gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Keynote lecture II: Tyflos : a wearable system-prototype for assisting visually impaired (2008)

Human eyes receive more than 75% of the total information accessible to the human senses. There are approximately 45 million blind individuals world-wide according to the World Health Report. Vision loss can be very traumatic, leading to frustration and depression. According to the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), the rate of unemployment among legally blind individuals of working age residing in the United States (58%) is much greater than that of individuals with no functional limitations (18%). Employment opportunities and independence are scarce for visually impaired individuals. This is unfortunate in view of the fact that ingenious devices [IEEE Spectrum] and information technology (IT) strategies can be developed to help people overcome these barriers and to pursue educational opportunities that will allow them to become productive members of society. In this talk technological efforts are presented that have the same goal assisting and increasing the visual impaired people's independence in their working and living environment, and reducing their social neglect ness. In particular, the research effort (called Tyflos) is presented here that is an IT- based wearable system-prototype. It consists of a pair of dark glasses on which two tiny vision cameras, an ear speaker and a microphone are attached. The cameras are connected with a portable computer that carries intelligent software programs. The cameras, under the user's command, capture images from the surrounding and convert them via software programs into audio or vibrations. The current versions of Tyflos is used as 1) a reader by reading books or the blind user via audio conversion and 2) a navigation by converting 3D images into vibrations for navigation.
Some rules to transform sequence diagrams into coloured Petri nets (2006)

Abstract. This paper presents a set of rules that allows software engineers to transform the behavior described by a UML 2.0 Sequence Diagram (SD) into a Colored Petri Net (CPN). SDs in UML 2.0 are much richer than in UML 1.x, namely by allowing several traces to be combined in a unique diagram, using high-level operators over interactions. The main purpose of the transformation is to allow the development team to construct animations based on the CPN that can be shown to the users or the clients in order to reproduce the expected scenarios and thus validate them. Thus, non-technical stakeholders are able to discuss and validate the captured requirements. The usage of animation is an important topic in this context, since it permits the user to discuss the system behavior using the problem domain language. A small control application from industry is used to show the applicability of the suggested rules. 1
Ways to implement global variance in statistical speech synthesis (2012)

Hidden Markov model-based speech synthesis is prone to over-smoothing of spectral parameter trajectories. The maximum-likelihood parameter generation favors smooth tracks and the utterance-level variance of each parameter trajectory is significantly reduced compared to the original recordings. This results in muffled speech. To retain the natural variance, statistical global variance modeling has been used in parameter generation. The modeling increases the utterancelevel variance in synthesis, but it is computationally demanding: there is no closed-form solution and an iterative approach is used. In this paper, we analyze the performance of two simple alternative approaches for retaining the natural variance of spectral parameters in synthesis, namely variance scaling and histogram equalization. Both methods apply analytically solvable parameter generation and impose the natural variance afterwards as an efficient post-processing step. Subjective evaluations carried out on English data confirm that the achieved synthesis quality is higher compared to simple post-filtering and similar to the standard global variance modeling.
Reversibility of sodium-induced aggregation of sonicated phosphatidylserine vesicles. (1980)

The kinetics of sodium-induced aggregation of sonicated phosphatidylserine vesicles has been studied as a function of sodium concentration and temperature. The concentration threshold for aggregation induced by monovalent sodium has been found to be 550 mM sodium by stopped-flow rapid-mixing techniques. This aggregation is completely reversible to changes in sodium ion concentration and to changes in temperature. The aggregation rate decreases with increasing temperature, indicating that the backward reaction rate increases more rapidly with temperature than does the forward rate.
Control of Pretilt Angles of Liquid Crystal Molecules in a Liquid Crystal Cell Using a Chemically Adsorbed Monolayer as an Alignment Film (1990)

Using chemically adsorbed monolayers with two surfactants as an alignment film for a liquid crystal cell, liquid crystal cells were structured. The monolayers showed a fair degree of alignment effects without rubbing. By changing the composition ratio of the mixture of the surfactants having a long hydrocarbon chain and a short hydrocarbon chain, the pretilt angles of the liquid crystal molecules could be controlled. The molecular density or the molecular arrangements in the chemically adsorbed monolayers may strongly affect the pretilt angles. To interpret the experimental results, possible model structures in the monolayer were proposed.
NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase from bovine heart mitochondria. cDNA sequences of the import precursors of the nuclear-encoded 39 kDa and 42 kDa subunits (1991)

The 39 kDa and 42 kDa subunits of NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase from bovine heart mitochondria are nuclear-coded components of the hydrophobic protein fraction of the enzyme. Their amino acid sequences have been deduced from the sequences of overlapping cDNA clones. These clones were amplified from total bovine heart cDNA by means of the polymerase chain reaction, with the use of complex mixtures of oligonucleotide primers based upon fragments of protein sequence determined at the N-terminals of the proteins and at internal sites. The protein sequences of the 39 kDa and 42 kDa subunits are 345 and 320 amino acid residues long respectively, and their calculated molecular masses are 39,115 Da and 36,693 Da. Both proteins are predominantly hydrophilic, but each contains one or two hydrophobic segments that could possibly be folded into transmembrane alpha-helices. The bovine 39 kDa protein sequence is related to that of a 40 kDa subunit from complex I from Neurospora crassa mitochondria; otherwise, it is not related significantly to any known sequence, including redox proteins and two polypeptides involved in import of proteins into mitochondria, known as the mitochondrial processing peptidase and the processing-enhancing protein. Therefore the functions of the 39 kDa and 42 kDa subunits of complex I are unknown. The mitochondrial gene product, ND4, a hydrophobic component of complex I with an apparent molecular mass of about 39 kDa, has been identified in preparations of the enzyme. This subunit stains faintly with Coomassie Blue dye, and in many gel systems it is not resolved from the nuclearcoded 36 kDa subunit.
In Vivo Virulence of<i>Candida albicans</i>Isolates Causing Mucosal Infections in People Infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (2000)

Mucosal candidiasis is common in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Susceptibility to such infections may be attributed to reduced host defense mechanisms and/or virulence of the organism. In the present study, we compared the virulence of mucosal Candida albicans isolates from HIV-infected people, with and without fluconazole-refractory infection, in established murine models of systemic and vaginal candidiasis. Compared with the mortality rate ( approximately 70%) after intravenous challenge with 2 virulent reference isolates, challenge with most clinical isolates (66%-77%) resulted in prolonged survival. In contrast, fungal burden induced by intravaginal challenge of nearly all (97%) isolates was similar to that of the virulent controls. There were no differences in in vitro growth rates for any of the isolates, and there was no association between reduced mortality and clinical failure to fluconazole, in vitro antifungal susceptibility, site of infection, or other host factors. These results suggest that virulence of C. albicans is tissue specific and is not a factor in the development of fluconazole-refractory infections in advanced HIV disease.
Future trends in aberration-corrected electron microscopy (2009)

The attainable specimen resolution is determined by the instrumental resolution limit d(i) and by radiation damage. Solid objects such as metals are primarily damaged by atom displacement resulting from knock-on collisions of the incident electrons with the atomic nuclei. The instrumental resolution improves appreciably by means of aberration correction. To achieve atomic resolution at voltages below approximately 100 kV and a large number of equally resolved image points, we propose an achromatic electron-optical aplanat, which is free of chromatic aberration, spherical aberration and total off-axial coma. Its anisotropic component is eliminated either by a dual objective lens consisting of two separate windings with opposite directions of their currents or by skew octopoles employed in the TEAM corrector. We obtain optimum imaging conditions by operating the aberration-corrected electron microscope at voltages below the knock-on threshold for atom displacement and by shifting the phase of the non-scattered wave by pi/2 or that of the scattered wave by -pi/2. In this negative contrast mode, the phase contrast and the scattering contrast add up with the same sign. The realization of a low-voltage aberration-corrected phase transmission electron microscope for the visualization of radiation-sensitive objects is the aim of the proposed SALVE (Sub-A Low-Voltage Electron microscope) project. This microscope will employ a coma-free objective lens, an obstruction-free phase plate and a novel corrector compensating for the spherical and chromatic aberrations.
Comparison of head gaze and head and eye gaze within an immersive environment (2006)

For efficient collaboration between participants, eye gaze is seen as being critical for interaction. Teleconferencing systems such as the AcessGrid allow users to meet across geographically disparate rooms but as of now there seems no substitute for face to face meetings. This paper gives an overview of some preliminary work that looks towards integrating eye gaze into an immersive collaborative virtual environment and assessing the impact that this would have on interaction between the users of such a system. An experiment was conducted to assess the difference between users' abilities to judge what objects an avatar is looking at with only head gaze being viewed and also with eye and head gaze data being displayed. The results from the experiment show that eye gaze is of vital importance to the subjects correctly identifying what a person is looking at in an immersive virtual environment. This is followed by a description of how the eye tracking system has been integrated into an immersive collaborative virtual environment and some preliminary results from the use of such a system
Aircraft Turbofan Engine Health Estimation Using Constrained Kalman Filtering (2003)

Kalman filters are often used to estimate the state variables of a dynamic system. However, in the application of Kalman filters some known signal information is often either ignored or dealt with heuristically. For instance, state variable constraints (which may be based on physical considerations) are often neglected because they do not fit easily into the structure of the Kalman filter. This paper develops an analytic method of incorporating state variable inequality constraints in the Kalman filter. The resultant filter is a combination of a standard Kalman filter and a quadratic programming problem. The incorporation of state variable constraints increases the computational effort of the filter but significantly improves its estimation accuracy. The improvement is proven theoretically and shown via simulation results obtained from application to a turbofan engine model. This model contains 16 state variables, 12 measurements, and 8 component health parameters. It is shown that the new algorithms provide improved performance in this example over unconstrained Kalman filtering.
Fabrication of FeF3 nanocrystals dispersed into a porous carbon matrix as a high performance cathode material for lithium ion batteries (2013)

FeF3/C nanocomposites, where FeF3 nanocrystals had been dispersed into a porous carbon matrix, were successfully fabricated by a novel vapour–solid method in a tailored autoclave. Phase evolution of the reaction between the precursor and HF solution vapour under air and argon gas atmospheres were investigated. The results showed that the air in the autoclave played an important role in driving the reaction to form FeF3. The as-prepared FeF3/C delivered 134.3, 103.2 and 71.0 mA h g−1 of charge capacity at a current density of 104, 520, and 1040 mA g−1 in turn, exhibiting superior rate capability to the bare FeF3. Moreover, it displayed stable cycling performance, with a charge capacity of 196.3 mA h g−1 at 20.8 mA g−1. EIS and BET investigations indicated that the good electrochemical performance can be attributed to the good electrical conductivity and high specific surface area that result from the porous carbon matrix.
Infrared spectra of crystalline polysaccharides. V. Chitin (1960)

Abstract The polarized infrared spectra of crab chitin crystallites, blowfly larval cuticle, lobster tendon, and partially deacetylated lobster chitin have been studied. In addition, the spectra of amorphous deacetylated chitin, deuterated lobster chitin and crystalline N ‐acetylated chitohexaose were obtained and analyzed. Band assignments have been made with the aid of previous work on celluloses and other related molecules. The complete intermolecular CO‐‐‐‐HN hydrogen bonding scheme, orginally proposed by Carlstrom from x‐ray studies, is in agreement with the infrared data. With the aid of a scale model of the chitin unit cell, a number of hydrogen‐bonding schemes involving the primary hydroxyl group have been examined and are discussed.
Electrical Dispersion in Relation to Soil Structure (1968)

The dielectric constant and conductivity of saturated clays vary with frequency in the frequency range 0 cps to 105 cps. These variations can be used to reflect differences in structure-determining factors in clays, since particle orientation, particle size and size distribution, water content, type and amount of electrolyte, temperature, and particle surface treatment all influence the conductivity and dielectric response in a numerically significant and generally predictable manner. The determination of AC electrical response characteristics is fast and nondestructive of the sample. Electrical measurements may be incorporated into other tests such as strength and consolidation, where changes in structure that develop as the test proceeds may be of interest.
Epstein Barr Virus: Development of Vaccines and Immune Cell Therapy for EBV-Associated Diseases (2021)

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the first human tumor virus discovered and is strongly implicated in the etiology of multiple lymphoid and epithelial cancers. Each year EBV associated cancers account for over 200,000 new cases of cancer and cause 150,000 deaths world-wide. EBV is also the primary cause of infectious mononucleosis, and up to 70% of adolescents and young adults in developed countries suffer from infectious mononucleosis. In addition, EBV has been shown to play a critical role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis. An EBV prophylactic vaccine that induces neutralizing antibodies holds great promise for prevention of EBV associated diseases. EBV envelope proteins including gH/gL, gB and gp350 play key roles in EBV entry and infection of target cells, and neutralizing antibodies elicited by each of these proteins have shown to prevent EBV infection of target cells and markedly decrease EBV titers in the peripheral blood of humanized mice challenged with lethal dose EBV. Recent studies demonstrated that immunization with the combination of gH/gL, gB and/or gp350 induced markedly increased synergistic EBV neutralizing activity compared to immunization with individual proteins. As previous clinical trials focused on gp350 alone were partially successful, the inclusion of gH/gL and gB in a vaccine formulation with gp350 represents a promising approach of EBV prophylactic vaccine development. Therapeutic EBV vaccines have also been tested clinically with encouraging results. Immunization with various vaccine platforms expressing the EBV latent proteins EBNA1, LMP1, and/or LMP2 promoted specific CD4+ and CD8+ cytotoxic responses with anti-tumor activity. The addition of EBV envelope proteins gH/gL, gB and gp350 has the potential to increase the efficacy of a therapeutic EBV vaccine. The immune system plays a critical role in the control of tumors, and immune cell therapy has emerged as a promising treatment of cancers. Adoptive T-cell therapy has been successfully used in the prevention and treatment of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder. Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy and T cell receptor engineered T cell therapy targeting EBV latent proteins LMP1, LMP2 and/or EBNA1 have been in development, with the goal to increase the specificity and efficacy of treatment of EBV associated cancers.
General Strategy for Constructing Large HSV-1 Plasmid Vectors that Co-Express Multiple Genes (2001)

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) plasmid vectors have a number of attractive features for gene transfer into neurons. In particular, the large size of the HSV-1 genome suggests that HSV-1 vectors might be designed to co-express multiple genes. Here, we report a general strategy for constructing large HSV-1 plasmid vectors that co-express multiple genes. Each transcription unit is linked to an antibiotic resistance gene, and genetic selections are used to assemble large vectors. Using this strategy, we constructed large (26 or 31 kb) HSV-1 vectors that contain two transcription units and two or three genes. These vectors were efficiently packaged into HSV-1 particles using a helper virus-free packaging system. The resulting vector stocks supported the expression of two or three genes in both cultured cells and the rat brain. Potential applications of HSV-1 vectors that co-express multiple genes are discussed.
On the role of lysine residues in the bromophenol blue-albumin interaction. (1997)

In order to explore the role of buried lysine residues of bovine serum albumin (BSA) in its interaction with bromophenol blue (BPB), three acetylated derivatives of albumin namely: 90%, 100% and 10%/chiefly having modification of buried lysine residues) were prepared by conventional and double modification techniques. The modification of lysine residues resulted in the change in conformation, as evidenced by the increase in Stokes radius from 3.55 nm (for native albumin) to 4.91 and 4.97 nm for 90% and 100% acetylated albumins, respectively. Modification of buried lysine residues (10% acetylated preparation) of albumin increased the Stokes radius up to 3.96 nm. The interaction of BPB with albumin preparations was studied spectrophotometrically at ionic strength 0.4 and at three different pH values i.e., 4.0, 6.0 and 8.0. There was decrease in BPB binding on increasing the modification. A decrease of 63% and 69% was noticed at pH 8.0 in 90% and 100% acetylated preparation, respectively. The 10% acetylated BSA preparation with minimum conformational changes also showed a significant decrease (31%) in BPB binding at pH 8.0. The change in Kd from 2.04 x 10(-6) M for native albumin to 5.41 x 10(-6) M for 100% acetylated albumin and 3.39 x 10(-6) M for 10% acetylated preparation at pH 8.0 confirmed the critical role of buried lysine residues in BPB-BSA interaction.
Parker weights revisited (2002)

The short-scan case in fan-beam computed tomography requires the introduction of a weighting function to handle redundant data. Parker introduced such a weighting function for a scan over pi plus the opening angle of the fan. In this article we derive a general class of weighting functions for arbitrary scan angles between pi plus fan angle and 2pi (over-scan). These weighting functions lead to mathematically exact reconstructions in the continuous case. Parker weights are a special case of a weighting function that belongs to this class. It will be shown that Parker weights are not generally the best choice in terms of noise reduction, especially when there is considerable over-scan. We derive a new weighting function that has a value of 0.5 for most of the redundant data and is smooth at the boundaries.
Antioxidant Activity of Some Jordanian Medicinal Plants Used Traditionally for Treatment of Diabetes (2008)

Medicinal plants are being used extensively in Jordanian traditional medicinal system for the treatment of diabetes symptoms. Twenty one plant samples were collected from different Jordanian locations and used for antioxidant evaluation. The level of antioxidant activity was determined by DPPH and ABTS assays in relation to the total phenolic contents of the medically used parts. The most frequently used plant parts as medicines were fruit, shoot and leaves. The total phenolic contents of methanol and aqueous extracts, from plants parts, ranged from 6.6 to 103.0 and 3.0 to 98.6 GAE mg g(-1) of plant part dry weight, respectively. DPPH-TEAC of the methanol extracts of plants parts were varied from 4.1 to 365.0 mg g(-1) of plant dry weight versus 0.6 to 267.0 mg g(-1) in aqueous extracts. Moreover, the mean values of ABTS*- (IC50) varied from 6.9 to 400.0 microg dry weight mL(-1) ABTS in methanol extracts versus 9.8 to 580.5 microg mL(-1) in aqueous extracts. According to their antioxidant capacity, the plants were divided into three categories: high (DPPH-TEAC > or = 80 mg g(-1) ), (i.e., Punica granatum peel, Quercus calliprinos leave, Quercus calliprinos fruit, Cinchona ledgeriana and Juniperus communis leave), moderate (DPPH-TEAC range 20-80 mg g(-1)) (i.e., Salvia fruticosa shoot, Crataegus azarolus stem, Crataegus azarolus leave, Varthemia iphionoides shoot, Artemisia herba-alba shoot, Thymus capitatus shoot, Morus nigra leaves and Arum palaestinum leaves) and low antioxidant plants (DPPH-TEAC < 20 mg g(-1)), (i.e., Matricaria aurea shoot, Artemisia judaica shoot, Teucrium polium shoot, Pinus halepenss pollen grains, Sarcopoterium spinosum root, Crataegus azarolus fruit, Inula viscose shoot and Achillea fragrantissima shoot). The antioxidant activity of these plant's extracts and their potential rule in radical scavenging agreed with their potential use by Jordanian population as a traditional anti-diabetic agents.