Evaluation of Surfactants-Assisted Folic Acid-Loaded Pectin Submicrospheres: Characterization and Hemocompatibility Assay

Folic acid is used for preventing and treating multiple diseases and disorders, administered in the form of oral supplements. The present research work was aimed to study the influence of two non-ionic surfactants Poloxamer and Tween 80 (Polysorbate 80) on pectin submicrospheres formulations. Typical natural polymer pectin was used to encapsulate folic acid by cross linking method. The resultant submicrospheres contributed to improve the aqueous solubility to enhance the bioavailability of folic acid. During investigation, it was observed that pectin polymers influenced kinetics of the rate of reaction more intensively than the surfactants. The physical phenomenon caused the change in their size, shape and chemistry of pectin polymers transforming into submicrospheres in aqueous condition. The characteristic differences of submicrospheres were assessed by scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The average diameters of the submicrospheres ranged between 250 and 500 nm. The encapsulation efficiency of submicrospheres ranged between 80 and 96 %. The characteristic swelling behavior of lyophilized submicrospheres was influenced by the ratio of pectin polymers and folic acid used in the formulations. The submicrospheres systems exhibited controlled release of folic acid due to the pH-dependent solubility of pectin polymers in aqueous medium. The submicrospheres showed good haemocompatibility suggesting them to be promising candidates for oral delivery.     

几种蒸散模型在玉米农田蒸散量计算中的应用比较

模拟蒸散的物理过程,计算农田蒸散量是进行生态系统水资源评价和管理的重要手段,同时也是气象部门进行土壤湿度预报的首要条件.本研究以玉米农田为研究对象,基于涡度相关法观测的蒸散实测资料,比较分析了基于常规气象数据的蒸散模型(Hargreaves法、Priestlev-Taylor法、FAO-Penman-Monteith法)和基于气象梯度数据的蒸散模型(波文比法、梯度法、生态系统过程模型模拟)的模拟精度.结果表明:①Hargreaves法、Priestley-Taylor法和FAO-Penman-Monteith法日蒸散的模拟结果较为一致,总体上高估20%～26%,其中Priestley-Taylor法模拟结果最优;②生态系统过程模型模拟的农田日蒸散精度较高,但模型中涉及的物理过程和参数较多,在实际应用中难于获取;③波文比法在波文比小于0.4且仪器精度较高时可以得到较准确的估算值.研究同时还指出,仪器的安装高度及高差设计对梯度法估算蒸散十分重要.     

Pressure driven spinning: A multifaceted approach for preparing nanoscaled functionalized fibers, scaffolds, and membranes with advanced materials

Electrospinning, a flexible jet-based fiber, scaffold, and membrane fabrication approach, has been elucidated as having significance to the heath sciences. Its capabilities have been most impressive as it possesses the ability to spin composite fibers ranging from the nanometer to the micrometer scale. Nonetheless, electrospinning has limitations and hazards, negating its wider exploration, for example, the inability to handle highly conducting suspensions, to its hazardous high voltage. Hence, to date electrospinning has undergone an exhaustive research regime to a point of cliché. Thus, in the work reported herein we unveil a competing technique to electrospinning, which has overcome the above limitations and hazards yet comparable in capabilities. The fiber preparation approach unearthed herein is referred to as “pressure driven spinning (PDS).” The driving mechanism exploited in this fiber spinning process is the pressurized by-pass flow. This mechanism allows the drawing of either micro- or nanosized fibers while processing polymeric suspensions containing a wide range of advanced materials spanning structural, functional, and biological entities. Similar to electrospinning if the collection time of these continuous formed fibers is varied, composite scaffolds and membranes are generated. In keeping with our interests, multicompositional structural entities such as these could have several applications in biology and medicine, for example, ranging from the development of three-dimensional cultures (including disease models) to the development of synthetic tissues and organ structures to advanced approaches for controlled and targeted therapeutics.     

A Multidimensional Analysis of the Disability Digital Divide: Some Evidence for Internet Use

Over the last few years, information and communication technologies have become an essential part of daily life, affecting education, employment, and leisure, among other activities. Nonetheless, many individuals still reap few or no benefits from these technologies, and there are resilient gaps in their use. Within this larger context, the authors examine the Internet digital divide between people with and without disabilities from a multidimensional approach. Rather than analyzing the gap in terms of “haves” and “have-nots,” a range of Internet-related dimensions—affordability, motivation and attitudes, skills, usage, and others—is taken into account.     

How Does It Look? Level 2 Perspective‐Taking at 36 Months of Age

Previous research has found that children engage in Level 2 visual perspective-taking, that is, the understanding that others may see things in a different way, between 4 and 5 years of age (e.g., J. H. Flavell, B. A. Everett, K. Croft, & E. R. Flavell, 1981). This ability was reexamined in 36-month-olds using color filters. In Experiment 1 (N = 24), children had to recognize how an object looked to an adult when she saw it through a color filter. In Experiment 2 (N = 24), a novel production test was applied. Results of both studies show that 36-month-olds know how an object looks to another person. The discussion focuses on the psychological requirements of visual perspective-taking and its relation to other "theory of mind" abilities, such as the distinction between appearance and reality and understanding false belief.     

What makes a landmark effective? Sex differences in a navigation task

In Experiment 1, two groups of female rats were trained in a triangular pool to find a hidden platform whose location was defined in terms of a single a landmark, a cylinder outside the pool. For one group, the landmark had only a single pattern (i.e., it looked the same when approached from any direction), while for the other, the landmark contained four different patterns (i.e., it looked different when approached from different directions). The first group learned to swim to the platform more rapidly than the second. Experiment 2 confirmed this difference when female rats were trained in a circular pool but found that male rats learned equally rapidly (and as rapidly as females trained with the single-pattern landmark) with both landmarks. This second finding was confirmed in Experiment 3. Finally, in Experiment 4a and 4b, male and female rats were trained either with the same, single-pattern landmark on all trials or with a different landmark each day. Males learned equally rapidly (and as rapidly as females trained with the unchanged landmark) whether the landmark changed or not. We conclude that male and female rats learn rather different things about the landmark that signals the location of the platform.     

Retrieving and classifying instances of source code plagiarism

Automatic detection of source code plagiarism is an important research field for both the commercial software industry and within the research community. Existing methods of plagiarism detection primarily involve exhaustive pairwise document comparison, which does not scale well for large software collections. To achieve scalability, we approach the problem from an information retrieval (IR) perspective. We retrieve a ranked list of candidate documents in response to a pseudo-query representation constructed from each source code document in the collection. The challenge in source code document retrieval is that the standard bag-of-words (BoW) representation model for such documents is likely to result in many false positives being retrieved, because of the use of identical programming language specific constructs and keywords. To address this problem, we make use of an abstract syntax tree (AST) representation of the source code documents. While the IR approach is efficient, it is essentially unsupervised in nature. To further improve its effectiveness, we apply a supervised classifier (pre-trained with features extracted from sample plagiarized source code pairs) on the top ranked retrieved documents. We report experiments on the SOCO-2014 dataset comprising 12K Java source files with almost 1M lines of code. Our experiments confirm that the AST based approach produces significantly better retrieval effectiveness than a standard BoW representation, i.e., the AST based approach is able to identify a higher number of plagiarized source code documents at top ranks in response to a query source code document. The supervised classifier, trained on features extracted from sample plagiarized source code pairs, is shown to effectively filter and thus further improve the ranked list of retrieved candidate plagiarized documents.     

The neural correlates of working memory training in typically developing children

Working memory training improves children's cognitive performance on untrained tasks; however, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. This was investigated in 32 typically developing children aged 10–14 years (19 girls and 13 boys) using a randomized controlled design and multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (Devon, UK; 2015–2016). Training improved working memory performance and increased intrinsic functional connectivity between the bilateral intraparietal sulci. Furthermore, improvements in working memory were associated with greater recruitment of the left middle frontal gyrus on a complex span task. Repeated engagement of fronto-parietal regions during training may increase their activity and functional connectivity over time, affording greater working memory performance. The plausibility of generalizable cognitive benefits from a neurobiological perspective and implications for neurodevelopmental theory are discussed.     

篮球战术基础配合定量评价方法研究

篮球战术基础配合的质量直接影响全队战术完成的效果和个人技术的发挥。长期以来对篮球战术基础配合运用效果的评价研究却很少见．且大多是定性分析。因此，力图研究一套定量评价与诊断篮球战术基础配合的方法，拟分析在比赛、训练、教学中篮球战术基础配合的运用效果。以定量化实现训练最佳的控制，为各级篮球教练员及教师服务。