gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Strengthening blends of poly(lactic acid) and starch with methylenediphenyl diisocyanate (2001)

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer, but its applications are limited by its high cost. Blending granular starch with PLA reduces the cost, but the blend has poor strength properties. In this study, a 55/45 (w/w) mixture of PLA (weight-average molecular weight = 120,000 Da) and dried wheat starch was blended thermally in an intensive mixer with or without a low level of methylenediphenyl diisocyanate (MDI). Blends with MDI had enhanced mechanical properties that could be explained by the in situ formation of a block copolymer acting as a compatibilizer. Scanning electron micrographs showed reduced interfacial tension between the two phases. The presence of MDI also enhanced the mechanical properties of the blend at temperatures above the glass-transition temperature. Water uptakes by the PLA/starch blends with and without MDI did not differ. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 82: 1761–1767, 2001
B Cell Depletion Is Not Required for Prolongation of Renal Allograft Survival in Non-Human Primates Using a Novel Anti-CD40 Blocking Antibody. (2014)

CD40-CD154 pathway blockade significantly prolongs allograft survival in non-human primates (NHPs). However, antibodies targeting CD154, while efficacious, were associated with an increased incidence of thromboembolic complications precluding clinical development. Current antibodies targeting CD40 effectively prolong renal allograft survival in NHPs without associated thromboembolic events but with accompanying B cell depletion, raising the question of whether CD40 blockade or B cell depletion was the effective mechanism. We developed a novel, Fc-silent (i.e. incapable of antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity or complement-dependent cytotoxicity) anti-human CD40 monoclonal antibody (OM11-62MF). OM11 blocked recombinant CD154-mediated activation of leukocytes in vitro and inhibited T cell-dependent antibody responses in vivo in the absence of significant peripheral B cell depletion. We tested OM11 and an Fc-competent anti-CD40 antibody in MHC-mismatched cynomolgus monkey renal allograft transplantation as monotherapies. Allograft survival was significantly prolonged in animals dosed with the Fc-competent anti-CD40 antibody (52, 22, 24 days) in comparison to untreated monkeys (survival ˜ 7 days; n = 9). Well-functioning renal allografts survived up to 100 days in OM11-treated animals (100, 100, 100, 98, 78 days) at which point the experiment was terminated and graft morphology examined by histology. In contrast to good graft morphology in OM11-dosed group, acute cellular rejection was observed in animals treated with Fc-competent anti-CD40. Rapid and complete peripheral B cell depletion was only observed with the Fc-competent antibody, despite full peripheral CD40 receptor occupancy by both antibodies throughout the duration of the experiment. OM11 was well-tolerated and we observed no evidence of thromboembolic events. Collectively, our results indicated that CD40 pathway blockade in the absence of B cell depletion inhibited T cell-dependent immune responses and prevented allograft rejection. Thus, use of the Fc-silent anti-CD40 antibody OM11 appears to be an attractive approach for preventing solid organ transplant rejection and treating autoimmune diseases involving T cell-dependent humoral immune mechanisms. DISCLOSURES:Rush, J.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Cordoba, F.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Wieczorek, G.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Audet, M.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Schneider, M.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Patel, D.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Heusser, C.: Other, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Contractor. Bruns, C.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Ulrich, P.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Slade, A.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation. Klupp, J.: Employee, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation.
A Volumetric Approach to Point Cloud Compression (2018)

Compression of point clouds has so far been confined to coding the positions of a discrete set of points in space and the attributes of those discrete points. We introduce an alternative approach based on volumetric functions, which are functions defined not just on a finite set of points, but throughout space. As in regression analysis, volumetric functions are continuous functions that are able to interpolate values on a finite set of points as linear combinations of continuous basis functions. Using a B-spline wavelet basis, we are able to code volumetric functions representing both geometry and attributes. Geometry is represented implicitly as the level set of a volumetric function (the signed distance function or similar). Attributes are represented by a volumetric function whose coefficients can be regarded as a critically sampled orthonormal transform that generalizes the recent successful region-adaptive hierarchical (or Haar) transform to higher orders. Experimental results show that both geometry and attribute compression using volumetric functions improve over those used in the emerging MPEG Point Cloud Compression standard.
Efficient Processing of Data for Locating Lightning Strikes (2003)

Two algorithms have been devised to increase the efficiency of processing of data in lightning detection and ranging (LDAR) systems so as to enable the accurate location of lightning strikes in real time. In LDAR, the location of a lightning strike is calculated by solving equations for the differences among the times of arrival (DTOAs) of the lightning signals at multiple antennas as functions of the locations of the antennas and the speed of light. The most difficult part of the problem is computing the DTOAs from digitized versions of the signals received by the various antennas. One way (a time-domain approach) to determine the DTOAs is to compute cross-correlations among variously differentially delayed replicas of the digitized signals and to select, as the DTOAs, those differential delays that yield the maximum correlations. Another way (a frequency-domain approach) to determine the DTOAs involves the computation of cross-correlations among Fourier transforms of variously differentially phased replicas of the digitized signals, along with utilization of the relationship among phase difference, time delay, and frequency.
Shadow-Routing Based Dynamic Algorithms for Virtual Machine Placement in a Network Cloud (2015)

We consider a shadow routing based approach to the problem of real-time adaptive placement of virtual machines (VM) in large data centers (DC) within a network cloud. Such placement in particular has to respect vector packing constraints on the allocation of VMs to host physical machines (PM) within a DC, because each PM can potentially serve multiple VMs simultaneously. Shadow routing is attractive in that it allows a large variety of system objectives and/or constraints to be treated within a common framework (as long as the underlying optimization problem is convex). Perhaps even more attractive feature is that the corresponding algorithm is very simple to implement, it runs continuously, and adapts automatically to changes in the VM demand rates, changes in system parameters, etc., without the need to re-solve the underlying optimization problem “from scratch”. In this paper we focus on the min-max-DC-load problem. Namely, we propose a combined VM-to-DC routing and VM-to-PM assignment algorithm, referred to as Shadow scheme, which minimizes the maximum of appropriately defined DC utilizations. We prove that the Shadow scheme is asymptotically optimal (as one of its parameters goes to 0). Simulation confirms good performance and high adaptivity of the algorithm. Favorable performance is also demonstrated in comparison with a baseline algorithm based on VMware implementation [7], [8]. We also propose a simplified - “more distributed” - version of the Shadow scheme, which performs almost as well in simulations.
Synthèse de l'amino‐3 azétidine (1985)

Abstract La synthèse de l'amino‐3 azétidine (4) , un bio‐équivalent potentiel de la pipérazine ou amino‐4 pipéridine, est decrite en utilisant une reaction catalysee par transfert de phase solide‐liquide.
Quorum Sensing Regulates Type III Secretion in<i>Vibrio harveyi</i>and<i>Vibrio parahaemolyticus</i> (2004)

In a process known as quorum sensing, bacteria communicate with one another by producing, releasing, detecting, and responding to signal molecules called autoinducers. Vibrio harveyi, a marine pathogen, uses two parallel quorum-sensing circuits, each consisting of an autoinducer-sensor pair, to control the expression of genes required for bioluminescence and a number of other target genes. Genetic screens designed to discover autoinducer-regulated targets in V. harveyi have revealed genes encoding components of a putative type III secretion (TTS) system. Using transcriptional reporter fusions and TTS protein localization studies, we show that the TTS system is indeed functional in V. harveyi and that expression of the genes encoding the secretion machinery requires an intact quorum-sensing signal transduction cascade. The newly completed genome of the closely related marine bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus, which is a human pathogen, shows that it possesses the genes encoding both of the V. harveyi-like quorum-sensing signaling circuits and that it also has a TTS system similar to that of V. harveyi. We show that quorum sensing regulates TTS in V. parahaemolyticus. Previous reports connecting quorum sensing to TTS in enterohemorrhagic and enteropathogenic Escherichia coli show that quorum sensing activates TTS at high cell density. Surprisingly, we find that at high cell density (in the presence of autoinducers), quorum sensing represses TTS in V. harveyi and V. parahaemolyticus.
Immunogenicity of a thermally inactivated rotavirus vaccine in mice (2008)

Current approaches to the prevention of severe rotavirus diarrhea and deaths in children have all been through the use of live oral vaccines. To develop a safe and effective inactivated rotavirus vaccine (IRV), a new simple, rapid and robust method for the inactivation is critical and essential because chemical inactivation commonly used for a number of killed vaccines has been a challenge and problematic for rotavirus. We have examined an array of thermal conditions and demonstrated that purified YK-1 rotavirus in diluent buffer can be completely inactivated by heat treatment, as evidenced by the lack of virus growth in two successive passages in cell culture. Unlike chemical treatment that often causes physical and biochemical damages to viruses, thermally inactivated rotavirus particles maintained their structural, biochemical and antigenic integrity. A two-dose intramuscular administration of thermally inactivated YK-1 rotavirus without adjuvant resulted in high titers of total and neutralizing antibody in serum of mice. Adjuvant Al(OH)(3) further led to enhanced antibody titers and also dramatically lowered the amount of antigens in the vaccine formulation. Our results demonstrate the potential of heat inactivation as a novel approach to the manufacture of a safe and efficacious parenteral rotavirus vaccine, which should serve as an important addition to and back up for live oral rotavirus vaccine in children.
Measurement of serum phosphate levels using a mobile sensor (2020)

The measurement of serum phosphate concentration is crucial for patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) and those on maintenance dialysis, as abnormal phosphate levels may be associated with severe health risks. It is important to monitor serum phosphate levels on a regular basis in these patients; however, such measurements are generally limited to every 0.5-3 months, depending on the severity of CKD. This is due to the fact that serum phosphate measurements can only be performed at regular clinic visits, in addition to cost considerations. Here we present a portable and cost-effective point-of-care device capable of measuring serum phosphate levels using a single drop of blood (<60 μl). This is achieved by integrating a paper-based microfluidic platform with a custom-designed smartphone reader. This mobile sensor was tested on patients undergoing dialysis, where whole blood samples were acquired before starting the hemodialysis and during the three-hour treatment. This sampling during the hemodialysis, under patient consent, allowed us to test blood samples with a wide range of phosphate concentrations, and our results showed a strong correlation with the ground truth laboratory tests performed on the same patient samples (Pearson coefficient r = 0.95 and p < 0.001). Our 3D-printed smartphone attachment weighs about 400 g and costs less than 80 USD, whereas the material cost for the disposable test is <3.5 USD (under low volume manufacturing). This low-cost and easy-to-operate system can be used to measure serum phosphate levels at the point-of-care in about 45 min and can potentially be used on a daily basis by patients at home.
The development of sparsomycin as an anti-tumour drug. (1988)

The synthesis of sparsomycin and eight lipophilic analogues is discussed. Sparsomycin, a bacterial metabolite, is a potent inhibitor of protein biosynthesis; in addition it has anti-tumour properties. Structure-activity relationship studies indicate that the anti-tumour activity is a direct consequence of the inhibition of protein synthesis. Two of the analogues show a higher anti-tumour activity in vitro as well as in vivo, and are less toxic to mice than sparsomycin. Finally, some properties of sparsomycin are discussed: the drug potentiates the cytotoxicity of cisplatin and is selectively active on tumour cells without affecting human bone-marrow.
COFTA: hardware-software co-synthesis of heterogeneous distributed embedded systems for low overhead fault tolerance (1999)

Embedded systems employed in critical applications demand high reliability and availability in addition to high performance. Hardware-software co-synthesis of an embedded system is the process of partitioning, mapping, and scheduling its specification into hardware and software modules to meet performance, cost, reliability, and availability goals. In this paper, we address the problem of hardware-software co-synthesis of fault-tolerant real-time heterogeneous distributed embedded systems. Fault detection capability is imparted to the embedded system by adding assertion and duplicate-and-compare tasks to the task graph specification prior to co-synthesis. The dependability (reliability and availability) of the architecture is evaluated during co-synthesis. Our algorithm, called COFTA (Co-synthesis Of Fault-Tolerant Architectures), allows the user to specify multiple types of assertions for each task. It uses the assertion or combination of assertions which achieves the required fault coverage without incurring too much overhead. We propose new methods to: 1) Perform fault tolerance based task clustering, which determines the best placement of assertion and duplicate-and-compare tasks, 2) Derive the best error recovery topology using a small number of extra processing elements, 3) Exploit multidimensional assertions, and 4) Share assertions to reduce the fault tolerance overhead. Our algorithm can tackle multirate systems commonly found in multimedia applications. Application of the proposed algorithm to a large number of real-life telecom transport system examples (the largest example consisting of 2,172 tasks) shows its efficacy. For fault secure architectures, which just have fault detection capabilities, COFTA is able to achieve up to 48.8 percent and 25.6 percent savings in embedded system cost over architectures employing duplication and task-based fault tolerance techniques, respectively. The average cost overhead of COFTA fault-secure architectures over simplex architectures is only 7.3 percent. In case of fault-tolerant architectures, which cannot only detect but also tolerate faults, COFTA is able to achieve up to 63.1 percent and 23.8 percent savings in embedded system cost over architectures employing triple-modular redundancy, and task-based fault tolerance techniques, respectively. The average cost overhead of COFTA fault-tolerant architectures over simplex architectures is only 55.4 percent.
<title>Optical approach to quantum computing</title> (1998)

We describe an on-going experimental investigation of a newly predicted mechanism for the production of nonlinear interactions between two photons. This mechanism involves nonlocal cooperative effects between pairs of atoms and exists only at the quantum level. An optical approach to quantum computing based on this effect may have many practical advantages.
3D Printed Conductive Nanocellulose Scaffolds for the Differentiation of Human Neuroblastoma Cells (2020)

We prepared cellulose nanofibrils-based (CNF), alginate-based and single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT)-based inks for freeform reversible embedding hydrogel (FRESH) 3D bioprinting of conductive scaffolds. The 3D printability of conductive inks was evaluated in terms of their rheological properties. The differentiation of human neuroblastoma cells (SH-SY5Y cell line) was visualized by the confocal microscopy and the scanning electron microscopy techniques. The expression of TUBB3 and Nestin genes was monitored by the RT-qPCR technique. We have demonstrated that the conductive guidelines promote the cell differentiation, regardless of using differentiation factors. It was also shown that the electrical conductivity of the 3D printed scaffolds could be tuned by calcium-induced crosslinking of alginate, and this plays a significant role on neural cell differentiation. Our work provides a protocol for the generation of a realistic in vitro 3D neural model and allows for a better understanding of the pathological mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases.
A miniaturized multi-wideband Quasi-Yagi MIMO antenna system (2018)

A multi-band directional multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system is presented based on a rectangular loop excited Quasi-Yagi configuration. A 64% reduction in size is obtained using a rectangular meandered element as well as a small ground plane. The proposed two-element MIMO antenna system covers the Telemetry L-band and several LTE/WLAN bands. It has a wide measured bandwidth of 689 MHz (1.897–2.586 GHz) in the desired band centered at 2 GHz, and a measured bandwidth of more than 168 MHz across rest of the bands. The MIMO antenna system has a total size of 45 × 120 × 0.76 mm3, with a single element size of 55 × 60 × 0.76 mm3. The non-desired back-lobe radiation which is obtained using a small ground plane, is significantly reduced by using a novel defected ground structure (DGS) as compared with the complex techniques present in literature. The proposed DGS provides a high measured front-to-back ratio of 14 dB at 2 GHz and 11 dB in other bands. A maximum measured realized gain of 5.8 dBi is obtained in the desired band using a single parasitic director element. The proposed MIMO antenna system has a minimum measured radiation efficiency of 70%, isolation of 12 dB, and envelope correlation coefficient of 0.098 within all bands which ensures very good MIMO performance.
Fixed-gain/adaptive control for simultaneous rejection of broadband and sinusoidal disturbances (2001)

In this paper we experimentally investigate the feasibility of using a hybrid fixed-gain/adaptive control architecture for simultaneous rejection of broadband and sinusoidal disturbances. The motivation for this study comes from active noise control (ANC) applications in which the disturbance has both broadband and sinusoidal components, for example, wind noise and engine noise in an aircraft cabin. The advantage of this approach is that it improves performance while reducing real-time computational load. The experiment is carried out on a three dimensional acoustic space contained in a steel drum, on which speakers and microphones are mounted as actuators and sensors respectively. A fixed-gain H<z optimal (LQG) controller is used to attenuate the broadband component of the noise while a low-order extended ARMARKOV adaptive controller (EAAC) is used to attenuate a tonal disturbance of unknown frequency.
Dynamic visual metaphors for news story abstractions (2003)

We describe a dynamic document genre for online news, specifically designed to support end users in both easily skimming news stories as well as reading them in-depth. Through careful analysis of the needs of online news readers, and understanding the opportunities and constraints of the computational medium, we set out to define characteristics of a document management environment which uses linguistically-intensive content analysis techniques to derive document abstractions usable as 'zooming' windows into and out of documents. The notion of flexible mediation between progressively richer, and more informative, layers of document content defines the core underlying characteristic of a dynamic document genre. We prototyped and deployed three examples of dynamic document viewers that characterize this new genre. The design incorporates a novel mix of: state-of-the-art linguistic analysis techniques that produces capsule document overviews, novel temporal typography techniques that allows us to dynamically change how these overviews are presented to the reader, specialized search and filter mechanisms to cull collections of relevant documents from the Web, and large screen displays to facilitate peripheral awareness of constantly changing news feeds.
Production of antibody to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) after immunization with a LPS‐polymyxin B‐agarose immunogen (1988)

A method was devised to produce antibodies to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in guinea-pigs following a single immunization. The antigen was prepared by mixing polymyxin B-agarose with LPS from Escherichia coli O55:B5. Use of the agarose support allowed purification of the complex by simple washing procedures. Twenty-nine days after a single injection of the immunogen mixed with Freund complete adjuvant all animals demonstrated antibody to the LPS portion of the complex. No antibodies were detected to the polymyxin B component. Typical titres of LPS as measured by ELISA were 2(11). After, a booster immunization, titres of LPS antibody were further increased and a greater avidity was noted. In contrast to other methods which have been employed for production of antibody to LPS, use of the polymyxin B-agarose complex has the following advantages: ease of antigen preparation, ready purification of the complex, potent immunostimulation, and under the conditions employed here, LPS-specific antibody production, without accompanying antibody to polymyxin B.
Quantitative Biological Microscopy of Cells by Digital Holography (2006)

Holograms of biological objects are acquired using digital holographic microscopy. The reconstructed phase images display high resolution, quantitative measurements of optical thickness with a resolution of several nanometers.