gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Towards markerless motion capture: model estimation, initialization and tracking (2007)

Motion capture is an important application in diverse areas such as bio-mechanics, computer animation, and human-computer interaction. Current motion capture methods use markers that are attached to the body of the subject and are therefore intrusive. In applications such as pathological human movement analysis, these markers may introduce unknown artifacts in the motion and are, in general, cumbersome. We present a computer vision based system for markerless human motion capture that uses images obtained from multiple synchronized and calibrated cameras. We model the human body as a set of rigid segments connected in articulated chains. We use a volumetric representation (voxels) of the subject using images obtained from the cameras in our work. We propose a novel, bottom-up approach to segment the voxels into different articulated chains based on their mutual connectivity, by mapping the voxels into Laplacian Eigenspace. We prove properties of the mapping that show that it is ideal for mapping voxels on non-rigid chains in normal space to nodes that lie on smooth 1D curves in Laplacian Eigenspace. We then use a 1D spline fitting procedure to segment the nodes according to which 1D curve they belong to. The segmentation is followed by a top-down approach that uses our knowledge of the structure of the human body to register the segmented voxels to different articulated chains such as the head, trunk and limbs. We propose a hierarchical algorithm to simultaneously initialize and estimate the pose and body model parameters for the subject. Finally, we propose a tracking algorithm that uses the estimated human body model and the initialized pose for a single frame of a given sequence to track the pose for the remainder of the frames. The tracker uses an iterative algorithm to estimate the pose, that combines both motion and shape cues in a predictor-corrector framework. The motion and shape cues complement each other and overcome drift and local minima problems. We provide results on 3D laser scans, synthetic data, and real video sequences with different subjects for our segmentation, model and pose estimation algorithms.
Peptides derived from serum amyloid A prevent, and reverse, aortic lipid lesions in apoE−/− mice (2005)

Macrophages (Mphi) at sites of acute tissue injury accumulate and export cholesterol quickly. This metabolic activity is likely dependent on the physiological function of a major acute-phase protein, serum amyloid A 2.1 (SAA2.1), that is synthesized by hepatocytes as part of a systemic response to acute injury. Our previous studies using cholesterol-laden J774 mouse Mphi showed that an N-terminal domain of SAA2.1 inhibits acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferase activity, and a C-terminal domain enhances cholesteryl ester hydrolase activity. The net effect of this enzymatic regulation is to drive intracellular cholesterol to its unesterified state, the form readily exportable to an extracellular acceptor such as HDL. Here, we demonstrate that these domains from mouse SAA2.1, when delivered in liposomal formulation, are effective at preventing and reversing aortic lipid lesions in apolipoprotein E-deficient mice maintained on high-fat diets. Furthermore, mouse SAA peptides, in liposomal formulation, are effective at regulating cholesterol efflux in THP-1 human Mphi, and homologous domains from human SAA are effective in mouse J774 cells. These peptides operate at the level of the foam cell in the reverse cholesterol pathway and therefore may be used in conjunction with other agents that act more distally in this process. Such human peptides, or small molecule mimics of their structure, may prove to be potent antiatherogenic agents in humans.
Fiber Optic Damage Assessment System for Fiber Reinforced Composite Structures. (1982)

There are a limited number of nondestructive evaluation techniques available for field inspection of large composite structures and practically no viable techniques for in-service inspection. With this in mind, an innovative Damage Assessment System is proposed which is based on a concept of using an optical fiber mesh, implanted into the body of a fiber reinforced composite structure. Such a mesh would become an integral part of the structure during the course of its fabrication. The selection of the mesh fibers would be predicated on their strain to failure characteristics and strain compatability with the base composite reinforcing fibers. This optical system will be capable of locating damage, assessing severity and monitoring damage growth. A successful implementation of the total Damage Assessment System would involve the interaction of the optical fiber mesh with an adequately designed interrogative electronic package. This report focuses on the former aspect of the total system. It will address some recent experimental work showing the practicality of the concept in assessing various modes of failure due to impact of composite plates, optical fiber selection, location and spacing of fibers, as well as the utility of the system for damage assessment in large, complex composite structures. (Author)
Benzoxazolone Carboxamides as Potent Acid Ceramidase Inhibitors: Synthesis and Structure–Activity Relationship (SAR) Studies (2015)

Ceramides are lipid-derived intracellular messengers involved in the control of senescence, inflammation, and apoptosis. The cysteine amidase, acid ceramidase (AC), hydrolyzes these substances into sphingosine and fatty acid and, by doing so, regulates their signaling activity. AC inhibitors may be useful in the treatment of pathological conditions, such as cancer, in which ceramide levels are abnormally reduced. Here, we present a systematic SAR investigation of the benzoxazolone carboxamides, a recently described class of AC inhibitors that display high potency and systemic activity in mice. We examined a diverse series of substitutions on both benzoxazolone ring and carboxamide side chain. Several modifications enhanced potency and stability, and one key compound with a balanced activity-stability profile (14) was found to inhibit AC activity in mouse lungs and cerebral cortex after systemic administration. The results expand our arsenal of AC inhibitors, thereby facilitating the use of these compounds as pharmacological tools and their potential development as drug leads.
Automated Scoring of Speaking Tasks in the Test of English‐for‐Teaching (<i><scp>TEFT</scp></i>™) (2015)

This research report presents a summary of research and development efforts devoted to creating scoring models for automatically scoring spoken item responses of a pilot administration of the Test of English‐for‐Teaching ( TEFT ™ ) within the ELTeach ™ framework. The test consists of items for all four language modalities: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. This report only addresses the speaking items, which elicit responses ranging from highly predictable to semipredictable speech from nonnative English teachers or teacher candidates. We describe the components of the system for automated scoring, comprising an automatic speech recognition ( ASR ) system, a set of filtering models to flag nonscorable responses, linguistic measures relating to the various construct subdimensions, and multiple linear regression scoring models for each item type. Our system is set up to simulate a hybrid system whereby responses flagged as potentially nonscorable by any component of the filtering model are routed to a human rater, and all other responses are scored automatically by our system.
Multi-area state estimation using distributed SDP for nonlinear power systems (2012)

State estimation (SE) is an important task allowing power networks to monitor accurately the underlying system state, while multi-area SE is becoming increasingly popular as the power grid comprises multiple interconnected “subgrids.” For nonlinear AC power systems, SE per subgrid amounts to minimizing a nonlinear least-squares cost that is inherently nonconvex, thus giving rise to many local optima. Despite the non-convexity, a recent SE approach based on semidefinite programming (SDP) has been effective in approaching globally optimal performance at the price of higher computational cost. A novel reduced-complexity algorithm is developed in this paper for local control areas to solve the centralized SDP-based SE problem in a distributed fashion. It leverages results on positive semidefinite matrix completion to split a global state matrix constraint into local ones, which further allows for parallel implementation using the alternating-direction method of multipliers (ADMM). With minimal data exchanges among neighboring areas, each control center can efficiently perform local updates that scale with each area's size (number of buses). Numerical simulations using the IEEE 14-bus system demonstrate the asymptotic convergence of local state matrices, and desirable estimation accuracy attainable with a limited number of exchanges.
Digital Alloy Growth of Low-Noise Avalanche Photodiodes (2018)

We describe the molecular beam epitaxial growth, characterization, and device performance of conventional, staircase, and photoconductive avalanche photodetectors grown with AlInAsSb digital alloys. In particular, this is the first low-noise III-V avalanche photodiode alloy family and offers the band engineering flexibility necessary to achieve staircase avalanche photodiode operation.
Activation of Gαs Mediates Induction of Tissue-type Plasminogen Activator Gene Transcription by Epoxyeicosatrienoic Acids (2001)

The epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) are products of cytochrome P450 (CYP) epoxygenases that have vasodilatory and anti-inflammatory properties. Here we report that EETs have additional fibrinolytic properties. In vascular endothelial cells, physiological concentrations of EETs, particularly 11,12-EET, or overexpression of the endothelial epoxygenase, CYP2J2, increased tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) expression by 2.5-fold without affecting plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 expression. This increase in t-PA expression correlated with a 4-fold induction in t-PA gene transcription and a 3-fold increase in t-PA fibrinolytic activity and was blocked by the CYP inhibitor, SKF525A, but not by the calcium-activated potassium channel blocker, charybdotoxin, indicating a mechanism that does not involve endothelial cell hyperpolarization. The t-PA promoter is cAMP-responsive, and induction of t-PA gene transcription by EETs correlated with increases in intracellular cAMP levels and, functionally, with cAMP-driven promoter activity. To determine whether increases in intracellular cAMP levels were due to modulation of guanine nucleotide-binding proteins, we assessed the effects of EETs on Galpha(s) and Galpha(i2). Treatment with EETs increased Galpha(s), but not Galpha(i2), GTP-binding activity by 3.5-fold. These findings indicate that EETs possess fibrinolytic properties through the induction of t-PA and suggest that endothelial CYP2J2 may play an important role in regulating vascular hemostasis.
Isobutyraldehyde production from Escherichia coli by removing aldehyde reductase activity (2012)

In this work, we optimized E. coli for the production of the important chemical feedstock isobutyraldehyde by the removal of IBRs. Long-term production yielded industrially relevant titers of isobutyraldehyde with in situ product removal. The mutational load imparted on E. coli in this work demonstrates the versatility of metabolic engineering for strain improvements.
Fluorescence Axial Localization with Nanometer Accuracy and Precision (2012)

We describe a new technique, standing wave axial nanometry (SWAN), to image the axial location of a single nanoscale fluorescent object with sub-nanometer accuracy and 3.7 nm precision. A standing wave, generated by positioning an atomic force microscope tip over a focused laser beam, is used to excite fluorescence; axial position is determined from the phase of the emission intensity. We use SWAN to measure the orientation of single DNA molecules of different lengths, grafted on surfaces with different functionalities.
Compiler supports for VLIW DSP processors with SIMD intrinsics (2011)

SUMMARY To sustain growing multimedia workload, modern digital signal processing (DSP) processors are commonly equipped with subword instructions to accelerate signal processing. Besides subword, functional units of very long instruction word (VLIW) DSP processors can also be employed to process multiple data streams in parallel. However, because of power and area concerns, many embedded VLIW DSP processors adopt distributed register files to reduce read/write ports and wire connection by privatizing register files for clusters and even for functional units. The distributed design presents great challenges to compilers in distributing single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) workload to functional units. In this paper, we address the issue in supporting SIMD parallelism on VLIW DSP processors with subword instructions and distributed register files. Currently, industrial practices have adopted intrinsics that enable developers to utilize hardware resources and compete with hand‐coded assembly in performance. However, it is still an open issue to provide such a solution for VLIW DSP processors with distributed register files. In this work, we provide SIMD intrinsics to allow programmers to write highly optimized codes by following given programming guides. In addition, an enhanced register allocation scheme and data replication optimizations are devised to enable efficient code generation. In our experiments, DSPstone benchmark and a set of H.264 kernels are used to evaluate the proposed programming and optimization schemes. The result shows that by combining SIMD intrinsics and compiler optimizations, one is able to obtain remarkable performance improvements, speedups of 2.9 and 3.5 for DSPstone and H.264 kernels, respectively. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Airtime Fair Distributed Cross-Layer Congestion Control for Real-Time Video Over WLAN (2009)

We propose a distributed cross-layer congestion control algorithm that provides enhanced quality of service QoS and reliable operation for real-time uplink video over WiFi applications. Such applications are characterized by many wireless devices transmitting video at various PHY rates over a relatively congested channel. Unfortunately, today's off-the-shelf 802.11 equipment can be easily demonstrated to suffer catastrophic failure when subject to these conditions-let alone provide acceptable perceptual quality to the user. We show that in order to remedy these issues, it is preferable to apply airtime fairness with a cross-layer approach. The idea is to use a fast frame-by-frame control loop in the carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)-based medium access control (MAC) layer while simultaneously exploiting the powerful control loop gain attainable by performing source-rate adaptation in the application layer. We support the proposed algorithm through both simulation and experimentation with various channel and PHY rate scenarios.
Keypoint trajectory coding on compact descriptor for video analysis (2016)

In contrast to still image analysis, motion information offers a powerful means to analyze video. In particular, motion trajectories determined from keypoints have become very popular in recent years for a variety of video analysis tasks, including search, retrieval and classification. Additionally, cloud-based analysis of media content has been gaining momentum, so efficient communication of salient video information to perform the necessary analysis of video at the cloud server is needed. This paper describes a novel framework to efficiently represent the keypoint trajectories. In particular, an interframe prediction is designed with the option to operate in a low-delay mode. Additionally, a scalable coding method is proposed that allows for a subset of the coded trajectories in a video segment to be easily accessed. Experimental results on several popular datasets including Stanford MAR and Hopkin155 demonstrate a significant rate saving of up to 25% with our proposed trajectory coding approaches relative to a state-of-the-art reference approach.
Overview of the diagnostic value of biochemical markers of liver fibrosis (FibroTest, HCV FibroSure) and necrosis (ActiTest) in patients with chronic hepatitis C (2004)

SUMMARY: BACKGROUND: Recent studies strongly suggest that due to the limitations and risks of biopsy, as well as the improvement of the diagnostic accuracy of biochemical markers, liver biopsy should no longer be considered mandatory in patients with chronic hepatitis C. In 2001, FibroTest ActiTest (FT-AT), a panel of biochemical markers, was found to have high diagnostic value for fibrosis (FT range 0.00-1.00) and necroinflammatory histological activity (AT range 0.00-1.00). The aim was to summarize the diagnostic value of these tests from the scientific literature; to respond to frequently asked questions by performing original new analyses (including the range of diagnostic values, a comparison with other markers, the impact of genotype and viral load, and the diagnostic value in intermediate levels of injury); and to develop a system of conversion between the biochemical and biopsy estimates of liver injury. RESULTS: A total of 16 publications were identified. An integrated database was constructed using 1,570 individual data, to which applied analytical recommendations. The control group consisted of 300 prospectively studied blood donors. For the diagnosis of significant fibrosis by the METAVIR scoring system, the areas under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUROC) ranged from 0.73 to 0.87. For the diagnosis of significant histological activity, the AUROCs ranged from 0.75 to 0.86. At a cut off of 0.31, the FT negative predictive value for excluding significant fibrosis (prevalence 0.31) was 91%. At a cut off of 0.36, the ActiTest negative predictive value for excluding significant necrosis (prevalence 0.41) was 85%. In three studies there was a direct comparison in the same patients of FT versus other biochemical markers, including hyaluronic acid, the Forns index, and the APRI index. All the comparisons favored FT (P < 0.05). There were no differences between the AUROCs of FT-AT according to genotype or viral load. The AUROCs of FT-AT for consecutive stages of fibrosis and grades of necrosis were the same for both moderate and extreme stages and grades. A conversion table was constructed between the continuous FT-AT values (0.00 to 1.00) and the expected semi-quantitative fibrosis stages (F0 to F4) and necrosis grades (A0 to A3). CONCLUSIONS: Based on these results, the use of the biochemical markers of liver fibrosis (FibroTest) and necrosis (ActiTest) can be recommended as an alternative to liver biopsy for the assessment of liver injury in patients with chronic hepatitis C. In clinical practice, liver biopsy should be recommended only as a second line test, i.e., in case of high risk of error of biochemical tests.
Interference estimation with noisy measurements in broadband wireless packet networks (2002)

It has been shown that link adaptation and power control can improve the performance of our future wireless packet networks. Realizing the expected performance gain of these techniques requires accurate prediction of future interference power. We propose a new method based on Kalman filtering for interference estimation. The new method is devised by observing: (a) it is possible to identify fairly accurately the number of active co-channel interferers in the cellular networks and (b) interference power is positively correlated with the number of active interferers. The new technique uses a two-dimensional Kalman filter to exploit that correlation to enhance the prediction accuracy. Using a cellular network with 1/3 frequency reuse and partial traffic loading, the performance of the new method is compared with a simplified method using a one-dimensional Kalman filter where the number of active interferers is not considered. Further, the new method is compared with the traditional exponential filtering. Since the proposed method and the simplified method track interference and measurement errors separately, their predictions represent closely the best estimation by exponential filtering with the optimal parameter. In addition, for a typical network environment, the two-dimensional method yields the lowest prediction errors for a wide range of parameters, and provides a 0.5 dB improvement for the 90th percentile estimation error over the simplified method due to exploitation of the positive correlation between interference and the number of active interferers.
The Lung Cancer Genomic Screening Project for Individualized Medicine in Japan (LC-SCRUM-Japan): Screening for <i>RET</i> and <i>ROS1</i> fusions in advanced <i>EGFR</i> mutation-negative nonsquamous lung cancer and development of molecular targeted therapy. (2014)

8055 Background: EGFR mutations and ALK fusions have emerged as important oncogenic drivers in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). RET and ROS1 fusions have identified as new drivers of lung adenocarcinomas and these fusions are reported to be promising druggable targets. However, these gene fusions are encountered rather rarely, that is observed in only 1-2% of all lung adenocarcinomas. Methods: This study was established in February 2013 as a new nationwide genomic screening project for developing individualized medicine of advanced NSCLC patients in Japan. Tumor samples of advanced EGFR mutation-negative non-squamous lung cancer patients were eligible for submission. The specimens were screened for RET, ROS1 and ALK fusions by RT-PCR and FISH methods. Results: As of January 22th in 2014, The LC-SCRUM-Japan is under way with the participation of 158 institutions in Japan, under aid from the public research fund of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan. 507 patients were enrolled to this st...
Surface Carboxymethylation of a Chitin Hydrogel (1997)

A chitin hydrogel was modified to give a bilayer structure comprised of a surface layer of carboxymethyl-chitin and bulk chitin within. By gradually increasing the sodium hydroxide concentration used in the activation step of the reaction, thickness of the carboxymethyl layer with accompanying swellability was varied. These bilayer hydrogels showed distinct morphological differences between the surface and bulk regions, visualized with a basic dye test and verified by FT-IR. Carboxymethylation was found to increase the lysozyme susceptibility of these hydrogels. These modified hydrogels have potential in orthopedics applications where enhanced water swellability and calcium affinity imparted by surface carboxymethylation are desirable properties.
Camera-based clear path detection (2010)

In using image analysis to assist a driver to avoid obstacles on the road, traditional approaches rely on various detectors designed to detect different types of objects. We propose a framework that is different from traditional approaches in that it focuses on finding a clear path ahead. We assume that the video camera is calibrated offline (with known intrinsic and extrinsic parameters) and vehicle information (vehicle speed and yaw angle) is known. We first generate perspective patches for feature extraction in the image. Then, after extracting and selecting features of each patch, we estimate an initial probability that the patch corresponds to clear path using a support vector machine (SVM) based probability estimator on the selected features. We finally perform probabilistic patch smoothing based on spatial and temporal constraints to improve the initial estimate, thereby enhancing detection performance. We show that the proposed framework performs well even in some challenging examples with shadows and illumination changes.