gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Investigation of Cracking Behavior of Antioxidant-Modified Asphalt Mixtures (With Discussion) (2008)

A major cause of asphalt pavement cracking and other distresses is age hardening. Antioxidant use is one approach to controlling asphalt binder age hardening and the detrimental effects it has on pavement performance. Cracking potential investigation in asphalt binders containing various antioxidant levels through a rheological test series suggests that there can be a significant reduction in asphalt pavement cracking through antioxidant use. In this study, there was laboratory preparation of asphalt mixtures containing antioxidants. In a forced-draft oven, these mixtures were subsequently subjected to two aging levels for short-term and long-term aging simulation. To determine mixture stress-strain behavior at seven frequencies and three temperatures, dynamic modulus tests in the indirect tensile (IDT) mode were conducted. Additionally, to obtain mixture creep compliance at three temperatures, creep tests were conducted in IDT mode. To determine mixture tensile strength at ten degrees below zero Celsius, indirect tensile strength tests were conducted. Using the thermal cracking model, thermal cracking was simulated in a hypothetical 12 inch thick asphalt pavement located in Frazee, Minnesota through test results. There was also evaluation of mixture cracking susceptibility using University of Florida-developed unified performance-based fracture mechanics analysis. Testing and analysis results indicate that there is significant reduction in asphalt mixture cracking resistance through asphalt aging. Predicted cracking susceptibility was substantially lower through antioxidant use. Study results suggest that a larger investigation, including full-scale field tests, is warranted in antioxidant effects in reducing asphalt mixture cracking.
Robust segmentation of tubular structures in medical images (2008)

Segmentation of blood vessels is a challenging problem due to poor contrast, noise, and specifics of vessels' branching and bending geometry. This paper describes a robust semi-automatic approach to extract the surface between two or more user-supplied end points for tubular- or vessel-like structures. We first use a minimal path technique to extract the shortest path between the user-supplied points. This path is the global minimizer of an active contour model's energy along all possible paths joining the end-points. Subsequently, the surface of interest is extracted using an edge-based level set segmentation approach. To prevent leakage into adjacent tissues, the algorithm uses a diameter constraint that does not allow the moving front to grow wider than the predefined diameter. Points constituting the extracted path(s) are automatically used as initialization seeds for the evolving level set function. To cope with any further leaks that may occur in the case of large variations of the vessel width between the user-supplied end-points, a freezing mechanism is designed to prevent the moving front to leak into undesired areas. The regions to be frozen are determined from few clicks by the user. The potential of the proposed approach is demonstrated on several synthetic and real images.
Extracellular vesicles yield predictive pre‐eclampsia biomarkers (2017)

Circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) such as cholera toxin B chain (CTB)- or annexin V (AV)-binding EVs were previously shown to be rich sources of biomarkers. Here we test if previously identified pre-eclampsia (PE) candidate biomarkers, TIMP-1 in CTB-EVs (CTB-TIMP) and PAI-1 in AV-EVs (AV-PAI) complement plasma PlGF in predicting PE in a low-risk obstetric population. Eight hundred and forty-three prospectively banked plasma samples collected at 28 + 0 to 32 + 0 gestation weeks in the Neonatal and Obstetrics Risk Assessment (NORA) cohort study were assayed by sandwich ELISAs for plasma PlGF, CTB-TIMP1 and AV-PAI1. Nineteen patients subsequently developed PE 7.3 (±2.9) weeks later at a mean gestational age of 36.1 ± 3.5 weeks. The biomarkers were assessed for their predictive accuracy for PE using stepwise multivariate logistic regression analysis with Firth correction and Areas under the curve (AUC). To achieve 100% sensitivity in predicting PE, the cut-off for plasma PlGF, CTB-TIMP1 & AV-PAI1 were set at <1235, ≤300 or >1300 and <10,550 pg/mL plasma, respectively. The corresponding AUCs, specificity and PPV at a 95% confidence interval were 0.92, 52.1% and 4.7%; 0.72, 44.5% and 4.0%; and 0.69, 21.5% and 2.9%, respectively. At 100% sensitivity, the three biomarkers had a combined AUC of 0.96, specificity of 78.6%, and PPV of 9.9%. This is the first large cohort validation of the utility of EV-associated analytes as disease biomarkers. Specifically, EV biomarkers enhanced the predictive robustness of an existing PE biomarker sufficiently to justify PE screening in a low-risk general obstetric population.
High Order Spatial Audio Capture and Its Binaural Head-Tracked Playback Over Headphones with HRTF Cues (2005)

A theory and a system for capturing an audio scene and then rendering it remotely are developed and presented. The sound capture is performed with a spherical microphone array. The sound field at the location of the array is deduced from the captured sound and is represented using either spherical wave-functions or plane-wave expansions. The sound field representation is then transmitted to a remote location for immediate rendering or stored for later use. The sound renderer, coupled with the head tracker, reconstructs the acoustic field using individualized head-related transfer functions to preserve the perceptual spatial structure of the audio scene. Rigorous error bounds and Nyquist-like sampling criterion for the representation of the sound field are presented and verified.
52.1: <i>Invited Paper:</i> Electrophosphorescent Organic Light Emitting Devices (2002)

Abstract We discuss recent results in ultrahigh efficiency electrophosphorescent organic light emitting devices. In particular, we consider electrophosphorescent devices emitting in the red, green and blue spectral regions, and the relationship between efficiency and energy transfer. Both small molecular weight and polymer OLEDs are discussed. Furthermore, very high brightness, white emitting electrophosphorescent OLEDs will be described.
Enzymatic modification of plasma low density lipoproteins in rabbits: a potential treatment for hypercholesterolemia. (1993)

Phospholipase A2 (EC 3.1.1.4) hydrolyzes certain phospholipids of low density lipoprotein (LDL). Plasma clearance of phospholipase A2-modified human LDL is up to 17 times faster than that of native human LDL in hypercholesterolemic rabbits. Modification of blood lipoproteins of hypercholesterolemic rabbits was performed by using an extracorporeal circuit containing immobilized phospholipase A2. After 90-min treatments, nearly 30% decreases in plasma cholesterol concentrations were observed. Erythrocyte, leukocyte, and platelet counts showed no net change after treatment. This technique does not require any fluid replacement or sorbent regeneration and offers a potential approach for lowering serum cholesterol and LDL levels.
Acoustic tomography in the autonomous oceanographic sampling network (1997)

Ocean acoustics plays a central role in the new autonomous oceanographic sampling network (AOSN) concept. Thus, as in most other underwater systems, acoustics provides the only reliable means for wireless communication and navigation. Also, the sensor suite applied in the AOSN includes various sonars for object avoidance and imaging, and acoustic Doppler current profilers. By adding a tomographic component, the performance of the AOSN in highly dynamic littoral environments can be significantly improved. Thus, the tomography can provide a low resolution, but also a synoptic image of the oceanography which can eliminate the space-time aliasing inherent to the point measurements made by the AUVs. Using real-time processing the tomographic map is used to adaptively focus the AUV measurements in areas with high gradients or large uncertainty. In addition, the AUVs can enhance the tomographic coverage by equipping them with acoustic sources. The feasibility of this acoustically focused oceanographic sampling (AFOS) concept was investigated in the June 1996 Haro Strait PRIMER experiment. The experiment clearly demonstrated the feasibility of the tomographic components. Robust and efficient algorithms have been developed, capable of performing real-time tomographic inversion within a littoral AOSN. The results of the experiment are reviewed, including frontal mapping performed in more than 80 AUV missions. The experiment also clearly demonstrated the severity of the littoral acoustic environment in terms of ambient noise, reverberation, and variability, significantly affecting the robustness of the acoustic communication and navigation systems crucial to the AOSN. [Work supported by ONR.]
Non-Autoregressive Neural Text-to-Speech (2019)

In this work, we propose ParaNet, a non-autoregressive seq2seq model that converts text to spectrogram. It is fully convolutional and brings 46.7 times speed-up over the lightweight Deep Voice 3 at synthesis, while obtaining reasonably good speech quality. ParaNet also produces stable alignment between text and speech on the challenging test sentences by iteratively improving the attention in a layer-by-layer manner. Furthermore, we build the parallel text-to-speech system and test various parallel neural vocoders, which can synthesize speech from text through a single feed-forward pass. We also explore a novel VAE-based approach to train the inverse autoregressive flow (IAF) based parallel vocoder from scratch, which avoids the need for distillation from a separately trained WaveNet as previous work.
Design of FSMA spring actuators (2004)

A new spring actuator composing of two parts: driving unit and ferromagnetic shape memory alloy (FSMA) spring, is designed based on hybrid actuation mechanism. The driving unit, which is based on hybrid magnet, consists of coil, yoke, and ring shape permanent magnet (PM); the FSMA spring can be either composite material, which is made of shape memory alloy of superelastic grade, and soft ferromagnetic material, or FSMAs such as FePd. In this design, driving units are inserted in between ferromagnetic springs. This will provide the actuator with larger force and stroke. FEM analysis under axis symmetric model has been used to optimize the driving components. According to the numerical results, the iron blocks, both on the top and the bottom, can provide larger magnetic forces facing downwards and upwards respectively due to the gradient of magnetic flux density. Advantages of this design are simple, robust, and compact yet providing relatively large force (20N) and stroke (30mm).
Yarn-level simulation of woven cloth (2014)

The large-scale mechanical behavior of woven cloth is determined by the mechanical properties of the yarns, the weave pattern, and frictional contact between yarns. Using standard simulation methods for elastic rod models and yarn-yarn contact handling, the simulation of woven garments at realistic yarn densities is deemed intractable. This paper introduces an efficient solution for simulating woven cloth at the yarn level. Central to our solution is a novel discretization of interlaced yarns based on yarn crossings and yarn sliding, which allows modeling yarn-yarn contact implicitly, avoiding contact handling at yarn crossings altogether. Combined with models for internal yarn forces and inter-yarn frictional contact, as well as a massively parallel solver, we are able to simulate garments with hundreds of thousands of yarn crossings at practical frame-rates on a desktop machine, showing combinations of large-scale and fine-scale effects induced by yarn-level mechanics.
Replacement of the Replication Factors of Porcine Circovirus (PCV) Type 2 with Those of PCV Type 1 Greatly Enhances Viral Replication <i>I</i> <i>n</i> <i>V</i> <i>itro</i> (2010)

Porcine circovirus type 1 (PCV1), originally isolated as a contaminant of PK-15 cells, is nonpathogenic, whereas porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) causes an economically important disease in pigs. To determine the factors affecting virus replication, we constructed chimeric viruses by swapping open reading frame 1 (ORF1) (rep) or the origin of replication (Ori) between PCV1 and PCV2 and compared the replication efficiencies of the chimeric viruses in PK-15 cells. The results showed that the replication factors of PCV1 and PCV2 are fully exchangeable and, most importantly, that both the Ori and rep of PCV1 enhance the virus replication efficiencies of the chimeric viruses with the PCV2 backbone.
Torsional resonators based on inorganic nanotubes (2017)

We study for the first time the resonant\ntorsional behaviors of inorganic nanotubes, specifically tungsten\ndisulfide (WS<sub>2</sub>) and boron nitride (BN) nanotubes, and compare\nthem to that of carbon nanotubes. We have found WS<sub>2</sub> nanotubes\nto have the highest quality factor (<i>Q</i>) and torsional\nresonance frequency, followed by BN nanotubes and carbon nanotubes.\nDynamic and static torsional spring constants of the various nanotubes\nwere found to be different, especially in the case of WS<sub>2</sub>, possibly due to a velocity-dependent intershell friction. These\nresults indicate that inorganic nanotubes are promising building blocks\nfor high-<i>Q</i> nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS).
NetRevert (2014)

Recognizing the inevitability of human error and hardware failures, which can significantly hamper the computer system performance, the capability of checkpointing and rollback recovery has been proposed and widely used in servers and distributed systems. These facilities allow fast recovery from failures, software bugs, and misconfigurations. Though promising, they are rarely, if ever, provided for networking systems, thus the network operators still rely on ad-hoc and error-prone processes to recover from errors. In this work, we propose a checkpoint and rollback-recovery system for Software-Define Networking (SDN) systems, exploiting SDN's simple abstraction, network-wide view, and direct control properties. We propose an approach to efficiently identify the network-wide consistent states for rollback while preserving correctness.
Learning from Failure Experiences in Case-Based Schedule Repair (1994)

We describe a framework, implemented in CABINS, for itemtive schedule revision based on acqutsition and reuse of user optimization preferences to improve schedule quality. Practical scheduling problems generally require allocation of resources in the presence of a large, diverse and typically conflicting set of constraints and optimization criteria. The allstructuredness of both the solution space and the desired objectives make scheduling problems dificult to formalize. In CABINS, case-based reasoning is used for eliciting situation-dependent user’s tradeofls about repair actions and schedule quality to guide schedule revision for quality improvement. During iterative repair, cases are exploited for multiple purposes, such as (I) repair action selection, (2) evaluation of intermediate repair results and (3) recovery from revision failures. The contributions of the work lie in experimentally demonstrating an a domain when neither the user nor the program possess causal knowledge of the domain that taking into consideration failure information improves the efficiency of rather costly iterative repaar process. The experiments in this paper were performed an the context of job shop scheduling problems.
The High Molecular Weight Insulin-Like Growth Factor-Binding Protein Complex: Epitope Mapping, Immunoassay, and Preliminary Clinical Evaluation (1999)

Measurements of insulin-like growth factor I(IGF-I), IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3), and the acid-labile subunit (ALS) are important in assessing the GH-IGF axis. As nearly all IGF-I, IGFBP-3, and ALS circulate in a GH-dependent ternary protein complex, direct determination of the complex may be of significant analytical and clinical importance. We evaluated a panel of monoclonal antibodies (mAb) to human IGFBP-3 and classified them into four groups (G-1 to G-4). G-1 antibodies recognized epitopes that mapped at or near IGFBP-3 ligand (IGF)-binding site. This region overlapped with the G-2 defined region, which, in turn, overlapped with G-3 epitopes defined by one antibody (mAb 3). Only G-1 and G-3 antibodies paired without interference. mAb 9 recognized a conformational epitope (G-4), and mAb 10 was nonreactive. In pairwise mixed antibody evaluation, mAbs in G-2 and G-3 showed simultaneous binding to serum IGFBP-3 complexes in combination with an anti-IGF-I or an anti-ALS antibody. On this basis, two novel enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) involving IGFBP-3/IGF-I (ELISA-1) and IGFBP-3/ALS (ELISA-2) recognition partners were developed, both demonstrating acceptable analytical performance characteristics. IGFBP-3 complexes measured by ELISA-1 and -2 in samples from normal individuals and subjects with GH deficiency, acromegaly, and GH receptor deficiency more tightly correlated with IGF-I, IGFBP-3, and ALS than IGF-II. ELISA-1 determinations were comparatively more age dependent and, in comparison to ELISA-2, showed better discriminations among the various sample groups, particularly among GH receptor deficiency, normal, and GH deficiency subjects. The development of IGFBP-3 complex ELISAs may simplify diagnostic applications and facilitate investigations of the physiological relevance of the ternary complex formation.
Prostaglandins: effects on the gastrointestinal tract. (1984)

Several prostaglandins have been shown to exert five major gastrointestinal actions. Inhibition of gastric acid secretion, orally and parenterally. Antiulcer activity (they prevent gastric and duodenal ulcers produced experimentally in animals, and they accelerate the rate of healing of duodenal ulcers in humans). Cytoprotection for the stomach, the small and the large intestine. Cytoprotection is defined as the property of many prostaglandins to protect the mucosa of the stomach and intestine from becoming inflamed and necrotic when this mucosa is exposed to noxious agents. Cytoprotection is separate from, and unrelated to, inhibition of gastric secretion. In humans, certain prostaglandins of the E type given at very low doses prevent gastric bleeding produced by aspirin and indomethacin. Stimulation of intestinal secretion, through increase of cyclic AMP formation. Stimulation of smooth muscle contraction. Certain prostaglandins are likely to be beneficial in the treatment of gastric ulcers, stress ulcers, duodenal ulcers, and perhaps gastritis and certain forms of inflammatory bowel disease.
Broadening the scope of glycosyltransferase-catalyzed sugar nucleotide synthesis (2013)

We described the integration of the general reversibility of glycosyltransferase-catalyzed reactions, artificial glycosyl donors, and a high throughput colorimetric screen to enable the engineering of glycosyltransferases for combinatorial sugar nucleotide synthesis. The best engineered catalyst from this study, the OleD Loki variant, contained the mutations P67T/I112P/T113M/S132F/A242I compared with the OleD wild-type sequence. Evaluated against the parental sequence OleD TDP16 variant used for screening, the OleD Loki variant displayed maximum improvements in k(cat)/K(m) of >400-fold and >15-fold for formation of NDP-glucoses and UDP-sugars, respectively. This OleD Loki variant also demonstrated efficient turnover with five variant NDP acceptors and six variant 2-chloro-4-nitrophenyl glycoside donors to produce 30 distinct NDP-sugars. This study highlights a convenient strategy to rapidly optimize glycosyltransferase catalysts for the synthesis of complex sugar nucleotides and the practical synthesis of a unique set of sugar nucleotides.
The Synthesis and Study of Azole Carboxamide Nucleosides as Agents Active Against RNA Viruses. (1986)

Abstract : In an effort to prepare compounds with potential antiviral activity against RNA viruses having substantial implications from a global epidemiological standpoint, a number of azole heterocycles and the corresponding nucleosides structurally related to ribavirin have been synthesized. 1,2,4-Triazole, thiazole, pyrrole, pyrazole, purine, pyrrolo(2,3-d) pyrimidine and pyrimido(5,4-d) pyrimidine ring systems have particularly been selected. New and improved synthetic procedures have been developed during the course of this study. The compounds thus synthesized in gram quantities were tested at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, against RVF, VEE, PITCH, YF, SF, VSV, and KHF viruses in vitro and in vivo. Keywords: Ribaviran, Rift Valley fever virus; Lass virus; Machupovirus; Dengue virus; Pichinde virus; Hantaan virus; Retroviruses.
Atomic layer deposition of HfxAlyCz as a work function material in metal gate MOS devices (2013)

As advanced silicon semiconductor devices are transitioning from planar to 3D structures, new materials and processes are needed to control the device characteristics. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) of HfxAlyCz films using hafnium chloride and trimethylaluminum precursors was combined with postdeposition anneals and ALD liners to control the device characteristics in high-k metal-gate devices. Combinatorial process methods and technologies were employed for rapid electrical and materials characterization of various materials stacks. The effective work function in metal–oxide–semiconductor capacitor devices with the HfxAlyCz layer coupled with an ALD HfO2 dielectric was quantified to be mid-gap at ∼4.6 eV. Thus, HfxAlyCz is a promising metal gate work function material that allows for the tuning of device threshold voltages (Vth) for anticipated multi-Vth integrated circuit devices.
Complementary punctured-pair convolutional codes for digital audio broadcasting (2000)

Hybrid in-band on-channel (IBOC) broadcasting systems for digital audio radio have the capability of simultaneously transmitting analog FM and digital audio of CD-like quality. Due to fading and interference in the already-crowded FM band, the signal design for the hybrid IBOC system is very challenging. It has been proposed to use a method of double sideband transmission where the digital information is transmitted by means of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) on both sides of the analog host FM and where the digital information can be recovered when one sideband is partially or even totally lost. This leads to an interesting channel coding problem, where we search for optimal pairs of high-rate codes that form good combined low-rate codes, which are better than classic code combining techniques. Furthermore, we also search for rate-compatible punctured convolutional codes which can be used for two-level unequal error protection (UEP) of digital audio. Since some of the tones in the multitone modem (OFDM) are more exposed to interference than others, optimal assignments of convolutional code bits to tones depending on their spectral position are also found. A large number of new codes with memory 6 and 8 are presented both for equal error protection and UEP.