Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Emulsion microgel particles: from design to oral to gastrointestinal digestion

Lipophilic active molecules, such as fat soluble vitamins, flavourings and fatty acids pose challenges for their application in food matrices due their water-insolubility, rapid oxidation and degradation during physiological transit. Based on the perceived knowledge gap from the literature review, a novel encapsulation strategy, targeting the delivery of lipophilic molecules, was developed in this thesis: emulsion microgel particles. These engineered smart particles are soft gel like particles encapsulating several oil droplets. These particles can alter their network structure, swelling behaviour, permeability or mechanical strength in response to internal physiological stimuli (e.g., change in pH, ionic strength, temperature, mechanical shear, enzymatic action, etc.). By investigating the nature of two specific biopolymer networks (i.e., starch gel or whey protein gel) and the interactions between the filler (i.e., emulsion droplets) and the matrix (i.e., the gel), two different approaches (top-down or bottom-up) were used to design these emulsion microgel particles. The unique design of the emulsion microgel particles developed in this PhD was that both the emulsifying agent and the matrix material were composed of the same biopolymer without the need of additional hydrocolloids. The characterization techniques used in this thesis included particle sizing, microscopy at various length scales, zeta-potential, rheology, tribology, sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, pH-stat titrimetric measurements supported by theoretical calculations. In view of the above, the rheological properties and microstructural breakdown of the model emulsion gels were first analysed. The oil content, particle size, filler to matrix ratio and matrix polymer properties were also examined. Emphasis was then placed on the different response mechanisms of the starch- or whey protein-based emulsion microgel particles when subjected to different environmental stresses, such as acidic pH, enzyme activity (α-amylase for oral relevance, pepsin or trypsin for gastrointestinal relevance) and mechanical shear. Successfully, the emulsion microgel particles contributed to the improvement of food based delivery systems for lipophilic materials. Starch-based emulsion microgel particles were found to be suitable for the protection of lipophilic molecules against oral shear and coalescence whilst providing appropriate lubrication via both enzyme and shear-response mechanism. Whey protein-based emulsion microgel particles were established to protect the lipophilic molecules from harsh gastric environment whilst enabling complete release of free fatty acid during the intestinal phase due to both enzyme and pH-assisted mechanisms. The findings from this PhD thesis thus provide guidelines to develop new bio-responsive materials where these emulsion microgel particles can be used to offer excellent site-dependent controlled release properties for lipophilic materials.
Use of biogenic nanomaterials to improve the peritoneal dialysis technique: A Translational Research Perspective

Intraperitoneal and catheter exit site infections are the most common complications associated with prolonged peritoneal dialysis (PD) therapy used for treating the patients with end stage renal failure (ESRF). Recurrent and persistent infections often cause inflammation of the peritoneum, a condition known as infectious peritonitis and to resolve the condition, patients require antibiotic treatment. However, if the treatment is delayed or if it fails due to antibiotic resistance, the peritonitis may lead to permanent malfunctioning of peritoneal membrane causing technique failure and transferring the patients to haemodialysis. Severe and prolonged peritonitis is not only the major cause of technique failure, it is also the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in PD patients. Therefore, there is an urgent need to improve the existing PD technique so that the frequency of PD associated infections could be reduced and infectious peritonitis episodes thereof during prolonged peritoneal dialysis. In this perspective, I highlight the possibility to improve the PD technique through the use of antimicrobial nanoparticles synthesized biologically.
New competitive strategies for searching in unknown star-shaped polygons

We consider searching problems in robotics that a robot has to find a path to a target by traveling in an unknown starshaped polygon P. The goal is to minimize the ratio of the distance traveled by the robot to the length of the shortest start-to-target path. Let s be a starting point in P. We first present a competitive strategy to find a path from s to the closest kernel point k of P. The length of the path that the robot generates is less than 1 + 2W (< 3.829) times the distance from s to k, which improves the best previous bound 5.331 [3]. Second, given a specified target t in P, we present a competitive strategy to find a path from s to t whose length does not exceed 17 times the length of the shortest s-t path.
Transformer-based measurement of critical currents in superconducting cables: tutorial 51

Superconductivity is a technology with a declared interest in several fields of physics and engineering. Nowadays, superconducting cables [1] are largely exploited in fields such as particle colliders [2] and medical machines [3]. The generation of electrical energy with tokamaks [4] is a further application of low-temperature superconductivity as well. Moreover, the promises arising from High Temperature Superconductors (Tc>77 K) would extend the range of application, for instance, to power distribution [5]-[6].
The Automatic Generation of Formal Annotations in a Multimedia Indexing and Searching Environment

We describe in this paper the MU-MIS Project (Multimedia Indexing and Searching Environment), which is concerned with the development and integration of base technologies, demonstrated within a laboratory prototype, to support automated multimedia indexing and to facilitate search and retrieval from multimedia databases. We stress the role linguistically motivated annotations, coupled with domain-specific information, can play within this environment. The project will demonstrate that innovative technology components can operate on multilingual, multisource, and multimedia information and create a meaningful and queryable database.
CDMA Based Multiple-User Digital Watermarking

This paper proposes a new type of multi-user digital watermarking based on CDMA, which aims at the demand of multi-user copyright sharing protection. It presents two CDMA based approaches, i.e. wavelet domain direct approach (WD) and wavelet domain neighbor linear prediction approach (WNLP). It analyses the influence of user quantity and embedding depth on the quality of watermarked images and extracted watermarks. Experiment results show that the algorithm can solve the problem of watermarks collision and relieve the restriction of user quantity of multiple watermarking algorithms.
A direct method for the extrinsic calibration of a camera and a line scan LIDAR

This paper presents a direct method for the extrinsic calibration of a perspective projection camera and a line-scan LIDAR. We freely move a checkerboard pattern to obtain different plane poses in the camera coordinate system and depth readings in the line-scan LIDAR reference frame. From 3 plane-line correspondences, we first present a closed form solution for the relative orientation between two sensors, then the translation can be determined linearly. Unlike the method proposed in [12] to reformulate the registration of 3 plane-line correspondences as a standard P3P problem, we find novel and direct constraints on rotation. From these constraints, a closed form solution for rotation is found by multivariate polynomial elimination using a resultant from the Jacobian method of Salmon. Some degenerate cases in the P3P based method [12] inherited from the standard P3P problem do not occur in our method, which makes our method a little more stable and accurate in some cases. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
MCAT Math Retrieval System for NTCIR-12 MathIR Task

This paper describes the participation of our MCAT search system in the NTCIR-12 MathIR Task. We introduce three granularity levels of textual information, new approach for generating dependency graph of math expressions, score normalization, cold-start weights, and uni(cid:12)cation. We (cid:12)nd that these modules, except the cold-start weights, have a very good impact on the search performance of our system. The use of dependency graph signi(cid:12)cantly improves precision of our system, i.e., up to 24 : 52% and 104 : 20% relative improvements in the Main and Simto subtasks of the arXiv task, respectively. In addition, the implementation of uni(cid:12)cation delivers up to 2 : 90% and 57 : 14% precision improvements in the Main and Simto subtasks, respectively. Overall, our best submission achieves P@5 of 0.5448 in the Main subtask and 0.5500 in the Simto subtask. In the Wikipedia task, our system also performs well at the MathWikiFormula subtask. At the MathWiki subtask, however, due to a problem with handling queries formed as questions that contain many stop words, our system (cid:12)nishes second.
Multivariate Data Analysis Techniques to Detect Early Warnings of Elderly Frailty

In this paper we outline the results of a project intended to detect the most important leading indicators of elderly frailty in a health district of the province of Parma (Italy). Through the joint application of several multivariate data analysis techniques we found a series of factors which are predictive of loss of functional and cognitive ability and we set up a model which provides early warnings of cases of potential elderly frailty. This allows social and health care workers of the Local Health Unit (LHU) of Parma and local administrators to take preventive action, in order to avoid cases of worsening of the physical and mental status.
A bit-serial architecture for a multiplierless DCT

This paper describes the implementation of a multiplierless 1-D DCT which is also applicable to a 2-D computation. The key idea is based on the binary DCT of which multipliers are replaced by lifting parameters that essentially are shifts and adds. For low power applications and smaller hardware size, a bit-serial architecture was invoked in the implementation of such an algorithm. Varying data word length, MSE obtained form our approach and some similar algorithms are also investigated and reported.
Comparative Analysis of RNA Families Reveals Distinct Repertoires for Each Domain of Life

The RNA world hypothesis, that RNA genomes and catalysts preceded DNA genomes and genetically-encoded protein catalysts, has been central to models for the early evolution of life on Earth. A key part of such models is continuity between the earliest stages in the evolution of life and the RNA repertoires of extant lineages. Some assessments seem consistent with a diverse RNA world, yet direct continuity between modern RNAs and an RNA world has not been demonstrated for the majority of RNA families, and, anecdotally, many RNA functions appear restricted in their distribution. Despite much discussion of the possible antiquity of RNA families, no systematic analyses of RNA family distribution have been performed. To chart the broad evolutionary history of known RNA families, we performed comparative genomic analysis of over 3 million RNA annotations spanning 1446 families from the Rfam 10 database. We report that 99% of known RNA families are restricted to a single domain of life, revealing discrete repertoires for each domain. For the 1% of RNA families/clans present in more than one domain, over half show evidence of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), and the rest show a vertical trace, indicating the presence of a complex protein synthesis machinery in the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) and consistent with the evolutionary history of the most ancient protein-coding genes. However, with limited interdomain transfer and few RNA families exhibiting demonstrable antiquity as predicted under RNA world continuity, our results indicate that the majority of modern cellular RNA repertoires have primarily evolved in a domain-specific manner.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STUDENT TEAMS ACHIEVEMENT DIVISION (STAD) IN TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION OF THE FIRST SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

Strategy plays the important role to make students understand reading materials. Teachers should be able to choose right teaching strategy in order to make the students interested more in learning beacause they enjoy learning and reading the given material. This study was conducted to find out whether the use of STAD in teaching of reading comprehension is effective to improve the student reading comprehension achievement. The design of the study was experimental reasearch. The study was conducted in Islamic University of Balitar. the researcher takes one class of the first semester students of english language education study program in the islamic university of balitar blitar in the academic year 2016/2017. and in analyzing the data, the researcher used the statistical procedures namely dependent T-test. The finding of this study is the score that students got after treatment increased. It means that the hypothesis alternative is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected. By those facts, Ho hypothesis is rejected and H1 hypothesis is accepted. Thus, it can be concluded that using STAD method in teaching reading comprehension proved to be effective in increasing teh students ’ reading comprehension achievement.
Failure detectors for large-scale distributed systems

This paper discusses the problem of implementing a scalable failure detection service for grid systems. More specifically, traditional implementations of failure detectors are often tuned for running over local networks and fail to address important problems found in wide-area distributed systems, such as grid systems. We identify some of the most important problems raised in the context of grids. We then survey recent propositions that can help in solving some of these problems.
Integrating De Novo Transcriptome Assembly and Cloning to Obtain Chicken Ovocleidin-17 Full-Length cDNA

Efficiently obtaining full-length cDNA for a target gene is the key step for functional studies and probing genetic variations. However, almost all sequenced domestic animal genomes are not ‘finished’. Many functionally important genes are located in these gapped regions. It can be difficult to obtain full-length cDNA for which only partial amino acid/EST sequences exist. In this study we report a general pipeline to obtain full-length cDNA, and illustrate this approach for one important gene (Ovocleidin-17, OC-17) that is associated with chicken eggshell biomineralization. Chicken OC-17 is one of the best candidates to control and regulate the deposition of calcium carbonate in the calcified eggshell layer. OC-17 protein has been purified, sequenced, and has had its three-dimensional structure solved. However, researchers still cannot conduct OC-17 mRNA related studies because the mRNA sequence is unknown and the gene is absent from the current chicken genome. We used RNA-Seq to obtain the entire transcriptome of the adult hen uterus, and then conducted de novo transcriptome assembling with bioinformatics analysis to obtain candidate OC-17 transcripts. Based on this sequence, we used RACE and PCR cloning methods to successfully obtain the full-length OC-17 cDNA. Temporal and spatial OC-17 mRNA expression analyses were also performed to demonstrate that OC-17 is predominantly expressed in the adult hen uterus during the laying cycle and barely at immature developmental stages. Differential uterine expression of OC-17 was observed in hens laying eggs with weak versus strong eggshell, confirming its important role in the regulation of eggshell mineralization and providing a new tool for genetic selection for eggshell quality parameters. This study is the first one to report the full-length OC-17 cDNA sequence, and builds a foundation for OC-17 mRNA related studies. We provide a general method for biologists experiencing difficulty in obtaining candidate gene full-length cDNA sequences.
Influence of Aging on Lung Function‐Clinical Significance of Changes from Age Twenty

There has been a progressive increase in the number of patients aged 65 years and over presenting for single or multiple anesthetics. In order to provide adequate care, a clear understanding of the physiological changes that occur with aging is needed. This review will examine the literature dealing with the effects of aging on pulmonary physiology and discuss their clinical implications as follows: mechanical properties of the lungs, gas exchange, control of breathing, and postoperative lung function. Because smoking, obesity, and chronic heart disease adversely affect lung function, the effects of these diseases also will be examined. There are no longitudinal studies in the literature that examine all aspects of lung function. Therefore, we gathered data pertaining to different age groups and used regression analysis limiting extrapolation beyond the range of ages in any particular study.
A Simple Moist Tropical Atmosphere Model: The Role of Cloud Radiative Forcing

Abstract A simple moist model for the large-scale tropical atmospheric circulation is constructed by combining the simple models of Gill and Neelin and Held. The model describes the first baroclinic mode of the moist troposphere with variable “gross moist stability” in response to given thermodynamic forcing from surface evaporation and atmospheric cloud radiative forcing (CRF), which is a measure of the radiative effects of clouds in the atmospheric radiative heating. When the present model is forced solely by the observed atmospheric CRF, quantitatively reasonable Hadley and Walker circulations are obtained, such as the trades, the ascending branches in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), as well as the descending branches in the cold tongue and subtropics. However, when the model is forced only by the observed surface evaporation, the Walker circulation totally disappears, and the Hadley circulation reverses. These results indicate that, in the conte.
A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Dynamic Resource Allocation: First Results.

This paper addresses the problem of dynamic resource allocation among multiple entities sharing a common set of resources. A solution approach is presented based on combining the reinforcement learning methodology with function approximation architectures. An implementation of this approach in Solaris 10 demonstrated a robust near-optimal performance on a simple problem of transferring CPUs among resource partitions so as to match the stochastically changing workload in each partition, both for large and small CPU migration costs
Analyse de la fonction marketing des fédérations sportives olympiques françaises et construction d'un modèle de développement différencié selon une typologie fédérale

Un contexte concurrentiel exacerbe sur les marches du sport, une baisse tendancielle des aides publiques et de ouvelles attentes des consommateurs obligent les federations sportives olympiques a faire evoluer leurs modeles economiques. Tiraillees entre la necessite d’etre performantes en resultats sportifs lors des grands rendez-vous planetaires couverts par les medias, notamment les Jeux Olympiques, et celle de la promotion du sport pour tous afin d’augmenter leur nombre de licencies, les federations olympiques sont a la recherche de nouveaux leviers de developpement et de competitivite.L’ambition de cette these est d’analyser la facon dont elles sont en mesure d’adopter une demarche marketing au service de leurs strategies de developpement dans un environnement concurrentiel. Comment positionner la federation ? Comment fideliser les licencies et en faire des fans ? Comment attirer des prospects et notamment de nouveaux spectateurs ? Comment valoriser l’image federale aupres des partenaires et des medias ? Sur la base d’une typologie des federations olympiques, nous avons analyse comment chaque type de federation mobilise le modele classique du marketing commercial de facon differenciee. Cela nous a amene a les evaluer face a la necessite de se transformer en veritables marques pour etre en mesure de construire une relation affective et emotionnelle avec les consommateurs (pratiquants licencies, spectateurs, partenaires) qui depasse le simple usage du produit. Mais, l’heritage d’une ethique associative et benevole plus ou moins pregnantes chez les elus, peut apparaitre comme un obstacle a une politique de marque federale.C’est pourquoi nous proposons des modeles de developpement differencies selon les types de federations, declinant et adaptant les etapes classiques du plan marketing en fonction des specificites de chacun. Coincees entre une ethique utilitariste (moteur de la reussite sur le marche) par nature commerciale et une ethique associative (qui fonde leur legitimite) centree sur les differentes modalites de pratique, les federations n’ont pas d’autres choix que celui du compromis en s’engageant a la fois vers une logique manageriale d’entreprise (en s’ouvrant a l’expertise marketing et a la rentabilite economique) et en preservant leur specificite culturelle qui est leur socle de positionnement. L’apport de la these se trouve dans cette modelisation differenciee car toutes les federations n’ont pas les memes capacites de s’ouvrir a la concurrence commerciale.L’organisation des Jeux Olympiques a Paris en 2024 ouvre une periode passionnante a la fois sur le plan sportif et economique dont un des enjeux sera sans doute aussi de mesurer son impact sur le modele de developpement des federations sportives olympiques francaises.
Robust Adaptive Beamforming Using Multidimensional Covariance Fitting

Over the last decade, several set-based worst-case beamformers have been proposed. It has been shown that some of these beamformers can be formulated equivalently as one-dimensional (ID) covariance fitting problems. Based on this formulation, we show that these beamformers lead to inherently nonoptimum results in the presence of interferers. To mitigate the detrimental effect of interferers, we extend the ID covariance fitting approach to multidimensional (MD) covariance fitting, modeling the source steering vectors by means of uncertainty sets. The proposed MD covariance fitting approach leads to a nonconvex optimization problem. We develop a convex approximation of this problem, which can be solved, for example, by means of the logarithmic barrier method. The complexity required to compute the barrier function and its first- and second-order derivatives is derived. Simulation results show that the proposed beamformer based on MD covariance fitting achieves an improved performance as compared to the state-of-the-art narrowband beamformers in scenarios with large sample support.
Optimized polymeric Mach-Zehnder rib waveguide structure derived from optical waveguide modeling techniques

In this paper an optimized structure of the polymeric Mach-Zehnder rib waveguide is derived from optical waveguide modeling Techniques. The simulation is carried out by employing the effective index method (EIM) and two-dimensional finite difference beam propagation method (2D-FD-BPM). The precision of the calculation is ensured by applying the EIM to reduce the large refractive index step between consecutive polymer layers. Important parameters of the waveguide and their relationships with the optical power transmission are investigated. The power loss of the optimized waveguide is /spl sim/0.26 dB. The optimized structural parameters show good agreement with the reported ones derived from experiments.