gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Amyloid Aggregation Inhibitory Mechanism of Arginine-rich D-peptides (2014)

It is widely believed that Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis is driven by the production and deposition of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) in the brain. In this study, we employ a combination of in silico and in vitro approaches to investigate the inhibitory properties of selected arginine-rich D-enantiomeric peptides (D-peptides) against amyloid aggregation. The D-peptides include D3, a 12-residue peptide with anti-amyloid potencies demonstrated in vitro and in vivo, RD2, a scrambled sequence of D3, as well as truncated RD2 variants. Using a global optimization method together with binding free energy calculations followed by molecular dynamics simulations, we perform a detailed analysis of D-peptide binding to Aβ monomer and a fibrillar Aβ structure. Results obtained from both molecular simulations and surface plasmon resonance experiments reveal a strong binding of D3 and RD2 to Aβ, leading to a significant reduction in the amount of β structures in both monomer and fibril, which was also demonstrated in Thioflavin T assays. The binding of the D-peptides to Aβ is driven by electrostatic interactions, mostly involving the D-arginine residues and Glu11, Glu22 and Asp23 of Aβ. Furthermore, we show that the anti-amyloid activities of the D-peptides depend on the length and sequence of the Dpeptide, its ability to form multiple weak hydrophobic interactions with Aβ, as well as the Aβ oligomer size.
Crosstalk between Bile Acids and Gut Microbiota and Its Impact on Farnesoid X Receptor Signalling (2017)

It is of special importance to elucidate how a human gut microbiota influences bile acid composition and FXR signalling in colonised mice.
Measurement of the x-ray dose-dependent glass transition temperature of structured polymer films by x-ray diffraction (2007)

The glass transition temperature (Tg) of polymer nanostructures was measured using a technique based on synchrotron x-ray diffraction from periodic grating structures. Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanostructures consisting of 1:1 lines:spaces with a 100 nm period and 100 nm height were characterized to have a Tg of 118 °C, which is comparable to the Tg of PMMA in bulk systems. The Tg of the PMMA structures also was measured as a function of absorbed x-ray dose. Doses ranging from 0 to 2400 mJ/mm3 were delivered to the PMMA structures prior to the Tg measurements; the Tg of the structures was found to decrease from 118 °C to 95 °C, respectively. The dose dependence of the PMMA glass transition temperature can be attributed to changes in the polymer molecular weight under exposure to x rays.
FK concentrator outdoor measurements (2013)

The FK is a two-stage optical concentrator for CPV, composed by a Fresnel lens working as POE and a refractive element working as SOE. Both elements perform Kohler integration, for uniform irradiance purposes. The FK has demonstrated that compares very well with other Fresnel-based concentrator optics. Recent on-sun measurements carried out on an FK mono-module prototype have already shown outstanding results, achieving electrical efficiencies over 34%. Further optimization of optical design together with application of AR coating on SOE will predictably lead to efficiencies over 35%.
Effects of Working Memory Capacity and Noise Placement on Passive Sentence Processing in Elderly Adults: An Eye-Tracking Study (2022)

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of working-memory (WM) capacity on age-related changes in abilities to comprehend incomplete passive sentences using eye tracking.Methods: A total of 45 individuals participated in the study. The incomplete sentences were made by replacing dative case makers or verbs with white noise. A composite measure of WM scores was used as an index of WM capacity.Results: The elderly group and the lower WM group showed worse performance in accuracy and response time under the both noise conditions. All groups showed worse performance under the verb noise conditions in accuracy and response time. In accuracy, a two-way interaction between the age groups and the WM groups was significant. There was a correlation between the noise locations and the age groups in response time. In target advantage ratio (TA), there was a correlation between the regions and the age groups under the both conditions. Moreover, the main effect of the region was significant under the verb noise.Conclusion: Ageing reduces the ability of sentence processing and the sentences without verbs were more difficult to process for all groups. Also, the WM capacity can affect sentence processing and the affect increases with ageing. TA results showed that elderly adults use an inefficient strategy when dealing with incomplete passive-sentences, affected by reduced cognitive function due to ageing. Also, TA results suggested that WM capacity plays different roles in online and offline sentence processing.
Stray Flux Sensor Core Impact on the Condition Monitoring of Electrical Machines (2020)

The analysis of the stray flux for electrical machine condition monitoring is a very modern and active research topic. Thanks to this technique, it is possible to detect several types of failures, including stator and rotor inter-turn faults, broken rotor bars and mechanical faults, among others. The main advantages are that it involves a non-invasive technique and low-cost monitoring equipment. The standard practice is to use coreless flux sensors, with which the stray flux of the machine is not perturbed and there are no problems due to saturation or nonlinear behavior of the iron. However, the induced voltage in the coreless coil sensor may be very low and even, in some cases, have a similar amplitude to the noise floor. This paper studies the use of iron core stray flux sensors for condition monitoring of electrical machines. The main advantage of iron core flux sensors is that the measured electromotive force is stronger. In the case of large machines in noisy environments, this can be crucial. Two different types of iron core stray flux sensors and a coreless flux sensor are tested. A comparison of the three sensors is presented. Extensive experimental testing with all sensors shows the superiority and greater sensitivity of sensors with core versus the coreless ones.
Understanding cable coupling artifacts in wireline-deployed DAS VSP data (2019)

Vertical seismic profile data can be acquired using distributed acoustic sensing on a wireline-deployed optical fiber in virtually any well. Unfortunately, in vertical wells insufficient coupling of the cable to the borehole wall can occur over small regions of the well causing high amplitude noise events. This noise appears to reverberate back and forth on the uncoupled zones of the cable between the points that are touching the well. The noise propagates along the cable with different speeds. Traces with this noise exhibit spectral amplitude peaks and notches associated with the noise train. The gauge length used in the interrogator unit affects the characteristics of the noise; longer gauge lengths spatially smear out the noise affecting more channels. This paper advances a deeper understanding of this noise so that it can be mitigated on the recorded VSP data. Presentation Date: Wednesday, September 18, 2019 Session Start Time: 8:30 AM Presentation Start Time: 8:30 AM Location: 303B Presentation Type: Oral
Chemotaxis by natural populations of coral reef bacteria (2015)

Corals experience intimate associations with distinct populations of marine microorganisms, but the microbial behaviours underpinning these relationships are poorly understood. There is evidence that chemotaxis is pivotal to the infection process of corals by pathogenic bacteria, but this evidence is limited to experiments using cultured isolates under laboratory conditions. We measured the chemotactic capabilities of natural populations of coral-associated bacteria towards chemicals released by corals and their symbionts, including amino acids, carbohydrates, ammonium and dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP). Laboratory experiments, using a modified capillary assay, and in situ measurements, using a novel microfabricated in situ chemotaxis assay, were employed to quantify the chemotactic responses of natural microbial assemblages on the Great Barrier Reef. Both approaches showed that bacteria associated with the surface of the coral species Pocillopora damicornis and Acropora aspera exhibited significant levels of chemotaxis, particularly towards DMSP and amino acids, and that these levels of chemotaxis were significantly higher than that of bacteria inhabiting nearby, non-coral-associated waters. This pattern was supported by a significantly higher abundance of chemotaxis and motility genes in metagenomes within coral-associated water types. The phylogenetic composition of the coral-associated chemotactic microorganisms, determined using 16S rRNA amplicon pyrosequencing, differed from the community in the seawater surrounding the coral and comprised known coral associates, including potentially pathogenic Vibrio species. These findings indicate that motility and chemotaxis are prevalent phenotypes among coral-associated bacteria, and we propose that chemotaxis has an important role in the establishment and maintenance of specific coral-microbe associations, which may ultimately influence the health and stability of the coral holobiont.
Dynamics of water evaporation and flammability from the common “dogwood” (Cornus kousa) leaf (2018)

The leaves of Cornus kousa Dogwood were specifically analyzed for their ability to resist burning in three different conditions fresh oven dried and naturally fallen leaves Analyzing the different surface properties of each of the leaves was of particular importance and the special attributes of the epidermis layer were determined using Optical Water Contact Angle Microscopy Optical Microscopy and Confocal Microscopy Water droplets were displaced onto the surface of the leaves measuring each of the contact angles over a period of time until evaporation occurred which aided the understanding of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic properties of the leaves in different settings Optical and Confocal Microscopy were utilized to examine the topology of the leaf epidermis not only through a micro ndash analysis of the epidermal layer structures but also through a D model of the different course and smooth surfaces respectively Flame tests were conducted to contrast the pyrolyzing rates of the leaves under the three conditions Understanding properties specific to the Cornus kousa and more specifically the dynamics in water evaporation and flammability which is helpful for numerous applications ranging from wildfire prevention to horticulture
Heavy Traffic Asymptotic Approach for Video Streaming over Small Cell Networks with Imperfect State Information (2012)

International audience
Competition of Charge and Energy Transfer Processes in Donor–Acceptor Fluorescence Pairs: Calibrating the Spectroscopic Ruler (2018)

Sensing strategies utilizing Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) are widely used for probing biological phenomena. FRET sensitivity to the donor-acceptor distance makes it ideal for measuring the concentration of a known analyte or determining the spatial separation between fluorescent labels in a macromolecular assembly. The difficulty lies in extracting the FRET efficiency from the acceptor-induced quenching of the donor emission, which may contain a significant non-FRET contribution. Here, we demonstrate a general spectroscopic approach for differentiating between charge transfer and energy transfer (ET) processes in donor-acceptor assemblies and apply the developed method for unravelling the FRET/non-FRET contributions in cyanine dye-semiconductor quantum dot (QD) constructs. The present method relies on correlating the amplitude of the acceptor emission to specific changes in the donor excitation profile in order to extract ET-only transfer efficiencies. Quenching of the donor emission is then utilized to determine the non-ET component, tentatively attributed to the charge transfer. We observe that the latter accounts for 50-99% of donor emission quenching in QD-Cy5 and QD-Cy7 systems, stressing the importance of determining the non-FRET efficiency in a spectroscopic ruler and other FRET-based sensing applications.
Highly polarized light emission by isotropic quantum dots integrated with magnetically aligned segmented nanowires (2014)

In this work, we demonstrate a proof-of-concept system for generating highly polarized light from colloidal quantum dots (QDs) coupled with magnetically aligned segmented Au/Ni/Au nanowires (NWs). Optical characterizations reveal that the optimized QD-NW coupled structures emit highly polarized light with an s-to p-polarization (s/p) contrast as high as 15:1 corresponding to a degree of polarization of 0.88. These experimental results are supported by the finite-difference time-domain simulations, which demonstrate the interplay between the inter-NW distance and the degree of polarization.
On the Feasibility of Generating Deception Environments for Industrial Control Systems (Presentation). (2022)

Abstract not provided.
The expandable split window paradigm for exploiting fine-grain parallelism (1995)

We propose a new processing paradigm, called the Expandable Split Window (ESW) paradigm, for exploiting finegrain parallelism. This paradigm considers a window of instructions (possibly having dependencies) as a single unit, and exploits fine-grain parallelism by overlapping the execution of multiple windows. The basic idea is to connect multiple sequential processors, in a decoupled and decentralized manner, to achieve overall multiple issue. This processing paradigm shares a number of properties of the restricted dataflow machines, but was derived from the sequential von Neumann architecture. We also present an implementation of the Expandable Split Window execution model, and preliminary performance results. 1.
Two-dome structure in electron-doped iron arsenide superconductors (2012)

Iron arsenide superconductors based on the material LaFeAsO(1-x)F(x) are characterized by a two-dimensional Fermi surface (FS) consisting of hole and electron pockets yielding structural and antiferromagnetic transitions at x=0. Electron doping by substituting O(2-) with F(-) suppresses these transitions and gives rise to superconductivity with a maximum T(c) of 26 K at x=0.1. However, the over-doped region cannot be accessed due to the poor solubility of F(-) above x=0.2. Here we overcome this problem by doping LaFeAsO with hydrogen. We report the phase diagram of LaFeAsO(1-x)H(x) (x<0.53) and, in addition to the conventional superconducting dome seen in LaFeAsO(1-x)F(x), we find a second dome in the range 0.21<x<0.53, with a maximum T(c) of 36 K at x=0.3. Density functional theory calculations reveal that the three Fe 3d bands (xy, yz and zx) become degenerate at x=0.36, whereas the FS nesting is weakened monotonically with x. These results imply that the band degeneracy has an important role to induce high T(c).
MetaVInsulatorPolymer - LEDs Based on PPV (1996)

Abstract We investigated the current-voltage (I-V) and electroluminescence (EL) characteristic of metal/polymer and metal/insulator/polymer (MIP) LEDs based on poly (1,4-phenylene vinylene) (PPV). The I-V- and EL characteristics of the MIP structures display a pronounced dependence of the insulator thickness and we measure an increase of the quantum efficiency of more than a factor of 40 at an AlOX layer thickness of 3–5nm. The device characteristic is qualitatively understood within inorganic metal/insulator/semiconductor (MIS) theory and can be explained by a voltage dependent barrier for minority carrier injection in connection with a hole blocking barrier at the PPV/insulator interface. With MIP structures we reveal external quantum efficiencies up to 0.01%, comparable to values achieved on monolayer Ca LEDs. The MIP structures, however have the advantage, that a more stable device performance is obtained.
Model-Resolution-Based Basis Pursuit Deconvolution Improves Diffuse Optical Tomographic Imaging (2014)

The image reconstruction problem encountered in diffuse optical tomographic imaging is ill-posed in nature, necessitating the usage of regularization to result in stable solutions. This regularization also results in loss of resolution in the reconstructed images. A frame work, that is attributed by model-resolution, to improve the reconstructed image characteristics using the basis pursuit deconvolution method is proposed here. The proposed method performs this deconvolution as an additional step in the image reconstruction scheme. It is shown, both in numerical and experimental gelatin phantom cases, that the proposed method yields better recovery of the target shapes compared to traditional method, without the loss of quantitativeness of the results.
Enrichment for RNA molecules that bind a Diels-Alder transition state analog. (1994)

RNA molecules that bind a transition state analog for a Diels-Alder reaction (Kd = 0.35 +/- 0.05 mM) were isolated from a starting pool of approximately 10(14) sequences by affinity chromatography. After the initial rise and plateau of the amount of RNA that eluted with soluble analog, a step gradient elution was used to further enrich the pool for sequences with higher affinities for the target. To our knowledge, the isolation of RNA molecules that bind either a nonplanar or a hydrophobic ligand has not been reported previously. A conserved nucleotide sequence and secondary structure present in many of the RNA molecules are necessary but not sufficient for binding the analog. No catalysts of the targeted Diels-Alder reaction were found among the binders. The absence of catalysis contrasts with previous successful experiments with antibodies and suggests that other strategies may be needed to identify oligonucleotides with diverse catalytic activities.
Breath-hold, contrast-enhanced, three-dimensional MR angiography. (1996)

Breath-hold gadolinium-enhanced three-dimensional magnetic resonance (MR) angiography was performed with a high-performance gradient MR imaging system in 10 volunteers with no history of vascular abnormalities (breath-hold interval, 28 seconds; repetition time, 4.0 msec; echo time, 1.9 msec; 0.4 mmol gadoterate meglumin per kilogram of body weight). High-resolution three-dimensional time-of-flight angiograms of the aorta, renal arteries, pulmonary arteries, pelvic arteries, and portal venous system were successfully acquired in all cases.
The Aberrance of the 4S Diastereomer of 4-Hydroxyproline (2010)

Prolyl 4-hydroxylases install a hydroxyl group in the 4R configuration on the gamma-carbon atom of certain (2S)-proline (Pro) residues in tropocollagen, elastin, and other proteins to form (2S,4R)-4-hydroxyproline (Hyp). The gauche effect arising from this prevalent post-translational modification enforces a C(gamma)-exo ring pucker and stabilizes the collagen triple helix. The Hyp diastereomer (2S,4S)-4-hydroxyproline (hyp) has not been observed in a protein, despite the ability of electronegative 4S substituents to enforce the more common C(gamma)-endo ring pucker of Pro. Here, we use density functional theory, spectroscopy, crystallography, and calorimetry to explore the consequences of hyp incorporation on protein stability using a collagen model system. We find that the 4S-hydroxylation of Pro to form hyp does indeed enforce a C(gamma)-endo ring pucker but a transannular hydrogen bond between the hydroxyl moiety and the carbonyl of hyp distorts the main-chain torsion angles that typically accompany a C(gamma)-endo ring pucker. This same transannular hydrogen bond enhances an n-->pi* interaction that stabilizes the trans conformation of the peptide bond preceding hyp, endowing hyp with the unusual combination of a C(gamma)-endo ring pucker and high trans/cis ratio. O-Methylation of hyp to form (2S,4S)-4-methoxyproline (mop) eliminates the transannular hydrogen bond and restores a prototypical C(gamma)-endo pucker. mop residues endow the collagen triple helix with much more conformational stability than do hyp residues. These findings highlight the critical importance of the configuration of the hydroxyl group installed on C(gamma) of proline residues.
Modeling of cluster organization in metal-doped oxide glasses irradiated by a train of femtosecond laser pulses (2016)

The formation of silver cluster structures at submicrometer spatial scales under the irradiation by high-power femtosecond laser pulses with high repetition rate was observed in various glasses containing silver ions. In order to account for the formation of these structures in metal-doped glasses, we present a theoretical model for the organization of noble metallic clusters induced by a train of femtosecond laser pulses. The model includes photoionization and laser heating of the sample, diffusion, kinetic reactions, and dissociation of metallic species. This model was applied to reproduce the formation of cluster structures in silver-doped phosphate glass. The parameters of the silver structures were obtained numerically under various incident pulse intensities and number of pulses. Numerical modeling shows that the involved microscopic physical and chemical processes naturally lead to the emergence of a silver cluster organization, together with charge migration and subsequent trapping giving rise to a strong static electric field buried in the irradiated area as experimentally observed. Based on this modeling, a theoretical basis is provided for the design of new metallic cluster structures with nanoscale size.
Out-of-pile and postirradiated examination of lanthanide and lanthanide-palladium interactions for metallic fuel (2020)

Palladium is being investigated as a fuel additive to bind with and potentially immobilize lanthanide fission products. A primary cause of fuel-cladding chemical interaction (FCCI) is the lanthanide fission products migrating to the fuel periphery and interacting with the cladding. This interaction will lead to wastage of the cladding and eventually to a cladding breach. Palladium has previously been identified as a promising additive used to prevent or decrease FCCI by reacting with the lanthanide fission products. In the current study, an alloy cast from the four highest abundant lanthanides found in irradiated metallic fuel, Nd, Ce, Pr, and La, with and without Pd, has been characterized using neutron diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and electron probe microanalysis. In the lanthanide-Pd intermetallic compounds, all of the constituent compounds, i.e. Nd-Pd, Ce-Pd, La-Pd and Pr-Pd are known. There is very good agreement, both structurally and compositionally, between the out-of-pile lanthanide alloy and lanthanide fission products characterized in irradiated fuels. In both cases, the lanthanide elements form a solid solution in a hexagonal crystal structure. The out-of-pile lanthanide alloy follows Vegard's Law, with the measured and calculated (weighted average of constituents) lattice parameters being within 1% for both the a and c parameters. Pd bonds with the lanthanides (Ln) forming the phases LnPd and Ln7Pd3. The results indicate the properties of lanthanide compounds in irradiated metallic fuel can be reliably simulated in out-of-pile experiments.