Towards a Driving Training System to Support Cognitive Flexibility

Driving under unfamiliar conditions, such as unfamiliar traffic system and unfamiliar vehicle configuration during overseas holidays, might cause fatality, injury or property damage. In these cases, a driver needs to apply their prior knowledge to a new driving situation in order to drive safely. This ability is called cognitive flexibility. Prior research has found that left/mixed-handed people show superior cognitive flexibility in tasks required such ability than right-handed people. This paper aims to explore the relationships among cognitive flexibility, handedness and the types of errors drivers make, specifically at roundabouts and intersections in an unfamiliar driving condition. We conducted an experiment using a right-hand driving simulator and a left-hand simulated traffic scenario as a driving condition to collect the related data to driving at roundabout and intersection. All participants were not familiar with that condition. We found that left/mixed-handed drivers show a significantly superior cognitive flexibility at a turn-left roundabout and intersection. Also left/mixed handed drivers make a significantly fewer number of errors than right-handed drivers when entering the roundabout and approaching the intersection

Physicochemical traits of seedless barberry (Berberis vulgaris L.) fruits stored under refrigeration as affected by heat and calcium chloride treatments

The loss of chemical characteristics and quality of the fresh seedless barberry fruit during storage and qualitative losses of its dried fruit are the most important postharvest challenges in barberry industry and its exports. The fresh harvested fruit samples were dried using an electrical drier at 50°C to 50% moisture content. Thereafter, the effects of hot water alone (65°C for 45 sec), and hot water + 2% calcium chloride were carried out on the quality maintenance and chemicals during the cold storage of seedless barberry. The results showed that the samples treated with calcium chloride stored at 2°C had the highest TSS over time, whereas the titratable acidity of barberry fruits was not significantly affected by postharvest treatments. Hot water alone or in combination with calcium chloride treatment increased redness and chroma values result in better appearance quality than control. In addition, the treatments reduced the variable L* and thereby enhanced fruit lightness. The highest antioxidant content (% 77.92) was observed in hot water treated samples and the lowest (% 54.28) was obtained on control. Also, the highest amount of anthocyanins and antioxidants were obtained from samples treated with hot water. Only calcium chloride treatment had a significant effect on Ca content of the samples. The results revealed that postharvest application of hot water and calcium chloride treatments improved the appearance quality and nutritional values of fresh seedless barberry fruit, as well as extend the cold storage life, likely due to reduced pathogen contamination

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles catalyzed synthesis of Hantzsch esters and polyhydroquinoline derivatives

1,4-Dihydropyridine and polyhydroquinoline derivatives have been prepared efficiently in a one-pot synthesis via Hantzsch condensation using nanosized titanium dioxide as a heterogeneous catalyst. The present methodology offers several advantages such as excellent yields, short reaction times (30-120 min), environmentally benign, and mild reaction conditions. The catalyst can be readily separated from the reaction products and recovered in excellent purity for direct reuse

Analysing the effect of a dynamic physical environment network on the travel dynamics of forcibly displaced persons in Mali

Data Availability Statement: The exact code used for this work is available here: https://github.com/djgroen/flee/tree/pt-accessibility; All input files are available here: https://github.com/djgroen/FabFlee/tree/aed751fd10333ed4394578f48133b6cb0e733242/config_files/mali-freek; Output files can be generated using the code and input files (see https://flee.readthedocs.io for instructions).Supplementary Materials: Electronic Supplementary Material for this paper is available at: https://www.sciltp.com/journals/ijndi/2024/1/348/s1.As of 2023, the world has approximately 100 million refugees, many of whom have been displaced by violent conflicts. Accurately predicting where these people may go can help non-government organisations (NGOs) and other support organisations to more effectively help these refugees. In this paper, we extend the existing flee migration forecasting model which models migration using intelligent agents with a dynamic network that represents the physical environment. In doing so, we integrate time-dependent data into four different characteristics from three public data sources. We obtain data from aspects such as the slope, drainage, soil and infrastructure, and use these aspects to systematically modify the movement preferences of forcibly displaced agents in the flee model. We showcase our approach by applying it to the 2012 northern Mali conflict. We find that numerous routes previously deemed traversable are actually inaccessible for prolonged periods according to sensor data, and a range of off-road routes are instead traversable for vehicles. We also perform a validation comparison with the original modelling approach, and find that our revised representation of travel routes leads to a reduction of 4.5% in the averaged relative difference. Our approach can be reused in other flee conflict contexts, of which five are present in the EU-funded ITFLOWS project alone. Our work provides the ability to represent a dynamic physical environment and potentially improves the simulation accuracy in a range of flee conflict situations.This work was supported by the ITFLOWS project and the HiDALGO project, both of which have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 882986 and 824115, respectively. In addition, this work was supported by EPSRC under grant agreement EP/W007711/1

Clinical Grade Human Adipose Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cell Banking

In this study, our aim was to produce a generation of GMP-grade adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells for clinical applications. According to our results, we fulfill to establish consistent and also reproducible current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) compliant adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells from five female donors. The isolated cells were cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10 fetal bovine serum and characterized by standard methods. Moreover, karyotyping was performed to evaluate chromosomal stability. Mean of donors' age was 47.6 ± 8.29 year, mean of cell viability was 95.6 ± 1.51, and cell count was between 9�106 and 14�106 per microliter with the mean of 12.2�106 ± 2863564.21 per microliter. The main aim of this project was demonstrating the feasibility of cGMP-compliant and clinical grade adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells preparation and banking for clinical cell transplantation trials

Clinical grade human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cell banking

In this study, our aim was to produce a generation of GMP-grade adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells for clinical applications. According to our results, we fulfill to establish consistent and also reproducible current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) compliant adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells from five female donors. The isolated cells were cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10 fetal bovine serum and characterized by standard methods. Moreover, karyotyping was performed to evaluate chromosomal stability. Mean of donors� age was 47.6 ± 8.29 year, mean of cell viability was 95.6 ± 1.51, and cell count was between 9�106 and 14�106 per microliter with the mean of 12.2�106 ± 2863564.21 per microliter. The main aim of this project was demonstrating the feasibility of cGMP-compliant and clinical grade adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells preparation and banking for clinical cell transplantation trials. © 2015 Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Genetic Variants of Cytochrome b-245, Alpha Polypeptide Gene and Premature Acute Myocardial Infarction Risk in An Iranian Population

Background: Oxidative stress induced by superoxide anion plays critical roles in the pathogenesis of coronary artery disease (CAD) and hence acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The major source of superoxide production in vascular smooth muscle and endothelial cells is the NADPH oxidase complex. An essential component of this complex is p22phox, that is encoded by the cytochrome b-245, alpha polypeptide (CYBA) gene. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of CYBA variants (rs1049255 and rs4673) and premature acute myocardial infarction risk in an Iranian population. Methods: The study population consisted of 158 patients under the age of 50 years, with a diagnosis of premature AMI, and 168 age-matched controls with normal coronary angiograms. Genotyping of the polymorphisms was performed by the polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Results: There was no association between the genotypes and allele frequencies of rs4673 polymorphism and premature acute myocardial infarction (P>0.05). A significant statistical association was observed between the genotypes distribution of rs1049255 polymorphism and AMI risk (P=0.037). Furthermore, the distribution of AA+AG/GG genotypes was found to be statistically significant between the two groups (P=0.011). Conclusions: Our findings indicated that rs1049255 but not rs4673 polymorphism is associated with premature AMI