Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Placental Models for Evaluation of Nanocarriers as Drug Delivery Systems for Pregnancy Associated Disorders

Pregnancy-associated disorders affect around 20% of pregnancies each year around the world. The risk associated with pregnancy therapeutic management categorizes pregnant women as “drug orphan” patients. In the last few decades, nanocarriers have demonstrated relevant properties for controlled drug delivery, which have been studied for pregnancy-associated disorders. To develop new drug dosage forms it is mandatory to have access to the right evaluation models to ensure their usage safety and efficacy. This review exposes the various placental-based models suitable for nanocarrier evaluation for pregnancy-associated therapies. We first review the current knowledge about nanocarriers as drug delivery systems and how placenta can be used as an evaluation model. Models are divided into three categories: in vivo, in vitro, and ex vivo placental models. We then examine the recent studies using those models to evaluate nanocarriers behavior towards the placental barrier and which information can be gathered from these results. Finally, we propose a flow chart on the usage and the combination of models regarding the nanocarriers and nanoparticles studied and the intended therapeutic strategy.
Materializing Strategy in Mundane Tools: The Key to Coupling Global Strategy and Local Strategy Practice?

While much of the literature on strategy and strategy as practice (SaP) focuses on traditional strategic tools, technologies and discursive practices of managers, this paper extends the understanding of strategic change implementation by proposing that mundane material tools, understood as text, translate global strategic discourse in ways that make sense to workers and orchestrate successful global strategy implementation at the local level. Based on a rich case study within one branch of a national bank, we demonstrate how a middle manager’s materialising practices developed local strategy practice while simultaneously transforming work and producing strategic figures or indicators that satisfied senior management’s global strategic change objectives. The contributions of this paper are threefold: i) we advance the understanding of the multimodality of materiality by identifying the influence of three kinds of mundane tools produced locally by a middle manager as he performed his sense of the senior managers’ strategic discourse; ii) we reveal how these three types of physical texts materialised the manager’s sense of this discourse, facilitating frontline workers’ engagement and coupling materiality and orality in a coherent way that allowed workers to embody the company’s global strategy in their ‘sayings and doings’; and iii) we highlight the importance of managers’ ability to materialise a strategic discourse.
Frequency Characteristics of Pulse Wave Sensor Using MEMS Piezoresistive Cantilever Element

Wearable sensor devices with minimal discomfort to the wearer have been widely developed to realize continuous measurements of vital signs (body temperature, blood pressure, respiration rate, and pulse wave) in many applications across various fields, such as healthcare and sports. Among them, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based differential pressure sensors have garnered attention as a tool for measuring pulse waves with weak skin tightening. Using a MEMS-based piezoresistive cantilever with an air chamber as the pressure change sensor enables highly sensitive pulse-wave measurements to be achieved. Furthermore, the initial static pressure when attaching the sensor to the skin is physically excluded because of air leakage around the cantilever, which serves as a high-pass filter. However, if the frequency characteristics of this mechanical high-pass filter are not appropriately designed, then the essential information of the pulse-wave measurement may not be reflected. In this study, the frequency characteristics of a sensor structure is derived theoretically based on the air leakage rate and chamber size. Subsequently, a pulse wave sensor with a MEMS piezoresistive cantilever element, two air chambers, and a skin-contacted membrane is designed and fabricated. The developed sensor is 30 mm in diameter and 8 mm in thickness and realizes high-pass filter characteristics of 0.7 Hz. Finally, pulse wave measurement at the neck of a participant is demonstrated using the developed sensor. It is confirmed that the measured pulse wave contains signals in the designed frequency band.
Sildenafil for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis have a poor overall prognosis and there are few evidence-based drug therapies that reduce mortality. OBJECTIVE We aimed to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess whether sildenafil reduces mortality, disease progression and adverse side effects. METHODS We reviewed randomized controlled studies (RCTs) from MEDLINE, Cochrane registry of clinical trials, and EMBASE. Our outcomes of interest included mortality, change in FVC, acute exacerbations and hospitalizations and adverse drug effects leading to discontinuation. We used an inverse variance fixed effects meta-analysis method to calculate pooled relative risk (RR) and mean difference (MD). RESULTS A total of 4 studies were included in the systematic review. Sildenafil probably reduces mortality when compared to placebo or to standard care, [RR 0.73 (95% CI 0.51 to 1.04); moderate certainty]. Pooled estimates showed sildenafil may not alter the rate of change of FVC [MD 0.61% (95% CI -0.29 to 1.52)], or DLCO [MD 0.97% (95% CI 0.04 to 1.90)] (both low certainty). Pooled estimated showed sildenafil may not reduce the number of hospitalizations or acute exacerbations, [RR 1.10 (95% CI 0.61 to 1.98); low certainty]. There is probably no difference in drug discontinuation due to adverse effects when comparing sildenafil to the control group, [RR 0.79 (95% CI 0.56, 1.10); moderate certainty]. CONCLUSION Sildenafil probably reduces all-cause mortality in IPF patients. More studies need to be done to confirm the magnitude and reliability of the point estimate.
Pertactin-Deficient Bordetella pertussis with Unusual Mechanism of Pertactin Disruption, Spain, 1986–2018

Bordetella pertussis not expressing pertactin has increased in countries using acellular pertussis vaccines (ACV). The deficiency is mostly caused by pertactin gene disruption by IS481. To assess the effect of the transition from whole-cell vaccine to ACV on the emergence of B. pertussis not expressing pertactin in Spain, we studied 342 isolates collected during 1986–2018. We identified 93 pertactin-deficient isolates. All were detected after introduction of ACV and represented 38% of isolates collected during the ACV period; 58.1% belonged to a genetic cluster of isolates carrying the unusual prn::del(–292, 1340) mutation. Pertactin inactivation by IS481 insertion was identified in 23.7% of pertactin-deficient isolates, arising independently multiple times and in different phylogenetic branches. Our findings support the emergence and dissemination of a cluster of B. pertussis with an infrequent mechanism of pertactin disruption in Spain, probably resulting from introduction of ACV.
RAFI: Robust Authentication Framework for IoT-Based RFID Infrastructure

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a future trend that uses the Internet to connect a variety of physical things with the cyber world. IoT technology is rapidly evolving, and it will soon have a significant impact on our daily lives. While the growing number of linked IoT devices makes our daily lives easier, it also puts our personal data at risk. In IoT applications, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) helps in the automatic identification of linked devices, and the dataflow of the system forms a symmetry in communication between the tags and the readers. However, the security and privacy of RFID-tag-connected devices are the key concerns. The communication link is thought to be wireless or insecure, making the RFID system open to several known threats. In order to address these security issues, we propose a robust authentication framework for IoT-based RFID infrastructure. We use formal security analysis in the random oracle model, as well as information analysis to support the claim of secure communication. Regarding the desirable performance characteristics, we describe and analyze the proposed framework’s performance and compare it to similar systems. According to our findings, the proposed framework satisfies all security requirements while also improving the communication.
Comparative Studies on the Antioxidant, Antifungal, and Wound Healing Activities of Solenostemma arghel Ethyl Acetate and Methanolic Extracts

Various herbal compounds are used for medical purposes due to their safety, as there are no or minimal side effects. This study was performed to assess the wound healing and antioxidant activities of ethyl acetate (EtOAc) and methanolic extract (MeoH) of Solenostemma arghel (S. arghel). Their antifungal activities were also evaluated against isolated swabs of equine wounds. They underwent GC-MS analysis for the characterization of both extracts. For wound healing evaluation, forty-five male albino rats were divided into three groups; the control group was treated with normal saline, and the other two groups were treated with S. arghel EtOAc and MeoH extract gels, respectively. The wounds were examined clinicopathologically and immunohistochemistry on the 3rd, 7th, and 14th days post-wounding. GC-Ms analysis of S. arghel recorded fifty-one volatile organic compounds (VOCs) within EtOAc extraction and thirty VOCs in MeoH extract. VOCs represented in EtOAc extract showed higher antioxidant activity and better and faster wound healing than VOCs of MeOH extract. The treated groups showed improved wound healing clinically and pathologically in comparison with the control group as they decreased the wound surface area (WSA) and percent (WSA%) and increased the wound contraction percent (WC%), epithelization, fibroblast proliferation with neovascularization, and reduced the inflammatory reaction. Moreover, the treated groups showed higher expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) compared with the control. The EtOAc extract showed higher antifungal activity against Penicillium funiculosum, P. jensenii, M. cinctum, and Candida albicans, which were isolated from infected clinical equine wounds, than MeOH extract. The treated groups showed improved wound healing clinically and pathologically in comparison with the control group as they decreased the wound surface area (WSA) and percent (WSA%) and increased the wound contraction percent (WC%), epithelization, fibroblast proliferation with neovascularization, and reduced the inflammatory reaction. Moreover, the treated groups showed higher expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) compared with the control. Additionally, the two extract gels showed promising healing of equine wounds. In conclusion, the study recommended the use of S. arghel EtOAc extract as it was proven to promote wound healing compared with MeoH extract.
Effects of Altitude Differences on the Performance of Broiler Chicken Kept in Closed House Cage

This study aimed to examine the effect of differences in altitude on the performance of broiler chickens. The experimental design used was a completely randomized design (CRD) with 3 treatments and 8 replications. For this research, the broiler chickens were reared in closed house cages at different altitudes: lowlands, medium lands, and highlands with the same Standard Operation Procedure (SOP). The treatments applied were T1 (broilers reared at an altitude of ± < 600 meters), T2 (broilers reared at an altitude of ± 800 – 1000 meters) and T3 (broilers reared at an altitude of ± > 1000 meters). The data were analyzed to determine the treatment effect using Duncan's Multiple Distance Test. The parameters measured were feed consumption, body weight gain (WG), feed conversion ratio (FCR), index performance (IP) and income over feed cost (IOFC). The results showed that altitude had a significant effect (P<0.05) on body weight gain (WG) in the finisher phase, feed conversion ratio (FCR) in the starter phase and finisher phase, index performance (IP) in the starter phase and finisher phase as well as income over feed cost (IOFC). From this study, it can be concluded that the performance of broiler chickens in the medium-altitude is better than the lowlands and highlands, and economically it is more profitable than rearing them
The Effect of Mixed Leaves Tannin Sources (Acacia mangium Willd, Swietenia mahagoni, and Artocarpus heterophyllus) in Pellets on In Vitro Methane Production

Mitigation effort to reduce methane emissions using plant bioactive compounds has been extensively studied and applied as feed additives. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of three leaves mixtures of tannin source ( Acacia mangium Willd, Swietenia mahagoni , and Artocarpus heterophyllus ) in pellet feed on in vitro methane and volatile fatty acids (VFA) production. Three experimental diets (grass: concentrate, 60:40) with substitution of pellet in concentrate equal to tannin level 0%, 1%, and 2% based on dry matter (DM) were used as substrate for in vitro fermentation by Menke and Steingass gas production method for 48 h of incubation. The addition of three leaves mixtures of tannin source did not affect (P>0.05) methane and VFAs production. It could be concluded that substitution of pellets containing three leaves mixtures of tannin source to concentrate up to 2% was not enough to reduce methane emissions.
Multi-Mode Damping Control Approach for the Optimal Resilience of Renewable-Rich Power Systems

The integration of power-electronics-based power plants is developing significantly due to the proliferation of renewable energy sources. Although this type of power plant could positively affect society in terms of clean and sustainable energy, it also brings adverse effects, especially with the stability of the power system. The lack of inertia and different dynamic characteristics are the main issues associated with power-electronics-based power plants that could affect the oscillatory behaviour of the power system. Hence, it is important to design a comprehensive damping controller to damp oscillations due to the integration of a power-electronics-based power plant. This paper proposes a damping method for enhancing the oscillatory stability performance of power systems with high penetration of renewable energy systems. A resilient wide-area multimodal controller is proposed and used in conjunction with a battery energy storage system (BESS) to enhance the damping of critical modes. The proposed control also addresses resiliency issues associated with control signals and controllers. The optimal tuning of the control parameters for this proposed controller is challenging. Hence, the firefly algorithm was considered to be the optimisation method to design the wide-area multimodal controllers for BESS, wind, and photovoltaic (PV) systems. The performance of the proposed approach was assessed using a modified version of the Java Indonesian power system under various operating conditions. Both eigenvalue analysis and time-domain simulations are considered in the analysis. A comparison with other well-known metaheuristic methods was also carried out to show the proposed method’s efficacy. Obtained results confirmed the superior performance of the proposed approach in enhancing the small-signal stability of renewable-rich power systems. They also revealed that the proposed multimodal controller could enhance the penetration of renewable energy sources in the Javan power system by up to 50%.
Development of a smart metering scheme for building smart grid system

This paper presents a smart metering system for application in building LV smart grid system. The smarting meter scheme consists of smart metering device, a communication module for wireless or wired data communication, and a central system for power calculation and power quality analysis. The smart meter device captures current or voltage waveform and performs waveform compression function. The waveform compression algorithm is developed from FFTW algorithm and DWPT algorithm. Simulation tests have been conducted to verify the compression capability of the waveform compression algorithm. It is verified that the waveform compression algorithm can achieve an accuracy of 99%. (5 pages)
CASPPNet: a chained atrous spatial pyramid pooling network for steel defect detection

Automatic machine vision-based defect detection has been successfully applied to many industrial visual inspection applications. However, automatic steel surface defect detection is still a challenging task due to diverse defect categories, low-contrast between defect and complex texture background. To address these challenges, a chained atrous spatial pyramid pooling network (CASPPNet) is proposed for steel surface defect detection. In CASPPNet, chained atrous spatial pyramid pooling is designed to enlarge receptive field and obtain enrich semantic information. An improved global attention feature fusion module is introduced to achieve feature interaction and salience. Moreover, residual boundary refinement block is introduced to get more complete defect boundary. Comparative experimental results verify that our method is superior to the state-of-the-art segmentation methods on public accessible SD-saliency-900 datasets and can meet the requirement of real-time online detection (the detection efficiency is at over 47 FPS on a single GPU).
Analysis of feedback control applied with command shaping to minimize residual vibration

Jacobs, Nicholas L. MS, Purdue University, August 2016. Analysis of Feedback Control Applied with Command Shaping to Minimize Residual Vibration. Major Professor: Peter H. Meckl, School of Mechanical Engineering. Joint flexibility is a physical trait that affects all robotic systems to some degree. This characteristic has been shown to be very detrimental to the performance of these robotic systems when implementing fast point-to-point motion. During such motion, the robot will induce vibrations in its structure that will extend past the completion of the move. Many techniques have been applied over the years in order to minimize these residual vibrations. One such method is known as command shaping, which will construct the input profile so as to avoid exciting the natural frequencies of the system. This work seeks to extend this by analyzing how the feedback controller interacts with the input signal. Since a robotic manipulator is inherently nonlinear, this investigation is begun using a linear three-mass system that mimics the important dynamics of a two-link flexible-joint robot. A model of this three-mass system is derived and simulated in order to provide a new testbed for analyzing the problem of reducing residual vibration. It is shown that by appropriately designing the feedback controller so as to minimize the level of energy at the natural frequencies, lower residual vibration amplitudes are achieved. However, in some instances, these vibrations may take longer to settle out, which is directly correlated to the closed-loop damping of the system. This provides guidelines on how to appropriately construct a feedback controller so as to minimize residual vibration. Using this better understanding of the influence of the feedback, several different controllers are then tested on a twolink flexible-joint robot. The results of these experiments show correlation with the results obtained from the linear system analysis completed, and the trends are now better understood by applying the knowledge gained from the three-mass system. xvi With the influence of the feedback controller on the level of residual vibration that ensues from fast point-to-point motion identified, the separate problems of command shaping and feedback control are tied together so as to achieve even lower levels of residual vibration.
Exploring the daily mobility rhythms in an urban environment: using the data from intelligent transport systems

The recent development of modern intelligent transport systems has caused a major innovation in the organization and management of traffic and enabled a pronounced integration of new data on the transport phenomena and processes. The goal of the study is to analyse the daily mobility rhythms in an urban environment through data from intelligent transport systems. To study daily mobility rhythms, we make use of hitherto unutilized data from inductive loops and strategic traffic detectors (parts of the ITS) within the urban area of České Budějovice, Czechia. We particularly focus on the assessment of overall daily mobility rhythms and the daily rhythms of individual locations within the urban area with a goal to reveal the main conformities and differences. The research has attained two key results. It was discovered that daily mobility rhythms differ especially in individual types of vehicles (cars, medium vehicles, and long vehicles). In the assessment of spatial differences in the daily rhythms of individual locations significant differences were revealed in the courses of daily mobility rhythms in the city centre, residential areas, and shopping areas.
A self-contained motion capture platform for e-textiles

Wearable computers and e-textiles are increasingly prevalent in today’s society. Motion capture is one of many potential applications for on-body electronic systems. Self-contained motion capture applications require information from sensors distributed throughout the body on a ”smart” garment. Therefore, this thesis presents the design of a flexible hardware platform for e-textile motion capture applications. This thesis also presents software for one such application, namely, tracking the pose or relative position of body limbs. The accuracy of this solution is compared to an industrial optical motion capture system. The combined hardware and software design are successful at collecting and processing motion capture data in the context of an e-textile jumpsuit.
Impact of the Acetaldehyde-Mediated Condensation on the Phenolic Composition and Antioxidant Activity of Vitis vinifera L. Cv. Merlot Wine

Acetaldehyde is a critical reactant on modifying the phenolic profile during red wine aging, suggesting that the acetaldehyde-mediated condensation can be responsible for the variation of antioxidant activity during the aging of this beverage. The present study employs exogenous acetaldehyde at six levels of treatment (7.86 ± 0.10–259.02 ± 4.95 mg/L) before the bottle aging of Merlot wines to encourage phenolic modification. Acetaldehyde and antioxidant activity of wine were evaluated at 0, 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 days of storage, while monomeric and polymeric phenolics were analyzed at 0, 30 and 75 days of storage. The loss of acetaldehyde was fitted to a first-order reaction model, the rate constant (k) demonstrated that different chemical reaction happened in wines containing a different initial acetaldehyde. The disappearance of monomeric phenolics and the formation of polymeric phenolics induced by acetaldehyde could be divided into two phases, the antioxidant activity of wine did not alter significantly in the first phase, although most monomeric phenolics vanished, but the second phase would dramatically reduce the antioxidant activity of wine. Furthermore, a higher level of acetaldehyde could shorten the reaction time of the first phase. These results indicate that careful vinification handling aiming at controlling the acetaldehyde allows one to maintain prolonged biological activity during wine aging.