gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Real Options (2008)

A firm's capital investment opportunities include valuable options that the firm should explicitly consider during project evaluation. The traditional DCF method ignores the extra value associated with real options, such as the possibility of deferring the start of the project or proceeding in stages to take advantage of new information the firm might obtain or advances in technology that might occur over time. In contrast, real-options analysis allows the firm to value these options explicitly and calculate a more inclusive value for each project. Real-options analysis is very useful in evaluating projects that consist of two or more discrete stages at the end of which the firm will decide whether to continue the project or abandon it. The analysis indicates what corporate action is value-maximizing at each stage of the project, contingent on the information available at the time. It is especially useful for large projects, such as natural resource development, where a firm would like to defer committing to spend large sums on final development until it is reasonably certain the investment is worthwhile.
Isomeric Trisaryloxycyclotriphosphazene Polymer Precursors (1990)

Substances useful for making heat-and fire-resistant polymers. Cyclotriphosphazene-based monomers and polymer precursors led to development of high-temperature materials. Cyclotriphosphazene-derived monomers, polymer precursors, and polymers becoming important from both industrial and scientific points of view. Presence of phosphazene moiety in cyclotriphosphazene-based monomers and polymer precursors expected to impact special properties in desired high-performance materials containing inorganic backbones for aerospace applications. Useful for obtaining heat-and fire-resistant polymers for composites, adhesives, molding powders, and coating laminates. Also used in structures (e.g. secondary structures in aircraft), in construction of spacecraft, and in electronics and computer industries.
Structure of hyaluronan during acid-catalyzed hydrolysis, a kinetic study of both chain scission and disaggregation (2011)

Aqueous hyaluronan (HA) solutions were hydrolyzed at pH 1.1, at various temperatures, and followed by (1) determining the increase in concentration of reducing sugar ends, and by (2) measuring the reduction in light-scattering intensity. The first method measures the chain scissions per unit time. The second method measures the change in particle size in time. From the determined chain scission rate, the evolution of the weight-averaged molecular mass of chains can be calculated. Under the assumption that the formed chain fragments immediately dissociate from the parent particle this would be equal to the evolution of the particle mass. However, the observed decay of light-scattering intensity relates to a much slower decrease of weight-averaged particle mass than predicted. Therefore, chain scission does not necessarily lead to immediate particle dissociation. Temperature-dependent measurements show that both chain scission and dissociation have similar activation energies of 97 ± 3 and 101 ± 10 kJ mol−1 respectively, showing that these two processes are coupled, and that scission is the rate-limiting process in the dissociation. The kinetic data have been interpreted using a model in which cleaved oligomers only dissociate from the parent particle if they are smaller than a critical number of disaccharide units. The critical number amounts to 26 to 33 units. From our studies accurate HA hydrolysis conditions can be extracted to obtain a desired molecular-weight distribution. Additional circular dichroism measurements show that at neutral pH, 80% of the bond angles in the HA random coil are consistent with a flat strand structure, and 20% are consistent with a double helix structure; under our applied hydrolysis conditions, HA completely possesses the flat strand structure.
Neo-epitope Peptides as Biomarkers of Disease Progression for Muscular Dystrophies and Other Myopathies (2016)

For several decades, serological biomarkers of neuromuscular diseases as dystrophies, myopathies and myositis have been limited to routine clinical biochemistry panels. Gauging the pathological progression is a prerequisite for proper treatment and therefore identifying accessible, easy to monitor biomarkers that can predict the disease progression would be an important advancement. Most muscle diseases involve accelerated muscle fiber degradation, inflammation, fatty tissue substitution and/or fibrosis. All these pathological traits have been shown to give rise to serological peptide biomarkers in other tissues, underlining the potential application of existing biomarkers of such traits in muscle disorders. A significant quantity of tissue is involved in these pathological mechanisms alongside with qualitative changes in protein turnover in myofibrillar, extra-cellular matrix and immunological cell protein fractions accompanied by alterations in body fluids. We propose that protein and peptides can leak out of the afflicted muscles and can be of use in diagnosis, prediction of pathology trajectory and treatment efficacy. Proteolytic cleavage systems are especially modulated during a range of muscle pathologies, thereby giving rise to peptides that are differentially released during disease manifestation. Therefore, we believe that pathology-specific post-translational modifications like cleavages can give rise to neoepitope peptides that may represent a promising class of peptides for discovery of biomarkers pertaining to neuromuscular diseases.
Trafficking defects and loss of ligand binding are the underlying causes of all reported DDR2 missense mutations found in SMED-SL patients (2010)

Spondylo-meta-epiphyseal dysplasia (SMED) with short limbs and abnormal calcifications (SMED-SL) is a rare, autosomal recessive human growth disorder, characterized by disproportionate short stature, short limbs, short broad fingers, abnormal metaphyses and epiphyses, platyspondyly and premature calcifications. Recently, three missense mutations and one splice-site mutation in the DDR2 gene were identified as causative genetic defects for SMED-SL, but the underlying cellular and biochemical mechanisms were not explored. Here we report a novel DDR2 missense mutation, c.337G>A (p.E113K), that causes SMED-SL in two siblings in the United Arab Emirates. Another DDR2 missense mutation, c.2254C>T (p.R752C), matching one of the previously reported SMED-SL mutations, was found in a second affected family. DDR2 is a plasma membrane receptor tyrosine kinase that functions as a collagen receptor. We expressed DDR2 constructs with the identified point mutations in human cell lines and evaluated their localization and functional properties. We found that all SMED-SL missense mutants were defective in collagen-induced receptor activation and that the three previously reported mutants (p.T713I, p.I726R and p.R752C) were retained in the endoplasmic reticulum. The novel mutant (p.E113K), in contrast, trafficked normally, like wild-type DDR2, but failed to bind collagen. This finding is in agreement with our recent structural data identifying Glu113 as an important amino acid in the DDR2 ligand-binding site. Our data thus demonstrate that SMED-SL can result from at least two different loss-of-function mechanisms: namely defects in DDR2 targeting to the plasma membrane or the loss of its ligand-binding activity.
A statistical method for correlating in-line defectivity to probe yield (2002)

Improving yield in semiconductor production requires continuous effort and the application of complex fools. The task is further complicated when new products with smaller dimensions are introduced. Popular methods for identitfying yield enhancement opportunities include defect map overlays, trend charts, failure analysis, defect source analysis, paretos of classified defects and killer defect classification. Statistical methods for yield enhancement offer another choice of analysis techniques. The statistical method described here uses both the electrical bin failures from probe and the defects found with in-line inspections. The probability that defects added at each inspection result in a bin failure at probe is calculated. The correlation includes all of the wafers inspected in-line and covers both ASIC and BiCMOS products. A killer factor is determined for each level of inspection by defect type. Using this data, a six sigma defect density specification is set for each layer so that corrective actions can be taken before there is a significant yield impact at probe. The data also identifies layers with high killer factors as areas of focus for yield enhancement. A case study is presented with the correlation of defects by layer and by classification. The statistical method provides valuable information that can be used to identify opportunities for yield improvement and set SPC limits on in line measurements. The numerical format provides solid information to supplement the softer methods typically used in yield and defect analysis.
OCRL1Modulates Cilia Length in Renal Epithelial Cells (2012)

Lowe syndrome is an X-linked disorder characterized by cataracts at birth, mental retardation and progressive renal malfunction that results from loss of function of the OCRL1 (oculocerebrorenal syndrome of Lowe) protein. OCRL1 is a lipid phosphatase that converts phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate to phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate. The renal pathogenesis of Lowe syndrome patients has been suggested to result from alterations in membrane trafficking, but this cannot fully explain the disease progression. We found that knockdown of OCRL1 in zebrafish caused developmental defects consistent with disruption of ciliary function, including body axis curvature, pericardial edema, hydrocephaly and impaired renal clearance. In addition, cilia in the proximal tubule of the zebrafish pronephric kidney were longer in ocrl morphant embryos. We also found that knockdown of OCRL1 in polarized renal epithelial cells caused elongation of the primary cilium and disrupted formation of cysts in three-dimensional cultures. Calcium release in response to ATP was blunted in OCRL1 knockdown cells, suggesting changes in signaling that could lead to altered cell function. Our results suggest a new role for OCRL1 in renal epithelial cell function that could contribute to the pathogenesis of Lowe syndrome.
Chaperone activation of the hepadnaviral reverse transcriptase for template RNA binding is established by the Hsp70 and stimulated by the Hsp90 system (2007)

Hepadnaviruses are DNA viruses that replicate by protein-primed reverse transcription, employing a specialized reverse transcriptase (RT), P protein. DNA synthesis from the pregenomic RNA is initiated by binding of P to the epsilon signal. Using epsilon as template and a Tyr-residue for initiation, the RT synthesizes a DNA oligo (priming) as primer for full-length DNA. Priming strictly requires prior RT activation by chaperones. Active P-epsilon complexes have been reconstituted in vitro, but whether in addition to the heat-shock protein 70 (Hsp70) system the Hsp90 system is essential has been controversial. Here we quantitatively compared Hsp70 versus Hsp70 plus Hsp90 RT activation, and corroborated that the Hsp70 system alone is sufficient; however, Hsp90 as well the Hsp70 nucleotide exchange factor Bag-1 markedly stimulated activation by increasing the steady-state concentration of the activated metastable RT form P*, though by different mechanisms. Hsp90 inhibition in intact cells by geldanamycin analogs blocked hepadnavirus replication, however not completely and only at severely cytotoxic inhibitor concentrations. While compatible with a basal level of Hsp90 independent in vivo replication, unambiguous statements are precluded by the simultaneous massive upregulation of Hsp70 and Hsp90.
Cystic Fibrosis: A New Target for 4-Imidazo[2,1-b]thiazole-1,4-dihydropyridines (2011)

The pharmacology of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) Cl(-) channel has attracted significant interest in recent years with the aim to search for rational new therapies for diseases caused by CFTR malfunction. Mutations that abolish the function of CFTR cause the life-threatening genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF). The most common cause of CF is the deletion of phenylalanine 508 (ΔF508) in the CFTR chloride channel. Felodipine, nifedipine, and other antihypertensive 1,4-dihydropyridines (1,4-DHPs) that block L-type Ca(2+) channels are also effective potentiators of CFTR gating, able to correct the defective activity of ΔF508 and other CFTR mutants ( Mol. Pharmacol. 2005 , 68 , 1736 ). For this purpose, we evaluated the ability of the previously and newly synthesized 4-imidazo[2,1-b]thiazoles-1,4-dihydropyridines without vascular activity and inotropic and/or chronotropic cardiac effects ( J. Med. Chem. 2008 , 51 , 1592 ) to enhance the activity of ΔF508-CFTR. Our studies indicate compounds 17, 18, 20, 21, 38, and 39 as 1,4-DHPs with an interesting profile of activity.
A Novel Circular Array Structure and Particle Swarm Optimization in Aperture Synthesis Radiometers (2015)

A novel array configuration, circular lattice array (CLA), to generate uniform rectangular grid u-v coverage for aperture synthesis radiometers is introduced. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to finding optimal CLA configurations. To evaluate the advantages of the CLA over previously proposed circular arrays, a comparative study is carried out by analyzing the performance of the CLA in terms of both the number of samples in u-v coverage and the computation cost of the fitness function in optimization algorithm. The obtained optimization results for 5-30 elements are also presented.
Terahertz bolometric detection by thermal noise in graphene field effect transistor (2015)

Monolayer (MLG) and bilayer (BLG) graphene devices have been fabricated with integrated antennas and have been investigated for a wideband terahertz (THz) detection at room temperature (RT). The devices show opposite (metallic vs. semiconducting, respectively) temperature coefficients of their resistance, which enable us to achieve a reproducible THz response via bolometric heating. The bolometric nature of this response is inferred by determining the spectral density of the 1/f resistance noise exhibited by the devices, as a function of the incident THz power. With increasing power, the spectral density varies in the two devices in a manner that reflects the opposite signs of their resistance temperature coefficients. The bolometric response is furthermore confirmed for both devices by the variation of their Hooge parameter as a function of the THz power. Overall, these observations confirm the capacity of graphene devices for sensitive broadband THz detection near RT.
The chemistry of dammar resin (1955)

J. S. Mills and A. E. A. Werner, J. Chem. Soc., 1955, 3132 DOI: 10.1039/JR9550003132
Spare the rod, spoil the regulation: Necessity for a myosin rod (1997)

Regulation of a variety of cellular contractile events requires that vertebrate smooth and non-muscle myosin II can achieve an "off" state. To examine the role of the myosin rod in this process, we determined the minimal size at which a myosin molecule is capable of regulation via light chain phosphorylation. Expressed smooth muscle myosin subfragments with as many as 100 amino acids of the coiled-coil rod sequence did not dimerize and were active independently of phosphorylation. To test whether dimerization per se restores regulation of ATPase activity, mutants were expressed with varying lengths of rod sequence, followed by C-terminal leucine zippers to stabilize the coiled-coil. Dimerization restored partial regulation, but the presence of a length of rod approximately equal to the myosin head was necessary to achieve a completely off state. Partially regulated short dimers could be converted into fully regulated molecules by addition of native rod sequence after the zipper. These results suggest that the myosin rod mediates specific interactions with the head that are required to obtain the completely inactive state of vertebrate smooth and non-muscle myosins. If these interactions are prohibited under cellular conditions, unphosphorylated crossbridges can slowly cycle.
Temperature dependence of thermally‐carbonized porous silicon humidity sensor (2005)

Abstract Thermal carbonization of porous silicon (PS) at 820 °C under acetylene atmosphere is an appropriate method for humidity sensing purposes. It produces stable and hydrophilic surface still maintaining originally large specific surface area of PS. We report the temperature dependence of various electrical param‐ eters measured for the thermally‐carbonized PS humidity sensor. Capacitance of the sensor in dry air (6 RH%) is almost constant at various temperatures, whereas in higher relative humidity values, the temperature dependence becomes evident. The resistance variation of the sensor is less dependent on RH as the temperature increases. While the capacitance showed linear behavior as a function of temperature, the resistance had a clear non‐linear temperature dependence. In order to get information about the effects of frequency on capacitance values, we measured a phase angle and admittance of the sensor as a function of frequency at three different temperatures in low and high humidity. According to these results, it is preferable to operate this sensor construction using low frequency (&lt;1 kHz). (© 2005 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Modèle de sonie: Objectifs des recherches actuelles (2014)

cote interne IRCAM: Ponsot14b
Distribution and persistence of Verticillium dahliae in the xylem of Norway maple and European ash trees (2017)

Verticillium dahliae colonizes the xylem vessels of susceptible host plants. Hence it can be expected that the distribution of the fungus as well as disease progress will be influenced by the anatomy of the xylem of that host. Here, we studied the spatial and temporal distribution of V. dahliae in relation to recovery from disease symptoms in young European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) and Norway maple (Acer platanoides) trees that differ in vascular anatomy. Quantifying the amount of V. dahliae DNA at different heights in the stem of inoculated trees at different time points after inoculation showed that, in the year of inoculation, the speed of colonization of these two species by V. dahliae was similar. Nevertheless, in the year after inoculation disease incidence and also quantities of V. dahliae detected in maple trees were significantly higher than in ash trees, suggesting that the xylem of ash trees is much less supportive for growth and survival of V. dahliae than that of maple trees. Moreover, in this second year V. dahliae could not be re-isolated from the wood of ash trees that had recovered from disease and was only rarely detected by PCR, only in xylem of the previous year and never in the current xylem. In contrast, V. dahliae easily was detected in the wood of diseased ash and maple trees. Furthermore, despite the presence of a layer of parenchyma cells between growth rings in ash trees, in symptomatic ash trees V. dahliae was present in the xylem of the new growth ring. We also observed that V. dahliae can move downward from the point of inoculation into the root collar, which possibly provides a way for infection of new growth rings by circumventing the physical barriers within the stem xylem.
Wavelet-based image denoising using non-stationary stochastic geometrical image priors (2003)

In this paper a novel stochastic image model in the transform domain is presented and its superior performance in image denoising applications is demonstrated.The proposed model exploits local subband image statistics and is based on geometrical priors.Contrarily to complex models based on local correlations, or to mixture models, the proposed model performs a partition of the image into non-overlapping regions with distinctive statistics.A close form analytical solution of the image denoising problem for AWGN is derived and its performance bounds are analyzed.Despite being very simple, the proposed stochastic image model provides a number of advantages in comparison to the existing approaches: (a) simplicity of stochastic image modeling; (b) completeness of the model, taking into account multiresolution, non-stationary image behavior, geometrical priors and providing an excellent fit to the global image statistics; (c) very low complexity of the algorithm; (d) tractability of the model and of the obtained results due to the closed-form solution and to the existence of analytical performance bounds; (e) extensibility to different transform domains, such as orthogonal, biorthogonal and overcomplete data representations.The results of benchmarking with the state-of-the-art image denoising methods demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed approach.
iWork '09: Descubre todos los secretos del nuevo paquete de programas para oficina de Apple (2009)

Aunque en principio, iWork nacio buscando seducir a los usuarios que no necesitan de la potencia de Microsoft Office y si programas de oficina con una orientacion mas creativa, los avances en las aplicaciones del paquete de Apple, su integracion con otros programas del fabricante y con dispositivos como el iPhone, asi como el nuevo servicio iWork.com, empiezan a conformar un producto muy interesante para quienes no dependen de alguna de las capacidades exclusivas de los programas de Office. A continuacion te ofrecemos un amplio repaso a todas las novedades, mejoras y cambios de iWork '09 y del nuevo servicio iWork.com (de momento en fase beta) para trabajo colaborativo con los documentos del paquete.
Retinoschisin Gene Therapy and Natural History in theRs1h-KO Mouse: Long-term Rescue from Retinal Degeneration (2007)

The ERG of the Rs1h-KO mouse at early ages reflects disruption of photoreceptor and second-order neuron function. In mid to late ages, the ERG decline reflects primarily photoreceptor degeneration. The Rs1h-KO mouse is consistent with human clinical X-linked juvenile retinoschisis (XLRS) in showing schisis cavities, which affect primarily the b-wave, the regression of schisis cavities at older ages, and a considerable range in phenotypic severity across individuals. This mouse model also indicates the critical roll of RS-protein in photoreceptor survival consistent with decreased a-waves in some patients with XLRS. Long-term rescue of retinal morphology and function by AAV-Rs1h gene transfer may provide a basis for considering intervention in the homologous human XLRS condition.
Method Development for Quantitative Analysis of Actinides in Molten Salts (2015)

This paper describes how electrochemical techniques have been used to develop a method for high-precision, real-time quantitative measurements of the concentration of actinides, present in in molten salts as actinide chlorides, for pyrochemical process monitoring applications. Possible reasons for discrepancies between reported measurements obtained with electrochemical techniques have been investigated and a combination of methods to improve their precision has been established. The combination of methods consists of selecting a suitable electroanalytical measurement technique, experimentally verifying assumptions used in its theoretical analysis, ensuring reproducible conditions at the electrode/electrolyte interface, and using an improved method to eliminate the need to know the electrode surface area. By following the developed procedures and refining both experimental techniques and data analysis methods, precise and reproducible measurements were obtained for U and Pu in LiCl/KCl eutectic at 773 K. Preliminary results showed that cyclic voltammetry, along with a method of standard area addition, are very promising tools for in situ quantitative measurements with a degree of precision comparable to destructive analysis techniques.