Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preparation and characteristics of diatrizoate meglumine-loaded chitosan microspheres

The purpose of the present study is to prepare a diatrizoate meglumine-loaded chitosan microsphere, which could be used to be investigated by ultrasonic imaging technique in vivo and would has water absorption swelling property to dredge the obstruction. Diatrizoate meglumine-loaded chitosan microspheres were prepared by crosslink emulsification process, to use chitosan acetic acid solution as aqueous phase, liquid paraffin as oil phase, Span80 and n-butyl alcohol as surfactant, glutaraldehyde solution as crosslink agent. The effect of ratio of diatrizoate meglumine (ratio of W), the ratio of aqueous to organic phase (W/O ratio), the ratio of Span80 to liquid paraffin and the time of crosslink process were optimized by the single factor experiment and response surface experiment. And the optimum prepared microspheres' appearance, distribution, diameter, zeta potential, thermal performance and release properties were measured and their swelling and development properties were observed. The diatrizoate meglumine-loaded chitosan microspheres had a good shape and uniform distribution by light microscope and transmission electron microscope, with average diameters of 1.53 μm and average zeta potential of -19.7 mV; the microspheres had a good sustained release property. And the swelling property of the diatrizoate megiumine-loaded chitosan microspheres varied in different conditions and developed clearly under the ultrasonic imaging technique. This study prepares a kind of diatrizoate meglumine-loaded chitosan microspheres, who can make the microspheres, develop and dredge the obstruction at the same time.
Export problems and Government assistance required by UK exporters

Reports on one aspect of a government funded study which provides comparative empirical evidence concerning selected aspects of the behaviour and government export assistance requirements of Asian and indigenous (white)‐owned small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. Provides a contribution to the literature since, although a limited body of literature exists on both the areas of export assistance, and the business practices of ethnic minority‐owned firms, there is a need to bring these two research topics together in the form of a single study to establish whether current export assistance and targeting procedures are suitable for managers from different sub‐cultures. The rationale for such a study is that if managers from particular sub‐cultures differ in their requirements towards government assistance, where pragmatic to do so, policy makers may need to reconsider the way in which services are provided to avoid wasting scarce resources. With this in mind, discusses findings which examine whether differences exist between firms from particular sub‐cultures in relation to perceived export problems and their assistance requirements.
Applying Satellite Altimetry to Wetland Water Levels Monitoring (Case Study: Louisiana Wetland)

The idea of the application of satellite radar altimetry for inland water study has been considered for about two decades. It has always been much challenging, because the returned signal from inland water, in comparison to the ocean one, is very different. Thus the onboard satellite processing unit would not be able to determine the exact tracking point. Therefore, the execution of waveform re-tracking is efficient to correct the presented Range. The purpose of this letter is the application of the three of waveform re-tracking methods, namely OCOG, NASA β and Threshold and known as common methods, in order to monitor the Louisiana wetland water level. The validation is done by calculating the Correlation coefficient between the satellite altimetry and the tide gauge observations. The correlation coefficient has calculated between the two time series made from tide gauge data and satellite data. The coefficient value without exerting re-tracking is 0.4758 and with re-tracking is 0.6462. Numerical results shows, accuracy of water level monitoring increase up to 35.81% by the waveform re-tracking execution. In addition the results of all methods are compared with each other.
Intelligent decision-making system for autonomous robots

Intelligent decision-making system for autonomous robots The paper gives an account of research results concerning a project on creating a fully autonomous robotic decision-making system, able to interact with its environment and based on a mathematical model of human cognitive-behavioural psychology, with some key elements of personality psychology included. The principal idea of the paper is focused on the concept of needs, with a certain instrumental role of emotions.
Optimized design of successive approximation time-to-digital converter with single set of delay lines

The paper addresses the problems of design of picosecond resolution time-to-digital converter based on successive approximation (SA-TDC). The principle of the conversion process in SA-TDC consists in successive delaying the events defining a start and a stop of the input time interval by the use of binary-weighted delays. The paper is focused on optimization of particular components of the SA-TDC architecture with a single set of delay lines in order to reduce differential (DNL) and integral (INL) nonlinearities. In particular, the paper contribution is an improvement of time resolution of the converter from 25 ps to 12.5 ps (i.e., by one extra bit) in 180 nm CMOS technology through enhancements of design of circuit components which results in a reduction of conversion errors.
Continuum and Emission-Line Strength Relations for a Large Active Galactic Nuclei Sample

We report on the analysis of a large sample of 744 type 1 active galactic nuclei, including quasars and Seyfert 1 galaxies across the redshift from 0 ≲ z ≲ 5 and spanning nearly 6 orders of magnitude in continuum luminosity. We discuss correlations of continuum and emission-line properties in the rest-frame ultraviolet and optical spectral ranges. The well-established Baldwin effect is detected for almost all emission lines from O VI λ1034 to [O III] λ5007. Their equivalent widths are significantly anticorrelated with the continuum strength, while they are nearly independent of redshift. This is the well-known Baldwin effect. Its slope β, measured as log Wλ ∝ β log λLλ(1450 Å), shows a tendency to become steeper toward higher luminosity. The slope of the Baldwin effect also increases with the ionization energy needed to create the individual lines. In contrast to this general trend, the N V λ1240 equivalent width is nearly independent of continuum luminosity and remains nearly constant. The overall line behaviors are consistent with softer UV continuum shapes and perhaps increasing gas metallicity in more luminous active galactic nuclei.
Computational analysis of propensities of amino acids and nucleotides usage at protein-nucleic acid interfaces

The mechanism of protein-nucleic acid interaction is still not very clear, especially that of protein-RNA interaction. Therefore, with the increasing of available protein-nucleic acid complex structures in the protein data bank database, we have collected all the structures and then analyzed the rules controlling the recognition of residues by nucleotides using classical statistical methods. The results show the number of nucleotide-binding residues presents significant differences among each kind of protein - nucleic acid complex structures with different functions. Second, Arg is the most popular in both protein-DNA and protein-RNA interactions. Moreover, the size and orientation of the polarity of amino acids play important roles in determining whether they are combined with DNA/RNA molecules, and the steric hindrances formed by the side chain of amino acids appear to influence the course of recognizing residues by nucleotides. In addition, the choice of the type of amino acids for space-adjacent binding residues with cooperative interactions in protein-DNA complexes is significantly different with that of protein-RNA complexes, and it is also found that space-adjacent residues with cooperative interactions present frequently sequence-adjacent. Finally, specificity of amino acid usage for binding residues reduces while the threshold in defining of nucleotide-binding residues increases; however, there is no change in types of amino acid regardless of popular or unpopular ones.
The use of speaker correlation information for automatic speech recognition

This dissertation addresses the independence of observations assumption which is typically made by today's automatic speech recognition systems. This assumption ignores within-speaker correlations which are known to exist. The assumption clearly damages the recognition ability of standard speaker independent systems, as can be seen by the severe drop in performance exhibited by systems between their speaker dependent mode and their speaker independent mode. The typical solution to this problem is to apply speaker adaptation to the models of the speaker independent system. This approach is examined in this thesis with the explicit goal of improving the rapid adaptation capabilities of the system by incorporating within-speaker correlation information into the adaptation process. This is achieved through the creation of an adaptation technique called reference speaker weighting and in the development of a speaker clustering technique called speaker cluster weighting. However, speaker adaptation is just one way in which the independence assumption can be attacked. This dissertation also introduces a novel speech recognition technique called consistency modeling. This technique utilizes a priori knowledge about the within-speaker correlations which exist between different phonetic events for the purpose of incorporating speaker constraint into a speech recognition system without explicitly applying speaker adaptation. These new techniques are implemented within a segment-based speech recognition system and evaluation results are reported on the DARPA Resource Management recognition task. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)
ManyLists : Product Comparison Tool Using Spatial Layouts with Animated Transitions

Product comparison is a common process consumers perform every day. However, current tools provide limited functions and poor visual designs. We present ManyLists, a product comparison tool that compares products’ features using Spatial Layouts with Animated Transitions. In addition colorcoding is used to highlight the best features among the products. A usability study with fourteen participants provided evidence that the visualization is easy to learn and the animated transitions are helpful. Finally we propose three guidelines for Spatial Layouts with Animated Transitions: break multi-step processes into small comprehensible steps, show animated transitions for each step, and use spatial layouts to indicate relationships among features. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. Graphical user interfaces. General terms: Design
Inter-item correlations among function points

The paper reports on an empirical investigation of Albrecht function points.The study suggests that function points are not well-formed metrics because there is a correlation between their constituent elements. It also suggests that (for the dataset under investigation) two of the constituent elements were as good at predicting effort as the raw function point count and that the unweighted counts can be reasonable predictors of effort. <<ETX>>
Integrating Opponent Models with Monte-Carlo Tree Search in Poker

In this paper we apply a Monte-Carlo Tree Search implementation that is boosted with domain knowledge to the game of poker. More specifically, we integrate an opponent model in the Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithm to produce a strong poker playing program. Opponent models allow the search algorithm to focus on relevant parts of the game-tree. We use an opponent modelling approach that starts from a (learned) prior, i.e., general expectations about opponent behavior, and then learns a relational regression tree-function that adapts these priors to specific opponents. Our modelling approach can generate detailed game features or relations on-the-fly. Additionally, using a prior we can already make reasonable predictions even when limited experience is available for a particular player. We show that Monte-Carlo Tree Search with integrated opponent models performs well against state-of-the-art poker programs.
Impact of ABCB 1 single nucleotide polymorphisms 1236 C greater than T and 2677 G greater than T on overall survival in FLT 3 wild-type de novo AML patients with normal karyotype

Ingrid Jakobsen Falk, Anna Fyrberg, Esbjorn Paul, Hareth Nahi, Monica Hermanson, Richard Rosenquist, Martin Hoglund, Lars Palmqvist, Dick Stockelberg, Yuan Wei, Henrik Green and Kourosh Lotfi, Impact of ABCB1 single nucleotide polymorphisms 1236C greater than T and 2677G greater than T on overall survival in FLT3 wild-type de novo AML patients with normal karyotype, 2014, British Journal of Haematology, (167), 5, 671-680. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/bjh.13097 Copyright: Wiley: 12 months http://eu.wiley. com/WileyCDA/
Robust Central Reduction of Amyloid-β in Humans with an Orally Available, Non-Peptidic β-Secretase Inhibitor

According to the amyloid cascade hypothesis, cerebral deposition of amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) is critical for Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Aβ generation is initiated when β-secretase (BACE1) cleaves the amyloid precursor protein. For more than a decade, BACE1 has been a prime target for designing drugs to prevent or treat AD. However, development of such agents has turned out to be extremely challenging, with major hurdles in cell penetration, oral bioavailability/metabolic clearance, and brain access. Using a fragment-based chemistry strategy, we have generated LY2811376 [(S)-4-(2,4-difluoro-5-pyrimidin-5-yl-phenyl)-4-methyl-5,6-dihydro-4H-[1,3]thiazin-2-ylamine], the first orally available non-peptidic BACE1 inhibitor that produces profound Aβ-lowering effects in animals. The biomarker changes obtained in preclinical animal models translate into man at doses of LY2811376 that were safe and well tolerated in healthy volunteers. Prominent and long-lasting Aβ reductions in lumbar CSF were measured after oral dosing of 30 or 90 mg of LY2811376. This represents the first translation of BACE1-driven biomarker changes in CNS from preclinical animal models to man. Because of toxicology findings identified in longer-term preclinical studies, this compound is no longer progressing in clinical development. However, BACE1 remains a viable target because the adverse effects reported here were recapitulated in LY2811376-treated BACE1 KO mice and thus are unrelated to BACE1 inhibition. The magnitude and duration of central Aβ reduction obtainable with BACE1 inhibition positions this protease as a tractable small-molecule target through which to test the amyloid hypothesis in man.
Primer of public relations research

Part 1. An Introduction to Research in Public Relations. 1. Understanding Research: An Introduction with Public Relations Implications. 2. Management of Research in Public Relations. 3. Measuring Outcomes. 4. Descriptive Statistical Reasoning and Computer Analysis. 5. Ethical Concerns in Public Relations Research. Part 2. Research Methodology. 6. Qualitative Research Methodology: Content Analysis. 7. Qualitative Research Methodology: Historical and Secondary Methods. 8. Qualitative Research Methodology: Case Studies. 9. Qualitative Research Methodology: Methods of Observing People. 10. Quantitative Research Methodology: Sampling Messages and People. 11. Quantitative Research Methodology: Survey and Poll Methods. 12. Quantitative Research Methodology: Experimental Method. 13. Quantitative Statistics: Advanced Inferential Statistical Reasoning and Computer Analysis. Part 3. Obtaining and Reporting Public Relations Research. 14. Writing and Evaluating the Request for Research Proposal. 15. Writing and Presenting the Final Research Report. Appendix: Dictionary of Public Relations Measurement and Research.
Low-Dose, High-Frequency CPR Training Improves Skill Retention of In-Hospital Pediatric Providers

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effectiveness of brief bedside cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training to improve the skill retention of hospital-based pediatric providers. We hypothesized that a low-dose, high-frequency training program (booster training) would improve CPR skill retention. PATIENTS AND METHODS: CPR recording/feedback defibrillators were used to evaluate CPR quality during simulated arrest. Basic life support–certified, hospital-based providers were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 study arms: (1) instructor-only training; (2) automated defibrillator feedback only; (3) instructor training combined with automated feedback; and (4) control (no structured training). Each session (time: 0, 1, 3, and 6 months after training) consisted of a pretraining evaluation (60 seconds), booster training (120 seconds), and a posttraining evaluation (60 seconds). Excellent CPR was defined as chest compression (CC) depth ≥ one-third anterior-posterior chest depth, rate ≥ 90 and ≤120 CC per minute, ≤20% of CCs with incomplete release (>2500 g), and no flow fraction ≤ 0.30. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Eighty-nine providers were randomly assigned; 74 (83%) completed all sessions. Retention of CPR skills was 2.3 times (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.1–4.5; P = .02) more likely after 2 trainings and 2.9 times (95% CI: 1.4–6.2; P = .005) more likely after 3 trainings. The automated defibrillator feedback only group had lower retention rates compared with the instructor-only training group (odds ratio: 0.41 [95% CI: 0.17–0.97]; P = .043). CONCLUSIONS: Brief bedside booster CPR training improves CPR skill retention. Our data reveal that instructor-led training improves retention compared with automated feedback training alone. Future studies should investigate whether bedside training improves CPR quality during actual pediatric arrests.
The Centrosomal Linker and Microtubules Provide Dual Levels of Spatial Coordination of Centrosomes

The centrosome is the principal microtubule organizing center in most animal cells. It consists of a pair of centrioles surrounded by pericentriolar material. The centrosome, like DNA, duplicates exactly once per cell cycle. During interphase duplicated centrosomes remain closely linked by a proteinaceous linker. This centrosomal linker is composed of rootletin filaments that are anchored to the centrioles via the protein C-Nap1. At the onset of mitosis the linker is dissolved by Nek2A kinase to support the formation of the bipolar mitotic spindle. The importance of the centrosomal linker for cell function during interphase awaits characterization. Here we assessed the phenotype of human RPE1 C-Nap1 knockout (KO) cells. The absence of the linker led to a modest increase in the average centrosome separation from 1 to 2.5 μm. This small impact on the degree of separation is indicative of a second level of spatial organization of centrosomes. Microtubule depolymerisation or stabilization in C-Nap1 KO cells dramatically increased the inter-centrosomal separation (> 8 μm). Thus, microtubules position centrosomes relatively close to one another in the absence of linker function. C-Nap1 KO cells had a Golgi organization defect with a two-fold expansion of the area occupied by the Golgi. When the centrosomes of C-Nap1 KO cells showed considerable separation, two spatially distinct Golgi stacks could be observed. Furthermore, migration of C-Nap1 KO cells was slower than their wild type RPE1 counterparts. These data show that the spatial organization of centrosomes is modulated by a combination of centrosomal cohesion and microtubule forces. Furthermore a modest increase in centrosome separation has major impact on Golgi organization and cell migration.
The African Pitocin - a midwife’s dilemma: the perception of women on the use of herbs in pregnancy and labour in Zimbabwe, Gweru

Introduction The use of natural health products is gradually increasing all over the world with up to 50% of the general population having tried at least one herbal product. This becomes a dilemma to the midwife who has limited or no knowledge on their effects in pregnancy, hence the need to explore the perceptions of women on the use herbs in pregnancy and labour. Methods The research, which was a case study of a Claybank Private Hospital in Gweru, Zimbabwe, adopted a qualitative approach with a triangulation of data from interviews, observations and analysis of maternal records. A sample of 20 women, admitted to using herbs, was purposively selected from the labour and post natal wards. Results A variety of substances, but mainly the elephant's dung, was used. The family, (mother) prescribed the herbs. The women did not have knowledge on how the substances work but believed in them, as they have stood the test of time. Conclusion The African women in Zimbabwe cannot be stopped from taking herbs as it is engraved in their culture and have absolute faith in them. Whilst the herbs are assumed by the women to be effective, their safety is questionable, especially in women with underlying obstetric complications. It is therefore recommended to scientifically explore the safety and effectiveness of the most commonly used herbs if pregnancy is to be safe. Whilst the women can not be stopped from taking these herbs, it is important to build a trusting relationship between the midwife and the mother so that communication about the use of herbs can be done freely without fear or judgement.
The anti-inflammatory effect of erythropoietin and melatonin on renal ischemia reperfusion injury in male rats.

PURPOSE Renal ischemia reperfusion (IR) is an important cause of renal dysfunction. It contributes to the development of acute renal failure (ARF). The purpose of this study was to investigate the anti-inflammatory effect of erythropoietin (EPO) and melatonin (MEL), which are known anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agents, in IR-induced renal injury in rats. METHODS Male Wistar Albino rats were unilaterally nephrectomized and subjected to 45 min of renal pedicle occlusion followed by 24 h reperfusion. MEL (10mg/kg, i.p) and EPO (5000U/kg, i.p) were administered prior to ischemia. After 24 h reperfusion, blood samples were collected for the determination of total antioxidant capacity (TAC), malondialdehyde (MDA) and serum creatinine levels. Also, renal samples were taken for Immunohistochemical evaluation of Bcl2 and TNF-α (tumor necrosis factor-α) expression. RESULTS Ischemia reperfusion increased creatinine, TAC, MDA levels and TNF-α expression, also, IR decreased Bcl2 expression. Treatment with EPO or MEL decreased creatinine, MDA levels, and increased TAC level. Also, MEL up-regulated Bcl2 expression and down-regulated TNF-α expression compared with EPO. CONCLUSION Treatment with EPO and MEL had a curative effect on renal IR injury. These results may indicate that MEL protects against inflammation and apoptosis better than EPO in renal IR injury.