD and an erosion model is presented and tested in several configurations of cavitating flow on a two‐dimensional hydrofoil. The CFD code, which is based on the homogeneous approach, was previously validated on numerous experiments. In the present work, the predictions of velocity and pressure evolutions in the vicinity of the hydrofoil are compared with experimentally measured data. A close agreement is systematically obtained. The erosion model is based on the physical description of phenomena from cavitation cloud implosion, pressure wave emission and its attenuation, micro‐jet formation and finally to the pit formation. The coupling between CFD and the erosion model is based on the use of local pressure, void fraction and velocity values to determine the magnitude of damage at a certain point. The results are compared with the experimentally measured damage on the hydrofoil. In the experiments a thin copper foil applied to the surface of the hydrofoil was used as an erosion sensor. A pit‐count method was applied to evaluate the damage. The comparison shows that it is possible to use solely CFD tools to predict time evolution of cavitation erosion, including final extent and magnitude, with a very good accuracy. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.