gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Image Quality Enhancement for Low Backlight TFT-LCD Displays (2007)

Reducing LCD backlight saves power consumption of a portable device, but it also decreases the contrast and brightness of the displayed image. Previous approaches adjust the backlight level frame by frame to reach a specified image quality level without optimizing the image quality. In contrast, the proposed method adjusts the backlight to meet the target power level while maintaining the image quality. This is achieved by performing brightness compensation and local contrast enhancement in accordance with the given backlight level. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms previous methods.
Anaerobic Digestion of Dairy Manure: Design and Process Considerations (2005)

The increase in production and concentration of intensive livestock operations along with increased urbanization of rural regions have resulted in greater awareness and concern for the proper storage, treatment, and utilization of livestock manure. In particular, the management, treatment and disposal of liquid and solid manure at dairy operations are receiving increased attention. In today’s society, the “odorshed” is just as important as the watershed. Nonetheless, livestock manure has significant resource potential. All animal manures are valuable sources of crop nutrients and manure represents a substantial bioenergy resource if processed by anaerobic digestion.
Time Domain Pitch Extraction Algorithm (1974)

An algorithm is described for determining the pitch period of voiced speech in real time. The input signal to the algorithm is the residual or error signal of a 10th-order adaptive linear predictor. The pitch period estimated is updated on each speech sample based on an analysis of the present and past input samples. Pitch period is determined by locating sharp pitch peaks in the short-term power of the prediction residual signal. The instantaneous pitch period is the time separation of two adjacent pitch peaks. The algorithm employs a time-moving search window and a time-varying threshold level to locate pitch peaks. Various tests and procedures are incorporated into the algorithm to handle the special cases of false and missed pitch peaks. Detected errors are corrected within the algorithm by employing past data. Unlike the correlation or averaging methods of pitch extraction, which require large amounts of storage and arithmetic operations, the time domain method requires a minimal of storage and only simple comparisons of amplitudes. Experimental results illustrating the algorithm performance will be presented.
An artificial neural net Viterbi decoder (1996)

The Viterbi algorithm is a maximum likelihood means for decoding convolutional codes and has thus played an important role in applications ranging from satellite communications to cellular telephony. In the past, Viterbi decoders have usually been implemented using digital circuits. The speed of these digital decoders is directly related to the amount of parallelism in the design. As the constraint length of the code increases, parallelism becomes problematic due to the complexity of the decoder. In this paper an artificial neural network (ANN) Viterbi decoder is presented. The ANN decoder is significantly faster than comparable digital-only designs due to its fully parallel architecture. The fully parallel structure is obtained by implementing most of the Viterbi algorithm using analog neurons as opposed to digital circuits. Several modifications to the ANN decoder are considered, including an analog/digital hybrid design that results in an extremely fast and efficient decoder. The ANN decoder requires one-sixth the number of transistors required by the digital decoder. The connection weights of the ANN decoder are either +1 or -1, so weight considerations in the implementation are eliminated. This, together with the design's modularity and local connectivity, makes the ANN Viterbi decoder a natural fit for VLSI implementation. Simulation results are provided to show that the performance of the ANN decoder matches that of an ideal Viterbi decoder.
NOB Repression for Mainstream Nitrite-Shunt and Deammonification: A Pilot Study (2013)

NOB Repression for Mainstream Nitrite-Shunt and Deammonification: A Pilot StudyMainstream deammonification is regarded as a paradigm shift from the conventional aerobic wastewater treatment that is capable of promoting more sustainable nitrogen removal. It is understood that for deammonification to be successful in mainstream wastewater treatment, the...Author(s)Pusker RegmiBecky HolgateMark W. MillerRyder BunceHongkeun ParkKartik ChandranBernhard WettSudhir MurthyCharles B. BottSourceProceedings of the Water Environment FederationDocument typeConference PaperPublisherWater Environment FederationPrint publication date Oct, 2013ISSN1938-6478DOI10.2175/193864713813673677Volume / Issue2013 / 16Content sourceWEFTECCopyright2013Word count353
Application of MEMS-based x-ray optics as tuneable nanosecond choppers (2017)

Time-resolved synchrotron x-ray measurements often rely on using a mechanical chopper to isolate a set of x-ray pulses. We have started the development of micro electromechanical systems (MEMS)-based x-ray optics, as an alternate method to manipulate x-ray beams. In the application of x-ray pulse isolation, we recently achieved a pulse-picking time window of half a nanosecond, which is more than 100 times faster than mechanical choppers can achieve. The MEMS device consists of a comb-drive silicon micromirror, designed for efficiently diffracting an x-ray beam during oscillation. The MEMS devices were operated in Bragg geometry and their oscillation was synchronized to x-ray pulses, with a frequency matching subharmonics of the cycling frequency of x-ray pulses. The microscale structure of the silicon mirror in terms of the curvature and the quality of crystallinity ensures a narrow angular spread of the Bragg reflection. With the discussion of factors determining the diffractive time window, this report showed our approaches to narrow down the time window to half a nanosecond. The short diffractive time window will allow us to select single x-ray pulse out of a train of pulses from synchrotron radiation facilities.
758. A Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor Enhances Recombinant Adeno-Associated Virus-Mediated Gene Expression in Cancer Cells In Vitro and In Vivo (2004)

Background: The transduction of cancer cells using recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) occurs with low efficiency, which limits its utility in cancer gene therapy. We have previously sought to enhance rAAV-mediated transduction of cancer cells by applying DNA-damaging stresses. An alternative technique to improve the rAAV-mediated transduction of tumor cells is enhancement at a transcription step. Treatment with a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor is known to recover the gene expression from a silenced rAAV genome that has been integrated into the host's genome. However, rAAV exists mostly as an extrachromosomal genome rather than as an integrated genome, and this extrachromosomal form is the primary source of gene expression. We examined whether the HDAC inhibitor could contribute to the enhanced transcription before integration occurs.
Infectious Agent Detection With SERS-Active Silver Nanorod Arrays Prepared by Oblique Angle Deposition (2008)

The aligned silver nanorod array substrates prepared by the oblique angle deposition method are capable of providing extremely high enhancement factors (~5times10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">8</sup> ) at near-infrared wavelengths (785 nm) for a standard reporter molecule 1,2 trans-(bis)pyridyl-ethene (BPE). The enhancement factor depends strongly on the length of the Ag nanorods, the substrate coating, the polarization of the excitation light, as well as the incident angle. With the current optimum structure, we demonstrate that the detection limit for BPE can be lower than 0.1 fM. We also show that this surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-active substrate can serve as a sensor to detect and differentiate the molecular fingerprints of several important human pathogens, particularly, respiratory syncytial virus, human immunodeficiency virus, rotavirus, and the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Utilizing chemometric methods, SERS nanorod array data can be used to sensitively detect and to classify viruses at the strain level. These results suggest that the SERS Ag nanorod array is a powerful technique for direct, rapid, and sensitive detection of infectious agents.
Continuous working level measurements using alpha and beta detectors. Report of investigations 1977 (1977)

The Bureau of Mines has investigated techniques of using gross alpha or beta detectors to continuously measure working levels. Both methods measure radioactive particulates collected on a filter paper using a constant airflow. Inherent error studies indicate a value of about plus or minus 3 percent for the gross alpha method and about plus or minus 8 percent for the beta method in typical mine atmospheres. Applications of these continuous working level detectors include work area monitoring of exposure levels in underground openings, such as mines and caves as well as a means of calibrating personal dosimeters exposed over extended time intervals.
Sequence-Specific Binding of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Nucleocapsid Protein to Short Oligonucleotides (1998)

We have analyzed the binding of recombinant human immunodeficiency virus type 1 nucleocapsid protein (NC) to very short oligonucleotides by using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology. Our experiments, which were conducted at a moderate salt concentration (0.15 M NaCl), showed that NC binds more stably to runs of d(G) than to other DNA homopolymers. However, it exhibits far more stable binding with the alternating base sequence d(TG)n than with any homopolymeric oligodeoxyribonucleotide; thus, it shows a strong sequence preference under our experimental conditions. We found that the minimum length of an alternating d(TG) sequence required for stable binding was five nucleotides. Stable binding to the tetranucleotide d(TG)2 was observed only under conditions where two tetranucleotide molecules were held in close spatial proximity. The stable, sequence-specific binding to d(TG)n required that both zinc fingers be present, each in its proper position in the NC protein, and was quite salt resistant, indicating a large hydrophobic contribution to the binding. Limited tests with RNA oligonucleotides indicated that the preferential sequence-specific binding observed with DNA also occurs with RNA. Evidence was also obtained that NC can bind to nucleic acid molecules in at least two distinct modes. The biological significance of the specific binding we have detected is not known; it may reflect the specificity with which the parent Gag polyprotein packages genomic RNA or may relate to the functions of NC after cleavage of the polyprotein, including its role as a nucleic acid chaperone.
The use of novel gradient directions with DTI to synthesize data with complicated diffusion behavior (2009)

This study demonstrates a new technique for synthesizing diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data sets that exhibit complex diffusion characteristics by performing operations on acquired DTI data of simple structures with anisotropic diffusive properties. The motivation behind this technique is to characterize the behavior of noise in complicated data using a phantom. Compared to simulations, an advantage to this approach is that the acquired data contain noise characteristic of the scanner and protocol. Using this technique, a simple capillary phantom is employed to infer the quality of data for more clinically realistic tissue structures (e.g., crossing fiber tracts). A water-filled phantom containing capillary arrays was constructed to demonstrate this technique, which uses a DTI protocol with typical clinical parameters. Eigenvalues and fractional anisotropy were calculated for the initial prolate data. Data were adjusted to synthesize different apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) spatial distributions, which were compared to theoretical and analytical models. RMS differences and volumetric overlap between expected and measured ADC distributions were quantified for all synthesized distributions. Differences between synthesized and actual distributions were discussed.
Site-Specific Thiol-mediated PEGylation of Streptokinase Leads to Improved Properties with Clinical Potential (2016)

Streptokinase (SK) is an efficient thrombolytic agent that dissolves fibrin blood clots with clinical efficiency comparable to the high priced drug, tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). However, being of bacterial origin, its major drawbacks are its potentially high antigenicity, and relatively short circulating half-life (approximately 10-15 min). In the present investigation, an attempt has been made to address both these shortcomings by site-specific pegylation, and to obtain longer lasting thrombolytics, which are consistent with clinical requirements. Therefore, we employed available three-dimensional structural information on SK to carry out site-specific cysteine incorporation at 'optimal' surfaceexposed sites within all the three domains in streptokinase followed by pegylation with 20KDa PEG groups, and screening for biologically active variants. Interestingly, some of these SK PEG-conjugates exhibited considerably subdued immunereactivity along with enhanced in-vitro proteolytic stability profiles and extended circulating in-vivo half-lives (2 to 20-fold compared to that of native unconjugated SK) depending upon location and number of PEG-groups per molecule obtained in homogeneous form. The obtained results are a promising approach for favorably modulating immune-reactivity and half-life by cysteine- specific PEGylation of SK to achieve therapeutic attributes desirable for the treatment of different circulatory disorders, such as ischemic stroke, myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism.
On the Use of Admission Control for Better Quality of Security (2009)

We propose an admission control policy that admits users into a public access network as soon as possible while limiting the overall security impact on the network and other users. In our model, each user has a particular reputation level when first requesting network access. Before admitting a user into the network, the initial risk of a user is assessed by the admission control system using past history and a scanning of the user's device which delays the user's admission into the network and updates the user's reputation level accordingly. We formulate the trade-off between the admission delay and security risk as a convex optimization problem, which can be solved for an admission control policy. The evaluation suggests that our approach can substantially increase the system security for public access networks while minimizing admission delay, in contrast to current approaches widely used in enterprise networks. The proposed framework extends the traditional quality of service- based admission control mechanisms with a well-defined notion of quality of security.
Automatic facial landmark labeling with minimal supervision (2009)

Landmark labeling of training images is essential for many learning tasks in computer vision, such as object detection, tracking, and alignment. Image labeling is typically conducted manually, which is both labor-intensive and error-prone. To improve this process, this paper proposes a new approach to estimate a set of landmarks for a large image ensemble with only a small number of manually labeled images from the ensemble. Our approach, named semi-supervised least-squares congealing, aims to minimize an objective function defined on both labeled and unlabeled images. A shape model is learnt on-line to constrain the landmark configuration. We also employ a partitioning strategy to allow coarse-to-fine landmark estimation. Extensive experiments on facial images show that our approach can reliably and accurately label landmarks for a large image ensemble starting from a small number of manually labeled images, under various challenging scenarios.
A 2.3-mW 11-cm Range Bootstrapped and Correlated-Double-Sampling Three-Dimensional Touch Sensing Circuit for Mobile Devices (2016)

This brief discusses an oscillator-based capacitive 3-D touch-sensing circuit for mobile devices. The proposed 3-D touch sensor uses correlated double sampling to achieve a high sensing resolution in the Z-direction and employs bootstrapping circuitry to reduce the mobile screen's interchannel-coupling effects. Additionally, to reduce chip area and assembly, the sensing oscillator is implemented with inverter-based active resonators instead of using either on- or off-chip inductors. The prototyped 3-D touch sensor is fabricated using 65-nm CMOS process technology and consumes an area of 2 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , with a 2.3-mW power consumption from a 1-V power supply. Measured together with a 3.4" HTC standard mobile screen, the sensor achieves an 11-cm Z-direction sensing range with a 1-cm resolution, demonstrating the potential implementation of 3-D finger position sensing in a mobile device.
Epitaxial Cuprate Superconductor/Ferroelectric Heterostructures (1991)

Thin-film heterostructures of Bi(4)Ti(3)O(12)Bi(2)Sr(2)CuO(6+x), have been grown on single crystals of SrTiO(3), LaAlO(3), and MgAl(2)O(4) by pulsed laser deposition. X-ray diffraction studies show the presence of c-axis orientation only; Rutherford backscattering experiments show the composition to be close to the nominal stoichiometry. The films are ferroelectric and exhibit a symmetric hysteresis loop. The remanent polarization was 1.0 microcoulomb per square centimeter, and the coercive field was 2.0 x 10(5) volts per centimeter. Similar results were obtained with YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-x) and Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+x), and single-crystal Bi(2)Sr(2)CuO(6+x)as the bottom electrodes. These films look promising for use as novel, lattice-matched, epitaxial ferroelectric film/electrode heterostructures in nonvolatile memory applications.
Carbon Nano Tube (CNT) multiplexers for multiple-valued computing (2007)

Novel two types of Carbon Nano Tube (CNT)-based multiplexers are introduced The first device is a solid-state transmission gate (t-gate) multiplexer that uses CNT as a channel in the Field Effect Transistors (FET) of both n-FET and p-FET types that are used. Because of its very small size, it has been shown that a CNT-based FET switches reliably using much less power than a silicon-based device, and thus the new device will consume less power than traditional t-gate multiplexer. The second new CNT device uses the fundamental Lorentz magnetic force from the basic laws of Electromagnetics as a switching mechanism between two conducting CNTs. The implementation of multiple-valued Galois logic using the new CNT devices is shown. Since a multiplexer is a fundamental logic block, the new devices can have a wide range of applications in a wide variety of nano circuits.
Islet amyloid polypeptide toxicity and membrane interactions (2013)

Islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) is responsible for amyloid formation in type 2 diabetes and contributes to the failure of islet cell transplants, however the mechanisms of IAPP-induced cytotoxicity are not known. Interactions with model anionic membranes are known to catalyze IAPP amyloid formation in vitro. Human IAPP damages anionic membranes, promoting vesicle leakage, but the features that control IAPP-membrane interactions and the connection with cellular toxicity are not clear. Kinetic studies with wild-type IAPP and IAPP mutants demonstrate that membrane leakage is induced by prefibrillar IAPP species and continues over the course of amyloid formation, correlating additional membrane disruption with fibril growth. Analyses of a set of designed mutants reveal that membrane leakage does not require the formation of β-sheet or α-helical structures. A His-18 to Arg substitution enhances leakage, whereas replacement of all of the aromatic residues via a triple leucine mutant has no effect. Biophysical measurements in conjunction with cytotoxicity studies show that nonamyloidogenic rat IAPP is as effective as human IAPP at disrupting standard anionic model membranes under conditions where rat IAPP does not induce cellular toxicity. Similar results are obtained with more complex model membranes, including ternary systems that contain cholesterol and are capable of forming lipid rafts. A designed point mutant, I26P-IAPP; a designed double mutant, G24P, I26P-IAPP; a double N-methylated variant; and pramlintide, a US Food and Drug Administration-approved IAPP variant all induce membrane leakage, but are not cytotoxic, showing that there is no one-to-one relationship between disruption of model membranes and induction of cellular toxicity.
Broadband Efficiency-Enhanced Mutually Coupled Harmonic Postmatching Doherty Power Amplifier (2017)

The postmatching topology is an effective approach for broadening the bandwidth of a Doherty power amplifier (DPA). Its efficiency can be enhanced using a second-harmonic short-circuit network (SHSN), but at the expense of bandwidth. In this paper, the SHSNs with mutual coupling are proposed to achieve efficiency enhancement without sacrificing bandwidth. A broadband Doherty amplifier was designed and fabricated based on commercially available gallium nitride HEMT (Cree CGH 40006P) devices to validate the proposed technique. Under continuous-wave excitation, the measured results of the proposed DPA demonstrated that a wide bandwidth of 40% (1.8-2.7 GHz) can be maintained, with the 6-dB back-off drain efficiency between 47.5% and 54%. Using a wideband code-division multiple access 3GPP test signal with the peak-to-average power ratio of 6.6 dB, the adjacent channel power ratio over the entire frequency band is below -30 and -25 dBc at a 6-dB back-off and saturation, respectively.
43.3: Electrostatic Tactile Display Using Beat Phenomenon of Voltage Waveforms (2014)

Abstract We propose an electrostatic tactile display, which presents regional stimulation. The 240‐Hz electrostatic force is generated by the beat phenomenon in a region where excited X electrodes cross excited Y electrodes, which presents tactile sensation to users. This display can accommodate multi‐touch tactile interaction with visual information.
Layered bandwidth management in the integrated ATM, SDH/SONET, and optical transport networks (2002)

This paper presents a layered bandwidth management scheme that exploits the strengths of ATM, STM and optical network technologies to realize a more manageable and cost-effective network than is possible by applying only one of these technologies in the integrated ATM, SDH/SONET, and optical transport networks.
Static Deadlock Prevention in Dynamically Configured Communication Networks (2008)

Abstract. We propose a modular verification technique that guarantees the absence of deadlocks in a system of communicating processes. The network model is very general. It supports dynamic process and channel creation and the ability to send channel endpoints over channels, thereby allowing arbitrary dynamically configured networks. The technique is based on statically approximating all potential wait cycles that could arise at runtime. The potential cycle information is computed from the local perspective of each process, leading to a modular analysis. We prove the soundness of the analysis (namely dead-lock freedom) on a simple but realistic language that captures the essence of such communication networks. We also describe how the technique can be applied to a substantial example. 1