gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Direct evidence for a β1-adrenergic receptor–directed autoimmune attack as a cause of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (2004)

Today, dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) represents the main cause of severe heart failure and disability in younger adults and thus is a challenge for public health. About 30% of DCM cases are genetic in origin; however, the large majority of cases are sporadic, and a viral or immune pathogenesis is suspected. Following the established postulates for pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, here we provide direct evidence that an autoimmune attack directed against the cardiac β(1)-adrenergic receptor may play a causal role in DCM. First, we immunized inbred rats against the second extracellular β(1)-receptor loop (β(1)-EC(II); 100% sequence identity between human and rat) every month. All these rats developed first, receptor-stimulating anti–β(1)-EC(II) Ab’s and then, after 9 months, progressive severe left ventricular dilatation and dysfunction. Second, we transferred sera from anti–β(1)-EC(II)–positive and Ab-negative animals every month to healthy rats of the same strain. Strikingly, all anti–β(1)-EC(II)–transferred rats also developed a similar cardiomyopathic phenotype within a similar time frame, underlining the pathogenic potential of these receptor Ab’s. As a consequence, β(1)-adrenergic receptor–targeted autoimmune DCM should now be categorized with other known receptor Ab-mediated autoimmune diseases, such as Graves disease or myasthenia gravis. Although carried out in an experimental animal model, our findings should further encourage the development of therapeutic strategies that combat harmful anti–β(1)-EC(II) in receptor Ab–positive DCM patients.
Distributed Receding Horizon Control of Vehicle Platoons: Stability and String Stability (2011)

This paper considers the problem of distributed control of a platoon of vehicles with nonlinear dynamics. We present distributed receding horizon control algorithms and derive sufficient conditions that guarantee asymptotic stability, leader-follower string stability, and predecessor-follower string stability, following a step speed change in the platoon. Vehicles compute their own control in parallel, and receive communicated position and velocity error trajectories from their immediate predecessor. Leader-follower string stability requires additional communication from the lead car at each update, in the form of a position error trajectory. Predecessor-follower string stability, as we define it, implies leader-follower string stability. Predecessor-follower string stability requires stricter constraints in the local optimal control problems than the leader-follower formulation, but communication from the lead car is required only once at initialization. Provided an initially feasible solution can be found, subsequent feasibility of the algorithms are guaranteed at every update. The theory is generalized for nonlinear decoupled dynamics, and is thus applicable to fleets of planes, robots, or boats, in addition to cars. A simple seven-car simulation examines parametric tradeoffs that affect stability and string stability. Analysis on platoon formation, heterogeneity and size (length) is also considered, resulting in intuitive tradeoffs between lead car and following car control flexibility.
A single histidine in GABAA receptors is essential for benzodiazepine agonist binding. (1992)

Benzodiazepines (BZ) modulate neurotransmitter-evoked chloride currents at the gamma-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptor, the major inhibitory ion channel in the mammalian brain. This receptor is composed of structurally distinct subunits whose numerous molecular variants underlie the observed diversity in the properties of the BZ site. Pharmacologically distinct BZ sites can be recreated by the recombinant coexpression of any one of six alpha subunits, a beta subunit variant, and the gamma 2 subunit. In these receptors the alpha variant determines the affinity for ligand binding of the BZ site. Notably, the alpha 1 and alpha 6 variants impart on alpha chi beta 2 gamma 2 receptors high and negligible affinity, respectively, to BZ ligands with sedative as well as anxiolytic activities. By exchanging domains between the alpha 1 and alpha 6 variants, we show that a portion of the large extracellular domain determines sensitivity toward these ligands. Furthermore, we identify a single histidine residue in the alpha 1 variant, replaced by an arginine in alpha 6, as a major determinant for high affinity binding of BZ agonists. This residue also plays a role in determining high affinity binding for BZ antagonists. Hence, this histidine present in the alpha 1, alpha 2, alpha 3, and alpha 5 subunits appears to be a key residue for the action of clinically used BZ ligands.
Puzzles and paradoxes in protein adsorption (1995)

J. J. Ramsden, Chem. Soc. Rev., 1995, 24, 73 DOI: 10.1039/CS9952400073
Attenuation and efficacy of human parainfluenza virus type 1 (HPIV1) vaccine candidates containing stabilized mutations in the P/C and L genes (2007)

The rHPIV1-CR84G/Delta170HNT553ALY942A and rHPIV1-CR84G/Delta170HNT553ALDelta1710-11 vaccine candidates are clearly highly attenuated in AGMs and clinical trials are planned to address safety and immunogenicity in humans.
A Comparative Evaluation of Intranasal Dexmedetomidine and Intranasal Midazolam for Premedication in Children : A Double Blind Randomised Controlled Trial (2011)

Premedications frequently are administered in children to alleviate the stress and fear of treatment as well as to ease child-parent separation and promote a smooth induction of anesthesia. Midazolam is the most commonly used drug for this purpose till now. Midazolam may not be the most suitable preoperative sedative and anxiolytic in all children and in all circumstances. Clonidine, an α2 agonist, has been suggested as an alternative. Dexmedetomidine is a more α2 selective drug with favorable pharmacokinetic properties than clonidine. Intranasal administration is relatively easy and with high bioavailability than oral route. This study is conducted to evaluate whether intranasal dexmedetomidine is as effective as intranasal midazolam for premedication in children. Children premedicated with 1 μg/kg of intranasal dexmedetomidine attained more significant and satisfactory sedation at parental separation and at induction of anesthesia than those patients who received 0.2mg/kg of intranasal midazolam. The sedation produced by dexmedetomidine differs from other sedatives as patients may be easily aroused and cooperative.
Multiple frequency range imaging to remove measurement ambiguity (2009)

Abstract: Range imaging systems use a specialised sensor to capture an image where object distance (range) is measured for every pixel using time-of-flight. The scene is illuminated with an amplitude modulated light source, and the phase of the modulation envelope of the reflected light is measured to determine flight time, hence object distance for each pixel. As the modulation waveform is cyclic, an ambiguity problem exists if the phase shift exceeds 2π radians. To overcome this problem we demonstrate a method that superposes two different modulation frequencies within a single capture. This technique reduces the associated overhead compared with performing two sequential measurements, allowing the system to retain high range measurement precision at rapid acquisition rates. A method is also provided to avoid interference from aliased harmonics during sampling, which otherwise contaminate the resulting range measurement. Experimental results show the potential of the multiple frequency approach; producing high measurement precision while avoiding ambiguity. The results also demonstrate the limitation of this technique, where large errors can be introduced through a combination of a low signal to noise ratio and suboptimal selection of system parameters. 1.
Detail-on-demand hypervideo (2003)

We demonstrate the use of detail-on-demand hypervideo in interactive training and video summarization. Detail-on-demand video allows viewers to watch short video segments and to follow hyperlinks to see additional detail. The player for detail-on-demand video displays keyframes indicating what links are available at each point in the video. The Hyper-Hitchcock authoring tool helps users create hypervideo by automatically dividing video into clips that can be combined in a direct manipulation interface. Clips can be grouped into composites and hyperlinks can be placed between clips and composites. A summarization algorithm creates multi-level hypervideo summaries from linear video by automatically selecting clips and placing links between them.
Thin Polymer Layers Formed by Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Techniques on Biological Surfaces (1999)

Thin polymer films were formed on models of tissue surfaces using polyelectrolyte multilayer techniques, to evaluate the feasibility of using such techniques to build barrier materials onto the surfaces of tissues to improve postsurgical healing, or on the surfaces of tissue-engineered implants. By incubating heterogeneous surfaces with a polycation, followed by a polyanion, layers of polyelectrolyte were deposited onto the surfaces, as confirmed by ellipsometry and water contact angle measurement. Particularly favorable properties were found using the polyelectrolytes polylysine and alginate, which are capable of forming complex gels at physiologic pH; whereas others have demonstrated linear growth in film thickness, with this system, exponential growth was observed under certain conditions, which may be very useful in the coating of heterogeneous surfaces. Surfaces that were treated with multilayer techniques included gelatin, fibroblast extracellular matrix, and fibrillar type I collagen. All surfaces tested were highly heterogeneous and highly adhesive to cells before treatment. The formed thin polymer layers were found to be relatively bioinert, and the thicknesses of the assembles were found to be correlated with bioinertness, such that interactions of cells with the underlying proteinaceous surface could be prevented. The thickness of the polymer layers could be changed by increasing the number of bilayers adsorbed and also by changing the treatment and washing conditions so as to enhance the formation of complex gels.
Real time, video image centroid tracker (1990)

A real time image centroid tracker has been developed and is presently being used for laser beam alignment in the Aurora Laser Fusion project at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Aurora is one of the three national inertial confinement fusion energy experiments. The Aurora beam control systems are required to achieve angular beam pointing accuracy of up to 0.25 microradians by precision control of optical mirrors up to 44 inches in diameter. The centroid tracker is part of a PS 170 video image processing system which provides the precision beam position information that is the feedback portion of a stochastic control system for beam pointing. Mechanical vibration and electronic noise inherent in the system is used to enhance, rather than degrade, positional resolution. This system is capable of yielding centroid position information accurate to within a very small fraction of one pixel. The centroid tracker is presently implemented on one Multibus board using primarily HCT 7400 series logic and large PLDs. Digitized R5170 video is supplied as the board's input. The video image's centroid information is supplied by the board every 33 milliseconds as the board's output. A unique hardware algorithm used on the board allows very high resolution, real time tracking with a relatively small amount of electronics. Included on the board is circuitry used to distinguish image pixels from noise and background pixels. Other applications of the centroid tracker might include pick and place robot arm control, military target tracking and pointing, intruder localization and, in general, very high resolution, real time image position tracking. The board can be modified relatively easily to allow real time, multiple object centroid tracking and we expect to do this in the future. The first of the Aurora beam control systems requires that 96 laser beams be simultaneously controlled. The multiple centroid tracker board will make it possible to do image processing at a higher rate, leading to increased position resolution, while still maintaining control system bandwidth.
Ventilatory Response to Induced Auditory Arousals During NREM Sleep (1997)

Sleep state instability is a potential mechanism of central apnea/hypopnea during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. To investigate this postulate, we induced brief arousals by delivering transient (0.5 second) auditory stimuli during stable NREM sleep in eight normal subjects. Arousal was determined according to American Sleep Disorders Association (ASDA) criteria. A total of 96 trials were conducted; 59 resulted in cortical arousal and 37 did not result in arousal. In trials associated with arousal, minute ventilation (VE) increased from 5.1 +/- 1.24 minutes to 7.5 +/- 2.24 minutes on the first posttone breath (p = 0.001). However, no subsequent hypopnea or apnea occurred as VE decreased gradually to 4.8 +/- 1.5 l/minute (p > 0.05) on the fifth posttone breath. Trials without arousal did not result in hyperpnea on the first breath nor subsequent hypopnea. We conclude that 1) auditory stimulation resulted in transient hyperpnea only if associated with cortical arousal; 2) hypopnea or apnea did not occur following arousal-induced hyperpnea in normal subjects; 3) interaction with fluctuating chemical stimuli or upper airway resistance may be required for arousals to cause sleep-disordered breathing.
A profile- and community-driven book recommender system (2015)

Book lovers often struggle to find something new to read. The choice of possible books to read can be overwhelming and confusing, making this subjective decision-making process quite difficult. Searching the Internet we often stumble upon opinions and book ratings of people who are strangers to us. We do not know what their favorite categories, authors, publishers and taste in books are, nor whether we should trust them. As a possible solution to the above mentioned problems, we present Pickbooks - a Web application that is partly a social network and partly a book database. It integrates the social aspects of today's popular social networks into a book recommender system, and not the other way around. It features book recommendation based on previously read books or personal preferences. It allows users to message and follow people they like, see their updates, reviews and get recommendations from them, and vice versa. The users are encouraged to rate a book they have read before, as those ratings affect the global lists of top rated and currently popular books. There are other features which are in the works and will allow us to further improve the presented application and attract more audience.
Re(CO)5Br-Catalyzed Coupling of Epoxides with CO2 Affording Cyclic Carbonates under Solvent-Free Conditions (2004)

In the presence of a catalytic amount of Re(CO)(5)Br, the coupling of epoxides with supercritical CO(2) without an organic solvent at 110 degrees C has afforded cyclic carbonates in good to excellent yields.
A secure identity-based capability system (2003)

The author presents the design of an identity-based capability protection system called ICAP, which is aimed at a distributed system in a network environment. The semantics of traditional capabilities are modified to incorporate subject identities. This enables the monitoring, mediating, and recording of capability propagations to enforce security policies. It also supports administrative activities such as traceability. The author has developed an exception-list approach to achieve rapid revocation and the idea of capability propagation trees for complete revocation. Compared with existing capability system designs, ICAP requires much less storage and has the potential of lower cost and better real-time performance. The author proposes to expand R.Y. Kain and C.E. Landwehr's (1987) design taxonomy of capability-based systems to cover a wider range of designs.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>
Requirement of Src-Family Tyrosine Kinases in Fat Accumulation (2005)

Src-family tyrosine kinases mediate many receptor signals to various biological responses. Here we investigate the requirement of Src-family tyrosine kinases in adipogenesis. The biochemical mechanism by which insulin induces adipogenesis, converting fibroblast cells to adipocytes, is not clear. We show that fibroblast cells deficient of three ubiquitously expressed Src-family members (Src, Yes, and Fyn), SYF cells, are refractory to hormonally induced fat accumulation. The defect is rescued by reintroduction of c-Src into SYF cells. Furthermore, Src-family tyrosine kinases are required in the early steps of insulin signaling; it is responsible for the tyrosine phosphorylation of adaptor protein c-Cbl. Deficiency of c-Cbl blocked adipogenesis. These genetic and biochemical data clearly demonstrate that Src-family tyrosine kinases serve as a critical signal relay, via phosphorylation of c-Cbl, for fat accumulation, and provide potential new strategies for treating obesity.
Androgens, Estrogens, and Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin in Middle-Aged Men* (1990)

Although the administration of estrogens and androgens can affect the concentrations of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) in men, the relationships between endogenous estrogens and androgens and SHBG are uncertain. Therefore, in a randomly selected cohort of 1640 middle-aged men we measured androgen, estrogen, and SHBG concentrations and obtained the subjects' weight, ethanol intake, and smoking histories. The data were analyzed by stepwise multiple regression, with SHBG as the dependent variable, to compare the role of hormones with that of other factors in the control of SHBG levels. Neither estrone or estradiol nor the testosterone/estradiol ratio was predictive of SHBG levels. However, SHBG concentrations were positively correlated with total testosterone and negatively correlated with percent free and percent albumin-bound testosterone. SHBG concentrations were negatively correlated with estrone sulfate, but were positively correlated with the testosterone/estrone sulfate ratio and the concentrations of free and albumin-bound testosterone. In addition, in all models tested age and body mass index (wt/ht2), but not smoking or ethanol, were strong predictors of SHBG concentrations. Thus, when present in physiological amounts in the blood as a result of glandular secretion, there is a positive relationship between SHBG concentrations and testosterone and, to a lesser extent, free- and albumin-bound testosterone, but age and body mass index appear to be more important in predicting the SHBG concentration.
Unsupervised and active learning in automatic speech recognition for call classification (2004)

A key challenge in rapidly building spoken natural language dialog applications is minimizing the manual effort required in transcribing and labeling speech data. This task is not only expensive but also time consuming. We present a novel approach that aims at reducing the amount of manually transcribed in-domain data required for building automatic speech recognition (ASR) models in spoken language dialog systems. Our method is based on mining relevant text from various conversational systems and Web sites. An iterative process is employed where the performance of the models can be improved through both unsupervised and active learning of the ASR models. We have evaluated the robustness of our approach on a call classification task that has been selected from AT&T VoiceTone/sup SM/ customer care. Our results indicate that with unsupervised learning it is possible to achieve a call classification performance that is only 1.5% lower than the upper bound set when using all available in-domain transcribed data.
High activity and stability of hammerhead ribozymes containing 2'-modified pyrimidine nucleosides and phosphorothioates. (1994)

The influence of chemical modifications on the catalytic activity and stability of a hammerhead ribozyme directed against the long terminal repeat RNA of the human immunodeficiency virus 1 was examined. Previous studies had shown that substitution of all pyrimidine nucleosides by their 2'-fluoro analogs led to an 8-fold decrease in catalytic efficiency in the cleavage reaction compared to the unmodified ribozyme (Heidenreich, O., and Eckstein, F. (1992) J. Biol. Chem. 267, 1904-1909). It is shown here that replacement of the 2'-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridines in the conserved region of this ribozyme, positions 4 and 7, by 2'-amino-2'-deoxyuridines fully restores catalytic activity of the ribozyme. Ribozymes containing these 2'-modifications show an increased stability against RNases present in fetal calf serum and in cell culture supernatant. The stability is increased further by the incorporation of four terminal phosphorothioates as protection against 3'-exonucleases, the degree of which depends on the secondary structure of the ribozyme. Such ribozymes are stable in undiluted fetal calf serum for at least 24 h. The results clearly demonstrate the potential to design stable ribozymes without any loss of catalytic activity.
Differential expression of the epidermal growth factor receptor and its ligands in primary non-small cell lung cancers and adjacent benign lung. (1993)

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and one of its ligands, transforming growth factor alpha (TGF-alpha), are thought to function as a potential autocrine loop in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the expression pattern of EGFR and the TGF-alpha-related ligands have not been fully characterized in primary NSCLC and adjacent benign lung tissue. For this reason, we comprehensively examined the coexpression and differential expression of EGFR and its ligands, TGF-alpha, epidermal growth factor (EGF), and amphiregulin (AR), by Northern analysis, in paired samples of primary tumors and uninvolved lung. For those RNA species overexpressed in malignant lung, single cell expression patterns were studied by immunohistochemistry. Specimens were obtained from 57 consecutive patients who underwent resection of carefully staged resectable NSCLC and were followed prospectively. Most (112 of 114) tissue samples yielded high-quality RNA. EGFR was expressed in 82 of 88 (93%) tissue samples, while TGF-alpha was expressed in 62 of 72 (86%) samples, and AR was expressed in 64 of 70 (92%) samples. EGF was unexpressed in total cellular RNA in both tumor and uninvolved lung. In a comparison of RNA expression patterns in tumors and uninvolved lung, overexpression of EGFR was found in 45% (22 of 44) of tumors, while overexpression of TGF-alpha was seen in 61% (22 of 36) of tumors, and decreased expression of AR was seen in 63% (22 of 35) of tumors. Cell type and stage did not influence differential expression, indicating that this is a frequent event in primary NSCLC. Simultaneous overexpression of EGFR and TGF-alpha was seen in only 38% of tumors. Simultaneous overexpression of EGFR and decreased expression of AR were seen in only 21% of tumors. Thus far, the differential expression of EGFR, TGF-alpha, and AR does not correlate with either disease-free or overall survival. These findings indicate that histologically dissimilar tumors can express similar components of autocrine or paracrine growth factor loops. Differential expression of EGFR and its ligands in tumor specimens compared to uninvolved lung is a common event in NSCLC and may participate in tumor growth without necessarily influencing tumor progression or histology.