Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of DNA Topoisomerases I and II and Cytotoxicity of Compounds from Polygonum aviculare L .

Six flavonoid glycosides ( 1 – 3 , 6 – 8 ), one lignan ( 4 ), and one galloyl glycoside ( 5 ) were isolated based on the phytochemical study for the MeOH extract of Polygonum aviculare L. herb. The eight isolated compounds' structures were determined by comparing their physicochemical and spectral data with published ones. Compounds 5 and 6 were first isolated from this plant, and all the compounds were evaluated for DNA topoisomerase inhibitory activities and cytotoxicities. Among the purified compounds, 5 showed stronger inhibitory activity against topoisomerase I with an IC 50 value of 12.0 μM, while the value of positive control camptothecin (CPT) was 17.0 μM. For compounds 1 , 3 , and 5 – 8 , the value ranged from 0.054 to 17.0 µM, suggesting more potent inhibitory activity against topoisomerase II, and that of etoposide (VP-16) was 28.0 µM. Particularly, compounds 6 and 8 (IC 50 = 0.054 and 0.077 µM, respectively) inhibited Topo II about 500 times stronger than VP-16, making them safer agents of DNA topoisomerase. Furthermore, all compounds demonstrated no cytotoxic activity against four cancer cell lines. This study is the first to report the inhibition of DNA topoisomerases of compounds from P. aviculare , suggesting that these compounds may be potential candidates for treating cancer.
Automatic microassembly by means of visually guided micromanipulation

These Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne EPFL, n° 1804 (1998)Institut de microtechniqueLaboratoire de production microtechnique 1 Reference doi:10.5075/epfl-thesis-1804Print copy in library catalog Record created on 2005-03-16, modified on 2016-08-08
Adaptively Adjusting the Stereophonic Sweet Spot to the Listener’s Position

A stereophonic playback system designed to adjust the sweet spot to the listener's position is presented. The system includes an optical face tracker, which provides information about the listener's x―y position. The loudspeaker signals are manipulated in real time in order to move the sweet spot. The stereophonic perception with an adjusted sweet spot is theoretically investigated on the basis of several models of binaural hearing. The results indicate that an adjustment of signals corresponding to the center of the listener's head does improve localization over the entire listening area. Nevertheless, some localization error remains because of asymmetric signal paths for off-center listening positions, which can be estimated and compensated for.
Aperture-coupled dielectric resonator antenna using a strip-line feed

An aperture-coupled dielectric resonator antenna using a strip-line feed is investigated experimentally. As compared to the previous microstrip-line version, the new configuration eliminates the problems of backside radiation through the slot and frequency dispersion. The measured return loss, radiation patterns, and antenna gain of the new configuration are given in this letter. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 24: 120–121, 2000.
Strategic management of offshore branch campuses in transnational higher education : global synergy versus local responsiveness

This research is at the intersection of strategic management, international business and internationalisation of higher education institutions (HEIs). It focuses on the managerial aspects of higher education institutions with offshore branch campuses. In the past couple of decades the number of offshore branch campuses established by HEIs - mainly universities - has increased dramatically, but most research carried out to date in this field has been anecdotal and the number of theoretical studies in this area is very limited. Thus, the aim of this research is to breach this gap by developing a theoretical framework that is capable of explaining the managerial aspects of foreign branch campus operations. The key research question in this study is how transnational higher education institutions (TNHEIs) strategically manage their offshore branch campuses. In order to address this question, the literature on TNHEIs with regard to managerial complexities is reviewed. By assimilating and reconceptualising this literature, a multidimensional framework is constructed, which encapsulates the most pertinent ramifications of managing an offshore branch campus. The framework has been constructed by drawing on a widely used paradigm in the international business discipline, known as the dichotomy of global integration versus local responsiveness (I-R dichotomy). It helps to portray the TNHEIs’ strategic positions and positional change strategies on three dimensions of curriculum, research activities and staffing.
Effect of Garlic and Mackerel Fish on Rats Suffering From Obesity

The present work was conducted to study the effect of two levels from mackerel fish, garlic and their combinations on loss of weight, serum glucose, leptin hormone, lipid fraction and kidney functions of obese rats. Forty-eight albino rats (Sprague Dawley Strain) were divided into two main groups. The first main group (6 rats) fed on basal diet was considered control negative group. The second main group (42 rats) fed on high fat diet (HFD) for 6 weeks to induce obesity. Obese rats were randomly assigned to seven equal subgroups: The first subgroup fed on HFD as positive control group, subgroups 2 and 3 fed on high fat containing 2.5% and 5% garlic powder, respectively. Subgroup 4 and 5 fed on high fat diet containing mackerel fish, which provided the diets with 50% and 100% protein, respectively. Subgroup 6 and 7fed on high fat diet containing 2.5% garlic powdered and half amount of protein from mackerel fish and 5% garlic powdered and all amount of protein from mackerel fish, respectively.Feeding rats on high fat diet led to significant increase in weights, body weight gain %, serum "glucose, leptin hormone, cholesterol, triglyceride, low density lipoproteincholesterol, very low density lipoprotein-cholesterol, uric acid, urea Omnia G. Refaat Ashraf A. Abd-elmeged and Omnia W.Darwish 174 nitrogen and creatinine, while high density lipoprotein cholesterol decreased, as compared to healthy rats fed on basal diet. Treating obese rats with all tested diet showed significant decrease in weight and body weight gain%, in addition to improve all parameters. The best results recorded for the group which treated with HFD containing 5% garlic powdered and 100 % of protein from mackerel fish. Our results indicated1 that garlic and mackerel fish enhances the health status of obese rats and reduced the weight gain.
Design and Test of Flapping Device Mimicking Insect Flight

This paper addresses detail design and demonstration of an insect-mimicking flappingwing mechanism composed of LIPCA (Lightweight Piezo-Composite Actuator) and linkage system that can amplify the actuation displacement of LIPCA. The angular amplification of the linkage system can provide various flapping angles by adjusting the actuation point of the LIPCA. The device can generate flapping frequency ranging from 5 to 50 Hz depending on weight of the wing and linkages. Flapping tests using different wing mass, area, and aspect ratio were performed to investigate the flapping performance. The test results were described and compared with the estimation. It was found that changes in wing mass, area, and aspect ratio result in significant variation of natural flapping-frequency.
The Relationship Between Economic Growth and Environmental Pollution: Testing The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in Egypt

The aim of This study is to verify the existence of the EKC hypothesis and to analyze and measure the nature of the relationship between CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic growth , trade openness and Foreign Direct Investment in Egypt over the period of 1977–2014, using cointegration and Granger causality approach. The result suggests that there exists a long-run relationship among the variables and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is supported.
THE OPTIMAL COMBINATION OF POSTPONEMENT OPERATIONS IN A SUPPLY CHAIN

ABSTRACT In modeling postponement, most researchers focus on the manufacturing postponement; whereas this study extends it to the postponement of supply chain operations, namely, manufacturing, packaging, and logistics. We use a notebook computer supply chain as an example to model the optimal combinations among these operations' postponement. The results of this study can serve as a management tool to help determine the optimal supply chain operations for taking various postponements into consideration.
Transform domain edge enhancement of digital radiographs

An enhanced digital radiograph is obtained by multiplication between the digital radiograph and the digital Fourier transform of the second derivative of the Gaussian function ( Delta /sup 2/g) and inverse transformation, and the subsequent histogram equalization. Because image data includes only real values, the purely real-numbered transform, called the fast Hartley transform (FHT) is used to perform a digital Fourier transform of the image data. Preliminary results suggest that the transform of the Laplacian of the Gaussian may provide a more effective edge enhancement for medical imagery than space-domain convolution techniques such as the Sobel operator. <<ETX>>
Early Deconditioning of Human Skeletal Muscles and the Effects of a Thigh Cuff Countermeasure

Muscle deconditioning is a major consequence of a wide range of conditions from spaceflight to a sedentary lifestyle, and occurs as a result of muscle inactivity, leading to a rapid decrease in muscle strength, mass, and oxidative capacity. The early changes that appear in the first days of inactivity must be studied to determine effective methods for the prevention of muscle deconditioning. To evaluate the mechanisms of muscle early changes and the vascular effect of a thigh cuff, a five-day dry immersion (DI) experiment was conducted by the French Space Agency at the MEDES Space Clinic (Rangueil, Toulouse). Eighteen healthy males were recruited and divided into a control group and a thigh cuff group, who wore a thigh cuff at 30 mmHg. All participants underwent five days of DI. Prior to and at the end of the DI, the lower limb maximal strength was measured and muscle biopsies were collected from the vastus lateralis muscle. Five days of DI resulted in muscle deconditioning in both groups. The maximal voluntary isometric contraction of knee extension decreased significantly. The muscle fiber cross-sectional area decreased significantly by 21.8%, and the protein balance seems to be impaired, as shown by the reduced activation of the mTOR pathway. Measurements of skinned muscle fibers supported these results and potential changes in oxidative capacity were highlighted by a decrease in PGC1-α levels. The use of the thigh cuff did not prevent muscle deconditioning or impact muscle function. These results suggest that the major effects of muscle deconditioning occur during the first few days of inactivity, and countermeasures against muscle deconditioning should target this time period. These results are also relevant for the understanding of muscle weakness induced by muscle diseases, aging, and patients in intensive care.
Changing network structures in the plastics industry: from a slow changing to a fast changing industry

This paper presents a classification of company networks in the Finnish injection molding industry. The research question is how the change in business environment, from a slow changing to fast changing environment has affected company network structures in this industry. On the basis of the authors' research, they classified company networks in the injection molding industry into three categories: networks for producing simple plastic products; networks for producing complex plastic products; and future networks for plastic products. They noticed that product complexity had a great effect on network structure. They compared these network types with respect to several factors, such as product life cycle, production batch size, product quality requirements, coordination of the network role of different partners in the network, division of work and responsibilities, type of network relationship and amount and type of information flow in the network.
Unit Roots and Smooth Transitions: A Replication

This paper replicates Leybourne et al. (1998), who propose a Dickey-Fuller type test for unit root that is most appropriate when there is reason to suspect the possibility of deterministic structural change in the series. We find that our replicated results are quite similar to the authors' results. We also make the Ox source code available.
Diseño mecánico de un exoesqueleto para rehabilitación de miembro superior

The pace of modern life, both socio-cultural and technologically, has led to an increase of diseases and conditions that affect the physical-motor capabilities of persons. This increase has originated the development of prototypes to help patients to regain mobility and strength of the affected upper limb. This work, deals with the mechanical structure design of an exoskeleton with 4 degrees freedom for upper limb. Which has the capacity to adjust to the Mexican patient anthropometry (arm length, forearm extension, geometry conditions of the back and the patient's height) BLITZ QFD method was applied to establish the conceptual design and loading service conditions on the structure. So, 5 quasi-static cases of study were defined and conditions for patient rehabilitation were subjected. Also by applying the finite element method the structure was analyzed due to service loading. The results presented in this work, show a new method for patient rehabilitation with mobility deficiencies in the upper limb. The proposed new design allows the rehabilitation of the upper limb under 4 degrees of freedom (tree degrees of freedom at shoulder and one at the elbow), which is perfect to perform active and passive therapy. Additionally, it is an equipment of low cost, which can be affordable to almost all the country population.
Application of artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic and wavelet transform in fault diagnosis via vibration signal analysis: A review

Abstract Fault diagnosis through vibration analysis is a method widely used by maintenance engineers for the condition monitoring of rotating machinery. Conventional vibration signature analysis techniques have been used, and after the invention of soft computation, techniques such as artificial neural network (ANN), fuzzy logic, wavelet transform, genetic algorithms, are broadly used by several researchers. These techniques show tremendous scope in the field of fault diagnosis through vibration analysis. The objective of the present paper is to provide a brief review of recent developments in the area of applications of ANN, fuzzy logic and wavelet transform in fault diagnosis. Special attention is given to the rolling element bearings fault diagnosis through vibration analysis, due to the fact that bearings are among the most important and frequently encountered components in rotating machinery.
Degeneration-Aware Outlier Mitigation for Visual Inertial Integrated Navigation System in Urban Canyons

In this article, we proposed a graduated nonconvexity (GNC) aided outlier mitigation method for the improvement of the visual-inertial integrated navigation system (VINS) to face the challenge of dynamic environments with numerous unexpected outlier measurements. A GNC optical flow algorithm was proposed for the detection of the outliers of feature tracking in the front-end of VINS by iteratively estimating the optical flow and the optimal weightings of feature correspondences. Then the feature correspondences with small weightings were excluded. However, excessive outlier exclusion may cause insufficient constraints on the state, causing degeneration of VINS. To solve the problem, this article proposed to detect the potential degeneration based on the degree of constraint in different directions of the pose estimation. Then the number of features being considered was intelligently adapted based on the degeneration level to improve the geometry constraint in the coming epochs. We evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed method by using two challenging datasets (including challenging night scenarios) collected in urban canyons of Hong Kong. The results show that the proposed method can effectively reject the potential outlier visual measurements, and alleviate the degeneration, leading to improved positioning performance in both evaluated datasets.
Assessment of the quality of a Master on Photonics in Galicia, Spain

The Spanish University System in the framework of the European studies under the Bologna process presents a huge number of Master courses. This fact has yielded the creation of an official procedure of “accreditation” of this kind of degrees. In this work, we present and discuss data collected from the official accreditation process recently carried out for the Masters on “Photonics and Laser Technologies”, coordinated by the University of Vigo (UVigo) and involving three Universities: Vigo (UVIGO), Santiago de Compostela (USC) and A Coruña (UdC) in the autonomous region of Galicia (Spain) where the accreditation is made by the Agency for the Quality of the University Galician System (ACSUG). The data collected play a fundamental role in the accreditation process in order to make future decisions about the studies offered in the Galician University System.
The Online Culture of the Cryptoeconomy

In 2009 a purportedly pseudonymous individual known as Satoshi Nakamoto released the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin to the virtual public. Since then, the virtual currency has generated a substantial cult following. Enthusiasts have put forward bombastic and contradictory claims about this disruptive technology’s radical potential: an emancipatory triumph over the junta of the market, the birth of an anarcho-capitalist utopia, the death-knell of the nation-state—in short, far-fetched sound bites befitting science fiction have been actualized in a postmodern social drama; a digital opera featuring a cyberpunk quest for Pirate Utopia on the deep web. Engaging Granovetter’s theory of embeddedness (1985), I posit that the crypto-economy is entangled in a web of value laden modern-mythic narratives that inform and largely overdetermine participants' economic activities. Beyond demonstrating the ways in which these systems of value are practically and symbolically engaged by participants in the crypto-economy, I further suggest that these engagements validate social theorist Zygmunt Bauman’s projections about the diminished regulatory capacity of the State in Liquid Modernity (2000; 2014).
A dual beam planar antenna for Janus type Doppler navigation systems

Doppler Navigational Systems are relatively new and have been only recently declassified. For this reason very little has been published on the new problems in design which a Doppler system imposes on the antenna. It is the purpose of this paper to enumerate these problems and describe an antenna which has been used to solve them most successfully. This is a two-dimensional or planar dual beam antenna consisting of slotted waveguide linear arrays. The dual beams are formed by a proper choice of spacing and ohasing of the slot radiators in each linear array. By a unique combination of the linear arrays, lobe switching can be accomplished very simply with an R. F. switch and hybrid. One of the advantages in system application of this antenna is the inherent frequency compensation it possesses which renders the measured velocity independent of transmitter frequency drifts.
Development of an optical 2-axis force sensor usable in MRI environments

This paper presents a MR compatible force sensor. Recently, MRI are widely used in various fields, from medical purpose to brain science, and simultaneous measurement of force information enables more precise investigations of obtained images of living tissue. However, conventional metal force sensors which contaminate the true signals of MRI cannot be used in MRI environments. Furthermore, present MR compatible force sensors have limitation in accuracy, dynamic range and multi axis sensibility. In this paper, an optical 2-axis force sensor without any metal and electronic components in the sensing element is developed with photo sensors and optical fibers.
Feedback Module Based Convolution Neural Networks for Sound Event Classification

Sound event classification is starting to receive a lot of attention over the recent years in the field of audio processing because of open datasets, which are recorded in various conditions, and the introduction of challenges. To use the sound event classification model in the wild, it is needed to be independent of recording conditions. Therefore, a more generalized model, that can be trained and tested in various recording conditions, must be researched. This paper presents a deep neural network with a dual-path frequency residual network and feedback modules for sound event classification. Most deep neural network based approaches for sound event classification use feed-forward models and train with a single classification result. Although these methods are simple to implement and deliver reasonable results, the integration of recurrent inference based methods has shown potential for classification and generalization performance improvements. We propose a weighted recurrent inference based model by employing cascading feedback modules for sound event classification. In our experiments, it is shown that the proposed method outperforms traditional approaches in indoor and outdoor conditions by 1.94% and 3.26%, respectively.
Application of Sensor Technology for the Efficient Positioningand Assembling of Ship Blocks

Abstract This paper proposes the application of sensor technology to assemble ship blocks efficiently. A sensor-based monitoring system is designed and implemented to improve shipbuilding productivity by reducing the labor cost for the adjustment of adequate positioning between ship blocks during pre-erection or erection stage. For the real-time remote monitoring of relative distances between two ship blocks, sensor nodes are applied to measure the distances between corresponding target points on the blocks. Highly precise positioning data can be transferred to a monitoring server via wireless network, and analyzed to support the decision making which needs to determine the next construction process; further adjustment or seam welding between the ship blocks. The developed system is expected to put to practical use, and increase the productivity during ship blocks assembly.