Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of body temperature on residual neuromuscular blockade of intermediate-acting neuromuscular blocking agents

Aim: Aim of this study was to compare the rates of residual neuromuscular block in patients at different postoperative body temperatures. We also investigated incidence of early postoperative residual neuromuscular block with intermediate acting neuromuscular blocking agents and the factors affecting early postoperative residual neuromuscular block with intermediate acting neuromuscular blocking agents. Material and Methods: Two hundred and sixty-eight patients who underwent surgery under general anesthesia were enrolled in this study. Patients were monitored with an acceleromyograph from the moment of admission to post anesthesia care unit. In addition to Train of Four (TOF) measurements, patients' clinical findings (tongue depressor test, hand squeezing, existence of diplopia, ability to swallow, ability to lift head and legs for 5 seconds) were monitored and recorded. Patients body temperatures are measured with a tympanic thermometer and residual neuromuscular block at different body temperatures were compared. Results: The incidence of residual neuromuscular block was 48.9%. Univariate analysis of the data showed that surgical duration, maintenance dose administration, administration of reversal agent and body temperature were significantly relevant with residual neuromuscular block. There weren't any statistically significant difference between TOF values of patients with body temperatures lower or higher than 35ºC who were administered either one of the 3 neuromuscular blocking agents utilized in this study. Conclusion: We conclude that choice of intermediate acting neuromuscular blocking agent has no influence on residual neuromuscular block in patients with both intraoperative and postoperative mild hypothermia.
Antibacterial Potential of Bacteria from a Freshwater Fish Intestine

Eighteen (18) intestinal bacteria previously isolated from farmed Clarias gariepinus and biochemically identified to generic level were screened for their ability to inhibit in vitro growth of three fish pathogens (Vibrio sp., Salmonella sp. and Staphylococcus aureus) and three human pathogens (Escherichia coli, Shigella sp. and Klebsiella sp.). The antibacterial activity was examined using agar well diffusion assay. Selected strains displaying high antibacterial activity were identified using 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. All sequences were analyzed and blasted against the sequences available in GenBank. A total of eight (8) intestinal bacteria (44.4%) were found active against at least two of the target strains while ten (10) strains had no antibacterial activity against the pathogens. Three isolates which possessed high antibacterial ability (zone of inhibition > 15 mm) were identified as Bacillus cereus strain TE, Enterobacter cloacae strain P141 and Vibrio furnissii strain ZOR0035.The result suggests that intestinal bacteria having antibacterial activity may play a role in the prevention of infectious diseases in the host fish.
Coupled 3 D Numerical Simulations of the Effects of Ocean Salinity on Tropical Cyclone Intensity

In many modeling studies focusing on air-sea interactions in tropical cyclones (hereafter TCs), upper ocean stability is approximated by the vertical temperature profile, and gradients in salinity are assumed to be negligible. However, in certain instances freshwater inputs at the surface create a shallow, low salinity mixed layer above strong gradients in salinity at the base of the layer. When this occurs, the upper ocean becomes more stratified, thus increasing the ocean’s resistance to entrainment mixing of cooler, sub-thermocline waters into the surface mixed layer due to a given wind stress from a passing TC. This phenomenon was first observed in the late 1980s and was documented in detail by Sprintall and Tomczak (1992) (ST92). That study named this layer of increased stratification the barrier layer (hereafter, BL) and defined it as the difference in depths between the mixed layer and the isothermal layer. ST92 identified three regions of the tropical oceans as being favorable for BL formation: the Bay of Bengal, the South Western Pacific, and the Eastern Caribbean. The source of freshwater in the first two regions comes from heavy precipitation over the ocean during the rainy season, and the latter by the extension of the Amazon-Orinoco freshwater river plume, which can penetrate as far as north of Puerto Rico and eastward into the main development region for TCs (Foltz and McPhaden, 2009; Rudzin et al., 2017; Rudzin et al., 2018). The location of the BL in the Caribbean has been given special attention over the past couple decades. Multiple studies note that high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) coincide with the Amazon-Orinoco river plume, and that subsurface temperature maxima are common features beneath the plume. (Sprintall and Tomczak, 1992; Pailler et al., 1999; Mignot et al., 2012). It is not uncommon for a TC to pass over the plume during the summer months, when the river freshwater extent is at a maximum. Balaguru et al. (2012) observed that when Hurricane Omar in 2008 passed over a thick BL region near the Lesser Antilles, SST cooling abruptly ceased and even warmed slightly, during which time Omar intensified from a cate-
Similarity Collect-Clustering of Saccades Work presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor in Computer

12 RESUMO . 13
First-Mover Advantage in Online Review Platform Research-in-Progress

While first-mover advantage has been widely studied at firm-level, our research focuses on individual-level first-mover advantage in online review platform. More specifically, we study whether early reviews receive higher proportion of helpful votes than later reviews. We try to answer three questions. (1) Does first-mover have advantage in online review platform? (2) Does the first-mover advantage differ across different types of reviewers? (3) Are reputation-seeking reviewers more likely to exploit the first-move advantage? We analyze the model using Zero-inflated Beta with the review data from Amazon.com. Our preliminary results show that early reviews are more helpful than later reviews when controlling for total time being posted, review characteristics, and reviewer characteristics. The first-mover advantage is greater for high frequency reviewer than low frequency reviewer.
Microfluidic Platforms for Gradient Generation and its Applications

Due to criticality of gradients in both chemical and biological fields, generating stable and controllable gradient concentration in microfluidics has significance such as analysis of cell migration, cancer metastasis, drug screening, chemotaxis and chemical synthesis. Integrated microfluidic chips are particularly amenable to gradient generation. Microfluidic chips functioning as concentration gradient have made great progress based on various principles. Diverse advanced microfluidic platforms have been developed as convection mixing-based gradient generators, laminar flow diffusion-based gradient generators, static diffusion-based gradient generator and geometric metering mixing-based gradient generator. In this review, we discuss recent advances and wide application of microfluidic gradient generators.
Performance Analysis for Truncated ARQ based DSFBC-CO-OFDM Communication Scheme

We develop and analyze an ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) based distributed space-frequency block codeorthogonal frequency division multiplexing protocol for cooperative communications (DSFBC-CO-OFDM). At PHY layer, space frequency block codes (SFBC) are spread over OFDM subcarriers instead of OFDM symbols to compensate for the small coherence time. Medium access control (MAC) layer packet retransmission limit has been used as an actuator for transmit cooperative diversity initialization. Transmit diversity is provided by the relays in close proximity to source node. Closed form expressions are obtained for packet error rate (PER) and average delay for the proposed scheme in Nakagami-m fading channels. This cooperative scheme achieves lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values for desired packet error rate and markedly improves the average delay per packet compared to the direct transmissions at low SNR regime. Finally, the results of computer simulations are included to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme and to verify the accuracy of analytical expressions. KeywordsAutomatic repeat request (ARQ), cooperative transmit diversity, OFDM, wireless networks.
Use of Two-replisome Plasmids to Characterize How Chromosome Replication Completes

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Hamilton, Nicklas Alexander, "Use of Two-replisome Plasmids to Characterize how Chromosome Replication Completes" (2019). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 5064.
BLEU Decoding and Feature Weight Tuning in Docent

This thesis presents two sets of experiments carried out with Docent, a document-level decoder for phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT). In the first half of the thesis, BLEU decoding is introduced, implemented and investigated, whereby proposed changes to a translation are only accepted if the score of the automatic evaluation metric BLEU increases. Rather than leading to high quality translations as might be expected, the results show that high BLEU scores can be achieved despite patently bad translations. These results complement previous criticisms of the BLEU metric, which have thrown doubt on the claim that it always correlates well with human judgements of translation quality. The argument in this thesis is however more subtle: even if BLEU correlates well with human judgements of translation quality for translations produced independently of this metric, it does not necessarily hold that manipulating systems to achieve high BLEU scores leads to better quality translations. The second half of the thesis focuses on feature weight tuning, the process of finding optimum weights for the various feature functions employed in SMT. Several tuning paradigms already exist for standard sentence-level SMT decoders, but so far very little research has been carried out into tuning at the document level. The experiments presented here focus on adapting the PRO technique, which aims to find weights that correctly rank competing candidate translations. The ultimate goal of this work was to find a stable baseline tuning algorithm and use BLEU decoding to improve yet further on it. Despite extensive experimentation, this optimisation process fails to yield positive results in Docent: weights could not be found that improve the performance of the decoder compared to default settings. Possible reasons for these unexpected results and directions for future investigation are discussed in detail.
Microarray Image Segmentation Methodologies : A Review

2.1. Microarray Image Segmentation Methodologies The segmentation of an image can generally be defined as the process of partitioning the image into different regions, [1] each having certain properties (e. g., color or texture) [2, 3, and 4]. In a microarray experiment, segmentation allows the classification of pixels as foreground (i.e. as corresponding to a spot of interest) or background, so that fluorescence intensities can be calculated for each spotted DNA sequence as measure of transcript abundance. Any segmentation method produces spot mask, which consists of the set of foreground pixels for a given spot. Spot intensity extraction refers to the calculation of the fluorescence signal's mean intensity for the foreground spot's. Extracted mean intensities correspond to gene expression levels that, in turn, are translated into biological conclusions from molecular biologists, by employing data mining techniques [5]. The objective of the segmentation inside of a grid cell is to find one segment that contains the foreground information. Existing segmentation methods for microarray
Optimization of Spirulina platensis Biomass and Evaluation of its Protective Effect Against Chromosomal Aberrations of Bone Marrow Cells

There are numerous studies investigating the effectiveness and potential clinical applications of Spirulina in treating several diseases. So, the present essay was designed to Cultivate Spirulina sp. in three different media; namely (modified commercial low cost Zarrouk medium (MS), Khul medium and Sea Water enriched medium), to compare Biomass concentrations (g/lDW) and optical density (OD) for 20 days, and phytochemical screening (Total phenolic, total flavonoids and Antioxidant activity) of the crude extract of all media with commercial Spirulina (dry product). In addition, examine possible potentials of Spirulina against hepatic intoxication induced by CCl4 in albino male mice. Results revealed that, methanolic extract recorded the highest values in modified Zarrouk’s medium (88.98 mg gallic acid equivalent/ml, 78.57 mg Rutin equivalent/ml and 82.04%) in Total phenolic, total flavonoids and Antioxidant activity respectively. Conclusively, Spirulina showed an ameliorating effect of CCl4 induced chromosomal aberrations of bone marrow cells; which proves the protective role of it against the chromosomal damage.
Lack of an independent relationship between CXCL 16 gene rs 2277680 polymorphism and instability of carotid plaque in the Chinese Han population

Background: Chemokine CXC ligand 16 (CXCL16) may have an important role in the development of vulnerable carotid plaques. The rs2277680 polymorphism located in exon 4 of CXCL16 has been shown to accelerate inflammation, which increases the instability of carotid plaques. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the CXCL16 gene rs2277680 polymorphism and the instability of carotid plaques in the Chinese Han population. Methods: For this study, 554 patients were enrolled and divided into three groups according to the results of carotid ultrasound examination: vulnerable plaque group (n = 129), stable plaque group (n = 189) and no plaque group (n = 236). Additionally, the CXCL16 gene rs2277680 polymorphism was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. Results: The frequency of the GA+AA genotypes was not significantly different between the three groups (82.9% vs 87.8% vs 85.2%, x2 = 1.531, P = 0.465). The frequency of the A allele was also not significantly different between the three groups (59.69% vs 61.38% vs 61.65%, x2 = 0.771, P = 0.374). Conclusions: There is no correlation between the CXCL16 gene rs2277680 polymorphism and the instability of carotid plaques in the Chinese Han population.
Performance Evaluation on Virtualization Technologies for NFV Deployment in 5G Networks

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is regarded as a pivotal pillar to grasp the particularized 5G goals by shifting network intelligence from the cloud to the edge. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) emerged as a paradigm intending to replace traditional vendor-specific network appliances with software instances of the network functions capable of running on standard devices. Recently, deploying softwarized network functions at the network edge has gained an unprecedented attention. Multiple virtualization technologies can be utilized to deploy virtualized network functions including Virtual Machines (VMs), containers, and unikernels. However, each virtualization platform has specific advantages and disadvantages, which makes worthy studying their real performance. This is specially important when it comes to implement network functions at the edge of 5G networks, where resources are scarce and quick response to user requests is needed. In this regard, this paper studies the performance of virtualization technologies by deploying two services namely Apache and Redis and provides an extensive experimental campaign and conclusive results.
Photoluminescence Studies of Green Synthesized Copper Nanoparticles

Copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) are prepared using two stage chemical reduction method. Ocimum Sanctum (OS) leaves extract is used to stabilize the CuNPs. This approach is proved to be an efficient method for preparation of CuNPs at room temperature and without using any inert atmosphere. The resulted powder samples are characterized by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS), UV-Visible Spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) techniques. The prepared CuNPs are found to be FCC crystalline and monodispersed. The visible photoluminescence from metal nanoparticles is usually due to the interband transition between the sp conduction bands and the d bands. Photoluminescence spectra of CuNPs show an emission peak at 535 nm when illuminated at 325 nm. The fluorescence of molecules in direct contact with the metal gets enhanced. Here adsorbed natural extract on the surface of CuNPs can enhance the emission peak.
Patterns of coordination in simultaneously and sequentially improvising jazz musicians

In Joint Action (JA) tasks, individuals must coordinate their actions so as to achieve some desirable outcome at the grouplevel. Group function is an emergent outcome of ongoing, mutually constraining interactions between agents. Here we investigate JA in dyads of improvising jazz pianists. Participants’ musical output is recorded in one of two conditions: a real condition, in which two pianists improvise together as they typically would, and a virtual condition, in which a single pianist improvises along with a “ghost partner” – a recording of another pianist taken from a previous real trial. The conditions are identical except for that in real trials subjects are mutually coupled to one another, whereas there is only unidirectional influence in virtual trials (i.e. recording to musician). We quantify ways in which the rhythmic structures spontaneously produced in these improvisations is shaped by mutual coupling of co-performers. Musical signatures of underlying coordination patterns are also shown to parallel the subjective experience of improvisers, who preferred playing in trials with bidirectional influence despite not explicitly knowing which condition they had played in. These results illuminate how mutual coupling shapes emergent, group-level structure in the creative, open-ended and fundamentally collaborative domain of expert musical improvisation.
Degradation kinetics of anthocyanins in blackberry pulp during ohmic and conventional heating

Anthocyanin degradation kinetics in blackberry pulp during ohmic and conventional heating was evaluated at different temperature conditions (70, 75, 80, 90°C). Ohmic heating experiments were performed at 23 V and 125 V (60 Hz). The anthocyanin degradation rates were similar for both heating technologies for low voltage (23 V). Nevertheless, when high voltages were applied, anthocyanin degradation increased. This result can be attributed to the electrochemical reactions that might contribute to greater anthocyanins degradation during ohmic heating. The first order model provided a good description of the degradation kinetics for both heating technologies, and the k values ranged from 0.0155 to 0.0051 min-1. The activation energies were 67 and 56 kJ mol-1 for ohmic and conventional heating, respectively. ΔH≠, ΔS≠ and ΔG≠ values were similar for all conditions, varying between 53.6 to 64 kJ mol-1, 102.3 to 105.5 kJ mol-1 and -114 to 144 J mol-1 K-1, respectively.
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Tong Xu Anhui Province Key Lab of Big Data Analysis and Application, University of Science and Technology of China tongxu@ustc.edu. cn Enhong Chen Anhui Province Key Lab of Big Data Analysis and Application, University of Science and Technology of China cheneh@ustc.edu. cn Chuan Qin Anhui Province Key Lab of Big Data Analysis and Application, University of Science and Technology of China chuanqin0426@gmail.com
NEGES 2018 : Workshop on Negation in Spanish NEGES 2018 : Taller de Negación en Español Salud

This paper presents the 2018 edition of NEGES, Workshop on Negation in Spanish, that took place on September 18 as part of the 34th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing. In this edition, three tasks were proposed: Task 1: “Annotation guidelines”, Task 2: “Negation cues detection”, and Task 3: “Sentiment analysis”. The dataset used for Task 2 and Task 3 was the SFU ReviewSP-NEG corpus. About 10 teams showed interest in the tasks and 4 teams finally submitted results.
Mapping institutions and actors in global climate governance : A network approach

In our efforts to address climate change globally the traditional multilateral negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have been complemented by a range of new international and transnational governance initiatives involving state and non-state actors such as cities, regions, advocacy groups, companies and philanthropists. These developments have led to an increasingly dense institutional structure in global climate governance, resulting in functional overlaps and fragmentation. This paper suggests a novel network-based approach to map and measure the structural properties of global climate governance. It moves beyond current mappings, that mainly rely on lists and typologies, by focusing on the relations between actors and institutions. Two networks are created, one based on membership data in different institutions and one based on hyperlinks on homepages. The networks provide different pictures of the governance architecture which corroborate as well as questions current thinking about global climate governance. Finally, the paper engages in a forward-looking discussion on how to measure the degree of fragmentation in climate governance by using network metrics such as degree and centralization. Paper prepared for the ECPR General Conference, 3 – 6 September, Glasgow, Scotland DRAFT PAPER, PLEASE DON’T CITE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION!
Awareness of Teacher Educators towards Assessment of an Institution Dr . Sr

The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and National Assessment and Accreditation Council laid stress on quality of teacher education at every level. The efforts of NCTE and NAAC to ensure and assure the quality of Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs) in the country signaled in uplifting the authenticity of teacher education. The NAAC developed the methodology for assessment and accreditation of TEIs and the “manual for Self-appraisal of Teacher Education Institutions”. The evaluation procedure is not an external factor but it assesses the effectiveness and credibility of the institution in achieving its own educational objectives. The motivation behind the process of assessment is its excellence in all aspects. The process of assessment and accreditation helps the institution to analyze its strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats (SWOT) and making their programmes more relevant and useful to the students and its employers. NAAC has identified seven criteria as the basis for its assessment and accreditation encompasses all the process of an institution. The NAAC assessment process lays focus on the institutional developments with reference to three aspects like quality initiatives, quality sustenance and quality enhancement. The present study aims at assessing the awareness of prospective teacher educators (27 M.Ed scholars and 13 M. Phil scholars) towards evaluation of an institution. Survey method with random sampling technique was adopted in this study. Results revealed that female teacher educators have more awareness towards the evaluation of institutions than the male teacher educators.