gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
On the Performance Variability of Production Cloud Services (2011)

Cloud computing is an emerging infrastructure paradigm that promises to eliminate the need for companies to maintain expensive computing hardware. Through the use of virtualization and resource time-sharing, clouds address with a single set of physical resources a large user base with diverse needs. Thus, clouds have the potential to provide their owners the benefits of an economy of scale and, at the same time, become an alternative for both the industry and the scientific community to self-owned clusters, grids, and parallel production environments. For this potential to become reality, the first generation of commercial clouds need to be proven to be dependable. In this work we analyze the dependability of cloud services. Towards this end, we analyze long-term performance traces from Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine, currently two of the largest commercial clouds in production. We find that the performance of about half of the cloud services we investigate exhibits yearly and daily patterns, but also that most services have periods of especially stable performance. Last, through trace-based simulation we assess the impact of the variability observed for the studied cloud services on three large-scale applications, job execution in scientific computing, virtual goods trading in social networks, and state management in social gaming. We show that the impact of performance variability depends on the application, and give evidence that performance variability can be an important factor in cloud provider selection.
Radiofrequency Encoded Combinatorial Chemistry (1995)

The combinatorial synthesis of peptides on a support can be traced exactly by the incorporation of semi-conductor memory chips in Microreactors containing polymer beads (see picture on the right). Before each coupling step the chip is encoded with a radiofrequency signal (for example A); the sequence of signals encoding the complete amino acid sequence (for example A-B-A) can be read before or after the oligopeptide is cleaved from the support. This approach was used to construct a 24-member peptide library from 96 Microreactors and could be applicable to the synthesis of small organic molecule libraries as well.
How we diagnose and treat iron deficiency anemia (2015)

It is estimated that one-third of the world's population is anemic, the majority being due to iron deficiency (ID). In adults, ID is associated with fatigue in the absence of anemia, restless legs syndrome, pica and, in neonates, delayed growth and development. In adolescents, ID is associated with decrements in learning and behavioral abnormalities. In the absence of a clear cause, search for a source of bleeding is indicated. No single test is diagnostic of ID unless the serum ferritin is low or the percent transferrin saturation is low with an elevated total iron binding capacity. Oral iron is considered front line therapy except for conditions such as gastric bypass, heavy uterine bleeding, inflammatory bowel disease, and hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. Oral iron has many unpleasant side effects, resulting in low patient adherence. For patients intolerant of, or unresponsive to, oral iron, intravenous (IV) administration is the preferred route. While early formulations were associated with a high incidence of serious adverse events (SAEs), newer formulations are much safer with SAEs occurring very infrequently. Full replacement doses can be administered in a matter of minutes to a few hours. Nevertheless, there remains a reluctance to use IV iron due to a misunderstanding of the safety of the available formulations. IV iron is safe and effective in all clinical circumstances including pregnancy. The preponderance of published evidence suggests IV iron therapy is underutilized and we believe that IV iron should be moved forward in the treatment of ID and iron deficiency anemia (IDA).
HMB-45: A Review (1996)

HMB-45, named for the immunogen used (human melanoma, black) is a monoclonal antibody developed 10 years ago by Gown and colleagues to a whole-cell extract of a human melanoma. Over the years, it has been demonstrated that HMB-45 is a highly sensitive and specific reagent for the identification of m
Multimodal Image Registration by Maximization of the Correlation Ratio (1998)

Over the last five years, new &amp;quot;voxel-based&amp;quot; approaches have allowed important leaps in multimodal image registration, notably due to the increasing use of information-theoretic similarity measures. Their wide success has led to the progressive abandon of measures using standard image statistics (mean and variance). Until now, such measures have essentially been based on heuristics. In this paper, we address the determination of a new measure based on standard statistics from a theoretical point of view. We show that it naturally leads to a known concept of probability theory, the correlation ratio. In our derivation, we take as the hypothesis the functional dependence between the image intensities. This means that one image is considered as a model of the other. Although suchahypothesis is not validate in every circumstance, it enables us to incorporate implicitely an a priori smoothness model. We also demonstrate preliminary results of multimodal rigid registration involving Magnetic Resonance (MR), Computed Tomography (CT), and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) images. These results suggest that the correlation ratio provides a good trade-off between accuracy and robustness.
Comparison of Glucose Concentration in Interstitial Fluid, and Capillary and Venous Blood During Rapid Changes in Blood Glucose Levels (2001)

The relationship between glucose concentrations in interstitial fluid (ISF) and blood has generated great interest due to its importance in minimally invasive and noninvasive techniques for measuring blood glucose. The relationship between glucose levels in dermal ISF, and capillary and venous blood was studied with the dermal ISF samples obtained using the suction blister technique. The study was conducted with intensely managed diabetics whose blood glucose levels were manipulated so as to induce rapid changes in blood glucose levels. Glucose levels in the three compartments exhibited high correlations both when individual subjects were considered separately and when data from all subjects were combined. No significant time lag during glucose excursions was observed among the ISF, and capillary and venous glucose levels.
Double-Chain Surfactants with Two Carboxylate Head Groups That Form Vesicles (1996)

Double-chain, double-head group surfactants, 1, were prepared by dispersal of a 1:1 mixture of diastereomeric diacids 3a (r-2-(carboxymethyl)-2,t-5-dipentadecyl-c-4-(carboxymethyl)-1,3-dioxolane) and 3b (r-2-(carboxymethyl)-2,c-5-dipentadecyl-t-4-(carboxymethyl)-1,3-dioxolane) into pH 9.2 and 10.7 carbonate buffers. The resultant small unilamellar vesicles were characterized by 1H NMR spectroscopy, dynamic laser light scattering, differential scanning calorimetry, and gel filtration chromatography. The vesicles at pH 9.2 were larger and had a greater phase transition temperature than those at pH 10.7. These differences were attributed to a greater fraction of carboxyl groups among the carboxyl and carboxylate head groups at the lower pH.
Finding relevant answers in software forums (2011)

Online software forums provide a huge amount of valuable content. Developers and users often ask questions and receive answers from such forums. The availability of a vast amount of thread discussions in forums provides ample opportunities for knowledge acquisition and summarization. For a given search query, current search engines use traditional information retrieval approach to extract webpages containing relevant keywords. However, in software forums, often there are many threads containing similar keywords where each thread could contain a lot of posts as many as 1,000 or more. Manually finding relevant answers from these long threads is a painstaking task to the users. Finding relevant answers is particularly hard in software forums as: complexities of software systems cause a huge variety of issues often expressed in similar technical jargons, and software forum users are often expert internet users who often posts answers in multiple venues creating many duplicate posts, often without satisfying answers, in the world wide web. To address this problem, this paper provides a semantic search engine framework to process software threads and recover relevant answers according to user queries. Different from standard information retrieval engine, our framework infer semantic tags of posts in the software forum threads and utilize these tags to recover relevant answer posts. In our case study, we analyze 6,068 posts from three software forums. In terms of accuracy of our inferred tags, we could achieve on average an overall precision, recall and F-measure of 67%, 71%, and 69% respectively. To empirically study the benefit of our overall framework, we also conduct a user-assisted study which shows that as compared to a standard information retrieval approach, our proposed framework could increase mean average precision from 17% to 71% in retrieving relevant answers to various queries and achieve a Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (nDCG) @1 score of 91.2% and nDCG@2 score of 71.6%.
Adipocyte-derived endotrophin promotes malignant tumor progression (2012)

Adipocytes represent a major cell type in the mammary tumor microenvironment and are important for tumor growth. Collagen VI (COL6) is highly expressed in adipose tissue, upregulated in the obese state, and enriched in breast cancer lesions and is a stimulator of mammary tumor growth. Here, we have described a cleavage product of the COL6α3 chain, endotrophin (ETP), which serves as the major mediator of the COL6-mediated tumor effects. ETP augmented fibrosis, angiogenesis, and inflammation through recruitment of macrophages and endothelial cells. Moreover, ETP expression was associated with aggressive mammary tumor growth and high metastatic growth. These effects were partially mediated through enhanced TGF-β signaling, which contributes to tissue fibrosis and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of tumor cells. Our results highlight the crucial role of ETP as an obesity-associated factor that promotes tumor growth in the context of adipocyte interactions with tumor and stromal cells.
IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) plasma levels are co-ordinately regulated by both IL-1Ra and IL-1β genes (1998)

The genes in the IL-1 complex code for three proteins, IL-1alpha, IL-1beta and the IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1 Ra). The severity of a given infection is influenced by the balance between the levels of IL-1beta, the major extracellular agonist, and that of IL-1 Ra. In healthy individuals, IL-1 Ra is readily detectable in plasma but IL-1beta levels are usually undetectable. As there are polymorphisms in both of these genes, we have now analyzed whether there are allelic associations between these loci and whether these would have an influence on plasma IL-1 Ra levels. In 200 healthy blood donors, the mean plasma IL-1 Ra concentration was 681 pg/ ml. The IL-1Ra allele 2 (IL1RN*2) had a clear influence on IL-1Ra levels: its carriers had higher levels than the non-carriers (745 ng/ml vs. 627 pg/ml, p < 0.05, t-test). As marker alleles for IL-1beta we used two biallelic base-exchange polymorphisms (at positions -511 and +3953 relative to the transcriptional start site). The more rare allele of IL-1beta -511 (allele 2) was significantly associated with the presence of IL-1 Ra allele 2, but in the case of the IL-1beta +3953, the more rare allele (allele 2) was less frequent in the carriers of the IL-1 Ra allele 2. These IL-1beta allelisms did not have a direct influence on plasma IL-1Ra levels, but the enhancing effect of IL-1 Ra allele 2 on IL-1 Ra plasma levels required the presence of the IL-1beta -511 allele 2 or absence of the IL-1beta +3953 allele 2. Taken together, these results indicate that the IL-1beta gene participates in the regulation of IL-1 Ra production in vivo and that the alleles of IL-1beta and IL-1 Ra which demonstrate this cooperative effect are often associated.
Predicting crossover generation in DNA shuffling (2001)

We introduce a quantitative framework for assessing the generation of crossovers in DNA shuffling experiments. The approach uses free energy calculations and complete sequence information to model the annealing process. Statistics obtained for the annealing events then are combined with a reassembly algorithm to infer crossover allocation in the reassembled sequences. The fraction of reassembled sequences containing zero, one, two, or more crossovers and the probability that a given nucleotide position in a reassembled sequence is the site of a crossover event are estimated. Comparisons of the predictions against experimental data for five example systems demonstrate good agreement despite the fact that no adjustable parameters are used. An in silico case study of a set of 12 subtilases examines the effect of fragmentation length, annealing temperature, sequence identity and number of shuffled sequences on the number, type, and distribution of crossovers. A computational verification of crossover aggregation in regions of near-perfect sequence identity and the presence of synergistic reassembly in family DNA shuffling is obtained.
Efficacy of Bunazosin Hydrochloride 0.01% as Adjunctive Therapy of Latanoprost or Timolol (2004)

Bunazosin hydrochloride 0.01% may provide an additional intraocular pressure reduction in patients already receiving latanoprost or timolol. Since adding bunazosin to eyes treated with latanoprost caused a relatively small hypotensive response at 2 weeks and provided a further reduction from 2 weeks to 12 weeks, longer than 4 weeks may be required to evaluate a clinically meaningful response to treatment. Further investigation on more cases and longer follow-up are needed.
CSMA/CA MAC protocols for IP-HORNET: an IP over WDM metropolitan area ring network (2002)

As data traffic increases exponentially, IP over WDM transport will replace conventional SONET transport in metropolitan area networks. Such networks will require new media access control (MAC) protocols to efficiently share network bandwidth among multiple network nodes. This paper describes and evaluates novel and practical carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) MAC protocols for IP over WDM ring networks that handle variable size IP packets without complex variable optical delays or centralized algorithms. Simulation results show that the proposed IP-MAC protocols are efficient and comparable to our selected benchmark and will be implemented in the IP-HORNET testbed.
Mechanism of thiamine transport in neuroblastoma cells. Inhibition of a high affinity carrier by sodium channel activators and dependence of thiamine uptake on membrane potential and intracellular ATP. (1994)

Nerve cells are particularly sensitive to thiamine deficiency. We studied thiamine transport in mouse neuroblastoma (Neuro 2a) cells. At low external concentration, [14C]thiamine was taken up through a saturable high affinity mechanism (Km = 35 nM). This was blocked by low concentrations of the Na+ channel activators veratridine (IC50 = 7 +/- 4 microM) and batrachotoxin (IC50 = 0.9 microM). These effects were not antagonized by tetrodotoxin and were also observed in cell lines devoid of Na+ channels, suggesting that these channels are not involved in the mechanism of inhibition. At high extracellular concentrations, thiamine uptake proceeds essentially via a low affinity carrier (Km = 0.8 mM), insensitive to veratridine but blocked by divalent cations. In both cases, the uptake was independent on external sodium, partially inhibited (10-35%) by depolarization and sensitive to metabolic inhibitors. A linear relationship between the rate of thiamine transport and intracellular ATP concentration was found. When cells grown in a medium of low thiamine concentration (6 nM) were exposed to 100 nM extracellular thiamine, a 3-fold increase in intracellular thiamine diphosphate was observed after 2 h while the concomitant increase in intracellular free thiamine was barely significant. These data suggest a secondary active transport of thiamine, the main driving force being thiamine phosphorylation rather than the sodium gradient.
Pulsed Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dosimetry Using Alpha-Al2O3:C (1996)

α-Al 2 O 3 :C is a highly sensitive material for thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD), but exhibits strong light-induced fading. This light sensitivity can be exploited, however, in optically stimulated luminescence dosimetry (OSLD) when the detector is stimulated with light after exposure to radiation and luminescence is recorded. It is shown that by using pulsed OSL (POSL) with α-Al 2 O 3 :C detectors, light output several times higher than the TL output can be achieved. Dependencies of the POSL signal on the dose of irradiation, and the parameters of laser stimulation (wavelength, power, pulse duration) are presented and discussed. The conclusion is made that POSL, using α-Al 2 O 3 :C, is a very sensitive, fast and flexible technique for use in dosimetry.
Reduced Body Weight and Increased Postimplantation Fetal Death in Tyrosylprotein Sulfotransferase-1-deficient Mice (2002)

Tyrosine sulfation is mediated by one of two Golgi isoenzymes, called tyrosylprotein sulfotransferases (TPST-1 and TPST-2). A relatively small number of proteins are known to undergo tyrosine sulfation, including certain adhesion molecules, G-protein-coupled receptors, coagulation factors, serpins, extracellular matrix proteins, and hormones. As one approach to explore the role of these enzymes in vivo and how they might interact in biological systems, we have generated TPST-1-deficient mice by targeted disruption of the Tpst1 gene. Tpst1(+/-) mice appear normal and, when interbred, yield litters of normal size with a Mendelian genetic distribution and an equal sex distribution. Tpst1(-/-) mice appear healthy but have approximately 5% lower average body weight than Tpst1(+/+) controls. In addition, we show that although fertility of Tpst1(-/-) males and females per se is normal, Tpst1(-/-) females have significantly smaller litters because of fetal death between 8.5 and 15.5 days postcoitum. These findings suggest that there are proteins involved in regulation of body weight and reproductive physiology, which require tyrosine sulfation for optimal function that are yet to be described. Our findings also strongly support the conclusion that TPST-1 and TPST-2 have distinct biological roles that may reflect differences in their macromolecular substrate specificity.
Kryorhizotomy: an alternative technique for lumbar medial branch rhizotomy in lumbar facet syndrome (2003)

Based on this study, patients with LFS who have not undergone previous spinal surgery benefit significantly from percutaneous lumbar kryorhizotomy. Kryorhizotomy, which has virtually no risk, seems to be a valuable alternative technique to lumbar medial branch neurotomy.
Development of Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness During Childhood (2001)

Bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) produces the characteristic pathological abnormalities seen in asthma and clearly plays a central role in the pathophysiology of asthma. The presence of BHR has been demonstrated in infants with asthma, as has the possibility of BHR persisting through the childhood period. The level of BHR may not only reflect the state of the airways, as a marker of airway dysfunction, but may also predict the persistent prognosis of the disease. Thus, measurement of BHR may provide important information about the symptoms and lung function in children with asthma. In view of multiple pathophysiological mechanisms, BHR does not seem to have a single cause. Many potential confounding variables, such as age, gender and genetic status, and some environmental factors, such as allergens, infections, and pollutants, could be responsible for the establishment of childhood BHR. There may be differences between the mechanisms that induce transient BHR and the mechanisms that induce persistent BHR. Also, there may be differences between the causes that induce BHR in the infantile period and the causes that maintain persistent BHR during childhood asthma. There is also disagreement as to the most suitable method to measure BHR in children, especially in infants. The assessment of BHR in young children has not been uniformly successful, and measurements of BHR changes over the childhood period (are associated with a number of problems. To resolve these problems, there may be two ways to study childhood BHR. One is to use age-matched specific techniques to clarify the precise BHR in each age group; the other is to use simple techniques that can be performed over the childhood period on a large number of subjects. In studies of infantile respirator, dysfunction the ultimate goal is to establish a simple, noninvasive method by which measurements of respiratory function may be obtained in infants. Further investigations and acceptable methods will be needed to clarify, the mechanisms involved in the establishment of asthma throughout the childhood period.
Itch and Atopic Dermatitis: An Overview (1999)

Abstract Itching is the hallmark of atopic dermatitis, and a vicious itch‐scratch circle is easily established. Itching and scratching are important factors in the maintenance of symptoms and can have a significant impact on the sufferer's quality of life. The pathophysiology of itch in atopic dermatitis is still not understood. Unlike in urticaria, histamine is not considered to be a major pruritogen in atopic dermatitis. In fact, the peripheral pruritogens and their cellular origin(s) still remain to be identified in this disease. Various treatments are used to relieve the skin inflammation, itching, and scratching in patients with atopic dermatitis, but no specific antipruritic therapy is available. However, several nonspecific therapies can effectively break the vicious itch‐scratch circle. The use of topical corticosteroids and emollients and the elimination of individual trigger factors are still first‐line measures.
PLGA Microspheres Phagocytosis by Pig Alveolar Macrophages: Influence of Polyvinyl alcohol) Concentration, Nature of Loaded-Protein and Copolymer Nature (1999)

The study aimed to investigate on a pig alveolar macrophage culture model the influence of: (1) poly(D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) characteristics, (2) the residual poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and (3) the nature of encapsulated proteins, immunoglobulin Y (IgY) or bovine serum albumin, on the microspheres phagocytosis efficiency. The phagocytosis evaluation was performed by flow cytometry and has allowed a screening of microspheres formulations. The hydrophilicity of microspheres resulting from the nature of the polymer and/ or from the residual hydrophilic surface agent (PVA) led to a decrease of phagocytosis intensity. The phagocytosis results of IgY-loaded microspheres strongly suggested that the phagocytosis was increased when the phagocytic cell possessed a receptor for this protein on its surface.
Refractive index of carcinogen-induced rat mammary tumours (2006)

Near-infrared optical techniques for clinical breast cancer screening in humans are rapidly advancing. Based on the computational inversion of the photon diffusion process through the breast, these techniques rely on optical tissue models for accurate image reconstruction. Recent interest has surfaced regarding the effect of refractive index variations on these reconstructions. Although many data exist regarding the scattering and absorption properties of normal and diseased tissue, no measurements of refractive index appear in the literature. In this paper, we present near-infrared refractive index data acquired from N-methyl-N-nitrosourea-induced rat mammary tumours, which are similar in pathology and disease progression to human ductal carcinoma. Eight animals, including one control, were employed in this study, yielding data from 32 tumours as well as adjacent adipose and connective tissues.