Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Biological Fate of Pharmaceutical Excipient β-Cyclodextrin: Pharmacokinetics, Tissue Distribution, Excretion, and Metabolism of β-Cyclodextrin in Rats

β-cyclodextrin has a unique annular hollow ultrastructure that allows encapsulation of various poorly water-soluble drugs in the resulting cavity, thereby increasing drug stability. As a bioactive molecule, the metabolism of β-cyclodextrin is mainly completed by the flora in the colon, which can interact with API. In this study, understanding the in vivo fate of β-cyclodextrin, a LC-MS/MS method was developed to facilitate simultaneous quantitative analysis of pharmaceutical excipient β-cyclodextrin and API dextromethorphan hydrobromide. The established method had been effectively used to study the pharmacokinetics, tissue distribution, excretion, and metabolism of β-cyclodextrin after oral administration in rats. Results showed that β-cyclodextrin was almost wholly removed from rat plasma within 36 h, and high concentrations of β-cyclodextrin distributed hastily to organs with increased blood flow velocities such as the spleen, liver, and kidney after administration. The excretion of intact β-cyclodextrin to urine and feces was lower than the administration dose. It can be speculated that β-cyclodextrin metabolized to maltodextrin, which was further metabolized, absorbed, and eventually discharged in the form of CO2 and H2O. Results proved that β-cyclodextrin, with relative low accumulation in the body, had good safety. The results will assist further study of the design and safety evaluation of adjuvant β-cyclodextrin and promote its clinical development.
Effect of Pre-Exposure to Chlorine Dioxide on the Susceptibility of Fecal Coliforms to Antibiotics

Adaptive exposure to sub-lethal concentrations of sanitizers was previously reported to offer cross-protection to bacteria against antibiotics. This study was undertaken to determine whether the pre-exposure of fecal coliforms to suboptimal concentrations of a chemical sanitizer, chlorine dioxide (ClO2), alters their susceptibility to certain antibiotics. Fecal coliforms isolated from fresh fruit packing facilities (n = 12) were adapted in ½ or ¼ of the manufacturer-recommended concentration of ClO2. The susceptibility of the adapted and non-adapted cells to 13 different antibiotics was determined by observing the changes in their minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs). The results showed that preadaptation to the suboptimal concentrations of ClO2, in general, either decreased or did not change the MICs of the antibiotics against selected fecal coliform isolates, with only two exceptions; preadaptation increased the MICs of kanamycin against two of the fecal coliform isolates, and of nalidixic acid against one of the fecal coliform isolates. The results suggest that the use of ClO2 has a relatively low risk of inducing the resistance of fecal coliforms to antibiotics.
AUSTRALIAN PLANNER SEPTEMBER 1999

The term ‘‘integration’’ has become a common modifier in planning today. In Australia it has appeared in the form of Integrated Local Area Planning (Australian Local Government Association 1993), Integrated Catchment Management (Western Australia, Queensland) and new integrated planning legislation (Queensland, New South Wales). North Americans have been no less prolific in their use of the term, particularly in the area of environmental planning. Many state, provincial, and national agencies are promoting integrated resources management (eg. US Forest Service), integrated watershed management (eg. Ontario and Wisconsin), and many authors have written about integrated environmental management (Margerum 1997; Margerum and Born 1995; Mitchell 1990; Moote et al. 1994; Slocombe 1993) But what does integration mean? In particular, what does it mean in operational terms? This article explores approaches to implementing an integrated approach. Based on case study research, I propose a typology for classifying different implementation approaches and discuss the implications for practice.
Nanofabrication of Polymer Biosensor Structures for Biomedical Applications

This paper presents the nanofabrication of polymer biosensor structures for biomedical applications. The polymer biosensor structures were achieved using hot embossing technology. The pressure effects on the replication of patterns during the hot embossing of the polymer biosensor structures were investigated. The fabricated polymer biosensor structures with pillar arrays were applied to immunoassay biochips. The pillar shapes of the polymer biosensor structures provided large surface areas and improved the antibody-antigen interaction of the immunoassay biochips.
Bless the Pure and Humble: Texas Lawyers and Oil Regulation, 1919–1936 by Nicholas George Malavis (review)

When oil was first struck in America in the nineteenth century, the courts were ill-prepared to deal with the legal issues it raised. Since it flowed across property lines, as a deer or other wild animal could cross boundaries, judges resorted to the "rule of capture" to determine ownership--the person who extracted it had full rights to it. Applied to the massive oil boom of the 1920s in Texas, this rule precipitated a series of crises, forcing operators and royalty owners to produce all they could regardless of current market conditions and demand and mindless of the waste and loss incurred. By 1927 the implications of the rule of capture were clear, and pressure was mounting for federal regulation of petroleum production. In that year attorneys in the Houston firm of Vinson and Elkins joined efforts by Pure Oil (the producer) and Humble Oil (the buyer and pipeline owner) to develop unitization rules for the 5400-acre Yates Oil Field in Pecos County, Texas. Amid their legal maneuvering the Texas Railroad Commission stepped in, issuing a proration rule and effectively assuming unitization powers over state production, thereby giving rise to charges by small producers that the state had sold out to "big oil. " The conflict over proration that resulted represented a legal and ideological clashes between principles of laissez-faire and progressive regulation. By 1935, when Congress enacted the Connally Hot Oil Act, the legal principles were settled and the battle for control of petroleum production had been won by the states. Nicholas George Malavis's well-reasoned and sophisticated study of the development of petroleum regulation offers historical and legal analysis of the basic issues affecting property rights and the public interest and traces the legal moves that shaped a new regulatory system centered around the Texas Railroad Commission. It provides a fascinating view of the multiple roles of lawyers in putting the new system in place as they worked for a variety of clients to resolve the serious conflicts plaguing the oil industry in its efforts to manage overproduction in the 1920s and 1930s. Access to the internal records of Vinson and Elkins has allowed Malavis to provide readers a rare view inside the world of lawyer-client relations. He describes how prominent attorney James Elkins and others applied their legal talents, negotiating skills, and political influence to fight for solutions to their problems that would help define the parameters of the new prorating system. "Bless the Pure and the Humble, " with its thorough research and use of organizational records to elucidate a broad and important theme, provides a valuable model for scholarly studies of corporate history. It offers important contributions to our knowledge of legal, business, and regional histories. Although necessarily focused on Texas history, the well-told story in this book has relevance far beyond the state's boundaries and will inform students of petroleum and property law and those interested in energy and conservation history.
An USB-based real-time communication infrastructure for robotic platforms

A USB-BASED REAL-TIME COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ROBOTIC PLATFORMS Cihan Ozturk M.S. in Computer Engineering Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Uluc Saranli August, 2009 A typical robot operates by carrying out a sequence of tasks, usually consisting of acquisition of sensory data, interpretation of sensory inputs for making decisions, and application of commands on appropriate actuators. Since this cycle involves transmission of data among electro-mechanical components of the robot, high quality communication is a fundamental requirement. Besides being reliable, robust, extensible, and efficient, a high quality communication infrastructure should satisfy all additional communication requirements that are specific to the robot it is used within. To give an example, for a rapid moving autonomous robot with a reactive controller which is intended to be used in time critical situations, a real-time communication infrastructure which guarantees demanded response times is required. The Universal Robot Bus (URB) is a distributed communication framework based on the widely used IC standard, intended to be used specifically within rapid autonomous robots. Real-time operation guarantees are provided by defining upper bounds in response times. URB facilitates exchange of information between a central controller and distributed sensory and actuator units. Adoption of a centralized topology by connecting distributed units directly to a central controller creates a bottleneck around the central unit, causing problems in scalability, noise and cabling. In order to overcome this problem, URB is physically realized such that gateways (bridges) are incorporated between the central and distributed units which offload the work of the central unit and master the underlying IC bus. Connection between the central unit and the gateway, the uplink channel, can be established using any high bandwidth communication alternative which successfully satisfies communication requirements of the system. The main contribution of this thesis is the design and implementation of the iii
Honouring historical facts: The case of intonational downtrends

: Various researchers of the past are honoured in citations as the very first who described or discovered certain scientifically important phenomena. However, the illusion of “our times being superior to past” causes certain myopia: we often do not go back enough to identify and appreciate the true pioneers. Generally, we tend to underestimate what our ancestors already knew and did, and we overestimate the contribution of our own era. The present paper demonstrates this predicament with the case of intonational downtrends, i.e., gradual lowering of phonologically equivalent melodic targets within an utterance. The first report of the phenomenon is often at-tributed to K. L. Pike, sometimes even to later intonologists. We, on the other hand, document much older accounts of intonational downtrends, and offer some tentative explanations as to why the earlier research was ignored.
A Study on Soft Error Mitigation for Microprocessor in Bulk CMOS Technology

This thesis presents techniques developed for mitigating soft error in microprocessors manufactured with bulk CMOS technology. For designing highly reliable microprocessors, a multi-layer approach is necessary ranging from architectural, circuity and transistor process layers. Microprocessors used in mission critical servers can improve their reliability with architectural layer techniques such as error correction code (ECC) parity checking, algorithmic checking, and watchdog timer. However these techniques cannot resolve all soft error issues in a microprocessor. Hence, component-level soft error mitigation in transistor and circuit layers is also required. In microprocessors, the components vulnerable to radiation are SRAM and latch/flip-flop (FF), and multi bit upset (MBU) and single event latchup (SEL) in SRAM, and single bit upset (SBU) and MBU in latches are factors that deteriorate the microprocessor reliability. Therefore, this thesis investigates these SBU, MBU and SEL, and proposes techniques for mitigating them. This thesis starts with the discussion on the scaling trend of SRAM and FF single event upset (SEU) rates in bulk CMOS technology. Neutron and alpha irradiation tests were performed on SRAMs manufactured in 350, 250, 180, 130, 90, 65, 55, 45, 40, 28 and 20 nm bulk CMOS technologies and FF in 65, 45, 28 and 20 nm bulk CMOS technologies. SRAM soft error rate (SER) per bit reached the maximum in 180 nm for neutron and in 250 nm for alpha. In addition, evaluations on various 90 nm SRAMs show that the SER can change by up to 75% due to process conditions and the number of access ports. The FF SEU rate per bit decreased more than SRAM SER in 20 nm bulk CMOS technology. Consequently, the chip-level processor SER remains at the same level from 65 to 20 nm both in SRAM and FF without soft error mitigation techniques. From this chip level prediction, MBU needs to be mitigated for higher reliability in old technology such as 65 nm. After that, SBU and MBU in FF need to be mitigated because hardware instruction retry (HIR) cannot exclude MBU and some SBU. In addition, SEL in SRAM needs to be taken into consideration whereas SEL in FF is negligibly few since the well width of FF is large enough. From this observation, this thesis discusses techniques for mitigating MBU and SEL in SRAM and SBU and MBU in FF. In 65 nm and older technology, SRAM SER with ECC, i.e. MBU, is higher than SER in sequential elements. This thesis approaches MBU mitigation in SRAM with optimization of well configuration optimization. First the dependence of SRAM SEU rate on well depth is investigated with and without deep N-well (DNW) through neutron and alpha irradiation tests. After that, an MBU mitigation technique that uses DNW is proposed. While DNW generally raises the SER due to parasitic bipolar action (PBA), the proposed method inserts narrow DNW to increase the distance be-
Critical success factors in the management of petrochemical construction projects for contractors and subcontractors during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract This research identifies the critical factors of multinational enterprises affecting the successful performance of contractors and sub-contractors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these critical success factors, labour availability, site accessibility, shortage of construction resources, and inadequate epidemic prevention in construction planning caused by the lockdown policy were the most fundamental successes encountered in construction projects. The present study focuses on Thailand's construction industry with the aim of identifying critical success factors and finding the cause-and-effect relationship among these essential success factors. To understand these interdependent relationships, this study distinguishes between ‘driving’ and ‘dependent’ critical success factors. Mixed-methods were applied to investigate the mutual relationships that exist between these critical success factors. The results show that the critical factors driving contractors’ successful performance are related to 18 critical factors that must be considered during construction management. Interpretive Structural Modelling found that the success factors during the COVID-19 pandemic were effectiveness management, e.g. profitability and client satisfaction. However, important performance drivers of contractor success that are compatible with MICMAC strategic analysis and the construction action plan, and participation of contractors by increasing knowledge on construction management and internal monitoring, are crucial success drivers for contractors and sub-contractors.
Efficient Range-Free Monte-Carlo-Localization for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

A major problem of localization algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is the dependence on anchor information. In mobile networks, single node or even whole parts of the network might be temporarily isolated from all anchors, which will render further localization impossible. Consequently, the localization error increases drastically in these situations. In addition to that, network operators have a strong interest in reducing the number of costly anchor nodes to reduce deployment and operation costs, which further amplifies the problem of missing anchorinformation. This thesis first discusses the advantages and disadvantages of two large groups of localization algorithms, range-based and range-free localization, and provides a study of an often used ranging technique based on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) distance estimation. After that, two new variants of a well-known range-free localization approach called Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) are introduced to account for the problem of missing or temporarily unavailable seed nodes. In Sensor-Assisted Monte Carlo Localization (SA-MCL) a dead reckoning technique using additional information provided by magnetometer and accelerometer sensors is proposed to update the location estimation based on the last known position. Path-Oriented Monte Carlo Localization (PO-MCL) is designed to exploit path-based mobility behavior as it exists for several applications in WSNs to improve the localization process. Both approaches are evaluated using excessive network simulation. Furthermore, SA-MCL is implemented on real hardware and evaluated in a mobile WSN testbed formed by radio controlled cars. It is shown that in low seed density situations the localization error for SA-MCL and PO-MCL can be reduced by about 60% and 50%, respectively.
The establishment and dynamic analysis of a new friction model of brake pair considering interface morphology and particles

The disc brake works in an open environment in contact with the outside world. The particles will cause fluctuations in the friction coefficient of the brake. A friction model is established to reflect the morphology characteristics of the surface and the particles, as well as the relationship between the mechanical properties of the brake pair and friction-velocity. The influence of surface morphology parameters and particle parameters on the friction model is analyzed. Based on the model, the stability of the braking system was analyzed, and the influence of friction parameters on the stick-slip vibration characteristics of the system was studied numerically. The results show that the variation of particle parameters has a great influence on the motion stability of the braking system.
An empirical investigation of software reliability indicators

This thesis investigates how individuals and organisations, without technical skills, might determine the reliability of open source software given the increased use of such software. Software reliability is normally indicated by the growth and subsequent decline of defects in the software. A notable observation is that reliability growth models require a definitive stabilisation phase during which testing can reveal the growth and decline of defects as the indication of the increase in reliability of software. However, there is not necessarily a definitive stabilisation phase in the open source software development. More importantly, the presence or absence of the stabilisation phase is an attribute of a software development method and is not restricted to open source software . When software is developed without a definitive stabilisation phase, reliability growth models are not applicable because the conditions for their validity have not been achieved. Consequently, this thesis looks for alternative information based on tests to aid decision-making about software acquisition. Data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews from 29 participants who were currently engaged in software development. The information of tests; coverage, sufficiency and rigours of tests concerns the testing that has been performed on the software product and gives expectations on how well the software product has been tested.
Cooperative Transmission Scheduling and Computation Offloading With Collaboration of Fog and Cloud for Industrial IoT Applications

Energy consumption for large amounts of delay-sensitive applications brings serious challenges with the continuous development and diversity of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications in fog networks. In addition, conventional cloud technology cannot adhere to the delay requirement of sensitive IIoT applications due to long-distance data travel. To address this bottleneck, we design a novel energy–delay optimization framework called transmission scheduling and computation offloading (TSCO), while maintaining energy and delay constraints in the fog environment. To achieve this objective, we first present a heuristic-based transmission scheduling strategy to transfer IIoT-generated tasks based on their importance. Moreover, we also introduce a graph-based task-offloading strategy using constrained-restricted mixed linear programming to handle high traffic in rush-hour scenarios. Extensive simulation results illustrate that the proposed TSCO approach significantly optimizes energy consumption and delay up to 12%–17% during computation and communication over the traditional baseline algorithms.
Cloud Robotics and Automation: A Survey of Related Work

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Linguistic Mediation of Perceptual Adjustment in University Students

Students from different areas of academic training (Psychology vs. Optometry) completed a task in which they had to locate a "lost moving target" in a simulated forest on a computer screen. The effects of three independent variables were assessed: a) the type of trajectory of the moving target (regular and irregular), b) the time elapsed since the loss of visual contact with the moving target (delays of 1, 4 and 6 seconds), and c) administration / non administration of verbal consequences for localization responses. Results indicated that accuracy in localization responses was higher on 1) regular trajectories, 2) shortest delays, 3) verbal consequences condition, and 4) Optometry students. Findings are discussed in terms of the parameters of the task. Contributions of the academic training of the participants are discussed as a linguistic scenario in which differential modes of the contact with the environment’s mediation are learned.
Shaping Children’s Knowledge and Response to Bushfire Through Use of an Immersive Virtual Learning Environment

A problem-based immersive virtual environment (IVE) about bushfire safety was developed as a learning tool for children aged 10–12. Its effectiveness was assessed in relation to children’s ability to determine how to be safer in a bushfire incident. A series of experiential activities were developed in the IVE with digital storytelling and two-stage embedded assessments providing children with an opportunity to engage with tasks and solve problems while receiving feedback on their performance. Changes from pre- to postsurvey results showed positive learning outcomes as evidenced by significant improvements in children’s knowledge of bushfire safety and confidence in their ability to contribute to decisions during a bushfire incident. The significant change in children’s knowledge as well as their performance at two-stage embedded assessments was independent of their gender, background knowledge and perceived ability in responding to bushfire hazards. This suggests that when appropriately designed and implemented within educational settings, immersive virtual learning tools can effectively engage children and enhance learning outcomes associated with bushfire safety. The paper also argues that such immersive problem-based learning can improve self-efficacy amongst children in relation to coping with a bushfire situation. Implications of the findings are also discussed.