gebhart/patrepeval huggingface dataset:
Acupuncture Treatment for Low Back Pain and Lower Limb Symptoms—The Relation between Acupuncture or Electroacupuncture Stimulation and Sciatic Nerve Blood Flow (2007)

To investigate the clinical efficacy of acupuncture treatment for lumbar spinal canal stenosis and herniated lumbar disc and to clarify the mechanisms in an animal experiment that evaluated acupuncture on sciatic nerve blood flow. In the clinical trial, patients with lumbar spinal canal stenosis or herniated lumbar disc were divided into three treatment groups; (i) Ex-B2 (at the disordered level), (ii) electrical acupuncture (EA) on the pudendal nerve and (iii) EA at the nerve root. Primary outcome measurements were pain and dysesthesia [evaluated with a visual analogue scale (VAS)] and continuous walking distance. In the animal study, sciatic nerve blood flow was measured with laser-Doppler flowmetry at, before and during three kinds of stimulation (manual acupuncture on lumber muscle, electrical stimulation on the pudendal nerve and electrical stimulation on the sciatic nerve) in anesthetized rats. For the clinical trial, approximately half of the patients who received Ex-B2 revealed amelioration of the symptoms. EA on the pudendal nerve was effective for the symptoms which had not improved by Ex-B2. Considerable immediate and sustained relief was observed in patients who received EA at the nerve root. For the animal study, increase in sciatic nerve blood flow was observed in 56.9% of the trial with lumber muscle acupuncture, 100% with pudendal nerve stimulation and 100% with sciatic nerve stimulation. Sciatic nerve stimulation sustained the increase longer than pudendal nerve stimulation. One mechanism of action of acupuncture and electrical acupuncture stimulation could be that, in addition to its influence on the pain inhibitory system, it participates in causing a transient change in sciatic nerve blood blow, including circulation to the cauda equine and nerve root.
Triplex real-time PCR melting curve analysis for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis mutations associated with resistance to second-line drugs in a single reaction (2013)

We have developed a simple and widely applicable assay to detect second-line drug resistance of M. tuberculosis. This method, combined with assays for detecting first-line drug resistance, provides an efficient and reliable tool to diagnose multidrug-resistant TB and XDR-TB.
Resolution enhancement in a light-sheet-based microscope (SPIM) (2006)

Light-sheet-based microscopy [single-plane illumination microscope (SPIM)] performs very well at low numerical apertures. It complements conventional (FM), confocal (CFM), and two-photon fluorescence microscopy (2hnu-FM) currently used in modern life sciences. Lateral and axial SPIM point spread function (PSF) extents are measured by using fluorescent beads to determine the 3D resolution. The results are compared with values derived from an analytical theory and numerical simulations. The discrepancies are found to be less than 5%. The axial extent of a SPIM-PSF (10x/0.3 W) is approximately 5.7 microm. This value is almost a factor of 2 smaller than in CFM, more than 2.5 times smaller than in FM, and more than three times smaller than in 2hnu-FM. SPIM outperforms 2hnu-FM and FM, while CFM has a better axial resolution at NAs above 0.8.
Calculated lattice structure, stability and properties of the series Bi<sub>2</sub>X<sub>2</sub>CuO<sub>6</sub>(X=Ca, Sr, Ba), Bi<sub>2</sub>X<sub>2</sub>YCu<sub>2</sub>O<sub>8</sub>(X=Ca, Sr, Ba; Y=Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba) and Bi<sub>2</sub>X<sub>2</sub>Y<sub>2</sub>Cu<sub>3</sub>O<sub>10</sub>(X=Ca, Sr, Ba; Y=Ba, Sr, Ca, Mg) (1989)

Atomistic lattice calculations are reported of the structure, stability, phonon density of states and elastic properties of the series Bi2X2CuO6 (X=Ca, Sr, Ba), Bi2X2YCu2O8 (X=Ca, Sr, Ba; Y=Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba) and Bi2X2Y2Cu3O10 (X=Ca, Sr, Ba; Y=Ba, Sr, Ca, Mg). Comparisons are made with Bi2Sr2CuO6, Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 and Bi2Sr2Ca2Cu3O10, which are close to recently discovered high-Tc phases.
Metal-insulator transition and antiferromagnetic order in bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene tetracyanoquinodimethane (BEDT-TTF)(TCNQ) (1994)

Electrical and magnetic properties have been investigated for (BEDT-TTF)(TCNQ) which is composed of BEDT-TTF sheets and TCNQ columns. The metal-insulator transition temperature ${\mathit{T}}_{\mathrm{MI}}$, 330 K at ambient pressure, decreases down to 40 K by applying hydrostatic pressure, which may be ascribed to the change in both the intermolecular transfer energy and the band filling (molecular valence). Measurements of EPR and magnetic susceptibility indicate that the low-temperature states of BEDT-TTF sheets and TCNQ columns are magnetic insulators, perhaps due to strong electron correlation. An anomalous broadening of EPR linewidth observed below 35 K at ambient pressure suggests an occurrence of magnetic order in BEDT-TTF sheets. A subsequent antiferromagnetic order of TCNQ columns has been found at ${\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{N}}$=3.0\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.1 K from the anisotropic magnetic susceptibility.
Urine-Based Assays for the Detection of Bladder Cancer (2009)

Bladder cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide. Furthermore, nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer has a 70% rate of recurrence, making it a considerable strain to the healthcare system. Patients with bladder cancer require repeat cystoscopic examinations of the bladder to monitor for tumor recurrence. The reason these patients have to undergo these costly, painful, invasive procedures is owing to the absence of accurate urine-based assays to detect the presence of bladder cancer noninvasively. Consequently, the development of a urine-based test to detect bladder cancer would be of tremendous benefit to both patients and healthcare systems. This article reports some of the more prominent urine markers in use today. In addition, the article will highlight some new technologies that are used to investigate novel urinary markers.
Rat renal preglomerular vessels, glomeruli and papillae do not express detectable quantities of B-type natriuretic peptide receptor (1994)

The present results suggest that ANP-B receptors either are absent or are present in undetectable amounts in rat renal preglomerular vessels, glomeruli and papillae.
Morphological variability of the human inferior alveolar nerve (1997)

The aims of this study were: to compare the radiographic appearance of the neurovascular bundle and its surrounding bone with the actual situation revealed on dissection; to reveal the morphology of the neurovascular bundle in dentate and edentulous subjects; and to note any changes occurring following the removal of the teeth and the consequent resorption of alveolar bone. Twenty-nine human mandibles were examined; 20 were dry skeletal specimens that were examined radiographically and the remaining nine were radiographed then dissected after decalcification and the branches of the inferior alveolar nerve were identified, sketched, and photographed. Different patterns of identifying characteristics of the mandibular canal were noted on the radiographs, ranging from alternating bands of radiopacity and radiolucency to continuous radiopaque lines. Dissections indicated that the radiographic appearance related to the number, distribution, and pattern of trabeculae around the canal. The dissections revealed that in all cases, the main nerve divided into its incisive and mental branches in the molar area well before reaching the mental foramen. A branch to the molar teeth, and in two instances to the second premolar as well, was given off from the main trunk before it divided into incisive and mental branches. In the dentate specimens, the neurovascular bundle formed two distinct curvatures, one between the mandibular and mental foraminae and the other between the mental foramen and the incisor teeth apices. In the edentulous specimens, the neurovascular bundle was reduced in size and although some small nerve branches, notably to the molar areas, were distinguishable, the blood vessels seemed to have atrophied beyond macroscopic identification. This project confirmed the inaccuracy of descriptions repeated in many anatomical textbooks suggesting that the inferior alveolar branch of the trigeminal nerve divides at the mental foramen into its incisive and mental branches and that during their path through the body of the mandible they give off fibers to the individual teeth. It further confirmed that the neurovascular bundle reduces in size quite markedly after removal of teeth and that the vascular component cannot be clearly identified.
QoS-oriented channel assignment strategy for hierarchical cellular networks (2002)

In the third generation of wireless cellular communication systems, cell sizes are expected to become smaller in order to accommodate high user density and multimedia traffic. In such a system, where hierarchical cellular networks are used, microcells may coexist with macrocells. Resource allocation schemes will have to be dynamic and flexible to handle user mobility and traffic variation. In this paper, we propose a new allocation strategy to manage both fast and slow users resources request in such a network. Our contribution uses an enhanced mechanism based on preemption which can be viewed as a reversible strategy on-demand using channel re-allocation. The originality of this work is to take into account the current value of QoS criteria provided to mobile users to perform resource allocation. Our new scheme is simulated and performance is analyzed in terms of new call blocking and dropping handover probabilities and signalling load. Results show that proposed resource management policy reduces significantly call blocking and dropping probabilities compared to other proposals with lower signalling increase.
<i>γ</i>-Tocopheryl quinone, not<i>α</i>-tocopheryl quinone, induces adaptive response through up-regulation of cellular glutathione and cysteine availability via activation of ATF4 (2008)

alpha-Tocopheryl quinone (alpha-TQ) and gamma-TQ are oxidized metabolites of the corresponding tocopherol (T) isoforms, which are vitamin E homologues. Unlike alpha-TQ, gamma-TQ functions as an arylating agent that reacts with nucleophiles such as reduced sulphydryl groups and it has unique biological properties such as high toxicity. Increasing evidence indicates that reactive oxygen species and other physiologically existing oxidative stimuli upregulate the antioxidant system, thereby triggering the adaptive response. The present study used PC12 cells and immature primary cortical cells to examine the possible adaptive cytoprotective effects of gamma-TQ against oxidative stress. Pre-treatment with gamma-TQ at sub-lethal concentrations resulted in cytoprotective effects against oxidative stress. gamma-TQ induced a significant increase in the cellular glutathione (GSH) levels while alpha-TQ did not. gamma-TQ did not induce any considerable change in the activity of glutamate-cysteine ligase (GCL), the rate-limiting enzyme in GSH synthesis, whereas it increased the cellular GSH levels by facilitating the availability of cysteine through the induction of xCT, which is the core sub-unit of the x(c)(-) high-affinity cystine transporter system. An activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4)-small interfering RNA effectively attenuated the xCT mRNA level as well as the increase in cellular cysteine levels induced by gamma-TQ, while the NF-E2-related factor (Nrf2)-small interfering RNA treatment did not. Collectively, these findings indicate that gamma-TQ acts as a signal messenger to induce adaptive response through the upregulation of intracellular GSH synthesis via transcriptional activation of ATF4 in order to cope with the forthcoming oxidative insult.
Development of Non-Antibiotic-Resistant, Chromosomally Based, Constitutive and Inducible Expression Systems for <i>aroA</i> -Attenuated <i>Salmonella enterica</i> Serovar Typhimurium (2009)

Live-vaccine delivery systems expressing two model antigens from Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, F2(P97) (Adh) and NrdF, were constructed using Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium aroA (STM-1), and immunogenicity in mice was evaluated. Recombinant plasmid-based expression (PBE) and chromosomally based expression (CBE) systems were constructed. The PBE system was formed by cloning both antigen genes into pJLA507 to create an operon downstream of temperature-inducible promoters. Constitutive CBE was achieved using a promoter-trapping technique whereby the promoterless operon was stably integrated into the chromosome of STM-1, and the expression of antigens was assessed. The chromosomal position of the operon was mapped in four clones. Inducible CBE was obtained by using the in vivo-induced sspA promoter and recombining the expression construct into aroD. Dual expression of the antigens was detected in all systems, with PBE producing much larger quantities of both antigens. The stability of antigen expression after in vivo passage was 100% for all CBE strains recovered. PBE and CBE strains were selected for comparison in a vaccination trial. The vaccine strains were delivered orally into mice, and significant systemic immunoglobulin M (IgM) and IgG responses against both antigens were detected among all CBE groups. No significant immune response was detected using PBE strains. Expression of recombinant antigens in S. enterica serovar Typhimurium aroA from chromosomally located strong promoters without the use of antibiotic resistance markers is a reliable and effective method of inducing a significant immune response.
Effects of condensed tannins supplementation level on weight gain and in vitro and in vivo bloat precursors in steers grazing winter wheat1 (2006)

Research was conducted to determine the effects of level of supplementation with quebracho condensed tannins (CT) on in vitro ruminal fluid gas production, in vivo ruminal fluid protein fractions, bloat dynamics, and ADG of steers grazing winter wheat. Two experiments were conducted to 1) enumerate the effect of ruminal fluid from steers fed quebracho CT (0, 1, and 2% CT/kg of DMI) on in vitro gas and methane production from minced fresh wheat forage; and 2) quantify the influence of CT supplementation on ruminal protein characteristics, biofilm complexes, bloat potential, and ADG of steers grazing wheat pasture. Eighteen ruminally cannulated steers (386 +/- 36 kg of BW) were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 treatments that included a control (water infusion) and 2 CT treatment levels (1 or 2% CT/kg of DMI). Treatments were administered daily (63 d) through the rumen cannula as pre-mixes with warm water (approximately 30 degrees C). Rumen contents were collected 2 h postinfusion (at 1030 to 1130) on d 0, 20, 40, 50, and 60. Bloat was visually scored daily for 5 d each wk. In Exp. 1, supplementation of CT decreased the rate of in vitro gas production in a dose-dependent response. In Exp. 2, ADG increased (P < 0.04) at both levels of CT supplementation. Mean bloat score across stage of growth and replicates decreased linearly with increasing CT supplementation; bloat scores were greater (P < 0.001) for the vegetative than for the reproductive stage of plant growth. Biofilm production and rumen fluid protein fractions varied among CT treatments and stage of growth. Addition of CT reduced the severity of bloat, principally through reducing microbial activities, biofilm production, and ruminal gas production. Quebracho CT is potentially a value-added supplement that can decrease the impacts of frothy bloat and increase BW gains in stocker cattle-wheat systems.
Rapid, Novel, Specific, High-Throughput Assay for Diagnosis of <i>Loa loa</i> Infection (2008)

The ability to diagnose Loa loa infection readily and accurately remains a demanding task. Among the available diagnostic methods, many are impractical for point-of-care field testing. To investigate whether luciferase immunoprecipitation systems (LIPS) can be used for rapid and specific diagnosis of L. loa infection, a LIPS assay was developed based on immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgG4 subclass antibodies to a recombinant L. loa SXP-1 (designated LlSXP-1) antigen and tested with sera from healthy controls or patients with proven infection with L. loa, Mansonella perstans, Onchocerca volvulus, Strongyloides stercoralis, or Wuchereria bancrofti. A LIPS test measuring IgG antibody against LlSXP-1 readily differentiated L. loa-infected from uninfected patients and demonstrated markedly improved sensitivity and specificity compared with an LlSXP-1 IgG4-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (67% sensitivity and 99% specificity). No significant immunoreactivity was observed with S. stercoralis-infected sera, but a small number of patients infected with O. volvulus, M. perstans, or W. bancrofti showed positive immunoreactivity. Measuring anti-IgG4-specific antibodies to LlSXP-1 showed a significant correlation (r approximately 0.85; P < 0.00001) with the anti-IgG results but showed no advantage over measuring the total IgG response alone. In contrast, a rapid LIPS format (called QLIPS) in which the tests are performed in less than 15 minutes under nonequilibrium conditions significantly improved the specificity for cross-reactive O. volvulus patient sera (100% sensitivity and 100% specificity). These results suggest that LIPS (and the even more rapid test QLIPS) represents a major advance in the ability to diagnose L. loa infection and may have future applications for point-of-care diagnostics.
FlyNets and GIF-DB, two internet databases for molecular interactions in Drosophila melanogaster (1998)

GIF-DB and FlyNets are two WWW databases describing molecular (protein-DNA, protein-RNA and protein-protein) interactions occuring in the fly Drosophila melanogaster (http://gifts.univ-mrs.fr/GIFTS_home_page.html ). GIF-DB is a specialised database which focuses on molecular interactions involved in the process of embryonic pattern formation, whereas FlyNets is a new and more general database, the long-term goal of which is to report on any published molecular interaction occuring in the fly. The information content of both databases is distributed in specific lines arranged into an EMBL- (or GenBank-) like format. These databases achieve a high level of integration with other databases such as FlyBase, EMBL, GenBank and SWISS-PROT through numerous hyperlinks. In addition, we also describe SOS-DGDB, a new collection of annotated Drosophila gene sequences, in which binding sites for regulatory proteins are directly visible on the DNA primary sequence and hyperlinked both to GIF-DB and TRANSFAC database entries.
Optimal cluster preserving embedding of nonmetric proximity data (2003)

For several major applications of data analysis, objects are often not represented as feature vectors in a vector space, but rather by a matrix gathering pairwise proximities. Such pairwise data often violates metricity and, therefore, cannot be naturally embedded in a vector space. Concerning the problem of unsupervised structure detection or clustering, in this paper, a new embedding method for pairwise data into Euclidean vector spaces is introduced. We show that all clustering methods, which are invariant under additive shifts of the pairwise proximities, can be reformulated as grouping problems in Euclidian spaces. The most prominent property of this constant shift embedding framework is the complete preservation of the cluster structure in the embedding space. Restating pairwise clustering problems in vector spaces has several important consequences, such as the statistical description of the clusters by way of cluster prototypes, the generic extension of the grouping procedure to a discriminative prediction rule, and the applicability of standard preprocessing methods like denoising or dimensionality reduction.
Single-Channel Multi-talker Speech Recognition with Permutation Invariant Training (2017)

Although great progresses have been made in automatic speech recognition (ASR), significant performance degradation is still observed when recognizing multi-talker mixed speech. In this paper, we propose and evaluate several architectures to address this problem under the assumption that only a single channel of mixed signal is available. Our technique extends permutation invariant training (PIT) by introducing the front-end feature separation module with the minimum mean square error (MSE) criterion and the back-end recognition module with the minimum cross entropy (CE) criterion. More specifically, during training we compute the average MSE or CE over the whole utterance for each possible utterance-level output-target assignment, pick the one with the minimum MSE or CE, and optimize for that assignment. This strategy elegantly solves the label permutation problem observed in the deep learning based multi-talker mixed speech separation and recognition systems. The proposed architectures are evaluated and compared on an artificially mixed AMI dataset with both two- and three-talker mixed speech. The experimental results indicate that our proposed architectures can cut the word error rate (WER) by 45.0% and 25.0% relatively against the state-of-the-art single-talker speech recognition system across all speakers when their energies are comparable, for two- and three-talker mixed speech, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first work on the multi-talker mixed speech recognition on the challenging speaker-independent spontaneous large vocabulary continuous speech task.
Neural network PMV estimation for model-based predictive control of HVAC systems (2012)

Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems are used to provide adequate comfort to occupants of spaces within buildings. One important aspect of comfort, the thermal sensation, is commonly assessed by computation of the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) index. Model-based predictive control may be applied to HVAC systems in existing buildings in order to provide a desired degree of thermal comfort and simultaneously achieve significant energy savings. This control strategy may be formulated as a discrete optimisation problem and solved by means of structured search techniques. Finding the optimal solution depends on the ability of computing many PMV values in a small amount of time. As the PMV formulation involves iterative computations consuming variable time, it is crucial to have a method for fast, possibly constant execution time, computation of the PMV index. In this paper it is experimentally shown that an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) can estimate the PMV index with varying degrees of efficiency over the trade-off of accuracy versus computational speed-up.
Channel Estimation Based in Comb-Type Pilots Arrangement for OFDM System over Time Varying Channel (2010)

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has been recently applied widely in wireless communication systems, due to its high data rate, transmission capability with high bandwidth, efficiency and its robustness to multipath delay .Channel estimation is an essential problem in OFDM system. Pilot-aided channel estimation has been used; a good choice of the pilot pattern should match the channel behavior both in time and frequency domains. We explored comb pilot arrangements. The advantage for comb type pilots arrangement in channel estimation is the ability to track the variation of the channel caused by doppler frequency, it is observed that the doppler effect can be reduced, and so this will increase the system mobility. Kalman and Least Square (LS) estimators have been proposed to estimate the Channel Frequency Response (CFR) at the pilots location, then CFR at data sub channels are obtained by mean of interpolation between estimates at pilot locations. Different types of interpolations have been used such as; low pass interpolation; spline cubic interpolation and linear interpolation. Kalman estimation has better performance than LS estimation. The estimators perform about the same for SNR lower than 10 dB. The performances of all schemes have been compared by finding Bit Error Rate (BER), where BPSK modulation scheme was used.