Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combination of Pectin and Eudargit RS and Eudragit RL in the Matrix of Pellets Prepared by Extrusion-Spheronization for Possible Colonic Delivery of 5-Amino Salicylic Acid

Background Different methods have been studied for targeting drugs to the colon, such as pH-based, time dependent and bacterially degradable systems. However, due to variations in physiological conditions of patients, one system alone could not be completely reliable on colonic drug delivery. Objectives The aim of this study was preparation and evaluation of a novel colon-specific drug delivery system for 5-ASA (mesalazine) pellets using pectin as a microbially degradable polymeric carrier and Eudragit RS (ERS) and Eudragit RL (ERL) as time-dependent polymers. Materials and Methods Formulations were constructed based on a multilevel full factorial design. Pellets were prepared via extrusion - spheronization and evaluated for physicochemical properties, image analysis, SEM, FT-IR, DSC and in vitro drug release studies in the simulated gastric fluid with pH = 1.2 (SGF), simulated intestinal fluid with pH = 6.8 (SIF) and simulated colonic fluid with pH = 6.8 in presence of pectinolytic enzyme (SCF). Results It was shown that in the presence of pectin, formulations without ERL had a relative resistance to drug release in SGF. Pellets containing pectin and the least amount of ERS had the highest burst release effect in SCF. On the other hand, increasing in amount of ERS in the formulations caused a sustained drug release. Presence of pectin in formulations containing ERS and ERL caused sensitivity of formulations to pectinolytic enzyme which can suitable for a colon specific drug delivery system. Conclusions It was shown that combination of pectin and eudragits can relatively control drug release in the upper GI. On the other hand, pectin degraded in the presence of pectinase and formulations were susceptible to the colonic media.
13% Power reduction in 16b integer unit in 40nm CMOS by adaptive power supply voltage control with parity-based error prediction and detection (PEPD) and fully integrated digital LDO

Scaling power supply voltages (VDD's) of logic circuits down to the sub/near-threshold region is a promising approach to achieve significant power reductions. Circuit delays in the ultra-low voltage region, however, are extremely sensitive to process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations, and hence, large timing margins are required for worst-case design. Since such large timing margins reduce the energy efficiency benefits of lower VDD, adaptive VDD control to cope with PVT variations is indispensable for ultra-low voltage circuits. In this paper, an adaptive VDD control system with parity-based error prediction and detection (PEPD) and 0.5-V input fully-integrated digital LDO (DLDO) is proposed.
The Relationship between Uterine Myoma Growth and the Endocrine Disruptor in Postmenopausal Women

Objectives To investigate the number of leiomyoma patients-exposed to bisphenol A (BPA) and to observe whether the serum concentration of BPA is related to leiomyoma growth. Methods A total of 158 patients were recruited for this study. Leiomyoma patients were divided into three groups, mild (n = 48), moderate (n = 32) and severe (n = 28), according to the size of leiomyomas. The control (n = 30) group was defined as having no leiomyomas. Transvaginal ultrasonography was used to identify and measure the leiomyomas. Serum BPA concentrations were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results BPA was detected in 87.0% out of a total of 158 samples, and in 86.0% out of 108 leiomyoma patients. In detail, the detection rates of serum BPA were 88.0% in the control group, 77.2% in the mild group, 90.0% in the moderate group and 96.0% in the severe group. The mean BPA concentration in the control group was 0.558 ± 0.097 ng/mL, the leiomyoma groups, the mean BPA concentrations were 0.274 ± 0.063 ng/mL (mild), 0.346 ± 0.064 ng/mL (moderate) and 0.647 ± 0.039 ng/mL (severe) (P = 0.0003). Values represent the mean ± standard error. Conclusion The detection rates of serum BPA in the control and leiomyoma groups were 88.0% and 86.0%, respectively. However, there was no significant difference in the serum BPA concentrations between the control and leiomyoma groups. To verify the effect of BPA on leiomyoma growth, a close and sequential monitoring is recommended for people who are at risk for uterine leiomyoma.
An Optimization System for Concrete Life Cycle Cost and Related CO 2 Emissions

An optimization system that supports the production of concrete while minimizing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions or costs is presented that incorporates an evolution algorithm for the materialsâ€™ mix design stage, a trigonometric function for the transportation stage, and a stochastic model for the manufacturing stage. A case study demonstrates that applying the optimization system reduced CO 2 emissions by 34% compared to the standard concrete production processes typically used. When minimizing the cost of concrete production was prioritized, the cost dropped by 1% compared to the cost of conventional concrete production. These findings confirm that this optimization system helps with the design of the concrete mix and the choice of a material supplier, thus reducing both CO 2 emissions and costs.
Countermeasure for Differential Power Analysis using Boolean and Arithmetic masking

Differential Power Analysis is a side channel attack for any symmetrical cryptosystem. This paper will review the brief explanation of DPA and also some of its countermeasures. This paper will be focusing on the countermeasure using Boolean and arithmetic masking. These masking techniques will be useful for encryption schemes such as IDEA and RC6, etc. since these schemes require both Boolean and arithmetic operations.
Valuation in an Inflationary Environment

Using illustrative examples, this paper shows that the Net Present Value for project evaluation should be based on estimates of free cash flows at nominal prices. It is a widespread practice to evaluate projects at constant or real prices. These days, the use of constant or real prices is an unnecessary oversimplification. In particular, we present an example where the results from the constant and real price methodologies are biased upwards and there is a risk that in practice, bad projects will be accepted as good projects.
Goods distribution management in city logistics environment: A systemic approach

The routing plan of a delivery fleet is usually developed a priori and provides an optimal (or near optimal) way of serving customers by taking into account certain constraints, such as vehicle capacity and delivery time windows. However, such plans may not cope adequately in a city logistics environment, in which unexpected events often occur during delivery execution (e.g. adverse traffic conditions). These events may lead to delays, higher costs, and inferior customer service. This paper presents the development and evaluation of a real-time fleet management system that handles such unforeseen events by using advanced traffic forecasting techniques and rerouting strategies coupled with telematic technology. The system monitors the delivery vehicles in real time, detects deviations from the initial distribution plan, and adjusts the schedule accordingly, by suggesting effective rerouting strategies. The system has been tested in real-life cases and the results show that delivery performance is enhanced significantly and customer satisfaction is improved accordingly.
LU-ITP-2006 / 004 Ramifications of Lineland

A non-technical overview on gravity in two dimensions is provided. Applications discussed in this work comprise 2D type 0A/0B string theory, Black Hole evaporation/thermodynamics, toy models for quantum gravity, for numerical General Relativity in the context of critical collapse and for solid state analogues of Black Holes. Mathematical relations to integrable models, non-linear gauge theories, Poisson-sigma models, KdV surfaces and non-commutative geometry are presented.
Fabrication and Characterization of a Micromachined Swirl-Shaped Ionic Polymer Metal Composite Actuator with Electrodes Exhibiting Asymmetric Resistance

This paper presents a swirl-shaped microfeatured ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) actuator. A novel micromachining process was developed to fabricate an array of IPMC actuators on a glass substrate and to ensure that no shortcircuits occur between the electrodes of the actuator. We demonstrated a microfluidic scheme in which surface tension was used to construct swirl-shaped planar IPMC devices of microfeature size and investigated the flow velocity of Nafion solutions, which formed the backbone polymer of the actuator, within the microchannel. The unique fabrication process yielded top and bottom electrodes that exhibited asymmetric surface resistance. A tool for measuring surface resistance was developed and used to characterize the resistances of the electrodes for the fabricated IPMC device. The actuator, which featured asymmetric electrode resistance, caused a nonzero-bias current when the device was driven using a zero-bias square wave, and we propose a circuit model to describe this phenomenon. Moreover, we discovered and characterized a bending and rotating motion when the IPMC actuator was driven using a square wave. We observed a strain rate of 14.6% and a displacement of 700 μm in the direction perpendicular to the electrode surfaces during 4.5-V actuation.
Seizure outcome after epilepsy surgery in patients with normal preoperative MRI

Objective: To determine outcome after epilepsy surgery in patients with normal preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Methods: 24 adult and paediatric patients with normal preoperative MRIs were studied. They underwent epilepsy surgery between 1994 and 2001 and had at least one year of follow up. Results: At the most recent follow up, nine patients (37%) were seizure-free and 18 (75%) had at least a 90% reduction in seizure frequency with weekly or monthly seizures. Seizure freedom was not significantly different after resections in frontal (5/9) or temporal regions (4/13) (p = 0.24, Fisher’s exact test), or among patients with or without localising features on EEG, PET, or ictal SPECT. Subdural grids, used in 15 of 24 patients, helped tailor resections but were not associated with differences in outcome. Histopathology showed cortical dysplasia in 10 patients (42%), non-specific findings in 13 (54%), and hippocampal sclerosis in one (4%). Cortical dysplasia was seen in seven patients with frontal resection (78%) and non-specific findings in nine (69%) with temporal resection. Seizure outcome did not differ on the basis of location of resection or histopathology. Conclusions: While these results were less favourable than expected for patients with focal epileptogenic lesions seen on MRI, they represented worthwhile improvement for this patient population with high preoperative seizure burden. In this highly selected group, no single test or combination of tests further predicted postoperative seizure outcome.
Adaptive image classification based on folksonomy

In this paper, we present a novel adaptive image classification method for content-based image classification systems based on user defined tags and annotations. The proposed method utilizes low-level features and folksonomies for improved classification accuracy. Thus, users' perceptive semantics are modeled in terms of low-level features and they are combined with low-level image categorization adaptively. The proposed method has been thoroughly evaluated and selected results are illustrated in the paper. It is shown that, satisfactory improvements can be achieved with integrating folksonomies into classification scheme. Furthermore, it is a language-independent and low-complex method that can be used on various databases, languages and Content-Based Image Retrieval applications.
Staff Experience of Pain Management: An Improvement in Palliative Care

Palliative care involves helping patients to achieve best possible quality of life by alleviating symptoms and suffering. The aim of the study was to describe and analyze staff member’s experience of working with evidence-based guidelines for pain management in palliative care. The study comprised a total of eight group interviews and 93 narratives from 22 staff members, all of who worked in palliative care. Data was analyzed using manifest qualitative content analysis and deductive perspectives according to SOC (sense of coherence). Three categories, “Awareness of Pain Management”, “Participation in Pain Management”, and “Safety at Pain Management”, were identified. The result showed an increased awareness of the value of a deeper understanding of policy documents and local guidelines. A key factor in improvement work was that team members were given the opportunity to repeat and continuously reflect on their performed work together within the team in dialog form. Teamwork may contribute to a better knowledge and understanding of how to develop high quality in healthcare by learning from each other in everyday work and by using evidence-based practices. Consistency in the working group could improve healthcare by using the espoused theory and theory-in-use for develop procedures and guidelines at work.
An architecture for reusable libraries

My colleagues and I have written and distributed a number of general purpose libraries covering a wide range of computing areas such as I/O, memory allocation, container data types, and sorting. Published studies showed that these libraries are more general, flexible and efficient than comparable packages as application construction tools. Our libraries are based on an architecture in which two main interfaces are made explicit: disciplines to define resource requirements, and methods to define resource management. This paper discusses the discipline and method library architecture and a resource-oriented analysis approach for analyzing and designing libraries based on this architecture.
In Services: Data Management for In Silico Workflows

Scientific workflows are emerging as a suitable practice to support bio informatics experiments. Specially, in distributed environments, where workflow steps are located at different sites, workflows can create an independent and interoperable environment between the scientific applications and databases, when combined with the Web services technology. Web services have been useful as legacy code wrappers, in order to facilitate distributed workflow definition and orchestration. However, there is an increasing need to address workflow intermediate data management. This work presents the In Services system that provides support for bio informatics workflows redefinition. This redefinition enables the user to include specific data management services, according to his needs. These services are able to filter, store and retrieve data that are generated in each workflow execution step
Modelling and diagnosis of feedback-controlled processes using dynamic PCA and neural networks

Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Engineering Process Control (EPC) have evolved rapidly in manufacturing industry. Typical feedback controllers, such as proportional integral derivative (PID) and exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) controllers, are designed to maintain desirable operations by compensating for the effects of disturbances and changes in industrial processes according to process data. However, little attention is paid to the modelling and diagnosis of feedback-controlled processes. A new scheme to diagnose the root cause of faults in a feedback-controlled process is presented here by integrating dynamic principal component analysis (PCA) and neural networks. The dynamic PCA is introduced first to extract the dynamic relationship between control action and process output and to generate feature sets. Furthermore, the neural networks' classifier is trained by a scale-conjugated gradient algorithm using training samples. Simulation results show that the above scheme could model the relationship between the features extracted by dynamic PCA and disturbance parameters, and could improve the ability to diagnose the root causes of faults in comparison with traditional classifiers. In addition, this scheme offers a broad perspective in production variability reduction and optimization of the process controller.
Encouraging Sustainable Energy Use in the Office with Persuasive Mobile Information Systems

Faced with growing pressures to be more environmentally sustainable, many companies are increasingly exploring innovative ways to incorporate “green” practices into their business processes. We focus on employees and their potential contributions to organization-wide sustainability goals through their pro-environmental behaviours. This article reports on current progress with a multi-year study targeting the use of mobile media to encourage pro-environmental behaviours. To do so, we provide employees with feedback on their computer-based energy usage. We discuss our combined design science and experimental approach to developing and studying a mobile application with embedded persuasive characteristics. Our future interventions will use this persuasive media platform to examine the impact of social-psychological theories on encouraging more sustainable energy use by employees.
Correlates of Protection against Norovirus Infection and Disease—Where Are We Now, Where Do We Go?

Human noroviruses (NoV) are the leading cause of foodborne gastroenteritis and endemic diarrheal disease across all ages in the United States, cause nearly 50% of all gastroenteritis outbreaks worldwide, and are rapidly replacing rotavirus as the predominant gastrointestinal pathogen in pediatric populations [1]. Modelling studies show that vaccination can offer significant healthcare and economic benefits, depending on vaccine cost, protective efficacy, and protection duration [2]. We stand at the threshold of exciting progress in NoV vaccine evaluation, with several vaccine candidates in development. Furthest along are virus-like particles (VLPs), composed of the NoV major capsid protein and produced in a recombinant baculovirus expression system. VLP vaccines are safe, immunogenic, and were efficacious in a proof-of-principle human experimental infection study [3]. As development transitions from small preclinical and clinical studies to larger clinical trials—and eventually to applications for licensure—it is important to review the current knowledge on correlates of protection (CoPs) against NoV infection and disease (Table 1), as well as to identify and address the remaining challenges (Table 2). This is critical to understand the basis of vaccine efficacy and to provide direction for the design and implementation of future NoV vaccine studies. Table 1 Correlates of protection. Table 2 Questions for future NoV vaccine studies.
Contested heritages and cultural tourism

Abstract The fascination with death and disaster has encouraged the development of distinctive tourism markets, the rediscovery of sites and places of past conflict and all accompanied with uneasy narratives about what they mean and how they should be consumed. The increasingly stratified tourist economy and the interplay between demand and supply has also stimulated a complex set of ontological, socio-political and indifferent responses as places and interests compete to project often selective or stylised claims for recognition. This paper reviews the experiences of tourists visiting Derry/Londonderry, the UK’s first City of Culture and how they make sense of the competing interpretations of the past in museums, rituals and artefacts. The 17thC walled city, the city of violence and the post-conflict renaissance city are spatially and socially reproduced but rarely connect with each other to help make sense of the past for the present and critically, for the future. The paper concludes that the discursive content promised by the City of Culture was a missed opportunity to debate these places and events and critically, the problematized and reified narratives they each project.
Effects of C18 Fatty Acids on Intracellular Ca2+ Mobilization and Histamine Release in RBL-2H3 Cells

To investigate the underlying mechanisms of C18 fatty acids (stearic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid) on mast cells, we measured the effect of C18 fatty acids on intracellular Ca2+ mobilization and histamine release in RBL-2H3 mast cells. Stearic acid rapidly increased initial peak of intracellular Ca2+ mobilization, whereas linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid gradually increased this mobilization. In the absence of extracellular Ca2+, stearic acid (100 µM) did not cause any increase of intracellular Ca2+ mobilization. Both linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid increased intracellular Ca2+ mobilization, but the increase was smaller than that in the presence of extracellular Ca2+. These results suggest that C18 fatty acid-induced intracellular Ca2+ mobilization is mainly dependent on extracellular Ca2+ influx. Verapamil dose-dependently inhibited stearic acid-induced intracellular Ca2+ mobilization, but did not affect both linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid-induced intracellular Ca2+ mobilization. These data suggest that the underlying mechanism of stearic acid, linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid on intracellular Ca2+ mobilization may differ. Linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid significantly increased histamine release. Linoleic acid (C18:2: ω-6)-induced intracellular Ca2+ mobilization and histamine release were more prominent than α-linolenic acid (C18:3: ω-3). These data support the view that the intake of more α-linolenic acid than linoleic acid is useful in preventing inflammation.
Context-based polynomial extrapolation and slackened synchronization for fast multi-core simulation using FMI

The growing complexity of systems, together with increasing available parallelism provided by multi-core chips, calls for the parallelization of simulation. Simulation speed-ups are expected from co-simulation and parallelization based on models splitting into loosely coupled sub-systems in the framework of Functional Mockup Interface (FMI). However, slackened synchronization between the sub-models and associated solvers running in parallel introduces integration errors, which must be kept inside predefined bounds. In this paper, context-based extrapolation is investigated to improve the trade-off between integration speedups, needing large communication steps, and simulation precision, needing frequent updates for the models inputs. An internal combustion engine, based on FMI for model exchange, is used to assess the parallelization methodology.
Efficient rare-event simulation for the maximum of heavy-tailed random walks

Let $(X_n:n\geq 0)$ be a sequence of i.i. d. r.v. 's with negative mean. Set $S_0=0$ and define $S_n=X_1+. +X_n$. We propose an importance sampling algorithm to estimate the tail of $M=\max \{S_n:n\geq 0\}$ that is strongly efficient for both light and heavy-tailed increment distributions. Moreover, in the case of heavy-tailed increments and under additional technical assumptions, our estimator can be shown to have asymptotically vanishing relative variance in the sense that its coefficient of variation vanishes as the tail parameter increases. A key feature of our algorithm is that it is state-dependent. In the presence of light tails, our procedure leads to Siegmund's (1979) algorithm. The rigorous analysis of efficiency requires new Lyapunov-type inequalities that can be useful in the study of more general importance sampling algorithms.