gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
A flexible dipole antenna for direct transduction of microwave radiated power into DC mechanical deflection (2022)

A new device resulting from the merging of mechanical and electromagnetic properties of a couple of conductive cantilevered beams is described in this paper. The device, which is based on two metallic clamped-free beams which, at the same time, are the arms of a radio frequency dipole antenna is capable to receive the electromagnetic power radiated from an emitting antenna and transduce it directly in a dc mechanical actuation. A numerical model developed to describe the behavior of the device has been validated through the test of a millimeter scale demonstrator working in the microwave frequency band.
Isolation and characterization of a novel type of neurotoxic peptide from the venom of the South African scorpion <i>Parabuthus transvaalicus</i> (Buthidae) (2001)

The venom of the South African scorpion Parabuthus transvaalicus was characterized using a combination of mass spectrometry and RP-HPLC separation and bioassays. The crude venom was initially separated into 10 fractions. A novel, moderately toxic but very high abundance peptide (birtoxin) of 58 amino-acid residues was isolated, identified and characterized. Each purification step was followed by bioassays and mass spectroscopy. First a C4 RP-HPLC column was used, then a C18 RP Microbore column purification resulted in > 95% purity in the case of birtoxin from a starting material of 230 microg of crude venom. About 12-14% of the D214 absorbance of the total venom as observed after the first chromatography step was composed of birtoxin. This peptide was lethal to mice at low microgram quantities and it induced serious symptoms including tremors, which lasted up to 24 h post injection, at submicrogram amounts. At least seven other fractions that showed different activities including one fraction with specificity against blowfly larvae were identified. Identification of potent components is an important step in designing and obtaining effective anti-venom. Antibodies raised against the critical toxic components have the potential to block the toxic effects and reduce the pain associated with the scorpion envenomation. The discovery of birtoxin, a bioactive long chain neurotoxin peptide with only three disulfide bridges, offers new insight into understanding the role of conserved disulfide bridges with respect to scorpion toxin structure and function.
Efficient Synthesis of Immunomodulatory Drug Analogues Enables Exploration of Structure–Degradation Relationships (2018)

Abstract The immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) thalidomide, pomalidomide, and lenalidomide have been approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma for many years. Recently, their use as E3 ligase recruiting elements for small‐molecule‐induced protein degradation has led to a resurgence in interest in IMiD synthesis and functionalization. Traditional IMiD synthesis follows a stepwise route with multiple purification steps. Herein we describe a novel one‐pot synthesis without purification that provides rapid access to a multitude of IMiD analogues. Binding studies with the IMiD target protein cereblon (CRBN) reveals a narrow structure–activity relationship with only a few compounds showing sub‐micromolar binding affinity in the range of pomalidomide and lenalidomide. However, anti‐proliferative activity as well as Aiolos degradation could be identified for two IMiD analogues. This study provides useful insight into the structure–degradation relationships for molecules of this type as well as a rapid and robust method for IMiD synthesis.
Evidence for Independent Mismatch Repair Processing on Opposite Sides of a Double-Strand Break in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (1998)

Double-strand break (DSB) induced gene conversion in Saccharomyces cerevisiae during meiosis and MAT switching is mediated primarily by mismatch repair of heteroduplex DNA (hDNA). We used nontandem ura3 duplications containing palindromic frameshift insertion mutations near an HO nuclease recognition site to test whether mismatch repair also mediates DSB-induced mitotic gene conversion at a non-MAT locus. Palindromic insertions included in hDNA are expected to produce a stem-loop mismatch, escape repair, and segregate to produce a sectored (Ura+/-) colony. If conversion occurs by gap repair, the insertion should be removed on both strands, and converted colonies will not be sectored. For both a 14-bp palindrome, and a 37-bp near-palindrome, approximately 75% of recombinant colonies were sectored, indicating that most DSB-induced mitotic gene conversion involves mismatch repair of hDNA. We also investigated mismatch repair of well-repaired markers flanking an unrepaired palindrome. As seen in previous studies, these additional markers increased loop repair (likely reflecting corepair). Among sectored products, few had additional segregating markers, indicating that the lack of repair at one marker is not associated with inefficient repair at nearby markers. Clear evidence was obtained for low levels of short tract mismatch repair. As seen with full gene conversions, donor alleles in sectored products were not altered. Markers on the same side of the DSB as the palindrome were involved in hDNA less often among sectored products than nonsectored products, but markers on the opposite side of the DSB showed similar hDNA involvement among both product classes. These results can be explained in terms of corepair, and they suggest that mismatch repair on opposite sides of a DSB involves distinct repair tracts.
A Distributed Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (1990)

To date erbium amplifiers have been based on fiber doped with 10 to 1000 ppm erbium oxide, providing several tens of dB gain in lengths of 100 m or less.[1–4] However, communications systems which use such high gain, "lumped" amplifiers subject the signal to large excursions in amplitude, which can cause significant interchannel interference in a wavelength division multiplexed system. Of equal importance, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) is significantly smaller when distributed amplification is used, and a larger signal to noise is obtained when the signal is sustained at a high level throughout the system.[5] We show here that fibers can indeed be made with the controlled, very low Er doping (10–100 ppb Er averaged over the core), required for such distributed amplification. Some of our fibers allowed for just enough gain per unit length (0.2–0.3 dB/Km) to cancel fiber loss, without at the same time introducing significant impurities or other defects.
SF6 enhanced nitridation of silicon in active nitrogen (1984)

A new procedure for thermal nitridation of silicon is reported. Active nitrogen generated using a microwave discharge is passed over silicon wafers in an externally heated quartz tube at low pressure (0.3 Torr). Nitridation is shown to be significantly enhanced by the addition of small amounts (20–200 ppm) of SF6 to the nitrogen before it enters the discharge. In this way films about 100 Å thick with a refractive index of 2.0±0.06 can be grown at 1050 °C in 4 h. The films have etch rates of 10–15 Å/min in buffered HF (NH4F:HF=7:1). Auger analysis shows [N]/[O] atomic ratios of about 2. A 60-Å film grown at 1000 °C inhibited substrate oxidation for over 16 h in dry oxygen at 1000 °C.
Ontogenetic reasoning system for autonomic logistics (2005)

Joint Strike Fighter Autonomic Logistics minimize operational and support costs by increasing system reliability, while reducing maintenance requirements to essential levels. Using Prognostics and Health Management, parts and service are ordered or performed only when needed, obviating costly routine scheduled maintenance, and reducing aircraft downtime. Realizing this vision requires communication between the aircraft, industrial contractors and suppliers, and the maintenance and support team. Management of interactions between these entities is challenging, characterized by uncertain information, and conflicting demands for resources. A system is needed to encode the knowledge of maintenance personnel, suggest corrective actions in fault conditions, and learn from previous decisions. Integration with the supply chain would free human resources for more critical decision making tasks. IAC is developing an intelligent software infrastructure to manage these complexities. This ontogenetic reasoning system features an adaptive knowledge base of maintenance information, and autonomous software agents which: (1) analyze on-board sensor and model data, and past behaviors; (2) recommended actions under dynamic and uncertain conditions; (3) manage knowledge base evolution; (4) connect maintenance activities to the supply chain; and (5) perform various communications, security and support functions. This paper presents the architectural design of the system, describes an example application scenario, and concludes with an assessment of the technical challenges in developing such a system using the multi-agent systems approach
Numerical Investigation of Condensate Banking in the North Kuwait Jurassic Gas Condensate Reservoirs (2009)

Abstract Condensate banking is a much studied phenomenon in gas condensate reservoirs. An excessive drop in flow rate occurs when the bottom hole flowing pressure of a producing well falls below the dew-point pressure. Condensate dropped around the well bore increasingly reduces relative permeability to gas until a critical liquid saturation is reached. As liquid saturation increases above the critical value, two phase flow of both liquid and gas creates the equilibrium necessary to maintain the reduced, but steady state flow. The reduced gas permeability is described as a positive skin reducing the well rate PI used in the forecasts. In more severe cases, the PI may be reduced to cause sub-commercial rates. Even though several equations are available in the literature to estimate skin damage due to condensate banking, it is well recognized that localized reservoir characteristics, especially in naturally fractured carbonates must be applied to obtain an accurate value. In this paper, numerical inverstigations of the impact of condensate banking on well productivity in the North Kuwait Jurassic Complex (NKJC) gas-codensate reservoirs are performed. A representative reservoir from Sabriyah field in the Najmah Sargelu formation was selected for the purpose. A general equation thus developed for rich condensate gas in naturally fractured carbonates was applied to the complex of reservoirs existing in the NKJC to study the impact condensate banking of full field performance.
New Building Material from Waste Concrete by Carbonation (2000)

A new recycled material derived from waste concrete using a CO2-activated hardening process is proposed. Waste autoclaved lightweight concrete powder was used as the starting material. The powder was mixed with water, compacted by pressing, and cured in high CO2 concentrations. The bending strength and the specific surface area of this hardened material increased as the degree of carbonation was increased. The hardened material had a high moisture absorption and desorption performance, suggesting potential application to the interior wall having a moisture control function.
Comprehensive Analysis of Missense Variations in the BRCT Domain of BRCA1 by Structural and Functional Assays (2010)

Genetic screening of the breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1 has uncovered a large number of variants of uncertain clinical significance. Here, we use biochemical and cell-based transcriptional assays to assess the structural and functional defects associated with a large set of 117 distinct BRCA1 missense variants within the essential BRCT domain of the BRCA1 protein that have been documented in individuals with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. In the first method, we used limited proteolysis to assess the protein folding stability of each of the mutants compared with the wild-type. In the second method, we used a phosphopeptide pull-down assay to assess the ability of each of the variants to specifically interact with a peptide containing a pSer-X-X-Phe motif, a known functional target of the BRCA1 BRCT domain. Finally, we used transcriptional assays to assess the ability of each BRCT variant to act as a transcriptional activation domain in human cells. Through a correlation of the assay results with available family history and clinical data, we define limits to predict the disease risk associated with each variant. Forty-two of the variants show little effect on function and are likely to represent variants with little or no clinical significance; 50 display a clear functional effect and are likely to represent pathogenic variants; and the remaining 25 variants display intermediate activities. The excellent agreement between the structure/function effects of these mutations and available clinical data supports the notion that functional and structure information can be useful in the development of models to assess cancer risk.
Technical Question Answering across Tasks and Domains (2020)

Building automatic technical support system is an important yet challenge task. Conceptually, to answer a user question on a technical forum, a human expert has to first retrieve relevant documents, and then read them carefully to identify the answer snippet. Despite huge success the researchers have achieved in coping with general domain question answering (QA), much less attentions have been paid for investigating technical QA. Specifically, existing methods suffer from several unique challenges (i) the question and answer rarely overlaps substantially and (ii) very limited data size. In this paper, we propose a novel framework of deep transfer learning to effectively address technical QA across tasks and domains. To this end, we present an adjustable joint learning approach for document retrieval and reading comprehension tasks. Our experiments on the TechQA demonstrates superior performance compared with state-of-the-art methods.
Improvement of Color Video Demosaicking in Temporal Domain (2006)

Color demosaicking is critical to the image quality of digital still and video cameras that use a single-sensor array. Limited by the mosaic sampling pattern of the color filter array (CFA), color artifacts may occur in a demosaicked image in areas of high-frequency and/or sharp color transition structures. However, a color digital video camera captures a sequence of mosaic images and the temporal dimension of the color signals provides a rich source of information about the scene via camera and object motions. This paper proposes an inter-frame demosaicking approach to take advantage of all three forms of pixel correlations: spatial, spectral, and temporal. By motion estimation and statistical data fusion between adjacent mosaic frames, the new approach can remove much of the color artifacts that survive intra-frame demosaicking and also improve tone reproduction accuracy. Empirical results show that the proposed inter-frame demosaicking approach consistently outperforms its intra-frame counterparts both in peak signal-to-noise measure and subjective visual quality.
The roles of active site hydrogen bonding in cytochrome P-450cam as revealed by site-directed mutagenesis. (1988)

The role of the active site hydrogen bond of cytochrome P-450cam has been studied utilizing a combination of site-directed mutagenesis and substrate analogues with altered hydrogen bonding capabilities. Cytochrome P-450cam normally catalyzes the regiospecific hydroxylation of the monoterpene camphor. The x-ray crystal structure of this soluble bacterial cytochrome P-450 (Poulos, T. L., Finzel, B. C., Gunsalus, I. C., Wagner, G. C., and Kraut, J. (1985) J. Biol. Chem. 260, 16122-16128) indicates a specific hydrogen bond between tyrosine 96 and the carbonyl moiety of the camphor substrate. The site-directed mutant in which tyrosine 96 has been changed to a phenylalanine and the substrate analogues thiocamphor and camphane have been used to probe this interaction in several aspects of catalysis. At room temperature, both the mutant enzyme with camphor and the wild type enzyme with thiocamphor bound result in 59 and 65% high-spin ferric enzyme as compared to the 95% high spin population obtained with native enzyme and camphor as substrate. The equilibrium dissociation constant is moderately increased, from 1.6 microM for the wild type protein to 3.0 and 3.3 microM for wild type-thiocamphor and mutant-camphor complexes, respectively. Camphane bound to cytochrome P-450cam exhibits a larger decrease in high spin fraction (45%) and a correspondingly larger KD (46 microM), suggesting that the carbonyl moiety of camphor plays an important steric role in addition to its interaction as a hydrogen bond acceptor. The absolute regioselectivity of the mutant enzyme, and of the wild type enzyme with thiocamphor, is lost resulting in production of several hydroxylated products in addition to the 5-exo-hydroxy isomer. Based on rates of NADH oxidation, comparison of the substrate specificity for these systems (kcat/KD) indicates a 5- and 7-fold decrease in specificity for the mutant enzyme and thiocamphor-wild type complex, respectively. The replacement of the cytochrome P-450cam active site tyrosine with phenylalanine does not affect the branching ratio of monooxygenase versus oxidase chemistry or peroxygenase activity (Atkins, W.M., and Sligar, S.G. (1987) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 109, 3754-3760).
Formulation development and<i>in vitro</i>characterization of proliposomes for topical Delivery of aceclofenac (2008)

Non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs are routinely prescribed for the patients with rheumatic disease and such patients are at increased risk of serious gastrointestinal complications, when non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs administered by oral route. The aim of the present study was to develop and characterized a vesicular drug carrier system (proliposome) for topical delivery of aceclofenac to overcome the problems related with oral route. Aceclofenac proliposome were prepared by the film-deposition on carriers method and characterized for size and surface morphology, drug content in both proliposomes and liposomal system, percent yield, in vitro drug release studies and drug permeation studies. The prepared system was also characterized for drug-excipients interaction by Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer and stability studies. The size and surface morphology were studied using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. A spherical shape of reconstituted aceclofenac liposome with an average vesicular size of about 500 nm was observed in photomicrographs. The maximum entrapment efficiency of reconstituted liposomes was 80.31% whereas the drug content in proliposomes was found to be more than 90%. In vitro release of drug was significantly retarded indicating sustained release of aceclofenac from proliposomes. Stability study was performed at various temperatures indicating that aceclofenac proliposomes are stable at lower temperature.
Development of the Contact Lens User Experience: CLUE Scales (2016)

The CLUE family of instruments, as it currently exists, exhibits excellent psychometric properties.
The Diagnostic and Prognostic Value of Traditional Semen Parameters (1999)

A high-quality basic semen analysis represents one cornerstone in the investigation of the infertile couple. However, the clinical value of traditional semen parameters in the diagnosis of male fertility is the subject of considerable debate. Some authorities clearly hold the view that apart from a diagnosis of azoospermia (or very severe oligozoospermia), a basic semen assessment is of little clinical value. A recent example of this is reflected by the opinion of McDonough (1997, p. 587), who wrote: “traditional sperm analysis as a clinical test may become nothing more than an ancestral heirloom. It may be performed spasmodically by those who know how to do it, like a 1940 airshow or laparotomy, to remind us of the good old days. We have come to the end of something. Surely someone will want to carve a headstone for traditional sperm analysis or perhaps a mausoleum would be more fitting.” Is this a correct view? Well, it does have some merit. For example, the diagnosis of an abnormal or normal semen sample according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines (1992) is somewhat artificial, and this dichotomy is of limited diagnostic value. It is well documented that a significant proportion of fertile men are diagnosed as abnormal if such criteria, i.e., WHO (1992), are used (Ombelet et al, 1997). The question that needs to be asked is the following: what is the clinical value of
Wireless implantable passive strain sensor: design, fabrication and characterization (2010)

This work presents a new passive sensor concept for monitoring the deformation of orthopedic implants. The novel sensing principle of the WIPSS (wireless implantable passive strain sensor) is based on a hydro-mechanical amplification effect. The WIPSS is entirely made from biocompatible PMMA and consists of a microchannel attached to a reservoir, which is filled with an incompressible fluid. As the reservoir is exposed to strain, its volume changes and consequently the fill level inside the microchannel varies. The wireless detection of the microchannel's strain-dependent fill level is based on ultrasound. The WIPSS' sensing principle is proved by finite-element simulations and the reservoir's design is optimized toward maximum volume change, in order to achieve high sensitivity. A fabrication process for WIPSS sensor devices entirely made from PMMA is presented. The obtained measurement results confirmed the sensor's functionality and showed very good agreement with the obtained results of the conducted FE simulations regarding the sensor's sensitivity. A strain resolution of 1.7 ± 0.2 × 10<SUP>−5</SUP> was achieved. Further, the determination of the cross-sensitivity to temperature and strains applied out of the sensing direction is presented. The response to dynamic inputs (0.1–5 Hz) has been measured and showed decreasing sensor output with increasing frequency. Test structures of the sensor device allow the application of a signal bandwidth up to 1 Hz. Therefore, the proposed sensor concept of the WIPSS presents a promising new sensor system for static <I>in vivo</I> strain monitoring of orthopedic implants. In combination with the developed ultrasound-based read-out method, this new sensor system offers the potential of wireless sensor read-out with medical ultrasound scanners, which are commercially available.
Identification of differentially expressed genes in rheumatoid arthritis by a combination of complementary DNA array and RNA arbitrarily primed-polymerase chain reaction (2002)

Numerous variants of the differential display method and continuous improvements, including RAP-PCR, have proven to be both efficient and reliable for examining differentially regulated genes. Our results show that RAP-PCR combined with cDNA arrays is a suitable method for identifying differentially expressed genes in rheumatoid synovial fibroblasts, using very small amounts of RNA.
75. Synthetical experiments in the isoflavone group. Part VII. Synthesis of daidzein (1933)

W. Baker, R. Robinson and N. M. Simpson, J. Chem. Soc., 1933, 274 DOI: 10.1039/JR9330000274