Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exergaming enhances children's efficiency to resolve visuospatial interference

INTERFERENCE by JOHN R. BEST (Under the Direction of Patricia H. Miller) ABSTRACT The current study examined as important aspect of experience—physical activity—that may contribute to children’s executive function. The design attempted to tease apart two important aspects of children’s exercise by examining the separate and combined effects of acute physical activity and cognitive engagement on an aspect of children’s executive functioning. In a 2 X 2 within-subjects experimental design, children (N = 33, aged 6-10) completed activities that varied systematically in both physical activity (physically active video games versus sedentary video activities) and cognitive engagement (challenging and interactive video games versus repetitive video activities). Cognitive functioning, including executive function, was assessed after each activity by a modified flanker task. Whereas cognitive engagement had no effect on any aspect of task performance, physical activity (i.e., exergaming) enhanced children’s speed to resolve interference from conflicting visuospatial stimuli. The results extend past research by showing more precisely how physical activity influences executive function while demonstrating that interactive video gaming can be an effective experimental tool.
Formulation and Characterization of Hydroquinone Nanostructured Lipid Carriers by Homogenization Emulsification Method

Nanostructured lipid carrier (NLC) was prepared by homogenization emulsification method and improved with modified surfactants. The properties of nanoparticles were investigated using the NLC system for hydroquinone (HQ) as a model drug and by increasing the light stability of hydroquinone. The optimized condition of NLC in stirring was 1200 rpm, the homogenized speed was 8000 rpm, solid oil to liquid oil ratio was 3 : 7, and lecithin to surfactant ratio was 3 : 1. The particle size was nm and the encapsulation efficiency was %. The zeta-potential of HQ-NLC was better than −30 mV. In the thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) studies, adding of PLANTACARE 2000 UP for HQ-NLC has better heat resisting property than the HQ-NLC only. The addition of PLANTACARE 2000 UP to NLC shows better permeability (125.10%) than that of Blank. In the stability studies, the HQ-NLC after UVA/UVB irradiation has better inhibition rate (34.25%) than that of the Blank. In the present study, NLC system has successfully improved the light stability and the skin permeability of active compound. Therefore, the NLC might be a potential delivery vehicle for transdermal products in the future.
Evaluation of Pseudomonas and Bacillus Bacterial Antagonists for Biological Control of Cotton Verticillium Wilt Disease

Verticillium wilt is considered the most important disease of cotton in the world, including Iran. Cultural practices and the use of resistant varieties are the most common strategies used to control Verticillium wilt of cotton. These strategies are not always available or effective. In recent years, biological control using fungal and bacterial antagonists, has been applied to control some cotton diseases including damping-off. In this study, we investigated the possibility of biological control of Verticillium wilt of cotton using bacterial antagonists. Suspension of eight bacterial strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillus spp. isolated from different rhizospheric soils and plant roots in the Iranian cotton fields, were prepared with a concentration of 108 cfu/ml. Ten cotton seeds (cv Varamin) were then coated with each bacterial suspension and were planted in soil pre-inoculated with Verticillium dahliae microsclerotia. The efficacy of bacterial antagonists in reducing wilt disease was evaluated by determination of the disease index in different treatments. The results indicated that most isolates were effective in reducing disease (compared to the untreated control) 90 days after sowing. Isolates B5, B6, B2, B7, and B3 were the most effective, respectively, in reducing wilt index. In contrast, isolates B1, B4, and B8 did not significantly reduce the disease. In general, P. fluorescens isolates were more effective than Bacillus isolates. This study suggests that bacterial antagonists might be potential biological control agents of cotton.
Low Tire Pressure Warning System Using Sensor Fusion

Sensor fusion is a signal processing discipline wherein one tries to merge – or fuse – sensor data information coming from different physical sensors. In this paper we illustrate how sensor fusion can be used to design a low tire pressure warning system using existing sensors on a modern vehicle. Results from real-world tests on a car are given as illustration of the method’s feasibility.
Efficacia clinica di un preparato orale quando associato ad una terapia locale con metronidazolo (1%) nel trattamento dell’acne rosacea

Oggetto di questo studio e stata la valutazione clinica di un formulato orale multicomponente, caratterizzato dalla presenza di antocianosidi, oligomeri procianidolici e triterpeni, associato alla terapia locale con metronidazolo (gel all’ 1%) nel trattamento dell’acne rosacea. I risultati ottenuti su 35 soggetti mostrano come tale preparato si dimostri caratterizzato da un’evidente azione anti-infiammatoria e come il suo impiego riduca, in alcuni casi annullandola, la presenza di papule e di pustole. La sua associazione con il metronidazolo consente risultati apprezzabili gia dopo 1 mese di trattamento con scomparsa, nella meta circa dei soggetti, della sintomatologia dopo 2 mesi e, nella quasi totalita, dopo 4 mesi. La sua efficacia e probabilmente legata alle sinergie derivanti dalle azioni farmacologiche dei singoli principi attivi.
Dynamics of Urban Fire Correlations with Detrended Fluctuation Analysis

To explore and understand the intrinsic dynamic mechanisms of urban fire system is an important prerequisite for the fire risk analysis and management. By analyzing the time series of urban fire system, it is helpful to achieve this goal. In this paper, the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is applied to study the long-range correlations of urban fires in both small and large spatial scales with a case of Chinese city. It is found that the time series of direct economic loss caused by urban fires presents stable anti-power law correlations, while the time interval series of urban fire occurrence presents persistent long-range power-law correlations with two scaling exponents. Based on the characteristics of these scaling exponents, the intrinsic dynamics of urban fires is discussed. It is found that the effect of human activities on the dynamics of urban fire system may become prevalent at small timescales, while at large timescales the effect of human activities is not obvious in influencing the long-range correlation patterns of urban fire system, which may be controlled mainly by some general characteristics of a city such as the meteo-climatic conditions.
Lean Principles to Inject Operations Knowledge into Design

Buildings represent a significant financial investment to owners, which is often carried for many years. Just as Toyota realised that the car assembly line accounted for only 15% of the total manufacturing process, the design and construction of a building amounts to only 20% of the total cost of a facility over its life-cycle. Importantly, research has shown that when just one percent of a project's upfront costs are spent, up to 70% of its life-cycle costs may already be committed. More research is needed to bridge the information divide between the development and operation of a facility. Progressive tools and strategies such as Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM), Design for Maintainability (DFM), and Concurrent Engineering have been developed to assist the design team in their focus on operations and maintenance (O and M) issues. Yet obstructions to the use of O and M knowledge in design still remain. It is argued that this is because the information flow of O and M knowledge into project design is poorly understood. This paper develops a model for exchanging information between design teams and O and M using the principles and tools of lean production to be implemented as a case study. To achieve an O and M compatible design, O and M information ideally ought to be received by the design team in a just-in-time fashion. This paper first explores the obstructions to O and M knowledge transfer, and then proposes a kanban system to facilitate the exchange of information. The paper discusses the triggers and media for the pull of O&M information into building design, as well as the types of projects that would be most receptive to this strategy.
Effects of phytoplankton bloom in a coastal ecosystem on the composition of bacterial communities

We studied the composition of free-living and particle-associated bacterial communities during the course of the phytoplankton succession in spring and early summer in the Wadden Sea, a tidal flat ecosystem in the southern North Sea. We applied the denaturing gradient gel electrophore- sis (DGGE) approach based on PCR-amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments and, in addition to Bacteria- specific primers, used primer sets targeting Alphaproteobacteria, the Roseobacter-clade and the Bac- teroidetes phylum. Even though the application of the primer sets targeting Bacteria and Alphaproteobacteria detected some changes, they were most pronounced with those targeting the Roseobacter-clade and Bacteroidetes. The changes were supported by a correspondence analysis, which showed a statistically significant correlation of the DGGE banding patterns of the Roseobac- ter-specific PCR with the composition of the phytoplankton (p = 0.03). This indicates that changes in the phytoplankton composition in this habitat are not reflected by changes in the most abundant or most readily amplifiable phylotypes. The findings rather suggest that few, specialized, heterotrophic bacteria are most responsive to the organic matter supplied by distinct phytoplankton communities and that the main part of organic matter in the Wadden Sea is utilized by generalists. Sequence analyses of excised bands revealed a high diversity for the Bacteria- and Bacteroidetes-targeted approaches. The bacterial community detected by the primer set targeting Alphaproteobacteria, however, was mainly composed of bacteria affiliated to the Roseobacter-clade.
Multicomponent new particle formation from sulfuric acid, ammonia, and biogenic vapors

Atmospheric aerosol formation from biogenic vapors is strongly affected by air pollutants, like NOx, SO2, and NH3. A major fraction of atmospheric aerosol particles, which affect both air quality and climate, form from gaseous precursors in the atmosphere. Highly oxygenated organic molecules (HOMs), formed by oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds, are known to participate in particle formation and growth. However, it is not well understood how they interact with atmospheric pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx) from fossil fuel combustion, as well as ammonia (NH3) from livestock and fertilizers. Here, we show how NOx suppresses particle formation, while HOMs, sulfuric acid, and NH3 have a synergistic enhancing effect on particle formation. We postulate a novel mechanism, involving HOMs, sulfuric acid, and ammonia, which is able to closely reproduce observations of particle formation and growth in daytime boreal forest and similar environments. The findings elucidate the complex interactions between biogenic and anthropogenic vapors in the atmospheric aerosol system.
Integrating indigenous knowledge systems into climate change interpretation: perspectives relevant to Zimbabwe

The theoretical paper argues for the Integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) with modern climate change science as a basis for sustainable comprehensive community based response to the impacts of climate change. Climate change is a long-term change in weather patterns resulting from natural and human activity. Human beings have a rich history of oral interpretation of climate change and variability through observing changes in behaviour of living organisms within their localities. Such knowledge could be used in determining timing of important agricultural activities, predicting disasters and in the interpretation of climate change. Climate change erodes global environmental sustainability and the repository of IKS. This paper recognizes the power of IKS and proposes a strategy to incorporate it into climate interpretation. Whilst the indicators of climate change like changes in precipitation, temperature, runoff, biodiversity and ecosystems, water resources, oceanic circulations and others are generally understood in modern climate change science literature there is limited research and integration with IKS. In the short to medium term comprehensive documentation of IKS is required as a basis for a national framework policy on climate change and its impacts.
Investigating the effects of issuance of bank debt guarantee on profitability of banking industry

Article history: Received June 28, 2013 Received in revised format 19 October 2013 Accepted 20 December 2013 Available online December 29 2013 This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the relationship between bank debt guarantee and profitability, increase in banks resources and customer retention. The proposed study has been implemented in one of Iranian banks located in city of Zanjan, Iran over the period of 10 years. The study has used Pearson correlation test to examine three hypotheses of the survey. The results indicate that there were positive and meaningful relationship between bank debt guarantee and profitability (r = 0.863, P-value = 0.001), a positive relationship between bank debt guarantee and bank resources (r = 0.708 with P-value = 0.015) and there was a positive and meaningful relationship between bank debt guarantee and customer retention (r = 0.252 with P-value = 0.001).
ONLINE MARKET COMMUNICATIONAL PATTERNS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: A MALAYSIAN PERSPECTIVE

The aim of present study is to provide ideas across a variety of online buyer practices and choices that will assist communicators to be more set in market patterns of developing countries. The study signifies not just for the web-vendors in promoting online market, but also for those individuals who are hesitant to buy products online. On a sample size of 50 Malaysian e-shoppers, an open ended questionnaire was used as a primary data collection method to analyze buyer practicing ideas gathered around several variables reviewed through past studies i.e. web promotion, consumer’s decision making methodologies, extensive online clientage, and online shopping related knowledge. The outcomes evidenced powerful influence of some of these variables on online buyer’s practices.
Minimum Risk Portfolios Using MMAR

In traditional portfolio optimization the aim is to construct a portfolio of assets which simultaneously optimize a blend of high return and small risk. Within the classical Markowitz model, the efficient frontier identifies the set of portfolios that a rational investor considers according to his degree of risk aversion. The basic assumption of the standard theory is that asset returns are multivariate normal, what is shown to be inconsistent with empirical evidence by a growing number of studies, which devote a particular emphasis on the role played by the variance as a measure of risk. In order to improve the portfolio selection, we suggest to model the asset price dynamics by a multifractal stochastic process. The empirical analysis concerned a selection of major assets of the U.S. market and the European market. In both cases the proposed methodology shows considerable improvements of performance on the holding periods of one, two, three, six and twelve months.
Setting the Record Straight: Assessing the Reliability of Retrospective Accounts of Change

Ecological degradation is accelerating, reducing our ability to detect and reverse declines. Resource user accounts have the potential to provide critical information on past change but their reliability can rarely be tested, hence they are often perceived as less valid than other forms of scientific data. We compared individual fishers’ catch records, recorded 1‐50 years ago, with their memories of past good, typical and poor catches for the corresponding time period. Good and poor catches were recalled with reasonable accuracy, matching variability in recorded catch with no significant change observed over time. Typical recalled catches were overestimated and became significantly more exaggerated over time, but were more comparable to mean than median recorded values. While accuracy of resource users’ memory varied with the type of information recalled, our results suggest that carefully structured interview questions can produce reliable quantitative data to inform resource management, even after several decades have elapsed.
Capital Accumulation and Dynamic Gains from Trade

We compute welfare gains from trade in a dynamic, multicountry model with capital accumulation. We examine transition paths for 93 countries following a permanent, uniform, unanticipated trade liberalization. Both the relative price of investment and the investment rate respond to changes in trade frictions. Relative to a static model, the dynamic welfare gains in a model with balanced trade are three times as large. The gains including transition are 60 percent of those computed by comparing only steady states. Trade imbalances have negligible effects on the cross-country distribution of dynamic gains. However, relative to the balanced-trade model, small, less-developed countries accrue the gains faster in a model with trade imbalances by running trade deficits in the short run but have lower consumption in the long-run. In both models, most of the dynamic gains are driven by capital accumulation.
Quantitative Model for Supply Chain Visibility: Process Capability Perspective

Currently, the intensity of enterprise competition has increased as a result of a greater diversity of customer needs as well as the persistence of a long-term recession. The results of competition are becoming severe enough to determine the survival of company. To survive global competition, each firm must focus on achieving innovation excellence and operational excellence as core competency for sustainable competitive advantage. Supply chain management is now regarded as one of the most effective innovation initiatives to achieve operational excellence, and its importance has become ever more apparent. However, few companies effectively manage their supply chains, and the greatest difficulty is in achieving supply chain visibility. Many companies still suffer from a lack of visibility, and in spite of extensive research and the availability of modern technologies, the concepts and quantification methods to increase supply chain visibility are still ambiguous. Based on the extant researches in supply chain visibility, this study proposes an extended visibility concept focusing on a process capability perspective and suggests a more quantitative model using score in Six Sigma methodology to evaluate and improve the level of supply chain visibility.
The N-Terminal Acidic Residue-Rich Domain and Lysine-Rich Domains I and II of P67 are Required for Stable Expression of Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK)

Differentiation of skeletal muscle cells into multinucleated myotubes needs several cellular events including shutting off the growth promoting signals mediated by several growth factors. Integrin-mediated growth signal is transduced to the downstream effectors through the higher levels of expression and activity of focal adhesion kinase (FAK), which seems to have strong proliferative signal almost in all tissues that leads to tumorigenesis. During myogenesis, the level of eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2)-associated glycoprotein p67 gradually increases and its level peaks at the time of fusion of C2C12 myoblasts into myotubes. This increased level binds to extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK1/2) to inhibit their activation and activity when C2C12 myoblasts are differentiating into myotubes. To investigate whether p67 is involved in the inactivation of FAK during the differentiation of C2C12 myoblasts, we examined the level of FAK. We found that degradation of FAK peaked at the time of fusion of C2C12 myoblasts into myotubes and at the same time the level of p67 is also high. In addition, p67’s N-terminal lysine-rich domains I & II and acidic residue-rich domain are involved in this degradation of FAK possibly by increasing the cellular concentration of p52 segment of p67 that has intermolecular proteolysis activity. We also found that the level of the Akt1/2 kinase, one of the several downstream effectors of FAK, gradually increased during the differentiation of C2C12 myoblasts, possibly to prevent differentiated C2C12 myoblasts from apoptosis and this process may be independent of FAK. Abbreviations Used: p67, a 67 kDa glycoprotein that binds to both eukaryotic initiation factor 2 (eIF2) and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 & 2 (ERK1/2); D251A and D262A, two p67 point mutants, which have alanine substitutions for aspartic acid residues at 251 and 262 positions; D6/2, a p67 block mutant, where a stretch of N-terminal acidic amino acid residues has been replaced with uncharged amino acids; K1K2, a p67 block mutant, where both of its N-terminal lysine/arginine-rich stretches of amino acid residues have been replaced with uncharged amino acids; FAK, Focal adhesive kinase; Akt1/2, the serine/threonine protein kinase or protein kinase B (PKB); and Vector, vector expressing enhanced green fluorescence protein (EGFP).
A New Controversial Pathophysiology Confirms that HIV does not Killthe CD4+ T-Cell But Mutates Its Physiological Behavior Becoming anUnaccountable CD8+ T-Cell

HIV pathogenesis is known to cause a progressive depilation of CD4+ T-cell cell population in close association with progressive impairment of cellular immunity and increase the susceptibility to infection. This new study is giving a new explanation about the mode of action of this virus. We assume that there is an alteration in the physiological behavior of CD4+ T-cells causing it to mutate to CD8+ T-cells and that CD4+ T-cell are neither destroyed nor lost during the infection. Twelve consenting adults took part in a randomized control trail, six were tested positive for HIV and had never received any antiretroviral therapy while the other six were tested negative. Blood samples withdrawn from participants were tested for total CD4+ T-cells and CD8+ T-cells . Infected cells from HIV positive patients were stimulated with a purified recombinant HIV-1 p17 matrix as a viral protein along with other immunological assays. The collected data showed that the sum of both CD4+ T-cells and CD8+ T-cells did not change in HIV positive patients, although there were a decrease in CD4+ T-cells and an increase in CD8+ T-cell count. Our study confirms that CD8+ T-cells is responsible for the increase in scope of HIV and the susceptibility to (OI), we assumed that this resulted from the duplication in cell signals of both newly formed (mutant) and originally found CD8+ T-cells causing a complete cellular discrepancy. According to our findings a new area of medications could arise to be a promising therapeutical modality for treating HIV-1 infection.
Development of a virtual reality system to study tendency of falling among older people

Injuries related to falls are a major threat to older persons health. A fall may not only result in an injury, but also in a decreased sense of autonomy in the persons daily life. In order to be able to prevent such falls there is a need to further understand the complex mechanisms involved in balance and walking. Here we present an immersive virtual reality system in which a person can move around, while being subjected to various events, which may influence balance and walking.