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This study aims to examine whether Globularia alypum (Ga) lyophilized aqueous leaves extract treatment improves cardiometabolic syndromes such as hyperglycemia, lipid profiles and oxidative damage resulting from a high-fructose diet induced in hypertriglyceridemic rats.

A total of 24 male Wistar rats weighing 80 ± 5 g were first randomly divided into 2 groups. A total of 12 control rats (C) were fed a standard-diet (St-D) and 12 high fructose (HF) rats were fed a high-fructose diet (HF-D) containing St-D in which cornstarch was substituted by fructose (61.4%). After 15 weeks of feeding, body weight (BW) was about 320 ± 20 g and hypertriglyceridemia was noted in HF vs C group (2.69 ± 0.49 mmol/L) vs (1.25 ± 0.33 mmol/L). Each group of rats was then divided into two equal groups (n = 6) and fed during four weeks either a St-D or HF-D, treated or not with 1% of Ga extract (C-Ga) and (HF-Ga). After 28 days, fasting rats were anesthetized and blood and tissues were removed to measure biochemical parameters.

The results showed no significant differences in BW and insulinemia between all groups. Ga extract supplementation reduced glycemia (−36%), glycosylated hemoglobin (−37%), Homeostasis Model of Assessment-Insulin Resistance index (−34%) and triacylglycerol’s contents in plasma (−33%), very low density lipoproteins–low density lipoproteins (VLDL-LDL) (−48%), liver (−52%) and aorta (−39%); total cholesterol concentrations in aorta was 3.7-fold lower in HF-Ga vs HF group. Ga treatment reduced lipid peroxidation in plasma, VLDL-LDL, red blood cells (RBC), liver, muscle and kidney by improving superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) in RBC and catalase (CAT) activity in kidney (p < 0.05). Moreover, Ga ameliorates glutathione (GSH) production in RBC (+41%) and kidney tissues (+35%).

Ga extract ameliorated cardiometabolic syndrome by its hypotriglyceridemic effect and prevented development of insulin resistance. It reduces lipid peroxidation by enhancing non-enzymatic (GSH) and enzymatic (SOD, GPx and CAT) antioxidant defense systems in high-fructose hypertriglyceridemic rats. Therefore, supplementation of Ga leaves extract as an adjuvant could be used for the treatment of hypertriglyceridemia and the prevention and/or the management of cardio-metabolic adverse effects.

This paper gives a bibliographical review of the finite element and boundary element parallel processing techniques from the theoretical and application points of view. Topics include: theory – domain decomposition/partitioning, load balancing, parallel solvers/algorithms, parallel mesh generation, adaptive methods, and visualization/graphics; applications – structural mechanics problems, dynamic problems, material/geometrical non‐linear problems, contact problems, fracture mechanics, field problems, coupled problems, sensitivity and optimization, and other problems; hardware and software environments – hardware environments, programming techniques, and software development and presentations. The bibliography at the end of this paper contains 850 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with presented subjects that were published between 1996 and 2002.

The main purpose of this work is to overcome the difficulty to manage large, dynamic business processes formed from the complicated interplay of business processes of distinct organizations, which take part of strategic alliances of organizations (joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions) and have their software systems as part of complex, large software-intensive systems called Systems of Systems (SoS). Hence, the authors introduce the novel concept of Processes-of-Business Processes (PoP), deepening on their characteristics and related key terms.

Based on the systematically retrieved and analyzed literature and on the authors’ experience from research/industrial projects, the authors defined PoP and have applied them in the Brazilian public health SoS, which involve several organizations and their business processes and their independent software systems as well.

Provided by PoP, a new understanding of the large, dynamic business processes of alliances of organizations is fundamental to advance both the state of the art and the state of the practice on business process management.

The adoption of PoP in other real-world scenarios is still required to get quantitative evidence.

The adoption of PoP can certainly contribute to the success of new businesses and even promoting sustainability and longevity of SoS, which are in fact deeply impacted by business processes.

The concept of PoP can change the mindset of the research community and practitioners about how large, dynamic business processes should be seen and further managed.

The transient thermal behaviour, based on a rigorous transient thermodynamic treatment, of a power VDMOS transistor during turn‐off is presented. The time variation of the interior lattice temperature within the device is calculated by self‐consistently solving the fully coupled Poisson's equation and transient electron continuity equation together with the transient heat flow equation. The simulation takes account of temperature dependent heat conduction and capacity and includes thermoelectric currents due to temperature gradient. To make the transient thermal simulation more robust, a new analytical expression for heat capacity is used.

Low-carbon agricultural technology (LAT) extension is a key strategy for the agricultural sector to address climate change. Social capital, which consists of social networks, trust and norms, can play an active LAT extension role. This paper aims to analyze the mechanism of the role of social capital in the process of LAT extension.

Questionnaire data from six counties in Jiangsu, China, were used to measure social capital and analyze its effect on LAT extension using logistic regression. Data from 27 interviews were used to analyze the LAT extension experiences and problems.

LAT is mainly deployed by the government to farmers and distributed among them. In this process, the village officials who form parts of the government’s composition and the villagers play a dual role that facilitates a close link between them and the farmers and ensures LAT integration. However, social norms did not play a significant role in the process.

Farmers’ acceptance of LAT is based solely on the trade-off between local networks’ benefits and trust in local villagers and village officials. LAT-related laws and technical measures, thus are essential to strengthen LAT practices’ authority and incorporate LAT-based agricultural production as the norm of production behavior.

This paper provides an insight into the process and essence of farmers’ acceptance of LAT, which provides theoretical lessons for the LAT extension in China and indeed other developing countries.

This paper aims to model the coupled on-chip Copper (Cu) interconnects by using the multiresolution time-domain (MRTD) method.

The proposed model is a wavelet-based numerical method for analyzing signal integrity and propagation delay of coupled on-chip interconnects. Moreover, the dependency of crosstalk noise and delay on coupling parasitics (L12, C12) are analyzed.

The proposed MRTD method captures the behaviour of propagation delay and peak crosstalk noise on victim line against coupling parasitics, which is in close agreement with that of H simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (HSPICE). The average error for the proposed model is less than 1 per cent with respect to HSPICE for the estimation of peak crosstalk noise voltage.

Simulations are performed using HSPICE and compared with those performed using the proposed MRTD method for global interconnect length with 130-nm technology, where the computations of the proposed model are carried out using Matlab.

The MRTD method with its unique features is tailored for modelling interconnects. To build further credence to this and its profound existence in the latest state-of-art works, simulations of crosstalk noise and propagation delay, for coupled Cu interconnect lines, using MRTD and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) are executed. The results illustrated the dominance of MRTD method over FDTD in terms of accuracy.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of research on robotics in travel, tourism and hospitality, and to identify research gaps and directions for future research.

This paper analyzes 131 publications published during 1993-2019, identified via Scopus, Web of Science, ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Google Scholar. It offers quantitative analysis of frequencies and cross-tables and qualitative thematic analysis of the publications within each of seven identified domains.

The paper identifies “Robot,” “Human,” “Robot manufacturer,” “Travel/tourism/hospitality company,” “Servicescape,” “External environment” and “Education, training and research” as the research domains. Most research studies are dedicated to robots in restaurants, airports, hotels and bars. Papers tend to apply engineering methods, but experiments and surveys grow in popularity. Asia-Pacific countries account for much of the empirical research.

The analysis was limited to publications indexed in four databases and one search engine. Only publications in English were considered. Growing opportunities for those who are anxious to publish in the field are identified. Importantly, emerging research is branching out from the engineering of robots to the possibilities for human/robot interactions and their use for service providers, opening up new avenues of research for tourism and hospitality scholars.

The paper identified a myriad of application areas for robots across various tourism and hospitality sectors. Service providers must critically think about how robots affect the servicescape and how it needs to be adjusted or re-imagined to ensure that robots and employees can augment the service experiences (co-)created within it.

This is the first study to systematically analyze research publications on robotics in travel, tourism and hospitality.

本论文全面评论了在旅游酒店业中的机器人技术的研究, 并指出文献缺口和未来研究方向。

本论文分析了在1993年至2019年发布在Scopus、Web of Science、ResearchGate、Academia.edu、和Google Scholar的131篇文献。本论文对文献做了一系列定量分析, 包括频率分析、交叉表、定性文本分析、在七大确立的领域中对每个领域的文献进行分析。

本论文确立了七个研究领域：机器人、人类、机器生产者、旅游酒店企业、Servicescape、外部环境、和教育培训和研究。大多数文献集中在对饭店、机场、酒店、和酒吧的机器人研究。文献往往采用工程手段进行研究, 但是实验和问卷方式正在呈增长趋势。亚太国家占据大多数实证研究作品。

本论文样本库局限于四个数据库和一个搜索引擎。只有英文文献被采样。本论文为对相关领域感兴趣的学者指出研究方向。重要的是, 本论文发现用工程角度研究机器人的文献有了分支, 有一小部分文献开始着手研究人/机器人交互和其在服务过程中的使用的研究, 这对旅游酒店学者提供新研究视角。

本论文指出了一系列有关旅游酒店领域中机器人的应用。服务商必须重视机器人如何影响Servicescape以及如何审视机器人与人的交互, 确保其与员工加强消费者的服务体验（价值共创）。

本论文是首篇系统评论旅游酒店领域中机器人研究文献的文章。

关键词：机器人、机器人经济、机器人设计、机器人使用、Servicescape、rService、人-机器人交互、研究议程

In the process of cold rolled strip, there is tight coupling between flatness control and gauge control. The variation of the roll gap caused by the change of bending force will lead to the change of rolling force. Furthermore, it can cause a deep impact on the control accuracy of strip exit thickness and exit crown. The purpose of this paper is to improve the accuracy of the bending force preset value for cold rolled strip.

In this paper, the bending force preset control strategy with considering of rolling force was proposed for the first time and the preset objective function of bending force was established on the basis of the two-objective optimization of bending force and rolling force. Meanwhile, the multi-objective intelligent algorithm – INSGA-II – was used to solve the objective function.

The proposed bending force multi-objective preset model has been tested in a 1,450 mm tandem cold rolling line. The analyzed results of field data show that the deviations of strip exit thickness and exit crown are reduced effectively by using the improved model, and at the same time, more reasonable bending force preset values are obtained, which can enhance the accuracy of flatness preset control.

A preset model of bending force with considering flatness and gauge is proposed in this paper and the multi-objective function of bending force preset is established on the basis of the two-objective optimization of bending force and rolling force. The value lies in proposing a new decoupling method of rolling force and bending force.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief, descriptive overview of Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) research with particular reference to studies on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

A search of electronic databases was carried out to identify English language articles on TSC. The literature was explored in more detail with a focus on neurodevelopmental disorders associated with TSC such as ASD.

The review included 3,679 references. The earliest articles identified were published in the early twentieth century. Since then research on TSC has advanced rapidly and is being carried out worldwide. Just 62 studies have focused on ASD in TSC, although the number of publications is increasing over time.

More research on ASD in TSC is needed to benefit those affected by TSC and the broader ASD scientific community.

Practitioners working with children and adults with ASD should be aware of the wider health issues experienced by those with genetic conditions such as TSC. Similarly, clinicians working with those who have TSC should be aware of the high prevalence of ASD in the group and implications for the way they work with their patients.

This is the first paper to map and characterise the scientific literature on TSC. There remains a focus on the biomedical aspects of TSC with fewer studies on psychosocial/educational or family impacts. The review concludes with recommended research questions for the future.