Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anti-Aspergillus Activities of the Ligusticum chuanxiong Essential Oil Alone and in Combination with Antibiotics

The present study aimed to assess the antifungal properties of the essential oil fraction from Ligusticum chuanxiong (Umbelliferae) and its components against five clinically important Aspergillus species. The essential oil fraction was extracted from the underground parts of the plant by steam distillation, and its main components, namely, Z-ligustilide, butylidene phthalide, and p-cresol were isolated by column chromatography. The antifungal activities of the essential oils were evaluated by the broth dilution method. Both the total essential oil fraction of L. chuanxiong and its components showed significant anti-Aspergillus activity against all five tested strains with MICs between 62.5 and 250 /ml, respectively. In a checkerboard microtiter assay, the combination of antibiotics, itraconazole with the essential oil fraction of L. chuanxiong or its main components exhibited synergistic or additive, and in some cases indifferent, effects against the tested Aspergillus species, resulting in FICIs (fractional inhibiting concentration indices) ranging from 0.12 to 2, while the combination of antibiotics, amphothericin B with L. chuanxiong essential oils mostly showed antagonistic effects.
tability and binding affinity of DNA / chitosan complexes by olyanion competition ei

The stability of DNA/chitosan complexes upon exposure to hyaluronic acid, chondroitin sulfate, and heparin, was assessed by fluorescence spectroscopy to quantify DNA release. Only the highly charged heparin was found to release DNA from the complexes. Complex stability upon exposure to heparin increased with the degree of deacetylation and molecular weight of chitosan and with the ratio of chitosan amino groups to DNA phosphate groups (N/P ratio) in the complexes. Isothermal titration microcalorimetry revealed that among polyanions tested, only heparin has a binding affinity to chitosan approaching that of DNA and can therefore release DNA from the complexes. These results also indicate that anionic com-
The Impact of Electronic Commerce Environment on User Behavior: The Case of a Complex Product

There is no doubt that growth of electronic commerce (EC) on the Internet/Web is only going to accelerate even more. However, as the EC technology matures and attracts a larger number of mainstream consumers, the virtuality of the EC environment will become an important issue. Many consumers feel uncomfortable with this virtuality. A compelling issue facing the designer/developer of an EC environment is how the EC environments can be made more acceptable to consumers by approximating their real-world physical store purchase experience. Drawing upon previous literature, this study uses the theme of "fit" between EC environment and the product type. Four different prototype systems depicting different EC environments for a complex product were developed. Using laboratory-based experiments, the influence of "fit" between EC environment and product type on user outcomes was examined. Significant support to the "fit" theory in the context of a complex product is obtained.
Propulsion Airframe Aeroacoustic Integration Effects for a Hybrid Wing Body Aircraft Configuration

An extensive experimental investigation was performed to study the propulsion airframe aeroacoustic effects of a high bypass ratio engine for a hybrid wing body aircraft configuration where the engine is installed above the wing. The objective was to provide an understanding of the jet noise shielding effectiveness as a function of engine gas condition and location as well as nozzle configuration. A 4.7% scale nozzle of a bypass ratio seven engine was run at characteristic cycle points under static and forward flight conditions. The effect of the pylon and its orientation on jet noise was also studied as a function of bypass ratio and cycle condition. The addition of a pylon yielded significant spectral changes lowering jet noise by up to 4 dB at high polar angles and increasing it by 2 to 3 dB at forward angles. In order to assess jet noise shielding, a planform representation of the airframe model, also at 4.7% scale was traversed such that the jet nozzle was positioned from downstream of to several diameters upstream of the airframe model trailing edge. Installations at two fan diameters upstream of the wing trailing edge provided only limited shielding in the forward arc at high frequencies for both the axisymmetric and a conventional round nozzle with pylon. This was consistent with phased array measurements suggesting that the high frequency sources are predominantly located near the nozzle exit and, consequently, are amenable to shielding. The mid to low frequency sources were observed further downstream and shielding was insignificant. Chevrons were designed and used to impact the distribution of sources with the more aggressive design showing a significant upstream migration of the sources in the mid frequency range. Furthermore, the chevrons reduced the low frequency source levels and the typical high frequency increase due to the application of chevron nozzles was successfully shielded. The pylon was further modified with a technology that injects air through the shelf of the pylon which was effective in reducing low frequency noise and moving jet noise sources closer to the nozzle exit. In general, shielding effectiveness varied as a function of cycle condition with the cutback condition producing higher shielding compared to sideline power. The configuration with a more strongly immersed chevron and a pylon oriented opposite to the microphones produced the largest reduction in jet noise. In addition to the jet noise source, the shielding of a broadband point noise source was documented with up to 20 dB of noise reduction at directivity angles directly under the shielding surface.
On the Security of Permutation-Only Image Encryption Schemes and Steganography

: An encryption process which is a commonly used primitive in multimedia for both images and videos is permutation scheme, and many permutation-only algorithms have been proposed in recent years for the protection of multimedia data. The image matrix entries in permutation-only image ciphers are scrambled using a pseudo-random number generated permutation mapping matrix. The literature survey done on the cryptanalysis of the image ciphers in the previous works indicates that the permutation-only image ciphers are prone to cipher text-only attacks and/or known/chosen-plaintext attacks. Steganography is a type of hidden communication in which a file, message, image, or video is concealed within another file, message, image, or video. The previous works on cryptanalysis of permutation-only image encryption schemes were studied in this paper and the cryptanalysis performed on chosen-plaintext attacks were made more efficient and along with this a steganographic process is done to hide text data as well. It was proved that in all permutation-only image ciphers, nevertheless of the cipher structure, the exact permutation mapping is recovered completely by a chosen-plaintext attack. A chosen-plaintext attack is introduced in this paper that determines the exact plaintext elements perfectly using a deterministic method. When the plain-images are of size M × N and with L different color potency, the number n of chosen plain-images required for breaking the permutation-only image encryption algorithm is n = [ 𝒍𝒐𝒈 𝑳 (M N)]. The complexity of the proposed attack is small as permutation is used and hence the consumption time is also small. To endorse the performance of the proposed chosen-plaintext attack, an experiment was performed on a recently proposed permutation-only image/video ciphers. Both the theoretical and the experimental results exhibited that the proposed attack surpasses the state-of-the art cryptanalytic methods. The steganographic step provides an additional security to the overall system.
How Much are Consumers Paying for Organic Baby Food

Using retail purchase data, price premiums and discounts associated with household demographics, market factors, and product attributes (focusing on the organic attribute for strained baby food) are estimated using a hedonic pricing model. Results suggest that the organic premium ranges from about 12 to 49 percent in 2004 and from 30 to 52 percent in 2006. Tests for significant changes relative to product attributes show that while the price of conventional baby food has stayed relatively the same, the premium for organic baby food has increased.
A Novel Power Amplifier Linearization Method for Handset Applications

A new circuit concept to improve the maximum linear output power of a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) power amplifier (PA) is introduced in this paper. The proposed circuit consists of an analog pre distorter (APD) integrated at the input of a class B amplifier. The proposed APD extends the maximum linear output power of the PA to 28dBm with corresponding power added efficiency (PAE) of 52.3%. Simulation result shows that at 1.95GHz, PA has a worst case adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) of 36dBc at output power of 28dBm. With a respective input and output return losses of 27.6dB and 13.2dB, the PA’s power gain is simulated to be 33.3dB while exhibiting an unconditional stability characteristic from DC to 3GHz. The monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier (PA) is designed in 2 m InGaP/GaAs process. The proposed APD technique serves to be a good solution to improve the maximum linear output power of the UMTS PA without sacrificing other critical performance metrics.
Agreeableness is related to social‐cognitive, but not social‐perceptual, theory of mind

We hypothesise on a number of grounds that the personality dimension of Agreeableness may be associated with inter‐individual differences in theory of mind (ToM) functioning. However, it is important to distinguish social‐perceptual from social‐cognitive ToM. Previous findings on ToM in psychopathic individuals, sex differences in ToM and the associations between ToM and social relationships, all suggest that social‐cognitive ToM is more likely than social‐perceptual ToM to relate to Agreeableness. In separate empirical studies, we find that Agreeableness is substantially correlated with social‐cognitive ToM performance, but uncorrelated with social‐perceptual ToM performance. We suggest that the propensity or motivation to attend to the mental states of others may be central to the personality dimension of Agreeableness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Reinventing Video Streaming for Distributed Vision Analytics

Driven by the ubiquity of camera-equipped devices and the prohibitive cost of modern vision techniques, we see a growing need for a custom video streaming protocol that streams videos from cameras to cloud servers to perform neural-network-based video analytics. In the past decade, numerous efforts have optimized video streaming protocols to provide better quality-of-experience to users. In this paper, we call upon this community to similarly develop custom streaming protocols for better analytics quality (accuracy) of vision analytics (deep neural networks). We highlight new opportunities to substantially improve the tradeoffs between bandwidth usage and inference accuracy. The key insight is that existing streaming protocols are essentially client (camera)driven; in contrast, by letting the analytics server decide what/when to stream from the camera, the new protocols can directly optimize the inference accuracy while minimizing bandwidth usage. Preliminary evaluation shows that a simple protocol can reduce bandwidth consumption by 4-23x compared to traditional streaming protocols and other distributed video analytics pipelines while maintaining at least 95% inference accuracy.
Analyzing Biases in Perception of Truth in News Stories and Their Implications for Fact Checking

Misinformation on social media has become a critical problem, particularly during a public health pandemic. Most social platforms today rely on users’ voluntary reports to determine which news stories to fact-check first. Despite the importance, no prior work has explored the potential biases in such a reporting process. This work proposes a novel methodology to assess how users perceive truth or misinformation in online news stories. By conducting a large-scale survey ( $N =15$ 000), we identify the possible biases in news perceptions and explore how partisan leanings influence the news selection algorithm for fact checking. Our survey reveals several perception biases or inaccuracies in estimating the truth level of stories. The first kind, called the total perception bias (TPB), is the aggregate difference in the ground truth and perceived truth level. The next two are the false-positive bias (FPB) and false-negative bias (FNB), which measures users’ gullibility and cynicality of a given claim. We also propose ideological mean perception bias (IMPB), which quantifies a news story’s ideological disputability. Collectively, these biases indicate that user perceptions are not correlated with the ground truth of new stories; users believe some stories to be more false and vice versa. This calls for the need to fact-check news stories that exhibit the most considerable perception biases first, which the current voluntary reporting does not offer. Based on these observations, we propose a new framework that can best leverage users’ truth perceptions to remove false stories, correct misperceptions of users, or decrease ideological disagreements. We discuss how this new prioritizing scheme can aid platforms to significantly reduce the impact of fake news on user beliefs.
Seismic response of foundation-mat structure subjected to local uplift

The effects of large rotations and p-delta on the dynamic response of a structure subjected to seismic loading and local uplift of its foundation were analyzed in this work. The structure was modeled by an equivalent flexible mat mounted on a rigid foundation that is supported either by a Winkler soil type or a rigid soil. The equations of motion of the system were derived by taking into account the equilibrium of the coupled foundation-mat system where the structure was idealized as a single-degree-of-freedom. The obtained nonlinear coupled system of ordinary differential equations was integrated by using an adequate numerical scheme. A parametric study was performed then in order to evaluate the maximum response of the system as function of the intensity of the earthquake, the slenderness of the structure, the ratio of the mass of the foundation to the mass of the structure. Three cases were considered: (i) local uplift of foundation under large rotation with the p-delta effect, (ii) local uplift of foundation under large rotation without including the p-delta effect, (iii) local uplift of foundation under small rotation. It was found that, in the considered ranges of parameters and for moderate earthquakes, assuming small rotation of foundation under seismic loading can yield more adverse structural response, while the p-delta effect has almost no effect.
DELİK BORU TÜRKİYE'DEKİ AKADEMİSYEN KADINLAR ÜZERİNE BİR ANALİZ

Leaky Pipeline is a conceptualization, referring to the status of women academicians who are out of the system just like the water leakage from a pierced pipe in certain stages of academic life at universities. The figures point out the problem concerning which the women could not make progress and also become permanent in academy rather than entering into the academy. This study was established on the empiric and theoretical examination of the reasons and situations slowing down women in the system. In accordance with this purpose, semi-structured interviews were carried out with the academician women who are working at universities and were asked the pars pro toto impressions of the women academicians. The phenomenology and interview (face-to-face meeting) are the prominent approaches in the study. The followings are the reasons slowing the women academicians down in the system; not updating herself at the postdoctoral stage, creating a weak academic capital from an academic mobility designed according to the family life, caring the traditional roles more than the public roles and incorporating the public roles into the traditional roles, having a problem abiding the academy, perceiving the academicianship as a business not as a profession, desire of women to live conformisly, attitudes, giving priority to their husbands, exhibited by the women within the same occupational group. Any strong tendency, related that the marriage or having a child create this hesitancy, was not obtained in this study. The other results obtained from the fieldwork are non-formation of a thought concerning the administratorship in women, unwillingness of a woman to reveal herself, fear of separation, and negative approach to the woman administrator. The existence of all these reasons slows down the existence of women in the system.
Implementation of a PID Controller for a Robotic Leg Actuated by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

This paper presents the implementation of a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller on a bio-inspired robotic leg driven by pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs). The controllability of PAMs in robotic application was studied. Many PAM-driven robots employed their actuators in an "all and none" principle; however, these robots only worked in very particular conditions. In order to implement sophisticated control strategy, PAMs have to accomplish a comprehensive variety of commands. A method without using costly components such as strain gauges and proportional valves promotes the feasibility of domestic robotic application. To realize this simple but effective PID controller, a continuous behavior, the solenoid valve was adopted. Pulse-width-modulation algorithm was then employed. Models were set up to give an insight into the controller's design. The experimental set-ups and the performance of the system are presented in detail.
Time Not Our Time: Physical Controls on the Preservation and Measurement of Geologic Time

Sadler's (1981) analysis of how measured sedimentation rate decreases with timescale of measurement quantified the vanishingly small fractional time preservation—completeness—of the stratigraphic record. Generalized numerical models have shown that the Sadler effect can be recovered, through the action of erosional clipping and time removal (the “stratigraphic filter”), from even fairly simple topographic sequences. However, several lines of evidence suggest that most of the missing time has not been eroded out but rather represents periods of inactivity or stasis. Low temporal completeness could also imply that the stratigraphic record is dominated by rare, extreme events, but paleotransport estimates suggest that this is not generally the case: The stratigraphic record is strangely ordinary. It appears that the organization of the topography into a hierarchy of forms also organizes the deposition into concentrated events that tend to preserve relatively ordinary conditions, albeit for very short intervals. Our understanding of time preservation would benefit from insight about how inactivity is recorded in strata; better ways to constrain localized, short-term rates of deposition; and a new focus on integrated time–space dynamics of deposition and preservation.
HSM01) The effects of various growth factors on the proliferation of human nasal septum chondrocytes and reconstruction of human cartilage via tissue engineering technology

Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz, 50300 Kuala Lumpur. Tissue Engineering Laboratory, Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bandar Tun Razak, 56000 Kula Lumpur. Ear, Nose & Throat Consultant Clinic, Ampang Puteri Specialist Hospital Jalan Mamanda 9, Taman Dato Ahmad Razali, Ampang Jaya, 68000 Ampang, Selangor. E-mail: kienhui@pd.jaring. my
Steady and unsteady fluidised granular flows down slopes

Fluidisation is the process by which the weight of a bed of particles is supported by a gas flow passing through it from below. When fluidised materials flow down an incline, the dynamics of the motion differs from their non-fluidised counterparts because the granular agitation is no longer required to support the weight of the flowing layer. Instead, the weight is borne by the imposed gas flow and this leads to a greatly increased flow mobility. In this paper, a framework is developed to model this two-phase motion by incorporating a kinetic theory description for the particulate stresses generated by the flow. In addition to calculating numerical solutions for fully developed flows, it is shown that for sufficiently thick flows there is often a local balance between the production and dissipation of the granular temperature. This phenomenon permits an asymptotic reduction of the full governing equations and the identification of a simple state in which the volume fraction of the flow is uniform. The results of the model are compared with new experimental measurements of the internal velocity profiles of steady granular flows down slopes. The distance covered with time by unsteady granular flows down slopes and along horizontal surfaces and their shapes are also measured and compared with theoretical predictions developed for flows that are thin relative to their streamwise extent. For the horizontal flows, it was found that resistance from the sidewalls was required in addition to basal resistance to capture accurately the unsteady evolution of the front position and the depth of the current and for situations in which sidewall drag dominates, similarity solutions are found for the experimentally measured motion.
S ecure Data Transmission through Trusted Node in Mantes using AODV Routing Algorithm : SATEM

To ensure fair and secure communication in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), the applications running in these networks must be regulated by proper communication policies. However, enforcing policies in MANETs is challenging because they lack the infrastructure and trusted entities encountered in traditional distributed systems. This paper presents the design and implementation of a policy enforcing mechanism based on trusted execution monitor built on top of the Trusted Platform Module. Under this mechanism, each application or protocol has an associated policy. Two instances of an application running on different nodes may engage in communication only if these nodes enforce the same set of policies for both the application and the underlying protocols used by the application. In this way, nodes can form trusted application centric networks. Before allowing a node to join such a network, SATEM (Service-aware Trusted Execution Monitor) verifies its trustworthiness of enforcing the required set of policies. If any of them is compromised, SATEM disconnects the node from the network and SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) algorithm for secure transmission. We demonstrate the fastidiousness of our solution through security analysis, and its low overhead through performance evaluation of the applications.