gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Microwave lens matching by simulated quarter-wave transformers (1956)

The reflections from the surface of a dielectric lens may be cancelled by a quarter-wavelength layer of refractive index intermediate between that of air and the lens medium. The possibility of simulating a quarter-wave matching section by perturbing the boundary of the lens is described in this paper. Some of the configurations considered are corrugated surfaces, arrays of dielectric cylinders, and arrays of holes in the dielectric surface. In each case, a match may be obtained at a given frequency and angle of incidence by the proper adjustment of the depth of the perturbation, and of one other parameter such as the width of a groove.
Identification of an Antigenic Determinant on the S2 Domain of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Spike Glycoprotein Capable of Inducing Neutralizing Antibodies (2004)

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a life-threatening disease caused by a newly identified coronavirus (CoV), SARS-CoV. The spike (S) glycoprotein of CoV is the major structural protein responsible for induction of host immune response and virus neutralization by antibodies. Hence, knowledge of neutralization determinants on the S protein is helpful for designing protective vaccines. To analyze the antigenic structure of the SARS-CoV S2 domain, the carboxyl-terminal half of the S protein, we first used sera from convalescent SARS patients to test the antigenicity of 12 overlapping fragments spanning the entire S2 and identified two antigenic determinants (Leu 803 to Ala 828 and Pro 1061 to Ser 1093). To determine whether neutralizing antibodies can be elicited by these two determinants, we immunized animals and found that both of them could induce the S2-specific antisera. In some animals, however, only one determinant (Leu 803 to Ala 828) was able to induce the antisera with the binding ability to the native S protein and the neutralizing activity to the SARS-CoV pseudovirus. This determinant is highly conserved across different SARS-CoV isolates. Identification of a conserved antigenic determinant on the S2 domain of the SARS-CoV S protein, which has the potential for inducing neutralizing antibodies, has implications in the development of effective vaccines against SARS-CoV.
Resveratrol inhibits prostaglandin formation in IL-1β-stimulated SK-N-SH neuronal cells (2009)

Resveratrol, a polyphenol present in grapes and red wine, has been studied due to its vast pharmacological activity. It has been demonstrated that resveratrol inhibits production of inflammatory mediators in different in vitro and in vivo models. Our group recently demonstrated that resveratrol reduced the production of prostaglandin (PG) E2 and 8-isoprostane in rat activated microglia. In a microglial-neuronal coculture, resveratrol reduced neuronal death induced by activated microglia. However, less is known about its direct roles in neurons. In the present study, we investigated the effects of resveratrol on interleukin (IL)-1beta stimulated SK-N-SH cells. Resveratrol (0.1-5 microM) did not reduce the expression of cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 and microsomal PGE2 synthase-1 (mPGES-1), although it drastically reduced PGE2 and PGD2 content in IL-1beta-stimulated SK-N-SH cells. This effect was due, in part, to a reduction in COX enzymatic activity, mainly COX-2, at lower doses of resveratrol. The production of 8-iso-PGF2alpha, a marker of cellular free radical generation, was significantly reduced by resveratrol. The present work provides evidence that resveratrol reduces the formation of prostaglandins in neuroblastoma cells by reducing the enzymatic activity of inducible enzymes, such as COX-2, and not the transcription of the PG synthases, as demonstrated elsewhere.
Analysis of the Mechanism of Action of Potent Antibacterial Hetero-tri-organometallic Compounds: A Structurally New Class of Antibiotics (2013)

Two hetero-tri-organometallic compounds with potent activity against Gram-positive bacteria including multi-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) were identified. The compounds consist of a peptide nucleic acid backbone with an alkyne side chain, substituted with a cymantrene, a (dipicolyl)Re(CO)3 moiety, and either a ferrocene (FcPNA) or a ruthenocene (RcPNA). Comparative proteomic analysis indicates the bacterial membrane as antibiotic target structure. FcPNA accumulation in the membrane was confirmed by manganese tracing with atomic absorption spectroscopy. Both organometallics disturbed several essential cellular processes taking place at the membrane such as respiration and cell wall biosynthesis, suggesting that the compounds affect membrane architecture. Correlating with enhanced antibacterial activity, oxidative stress was induced only by the ferrocene-substituted compound. The organometallics described here target the cytoplasmic membrane, a clinically proven antibacterial target structure, feature a bactericidal but non-bacteriolytic mode of action and limited cytotoxicity within the limits of solubility. Thus, FcPNA represents a promising lead structure for the development of a new synthetic class of antibiotics.
Anaerobic biodegradability of Tween surfactants used as a carbon source for the microbial reductive dechlorination of hexachlorobenzene (2005)

Three structurally-related, nonionic, polysorbate surfactants (Tween 60, 61, and 65) were used as the sole carbon source to sustain the microbial, sequential reductive dechlorination of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) in a mixed, methanogenic culture derived from a contaminated estuarine sediment. The surfactants were partially degraded and fermented to methane with no measurable accumulation of volatile fatty acids, indicating that methanogenesis was rapid relative to the rates of hydrolysis and acidogenesis. Addition of the methanogenesis inhibitor 2-bromoethanesulfonic acid resulted in acetate accumulation without impact on the sequential dechlorination of HCB. An anaerobic biodegradability assay was performed and the following data were obtained for the Tween 60, 61, and 65, respectively: 53, 62, and 62% COD destruction; 35, 57, and 48% COD to methane conversion; and 38, 38, and 45% COD to acetate conversion. These data suggest that the hydrophobic moiety (stearate) of the surfactants was preferentially degraded, most likely through beta-oxidation, to acetate and ultimately to methane and carbon dioxide. Between 38 and 47% of the initial surfactant COD remained after 46 d incubation, which most likely corresponds to the hydrophilic polyoxyethylene moiety. An anaerobic biodegradation pathway of the Tween surfactants is proposed.
Biological warfare. A historical perspective. (1997)

The deliberate use of microorganisms and toxins as weapons has been attempted throughout history. Biological warfare has evolved from the crude use of cadavers to contaminate water supplies to the development of specialized munitions for battlefield and covert use. The modern development of biological agents as weapons has paralleled advances in basic and applied microbiology. These include the identification of virulent pathogens suitable for aerosol delivery and industrial-scale fermentation processes to produce large quantities of pathogens and toxins. The history of biological warfare is difficult to assess because of a number of confounding factors. These include difficulties in verification of alleged or attempted biological attacks, the use of allegations of biological attacks for propaganda purposes, the paucity of pertinent microbiological or epidemiologic data, and the incidence of naturally occurring endemic or epidemic diseases during hostilities. Biological warfare has been renounced by 140 nations, primarily for strategic and other pragmatic reasons. International diplomatic efforts, including the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, have not been entirely effective in preventing the enhancement and proliferation of offensive biological warfare programs. The threats posed by biological weapons are likely to continue into the future.
Sunday, 4 September 2005 (2005)

Saline irrigation cooling creates larger and deeper radiofrequency (RF) ablation lesions, but is limited by the requirement for an above-freezing temperature of irrigated saline. A cryothermal cooling source may overcome this limitation to increase the lesion dimension and reduce the risk of thrombus formation. METHODS: We compared the lesion dimensions created by 1) RF and 2) salineirrigated RF (SI RF) using a 7 F, 4mm tip electrode catheter, 3) cryoablation (Cryo) and 4) cryothermal cooled RF (Cryo+RF) using a 10 F, 6.5 mm tip electrode catheter and Cryo system (CryoCor, CA) in vertical (V) or horizontal (H) orientiation to a thigh muscle preparation. All 3 modes of RF were delivered for 1 minute at 50W & 60°C, and Cryo was delivered with double-5 minutes freeze-thaw cycles. RESULTS: Of 211 (V=106, H=105) created, SI RF and Cryo+RF created deeper lesion than RF or Cryo application alone (Fig, p< 0.05). In all 4 modes of application, lesions diameter were greater with V than H orientation (Fig, p<0.05). Cryo and Cryo+RF were associated with a significant lower incidence of thrombus formation on the lesions compared with RF and SI RF (0/87vs.26/124, p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Cryothermal cooling during RF application resulted in a similar lesion dimension as SI RF. Both Cryo+RF and SI RF created significantly deeper lesions than Cryo, and significantly deeper and larger lesions than RF. The use of Cryo and Cryo+RF were associated with a lower risk of thrombus formation than RF and SI.
Using neural nets to predict several sequential and subsequent future values from time series data (2002)

Analysing time series data in order to recognize patterns or make predictions about future values is important in many application areas, for example, failure prediction in nuclear power plants and machinery, the stock market, inventory control, marketing sales forecasts, bankruptcy prediction, forest fire predictions, etc. Solutions to many of these problems exist in nonlinear mathematics, which three layer feedforward neural nets can model. The author reports the interim results of an experimental project using a neural net approach to predict future values using time series data. Four neutral nets were constructed which predict one day in advance, based upon different sample intervals and access to economic data. Four more neural nets were constructed to predict four time periods in advance. The tests revealed that the neural net trained to sample every five days without an economic data input, outperforms the other nets.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>
Creating a gold standard for sentence clustering in multi-document summarization (2009)

Sentence Clustering is often used as a first step in Multi-Document Summarization (MDS) to find redundant information. All the same there is no gold standard available. This paper describes the creation of a gold standard for sentence clustering from DUC document sets. The procedure of building the gold standard and the guidelines which were given to six human judges are described. The most widely used and promising evaluation measures are presented and discussed.
Generating Neurons from Stem Cells (2008)

Recent work shows that major developmental and clinical processes such as central nervous system regeneration and carcinogenesis involve stem cells (SCs) in the brain. In spite of this importance, the requirements of these SCs and their differentiated offspring (neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes) for survival and proper function are little understood. In vivo, the SCs themselves interact with their environment. This "SC niche" may be complex because it likely includes cells of the vascular and immune systems. The ability to maintain (1) and differentiate (1 -4) central nervous system (CNS) SCs in tissue culture where they can be pharmacologically or genetically (5) manipulated provides a powerful starting point for understanding their behavior. We present detailed information on the methods that permit CNS SCs to differentiate into functional neurons in tissue culture. Important aspects of the culture systems include (1) homogeneity, so that the input and output of a manipulation is known to involve the SC itself; (2) growth in monolayer to visualize and study individual SCs and their offspring; and (3) the use of fully defined culture components to exclude unknown factors from the culture. These conditions support the differentiation of functional, electrically active neurons. These methods allow cell growth and differentiation from normal adult and diseased tissue derived from both animal models and clinical samples. Ultimate validation of such a system comes from accurate prediction of in vivo effects, and the methods we present for CNS SC culture have also successfully predicted regenerative responses in the injured adult nervous system.
Naked Criticism (1974)

I want to discuss two things: the relationship of the writer to the past, and the idea that a literary work is an object.The two topics are related, as I hope to show, but distinct enough to treat successively.Out of these two topics, I intend to evolve a statement of the kind of criticism I think is most appropriate in ap proaching contemporary literature.Ill begin with a well-known quote from Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent": No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.His signif icance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.At first glance, this is a more or less true statement.But when you stop to think of it, it becomes uncomfortable, as if the corpses of the Great Poets were chilling the air around us.Eliot had an excessive love of the past.His famous statement that he was a royalist in politics, a classicist in literature, and an Anglo-Catholic in religion was an expression of this love.These values are neither good nor bad in themselves, but when they are used to set a standard for living writers, whose very element is change, movement, contingency,the result is distortion.Eliot's truth in "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is only a half-truth, and therefore a falsehood.He says that today's poets "must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past," but mentions nothing about judging yesterday's poets by the standards of the present.In a sense, the present has no standards, accord ing to Eliot's essay; he admits that the new can and should exist, but says that it exists only by virtue of conformity with the old."And we do not say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value?atest, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity."The past for Eliot is a ponderous iceberg, and the present is its small tip; he doesn't even mention the future.But this isn't our experience of time.The future affects us as much as the past does.The future affects us precisely by not existing, by coming toward us as that which doesn't yet exist.Eliot wants everything to have existed already.He makes it sound as if we are dragging along heavy sacks of tradition.But even if tradition lives in us, even if we are its accumulation, its weight is countered by the weightlessness of the future.The present, the new, is the intersection of these two; that is its excitement.It is not simply that we modify the past at the same time that it shapes us, as Eliot says; that is true, but that is only part of the story, and to create the impression that it is the whole story is to make it false.Eliot has an organic sense of time, but it is truncated, incomplete, distorted, like a body with some limbs missing and others inflated out of proportion.He grants the new a grudging, weak existence, as if it were born with a hole in its heart.In my view, 75
Urine Telomerase: An Important Marker in the Diagnosis of Bladder Cancer (2004)

Telomerase activity is present in most human malignant tumors, whereas it is generally not detectable, with some exceptions, in normal cells. Therefore, it represents a potential tool for tumor detection. In the present study, telomerase activity was determined in urine from 79 healthy individuals and 121 previously untreated bladder cancer patients using a highly sensitive telomeric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay and the results were expressed as arbitrary enzymatic units (AEU). This approach enabled us to identify cutoff values characterized by high sensitivity (from 75% to 93%) and specificity (from 72% to 92%). Moreover, analysis as a function of gender showed a higher accuracy of TRAP assay in males (93% sensitivity and 90% specificity at the cutoff of 50 AEU) than in females. This sensitivity was confirmed in patients with nonassessable or negative cytology. In women, morphological and immunocytochemical determinations using a monoclonal antibody (anti-hTERT) recently developed in our laboratory showed a large fraction of immunoreactive inflammatory or nonbladder cells, which may justify the false-positive TRAP results. In conclusion, this assay represents an important noninvasive diagnostic tool to detect bladder cancer also in patients with negative or nonassessable urine cytology and with low-grade and early-stage lesions.
Differential Expression and Characterization of a Member of the Mucin-Associated Surface Protein Family Secreted by Trypanosoma cruzi (2011)

We describe the characterization, purification, expression, and location of a 52-kDa protein secreted during interaction between the metacyclic form of Trypanosoma cruzi and its target host cell. The protein, which we have named MASP52, belongs to the family of mucin-associated surface proteins (MASPs). The highest levels of expression of both the protein and mRNA occur during the metacyclic and bloodstream trypomastigote stages, the forms that infect the vertebrate host cells. The protein is located in the plasma membrane and in the flagellar pockets of the epimastigote, metacyclic, and trypomastigote forms and is secreted into the medium at the point of contact between the parasite and the cell membrane, as well as into the host-cell cytosol during the amastigote stage. IgG antibodies specific against a synthetic peptide corresponding to the catalytic zone of MASP52 significantly reduce the parasite's capacity to infect the host cells. Furthermore, when the protein is adsorbed onto inert particles of bentonite and incubated with a nonphagocytic cell culture, the particles are able to induce endocytosis in the cells, which seems to demonstrate that MASP52 plays a role in a process whereby the trypomastigote forms of the parasite invade the host cell.
Fabrication of Silver Nanoparticles in Hydrogel Networks (2006)

Abstract Summary: This paper describes a simple and facile approach to fabricate well dispersed silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in poly[ N ‐isopropylacrylamide‐ co ‐(sodium acrylate)] hydrogels. The silver nanoparticles formed are spherical in shape with a narrow size distribution in the hydrogel networks in which the nanoparticles are stabilized by the polymer network. Uniformly dispersed silver nanoparticles were obtained with poly[ N ‐isopropylacrylamide‐ co ‐[sodium acrylate)] hydrogels, whereas a poly( N ‐isopropylacrylamide)/poly(sodium acrylate) IPN gel showed aggregated nanoparticles. It is demonstrated that the hydrogel network structure determines the size and shape of the nanoparticles. These particles are more stable in the gel networks compared to other reduction methods. The hydrogel/silver nanohybrids were well characterized by XRD, UV‐vis spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Schematic representation of the preparation of Ag nanoparticles in hydrogel networks. magnified image Schematic representation of the preparation of Ag nanoparticles in hydrogel networks.
Automatic program parallelization using stateless parallel processing architecture (2004)

This thesis investigates a new approach for automatic sequential-to-parallel program translation for distributed-memory multicomputers by leveraging a dataflow computation model. It is well-known that dataflow computation models allow automatic dependency uncovering without complex static dependency analysis. This dissertation focuses on a coarse-grain dataflow model supported by a stateless parallel processing architecture. Under this model, the user discovers an overall dependency pattern. This pattern is used to direct program partition and data distribution strategies. Non-linear, indirect and conditional dependencies are automatically uncovered at runtime. In contrast, other approaches, such as the PARADIGM project at UIUC, have encountered insurmountable difficulties when attempting to solve nonlinear and other dependencies at compile time. 
In this thesis, the dataflow computation model is provided by the Synergy system—a preliminary implementation of the stateless parallel processing architecture using multiple networked computers. 
This approach includes a new Parallelization Markup Language (PML). It is used to describe an overall dependency pattern by marking sequential program segments. A PML compiler translates the marked sequential program into multiple parallel programs using the extracted dependency pattern. Based on XML technique, PML is portable and extensible. It is completely independent from programming languages. The PML tags are also powerful enough to describe very complex dependency patterns (thus data partition strategies). 
Theoretically, this methodology is applicable to all types of iterative compute-intense applications. In this thesis, we have chosen four well-recognized numerical applications to illustrate the practical utility and efficiency of this method: Matrix Multiplication, Laplacian Solver using Gauss-Siedel iterations, Ion Generation Simulator and Block LU Factorization. We show that performance measurements from generated programs compare favorably against manually written parallel programs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Evolution of the revolutionary blended-wing-body (1996)

The Blended-Wing-Body (BWB) airplane concept represents a potential revolution in subsonic transport efficiency for Very Large Airplanes (VLA's). NASA is sponsoring an advanced concept study to demonstrate feasibility and begin development of this new class of airplane. In this study, 800 passenger BWB and conventional configuration airplanes have been compared for a 7000 nautical mile design range, where both airplanes are based on technology keyed to 2015 entry into service. The BWB has been found to be superior to the conventional configuration in the following areas: Fuel Burn--31% lower, Takeoff Weight -- 1 3% lower, Operating Empty Weight -- 10% lower, Total Thrust -- 16% lower, and Lift/Drag --35% higher. The BWB advantage results from a double deck cabin that extends spanwise providing structural and aerodynamic overlap with the wing. This reduces the total wetted area of the airplane and allows a high aspect ratio to be achieved, since the deep and stiff centerbody provides efficient structural wingspan. Further synergy is realized through buried engines that ingest the wing's boundary layer, and thus reduce effective ram drag. Relaxed static stability allows optimal span loading, and an outboard leading-edge slat is the only high-lift system required.