474 research outputs found
Multiobjective memetic algorithm applied to the optimisation of water distribution systems
No full textFinding low-cost designs of water distribution systems (WDSs) which satisfy appropriate levels of network performance within a manageable time is a complex problem of increasing importance. A novel multi-objective memetic algorithm (MA) is introduced as a solution method to this type of problem. The MA hybridises a robust genetic algorithm (GA) with a local improvement operator consisting of the classic Hooke and Jeeves direct search method and a cultural learning component. The performance of the MA and the GA on which it is based are compared in the solution of two benchmark WDS problems of inreacing size and difficulty. Solutions that are superior to those reported previously in the literature were achieved. The MA is shown to outperform the GA in each case, indicating that this may be a useful tool in the solution of real-world WDS problems. The potential benefits from search space reduction are also demonstrated
Carthamus, Salvia and Stachys species protect neuronal cells against oxidative stress-induced apoptosis.
No full textAbstract Context: Finding effective therapies for neurodegenerative diseases is of utmost importance for the aging population. Plants growing in Iran are rich sources of antioxidants and active phytochemicals.The protective capacity of plants, with a special focus on those with reported antioxidant or neuroprotective potential or nervous system-related applications in folk medicine, was tested against oxidative stress-induced apoptosis.Aerial parts of 20 plants including Carthamus, Salvia, and Stachys species were extracted with 80\% methanol and dichloromethane and preincubated with neuronal PC12 cells for 3 h. Oxidative stress and apoptosis were induced by hydrogen peroxide (75 μM, 1 h exposure). Cell viability and intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) were measured by MTT and 2',7'-dichlorofluorescein-diacetate (DCFH-DA) assays, respectively, while apoptosis was determined by annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide staining by a flow cytometer.Eighty percent methanol extracts of Carthamus oxyacantha Bieb. (Asteraceae), Salvia santolinifolia Boiss. (Lamiaceae), and Salvia sclarea L. (Lamiaceae) at the concentration of 100 μg/ml showed significant neuroprotection in the MTT assay by 38.7, 34.7, and 39.5\%, respectively, and inhibited intracellular ROS by 48.6, 61.9, and 61.4\%, respectively. The first two extracts also significantly inhibited apoptosis. Dichloromethane extracts of C. oxyacantha and Stachys pilifera Benth. (Lamiaceae) at the concentration of 25 μg/ml showed neuroprotection by 27.5 and 26.5\%, respectively, and inhibited ROS by 44.5 and 39.4\%, respectively.The above-mentioned plants seem to have important biological activities and their further study may lead to the discovery of new natural therapeutics useful against disorders such as Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases
In search of a poetics of the will
No full textThe essay, which presentsa review of the previous engagements of the author with Ricoeur’sthought, is dedicated to the search for the incomplete poetics in the work ofRicoeur. This poetics represents the horizon of his research overall. The essay offers a personalsolution to the enigma of this incompleteness: on one side the solution is inthe yes said to life in spite of the finitude and the incompleteness ofexistence, on the other side it is in the hermeneutics of the biblicaldiscourse that completes and fulfils the research of the author
ANALISIS KESALAHAN SISWA DALAM MENYELESAIKAN SOAL CERITA MATEMATIKA MATERI ARITMETIKA SOSIAL MENURUT POLYA
No full textERFANI, GITA AULIA. 2020. Analisis Kesalahan Siswa Dalam Menyelesaikan Soal Cerita Matematika Materi Aritmetika Sosial Menurut Polya (Studi Penelitian pada Siswa Kelas VII Semester Genap SMP Negeri 11 Kota Tegal Tahun Pelajaran 2019/2020). Skripsi. Pendidikan Matematika. Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan. Universitas Pancasakti Tegal.
Pembimbing I M. Shaefur Rokhman., M.Si
Pembimbing II Rizqi Amaliyakh S., M.Pd
Kata Kunci : Analisis, Kesalahan Siswa, Soal Cerita Matematika, Materi Aritmetika Sosial, Polya
Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk : (1) Mendeskripsikan kesalahan yang dilakukan siswa kelas VII dalam menyelesaikan soal cerita matematika materi aritmetika sosial menurut Polya, dan (2) Mendeskripsikan faktor-faktor yang menyebabkan kesalahan yang dilakukan siswa kelas VII dalam menyelesaikan soal cerita matematika materi aritmetika sosial menurut Polya.
Jenis penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif kualitatif. Subjek penelitian adalah siswa kelas VII A SMP Negeri 11 Kota Tegal Tahun Pelajaran 2019/2020. Pengambilan subjek menggunakan nilai tes Penilaian Tengah Semester Genap sebanyak 6 subjek yaitu 2 subjek dari kelompok tinggi, 2 subjek dari kelompok sedang, dan 2 subjek dari kelompok rendah. Teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan dokumentasi dan wawancara.
Hasil penelitian dapat disimpulkan bahwa : (1) Kesalahan yang dilakukan siswa, antara lain: (a) Kesalahan pada langkah memahami masalah termasuk ke dalam kategori yang cukup tinggi. Pada kesalahan memahami masalah, siswa tidak menuliskan apa yang diketahui dan ditanyakan dalam soal, (b) Pada kesalahan menyusun rencana, siswa kurang tepat dalam menyusun langkah-langkah penyelesaian dalam soal, (c) Pada kesalahan melaksanakan rencana, siswa tidak menuliskan rumus yang digunakan dalam menyelesaikan soal, siswa lupa atau salah menuliskan operasi dalam perhitungan, salah dalam menghitung, dan tidak menuliskan kesimpulan sesuai dengan permasalahan yang diberikan, (d) Pada kesalahan memeriksa kembali solusi yang diperoleh, siswa tidak memeriksa kembali solusi yang diperoleh, dan siswa kurang tepat memperoleh jawaban akhir. (2) Faktor penyebab kesalahan yang dilakukan siswa, yaitu: (a) Siswa tidak memahami maksud dari soal sehingga tidak menyertakan yang diketahui dan ditanyakan pada soal, (b) Siswa tidak mampu mengaitkan kalimat matematika yang ada pada soal, dan tidak mengetahui langkah mana yang dipilih dalam menyusun rencana, (c) Siswa tidak hafal rumus untuk menyelesaikan permasalahan yang diberikan, siswa tidak teliti dalam proses perhitungan, siswa tidak menuliskan kesimpulan sesuai dengan permasalahan yang diberikan dan konsep dasar perkalian kurang, (d) Siswa tidak memeriksa kembali langkah dalam melaksanakan rencana apakah sudah benar atau salah, (e) Rendahnya motivasi belajar siswa, (f) Terpengaruh dengan teman
M. Afzal Upal
No full textThis paper reports on a multiagent model of the emergence of social groups inspired by charismatic individuals such as new religious movement leaders. The Agent-based Information Entrepreneur Model (AIM) is based on the recently proposed cognitive theory of new religious movements and has been used to study various aspects of the emergence, maintenance, and growth of ideological organizations. The paper explores the role that differences in the cognitive capacities among various agents play by allowing agents to model other actors in their environment at different levels. The results show that higher cognitive capacity is an advantage but not a deciding factor
A Mechanistic Understanding of North American Monsoon and Microphysical Properties of Ice Particles
No full textA mechanistic understanding of the North American Monsoon (NAM) is suggested by incorporating local- and synoptic-scale processes. The local-scale mechanism describes the effect sea surface temperature (SST) in Gulf of California (GC) and how it contributes to the low-level moisture during the 2004 NAM. Before NAM onset, the strong low-level temperature inversion exists over the GC, but this inversion weakens with increasing GC SST and generally disappears once SSTs exceed 29.5°C, allowing the moist air, trapped in the MBL, to mix with free tropospheric air. This leads to a deep, moist layer that can be transported toward the NAM regions to produce thunderstorms. The synoptic scale mechanism is based on climatologies from 1983 to 2010 and explains that the warmest SSTs moving up the coast contributes to NAM convection and atmospheric heating, and consequently advancing the position of the anticyclone and the region of descent northward.In order to improve microphysical properties of ice clouds, this study develops self-consistent second order polynomial mass- and projected area-dimension (m-D and A-D) expressions that are valid over a much larger size range, compared to traditional power laws. Such expressions can easily be reduced to power laws for the size range of interest, in order to use in cloud and climate models. This was done by combining field measurements of individual ice particle m and D with airborne optical probe measurements of D, A and estimates of m. The resulting m-D and A-D expressions are functions of temperature and cloud type (synoptic vs. anvil), and are in good agreement with m-D power laws developed from recent field studies. These expressions also appear representative for heavily rimed dendrites occurring over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. By using the m-D field measurements of rimed and unrimed particles, and by developing theoretical methods, an approach was suggested for calculating rimed m and A, which has the benefit of accounting for the degree of riming, and therefore it produces a gradual and continuous growth from unrimed ice particles to graupel. The treatment for riming includes a parameterization for collision efficiency as a function of droplet size and ice particle size using the available numerical studies. A rimed snow growth model (RSGM) was developed based on the growth processes of vapor diffusion, aggregation, and riming. The RSGM uses a measured radar reflectivity at cloud top for initialization, and then predicts the vertical evolution of size spectra. The RSGM is based on the zeroth- and second- moment conservation equations with respect to mass, and thus conserves the number concentration and radar reflectivity, respectively. The size spectra predicted by the RSGM are in good agreement with observed spectra during Lagrangian spiral descents through frontal clouds. The snowfall rate with the inclusion of riming is significantly greater than that produced by the vapor deposition and aggregation alone. Snowfall rates are found to be sensitive to the cloud drop size distribution
A novel diblock copolymer of (monomethoxy poly [ethylene glycol]-oleate) with a small hydrophobic fraction to make stable micelles/polymersomes for curcumin delivery to cancer cells
No full textVahid Erfani-Moghadam,1,6 Alireza Nomani,2 Mina Zamani,3 Yaghoub Yazdani,4 Farhood Najafi,5 Majid Sadeghizadeh1,3 1Department of Nanobiotechnology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; 2Department of Pharmaceutics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran; 3Department of Genetics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; 4Infectious Diseases Research Center and Laboratory Science Research Center, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Golestan, Iran; 5Department of Resin and Additives, Institute for Color Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran; 6Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Advanced Medical Technology, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran Abstract: Curcumin is a potent natural anticancer agent, but its effectiveness is limited by properties such as very low solubility, high rate of degradation, and low rate of absorption of its hydrophobic molecules in vivo. To date, various nanocarriers have been used to improve the bioavailability of this hydrophobic biomaterial. This study investigates the encapsulation of curcumin in a novel nanostructure of monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-oleate (mPEG-OA) and its anticancer effect. Tests were done to determine the critical micelle concentration (CMC), encapsulation efficiency, drug-loading efficiency, and cytotoxicity (against U87MG brain carcinoma cells and HFSF-PI3 cells as normal human fibroblasts) of some nanodevice preparations. The results of fluorescence microscopy and cell-cycle analyses indicated that the in vitro bioavailability of the encapsulated curcumin was significantly greater than that of free curcumin. Cytotoxicity evaluations showed that half maximal inhibitory concentrations of free curcumin and curcumin-loaded mPEG-OA for the U87MG cancer cell line were 48 µM and 24 µM, respectively. The Annexin-V-FLUOS assay was used to quantify the apoptotic effect of the prepared nanostructures. Apoptosis induction was observed in a dose-dependent manner after curcumin-loaded mPEG-OA treatments. Two common self-assembling structures, micelles and polymersomes, were observed by atomic force microscopy and dynamic light scattering, and the abundance of each structure was dependent on the concentration of the diblock copolymer. The mPEG-OA micelles had a very low CMC (13.24 µM or 0.03 g/L). Moreover, atomic force microscopy and dynamic light scattering showed that the curcumin-loaded mPEG-OA polymersomes had very stable structures, and at concentrations 1,000 times less than the CMC, at which the micelles disappear, polymersomes were the dominant structures in the dispersion with a reduced size distribution below 150 nm. Overall, the results from these tests revealed that this nanocarrier can be considered as an appropriate drug delivery system for delivering curcumin to cancer cells. Keywords: anticancer agent, nanocarrier, encapsulation, bioavailability, apoptosis, critical micelle concentratio
A Mechanistic Understanding of North American Monsoon and Microphysical Properties of Ice Particles
No full textA mechanistic understanding of the North American Monsoon (NAM) is suggested by incorporating local- and synoptic-scale processes. The local-scale mechanism describes the effect sea surface temperature (SST) in Gulf of California (GC) and how it contributes to the low-level moisture during the 2004 NAM. Before NAM onset, the strong low-level temperature inversion exists over the GC, but this inversion weakens with increasing GC SST and generally disappears once SSTs exceed 29.5°C, allowing the moist air, trapped in the MBL, to mix with free tropospheric air. This leads to a deep, moist layer that can be transported toward the NAM regions to produce thunderstorms. The synoptic scale mechanism is based on climatologies from 1983 to 2010 and explains that the warmest SSTs moving up the coast contributes to NAM convection and atmospheric heating, and consequently advancing the position of the anticyclone and the region of descent northward. In order to improve microphysical properties of ice clouds, this study develops self-consistent second order polynomial mass- and projected area-dimension (m-D and A-D) expressions that are valid over a much larger size range, compared to traditional power laws. Such expressions can easily be reduced to power laws for the size range of interest, in order to use in cloud and climate models. This was done by combining field measurements of individual ice particle m and D with airborne optical probe measurements of D, A and estimates of m. The resulting m-D and A-D expressions are functions of temperature and cloud type (synoptic vs. anvil), and are in good agreement with m-D power laws developed from recent field studies. These expressions also appear representative for heavily rimed dendrites occurring over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. By using the m-D field measurements of rimed and unrimed particles, and by developing theoretical methods, an approach was suggested for calculating rimed m and A, which has the benefit of accounting for the degree of riming, and therefore it produces a gradual and continuous growth from unrimed ice particles to graupel. The treatment for riming includes a parameterization for collision efficiency as a function of droplet size and ice particle size using the available numerical studies. A rimed snow growth model (RSGM) was developed based on the growth processes of vapor diffusion, aggregation, and riming. The RSGM uses a measured radar reflectivity at cloud top for initialization, and then predicts the vertical evolution of size spectra. The RSGM is based on the zeroth- and second- moment conservation equations with respect to mass, and thus conserves the number concentration and radar reflectivity, respectively. The size spectra predicted by the RSGM are in good agreement with observed spectra during Lagrangian spiral descents through frontal clouds. The snowfall rate with the inclusion of riming is significantly greater than that produced by the vapor deposition and aggregation alone. Snowfall rates are found to be sensitive to the cloud drop size distribution
A fast handover M-MANET with QoS support
No full textLooking at the progress of mobile-IP in the recent years, there's a sense that IP (for QoS support, IPv6 more specifically) is going to be involved more and more in wireless applications. The current IETF standard for mobility is the Mobile IP (RFC 3344 for IPv4 and RFC 3775 for IPv6) both work by changing the IP address when changing the subnet. Both Mobile IPv4 and IPv6 suffer from longer handover delays mainly due to AAA (authentication, authorization and accounting) signalling and IP address configuration. There are numerous proposals out there, which try to either optimize Mobile IP or use different mechanisms for a certain domain. What proposed here is the deployment of existing technologies binding to a new approach in handling QoS and smooth and technology independent handoffs, thanks to the MPLS mechanism and to the adaptive characteristics of Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs). This paper discusses a mechanism for a fast handoff in Mobile-IPv6 architecture. Fast handoff in mobile-IP is used for facilitating applications such as videoconferencing, Internet telephony, and other applications that require minimal delays and packet drops. In our proposal, multipath routing approach facilitates the communication between M-MANET entities "Mobile Node (MN), Correspondent Nodes (CN), and Home Agent (HA)". These entities are all IPv6-Ad-Hoc-MPLS-ready elements and this is an MPLS Mobile-IPv6 Ad-Hoc Network (M-MANET) topology, therefore QoS will be maintained through the usage of this integration. With simulation results we discuss the overall functionality. © 2005 IEEE
Flowr: Enhancing Dynamic Market Audience Creation
No full textOmnicom Media Group (OMG) is a company heavily involved in marketing and advertising. Our client is Annalect, a solutions provider that helps the marketers of OMG to make data actionable. OMG has processed cookie data to help their marketers set up advertisement campaigns. They buy this cookie data from a 3rd party. They also manage, however, a vast amount of cookie data themselves, which is currently partly unused. In order for the marketers to use this data, Annalect needs to process and prepare database views for them. To let the marketers, who have no database knowledge, be able to manipulate these views, they create dashboards with 3rd party software called Tableau. Annalect wants us to create an application in which they can set up these dashboards for the marketers so they can manipulate the cookie data and use it for their advertisement campaigns. As a result we have created a web application which supports the workflow of the marketer. After some setup by the people from Annalect, a marketer can sign into our application, choose a dashboard, start working with the cookie data and send the manipulated data off to create an advertisement campaign. All this is done without leaving our application. The data the marketers manipulate in our application is just a small snippet of the complete data set. Since the complete data set contains much more data, it needs to be processed by server clusters paid for by Annalect. This processing is done at night, in order to cut the cost of running the server cluster. After the processing, the result has to be sent to Google DoubleClick Campaign Manager. Furthermore, the ability to use machine learning algorithms was requested by Annalect. This has been implemented through a generic pipeline, which supports multiple machine learning models. A model based on gradient boosting is included as a proof of concept. In order to evaluate the application some tests were done. Different aspects need different tests. Firstly, a usability test was performed with the end users to test the User Interface. Secondly, unit tests were made where it was applicable. Lastly, the machine learning model was evaluated using the recall precision method and K-fold cross validation method.The application has some aspects which have ethical interest. Managing vast amounts of cookie data needs to be done discretely as personal information can be derived from such data. Having cookie data leak can cause damage to individuals who supplied this data. Besides that, the right to explanation law coming into effect next year will force companies to explain why their computer models made certain decisions or classifications. This has implications for machine learning models used by our application. And finally, the users of the program have to be aware that they are using sensitive data about individuals, which they have to act upon accordingly.Final project BScComputer Scienc
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