gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Enhancing analgesic spinal cord stimulation for chronic pain with personalized immersive virtual reality (2020)

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an approved treatment for truncal and limb neuropathic pain. However, pain relief is often suboptimal and SCS efficacy may reduce over time, requiring sometimes the addition of other pain therapies, stimulator revision, or even explantation. We designed and tested a new procedure by combining SCS with immersive virtual reality (VR) to enable analgesia in patients with chronic leg pain. We coupled SCS and VR by linking SCS-induced paresthesia with personalized visual bodily feedback that was provided by VR and matched to the spatiotemporal patterns of SCS-induced paresthesia. In this cross-sectional prospective interventional study, 15 patients with severe chronic pain and an SCS implant underwent congruent SCS-VR (personalized visual feedback of the perceived SCS-induced paresthesia displayed on the patient's virtual body) and 2 control conditions (incongruent SCS-VR and VR alone). We demonstrate the efficacy of neuromodulation-enhanced VR for the treatment of chronic pain by showing that congruent SCS-VR reduced pain ratings on average by 44%. Spinal cord stimulation-VR analgesia was stronger than that in both control conditions (enabling stronger analgesic effects than incongruent SCS-VR analgesia or VR alone) and kept increasing over successive stimulations, revealing the selectivity and consistency of the observed effects. We also show that analgesia persists after congruent SCS-VR had stopped, indicating carry over effects and underlining its therapeutic potential. Linking latest VR technology with recent insights from the neuroscience of body perception and SCS neuromodulation, our personalized new SCS-VR platform highlights the impact of immersive digiceutical therapies for chronic pain.Registration: clinicaltrials.gov, Identifier: NCT02970006.
GA design of small wire antennas (2004)

A multiobjective genetic algorithm (GA) has been applied to the design of electrically small thin-wire antennas taking into account the resonance frequency, efficiency and Q factor of the different configurations. The performance of the resulting designs is compared to that of other prefractal antennas of similar size.
Mechanical Fractionation of Biomass Feedstocks for Enhanced Pretreatment and Conversion (2018)

Mechanical fractionation of plant material has been thoroughly developed and is used widely in the food industry. Most biomass utilization schemes treat all of the biomass in a similar way, grinding the material and processing it as if it were a homogeneous feedstock. The chapter discusses the benefits that mechanical fractionation if developed and implemented could have on biomass pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, and biochemical and thermochemical conversion processes. Mechanical separations also present an opportunity to generate fractions of biomass with specific chemical and physical traits that could be advantageous in pretreatment, hydrolysis, or conversion processes. Mechanical fractionation can provide effective and affordable methods to improve the quality of feedstocks, thus making less expensive feedstocks available for use in the feedstock supply chain. Incorporating mechanical fractionation into the biomass feedstock supply chain could be added in-line with existing feedstock processing equipment. The challenge to getting mechanical fractionation adopted at the industrial level is demonstrating its effectiveness to industrial partners.
Thermostable Variants of Pyranose 2-Oxidase Showing Altered Substrate Selectivity for Glucose and Galactose (2010)

The homotetrameric flavoprotein pyranose 2-oxidase (P2Ox) has several proposed biotechnological applications, among others as a biocatalyst for carbohydrate transformations toward higher-value products. To improve some of the catalytic properties of P2Ox from Trametes multicolor, we selected a semirational enzyme engineering approach, namely, saturation mutagenesis of the amino acid His450 located at a pivotal point of the active site loop and subsequent screening of the libraries thus obtained for improved activity with the sugar substrate d-galactose. A variant with improved catalytic characteristics identified was H450G, which showed a significant, 3.6-fold decrease in K(M) together with a 1.4-fold increase in k(cat) for its substrate D-galactose and an overall improvement in the catalytic efficiency by a factor of 5. By combining H450G with other amino acid replacements, we obtained the P2Ox variants H450G/V546C and H450G/E542K/V546C, which can be of interest for applications in food industry due to their increased activity with D-galactose, high activity with D-glucose, and considerably increased stability for the latter variant. While the His-tagged recombinant wild-type enzyme strongly prefers D-glucose to D-galactose as its substrate, H450G/E542K/V546C converts both sugars, which are found in lactose hydrolysates, concomitantly, as was shown by laboratory-scale biotransformation experiments. The 2-keto sugars thus obtained can conveniently be reduced to the corresponding ketoses D-fructose and D-tagatose.
Camera Calibration for Daylight Specular-Point Locus (2017)

In this paper we present a new camera calibration method aimed at finding a straight-line locus, in a special colour feature space, that is traversed by daylights and as well also approximately followed by specular points. The aim of the calibration is to enable recovering the colour of the illuminant in a scene, using the calibrated camera. First we prove theoretically that any candidate specular points, for an image that is generated by a specific camera and taken under a daylight, must lie on a straight line in log-chromaticity space, for a chromaticity that is generated using a geometric-mean denominator. Use is made of the assumptions that daylight illuminants can be approximated using Planckians and that camera sensors are narrowband or can be made so by spectral sharpening. Then we show how a particular camera can be calibrated so as to discover this locus. As applications we use this curve for illuminant detection, and also for re-lighting of images to show they would appear under lighting having a different colour temperature.
Efficient self-correction scheme for static non-idealities in nano-scale quadrature digital RF transmitters (2013)

As a disruptive solution exploiting the intrinsic speed of deeply scaled CMOS technology, digital RF transmitter has attracted extensive attention for its capability to handle multiple radio standards. However, deeply scaled nano level technology has both pros and cons, so that state-of-the-art designs still suffer from the combination of a large number of non-idealities that are inherent in deeply scaled technology. In this paper, a solution is proposed for the first time to tackle major static non-idealities simultaneously in digital RF transmitter employing an ultra-high-bandwidth digital-to-analog converter. Whereas existing work focuses on only correcting one or few non-idealities in isolated ways. The proposed input-signal segmentation and polynomial transforming scheme makes the proposal a computational efficient solution. Simulation combined with lab measurement results show that, after applying the proposed non-linearity self-correction scheme, on average, the root-mean-square error of a 28-nm digital RF transmitter output can be reduced by over 20 dB.
Functionalization of polyurethane dispersions for controlled interactions with different substrates (2017)

Die Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit der Herstellung verschiedener Polyurethandispersionen und deren Funktionalisierung zur Haftung auf drei Modellsubstraten: Haaren, Hydroxylapatit und Edelstahl. Die verwendeten Polyurethanstrukturen sind komplex: meist selbstdispergierend in Wasser und insbesondere teilkristallin im Film, so dass die thermischen Eigenschaften der Filme stets untersucht werden um Aufschluss auf den Einfluss der Funktionalisierung auf die Filmstruktur zu geben. Für eine verbesserte Wechselwirkung auf Haaren werden die Dispersionen mit einem Proteinhydrolysat aus Wolle funktionalisiert. Das Hydrolysat dient zudem der Stabiliserung der Dispersionen und ermöglicht deren pH-induzierte Koaleszenz. Die gewählte Herstellungsweise der Peptid-dekorierten Dispersionen ist besonders simpel und erfolgt in einem einzigen Schritt. Zur Haftung auf Hydroxylapatit werden Phosphonatgruppen auf zwei verschiedene Weisen an die Partikel angebunden. Es erfolgt eine detaillierte Analyse der Oberfläche der hergestellten Dispersionen und deren Haftungseigenschaften mittels Quartzmikrowaage. Um die Affinität der Dispersionen für Edelstahl zu erhöhen, wird ein sequendefiniertes Peptid an die Partikel angebunden. Die Kopplung erfolgt mittels einer Cystein-Maleimid Reaktion unter definierten Bedingungen und eine genaue Untersuchung der Kopplung wird vorgenommen. Die verbesserte Anhaftung auf Edelstahloberflächen wir dann ebenfalls mittels Quartzmikrowaage bewiesen.
Single-Cell Transcriptomic Attributes and Unbiased Computational Modeling for the Prediction of Immunomodulatory Potency of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (2020)

ABSTRACT Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are currently being tested in numerous clinical trials as potential cell therapies for the treatment of various diseases and due to their potential immunomodulatory, pro-angiogenic, and regenerative properties. However, variabilities in tissue sources, donors, and manufacturing processes and the lack of defined critical quality attributes (CQAs) and clinically relevant mechanism of action (MoA) pose significant challenges to identify MSC cell therapy products with a predictable therapeutic outcome. This also hinders regulatory considerations and broad clinical translation of MSCs. MSC products are often administered to the patient immediately after thawing from cryopreserved vials (out-of-thaw). However, the qualifying quality-control assays are either performed before cryopreservation, or after culturing the post-thaw cells for 24-48 hours (culture-rescued), none of which represent the out-of-thaw product administered to patients. In this study, we performed a broad functional characterization of out-of-thaw and culture-rescue MSCs from bone marrow (BM-MSCs) and cord tissue (CT-MSCs) using macrophage activation and T cell proliferation-based in vitro potency assays and deep phenotypic characterization using single-cell RNA-sequencing. Using this data, we developed unbiased computational models, specifically symbolic regression (SR) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) models to predict the immunomodulatory potency of MSCs. Overall, our results suggest that manufacturing conditions (OOT vs. CR) have a strong effect on MSC-function on MSC interactions with macrophages and T cells. Furthermore, single-cell RNA-seq analyses of out-of-thaw BM and CT-MSCs indicate a tissue of origin-dependent variability and heterogeneity in the transcriptome profile. Using symbolic regression modeling we identified specific single-cell transcriptomic attributes of MSCs that predict their immunomodulatory potency. In addition, CCA modeling predicted MSC donors with high or low immunomodulatory potency from their transcriptome profiles. Taken together, our results provide a broad framework for identifying predictive CQAs of MSCs that could ultimately help in better understanding of their MOAs and improved reproducibility and manufacturing control of MSCs.
Biomechanical Simulations of Bioprosthetic Heart Valve Deformations (2006)

Previous research has suggested that the structural deterioration in porcine bioprosthetic heart valves (BHV) may be correlated with the regions of high tensile and bending stresses acting on the leaflets during opening and closing[1, 2]. Stress concentrations within the cusp can either directly accelerate tissue structural fatigue damage, or initiate calcification by causing structural disintegration, enabling multiple pathways of calcification that can lead to valve failure[3,4]. In the case of bovine pericardial heart valve prostheses, structural failure of the leaflets is rare but calcification has been observed. Although details of the process are unclear, it is generally assumed that the design of the pericardial valve, which gives a stress-reduced state of the leaflets, is likely to provide improved performance in long-term applications.
Impact and Dynamic Jamming in Dense Suspensions of Particles (2014)

We discuss experiments investigating the propagation of transient jamming fronts in dense suspensions of particles in a liquid [1,2]. We focus on suspensions of cornstarch particles (diameter around 20 microns, elastic modulus around 5GPa) in water. At packing fractions close to jamming, a cornstarch suspension behaves liquid-like at rest but dynamically turns into a solid when impacted, sheared or subjected to tensile stress at sufficiently high speed. We show that driving this behavior is a solidification front that propagates in both axial and transverse direction from the point of impact, with a constant ratio between the two directions of propagation. Inside the jammed solid, we observe an additional compression, which results from the increasing stress as the solid grows. During the initial growth of the jammed solid, we measure a force response that can be accounted for by added mass. Only once the jamming front reaches a boundary, the added mass cannot account for the measured force anymore [2]. Both two- and three-dimensional systems will be discussed in which a combination of high-speed video, x-ray and fast ultrasound techniques was used to obtain information about the front propagation and the properties of the jammed solid.
The Role of Complement and Natural Antibody in Intestinal Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury (2003)

Activation of the complement cascade is central to many types of injury. Ischemia-reperfusion is an important example of such an event. Using intestinal ischemia-reperfusion as a model, we have further elucidated the importance and mechanism of this activation. Of novel importance is the evidence that natural antibody is a trigger for these events via recognition of self-antigen. In this article, we review the role of natural antibody and complement in intestinal ischemia-reperfusion injury. It is hoped that this study will ultimately lead to better understanding of these important modulators and their role in this type of injury.
Frequent harvesting from perfused bone marrow cultures results in increased overall cell and progenitor expansion (1994)

The establishment of prolific long-term human bone marrow cultures has led to the development of hematopoietic bioreactor systems. A single batch expansion of bone marrow mononuclear cell populations leads to a 10- to 30-fold increase in total cell number and in the number of colony forming units-granulocyte/macrophage (CFU-GMs), and a four- to tenfold increase in the number of long-term culture initiating cells (LTC-ICs). In principle, unlimited expansion of cells should be attainable from a pool of stem cells if all the necessary requirements leading to stem cell maintenance and division are met. In this article, we take the first step toward the identification of factors that limit single batch expansion of ex vivo bone marrow cells in perfusion-based bioreactor systems. One possible constraint is the size of the growth surface area required. This constraint can be overcome by harvesting half the cell population periodically. We found that harvesting cells every 3 to 4 days, beginning on day 11 of culture, led to an extended growth period. Overall calculated cell expansion exceeded 100-fold and the CFU-GM expansion exceeded 30-fold over a 27-day period. These calculated values are based on growth that could be obtained from the harvested cell population. Growth of the adherent cell layer was stable, whereas the nonadherent cell population diminished with increasing number of passages. These results show that the bioreactor protocols published to date are suboptimal for long-term cultivation, and that further definition and refinement is likely to lead to even greater expansion of hematopoietic cell populations obtained from bone marrow. More importantly, these results show that the LTC-IC measured during the single pass expansion do have further expansion potential that can be realized by frequent harvesting. Finally, the present culture conditions provide a basis for an assay system for the identifications provide a basis for an assay system for the identification of the factors that determine the long-term maintenance and replication of human stem cells ex vivo.
On Distributed Quantization for Classification (2020)

We consider the problem of distributed feature quantization, where the goal is to enable a pretrained classifier at a central node to carry out its classification on features that are gathered from distributed nodes through communication constrained channels. We propose the design of distributed quantization schemes specifically tailored to the classification task: unlike quantization schemes that help the central node reconstruct the original signal as accurately as possible, our focus is not reconstruction accuracy, but instead correct classification. Our work does not make any a priori distributional assumptions on the data, but instead uses training data for the quantizer design. Our main contributions include: we prove NP-hardness of finding optimal quantizers in the general case; we design an optimal scheme for a special case; we propose quantization algorithms, that leverage discrete neural representations and training data, and can be designed in polynomial-time for any number of features, any number of classes, and arbitrary division of features across the distributed nodes. We find that tailoring the quantizers to the classification task can offer significant savings: as compared to alternatives, we can achieve more than a factor of two reduction in terms of the number of bits communicated, for the same classification accuracy.
Molecular Basis for the Generation in Pigs of Influenza A Viruses with Pandemic Potential (1998)

Genetic and biologic observations suggest that pigs may serve as "mixing vessels" for the generation of human-avian influenza A virus reassortants, similar to those responsible for the 1957 and 1968 pandemics. Here we demonstrate a structural basis for this hypothesis. Cell surface receptors for both human and avian influenza viruses were identified in the pig trachea, providing a milieu conducive to viral replication and genetic reassortment. Surprisingly, with continued replication, some avian-like swine viruses acquired the ability to recognize human virus receptors, raising the possibility of their direct transmission to human populations. These findings help to explain the emergence of pandemic influenza viruses and support the need for continued surveillance of swine for viruses carrying avian virus genes.
Supplementary Table 5 from A Compendium of Syngeneic, Transplantable Pediatric High-Grade Glioma Models Reveals Subtype-Specific Therapeutic Vulnerabilities (2023)

&lt;p&gt;Cell type ontologies derived from snRNA-seq data.&lt;/p&gt;
Comparison of Different Sources and Degrees of Hydrolysis of Dietary Protein: Effect on Plasma Amino Acids, Dipeptides, and Insulin Responses in Human Subjects (2010)

The effect of protein fractionation on the bioavailability of amino acids and peptides and insulin response and whether the protein source influences these effects in humans are poorly understood. This study compared the effects of different sources and degrees of hydrolysis of dietary protein, independent of carbohydrate, on plasma amino acid and dipeptide levels and insulin responses in humans. Ten subjects were enrolled in the study, with five subjects participating in trials on either soy or whey protein and their hydrolysates. Protein hydrolysates were absorbed more rapidly as plasma amino acids compared to nonhydrolyzed protein. Whey protein also caused more rapid increases in indispensable amino acid and branched-chain amino acid concentrations than soy protein. In addition, protein hydrolysates caused significant increases in Val-Leu and Ile-Leu concentrations compared to nonhydrolyzed protein. Whey protein hydrolysates also induced significantly greater stimulation of insulin release than the other proteins. Taken together, these results demonstrate whey protein hydrolysates cause significantly greater increases in the plasma concentrations of amino acids, dipeptides, and insulin.
Polymer Gelatin Waveguide In Conjuction With Integrated Holographic Optical Elements On GaAs, LiNb0 3 , Glass, And Aluminum Substrates For Optical Interconnects, Signal Processing, And Computing (1990)

We have observed waveguiding in thin films of polymer gelatin on GaAs, LiNb0<sub>3</sub>, glass and aluminum substrates. A graded index profile can be induced in the gelatin layer and tuned by wet processing. This makes it possible to form waveguides on any smooth surface. Locally sensitizing the gelatin waveguide with ammonium dichromate allows us to integrate single and multiplexed gratings on the same substrate to perform various functions for optical interconnects and signal processing. A waveguide grating coupler that converts free space TEM<sub>00</sub> laser light to a two dimensional spherical guided wave with 50° angle of divergence has also demonstrated. A passive broadcasting network can be formed using this new technology. Further plausible applications such as WD(D)M local area network, optical interconnection, and optical computing are also presented.
Gene Expression Profiling Can Distinguish Physiologic B-Cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Clonal Expansions from Preleukemic and Leukemic Clones (2006)

Restricted accessAbstractFirst published March 2006Gene Expression Profiling Can Distinguish Physiologic B-Cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Clonal Expansions from Preleukemic and Leukemic ClonesB. McCarthy, X.-P. Wang, […], S. Paul, L. Goodwin, A. Rawstron, and N. Chiorazzi+3-3View all authors and affiliationsVolume 54, Issue 2_supplhttps://doi.org/10.1177/108155890605402s154
Ultrafast Intersystem Crossing in Isolated Ag29(BDT)123– Probed by Time-Resolved Pump–Probe Photoelectron Spectroscopy (2020)

The photophysics of the isolated trianion Ag<sub>29</sub>(BDT)<sub>12</sub><sup>3-</sup> (BDT = benzenedithiolate), a ligand-protected cluster comprising BDT-based ligands, terminating a shell of silver thiolates and a core of silver atoms, was studied in the gas phase by femtosecond time-resolved, pump-probe photoelectron spectroscopy. UV excitation at 490 nm populates one or more singlet excited states with significant charge transfer (CT) character in which electron density is shifted from shell to core. These CT states relax on an average time scale of several hundred femtoseconds by charge recombination to yield either the vibrationally excited singlet ground state (internal conversion) or a long-lived triplet (intersystem crossing). Our study is the first ultrafast spectroscopic probe of a ligand-protected coinage metal cluster in isolation. In the future, it will be interesting to study how cluster size, overall charge state, or heteroatom doping can be used to tune the corresponding relaxation dynamics in the absence of solvent.
Minimizing energy-per-bit for on-board LC transmission lines (2005)

Tuning down the signal voltage swing can be used to save energy for on-board interconnects. In this paper, we demonstrate that energy-per-bit, the energy to transfer a signal bit of data, could be minimized by selecting an optimum signal swing voltage for a given noise condition. The maximum energy saving and area overhead for this technique are derived. By using a proper power supply scheme, the energy-per-bit can be decreased by 2.5/spl times/ while consuming about 1.5/spl times/ more on-board wiring area.