Comprehensive Analysis of Zinc Oxide and Titanium Dioxide in Mineral Sunscreen Formulations

The inorganic materials of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide were analyzed through in vitro and physical tests to show their significant role in a sunscreen formulation scope. On-market formulas and lab-made prototypes were tested together to understand the relationship of finalized products and the formulation creation process, while highlighting sustainability efforts within personal care and cosmetic formulations. With a UV Spectrophotometer, Sun Protection Factor (SPF), broad spectrum UVA/UVB protection, and critical wavelength were explored, while skin-like substrate and a UV light visualized the differences between formulas

Maximum-throughput mapping of SDFGs on multi-core SoC platforms

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Multicenter, International Study of MIC/ MEC Distributions for definition of epidemiological cutoff values for sporothrix species identified by molecular methods

Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) conditions for testing the susceptibilities of pathogenic Sporothrix species to antifungal agents are based on a collaborative study that evaluated five clinically relevant isolates of Sporothrix schenckii sensu lato and some antifungal agents. With the advent of molecular identification, there are two basic needs: to confirm the suitability of these testing conditions for all agents and Sporothrix species and to establish species-specific epidemiologic cutoff values (ECVs) or breakpoints (BPs) for the species. We collected available CLSI MICs/minimal effective concentrations (MECs) of amphotericin B, five triazoles, terbinafine, flucytosine, and caspofungin for 301 Sporothrix schenckii sensu stricto, 486 S. brasiliensis, 75 S. globosa, and 13 S. mexicana molecularly identified isolates. Data were obtained in 17 independent laboratories (Australia, Europe, India, South Africa, and South and North America) using conidial inoculum suspensions and 48 to 72 h of incubation at 35°C. Sufficient and suitable data (modal MICs within 2-fold concentrations) allowed the proposal of the following ECVs for S. schenckii and S. brasiliensis, respectively: amphotericin B, 4 and 4 /ml; itraconazole, 2 and 2 μg/ml; posaconazole, 2 and 2 μg/ml; and voriconazole, 64 and 32 μg/ml. Ketoconazole and terbinafine ECVs for S. brasiliensis were 2 and 0.12 μg/ml, respectively. Insufficient or unsuitable data precluded the calculation of ketoconazole and terbinafine (or any other antifungal agent) ECVs for S. schenckii, as well as ECVs for S. globosa and S. mexicana. These ECVs could aid the clinician in identifying potentially resistant isolates (non-wild type) less likely to respond to therapy.A. Espinel-Ingroff, D. P. B. Abreu, R. Almeida-Paes, R. S. N. Brilhante, A. Chakrabarti, A. Chowdhary, F. Hagen, S. Córdoba, G. M. Gonzalez, N. P. Govender, J. Guarro, E. M. Johnson, S. E. Kidd, S. A. Pereira, A. M. Rodrigues, S. Rozental, M. W. Szeszs, R. Ballesté Alaniz, A. Bonifaz, L. X. Bonfietti, L. P. Borba-Santos, J. Capilla, A. L. Colombo, M. Dolande, M. G. Isla, M. S. C. Melhem, A. C. Mesa-Arango, M. M. E. Oliveira, M. M. Panizo, Z. Pires de Camargo, R. M. Zancope-Oliveira, J. F. Meis, J. Turnidge

Multicenter, International Study of MIC/MEC Distributions for Definition of Epidemiological Cutoff Values for Sporothrix Species Identified by Molecular Methods

ABSTRACT Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) conditions for testing the susceptibilities of pathogenic Sporothrix species to antifungal agents are based on a collaborative study that evaluated five clinically relevant isolates of Sporothrix schenckii sensu lato and some antifungal agents. With the advent of molecular identification, there are two basic needs: to confirm the suitability of these testing conditions for all agents and Sporothrix species and to establish species-specific epidemiologic cutoff values (ECVs) or breakpoints (BPs) for the species. We collected available CLSI MICs/minimal effective concentrations (MECs) of amphotericin B, five triazoles, terbinafine, flucytosine, and caspofungin for 301 Sporothrix schenckii sensu stricto, 486 S. brasiliensis, 75S. globosa, and 13 S. mexicana molecularly identified isolates. Data were obtained in 17 independent laboratories (Australia, Europe, India, South Africa, and South and North America) using conidial inoculum suspensions and 48 to 72 h of incubation at 35°C. Sufficient and suitable data (modal MICs within 2-fold concentrations) allowed the proposal of the following ECVs for S. schenckii and S. brasiliensis, respectively: amphotericin B, 4 and 4 g/ml; itraconazole, 2 and 2 g/ml; posaconazole, 2 and 2 g/ml; and voriconazole, 64 and 32 g/ml. Ketoconazole and terbinafine ECVs for S. brasiliensis were 2 and 0.12 g/ml, respectively. Insufficient or unsuitable data precluded the calculation of ketoconazole and terbinafine (or any other antifungal agent) ECVs for S. schenckii, as well as ECVs for S. globosa and S. mexicana. These ECVs could aid the clinician in identifying potentially resistant isolates (non-wild type) less likely to respond to therapy

An efficient and complete approach for throughput-maximal SDF allocation and scheduling on multi-core platforms

Our work focuses on allocating and scheduling a synchronous data-flow (SDF) graph onto a multi-core platform subject to a minimum throughput requirement. This problem has traditionally be tackled by incomplete approaches based on problem decomposition and local search, which could not guarantee optimality. Exact algorithms used to be considered reasonable only for small problem instances. We propose a complete algorithm based on Constraint Programming which solves the allocation and scheduling problem as a whole. We introduce a number of search acceleration techniques that significantly reduce run-time by aggressively pruning the search space without compromising optimality. The solver has been tested on a number of non-trivial instances and demonstrated promising run-times on SDFGs of practical size and one order of magnitude speed-up w.r.t. the fastest known complete approach

Precedence Constraint Posting for Cyclic Scheduling Problems

Resource constrained cyclic scheduling problems consist in planning the execution over limited resources of a set of activities, to be indefinitely repeated. In such a context, the iteration period (i.e. the difference between the completion time of consecutive iterations) naturally replaces the makespan as a quality measure; exploiting inter-iteration overlapping is the primary method to obtain high quality schedules. Classical approaches for cyclic scheduling rely on the fact that, by fixing the iteration period, the problem admits an integer linear model. The optimal solution is then usually obtained iteratively, via linear or binary search on the possible iteration period values. In this paper we follow an alternative approach and provide a port of the key Precedence Constraint Posting ideas in a cyclic scheduling context; the value of the iteration period is not a-priori fixed, but results from conflict resolution decisions. A heuristic search method based on Iterative Flattening is used as a practical demonstrator; this was tested over instances from an industrial problem obtaining encouraging results

Global Cyclic Cumulative Constraint

This paper proposes a global cumulative constraint for cyclic scheduling problems. In cyclic scheduling a project graph is periodically re-executed on a set of limited capacity resources. The objective is to find an assignment of start times to activities such that the feasible repetition period \u3bb is minimized. Cyclic scheduling is an effective method to maximally exploit available resources by partially overlapping schedule repetitions. In our previous work [4], we have proposed a modular precedence constraint along with its filtering algorithm. The approach was based on the hypothesis that the end times of all activities should be assigned within the period: this allows the use of traditional resource constraints, but may introduce resource inefficiency. The adverse effects are particularly relevant for long activity durations and high resource availability. By relaxing this restriction, the problem becomes much more complicated and specific resource constrained filtering algorithms should be devised. Here, we introduce a global cumulative constraint based on modular arithmetic, that does not require the end times to be within the period. We show the advantages obtained for specific scenarios in terms of solution quality with respect to our previous approach, that was already superior with respect to state of the art techniques

Throughput propagation in constraint-based design space exploration for mixed-criticality systems

When designing complex mixed-critical systems on multiprocessor platforms, a huge number of design alternatives has to be evaluated. Therefore, there is a need for tools which systematically find and analyze the ample alternatives and identify solutions that satisfy the design constraints. The recently proposed design space exploration (DSE) tool DeSyDe uses constraint programming (CP) to find implementations with performance guarantees for multiple applications with potentially mixed-critical design constraints on a shared platform. A key component of the DeSyDe tool is its throughput analysis component, called a throughput propagator in the context of CP. The throughput propagator guides the exploration by evaluating each design decision and is therefore executed excessively throughout the exploration. This paper presents two throughput propagators based on different analysis methods for DeSyDe. Their performance is evaluated in a range of experiments with six different application graphs, heterogeneous platform models and mixed-critical design constraints. The results suggest that the MCR throughput propagator is more efficient.QC 20170609</p

MPOpt-Cell: a high-performance data-flow programming environment for the CELL BE processor

We present MPOpt-Cell, an architecture-aware framework for high-productivity development and efficient execution of stream applications on the CELL BE Processor. It enables developers to quickly build Synchronous Data Flow (SDF) applications using a simple and intuitive programming interface based on a set of compiler directives that capture the key abstractions of SDF. The compiler backend and system runtime efficiently manage hardware resources