gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Modeling of transport of small molecules in polymer blends: Application of effective medium theory (1983)

Abstract This article concerns itself with the prediction of effective diffusion coefficients of small permeants in binary polymer blends of varying degrees of miscibility and microstructural order. Several models have been critically evaluated with the help of previously published experimental data and in terms of consistency of morphological information provided by small permeants serving as morphological probes. Completely random, two‐phase media have been modeled in terms of Effective Medium Theory with the coordination number ( z ) describing the average morphology. A comprehensive analysis of experimental data has shown a correlation between z and various physical situations. Near the percolation threshold, z attains a maximum value while, above it, z tends to decrease with increasing content of the conductive component. Accurate predictions of effective diffusivity can be made for volume fractions between 0.3 and 0.8 by letting z = 6. Evidence for phase inversion was studied in terms of models with ordered microstructure and transport data.
Smooth Transitions for Large Scale Changes in Multi-Resolution Images (2011)

Today's super zoom cameras offer a large optical zoom range of over 30x. It is easy to take a wide angle photograph of the scene together with a few zoomed in high resolution crops. Only little work has been done to appropriately display the high resolution photo as an inset. Usually, to hide the resolution transition, alpha blending is used. Visible transition boundaries or ghosting artifacts may result. In this paper we introduce a different, novel approach to overcome these problems. Across the transition, we gradually attenuate the maximum image frequency. We achieve this with a Gaussian blur with an exponentially increasing standard deviation.
Cyclic Nucleotide Phosphodiesterases and Vascular Smooth Muscle (1996)

At least 30 different phosphodiesterase (PDE) enzymes have now been identified in mammalian tissues and cells, many of which are products of separate genes. These different isoenzyme forms can be subdivided into seven families based on their genetic and functional characteristics. Relatively specific inhibitors are available for at least five of these PDE families. A functional classification based on substrate specificity, regulatory properties, and sensitivity to inhibition by isozyme- and tissue-selective inhibitors can be used in describing the PDEs of vascular smooth muscle. Inhibition of these PDEs, especially with inhibitors of the PDE3 isoform, promotes vascular relaxation, particularly if the preparation of smooth muscle has been preconracted. For the most part, the drugs appear to act directly on smooth muscle; their effects are usually observed in endothelium-denuded preparations. In addition to their cardiotonic properties, many PDE3 inhibitors possess antiplatelet and thrombolytic activities, thereby suggesting the potential benefit of these drugs in treating diseases of the cardiovascular system. Isozyme- and cell-specific drugs have been shown to alter the synthetic state (i.e. proliferative phenotype) of smooth muscle cultures toward the appearance of the contractile phenotype. This suggests the possible use of selective PDE inhibitors to minimize the problem of restenosis seen after angioplasty. The development of novel methods to deliver more potent and selective PDE inhibitors to individual cell types and subcellular locales will lead to new therapeutic uses for this class of drugs in diseases of the cardiovascular system.
Treatment of Severely Diabetic Pancreatectomized Dogs Using a Diffusion-Based Hybrid Pancreas (1992)

Long-term survival of dog islet allografts implanted in diabetic pancreatectomized dogs was achieved by islet encapsulation inside cylindrical chambers fabricated from permselective acrylic membranes (nominal M(r) exclusion of 50,000-80,000). Dog islets were isolated from the pancreases of outbred mongrel dogs by collagenase digestion. Chambers containing mean +/- SE 316 +/- 63K islet equivalents (mean islet volume, 558 +/- 111 mm3, purity 90-95%) were peritoneally implanted into six totally pancreatectomized dogs. The dogs were monitored for glycemic control by fasting and postprandial blood glucose determinations, and responses to both intravenous glucose (intravenous glucose tolerance test 0.5 g/kg) and oral glucose (oral glucose tolerance test 1 g/kg). All of the dogs required appreciably lower dosages of exogenous insulin therapy for control of fasting blood glucose levels, with the mean daily insulin dose dropping from 38 +/- 7 to 5 +/- 1 U/day during the 1st wk. Three recipients required no insulin for greater than 82, greater than 68, and 51 days. Intravenous glucose tolerance test K values (decline in glucose levels, %/min) at 1 and 2 mo postimplantation were 2.7 +/- 0.4 and 2.0 +/- 0.5, respectively compared with 3.5 +/- 0.5 before pancreatectomy. The glucose values during oral glucose tolerance tests at 2 wk, although returning to less than 125 mg/dl (less than 7.0 mM) by 2 h, exceeded the normal range, with peak values of 174 to 202 mg/dl (9.7 to 11.3 mM). These preliminary results are encouraging, and represent an important step in determining the feasibility of using this type of diffusion-based hybrid artificial pancreas as treatment for diabetes mellitus in humans.
Palladium-Catalyzed Cross-Coupling of <i>H</i>-Phosphinate Esters with Chloroarenes (2011)

The palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction between H-phosphinate esters and chloroarenes or chloroheteroarenes is described. This reaction is the first general metal-catalyzed phosphorus-carbon bond-forming reaction between a phosphorus nucleophile and chloroarenes.
The green blockchain: Managing decentralized energy production and consumption (2017)

Energy systems are evolving towards a more decentralized model accommodate with heterogeneous but competitive energy sources and energy storage systems (ESS). This will enable peer to peer energy transactions through microgrids architectures. This paper explores the use of blockchain technology implemented on an Industrial operating system (Predix) for a use case of green certificates, demonstrated within an eco-district.
Facial Expression Synthesis Based on Imitation (2012)

It is an interesting and challenging problem to synthesise vivid facial expression images. In this paper, we propose a facial expression synthesis system which imitates a reference facial expression image according to the difference between shape feature vectors of the neutral image and expression image. To improve the result, two stages of postprocessing are involved. We focus on the facial expressions of happiness, sadness, and surprise. Experimental results show vivid and flexible results.
Impact of portable device restrictions on IEEE 802.16 performance (2008)

IEEE 802.16 is a good alternative for fast wireless connection in the next generation portable information devices (PID). However it was not originally designed for portable devices, but mobility was added later to the specification. This means that the lack of resources on portable devices might have a significant impact on which IEEE 802.16 features should be chosen and how they should be used. Proper usage of ARQ can increase the IEEE 802.16 performance but it can also require much resources from PIDs. In this paper we focus on how ARQ features are affected by limited resources on PID and how much the limitations affect on the performance.
Covalent Immobilization of Caged Liquid Crystal Microdroplets on Surfaces (2015)

Microscale droplets of thermotropic liquid crystals (LCs) suspended in aqueous media (e.g., LC-in-water emulsions) respond sensitively to the presence of contaminating amphiphiles and, thus, provide promising platforms for the development of new classes of droplet-based environmental sensors. Here, we report polymer-based approaches to the immobilization of LC droplets on surfaces; these approaches introduce several new properties and droplet behaviors and thus also expand the potential utility of LC droplet-based sensors. Our approach exploits the properties of microscale droplets of LCs contained within polymer-based microcapsule cages (so-called "caged" LCs). We demonstrate that caged LCs functionalized with primary amine groups can be immobilized on model surfaces through both weak/reversible ionic interactions and stronger reactive/covalent interactions. We demonstrate using polarized light microscopy that caged LCs that are covalently immobilized on surfaces can undergo rapid and diagnostic changes in shape, rotational mobility, and optical appearance upon the addition of amphiphiles to surrounding aqueous media, including many useful changes in these features that cannot be attained using freely suspended or surface-adsorbed LC droplets. Our results reveal these amphiphile-triggered orientational transitions to be reversible and that arrays of immobilized caged LCs can be used (and reused) to detect both increases and decreases in the concentrations of model contaminants. Finally, we report changes in the shapes and optical appearances of LC droplets that occur when immobilized caged LCs are removed from aqueous environments and dried, and we demonstrate that dried arrays can be stored for months without losing the ability to respond to the presence of analytes upon rehydration. Our results address practical issues associated with the preparation, characterization, storage, and point-of-use application of conventional LC-in-water emulsions and provide a basis for approaches that could enable the development of new "off-the-shelf" LC droplet-based sensing platforms.
Vehicle Safety Enhancement System: Sensing and Communication (2013)

With the substantial increase of vehicles on road, driving safety and transportation efficiency have become increasingly concerned focus from drivers, passengers, and governments. Wireless networks constructed by vehicles and infrastructures provide abundant information to share for the sake of both enhanced safety and network efficiency. This paper presents the systematic research to enhance the vehicle safety by wireless communication, in the aspects of information acquisition through vehicle sensing, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) routing protocol for the highly dynamic vehicle network, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) routing protocol for a tradeoff in real-time performance and load balance, and hardware implementation of V2V system with on-road test. Simulations and experimental result validate the feasibility of the algorithms and communication system.
The CRT display subsystem of the IBM 1500 instructional system (1967)

The IBM 1500 Instructional System is an experimental system for computer-assisted instruction, designed to administer individual programmed lessons to 32 students at once. Working through one or more teaching devices at his own instructional station, a student may follow a course quite different from, and independent of, lessons presented at other stations. Instructional programs stored in central files control lesson content, sequence, timing, and audio-visual medium, varying all of these according to the student's responses.
Anti-inflammatory Activities and Mechanisms of a Butanol Fraction of Artificially Cultivated Cordyceps pruinosa Fruit Bodies by the suppression of IKKβ (2014)

The inhibitory activities of the Cordyceps pruinosa butanol fraction (Cp-BF) were investigated by determining inflammatory responses of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated RAW264.7 macrophage cells and by evaluating HCl/ethanol (EtOH)-triggered gastric ulcers in mice. The molecular mechanisms of the inhibitory effects of Cp-BF were investigated by identifying target enzymes using biochemical and molecular biological approaches. Cp-BF strongly inhibited the production of NO and TNF-α, release of reactive oxygen species (ROS), phagocytic uptake of FITC-dextran, and mRNA expression levels of interleukin (IL)-6, inducible NO synthase (iNOS), and tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF)-α in activated RAW264.7 cells. Cp-BF also strongly down regulated the NF-κB pathway by suppressing IKKβ according to luciferase reporter assays and immunoblot analysis. Furthermore, Cp-BF blocked both increased levels of NF-κB-mediated luciferase activities and phosphorylation of p65/p50 observed by IKKβ overexpression. Finally, orally administered Cp-BF was found to attenuate gastric ulcer and block the phosphorylation of IκBα induced by HCl/EtOH. Therefore, these results suggest that the anti-inflammatory activity of Cp-BF may be mediated by suppression of IKKα and its downstream NF-κB activation. Since our group has established the mass cultivation conditions by developing culture conditions for Cordyceps pruinosa, the information presented in this study may be useful for developing new anti-inflammatory agents.
Face annotation for personal photos using context-assisted face recognition (2008)

Face annotation for personal photos has a number of potential applications in Multimedia Information Retrieval (MIR). We propose a novel face annotation method that systematically combines contextual information of photos with traditional Face Recognition (FR) technologies. To overcome the limitations of conventional FR-based annotation approaches, situation and person clustering methods are proposed based on context of personal photos. By relying on the proposed clustering methods, multiple facial images that belong to the same person are applied to subspace FR methods. This allows traditional FR methods to take the advantages of feature- or measurement-level fusion strategies for automatic annotation of faces on personal photos. The effectiveness of the proposed method was successfully tested on 1,120 personal photos selected from standard MPEG-7 Visual Core Experiment 3 (VCE-3). Extensive experimental results showed that the proposed method improves annotation accuracy by at least an order of magnitude compared with conventional FR-based approaches.
Adiponectin and Mortality in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (2006)

Adiponectin is presumed to possess antiatherogenic and cardioprotective properties. Limited data exist on the relationship between adiponectin and mortality in the earlier stages of chronic kidney disease. The Modification of Diet in Renal Disease study was a randomized, controlled trial that was conducted between 1989 and 1993. Adiponectin was measured in frozen samples that were obtained at baseline (N = 820). Survival status and cause of death, up to December 31, 2000, were obtained from the National Death Index. Multivariable Cox models were used to examine the relationship of adiponectin with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. Mean +/- SD age was 52 +/- 12 yr, and mean +/- SD glomerular filtration rate (GFR) rate was 33 +/- 12 ml/min per 1.73 m2. Eighty-five percent of participants were white, and 60% were male. Mean +/- SD adiponectin was 12.8 +/- 8.0 mug/ml. Triglycerides, insulin resistance, glucose, body mass index, GFR, C-reactive protein, and albumin were inversely related and proteinuria and HDL cholesterol were directly related to adiponectin. During the 10-year follow-up period, 201 (25%) participants died of any cause, and 122 (15%) from cardiovascular disease. In multivariable adjusted Cox models, a 1-mug/ml increase in adiponectin was associated with a 3% (hazard ratio 1.03; 95% confidence interval 1.01 to 1.05; P = 0.02) increased risk for all-cause and 6% (hazard ratio 1.06; 95% confidence interval 1.03 to 1.09; P < 0.001) increased risk for cardiovascular mortality. High, rather than low, adiponectin is associated with increased mortality in this cohort of patients with chronic kidney disease stages 3 to 4. Further studies are necessary to confirm this association and to elucidate the underlying mechanisms.
On spatial adaptation of motion-field smoothness in video coding (2000)

Most motion-compensation methods dealt with in the literature make strong assumptions about the smoothness of the underlying motion field. For instance, block-matching algorithms assume a blockwise-constant motion field and are adequate for translational motion models; control-grid interpolation assumes a blockwise bilinear motion field and captures zooming and warping fairly well. Time-varying imagery, however often contains both types of motion (as well as others), and hence exhibits a high degree of spatial variability of its motion-field smoothness properties. We develop a simple method to spatially adapt the smoothness of the motion field. The proposed method demonstrates substantial improvements in video quality over a wide range of bit rates. To this end, we introduce the notion of a motion field that is characterized by a set of labels. The labels provide the flexibility to adaptively switch between two different motion models locally. The individual motion models have very different smoothness properties. The switched framework for motion compensation performs significantly better than each of its constituent motion models, in terms of both visual quality and signal-to-noise ratio (0.3-0.7 dB on the average). Finally, we develop an extension of this method that enhances the overlapped block motion compensation scheme by allowing spatial adaptation of the window function.
Research on Error Analysis and Calibration Method of Laser Scan Range Finder (2010)

The technology of laser scan range finder is researched, a line laser is used to survey the object section outlines. The system is composed of line laser, CCD camera, Frame Grabber, computer and the software. The mathematical model of the system is defined and studied, the error is analysed, the calibration method is resesrched. the system is calibrated and tested, the result showed that the survey data moved towards with the stripe shape tallies and the system achieve the accuracy requirements.
Distribution of gluten proteins in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) grain (2011)

Quantitative and qualitative gradients in gluten protein composition are established during grain development. These gradients may be due to the origin of subaleurone cells, which unlike other starchy endosperm cells derive from the re-differentiation of aleurone cells, but could also result from the action of specific regulatory signals produced by the maternal tissue on specific domains of the gluten protein gene promoters.
Histamine fish poisoning: a common but frequently misdiagnosed condition (2002)

Scombrotoxic or histamine fish poisoning is a common condition normally associated with consuming spoiled tuna, mackerel, bonito, or skipjack. Typical symptoms like flushing, urticaria, and palpitations mimic those of allergy so histamine fish poisoning can easily be misdiagnosed. Diagnosis is often clinical and the mainstay of treatment is antihistamines.
First births after preimplantation genetic diagnosis of structural chromosome abnormalities using comparative genomic hybridization and microarray analysis (2011)

This is the first study to describe the clinical application of comprehensive chromosome screening applied to polar bodies, blastomeres or trophectoderm cells from patients carrying inversions and translocations. Using these techniques, most patients requesting PGD for a chromosome rearrangement can be treated using a single protocol. Additionally, the detection of abnormalities affecting chromosomes unrelated to the rearrangement may assist in the selection of viable embryos for transfer.
Thrombopoietin Signal Transduction Requires Functional JAK2, Not TYK2 (1999)

The Janus family of tyrosine kinases (JAKs) plays a critical role in signal transduction by members of the cytokine receptor superfamily. In response to ligand-receptor interaction, these nonreceptor tyrosine kinases are rapidly phosphorylated and activated, triggering tyrosine phosphorylation and activation of downstream signaling intermediates. Upon binding to its receptor, the product of the proto-oncogene c-mpl, thrombopoietin (TPO) activates both JAK2 and TYK2 in multiple cell lines as well as megakaryocytes and platelets. To study whether one or both of these kinases are essential for TPO signal transduction, we engineered a parental human sarcoma cell line (2C4) as well as sarcoma cell lines that are deficient in JAK2 expression (gamma2A) or TYK2 expression (U1A) to express the wild-type Mpl receptor. The ability of TPO to induce tyrosine phosphorylation of Mpl and multiple intracellular substrates in each cell line was then examined. Our results demonstrate that JAK2-deficient cells (gamma2A-Mpl) are unable to initiate TPO-mediated signaling. In contrast, cells that are TYK2-deficient (U1A-Mpl) are able to induce tyrosine phosphorylation of Mpl, JAK2, STAT3, and Shc as efficiently as parental cells (2C4-Mpl). These data indicate that JAK2 is an essential component of Mpl signaling and that, in the absence of JAK2, TYK2 is incapable of initiating TPO-induced tyrosine phosphorylation.
QoS-aware replica placement for content distribution (2005)

The rapid growth of new information services and business-oriented applications entails the consideration of quality of service (QoS) in content distribution. This paper investigates the QoS-aware replica placement problems for responsiveness QoS requirements. We consider two classes of service models: replica-aware services and replica-blind services. In replica-aware services, the servers are aware of the locations of replicas and can therefore optimize request routing to improve responsiveness. We show that the QoS-aware placement problem for replica-aware services is NP-complete. Several heuristic algorithms for fast computation of good solutions are proposed and experimentally evaluated. In replica-blind services, the servers are not aware of the locations of replicas or even their existence. As a result, each replica only serves the requests flowing through it under some given routing strategy. We show that there exist polynomial optimal solutions to the QoS-aware placement problem for replica-blind services. Efficient algorithms are proposed to compute the optimal locations of replicas under different cost models.
Biaxial Orientation of Polylactide/Thermoplastic Starch Blends (2007)

Abstract The biaxial stretchability and film properties of polylactide/thermoplastic starch blends were investigated. Polylactide (PLA) and thermoplastic starch (TPS) were blended in various proportions. Blends containing 27, 42 and 60 wt.% TPS were prepared via a twin-screw extrusion process. Interfacial modification was performed by grafting the PLA with maleic anhydride. These blends were subsequently cast into sheets and biaxially drawn using a laboratory biaxial stretcher. The morphology of extruded strands and cast sheets was investigated using scanning electron microscopy. The compatibilized blends exhibited a much finer morphology as well as preferential minor phase size orientation along the machine direction. The addition of starch did not affect significantly the biaxial stretchability of the pure PLA. Even at high starch content (60 wt.%), the biaxial draw ratio at which the sample breaks is very similar to that of the pure PLA. At higher temperatures, all blends could be stretched at significantly much higher biaxial draw ratio and very thin films could be obtained. The starch content and processing variables affected the tensile properties.