gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Detection of the placental epigenetic signature of the<i>maspin</i>gene in maternal plasma (2005)

The discovery of fetal DNA in the plasma of pregnant women has opened up new approaches for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis and monitoring. Up to now, the lack of a fetal DNA marker that can be universally detected in maternal plasma has limited the clinical application of this technology. We hypothesized that epigenetic differences between the placenta and maternal blood cells could be used for developing such a marker. By using bisulfite DNA sequencing, the methylation status of the maspin gene promoter in placental tissues and paired maternal blood cells from pregnant women was analyzed. The maspin gene promoter was found to be hypomethylated in placental tissues and densely methylated in maternal blood cells. Genotyping of a single nucleotide polymorphism within the unmethylated maspin sequences in maternal plasma demonstrated that these sequences were derived from the fetus. By using real-time quantitative methylation-specific PCR, unmethylated maspin sequences were detected in maternal plasma in all three trimesters of pregnancy and were cleared within 24 h after delivery. The maternal plasma concentration of unmethylated maspin sequences was elevated by a median of 5.7 times in preeclamptic pregnancies compared with nonpreeclamptic pregnancies. Hypomethylated maspin DNA is the first universal marker for fetal DNA in maternal plasma, thus allowing the measurement of fetal DNA concentrations in pregnancy-associated disorders, irrespective of fetal gender and genetic polymorphisms. Differential DNA methylation between the placenta and maternal blood cells may be exploited to develop further markers for noninvasive prenatal assessment.
Thyrotropin (TSH) Receptor Autoantibodies Do Not Appear to Bind to the TSH Receptor Produced in an<i>in Vitro</i>Transcription/Translation System (1997)

An in vitro transcription/translation (TnT) system was used to produce 35S-labeled full-length TSH receptor (TSHR) and TSHR extracellular domain (TSHRex). The interaction of the labeled proteins with TSHR autoantibodies in Graves’ sera was then studied using an immunoprecipitation assay. In the assay, 35S-labeled TSHR or TSHRex were incubated with test sera, and any immune complexes formed were precipitated with protein A-Sepharose (in the case of mouse monoclonal antibodies, antimouse IgG-agarose was used). Rabbit antibodies to the TSHR and a mouse monoclonal antibody precipitated as much as 50% of the 35S-labeled TSHR preparations compared with about 2% for normal rabbit serum and 4% for a control monoclonal antibody. However, none of 34 Graves’ sera (TSHR autoantibody levels ranging from 14–95% inhibition of [125I]TSH binding) were able specifically to immunoprecipitate 35S-labeled TSHR or TSHRex. These negative findings were confirmed by analysis of the immunoprecipitates on SDS-PAGE followed by autoradiography. Our results indicate that the TnT system is not useful for producing labeled TSHR preparations that can bind TSHR autoantibodies well. This is in contrast to TnT produced 35S-labeled glutamic acid decarboxylase, thyroid peroxidase, and 21-hydroxylase, which react well with their respective autoantibodies. One main difference between these 3 autoantigens and the TSHR is that the receptor is highly glycosylated, and this extensive glycosylation may be of critical importance for correct folding of the receptor. Consequently, the inability of the TnT system to glycosylate proteins could explain in part why TnT-produced 35S-labeled TSHR and TSHRex do not bind TSHR autoantibodies.
Identification and characterization of three genes encoding acyl-CoA: diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) from the microalga Myrmecia incisa Reisigl (2015)

Acyl-CoA: diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) is a key enzyme responsible for triacylglycerol (TAG) synthesis in eukaryotic organisms. The present work reported DGAT genes in the green alga Myrmecia incisa , a promising candidate for arachidonic acid (ArA) production. According to the results of homology search against a transcriptome database, we cloned three cDNAs encoding putative DGAT1 and DGAT2. The 2238-bp, 1056-bp and 1068-bp of open reading frame (ORF) of these three cDNAs, designated as MiDGAT1 , MiDGAT2A and MiDGAT2B , were predicted to encode proteins composed of 745, 351 and 355 amino acids. They were separated by 14, 6 and 6 introns, respectively, as revealed by comparing their corresponding cDNA and DNA sequences. Multiple sequence alignment of amino acids indicated that MiDGAT1 had a pleckstrin homology (PH) domain, whilst MiDGAT2s contained a highly conserved HPHG, a characteristic motif of DGAT2 family. To determine the function, they were expressed heterologously in a Saccharomyces cerevisiae mutant strain with impaired TAG metabolism. Results of thin-layer chromatography and BODIPY staining indicated that both MiDGAT1 and MiDGAT2 s were able to restore TAG synthesis and lipid body formation. GC-MS analysis indicated that palmitic acid and stearic acid were the major components of TAGs in yeast cells, and their ratio between wild type and the transformed yeasts was not significantly different. Quantitative RT-PCR results showed that the transcript level of MiDGAT2A was regulated by nitrogen starvation, which was consistent with TAG accumulation in M. incisa . • Three novel genes encoding DGAT1 and 2 were cloned from M. incisa . • Mi DGAT properties and amino acid composition were determined. • Enzyme activity was confirmed by heterologous expression in the yeast. • Substrate preference of Mi DGATs was analyzed and compared. • Expression pattern of MiDGATs were examined.
An <i>in situ</i> calibration for hearing thresholds (2009)

Quantifying how the sound delivered to the ear canal relates to hearing threshold has historically relied on acoustic calibration in physical assemblies with an input impedance intended to match the human ear (e.g., a Zwislocki coupler). The variation in the input impedance of the human ear makes such a method of calibration questionable. It is preferable to calibrate the acoustic signal in each ear individually. By using a calibrated sound source and microphone, the acoustic input impedance of the ear can be determined, and the sound delivered to the ear calibrated in terms of either (i) the incident sound pressure wave or (ii) that portion of the incident sound pressure wave transmitted to the middle ear and cochlea. Hearing thresholds expressed in terms of these quantities are reported, these in situ calibrations not being confounded by ear canal standing waves. Either would serve as a suitable replacement for the current practice of hearing thresholds expressed in terms of sound pressure level calibrated in a 6cc or 2cc coupler.
Compact all-solid-state source of polarization-entangled photon pairs (2001)

A compact source of polarization-entangled photon pairs at a wavelength of 856 nm is realized using a frequency-doubled laser diode as the pump source for cavity-enhanced type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion. Our setup generates photon pairs with entanglement visibility of ⩾95% and with count rates comparable to those of standard experiments based on large-frame ion lasers.
Leveraging In-Batch Annotation Bias for Crowdsourced Active Learning (2015)

Data annotation bias is found in many situations. Often it can be ignored as just another component of the noise floor. However, it is especially prevalent in crowdsourcing tasks and must be actively managed. Annotation bias on single data items has been studied with regard to data difficulty, annotator bias, etc., while annotation bias on batches of multiple data items simultaneously presented to annotators has not been studied. In this paper, we verify the existence of "in-batch annotation bias" between data items in the same batch. We propose a factor graph based batch annotation model to quantitatively capture the in-batch annotation bias, and measure the bias during a crowdsourcing annotation process of inappropriate comments in LinkedIn. We discover that annotators tend to make polarized annotations for the entire batch of data items in our task. We further leverage the batch annotation model to propose a novel batch active learning algorithm. We test the algorithm on a real crowdsourcing platform and find that it outperforms in-batch bias naïve algorithms.
Flikker (2011)

Energy has become a first-class design constraint in computer systems. Memory is a significant contributor to total system power. This paper introduces Flikker, an application-level technique to reduce refresh power in DRAM memories. Flikker enables developers to specify critical and non-critical data in programs and the runtime system allocates this data in separate parts of memory. The portion of memory containing critical data is refreshed at the regular refresh-rate, while the portion containing non-critical data is refreshed at substantially lower rates. This partitioning saves energy at the cost of a modest increase in data corruption in the non-critical data. Flikker thus exposes and leverages an interesting trade-off between energy consumption and hardware correctness. We show that many applications are naturally tolerant to errors in the non-critical data, and in the vast majority of cases, the errors have little or no impact on the application's final outcome. We also find that Flikker can save between 20-25% of the power consumed by the memory sub-system in a mobile device, with negligible impact on application performance. Flikker is implemented almost entirely in software, and requires only modest changes to the hardware.
Echo canceller with both double-talk detector and path change detector (2012)

An echo canceller with both double-talk detector (DTD) and echo path change detector (PCD) is put forward. Double-talk detector is based on the activity detection of speech, using sub-filter to detect the near end talk, and enhancing its performance by adding a sliding window. The path change detector works by comparing the performance between main-filter and sub-filter. There is a problem when an echo canceller has both detectors: It's hard to discriminate between echo and near end speech after path changes, which can cause the echo of far voice increase suddenly and this echo is similar to the near end voice. To solve this problem, we propose to change double-talk detection threshold after path change happened. In addition, using the short silence mute at the beginning of a call, some random sequences will be sent to initialize the filter. The simulation results show that the proposed echo canceller has a satisfactory performance during double-talk and path change.
Single rare-earth ion spins in nanophotonic resonators (2020)

Rare-earth ions embedded in crystals are promising optically addressable spin qubits. We demonstrate this potential by measuring the optical and spin transition properties of single 171 Yb 3+ ions coupled to nanophotonic resonators fabricated in YVO 4 .
DurIAN-SC: Duration Informed Attention Network based Singing Voice Conversion System (2020)

Singing voice conversion is converting the timbre in the source singing to the target speaker's voice while keeping singing content the same. However, singing data for target speaker is much more difficult to collect compared with normal speech data.In this paper, we introduce a singing voice conversion algorithm that is capable of generating high quality target speaker's singing using only his/her normal speech data. First, we manage to integrate the training and conversion process of speech and singing into one framework by unifying the features used in standard speech synthesis system and singing synthesis system. In this way, normal speech data can also contribute to singing voice conversion training, making the singing voice conversion system more robust especially when the singing database is small.Moreover, in order to achieve one-shot singing voice conversion, a speaker embedding module is developed using both speech and singing data, which provides target speaker identify information during conversion. Experiments indicate proposed sing conversion system can convert source singing to target speaker's high-quality singing with only 20 seconds of target speaker's enrollment speech data.
Modeling planned downtime (2006)

In general, service providers have only placed system availability requirements on equipment providers for unplanned system downtime. However, reliability expectations of service providers are shifting in a manner that places requirements on equipment providers to manage all system downtime (i.e., planned system downtime as well as unplanned system downtime) rather than focusing solely on guaranteeing unplanned system downtime. Furthermore, service providers continuously request improvements in total system availability (e.g., requiring 99.999% system availability, which translates to 5.25 minutes of total system downtime per year). While numerous models exist for modeling unplanned system downtime, there are no equivalent models for planned downtime. This paper presents a planned downtime event taxonomy, characterizes the planned downtime for each category in the taxonomy, and incorporates the results into a model for predicting the total planned downtime associated with a system. It then uses the model on an example system, demonstrating the capability of the model in assessing various system design alternatives.
Isolation of A58365A and A58365B, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors produced by Streptomyces chromofuscus. (1985)

A58365A and A58365B, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, were isolated from the culture filtrate of Streptomyces chromofuscus NRRL 15098. A58365A and A58365B are homologous nitrogen-containing bicyclic structures of molecular formulae C12H13NO6 and C13H15NO6.
Single Step Conversion of Chiral Carnitine and Derivatives into (<i>S</i>)- and (<i>R</i>)-β-Substituted-γ-Butyrolactones (2004)

This paper describes an efficient single step transformation of chiral carnitine and carnitine derivatives into stereoisomerically pure (S)- and (R)-β-substituted-γ-butyrolactones, obtained by intramolecular nucleophilic displacement. (S)- Or (R)-carnitine and (R)-aminocarnitine inner salts give β-hydroxy-γ-butyrolactone and β-amino-γ-butyrolactone respectively (82% and 77%) with the same configuration as the starting material. (R)-Acetylaminocarnitine inner salt gives (R)-β-acetylamino-γ-butyrolactone (90%), while (R)-acetylcarnitine gives 2(5H)-furanone under the same reaction conditions (77%, via cyclization and subsequent elimination reaction). (R)-N-Benzyloxycarnitineamide gives a mixture of pyrrolidinone (11%) and furanoyl imidate (50%) derivatives. The direct transformation of wast (S)-carnitine into the valuable (S)-β-hydroxy-γ-butyrolactone or (after acetylation) into the precious 2(5H)-furanone is of particular interest.
Statistical Gabor-Based Gait Recognition Using Region-Level Analysis (2015)

Gait recognition has become a popular research problem gaining importance for human identification based on walking style. It has emerged as an attractive research problem due to possessing several desirable merits unlike other biometrics. However, most of the existing gait recognition methods that involve Gabor-based filters suffer from the curse of dimensionality, even with the use of a dimensionality reduction technique. This adds more computational and storage burdens and may cause difficulties to identify subjects with a high degree of confidence. In this paper a statistical gait recognition approach is proposed based on the analysis of overlapping Gabor-based regions. The Gait Energy Image (GEI) is first constructed from the gait sequence as a spatio-temporal summary. Then, the GEI image is convolved with a Gabor filter bank of 8 different orientations and 5 different scales. A statistical analysis is then applied to extract discriminative gait features from multi-overlapped Gabor-based regions. Consecutively, an SVM classifier is applied to measure the gait similarity and identify the subject. Comprehensive experiments are carried out to evaluate the proposed approach and compare it to existing approaches. The results have shown that promising performance can be achieved with the proposed approach under a variety of scenarios.
Fingerprinting magnetic media (1993)

The authors develop a technique to determine and extract a unique signature from a given magnetic recording medium (tape, disk, etc.). This feature is always recoverable and not permanently corruptible, making the individual medium readily identifiable with virtually no possibility of mistaking one for another. Results from experimental research are presented followed by a short discussion of some possible applications.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
Common-mode voltage reduction PWM algorithm for AC drives (2009)

The impact of common-mode voltage generated by PWM AC drives on motor bearings is well known. Several algorithms for common-mode voltage reduction have been proposed in the literature. While a few algorithms assume ideal switching and fall apart when non-idealities like inverter dead time are considered, some others are effective only in a limited operating range of the drive. In this paper, a previously proposed algorithm that is best suited for practical implementation is modified to include compensation for dead time and reflected wave motor over-voltage stress, while still producing output voltage waveforms with reduced common-mode content. Experimental results are provided to show the reduction in common-mode voltage over the entire operating range, with other performance attributes such as reflected wave motor over-voltage identical to conventional space-vector PWM. The advantages of applying the algorithm to a fully regenerative AC drive are also demonstrated.
Lignocellulosic Composites Prepared Utilizing Aqueous Alkaline/Urea Solutions with Cold Temperatures (2018)

Lignocellulosic composites (LCs) were fabricated by partially dissolving cotton to create a matrix that was reinforced with osage orange wood (OOW) particles and/or blue agave fibers (AF). LCs were composed of 15–35% cotton matrix and 65–85% OWW/AF reinforcement. The matrix was produced by soaking cotton wool in a cold aqueous alkaline/urea solvent and was stirred for 15 minutes at 350 rpm to create a viscous gel. The gel was then reinforced with lignocellulosic components, mixed, and then pressed into a panel mold. LC panels were soaked in water to remove the aqueous solvent and then oven dried to obtain the final LC product. Several factors involved in the preparation of these LCs were examined including reaction temperatures (−5 to −15°C), matrix concentration (15–35% cotton), aqueous solvent volume (45–105 ml/panel), and the effectiveness of employing various aqueous solvent formulations. The mechanical properties of LCs were determined and reported. Conversion of the cotton into a suitable viscous gel was critical in order to obtain LCs that exhibited high mechanical properties. LCs with the highest mechanical properties were obtained when the cotton wools were subjected to a 4.6% LiOH/15% urea solvent at −12.5°C using an aqueous solvent volume of 60 ml/panel. Cotton wool subjected to excessive cold alkaline solvents volumes resulted in irreversible cellulose breakdown and a resultant LC that exhibited poor mechanical properties.
Genetic Variation at the Tomato Cf-4/Cf-9 Locus Induced by EMS Mutagenesis and Intralocus Recombination (2004)

The interaction between tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) and the leaf mold pathogen Cladosporium fulvum is an excellent model for investigating disease resistance gene evolution. The interaction is controlled in a gene-for-gene manner by Cf genes that encode type I transmembrane extracellular leucine-rich repeat glycoproteins that recognize their cognate fungal avirulence (Avr) proteins. Cf-4 from L. hirsutum and Cf-9 from L. pimpinellifolium are located at the same locus on the short arm of tomato chromosome 1 in an array of five paralogs. Molecular analysis has shown that one mechanism for generating sequence variation in Cf genes is intragenic sequence exchange through unequal crossing over or gene conversion. To investigate this we used a facile genetic selection to identify novel haplotypes in the progeny of Cf-4/Cf-9 trans-heterozygotes that lacked Cf-4 and Cf-9. This selection is based on the ability of Avr4 and Avr9 to induce Cf-4- or Cf-9-dependent seedling death. The crossovers were localized to the same intergenic region defining a recombination hotspot in this cross. As part of a structure-function analysis of Cf-9 and Cf-4, nine EMS-induced mutant alleles have been characterized. Most mutations result in single-amino-acid substitutions in their C terminus at residues that are conserved in other Cf proteins.
IMAGE GUIDED NOISE TOMOGRAPHY FOR INCREASED SPECIFICITY OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING (2006)

A method for increasing the specificity of an MR image using noise correlation measurements is presented. From an MR image different regions within the body are identified based on contrast. Noise signals measured at the ports of the experimental setup are functions of the conductivity at each region and the sensitivity map of the field probes. For a simulated sensitivity map, the ratio of conductivities of two regions of a phantom containing saline and distilled water was determined from the measured noise correlation at the ports.
High selectivity production of propylene from 2-butene: non-degenerate pathways to convert symmetric olefins via olefin metathesis (2012)

The first example of propylene production from 2-butene in promising yield is described by reacting trans-2-butene over tungsten hydrides precursor W-H/Al(2)O(3) at 150 °C and different pressures in a continuous flow reactor. The tungsten carbene-hydride active site operates as a "bi-functional catalyst" through the disfavoured 2-butene isomerisation on W-hydride and 2-butenes/1-butene cross-metathesis on W-carbene.
Load Sensing Hydraulic Flow Control - A Versatile Controller (1978)

<div class="htmlview paragraph">A simple spool valve combined with load sensing principles is used for precision flow control on demand. This type of valve, even though it has been in use for about ten years, received new attention during the energy crunch of 1974 and the subsequent interest in load sensing systems The load sensing flow control has been used on many applications and especially for power steering circuits where priority flow is needed. The valve functions in all systems: open center, closed center, and load sensing. It provides flow and pressure to a controlled circuit on demand (only as much as needed).</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper describes the function and some applications of the valve and includes system considerations. Generally, a fluid linked power steering system is used for illustration but the same principles can apply to any circuit using a special four way valve.</div>