gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
On the decline of 1st and 2nd order sensitivity with eccentricity (2008)

We studied the relationship between the decline in sensitivity that occurs with eccentricity for stimuli of different spatial scale defined by either luminance (LM) or contrast (CM) modulation. We show that the detectability of CM stimuli declines with eccentricity in a spatial frequency-dependent manner, and that the rate of sensitivity decline for CM stimuli is roughly that expected from their 1st order carriers, except, possibly, at finer scales. Using an equivalent noise paradigm, we investigated the possible reasons for why the foveal sensitivity for detecting LM and CM stimuli differs as well as the reason why the detectability of 1st order stimuli declines with eccentricity. We show the former can be modeled by an increase in internal noise whereas the latter involves both an increase in internal noise and a loss of efficiency. To encompass both the threshold and suprathreshold transfer properties of peripheral vision, we propose a model in terms of the contrast gain of the underlying mechanisms.
Celecoxib Nanoparticles for Therapeutic Angiogenesis (2015)

Controllable induction of blood vessel formation (angiogenesis) presents an important therapeutic goal in ischemic diseases and is also beneficial in various normal physiological processes. In this study, we have shown that nanoparticles of celecoxib, a lipophilic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, effectively evoke therapeutic angiogenesis in animal models, in both normal and ischemic organs. Celecoxib is widely considered to inhibit angiogenesis, although a recent study suggests that it can instead promote blood vessel growth in cancer cell lines. The hydrophobic nature of this drug necessitates its administration in nanoparticulate form in order to elicit a perceivable pharmacological response. We developed a facile method for nanoparticle formation by solvent extraction from microemulsions in supercritical carbon dioxide. This method exploits a spontaneous formation of nanometric domains within the microemulsion system and their rapid conversion to nanoparticles by supercritical fluid. The resultant nanoparticles were administered subcutaneously to mice in a biocompatible hydrogel, and caused a 4-fold increase in blood vessel count in normally perfused skin compared with drug-free particles. They were at least as effective in inducing angiogenesis as nanoparticles of deferoxamine, a well-established neovascularization promoter. Next, we evaluated their effect on ischemic tissues in murine model of myocardial infarction. We found that celecoxib nanoparticles were able to induce a significant vascularization of ischemic myocardium and hamper the progression of heart failure, which points toward a new approach for treating ischemia.
Estimating a covariance matrix from incomplete realizations of a random vector (1992)

It is desired to estimate the mean and the covariance matrix of a Gaussian random vector from a set of independent realizations, with the complication that not every component of each realization of the random vector is observed. Subject to some restrictions, the authors obtained an exact, noniterative solution for the maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of the mean and the covariance matrix. The ML estimate of the covariance matrix that is obtained from the set of incomplete realizations is guaranteed to be positive definite, in contrast to ad hoc approaches based on averaging products of components from the same realization. The key to obtaining the ML estimates is a tractable expression for the likelihood function in terms of the Cholesky factors of the inverse covariance matrix. With this formulation, the ML estimates are found by fitting regression operators to appropriate subsets of the data. The Cholesky formulation also leads to a simple calculation by Cramer-Rao bounds.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>
Preclinical Activity of SAR408701: A Novel Anti-CEACAM5–maytansinoid Antibody–drug Conjugate for the Treatment of CEACAM5-positive Epithelial Tumors (2020)

On the basis of these preclinical data, the ADC SAR408701 is a promising candidate for development as a potential treatment for patients with CEACAM5-positive tumors.
Real-Time Quantitative PCR of Telomerase mRNA Is Useful for the Differentiation of Benign and Malignant Pancreatic Disorders (2001)

The presence of telomerase activity has been proposed as a specific and sensitive marker for malignant tissue, and positivity rates of up to 95% have been reported in pancreatic cancer. In the present study telomerase activity analysis was reevaluated in 29 pancreatic cancer tissues compared with 36 chronic pancreatitis tissues and 21 normal controls, and a study was made of whether malignant and benign pancreatic disorders can be better differentiated using a novel technique real-time quantitative PCR analysis-analyzing telomerase mRNA expression. Telomerase activity was present in 35% (10 of 29) of pancreatic cancer samples, 3% (one of 36) of chronic pancreatitis samples, and none of the normal pancreatic tissue samples in the TRAP assay. Real-time quantitative PCR analysis revealed the presence of telomerase mRNA expression in 50% (10 of 20) of normal, 86% (31 of 36) of chronic pancreatitis, and 90% (26 of 29) of pancreatic cancer samples. However, quantification of the expression data revealed that the relative increase above normal was 5.5 (range, 3.5-8.6) for chronic pancreatitis and 23.9 (range, 18.6-30.7) for pancreatic cancer samples (p < 0.01). No relationship was found between telomerase activity and the fold increase of telomerase mRNA above normal and gender, patient age, tumor stage, or tumor grade. These data indicate that detection of telomerase activity using the TRAP assay has limitations in differentiating benign and malignant pancreatic disorders. However, telomerase mRNA analysis by real-time quantitative PCR analysis allows a highly sensitive detection and differentiation of pancreatic cancer from normal pancreas and chronic pancreatitis and thereby may serve as a new reliable, easy, and effective diagnostic tool for cancer diagnosis.
Novel design for high-power single-lateral-mode lasers (2001)

A new laser design for single-mode high-power applications is reported. The waveguide is a laterally flaring and transversely tapering GaAs buried ridge fabricated by selective area epitaxy. Single-lateral-mode powers of 200 mW were achieved.
Intramural Virtual Electrodes During Defibrillation Shocks in Left Ventricular Wall Assessed by Optical Mapping of Membrane Potential (2002)

Strong defibrillation shocks induce DeltaV(m) in the intramural layers of LV. During action potential plateau, intramural DeltaV(m) are typically asymmetrical (DeltaV-(m)>DeltaV+(m)) and become globally negative during very strong shocks.
Photonic Toolbox for Quantum Simulation (2014)

Recently, various quantum simulators based on different quantum architectures are being successfully constructed, such as atoms, trapped ions, NMR, superconducting circuits, as well as single photons. For understanding molecular systems, quantum simulators are required to have very precise quantum control of the individual particles. Two main types of such quantum simulators are the analog and digital quantum simulators. Photons have the feature that they do not interact with anything easily, which provides the advantages and disadvantages for using them to realize quantum simulators. The advantageous side is a natural decoherence-free system that allows the implementations without complicated cryogenic experimental setups. Another advantage of photonic simulators is that photons are easily moved either in free space or waveguides and thus are not restricted to nearest–neighbor interaction. It has been proven that by using measurement induced interaction, one can circumvent the difficulty of photon–photon interaction and generate genuine many-body entangled photonic states.
Design, characterization and in vivo performance of synthetic 2 mm-diameter vessel grafts made of PVA-gelatin blends (2018)

Since the development of the first vascular grafts, fabrication of vessel replacements with diameters smaller than 6 mm remains a challenge. The present work aimed to develop PVA (poly (vinyl alcohol))-gelatin hybrids as tubes suitable for replacement of very small vessels and to evaluate their performance using a rat abdominal aorta interposition model. PVA-gelatin hybrid tubes with internal and external diameters of 1.4 mm and 1.8 mm, respectively, composed of 4 different gelatin ratios were prepared using a one-step strategy with both chemical and physical crosslinking. By 3D Time of Flight MRI, Doppler-Ultrasound, Computed Tomography angiography and histology, we demonstrated good patency rates with the 1% gelatin composition until the end of the study at 3 months (50% compared to 0% of PVA control grafts). A reduction of the patency rate during the time of implantation suggested some loss of properties of the hybrid material in vivo, further confirmed by mechanical evaluation until one year. In particular, stiffening and reduction of compliance of the PVA-gelatin grafts was demonstrated, which might explain the observed long-term changes in patency rate. These encouraging results confirm the potential of PVA-gelatin hybrids as ready-to-use vascular grafts for very small vessel replacement.
<title>Accuracy of two-color peak-height-encoded DNA sequencing by capillary gel electrophoresis and laser-induced fluorescence</title> (1993)

The two-color peak-height encoded DNA sequencing technique was evaluated with six clones taken from the malaria genome. This technique produced a sequencing accuracy of at least 97.5%. Capillary gel electrophoresis, using a modest voltage of 200 V/cm, showed a three- fold increase in speed and higher efficiency compared to conventional slab gel technique.
The Utility of Transcranial Stimulated Motor-Evoked Potential Alerts in Cervical Spine Surgery Varies Based on Preoperative Motor Status (2022)

The utility of Tc-MEP in patients with a preoperative severe motor status was enhanced, even in those without high-risk spine surgery. Regardless of the motor status, appropriate interventions following Tc-MEP alerts may prevent postoperative paralysis.
Finding consensus in speech recognition (2000)

This thesis explores new ways of utilizing the information existing in word lattices produced by speech recognition systems to improve the accuracy of the recognition output and obtain a more perspicuous representation of a set of alternative hypotheses. We change the standard problem formulation of searching among a large set of sentence hypotheses to a local search in a small set of word candidates. Our approach replaces sentence-level posterior probabilities with word-level posteriors as the objective function for speech recognition, corresponding to the word-based error metric commonly used. The core of the method is a clustering procedure that identifies mutually supporting and competing word hypotheses in a lattice, constructing a total order over all word hypotheses. Together with word posterior probabilities computed from recognizer scores, this allows an efficient extraction of the hypothesis that is expected to minimize the word error rate. Our approach thus overcomes the mismatch between the word-based performance metric and the standard MAP scoring paradigm which is sentence-based, that can lead to sub-optimal recognition results. We also show that our method can be used as an efficient lattice compression technique. Its success comes from the ability to discard links with low a posteriori probability and recombine the remaining ones to create a new set of hypotheses. Experiments on the Switchboard corpus and Broadcast News show that this approach results in significant word error rate reductions, both over the standard MAP approach and compared to a previous word error minimization technique based on N-best lists. We also report significant decrease in lattice size when compared with the conventionally used technique. In essence, our method is an estimator of word posterior probabilities, and as such could benefit a number of other tasks like word spotting and confidence annotation.
Electronic Beam Steering For Increasing The Coagulated Volume Created With A Toroidal Transducer (2011)

Spherical transducers used for HIFU therapy produce small single lesions that are ellipsoidal in shape. The placement of these lesions side by side requires precision if an entire tumor is to be ablated reliably. This can be difficult to produce in moving organs like the liver. It has been shown that a toroidal transducer makes it possible to significantly increase the focal zone. A HIFU device has been developed using this principle to treat liver metastases during an open procedure. The toroidal transducer is composed of 256 elements. Metastases suitable for such a local therapy are typically 2 cm in diameter. A typical ablation produced in vitro in 40 seconds has an average diameter of 14.1 mm and an average depth of 28.5 mm. Despite this progress, it remains necessary to juxtapose these single lesions to treat tumors with safety margins. The aim of this project is to use electronic beam steering in order to avoid the need to juxtapose single ablations. In vitro tests were conducted to validate new treatment parameters determined using software developed in the laboratory. It was shown that, using electronic focusing, similar treatment can be achieved in half the time (20 s). The average diameter and depth of these ablations were 12.9 mm and 31.1 mm respectively. In addition, it was possible to double the coagulated volume while keeping the same duration of treatment. In this case the average ablated dimensions obtained in 40 seconds were 25.8 mm in diameter, and 42.5 mm in length. Finally, larger ablations with an average diameter and length of 40.0 mm and 54.4 mm respectively have been obtained in 130 seconds. In conclusion, these results indicate that the treatment of a metastasis in the liver with safety margins is conceivable using a single exposure with no need to juxtapose single lesions.
Design of a Robotic Mobility System with a Modular Haptic Feedback Approach to Promote Socialization in Children (2013)

Self-initiated mobility is a causal factor in children's development. Previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of our training methods in learning directional driving and navigation. The ultimate goal of mobility training is to enable children to be social, that is, to interact with their peers. A powered mobility device was developed that can localize itself, map the environment, plan an obstacle-free path to a goal, and ensure safety of a human driver. Combined with a positioning system, this system is able to apply a force field using a modular haptic feedback approach to train subjects to drive towards an object, a caregiver, a peer, or a group of peers. System feasibility was tested by designing a 'ball chasing' game. Results show that the system is promising in promoting socialization in children.
An outline of the phylogenetic history of Metazoan aging phenomenon (to the study of creating a common Metazoa aging theory) (2011)

The evolution of aging phenomenon in Metazoa was from the very beginning developing from potentially immortal forms to those more prone to aging. Potential immortality is an ancestral feature gradually lost in the course of evolution; at the same time aging and death resulting from aging are not obligatory but highly desirable property of existence of Metazoa with gamogenesis; this is a prerequisite of evolutionary progress as it facilitates species formation processes accelerating phylogenetic groups radiation and thus gives certain outlying evolutionary advantages, namely, accelerating the evolutionary process and the speed of substitution of one species by others. The main principle of aging phenomenon evolution is as follows: it's the substitution of internal factors of death of nonaging Metazoa with external ones programmed in genome. Aging mechanisms add up to limitation of repairing and regeneration capabilities of adult phenotype and/or by extermination of the whole pool of stem cells or its part only. Aging is a holistic process and it can't be drawn down to one of the known cellular processes which in their turn can't be the initial trigger of this process that is programmed in the genome in a vague form (there is no aging program as it is): if at some stage of ontogenesis the reparation mechanism disablement is genetically programmed then this is really the aging phenomenon programming. Mainly full or partial postmitotic design of an organism is programmed, and it is in its turn a factor securing the "harmfulness" of cellular mechanisms, decreasing the physiological potential of an organism with age. By this it increases the chances of mortality among Metazoa species. On the whole the presented material points to the fact that to develop a common aging theory of Metazoa we don't have to substantially replenish the database of biological science, but we need a new understanding of known facts, which determine the initial cognitive position.
CT-planned internal mammary node radiotherapy in the DBCG-IMN study: Benefit versus potentially harmful effects (2014)

Refraining from IMN-RT on the left side may have spared some ischemic heart deaths. Assuming left-sided patients benefit as much from IMN-RT as right-sided patients, the benefits from IMN-RT outweigh the costs in terms of ischemic heart death.
Twelve-month results of a clinical pilot study utilizing pedicle-lengthening osteotomy for the treatment of lumbar spinal stenosis (2013)

OBJECTIVE Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a common condition that leads to significant disability, particularly in the elderly. Current therapeutic options have certain drawbacks. This study evaluates the 5-year clinical and radiographic results of a minimally invasive pedicle-lengthening osteotomy (PLO) for symptomatic LSS. METHODS A prospective, single-arm, clinical pilot study was conducted involving 20 patients (mean age 61.7 years) with symptomatic LSS treated by a PLO procedure at 1 or 2 lumbar levels. All patients had symptoms of neurogenic claudication or radiculopathy secondary to LSS, and had not improved after a minimum 6-month course of nonoperative treatment. Eleven patients had a Meyerding grade I degenerative spondylolisthesis in addition to LSS. Clinical outcomes were measured using the Oswestry Disability Index, Zürich Claudication Questionnaire, 12-Item Short Form Health Survey, and a visual analog scale for back and leg pain. Procedural variables, neurological outcomes, adverse events, and radiological imaging (plain radiographs and CT scans) were collected at the 1.5-, 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-, 24-, and 60-month time points. RESULTS The PLOs were performed through percutaneous incisions, with minimal blood loss in all cases. There were no operative complications. Four adverse events occurred during the follow-up period. Statistically significant improvement was observed in each of the outcome instruments and maintained over the 5-year follow-up period. Imaging studies, reviewed by an independent radiologist, showed no evidence of device subsidence, migration, breakage, or heterotopic ossification. Thin-slice CT scans documented healing of the osteotomy site in all patients at the 6-month time point and an increase of 115% in the mean cross-sectional area of the spinal canal. CONCLUSIONS Treatment of patients with symptomatic LSS with a PLO procedure provided substantial enlargement of the area of the spinal canal and favorable clinical results for both disease-specific and non-disease-specific outcome measures at all follow-up time points out to 5 years. Future research is needed to compare this technique to alternative therapies for LSS.
On Affinity Based Routing in Multi-System Data Sharing (1986)

Multiple systems coupling incurs performance degradation due to inter-system (global) lock conlention and database buffer invalidation. At high transaction rates, the level of inter-syslem interference can have a severe hnpact on performance. In this paper, we propose a scheme for transaction routing lhat reduces inter-system interference while keeping load nearly balanced. The routing decision is based on affinity relations defined between transactions and databases. A methodology, employing an integer linear programming technique, is developed to classify incoming transactions into affinity groups based on their dotuba& call reference puffem. Based on traces from two of IBM’s high volume single system customers, we find that. at high lransaction rates, the proposed aflinily based routing significantly reduces the lock contention probability and leads to a substantial reduction in transaction response time. Further, the reduction in inter-system data contenlion, produces a large hnpact on the performance of optimislic type concurrency control.
Feline Leukemia Virus: Occurrence of Viral Antigen in the Tissues of Cats with Lymphosarcoma and Other Diseases (1969)

Felinie leutkemia viruts antigen is demonstrable by immunodiffusion with rabbit precipitating antiserum to purified felinie leukemia virus. The felinie leukemia virus antigen was found in the tissues of 25 of 33 cats with lymphosarcoma and of 5 of 13 cats with infectious peritonitis. Its presence was correlated with the occurrence of felinie leukemia virus demonstrable by electron microscopy. The one clinically normal cat giving a positive test for feline leukemia virus antigen belonged to a household in which two cats had developed lymphosarcoma. With the exception of a dog with lymphosarcoma induced by feline leukemia virus, the antigent was absent from lymphosarcoma and nonlymphomatous tumors of other species (man, dog, cow, goat, or pig).
High-Throughput Density Measurement Using Magnetic Levitation (2018)

This work describes the development of an integrated analytical system that enables high-throughput density measurements of diamagnetic particles (including cells) using magnetic levitation (MagLev), 96-well plates, and a flatbed scanner. MagLev is a simple and useful technique with which to carry out density-based analysis and separation of a broad range of diamagnetic materials with different physical forms (e.g., liquids, solids, gels, pastes, gums, etc.); one major limitation, however, is the capacity to perform high-throughput density measurements. This work addresses this limitation by (i) re-engineering the shape of the magnetic fields so that the MagLev system is compatible with 96-well plates, and (ii) integrating a flatbed scanner (and simple optical components) to carry out imaging of the samples that levitate in the system. The resulting system is compatible with both biological samples (human erythrocytes) and nonbiological samples (simple liquids and solids, such as 3-chlorotoluene, cholesterol crystals, glass beads, copper powder, and polymer beads). The high-throughput capacity of this integrated MagLev system will enable new applications in chemistry (e.g., analysis and separation of materials) and biochemistry (e.g., cellular responses under environmental stresses) in a simple and label-free format on the basis of a universal property of all matter, i.e., density.