Car Racing Game

This project is a racing and car collecting video game, which can be played by one or more players. A player can buy cars, upgrade owned cars, tune owned cars, and use owned cars to race for money to buy, upgrade, and tune cars. The game runs on a personal computer in a Windows environment and can be played with keyboard, mouse, or a joystick. It can also be ported to other platforms such as Android or iOS. It was developed using Unity3D 5.4 Game Engine and features 3D graphic and physic simulation

Trematodes obtained from snails in giant gourami ponds supplied by well water in Tien Giang province, Vietnam

A study on trematode obtained from freshwater snails in 30 grow-out giant gourami ponds supplied by well water was conducted in Chau Thanh district, Tien Giang province, Vietnam. The snails were sampled in the flooding season (October 2020), the intermediary season (January 2021) and the non-flooding season (April 2021). Eight snail species belonging to 8 genera, 4 families were found including Sermyla tornatella (48.6%), Sinotaia lithophaga (19.3%), Filopaludina sumatrensis (15.4%), Melanoides tuberculata (6.4%), Pomacea sp. (4.7%), Bithynia siamensis (4.2%), Thiara scabra (0.8%) and Tarebia granifera (0.6%). Cercariae were recovered from only two snail species of Melanoides tuberculata with Xiphidio cercariae and Furcocercous cercariae with a prevalence of 7.4%, and Bithynia siamensis with Xiphidio cercariae and Pleurolophocercous cercariae with the infection rate of 6.9%. The trematodes were found in 8 ponds (26.7%), 7 ponds (23.3%), and 3 ponds (10.0%) in the intermediary season, the non-flooding season, and the flooding season, respectively (P>0.05). More research on the epidemiology of trematodes in snails in fishponds should be done to contribute to food safety and sustainable aquaculture

Inhibition of release of vasoactive and inflammatory mediators in airway and vascular tissues and macrophages by a Chinese herbal medicine formula for allergic rhinitis

Herbal therapies are being used increasingly for the treatment of allergic rhinitis. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible pharmacological actions and cellular targets of a Chinese herbal formula (RCM-101), which was previously shown to be effective in reducing seasonal allergic rhinitis symptoms in a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Rat and guinea pig isolated tissues (trachea and aorta) were used to study the effects of RCM-101 on responses to various mediators. Production of leukotriene 134 in porcine neutrophils and of prostaglandin E-2 and nitric oxide (NO) in Raw 264.7 cells were also measured. In rat and guinea pig tracheal preparations, RCM-101 inhibited contractile responses to compound 48/80 but not those to histamine (guinea pig preparations) or serotonin (rat preparations). Contractile responses of guinea pig tracheal preparations to carbachol and leukotriene C-4. and relaxant responses to substance P and prostaglandin E2 were not affected by RCM-101. In rat aortic preparations, precontracted with phenylephrine, endothelium-dependent relaxant responses to acetylcholine and endothelium-independent relaxant responses to sodium nitroprusside were not affected by RCM-101. However, RCM-101 inhibited relaxations to L-arginine in endothelium-denuded rat aortic preparations, which had been pre-incubated with lipopolysaccharide. RCM-101 did not affect leukotriene 134 formation in isolated porcine neutrophils, induced by the calcium ionophore A23187; however, it inhibited prostaglandin E-2 and NO production in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated murine macrophages (Raw 264.7 cells). The findings indicate that RCM-101 may have multiple inhibitory actions on the release and/or synthesis of inflammatory mediators involved in allergic rhinitis

Trajectory Optimization and NMPC Tracking for a Fixed Wing UAV in Deep Stall with Perch Landing

This paper presents a novel recovery technique for a fixed-wing UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) based on constrained optimization: i) we propose a trajectory generation for landing the UAV where it first reduces its altitude by deep stalling, then perches on a recovery net, ii) we design an NMPC (Nonlinear Model Predictive Control) tracking controller with terminal constraints for the optimal generated trajectory under disturbances. Compared to nominal net recovery procedures, this technique greatly reduces the landing time and the final airspeed of the UAV. Simulation results for various wind conditions demonstrate the feasibility of the idea.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure

Faxen relations in solids - a generalized approach to particle motion in elasticity and viscoelasticity

A movable inclusion in an elastic material oscillates as a rigid body with six degrees of freedom. Displacement/rotation and force/moment tensors which express the motion of the inclusion in terms of the displacement and force at arbitrary exterior points are introduced. Using reciprocity arguments two general identities are derived relating these tensors. Applications of the identities to spherical particles provide several new results, including simple expressions for the force and moment on the particle due to plane wave excitation.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

A statistical learning method to fast generalised rule induction directly from raw measurements

Induction of descriptive models is one of the most important technologies in data mining. The expressiveness of descriptive models are of paramount importance in applications that examine the causality of relationships between variables. Most of the work on descriptive models has concentrated on less expressive approaches such as clustering algorithms or rule-based approaches that are limited to a particular type of data, such as association rule mining for binary data. However, in many applications its important to understand the structure of the produced model for further human evaluation. In this research we present a novel generalised rule induction method that allows the induction of descriptive and expressive rules directly from both categorical and numerical features

Investigation of particles size effects in Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) modelling of colloidal suspensions

In the Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) simulation of suspension, the fluid (solvent) and colloidal particles are replaced by a set of DPD particles and therefore their relative sizes (as measured by their exclusion zones) can affect the maximal packing fraction of the colloidal particles. In this study, we investigate roles of the conservative, dissipative and random forces in this relative size ratio (colloidal/solvent). We propose a mechanism of adjusting the DPD parameters to properly model the solvent phase (the solvent here is supposed to have the same isothermal compressibility to that of water)

Inhibition of release of inflammatory in primary and cultured cells by a Chinese herbal medicine formula for allergic rhinitis

BACKGROUND - We demonstrated that a Chinese herbal formula, which we refer to as RCM-101, developed from a traditional Chinese medicine formula, reduced nasal and non-nasal symptoms of seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR). The present study in primary and cultured cells was undertaken to investigate the effects of RCM-101 on the production/release of inflammatory mediators known to be involved in SAR. METHODS - Compound 48/80-induced histamine release was studied in rat peritoneal mast cells. Production of leukotriene B4 induced by the calcium ionophore A23187 was studied in porcine neutrophils using an HPLC assay and lipopolysaccharide-stimulated prostaglandin E2 production was studied in murine macrophage (Raw 264.7) cells by immune-enzyme assay. Expression of cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) was determined in Raw 264.7 cells, using western blotting techniques. RESULTS - RCM-101 (1-100 microg/mL) produced concentration-dependent inhibition of compound 48/80-induced histamine release from rat peritoneal mast cells and of lipopolysaccharide-stimulated prostaglandin E2 release from Raw 264.7 cells. Over the range 1 - 10 microg/mL, it inhibited A23187-induced leukotriene B4 production in porcine neutrophils. In addition, RCM-101 (100 microg/mL) inhibited the expression of COX-2 protein but did not affect that of COX-1. CONCLUSION - The findings indicate that RCM-101 inhibits the release and/or synthesis of histamine, leukotriene B4 and prostaglandin E2 in cultured cells. These interactions of RCM-101 with multiple inflammatory mediators are likely to be related to its ability to reduce symptoms of allergic rhinitis