gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Rate-Adaptive LDPC-based key reconciliation for high performance quantum key distribution (2015)

The postprocessing or secret-key distillation process in quantum key distribution (QKD) mainly involves two well-known procedures: information reconciliation and privacy amplification. Information or key reconciliation has been customarily studied in terms of efficiency. During this, some information needs to be disclosed for reconciling discrepancies in the exchanged keys. The leakage of information is lower bounded by a theoretical limit, and is usually parameterized by the reconciliation efficiency (or inefficiency), i.e. the ratio of additional information disclosed over the Shannon limit. Most techniques for reconciling errors in QKD try to optimize this parameter. For instance, the well-known Cascade (probably the most widely used procedure for reconciling errors in QKD) was recently shown to have an average efficiency of 1.05 at the cost of a high interactivity (number of exchanged messages). Modern coding techniques, such as rate-adaptive low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes were also shown to achieve similar efficiency values exchanging only one message, or even better values with few interactivity and shorter block-length codes.
Broad-Range Survey of Tick-Borne Pathogens in Southern Germany Reveals a High Prevalence of Babesia microti and a Diversity of Other Tick-Borne Pathogens (2014)

Abstract Ticks harbor numerous pathogens of significance to human and animal health. A better understanding of the pathogens carried by ticks in a given geographic area can alert health care providers of specific health risks leading to better diagnosis and treatments. In this study, we tested 226 Ixodes ricinis ticks from Southern Germany using a broad-range PCR and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry assay (PCR/ESI-MS) designed to identify tick-borne bacterial and protozoan pathogens in a single test. We found 21.2% of the ticks tested carried Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato consisting of diverse genospecies; a surprisingly high percentage of ticks were infected with Babesia microti (3.5%). Other organisms found included Borrelia miyamotoi, Rickettsia helvetica, Rickettsia monacensis, and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. Of further significance was our finding that more than 7% of ticks were infected with more than one pathogen or putative pathogen.
DirectVoxGO++: Fast Neural Radiance Fields for Object Reconstruction (2022)

In recent years, new reconstruction techniques based on Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) have created new forms to model objects instead of the traditional mesh and point cloud-based representations, allowing for more photorealistic rendering. However, these techniques were too slow to be used in practical settings, taking in the range of hours in high-end GPUs. Due to these limitations, new techniques have been created for fast reconstruction of scenes, such as DirectVoxGO. Alongside this limitation, one issue with NeRFs is that they were initially unable to separate the foreground from the background and had problems with 360 scenes until the emergence of new techniques such as NeRF++. Our method extends DirectVoxGO to allow the handling of unbounded scenes inspired by some ideas from NeRF++, adapting it to incorporate elements from a neural hashing approach employed by other works. Our technique improved photorealism compared with DirectVoxGO and Plenoxels on a subset of the LF dataset on average in at least 2%, 8%, and 8% for PSNR, SSIM, and LPIPS metrics, respectively, while also being an order of magnitude faster than NeRF++. Code will be available in https://github.com/danperazzo/dvgoplusplus.
Board of Directors Meeting Agenda (2014)

5. ITEMS REQUIRING DECISIONS/MOTIONS: 5.1 TSH and RVHS Amalgamation 5.1.1 Amalgamation Calendar* 5.1.2 Financial Update* 5.1.3 Review Amalgamation Agreement* 5.1.4 Review Letters Patent of Amalgamation* 5.1.5 Review Administrative By-Law* 5.1.6 Review of Professional Staff By-Law* 5.1.7 Motion to Approve Amalgamation* 5.2 Motion to call Special Meeting of Members for March 18, 2014, at 1900 hours 5.2.1 Draft Members Resolution (for information)* Robert Biron Robert Biron Michael Watts Michael Watts Michael Watts Michael Watts Steve Smith Steve Smith
Multimode interference couplers for 2x2 high speed GaAs-GaAlAs electro-optic switches (2006)

Optical switches based on the electro-optic effect in III-Vs such as GaAs have fast optical switching times, typically shorter than 1 ns, and thus are promising candidates for a wide variety of optical network applications ranging from fault restoration and network configuration to optical packet switching. A Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is often used to implement a 2x2 electo-optic switch in which two identical multi-mode interference (MMI) couplers connected by two identical parallel single mode waveguides (two MZI arms) with electrodes allowing to vary the phase difference between the two MZI arms based on the electro-optic effect. In this paper, we report the design, fabrication, and test of MMI couplers and 2x2 MZI-MMI optical switches based on these couplers. The waveguide structure has 5 undoped GaAs-GaAlAs layers with a 1.7um-thick core layer. In both simulation and fabrication, various values of MMI width, MMI length, and waveguide width have been considered. Both simulation and experimental results have indicated that the device performance is most sensitive to the MMI width and is less sensitive to the MMI length. From simulation and experimental results, optimized structures have been obtained for 2x2 MZI-MMI optical switches. Devices based on the optimized structure have been fabricated without electrodes. The fabricated MZI-MMI optical switches have shown very promising switching properties such as low insertion loss and low cross-talk. The propagation loss of straight waveguides is typically around 0.3 dB/cm. There is almost no measurable additional loss due to the MMI couplers. A cross-talk of - 22 dB has been achieved.
Evidence for the Binding of a Biologically Active Interleukin-2 to Human α2-Macroglobulin (1995)

Human alpha 2-macroglobulin (alpha 2M), which irreversibly entraps proteinases through a drastic conformational change, has also been reported to bind various cytokines. The meaning of cytokine binding to native and/or transformed alpha 2M molecules is, however, not understood. In an attempt to elucidate this question, we have studied the interaction of radioiodinated recombinant human interleukin-2 (125I-rhIL-2) with native and chymotrypsin (alpha 2M-C)- or methylamine-transformed (alpha 2M-MA) alpha 2M. Our results show that native and alpha 2M-MA are able to bind 125I-rhIL-2, with binding occurring only with the latter in a covalent manner, whereas the labeled cytokine is proteolyzed when incubated with alpha 2M-entrapped chymotrypsin. The degradation of uncomplexed 125I-rhIL-2 has also been observed in the presence of trypsin, whereas 125I-rhIL-2 bound to alpha 2M-MA is protected. Moreover, the proliferative activity of this cytokine on responsive cells is still maintained either with native alpha 2M- or alpha 2M-MA-complexed rhIL-2 in comparison with that observed with the cytokine alone. Our results, which lead us to consider alpha 2M molecules as IL-2-binding proteins, emphasize the possible role of these molecules as immune response regulators.
Spline Based Microstructural Mapping for Soft Biological Tissues: Application to Aortic Valves (2013)

Splines are the standard tools in computer aided design for geometric representations and have been recently integrated into the finite element analysis of structures and fluids [1]. As the biomedical engineering is making progress, there is a need for an integrated tool for expanding the geometrical representation to include the microstructural details specific to soft tissue, e.g. fiber alignment, orientation, crimp and stiffness. In this work, a spline-based method is presented for aortic valves which facilitates mapping of the fiber structure from any aortic valve specimen to any other aortic valve geometry through a common parameter space. This techniques also has the ability to calculate mean tissue microstructure of representative population. Also strain and pre-strain from in-vivo state to the in-vitro state, where all the mechanical tests are done, are calculated for forward and inverse modeling of aortic valves.
Development of PET Detectors Using Monolithic Scintillation Crystals Processed With Sub-Surface Laser Engraving Technique (2010)

New monolithic scintillation detectors for PET have been developed, where the crystals are processed using an internally focused laser processing technique called sub-surface laser engraving (SSLE). When high intensity light pulses of short duration from a laser are focused into a scintillation crystal, they induce multi-photon absorption at the focal point and result in refractive index changes or micro-cracks inside the crystal. By applying the SSLE technique to a monolithic scintillation block, fine segmentation in the crystal can be formed without inter-pixel gaps. We have fabricated 2D segmented arrays by using a Nd:YAG laser to engrave various patterns of micro-cracks inside monolithic LYSO crystal blocks. The processed crystal array, segmented to 12 × 12 with 1.67 mm pitch, has been evaluated by coupling to a position-sensitive photomultiplier tube (PS-PMT). The 2D position histograms were measured for uniform irradiation of gamma rays, and each crystal segment was clearly separated. The average energy resolution was 9.7%, similar to that of the conventional arrays, so the laser-processed LYSO crystals have kept their primary scintillation properties. We have also evaluated the laser-processed crystals by using multi-pixel photon counters (MPPCs) to investigate their possibility as a future PET detector. The results suggest that it is possible to fabricate high performance PET detectors using the SSLE technique.
Serial circulating tumour DNA analysis during multimodality treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer: a prospective biomarker study (2018)

Postoperative ctDNA analysis stratifies patients with LARC into subsets that are either at very high or at low risk of recurrence, independent of conventional clinicopathological risk factors. ctDNA analysis could potentially be used to guide patient selection for adjuvant chemotherapy.
Beta-sheet prediction using inter-strand residue pairs and refinement with Hopfield neural network. (1997)

Many secondary prediction methods have been studied, but the prediction accuracy is still unsatisfactory, since beta-sheet prediction is difficult. In this research, we gathered statistics of pairs of three residue sub-sequences in beta-sheets, calculated propensities for them. When a sequence is given, all possible three residue sub-sequences are examined whether they form beta-sheets. A short coming is that many false predictions are made. To exclude false predictions and improve the prediction, we employed a Hopfield neural network, in which the natural limitations on protein tertiary structure and preference of chemically stable long beta-sheet are expressed in a form of energy functions. To clarify the prediction for heads and tails of beta-sheets, special variables are introduced, which are similar to the line process proposed by Geman.
Mastering Yield Stress Evolution and Formwork Friction for Smart Dynamic Casting (2020)

The construction industry is a slow adopter of new technologies and materials. However, interdisciplinary research efforts in digital fabrication methods with concrete aim to make a real impact on the way we build by showing faster production, higher quality and enlarged freedom of design. In this paper, the potential and constraints of a specific digital slip-forming process, smart dynamic casting (SDC), are investigated with a material-focused approach in the complex task of producing thin folded structures. Firstly, the workability and the strength evolution of different material compositions are studied to achieve the constant processing rate for SDC. Secondly, friction between the formwork walls and the concrete, a key aspect in slip-casting, is studied with a simplified experimental setup to identify if any of these mixes would provide an advantage for processing. Finally, a theoretical framework is constructed to link the material properties, the process conditions and the designed geometry. This framework introduces the 'SDC number' as a simplified approach to formulate the process window, the suitable conditions for slip-forming. The experimental results prove the assumption of the model that friction is proportional to yield stress for all base compositions and acceleration methods regardless of the filling history. The results are evaluated in the context of the narrow process window of thin folded structures as well as the wider process window of columns. The necessity of consistent strength evolution is underlined for narrow windows. Further, friction is shown to be the highest initially, thus with both narrow and wide process windows, after a successful start-up the continuation of slipping is less prone to failure. The proposed theoretical model could provide material and geometry-specific slipping strategy for start time and slipping rate during production.
Beyond Peak Performance: Comparing the Real Performance of AI-Optimized FPGAs and GPUs (2020)

The growing importance and compute demands of artificial intelligence (AI) have led to the emergence of domain-optimized hardware platforms. For example, Nvidia GPUs introduced specialized tensor cores for matrix operations to speed up deep learning (DL) computation, resulting in very high peak throughput up to 130 int8 TOPS in the T4 GPU. Recently, Intel introduced its first AI-optimized 14nm FPGA, the Stratix 10 NX, with in-fabric AI tensor blocks that offer estimated peak performance up to 143 int8 TOPS, comparable to 12nm GPUs. However, what matters in practice is not the peak performance but the actual achievable performance on target workloads. This depends mainly on the utilization of the tensor units, and the system-level overheads to send data to/from the accelerator. This paper presents the first performance evaluation of Intel's AI-optimized FPGA, the Stratix 10 NX, in comparison to the latest accessible AI-optimized GPUs, the Nvidia T4 and V100, on a large suite of real-time DL inference workloads. We enhance a re-implementation of the Brainwave NPU overlay architecture to utilize the FPGA's AI tensor blocks, and develop toolchain support that allows users to program tensor blocks purely through software, without FPGA EDA tools in the loop. We first compare the Stratix 10 NX NPU against Stratix 10 GX/MX versions with no tensor blocks, and then present detailed core compute and system-level performance comparisons to the T4 and V100 GPUs. We show that our enhanced NPU on Stratix 10 NX achieves better tensor block utilization than GPUs, resulting in 24× and 12× average compute speedups over the T4 and V100 GPUs at batch-6. Even with relaxed latency constraints that allow a batch size of 32, we still achieve average speedups of 5× and 2× against T4 and V100 GPUs, respectively. On a system-level, the FPGA's fine-grained flexibility with its integrated 100 Gbps Ethernet allows for remote access at 10× and 2× less system overhead latency than local access to a V100 GPU via 128 Gbps PCIe for short and long sequence RNNs, respectively.
Facile Synthesis of Trisubstituted Thioindoles via a Novel Tricyclic Thiolactone Intermediate (2009)

Abstract Methodology to conveniently and systematically prepare biologically active indole 9 is described. Keywords: Alkylationdemethylationsubstituted indolethiolactone ACKNOWLEDGMENTS C. Yang thanks Dr. Richard G. Ball and Nancy N. Tsou for x-ray analysis, Dr. Hong Shen for editorial contributions, and Dr. Zhicai Wu and Dr. Jason E. Imbriglio for helpful discussions during the preparation of the manuscript.
Arylthio-substituted coronenes as tailored building blocks for molecular electronics (2011)

The electron transport through molecules in molecular devices is typically influenced by the nature of the interfaces with the contacting electrodes and by the interactions between neighbouring molecules. It is a major goal of molecular electronics to adjust the electronic function of a molecular device by tailoring the intrinsic molecular properties and the interfacial and intermolecular interactions. Here, we report on the tunability of the electronic properties of coronene derivatives, namely dodecakis(arylthio)coronenes (DATCs), which are found to exhibit a three-dimensional aromatic system. Scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), spectroscopy (STS) and simulations based on the density functional theory (DFT) are employed to characterize the structural and electronic properties of these molecules deposited on Au(111) surfaces. It is shown that modifications of the peripheral aryl-groups allow us to specifically affect the self-assembly and the charge transport characteristics of the molecules. Molecular assemblies like supramolecular wires with highly delocalized orbitals and single molecules with molecular "quantum dot" characteristics are obtained in this way.
ChemInform Abstract: Adsorption and Decomposition of 1‐Alkanethiols on the Fe(100) Surface. (1996)

Abstract ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.
SiC power Schottky and PiN diodes (2002)

The present state of SiC power Schottky and PiN diodes are presented in this paper. The design, fabrication, and characterization of a 130 A Schottky diode, 4.9 kV Schottky diode, and an 8.6 kV 4H-SiC PiN diode, which are considered to be significant milestones in the development of high power SiC diodes, are described in detail. Design guidelines and practical issues for the realization of high-power SiC Schottky and PiN diodes are also presented. Experimental results on edge termination techniques applied to newly developed, extremely thick (e.g., 85 and 100 /spl mu/m) 4H-SiC epitaxial layers show promising results. Switching and high-temperature measurements prove that SiC power diodes offer extremely low loss alternatives to conventional technologies and show the promise of demonstrating efficient power circuits. At sufficiently high on-state current densities, the on-state voltage drop of Schottky and PiN diodes have been shown to be comparable to those offered by conventional technologies.
Noise-robust reverberation time estimation using spectral decay distributions with reduced computational cost (2013)

Reverberation Time (T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">60</sub> ) is an important measure of the acoustic properties of a room. It can provide information about the acoustic environment, the intelligibility, and quality of speech recorded in the room, and help improve the performance of speech processing algorithms with reverberant speech. Where the acoustic impulse response of the room is not available, the T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">60</sub> must be estimated non-intrusively from reverberant speech. State-of-the-art non-intrusive T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">60</sub> estimators have been shown to be strongly biased in the presence of noise. We describe a novel T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">60</sub> estimation algorithm based on spectral decay distributions that provides robustness to additive noise for a range of realistic noise types for signal-to-noise ratios in the range 0 to 35 dB and T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">60</sub> s between 200 and 950 ms. The proposed method also has much reduced computational cost.
On Automating the Doctrine of Double Effect (2017)

The doctrine of double effect (DDE) is a long-studied ethical principle that governs when actions that have both positive and negative effects are to be allowed. The goal in this paper is to automate DDE. We briefly present DDE, and use a first-order modal logic, the deontic cognitive event calculus, as our framework to formalize the doctrine. We present formalizations of increasingly stronger versions of the principle, including what is known as the doctrine of triple effect. We then use our framework to simulate successfully scenarios that have been used to test the presence of the principle in human subjects. Our framework can be used in two different modes. One can use it to build DDE-compliant autonomous systems from scratch, or one can use it to verify that a given AI system is DDE-complaint, by applying a DDE layer on an existing system or model. For the latter mode, the underlying AI system can be built using any architecture (planners, deep neural networks, bayesian networks, knowledge-representation systems, or a hybrid); as long as the system exposes a few parameters in its model, such verification is possible. The role of the DDE layer here is akin to a (dynamic or static) software verifier that examines existing software modules. Finally, we end by sketching initial work on how one can apply our DDE layer to the STRIPS-style planning model, and to a modified POMDP model. This is preliminary work to illustrate the feasibility of the second mode, and we hope that our initial sketches can be useful for other researchers in incorporating DDE in their own frameworks.