gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Two Faces of Health Care Quality Improvement. (Research Notes) (2003)

The attention of specialists in health policy has been focused on a very interesting worldwide movement in health care called Quality Improvement (QI). It bears watching. QI has the potential to be one of the best things that has happened to American health care in decades. Or it may prove to be merely one more driving force in the de-professionalization of medicine in the twenty-first century. QI grows out of the work of consultants in the 1970s who were trying to make American industries and products more competitive. A group of health policy experts began to draw upon those ideas of total quality management and import them into the running of hospitals, nursing homes, and doctor's offices. At the same time, there was a focus in medicine on outcomes research, medical practice variations studies, and evidence-based medicine. For the watchdogs of managed care, quality was on the agenda because they feared that the rewards for reducing costs would drive down quality as well. More recently, the shocking discovery of the number of medical errors and injuries that occur in American hospitals has fueled interest in QI. Thus QI has become organized, credentialed, and institutionalized. A federal agency exists to promote it, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The Institute of Medicine has issued two book-length reports on the field. And the powerful Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has helped force institutional change and establish quality improvement efforts within hospitals. QI comes into medicine like Janus, looking backward and forward at the same time. We will see a bit of both faces in the coming years. Still, these two directions are worth distinguishing as bioethics becomes involved in the quality improvement conversation. QI may be simply a contemporary extension of the approach to often called Taylorism, after the founder of scientific research and time-motion studies, Frederick W. Taylor. This approach emphasizes highly centralized practices and tightly controlled, narrowly defined assignments. If this backward face of QI predominates, then doctors, like their colleagues in the engineering profession before them, may lose what remains of their control over the conditions of their practice. Esoteric professional knowledge and judgment will give way to statistically validated general knowledge. Professional self-regulation will bow to formal legal and bureaucratic regulation. Charisma and idiosyncracy will be reduced to routinized and rule-governed process. …
Total Synthesis of Ageladine A, an Angiogenesis Inhibitor from the Marine Sponge <i>Agelas nakamurai</i> (2006)

[reaction: see text] A 12-step total synthesis of the tricyclic heteroaromatic marine metabolite ageladine A has been achieved using a 6pi-azaelectrocyclization and a Suzuki-Miyaura coupling of N-Boc-pyrrole-2-boronic acid with a chloropyridine as key steps.
Thin Film Sensors for Condition Monitoring in Ball Screw Drives (2012)

The development of sensor pins which can be easily integrated into ball screw drives for preload measurement is described in this paper. The sensor's base body consists out of a steel pin with a special shaped load region. This complex surface is coated and structured with a sensory thin film system based on a hydrogenated carbon layer. The layer shows an excellent tribological stability combined with piezoresistive behaviour. It is shown, that the sensor pins can be used for preload measurements during the mounting and for dynamic load detections during the movement of the ball screw drive. Hence, measurement results are presented, that show the dependency of resistance changes to the preload forces.
Electromagnetic acoustic transducer (2023)

A noncontact ultrasonic transducer for studying the acoustic properties of a metal workpiece includes a generally planar magnetizing coil positioned above the surface of the workpiece, and a generally planar eddy current coil between the magnetizing coil and the workpiece. When a large current is passed through the magnetizing coil, a large magnetic field is applied to the near-surface regions of the workpiece. The eddy current coil can then be operated as a transmitter by passing an alternating current therethrough to excite ultrasonic waves in the surface of the workpiece, or operated as a passive receiver to sense ultrasonic waves in the surface by measuring the output signal. The geometries of the two coils can be varied widely to be effective for different types of ultrasonic waves. The coils are preferably packaged in a housing which does not interfere with their operation, but protects them from a variety of adverse environmental conditions.
Transparently Achieving Superior Socket Performance Using Zero Copy Socket Direct Protocol over 20Gb/s InfiniBand Links (2005)

Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) is a byte stream protocol that utilizes the capabilities of the InfiniBand fabric to transparently achieve performance gains for existing socket-based networked applications. In this paper we discuss an implementation of Zero Copy support for synchronous send()/recv() socket calls, that uses the remote DMA capability of InfiniBand for SDP data transfers. We added this support to the open-source implementation of SDP over InfiniBand. We evaluate this implementation over a 20 Gb/s InfiniBand link. We demonstrate scalability of Zero Copy and show its benefits for systems that utilize multiple socket connections in parallel. For example, enabling Zero Copy with 8 active connections yields a bandwidth growth from 630MB/s to 1360MB/s, at the same time reducing the CPU utilization by a factor of ten.
Atomic Scale Indium Distribution in a GaN/In<sub>0.43</sub>Ga<sub>0.57</sub>N/Al<sub>0.1</sub>Ga<sub>0.9</sub>N Quantum Well Structure (1997)

Quantitative high resolution electron microscopy (HRTEM) is used to map the indium distribution in a GaN/In 0.43 Ga 0.57 N/Al 0.1 Ga 0.9 N quantum well at the atomic scale. Samples with atomically flat surfaces were prepared for microscopy by anisotropic chemical etching. The developed preparation procedure minimizes a possible confusion of thickness variations with local compositional fluctuations in the lattice images. An irregular distribution of indium is observed that is attributed to the formation of clusters with estimated diameters of 1–2 nm. The indium concentration gradient across GaN/In 0.43 Ga 0.57 N interfaces is measured to extend typically over a distance of 1nm. It is more than twice as large across the In 0.43 Ga 0.57 N/Al 0.1 Ga 0.9 N interface. Indium segregation into the Al 0.1 Ga 0.9 N layer during crystal growth is likely to cause this unusual large width of the In 0.43 Ga 0.57 N/Al 0.1 Ga 0.9 N interfaces. This introduces an asymmetric In distribution across the quantum well with respect to the growth direction.
Ocean upwelling system utilizing energy of surface waves (2016)

The upper ocean is an important component of climate and climate change. The heat capacity of only a few meters of the ocean is equivalent to the heat capacity of the entire atmosphere. (Solar radiation and IR balance in the atmosphere are of course major factors as well.) A large amount of cold water is available below the thermocline. Artificial upwelling devices can bring cold and nutrient rich water from below the thermocline, increase bio-productivity and cool down the sea surface and the air above. An analytical model and computational fluid dynamics simulation indicate high efficiency of the system. Wave-driven upwelling devices can modify climate on a local scale, and possibly help mitigate hurricanes to some extent.
Nanoporous Cu–Al–Co Alloys for Selective Furfural Hydrodeoxygenation to 2-Methylfuran (2017)

By finding new catalysts for selective and efficient conversion of biomass-derived products to industrially relevant chemicals and fuels, a transition from fossil fuel feedstocks may be achieved. Furfural (C5H4O2) is a platform chemical which may be converted to multiple heterocyclic and ring-opening products, but to date there have been few catalysts which enable selective hydrodeoxygenation to 2-methylfuran (2-MF, C5H6O). In this work, we present a self-supported nanoporous Cu–Al–Co ternary alloy catalyst with high furfural HDO activity toward 2-MF, achieving up to 66.0% selectivity and 98.2% overall conversion at 513 K with only a ∼5 atomic % Co composition. Further analysis over multiple temperature conditions and nominal Co concentrations was performed to examine optimal conditions and tune catalyst performance, and operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments were conducted to elucidate the structure of the catalyst in the reaction environment.
In Vitro Import of a Nuclearly Encoded tRNA into the Mitochondrion of <i>Trypanosoma brucei</i> (1999)

All of the mitochondrial tRNAs of Trypanosoma brucei have been shown to be encoded in the nucleus and must be imported into the mitochondrion. The import of nuclearly encoded tRNAs into the mitochondrion has been demonstrated in a variety of organisms and is essential for proper function in the mitochondrion. An in vitro import assay has been developed to study the pathway of tRNA import in T. brucei. The in vitro system utilizes crude isolated trypanosome mitochondria and synthetic RNAs transcribed from a cloned nucleus-encoded tRNA gene cluster. The substrate, composed of tRNA(Ser) and tRNA(Leu), is transcribed in tandem with a 59-nucleotide intergenic region. The tandem tRNA substrate is imported rapidly, while the mature-size tRNA(Leu) fails to be imported in this system. These results suggest that the preferred substrate for tRNA import into trypanosome mitochondria is a precursor molecule composed of tandemly linked tRNAs. Import of the tandem tRNA substrate requires (i) a protein component that is associated with the surface of the mitochondrion, (ii) ATP pools both outside and within the mitochondrion, and (iii) a membrane potential. Dissipation of the proton gradient across the inner mitochondrial membrane by treatment with an uncoupling agent inhibits import of the tandem tRNA substrate. Characterization of the import requirements indicates that mitochondrial RNA import proceeds by a pathway including a protein component associated with the outer mitochondrial membrane, ATP-dependent steps, and a mitochondrial membrane potential.
Source traffic smoothing and ATM network interfaces for VBR MPEG video encoders (2002)

This paper describes approaches for shaping and smoothing traffic from VBR MPEG video encoders and interfacing to ATM networks, by introducing delay and rate buffering between the video encoding and decoding processes, and by flow controlling the data rate out of the encoder buffer into the network. Three algorithms for flow control are defined and compared in terms of their resulting traffic profile. The performance of these algorithms in the presence of a leaky bucket ATM network access controller is studied. The relationship between the leaky bucket algorithm parameters and VBR MPEG encoder parameters is discussed. It is shown that significant gains in performance can be obtained by appropriate selection of traffic smoothing algorithms at the output of a VBR MPEG encoder.
A Microcomputer-Based Image Database Management System (1987)

Industrial applications frequently involve manipulation and management of pictorial information. In spite of the fact that digitized images and pictorial information are becoming more significant as parts of user databases, conventional database techniques have focused primarily on numerical and textual information. The Image Database Management (IDBM) system extends these techniques to encompass images, pictures, and graphs. Designed to run in a microcomputer environment, the design of IDBM integrates efficient database algorithms and compression techniques to permit fast retrievals as well as an unusually large number of images to be set up as a single database. The support of a synonym base is another important characteristic of the IDBM system.
A Technological Review of Wearable Cueing Devices Addressing Freezing of Gait in Parkinson’s Disease (2019)

Freezing of gait is one of the most debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's disease and is an important contributor to falls, leading to it being a major cause of hospitalization and nursing home admissions. When the management of freezing episodes cannot be achieved through medication or surgery, non-pharmacological methods such as cueing have received attention in recent years. Novel cueing systems were developed over the last decade and have been evaluated predominantly in laboratory settings. However, to provide benefit to people with Parkinson's and improve their quality of life, these systems must have the potential to be used at home as a self-administer intervention. This paper aims to provide a technological review of the literature related to wearable cueing systems and it focuses on current auditory, visual and somatosensory cueing systems, which may provide a suitable intervention for use in home-based environments. The paper describes the technical operation and effectiveness of the different cueing systems in overcoming freezing of gait. The "What Works Clearinghouse (WWC)" tool was used to assess the quality of each study described. The paper findings should prove instructive for further researchers looking to enhance the effectiveness of future cueing systems.
Characterizing chain processes in visible light photoredox catalysis (2015)

The recognition that Ru(bpy)<sub>3</sub><sup>2+</sup> andsimilar visible light absorbing transition metal complexes can be photocatalysts for a variety of synthetically useful organic reactions has resulted in a recent resurgence of interest in photoredox catalysis. However, many of the critical mechanistic aspects of this class of reactions remain poorly understood. In particular, the degree to which visible light photoredox reactions involve radical chain processes has been a point of some disagreement that has not been subjected to systematic analysis. We have now performed quantum yield measurements to demonstrate that threerepresentative, mechanistically distinct photoredox processes involve product-forming chain reactions. Moreover, we show that the combination of quantum yield and luminescence quenching experiments provides a rapid method to estimate the length of these chains. Together, these measurements constitute a robust, operationally facile strategy for characterizing chain processes in a wide range of visible light photoredox reactions.
Thermodynamic Studies of Anion Adsorption at Stepped Platinum(<i>h</i><i>kl</i>) Electrode Surfaces in Sulfuric Acid Solutions (2002)

The thermodynamics of the so-called perfectly polarized electrode was employed to analyze the total charge densities for stepped Pt(hkl) electrodes in solutions of H2SO4 with an excess of an inert electrolyte (0.1 M HClO4). Three Pt single-crystal electrodesPt(10,10,9) = 20(111)×(111), Pt(7,7,6) = 14(111)×(111), and Pt(5,5,4) = 10(111)×(111)vicinal to the Pt(111) surface were employed in these studies. A complete thermodynamic analysis using the electrode potential and the charge as independent variables has been performed. The Gibbs excess, Gibbs energy of adsorption, electrosorption valency, and Esin−Markov coefficients for (bi)sulfate adsorption at these surfaces have been determined. The thermodynamic data display a dependence on the crystallographic structure of the Pt electrode surface. Both the Gibbs excess and the Gibbs energy of adsorption decrease with increasing step density or decreasing terrace length. This result indicates that adsorption of (bi)sulfate is stronger at larger (111) terraces.
Phosphorylation and Dimerization Regulate Nucleocytoplasmic Shuttling of Mammalian STE20-like Kinase (MST) (2002)

Mammalian STE20-like kinase (MST) is a member of the yeast STE20-related kinase family and proteolytically activated by caspase during apoptosis. However, its other cellular functions are not known, including its activation mechanism, substrate(s), and subcellular localization. In this report, using anti-MST monoclonal antibodies, we clearly show that endogenous MST is localized in cytoplasm in a leptomycin B-dependent manner. Analyses with serial deletions and point mutations show that MST has two functional nuclear export signals and, unexpectedly, another localization motif for nuclear import. When cells are treated with leptomycin, monomeric MST is accumulated more rapidly in the nucleus than dimeric MST, indicating that dimerization contributes to the cytoplasmic retention of MST. Okadaic acid, an inhibitor of phosphatase 2A, induces activation of MST and translocation into the nucleus. Using phosphopeptide-specific antibody, we directly show that okadaic acid induces phosphorylation in the activation loop of MST, and, once phosphorylated, MST is rapidly translocated to the nucleus. However, kinase-deficient MST does not enter the nucleus, indicating that phosphorylation and activation is required for okadaic acid-induced nuclear translocation. In apoptotic cells, the activation of MST does not require phosphorylation in the activation loop and occurs through the release of C-terminal regulatory domain by caspase-dependent cleavage. Kinase-deficient MST functions dominant-negatively and represses okadaic acid-induced morphological change indicating that MST plays a role in okadaic acid-induced cellular shrinkage. Our identification of cytoplasmic and nuclear localization motifs and phosphorylation-dependent translocation of MST suggests that regulation of localization is important to the biological function of MST, including its effects on cellular morphology.
Sensitivity of the Human Binaural Cortical Steady State Response to Interaural Level Differences (2010)

The 8 Hz auditory steady state response to a 4 Hz change in noise interaural correlation might be useful as an objective measure of binaural integration in asymmetric hearing loss. Response amplitude is more negatively affected by small amounts of interaural asymmetry than by large reductions in overall presentation level.
Quantitative trait loci for lifespan of mated <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i> affect both sexes (2002)

The properties of alleles at quantitative trait loci (QTLs) contributing to variation in lifespan should be described to determine the mechanisms of evolution of life length and to predict its future changes. Previously, we and others conducted genome-wide screens for QTLs that segregate among one panel of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) using a dense molecular marker map. In non-stressful conditions, QTLs effecting the lifespans of virgin females and males were frequently sex specific. In an unrelated panel of RILs, the effects of QTLs in flies maintained in cages with mixed sexes were similar in both sexes. Here, we re-measured the lifespans of the former panel of RILs in cages with mixed sex cohorts. Lifespan declined owing to mating. The amount of decline correlated between sexes within lines. QTLs mapping to the intervals 15A-19C, 50B-57C, 63A-65A, and 96F-99B had similar effects on the lifespans of both males and females. These QTLs have previously been detected in virgin flies surveys and had sex- and/or environment-specific effects.
Efecto de diferentes distancias de siembra sobre el rendimiento en el cultivo del Algodón (Gossypium hirsutum L.) en el Estado Zulia (1994)

Se presentan los resultados de investigaciones realizadas durante los ciclos algodoneros 1991-92 y 1992-93, para evaluar el efecto de diferentes densidades de siembra sobre el rendimiento del algodon, en dos localidades, el Municipio Maracaibo y Municipio Baralt del Estado Zulia. Se probaron tres distancias entre hileras: 0,90; 1,00 y 1,10 m y cuatro distancias entre plantas: 0,15; 0,20; 0,25 y 0,30 m en un arreglo en parcelas divididas, bajo un diseno experimental en bloques al azar con cuatro repeticiones. En el Municipio Maracaibo, se determino que el rendimiento mostro diferencias altamente significativas por efecto de la distancia entre hileras, a favor de la distancia de 0,90 m, en la cual se produjo 807,17 kg/ha. En el Municipio Baralt se observaron diferencias en la variable estudiada por efecto del ciclo de cosecha, distancia entre hileras, distancia entre plantas y su interaccion. Al igual que en el Municipio Maracaibo las diferencias por efecto de la distancia entre hilera se encontro con la distancia de 0,90 m (1204,88 kg/ha), en cuanto 2 la distancia entre plantas fue la de 0,25 m la que mostro un mayor rendimiento (1303,89 kg/ha) y para los efectos de tratamiento la combinacion de 1 m entre hilera y 0,25 m entre plantas produjo el mayor rendimiento (1402,67 kg/ha).
Development of a Shifting Melting Point Ag-In Paste Via Transient Liquid Phase Sintering for High Temperature Environments (2008)

The increasing demand for electronic devices capable of operating at temperatures above the traditional 125°C limit is driving major efforts in research and development. Devices based on wide band gap semiconductors have been demonstrated to operate at temperatures up to 500°C, but packaging still remains a major hurdle for product development. Recent regulations, such as RoHS and WEEE, increase the complexity of the packaging task as they prohibit the use of certain materials in electronic products such as lead (Pb), which has traditionally been used in high temperature solder attach. The successful development of new attach materials and manufacturing processes will enable the realization of next generation products capable of operating reliably at elevated temperatures. In this investigation a shifting melting point silver (Ag) - indium (In) solder paste that uses a Transient Liquid Phase Sintering (TLPS) process was developed. This novel material and manufacturing process constitutes a major advancement over the conventional soldering process temperature hierarchy, in which the maximum allowable application temperature is limited by the melting point of the attach material. By virtue of a shifting melting temperature, which results from isothermal solidification during the TLPS process, this attach material can be processed at a relatively low temperature while being capable of sustaining much higher temperatures in use, limited only by its new melting point. In order to develop an empirical kinetics model of the Ag-In TLPS process, a design of experiments (DOE) was used to study the effect of multiple factors on the solidification reaction. These factors include particle size, weight fraction of solute, heating rate, holding time, and processing temperature. The physical implications of the empirical model were confirmed by constructing a diffusion based mechanistic model. Pivotal microstructural information was obtained from metallographic analysis where a transition from an In-rich matrix to an Ag-rich solid solution was observed. The metallographic characteristics, mechanical strength, and electrical conductivity of the resulting Ag-In TLPS material were assessed. This study has resulted in the creation of a novel attach material and method that will enable future development of electronic packaging for high temperature environments. The quantitative description of the reaction kinetics during the TLPS process provided a valuable tool for future development and an optimization of this system.
Implementation Aspects of a Novel Speech Packet Loss Concealment Method (2005)

A speech data packet loss concealment algorithm based on pitch period repetition is presented and a novel low complexity method to refine a pitch period estimate is introduced. Objective performance measurements show that this pitch refinement improves the quality of packet loss concealment. Hardware-software codesign techniques have been investigated to implement the algorithm. Using a coprocessor approach, a processing delay of 0.9 ms and a overall speedup of 3.3 was achieved.