gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Extent, severity and causative factors of land degradation in the Sudan (1999)

Abstract This paper examines the status of land resources in the Sudan after over half a century of unsustainable use. Several studies indicate that about 120 million ha of land, including 64 million ha of soils, are degraded to varying degrees. A remarkably high correlation seems to exist between human population densities and degraded soil in different aridity zones. The most degraded zones were the arid and semi-arid zones where 76% of the human population of the Sudan live. Wind erosion was the most widespread soil degradation type in the arid zone, while water erosion was dominant in the semi-arid zone. Chemical deterioration through nutrient loss was affecting all climatic zones. The central clay plains and the ironstone soils of south-west were the least degraded soil types. Overgrazing is the most widespread cause of soil degradation, particularly around permanent settlements and watering centres, affecting about 30M ha (47%) of the total degraded areas. Clearance of forests and woodlands cover for firewood and charcoal making and overexploitation of vegetation is the second cause of soil degradation affecting 22M ha. Cropping without appropriate nutrient inputs have degraded about 12M ha, particularly in small-scale farming on sandy and loamy soils. When these processes of resource mismanagement coincided with the recent recurrent droughts, collapse of the economic base of fragile areas took place.
Correlations between Tear Cytokines, Chemokines, and Soluble Receptors and Clinical Severity of Dry Eye Disease (2012)

Fifteen molecules were elevated in the tears of patients with DED; four molecules were decreased. Although the levels of sIL-6R, sIL-6R, and sgp130 may be potential indicators of the homeostatic process, an increase in the levels of IL-6 and IL-1 β are the earliest observable changes in patients with DED. Further study on the biomarkers in the pathogenesis of DED and treatment target modalities would be needed.
QoE for Mobile Streaming (2012)

After its debut in personal computers and home entertainment devices, streaming video has found its place in the mobile environment as well. However, the characteristics of the mobile devices present a different set of challenges for delivering satisfactory video services. They are typically smaller in size designed to be handheld or carried on person in some manner. They have reduced screen size and somewhat limited computational power due to restrictions in size and power consumption. These technical challenges necessitate the adaptation of the content to the particular device so that successful reproduction is possible and desired quality is met. When the mobile device is exposed to unadjusted content in spatial resolution and frame-rate, unnecessary penalties in computational load are incurred mostly due to processing of the downscaling. This in turn leads to higher power consumption and can lower the quality if the device fails to execute the task on time. In general the issue of over and underprovisioning is present in any video streaming service. However, in mobile streaming it is particularly evident due to specific limitations of the mobile devices and the larger variety in the design of the user interface and the mode of interaction.
Pulse gas delivery mass flow controllers for TSV applications (2016)

Advances in the Through Silicon Via (TSV) process have placed performance demands on gas delivery including higher levels of speed, precision, accuracy and repeatability of critical reactive gases, all driven by demands for high etch rate, increased uniformity, small scallops and better profile control. MKS pulse gas delivery mass flow controllers (Pulse MFCs) have been developed in order to solve these TSV etch challenges. Its mole based pulse gas delivery method provides unprecedented rapid pulse gas delivery performance which reduces the cost of the TSV process.
Expression profile of trophoblast invasion-associated genes in the pre-eclamptic placenta (2003)

The primary pathology of pre-eclampsia is thought be a defect in placentation due to failure of trophoblast invasion. Here, we aim to identify the expression profile of invasion-associated genes in the pre-eclamptic placenta. Messenger RNA (mRNA) expression levels of extracellular matrix molecule-related genes in five pre-eclamptic placentas and in five strictly matched normal placentas were assayed using complementary DNA (cDNA) microarrays representing over 220 human cytokine-associated or hormone-associated genes. Results demonstrated greater than two-fold higher expression of 18 extracellular matrix molecule genes, including cadherin, collagen, integrin and selectin, in the pre-eclamptic placenta. Extracellular matrix molecule degradation-related genes, including matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-10, MMP-13, MMP-15, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-2, TIMP-3, plasminogen and plasminogen activator, were also highly expressed in the pre-eclamptic placenta, compared to the normal placenta. Results suggest that the abnormal expression profiles of extracellular matrix molecules and degrading proteinases might be associated with the pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia.
New Approaches to β‐Trifluoromethylated Enone Derivatives. (2005)

Abstract For Abstract see ChemInform Abstract in Full Text.
Stabilization and productive positioning roles of the C2 domain of PTEN tumor suppressor. (2000)

PTEN is a tumor suppressor frequently inactivated in brain, prostate, and uterine cancer. It acts as a phosphoinositide phosphatase and consists of an amino-terminal phosphatase domain tightly linked to a COOH-terminal C2 domain involved in lipid membrane-binding. We investigated the functions of the C2 domain and their relevance for tumor growth. To discriminate between PTEN C2 domain ability to recruit or to position the active site to the membrane, we artificially membrane-targeted PTEN by a myristoylation signal. This modification increased wild-type PTEN growth inhibition but did not rescue a C2 mutant defective in lipid-binding, suggesting a model in which PTEN C2 domain positions the active site productively with respect to the membrane-bound phosphoinositide substrate. When tumor-derived mutations in the loops that connect the C2 beta-strands were analyzed, we found that these generally destabilized the protein but had variable effects on the phosphatase activity and tumor growth. The magnitude of these effects was dependent on the presence of the COOH-terminal PEST sequences and on the cell type where the mutant proteins were expressed, suggesting the existence of fluctuating structural defects of the mutant protein. One of the C2 loop mutants induced a total loss of PTEN tumor-suppressor function, most likely by affecting both the membrane binding and the protein stability. These data support a double role for PTEN C2 domain in protein stability and in productive orientation of the catalytic site.
Considering Thermal-aware Proactive and Reactive Scheduling and Cooling for Green Data-centers (2012)

Data-centers require huge amount of electricity to continue meeting the computing demands of consumers each year. Fossil fuel based electricity is utilized due to lack of abundant renewable energy resources, resulting in the emission of CO2 in atmosphere and causing global temperature hike. The world is in dire need of efficient utilization of electricity. At the same time, advent of cloud computing has brought the innovation of everything as a service. This has led to proliferation of cloud services in every computing field. It has increased the load on cloud hosting data-centers, resulting in excessive use of electricity. A cloud data-center can manage to save electricity by reducing resource exploitation through either or both of the efficient utilization based and thermal based scheduling and monitoring. In this paper we take a peek into recently proposed thermal aware scheduling and monitoring techniques to maintain a cost effective Green Cloud Computing environment.
Space-varying restoration of optical images (1997)

The improvement in optical image quality is now generally attempted in two stages. The first stage involves techniques in adaptive optics and occurs as the observed image is initially formed. The second stage of enhancing the quality of optical images generally occurs off line and consists of the postprocessing step of image restoration. Image restoration is an ill-posed inverse problem that involves the removal or the minimization of degradations caused by noise and blur in an image, resulting from, in this case, imaging through a medium. Our work concerns a new space-varying regularization approach and associated techniques for accelerating the convergence of iterative image postprocessing computations. Denoising methods, including total variation minimization, followed by segmentation-based preconditioning methods for minimum residual conjugate gradient iterations, are investigated. Regularization is accomplished by segmenting the image into (smooth) segments and varying the preconditioners across the segments. The method appears to work especially well on images that are piecewise smooth. Our algorithm has computational complexity of only O(ln2 log n), where n2 is the number of pixels in the image and l is the number of segments used. Also, parallelization is straightforward. Numerical tests are reported on both simulated and actual atmospheric imaging problems. Comparisons are made with the case where segmentation is not used. It is found that our approach is especially attractive for restoring images with low signal-to-noise ratios, and that magnification of noise is effectively suppressed in the iterations, leading to a numerically efficient and robust regularized iterative restoration algorithm.
Kantian Virtue Ethics in the Context of Business: How Practically Useful Can It Be? (2014)

The investigation of the microstructure in functional, polycrystalline thin films is an important contribution to the enhanced understanding of structure-property relationships in corresponding devices. Linear and planar defects within individual grains may affect substantially the performance of the device. These defects are closely related to strain distributions. The present work compares electron and X-ray diffraction as well as Raman microspectroscopy, which provide access to microstrain distributions within individual grains. CuInSe2 thin films for solar cells are used as a model system. High-resolution electron backscatter diffraction and X-ray microdiffraction as well as Raman microspectroscopy were applied for this comparison. Consistently, microstrain values were determined of the order of 10(-4) by these three techniques. However, only electron backscatter diffraction, X-ray microdiffraction exhibit sensitivities appropriate for mapping local strain changes at the submicrometer level within individual grains in polycrystalline materials.
Traffic Data Collection for Floating Car Data Enhancement in V2I Networks (2010)

This paper presents a complete vision-based vehicle detection system for floating car data (FCD) enhancement in the context of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Three cameras (side-, forward- and rear- looking cameras) are installed onboard a vehicle in a fleet of public buses. Thus, a more representative local description of the traffic conditions (extended FCD) can be obtained. Specifically, the vision modules detect the number of vehicles contained in the local area of the host vehicle (traffic load) and their relative velocities. Absolute velocities (average road speed) and global positioning are obtained after combining the outputs provided by the vision modules with the data supplied by the CAN Bus and the GPS sensor. This information is transmitted by means of a GPRS/UMTS data connection to a central unit which merges the extended FCD in order to maintain an updated map of the traffic conditions (traffic load and average road speed). The presented experiments are promising in terms of detection performance and computational costs. However, significant effort is further necessary before deploying a system for large-scale real applications.
Cell density-dependent regulation of basic fibroblast growth factor expression in human renal cell carcinoma cells. (1996)

We investigated some of the mechanisms that regulate the expression of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in human renal cell carcinoma (HRCC). HRCC SN12PM6 cells were cultured as adherent monolayers. The expression of steady-state bFGF mRNA (measured by in situ hybridization and Northern blot) and protein (measured by immunohistochemistry and ELISA) correlated inversely with the culture density. Tumor cells harvested from dense cultures (low bFGF expression) and plated under sparse conditions expressed high levels of bFGF mRNA and protein prior to cell division, suggesting that bFGF may be a competence factor. Similar data were obtained with human vascular endothelial cells. The expression of bFGF was not regulated by spent culture medium, cell cycle, or rate of cell division but was down-regulated by contract inhibition. These data show that the expression of bFGF in HRCC is cell density dependent.
TDP-43 regulation of stress granule dynamics in neurodegenerative disease-relevant cell types (2018)

Stress granules (SGs) are cytoplasmic foci that form in response to various external stimuli and are essential to cell survival following stress. SGs are studied in several diseases, including ALS and FTD, which involve the degeneration of motor and cortical neurons, respectively, and are now realized to be linked pathogenically by TDP-43, originally discovered as a component of ubiquitin-positive aggregates within patients' neurons and some glial cells. So far, studies to undercover the role of TDP-43 in SGs have used primarily transformed cell lines, and thus rely on the extrapolation of the mechanisms to cell types affected in ALS/FTD, potentially masking cell specific effects. Here, we investigate SG dynamics in primary motor and cortical neurons as well as astrocytes. Our data suggest a cell and stress specificity and demonstrate a requirement for TDP-43 for efficient SG dynamics. In addition, based on our in vitro approach, our data suggest that aging may be an important modifier of SG dynamics which could have relevance to the initiation and/or progression of age-related neurodegenerative diseases.
Design and performance analysis of secure and dependable cybercars: A steer-by-wire case study (2016)

The next generation of automobiles (also known as cybercars) will increasingly incorporate electronic control units (ECUs) in novel automotive control applications. Recent work has demonstrated vulnerability of modern car control systems to security attacks that directly impact the cybercar's physical safety and dependability. In this paper, we provide an integrated approach for the design of secure and dependable cybercars using a case study: a steer-by-wire (SBW) application over controller area network (CAN). The challenge is to embed both security and dependability over CAN while ensuring that the real-time constraints of the cybercar applications are not violated. Our approach enables early design feasibility analysis by embedding essential security primitives (i.e., confidentiality, integrity, and authentication) over CAN subject to the real-time constraints imposed by the desired quality of service and behavioral reliability. Our method leverages multi-core ECUs for providing fault-tolerance by redundant multi-threading (RMT) and also further enhances RMT for quick error detection. We quantify the error resilience of our approach and evaluate the interplay of performance, fault-tolerance, security, and scalability for our SBW case study.
Oral Anticoagulant Therapy Control: Evidence that INR Expression Improves the Inter-Laboratory Comparability of Results - The Bologna Oral Anticoagulant Control Exercise (1987)

The aims of the present study were: 1) interlaboratory normalization of prothrombin time (PT) testing for anticoagulant therapy control through calibration of customary thromboplastins against international reference materials, and 2) "on field" validation of the advantages offered by expression of results as International Normalized Ratio (INR) as opposed to percentage activity. PT tests were carried out over 8 days on the same normal subjects (16) and patients on oral anticoagulants (48) in the 9 laboratories of the Bologna area. The use of customary thromboplastins and coagulometers was maintained in all labs throughout the study. The main results were: 1) the interlaboratory CV of the prothrombin ratios obtained for each sample with all customary thromboplastins (5 different brands) was 15%, but was reduced to levels of 5.8 to 8.9 when using constant thromboplastin brands and batches; 2) the International Sensitivity Index (ISI) values obtained in the different labs were only slightly influenced by the use of different coagulometers; 3) comparable ISI values were obtained through direct calibration with the international reference material and through intermediate calibration with a locally selected standard; 4) use of INR values instead of percentage activity greatly reduced interlaboratory variability and significantly improved uniformity of anticoagulation level measurements, thus reducing the possibility of erroneous prescriptions. The Bologna exercise is therefore of educational value for laboratory and community doctors of the area in understanding and accepting the INR system.
[Mechanism analysis of optimized model of conversion from farmland to forestland in the hill-gully sub-region of Loess Plateau]. (2004)

Conversion from Farmland to Forestland Program (CFF) is one of the six great ecological forest programs in China. This study covered the CFF model area of the hilly-gully sub-region of loess plateau, and introduced system dynamics and other latest theories and methodologies. Based on the analysis of five modules including that of the site observation of field stations and extensive investigations, and over 10000 original data obtained in the fields of natural science, social science and economics, the operational mechanism of the optimized model was studied. The optimized operational models integrated maximized ecological, economic and social benefits, while sustainability concepts were proposed for typical CFF sites: The Pinus tabulaeformis + Platycladus orientalis + Zanthoxylum spp. + Robinia pseudoacacia model at the eroded flat ridges of the middle reaches of the Yellow River. The result showed that the ecological, economic and social benefits of the optimized model reflected by main indexes were the best or better, and in the other models, either individual one was the best or others were not. From the viewpoint of comprehensive comparison of three great benefits, the optimized model was most excellent, and had eminent difference comparing to other ones through F test. The relationship between ecological and social benefit was eminent positive correlative. Social benefit was the same with economical one at some degrees. The relationship between ecological and economical benefit was more complicated. On the whole, they were positive correlative, but the economical benefit was not the greatest when the ecological one was the greatest. In general, from the viewpoint of largest comprehensive benefit, the three great benefits were not all the best, indicating that the combination of the modules must be reasonable. In order to achieve the ultimate goal of CFF, we must choose the optimized combination of ecological, economical and social benefits, and can't only pursue any one maximum of three great benefits.
[Neutrophil defense against bovine uterine infections]. (1989)

The killing ability of bovine peripheral blood neutrophils did not vary during the oestrous cycle. Administration of sex steroids to ovariectomised cows reduced the intrinsic killing ability of neutrophils but enhanced the opsonising ability of serum. Exudate from experimental uterine infection with Corynebacterium pyogenes and Fusobacterium necrophorum impaired neutrophil function, probably as a result of the action of bacterial leucotoxins.
The strength of the OVA-induced airway inflammation in rats is strain dependent (2002)

To examine the influence of genetics on the OVA-induced allergic inflammatory response in lungs we compared rats that are genetically Th2-predisposed (Brown Norway, inbred) or not genetically predisposed (Sprague Dawley, outbred). Rats were sensitized with ovalbumin (OVA) and challenged four weeks later with OVA aerosol. Eighteen hours after challenge, lung tissue was studied for evaluation of numbers of eosinophils, neutrophils, macrophages and mast cells, as well as for expression of P-selectin, E-selectin, intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) on endothelial cells. From a separate portion of the pulmonary tissue, leucocytes were isolated to analyse numbers of IFNgamma and IL-4 producing cells (ELISPOT assay) and frequencies of T-cell subsets and B cells. We found increased numbers of eosinophils and neutrophils in the lung, an increased number of IL-4 producing cells in lung cell isolates and increased levels of serum (OVA- specific)-IgE in both rat strains. In addition, expression of E-selectin and ICAM-1 was up regulated in both rat strains whereas expression of VCAM-1 was only up regulated in the BN rat. Although the 'allergic' Th2 response to OVA was detectable in both rat strains, it was more pronounced in the BN rat than in the SD rat. However, the SD rat, which is not predisposed to respond in either a Th2 or Th1-like way, appeared capable of mounting an allergic response to OVA. This suggests that other factors than genetic contribute to allergic disease.
Induction of obesity and hyperleptinemia by central glucocorticoid infusion in the rat. (1999)

It has been claimed that factors favoring the development or maintenance of animal or human obesity may include increases in glucocorticoid production or hyperresponsiveness of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. In normal rats, glucocorticoids have been shown to be necessary for chronic intracerebroventricular infusion of neuropeptide Y to produce obesity and related abnormalities. Conversely, glucocorticoids inhibited the body weight-lowering effect of leptin. Such dual action of glucocorticoids may occur within the central nervous system, since both neuropeptide Y and leptin act within the hypothalamus. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of glucocorticoids (dexamethasone) given intracerebroventricularly to normal rats on body weight homeostasis and hypothalamic levels of neuropeptide Y and corticotropin-releasing hormone. Continuous central glucocorticoid infusion for 3 days resulted in marked sustained increases in food intake and body weight relative to saline-infused controls. The infusion abolished endogenous corticosterone output and produced hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperleptinemia, three salient abnormalities of obesity syndromes. Central glucocorticoid infusion also produced a marked decrease in the expression of uncoupling protein (UCP)-1 and UCP-3 in brown adipose tissue and UCP-3 in muscle. Finally, chronic central glucocorticoid administration increased the hypothalamic levels of neuropeptide Y and decreased those of corticotropin-releasing hormone. When the same dose of glucocorticoids was administered peripherally, it resulted in decreases in food intake and body weight, in keeping with the decrease in hypothalamic neuropeptide Y levels. These results suggest that glucocorticoids induce an obesity syndrome in rodents by acting centrally and not peripherally.