Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Citrus Waste Biorefinery: Process Development, Simulation and Economic Analysis

The production of ethanol and other sustainable products including methane, limonene and pectin from citrus wastes (CWs) was studied in the present thesis. In the first part of the work, the CWs were hydrolyzed using enzymes – pectinase, cellulase and β-glucosidase – and the hydrolyzate was fermented using encapsulated yeasts in the presence of the inhibitor compound ‘limonene’. However, the application of encapsulated cells may be hampered by the high price of encapsulation, enzymes and the low stability of capsules’ membrane at high shear stresses. Therefore, a process based on dilute-acid hydrolysis of CWs was developed. The limonene of the CWs was effectively removed through flashing of the hydrolyzate into an expansion tank. The sugars present in the hydrolyzate were converted to ethanol using a flocculating yeast strain. Then ethanol was distilled and the stillage and the remaining solid materials of the hydrolyzed CWs were anaerobically digested to obtain methane. The soluble pectin content of hydrolyzate can be precipitated using the produced ethanol. One ton of CWs with 20% dry weight resulted in 39.64 l ethanol, 45 m3 methane, 8.9 l limonene, and 38.8 kg pectin. The feasibility of the process depends on the transportation cost and the capacity of CW. For example, the total cost of ethanol with a capacity of 100,000 tons CW/year was 0.91 USD/L, assuming 10 USD/ton handling and transportation cost of CW to the plant. Changing the plant capacity from 25,000 to 400,000 tons CW per year results in reducing ethanol costs from 2.55 to 0.46 USD/L in an economically feasible process. Since this process employs a flocculating yeast strain, the major concern in design of the bioreactor is the sedimentation of yeast flocs. The size of flocs is a function of sugar concentration, time and flow. A CFD model of bioreactor was developed to predict the sedimentation of flocs and the effect of flow on distribution of flocs. The CFD model predicted that the flocs sediment when they are larger than 180 micrometer. The developed CFD model can be used in design and scale-up of the bioreactor. For the plants with low CW capacity, a steam explosion process was employed to eliminate limonene and the treated CW was used in a digestion plant to produce methane. The required cost of this pretreatment was about 0.90 million dollars for 10,000 tons/year of CWs.
Mechanical load initiates hypertrophic scar formation through decreased cellular apoptosis

Hypertrophic scars occur following cutaneous wounding and result in severe functional and esthetic defects. The pathophysiology of this process remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that mechanical stress applied to a healing wound is sufficient to produce hypertrophic scars in mice. The resulting scars are histopathologically identical to human hypertrophic scars and persist for more than six months following a brief (one‐week) period of augmented mechanical stress during the proliferative phase of wound healing. Resulting scars are structurally identical to human hypertrophic scars and showed dramatic increases in volume (20‐fold) and cellular density (20‐fold). The increased cellularity is accompanied by a four‐fold decrease in cellular apoptosis and increased activation of the prosurvival marker Akt. To clarify the importance of apoptosis in hypertrophic scar formation, we examine the effects of mechanical loading on cutaneous wounds of animals with altered pathways of cellular apoptosis. In p53‐null mice, with down‐regulated cellular apoptosis, we observe significantly greater scar hypertrophy and cellular density. Conversely, scar hypertrophy and cellular density are significantly reduced in proapoptotic BclII‐null mice. We conclude that mechanical loading early in the prolifer‐ative phase of wound healing produces hypertrophic scars by inhibiting cellular apoptosis through an Akt‐dependent mechanism. —Aarabi S. , Bhatt, K. A. , Shi, Y. , Paterno, J., Chang, E. I. , Loh, S. A. , Holmes, J. W. , Longaker, M. T. , Yee, H. , Gurtner G. C. Mechanical load initiates hypertrophic scar formation through decreased cellular apoptosis. FASEB J. 21, 3250–3261 (2007)
The Inflammatory Potential of the Diet at Midlife Is Associated with Later Healthy Aging in French Adults.

Background While low-grade chronic inflammation has been suggested as a major modulator of healthy aging (HA), no study has yet investigated the link between the inflammatory potential of the diet and multidimensional concepts of HA. Objective We aimed to evaluate the association between the inflammatory potential of the diet at midlife, as measured by the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII), and HA assessed 13 y later. Methods We analyzed data from 2796 participants in the French Supplémentation en Vitamines et Minéraux Antioxydants (SU.VI.MAX) study aged 45-60 y at baseline (1994-1995) and initially free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. During the trial phase of the study (1994-2002), participants received either a placebo or a daily nutritional dose of antioxidant supplement (120 mg vitamin C, 6 mg β-carotene, 30 mg vitamin E, 100 μg Se, 20 mg Zn). HA was assessed in 2007-2009, and defined as having no major chronic disease, good physical and cognitive functioning, independence in daily activities, no depressive symptoms, good social health, good overall self-perceived health, and no function-limiting pain. The DII was calculated based on repeated baseline 24-h dietary records. Its association with HA was assessed by robust-error-variance Poisson regression, providing RR estimates. Results After adjustment for potential confounders, higher DII scores (reflecting a more proinflammatory diet), were associated with a decreased likelihood of HA: RRtertile 3/tertile 1 = 0.85 (95% CI: 0.74, 0.99); P-trend = 0.03. Secondary analyses revealed that this association was only significant among participants who had been in the placebo group during the trial phase: RRtertile 3/tertile 1 = 0.80 (95% CI: 0.64, 1.00); P-trend = 0.04. Conclusions This study suggests that a proinflammatory diet may lower the probability of overall HA. The SU.VI. MAX trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials. gov as NCT00272428.
A Model-Based Scalability Optimization Methodology for Cloud Applications

Complex applications composed of many interconnected but functionally independent services or components are widely adopted and deployed on the cloud to exploit its elasticity. This allows the application to react to load changes by varying the amount of computational resources used. Deciding the proper scaling settings for a complex architecture is, however, a daunting task: many possible settings exists with big repercussions in terms of performance and cost. In this paper, we present a methodology that, by relying on modeling and automatic parameter configurators, allows to understand the best way to configure the scalability of the application to be deployed on the cloud. We exemplify the approach by using an existing service-oriented framework to dispatch car software updates.
Rigid formation shape control in general dimensions: an invariance principle and open problems

The control systems resulting from seeking to control the shape of a rigid formation are frequently described by gradient flows which are designed to minimize some predefined and relevant potential functions linked to the desired formation shape. This paper discusses and establishes a rank-preserving property of such formation shape stabilization systems. We further show some properties of the degenerate critical formations that live in a lower dimensional space, and prove that they are unstable. The implication of these results is that if all the agents start with generic initial positions, then their trajectories will be strictly bounded away from the set of degenerate formations at any finite or infinite time. By establishing this invariance principle, some previous results on equilibrium analysis for rigid formation systems can be greatly simplified. The results also have applications in other fields such as the multidimensional scaling study. The results are obtained from a joint analysis of rank-preserving flow theory, graph rigidity theory and invariant manifold theory.
Modeling Social-Ecological Scenarios in Marine Systems

Human activities have substantial impacts on marine ecosystems+ including rapid regime shifts with large consequences for human well-being. We highlight the use of model-based scenarios as a scientific tool for adaptive stewardship in the face of such consequences. The natural sciences have a long history of developing scenarios but rarely with an in-depth understanding of factors influencing human actions. Social scientists have traditionally investigated human behavior, but scholars often argue that behavior is too complex to be represented by broad generalizations useful for models and scenarios. We address this scientific divide with a framework for integrated marine social-ecological scenarios, combining quantitative process-based models from the biogeochemical and ecological disciplines with qualitative studies on governance and social change. The aim is to develop policy-relevant scenarios based on an in-depth empirical understanding from both the natural and the social sciences, thereby contributing to adaptive stewardship of marine social-ecological systems.
Leveraging Hardware Caches for Memoization

Memoization improves performance and saves energy by caching and reusing the outputs of repetitive computations. Prior work has proposed software and hardware memoization techniques, but both have significant drawbacks. Software memoization suffers from high runtime overheads, and is thus limited to long computations. Conventional hardware memoization techniques achieve low overheads and can memoize short functions, but they rely on large, special-purpose memoization caches that waste significant area and energy. We propose <sc>MCache</sc>, a hardware technique that leverages data caches for memoization. <sc>MCache</sc> stores memoization tables in memory, and allows them to share cache capacity with normal program data. <sc>MCache</sc> introduces ISA and pipeline extensions to accelerate memoization operations, bridging the gap between software and conventional hardware techniques. Simulation results show that <sc>MCache</sc> improves performance by up to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$21\times$ </tex-math><alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="zhang-ieq1-2762308.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, outperforms software memoization by up to <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.2\times$</tex-math> <alternatives><inline-graphic xlink:href="zhang-ieq2-2762308.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, and achieves similar or superior performance over conventional hardware techniques without any dedicated storage.
Comparison of Small Dose Ketamine and Dexmedetomidine Infusion for Postoperative Analgesia in Spine Surgery—A Prospective Randomized Double-blind Placebo Controlled Study

Background: High doses of opioids are frequently used to treat postoperative pain after spine surgery. This leads to opioid-related side effects like nausea, vomiting, respiratory depression, etc. The current study is an attempt to find a safe analgesic adjuvant, which will afford opioid sparing property. Method: Sixty-six patients undergoing spine surgery were randomized into 1 of the 3 groups—group K (ketamine bolus 0.25 mg/kg followed by infusion of 0.25 mg/kg/h with midazolam bolus 10 &mgr;g/kg and infusion of 10 &mgr;g/kg/h mixed in the same infusion pump), group D (dexmedetomidine bolus 0.5 &mgr;g/kg followed by 0.3 &mgr;g/kg/h infusion), and group C (normal saline). Study drugs were started in the postoperative period and continued for 24 hours. Pain-free period, pain scores, rescue analgesic (morphine) requirements, and side effects were noted for 48 hours postoperatively. Result: Mean pain-free periods in the ketamine group (860 min) and the dexmedetomidine group (580 min) were longer than in the saline group (265 min) (P<0.002) during the observation period of 48 hours. There was a significant decrease in the rescue analgesic requirement in both ketamine and dexmedetomidine group (P<0.05) (cumulative morphine requirement at 24 h—group C 15.64±9.31 mg, group D 6.89±5.88 mg, group K 2.45±2.06 mg; at 48 h—group C 21.09±12.88 mg, group D 7.98±7.72 mg, group K 2.59±1.97 mg). Hemodynamics were maintained within normal range in all the groups. Patients in ketamine and dexmedetomidine groups were sedated, but none required assistance for maintaining airway patency. Few patients in the ketamine group had nausea, dizziness, and diplopia, but the difference was insignificant in comparison with other groups (P>0.05). Conclusions: Infusion of low-dose ketamine and dexmedetomidine both provide good postoperative analgesia with minimal side effects. Both of the tested analgesic regimes can be used safely and effectively for postoperative pain relief in patients after spine surgery.
Chiral Speciation in Terrestrial Pulmonate Snails

On the basis of data in the literature, the percentages of dextral versus sinistral species of snails have been calculated for western Europe, Turkey, North America (north of Mexico), and Japan. When the family of Clausiliidae is represented, about a quarter of all snail species may be sinistral, whereas less than one per cent of the species may be sinistral where that family does not occur. The number of single-gene speciation events on the basis of chirality, resulting in the origin of mirror image species, is not closely linked to the percentage of sinistral versus dextral species in a particular region. Turkey is nevertheless exceptional by both a high percentage of sinistral species and a high number of speciation events resulting in mirror image species. Shell morphology and genetic background may influence the ease of chirality-linked speciation, whereas sinistrality may additionally be selected against by internal selection. For the Clausiliidae, the fossil record and the recent fauna suggest that successful reversals in coiling direction occurred with a frequency of once every three to four million years.
A COMSOL Model to Analyse the Structural Mechanical Problem in an Electrostatically Controlled Prestressed Micro-Mirror

In nowadays biomedical and industrial applications such as optical switch matrices, laser scanning displays and biomedical imaging systems which are parts of theactuation and sensing components are realized using micro-mirrors fabricated usingMicro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. This paper studies through comsol model, the structural mechanical properties of the actuation mechanism of a square shape micro-mirror with the lift-off of the structure used four springs simulating a prestressed cantilever beam (5). There are few base materials were introduced such as Alumina, Aluminium 3003 H18, Aluminium 6063 T18, Copper and Aluminium. To make the leg or cantilevermore efficient the structural steel was introduced together with base materials listed above to further reduce the lift-off stress.
The Association Between Osteoporosis and Oral Bone Loss.

BACKGROUND Osteoporosis and osteopenia are characterized by reductions in bone mass and may lead to skeletal fragility and fracture. The purpose of this paper is to review studies to determine the relationship between oral bone loss and osteoporosis. In addition, the major modes of therapy for osteoporosis are discussed. METHODS In this convenience review, papers studying the possible correlation between oral bone loss and osteoporosis in humans, written in the English language since 1983, were reviewed. RESULTS The methods used to assess oral and systemic bone varied greatly from study to study. Therefore, the results were not amenable to meta-analysis. Thirteen of the 15 studies did show a positive correlation between systemic bone mass and oral bone mass (or bone loss). CONCLUSION Studies to date indicate a possible correlation between systemic and oral bone loss.
Bacteria as Risk Markers for Periodontitis.

Specific microbial species have been closely associated with periodontitis. Through longitudinal studies, some of these microbial species have been implicated in the etiology of progressive periodontal disease. Although putative periodontal pathogens are often isolated from individuals with severe periodontitis, they also frequently inhabit the subgingival environment and are not always associated with advanced disease. In this respect, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is no single etiology of the various periodontal diseases. Destructive periodontal diseases are the result of environmental, host, and bacterial factors. Microorganisms, however, are essential components of any model for progressive periodontitis. This paper selectively reviews bacteria as risk markers for periodontitis. Attention focuses on bacteria in conjunction with behavioral patterns (oral hygiene habits and smoking) and host response (gingival crevicular fluid substances) as risk markers for periodontitis. Prospective studies implicating specific bacteria in progressive periodontitis are addressed and a bacterial risk assessment model for progressive periodontitis is discussed with respect to the interplay between bacterial, environmental, and host markers. J Periodontol 1994; 64:498-510.
A review of connectivity map and computational approaches in pharmacogenomics

Large-scale perturbation databases, such as Connectivity Map (CMap) or Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS), provide enormous opportunities for computational pharmacogenomics and drug design. A reason for this is that in contrast to classical pharmacology focusing at one target at a time, the transcriptomics profiles provided by CMap and LINCS open the door for systems biology approaches on the pathway and network level. In this article, we provide a review of recent developments in computational pharmacogenomics with respect to CMap and LINCS and related applications.
Association of the nurse work environment with nurse incivility in hospitals

AIM To determine whether nurse coworker incivility is associated with the nurse work environment, defined as organisational characteristics that promote nurse autonomy. BACKGROUND Workplace incivility can negatively affect nurses, hospitals and patients. Plentiful evidence documents that nurses working in better nurse work environments have improved job and health outcomes. There is minimal knowledge about how nurse coworker incivility relates to the United States nurse work environment. METHODS Quantitative, cross-sectional. Data were collected through online surveys of registered nurses in a southwestern United States health system. The survey content included the National Quality Forum-endorsed Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index and the Workplace Incivility Scale. Data analyses were descriptive and correlational. RESULTS Mean levels of incivility were low in this sample of 233 staff nurses. Incivility occurred 'sporadically' (mean = 0.58; range 0.00-5.29). The nurse work environment was rated highly (mean = 3.10; range of 1.00-4.00). The nurse work environment was significantly inversely associated with coworker incivility. The nurse manager qualities were the principal factor of the nurse work environment associated with incivility. CONCLUSIONS Supportive nurse managers reduce coworker incivility. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT Nurse managers can shape nurse work environments to prevent nurse incivility.
An EV Charging Management System Concerning Drivers’ Trip Duration and Mobility Uncertainty

With continually increased attention on electric vehicles (EVs) due to environment impact, public charging stations (CSs) for EVs will become common. However, due to the limited electricity of battery, EV drivers may experience discomfort for long charging waiting time during their journeys. This often happens when a large number of (on-the-move) EVs are planning to charge at the same CS, but it has been heavily overloaded. With this concern, in an EV charging management system, we focus on CS-selection decision making and propose a scheme to manage EVs’ charging plans, to minimize drivers’ trip duration through intermediate charging at CSs. The proposed scheme jointly considers EVs’ anticipated charging reservations (including arrival time and expected charging time) and parking duration at CSs. Furthermore, by tackling mobility uncertainty that EVs may not reach their planned CSs on time (due to traffic jams on the road), a periodical reservation updating mechanism is designed to adjust their charging plans. Results under the Helsinki city scenario with realistic EV and CS characteristics show the advantage of our proposal, in terms of minimized drivers’ trip duration, as well as charging performance at the EV and CS sides.
High Performance Relaxor-Based Ferroelectric Single Crystals for Ultrasonic Transducer Applications

Relaxor-based ferroelectric single crystals Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) have drawn much attention in the ferroelectric field because of their excellent piezoelectric properties and high electromechanical coupling coefficients (d33∼2000 pC/N, kt∼60%) near the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB). Ternary Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PIN-PMN-PT) single crystals also possess outstanding performance comparable with PMN-PT single crystals, but have higher phase transition temperatures (rhombohedral to tetragonal Trt, and tetragonal to cubic Tc) and larger coercive field Ec. Therefore, these relaxor-based single crystals have been extensively employed for ultrasonic transducer applications. In this paper, an overview of our work and perspectives on using PMN-PT and PIN-PMN-PT single crystals for ultrasonic transducer applications is presented. Various types of single-element ultrasonic transducers, including endoscopic transducers, intravascular transducers, high-frequency and high-temperature transducers fabricated using the PMN-PT and PIN-PMN-PT crystals and their 2-2 and 1-3 composites are reported. Besides, the fabrication and characterization of the array transducers, such as phased array, cylindrical shaped linear array, high-temperature linear array, radial endoscopic array, and annular array, are also addressed.