Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Formulation and evaluation of sustained release matrix tablet of metoprolol succinate

Metoprolol succinate, a BCS class I drug and selective β1 receptor blocking agent used in treatment of hypertension and angina pectoris. The objective of the present study was to develop sustained-release matrix tablets of metoprolol succinate by using different grades of eudragit (Eudragit RSPO, Eudragit RLPO) along with HPMC K15. Here, hydroxylpropylmethylcellulose was used to control burst release. Eudragit RSPO having low permeability in water.so it gives better sustained action. The tablets were prepared by the wet granulation method. The compressed matrix tablets were evaluated for various parameters like hardness, friability, weight variation, drug content uniformity, drug-polymer interaction and in-vitro drug release studies. In-vitro drug release studies were performed in pH 6.8 phosphate buffer using US Papparatus-II (paddle) at 100 rpm for 12 hrs.
Generating Black Metal and Math Rock: Beyond Bach, Beethoven, and Beatles

We use a modified SampleRNN architecture to generate music in modern genres such as black metal and math rock. Unlike MIDI and symbolic models, SampleRNN generates raw audio in the time domain. This requirement becomes increasingly important in modern music styles where timbre and space are used compositionally. Long developmental compositions with rapid transitions between sections are possible by increasing the depth of the network beyond the number used for speech datasets. We are delighted by the unique characteristic artifacts of neural synthesis.
International Conference on Competitive Manufacturing “ Overloaded , Slow , and Illogical ” A Usability Evaluation of Software for Product Manufacturing Processes with a Special Focus on Age and Expertise of CAM Users

Today’s manufacturing processes require complex computer-aided planning processes, which are provided by CAM (computer aided manufacturing)-software systems. While the functional capabilities of these systems are constantly extended, less attention was paid to CAM-software usability. Facing the demographic change (cognitively aging users, retiring of experienced CAM experts who are succeeded by inexperienced users), not only usability issues but also userspecific requirements are becoming increasingly important. An online-survey regarding the usability of CAM-software was conducted (n = 76) and apart from general usability effects of age and CAM expertise were analyzed. Main usability barriers were program behavior and controllability. For older and inexperienced users, cognitive complexity (menu complexity and information density) was found to affect productivity and satisfaction of CAM-software usage. For younger CAM experts, an improved system support (feedback, search function) in solving CAM problems was identified as important requirement. Recommendations for a user-centered CAMsoftware usability optimization were derived.
Eisenmenger syndrome: current perspectives

: Eisenmenger syndrome (ES) is the most severe form of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) related to congenital heart disease (CHD). It results from a cardiac defect allowing significant systemic-to-pulmonary (left-to-right) shunting, which triggers the development of pulmonary vascular disease (PVD) if the defect is not repaired in a timely fashion. Once severe PVD has developed, the defect cannot be repaired. With advances in pediatric cardiology and surgery, the prevalence of ES is steadily falling in developed countries; nonetheless, there will always be patients who are unsuitable for repair at the time of diagnosis, or emigrating from countries with less advanced healthcare, who will develop ES. ES is a multisystem disorder causing chronic hypoxemia and reduced cardiac output resulting in significant morbidity and mortality. While lung (plus defect repair) or combined heart and lung transplantation is thought be the definitive treatment for ES, transplant organs are a limited resource and long-term results are still suboptimal. PAH pharmacotherapy was, until quite recently, largely directed at symptomatic relief and had no impact on morbidity and mortality. Targeted PAH therapies have recently been proven to be beneficial in various forms of PAH in terms of functional status, progression of disease, and prognosis. Data on the effect of PAH therapies in the ES cohort remain limited, but available studies demonstrate evidence of improvement in symptoms, exercise capacity, and some evidence of survival benefit. ES patients should be followed in specialized centers, by means of an interdisciplinary approach by clinicians experienced in PAH and CHD. However, local physicians working in cardiology, respiratory medicine, primary care, and emergency services are likely to encounter ES patients and need to be aware of the main issues and pitfalls in their care. The authors present an overview of the management of ES, focusing on the most common issues and complications.
Housing Market Bust and Farmland Values: Identifying the Changing Influence of Proximity to Urban Centers

This article estimates the impact of the 2007–2008 residential housing market bust on farmland values, using parcel-level farmland sales data from 2001–2010 for a 50-county region under urbanization pressure in western Ohio. Hedonic model estimates reveal that farmland was not immune to the residential housing bust; the portion of farmland value attributable to proximity to urban areas was almost cut in half shortly after the bust in 2009–2010. Nonetheless, total farmland prices remained relatively stable in the 2000s, likely due to increased demand for agricultural commodities. Our results are robust to different assumptions about the structure of the unobserved spatial correlation. (JEL Q15, R14)
Symmetry-induced band-gap opening in graphene superlattices

We study $n\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}n$ honeycomb superlattices of defects in graphene. The considered defects are missing ${p}_{z}$ orbitals and can be realized by either introducing C atom vacancies or chemically binding simple atomic species at the given sites. Using symmetry arguments and electronic-structure calculations we show that it is possible to open a band gap without breaking graphene point symmetry. This has the advantage that new Dirac cones appear right close to the gapped region. We find that the induced gaps have an approximate square-root dependence on the defect concentration $x=1/{n}^{2}$ and compare favorably with those found in nanoribbons at the same length scale.
Examining human–carnivore interactions using a socio-ecological framework: sympatric wild canids in India as a case study

Many carnivores inhabit human-dominated landscapes outside protected reserves. Spatially explicit assessments of carnivore distributions and livestock depredation patterns in human-use landscapes are crucial for minimizing negative interactions and fostering coexistence between people and predators. India harbours 23% of the world's carnivore species that share space with 1.3 billion people in approximately 2.3% of the global land area. We examined carnivore distributions and human–carnivore interactions in a multi-use forest landscape in central India. We focused on five sympatric carnivore species: Indian grey wolf Canis lupus pallipes, dhole Cuon alpinus, Indian jackal Canis aureus indicus, Indian fox Vulpes bengalensis and striped hyena Hyaena hyaena. Carnivore occupancy ranged from 12% for dholes to 86% for jackals, mostly influenced by forests, open scrublands and terrain ruggedness. Livestock/poultry depredation probability in the landscape ranged from 21% for dholes to greater than 95% for jackals, influenced by land cover and livestock- or poultry-holding. The five species also showed high spatial overlap with free-ranging dogs, suggesting potential competitive interactions and disease risks, with consequences for human health and safety. Our study provides insights on factors that facilitate and impede co-occurrence between people and predators. Spatial prioritization of carnivore-rich areas and conflict-prone locations could facilitate human–carnivore coexistence in shared habitats. Our framework is ideally suited for making socio-ecological assessments of human–carnivore interactions in other multi-use landscapes and regions, worldwide.
Information and Data Management at PUC-Rio and UFMG

This article presents a summary of the main activities of the Database & Information Systems Research Group at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and the Information Management Research Group at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). These two groups played a pioneering role in the development of the information and data management research area in Brazil. The survey covers about four decades of research work, aiming at theoretical and practical results, with increasing participation of other groups that they helped to initiate.
Coupling Mobile Base and End-Effector Motion in Task Space

Dynamic systems are a practical alternative to motion planning in executing robot actions. They are of particular interest in Learning from Demonstration, as here we aim to carry out actions in a certain fashion, without a model or in-depth knowledge about the world, which might be difficult to achieve with a planner. Using model-based dynamic systems in task space enables robots to flexibly reproduce demonstrated actions. Nevertheless, when dealing with mobile manipulators, we face the challenge of including the kinematic constraints of the robot in the action models. In this paper we propose to couple robot base and end-effector motions generated by arbitrary dynamical systems modulating the base velocity, while respecting the robots kinematic design. To this end we learn an approximation of the inverse reachability in closed form. In real-world robot experiments we demonstrate that we are able to maintain kinematically feasible trajectories in the presence of obstacles and in configurations differing profoundly from the training scene.
Global Amphibian Declines: A Problem in Applied Ecology

▪ Abstract Declines and losses of amphibian populations are a global problem with complex local causes. These may include ultraviolet radiation, predation, habitat modification, environmental acidity and toxicants, diseases, changes in climate or weather patterns, and interactions among these factors. Understanding the extent of the problem and its nature requires an understanding of how local factors affect the dynamics of local populations. Hypotheses about population behavior must be tested against appropriate null hypotheses. We generated null hypotheses for the behavior of amphibian populations using a model, and we used them to test hypotheses about the behavior of 85 time series taken from the literature. Our results suggest that most amphibian populations should decrease more often than they increase, due to highly variable recruitment and less variable adult mortality. During the period covered by our data (1951–1997), more amphibian populations decreased than our model predicted. However, there .
Towards an Open Source Implementation of the IEEE 802 . 15 . 4 DSME Link Layer

Reliable wireless solutions for large-scale automation are a major challenge today. The IEEE 802.15. 4 standard forms the basis for many open and proprietary implementations. To reflect current state-of-the-art techniques, the IEEE has amended standard 802.15. 4 with new MAC-layers such as TSCH, which resembles WirelessHART, and the Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-Channel Extension (DSME). This paper introduces openDSME, our implementation of IEEE 802.15. 4 DSME. DSME aims at preventing packet collisions through slot reservation in networks where conventional CSMA/CA is not reliable enough. In this document, we will outline core features of DSME and openDSME, and present details of our implementation. Additionally, current research efforts on connected topics will be highlighted.
GPz: non-stationary sparse Gaussian processes for heteroscedastic uncertainty estimation in photometric redshifts

The next generation of cosmology experiments will be required to use photometric redshifts rather than spectroscopic redshifts. Obtaining accurate and well-characterized photometric redshift distributions is therefore critical for Euclid, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Square Kilometre Array. However, determining accurate variance predictions alongside single point estimates is crucial, as they can be used to optimize the sample of galaxies for the specific experiment (e.g. weak lensing, baryon acoustic oscillations, supernovae), trading off between completeness and reliability in the galaxy sample. The various sources of uncertainty in measurements of the photometry and redshifts put a lower bound on the accuracy that any model can hope to achieve. The intrinsic uncertainty associated with estimates is often non-uniform and input-dependent, commonly known in statistics as heteroscedastic noise. However, existing approaches are susceptible to outliers and do not take into account variance induced by non-uniform data density and in most cases require manual tuning of many parameters. In this paper, we present a Bayesian machine learning approach that jointly optimizes the model with respect to both the predictive mean and variance we refer to as Gaussian processes for photometric redshifts (GPZ). The predictive variance of the model takes into account both the variance due to data density and photometric noise. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR12 data, we show that our approach substantially outperforms other machine learning methods for photo-z estimation and their associated variance, such as TPZ and ANNZ2. We provide a MATLAB and PYTHON implementations that are available to download at https://github.com/OxfordML/GPz.
Factors Influencing Physical Activity Patterns in Obese and Non-Obese Children: Results from OBEY-AD Study

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to analyze patterns of Physical Activity (PA), concentrating on evaluating dietary patterns according with PA levels, in underweight/normal weight and overweight/obese (OWO) children across three geographical areas worldwide. Methods: OBEY-AD is an international study enrolling 2720 children aged 3-11 years from school settings of metropolitan areas in South America (Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil), Europe (Italy, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Georgia), and Asia (India). Children underwent anthropometric assessment. Dietary patterns and lifestyle were investigated through a cultural specific investigation tool administered to children’s parents. Results: Most of underweight/normal weight and OWO children did physical activity at least once a week or every day. OWO children who did PA at least once a week and every day showed slightly better dietary patterns compared who did PA rarely. Regarding underweight/normal weight children, thosemore physically active were more likely to eat more frequently fruits (p-value<0.001), vegetables (p-value<0.001), and meat (p-value<0.001). However, they ate slightly more frequently fried food, sweet and salty snacks (p-value<0.001). Interestingly, parent’s perception of a quality diet (in terms of pleasant family mealtimes and varied diet) seemed to influence PA in both OWO and underweight/normal weight children. Conclusions: Interestingly, parental perception of healthy diet may result in better PA patterns. However, it should be further analyzed what it means for families the concept of “varied and healthy diet” in order to understand if it really corresponds to the one proposed by international guidelines.
Twin-arginine-dependent translocation of folded proteins

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 367, 1029–1046 (19 April 2012) (doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0202) Twin-arginine-dependent translocation of folded proteins Julia Fröbel, Patrick Rose and Matthias Müller In this paper, it was stated that degradation of incompletely assembled Fe/S proteins in Escherichia coli was in fact demonstrated to occur, provided that they could interact with the Tat machinery [152]. However, in contrast to the original text, interaction with the Tat machinery was shown not to be required for the degradation of incompletely assembled Fe/S proteins in E. coli [79].
Diachronic Collocations and Genre

This paper outlines some potential applications of the open-source software tool “DiaCollo” to multi-genre diachronic corpora. Explicitly developed for the efficient extraction, comparison, and interactive visualization of collocations from a diachronic text corpus, DiaCollo – unlike conventional collocation extractors – is suitable for processing collocation pairs whose association strength depends on the date of their occurrence. By tracking changes in a word’s typical collocates over time, DiaCollo can help to provide a clearer picture of diachronic changes in the word’s usage, especially those related to semantic shift or discourse environment. Use of the flexible DDC search engine back-end allows user queries to make explicit reference to genre and other document-level metadata, thus allowing e.g. independent genre-local profiles or cross-genre comparisons. In addition to traditional static tabular display formats, a web-service plugin also offers a number of intuitive interactive online visualizations for diachronic profile data for immediate inspection.
A study of the front and back body enveloping based on 3 D information

A response to the possible enveloping of the Man of the Turin Shroud results from the analysis of the three-dimensionality of the body image. The 3-D analysis is based on the correspondence between image luminance levels and body-sheet distance. The sum, point by point, of the body-sheet distance, measured on the basis of the luminance levels, with the corresponding position of the external surface of a man gives the Turin Shroud outline of the enveloping. The frontal and dorsal body images were trimmed of different noises such as traces of water, blood, fires, etc.; such images were then reconstructed for the lacking parts (arms) through a kinematic analysis associated with a computerized anthropometric analysis. On the basis of experimental data, some points were chosen in which the body-sheet distance is lifelike and the condition is set so that a defined measured distance must be associated to the corresponding levels of image luminance. From the analysis of the luminance levels, segments reconstruct the assumptive distance between the Man and the sheet. From the three-dimensional analysis it is confirmed that the Man was not enveloped in the Turin Shroud with bandages. The sheet was simply laid on the outstretched body, in a position conformable to the one taken on during the crucifixion (except the arms) and maintained during the entombment because of the strong rigor mortis.
Antiradical activity and amount of phenolic compounds in extracts obtained from some plant raw materials containing methylxanthine alkaloids

Summary Raw materials containing methylxanthine alkaloids such as yerba mate, guaraná, white and green tea, coffee seeds, chocolate and cacao seed powder and extracts obtained from these raw materials were investigated for their antioxidant features and the amount of phenolic compounds. The level of phenolic compounds was measured with the colorimetric method using Folin-Ciocalteu’s phenol reagent and antioxidant features was determined with the use of DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical). Amounts of phenolic compounds were presented in percentages per mass of extracts and mass of raw materials. Antiradical potential was shown as the number of TAUDPPH units per mg of extracts and g of raw materials. The highest number of antiradical units TAUDPPH as well as the amount of phenolic compounds was calculated for white tea and its extracts and lowest for chocolate. The correlation coefficient between the content of phenolics and antiradical features of raw materials is equal to r=0.994.
Strain and Sex Effects on Productive and Slaughter Performance of Local Egyptian and Canadian Chicken Strains

This experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of strain and sex on productive performance and slaughter traits of chickens. A total of 1951 one day old chicks of three Canadian dual purpose strains (Shaver A, B and C) and two Egyptian strains (Salam and Mandarah) were used. Productive performance measured from one day old to 12 weeks of age and slaughter traits were recorded for cocks at 12 weeks of age. Results revealed that strain effect was clear for Shaver C strain for body weight, weight gain, feed consumption. In addition Shaver C had better feed conversion, dressing, fleshing, liver, glycogen, tenderness percentages but recorded the highest percentages for abdominal and total fat content as well as lowest testicular weight of cocks. Shaver B showed higher percentages for blood loss, feather, bones, gizzard and spleen percentages but Shaver A showed the highest percentages for pH content, ashes, color and water holding capacity. Sex effect showed superiority of males over females for body weight allover study period, weight gain during 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 weeks and feed consumption during 6, 8, 10 and 12 weeks of age, while sex effect was not clear for feed conversion. Shaver C strain had the best averages for most productive and slaughter traits.
Container Density Improvements with Dynamic Memory Extension using NAND Flash

While containers efficiently implement the idea of operating-system-level application virtualization, they are often insufficient to increase the server utilization to a desirable level. The reason is that in practice many containerized applications experience a limited amount of load while there are few containers with a high load. In such a scenario, the virtual memory management system can become the limiting factor to container density even though the working set of active containers would fit into main memory. In this paper, we describe and evaluate a system for transparently moving memory pages in and out of DRAM and to a NAND Flash medium which is attached through the memory bus. This technique, called Diablo Memory Expansion (DMX), operates on a prediction model and is able to relieve the pressure on the memory system. We present a benchmark for container density and show that even under an overall constant workload, adding additional containers adversely affects performance-critical applications in Docker. When using the DMX technology of the Memory1 system, however, the performance of the critical workload remains stable.
Event-centric Context Modeling: The Case of Story Comprehension and Story Generation

In this opinion piece, we argue that there is a need for alternative design directions to complement existing AI efforts in narrative and character generation and algorithm development. To make our argument, we a) outline the predominant roles and goals of AI research in storytelling; b) present existing discourse on the benefits and harms of narratives; and c) highlight the pain points in character creation revealed by semi-structured interviews we conducted with 14 individuals deeply involved in some form of character creation. We conclude by proffering several specific design avenues that we believe can seed fruitful research collaborations. In our vision, AI collaborates with humans during creative processes and narrative generation, helps amplify voices and perspectives that are currently marginalized or misrepresented, and engenders experiences of narrative that support spectatorship and listening roles.
Improved convergence properties of the Lin-Fukushima-Regularization method for mathematical programs with complementarity constraints

We consider a regularization method for the numerical solution of mathematical programs with complementarity constraints (MPCC) introduced by Gui-Hua Lin and Masao Fukushima. Existing convergence results are improved in the sense that the MPCC-LICQ assumption is replaced by the weaker MPCC-MFCQ. Moreover, some preliminary numerical results are presented in order to illustrate the theoretical improvements.