The University of North Carolina at Charlotte

A vitrification assembly for cryopreserving a biological sample, including a frame, a pair of vertically oriented, horizontally opposed cold plates, a cold plate actuator coupled to the pair of cold plates configured to control a distance between the pair of cold plates, a lift assembly configured to retain and raise and lower the biological sample between the pair of cold plates, a liquid nitrogen reservoir disposed below and around a bottom portion each of the pair of cold plates for cooling the pair of cold plates and the biological sample, and a control system configured to operate the cold plate actuator and monitor a temperature of the pair of cold plates and the biological sample. In some embodiments, the vitrification assembly further includes a heater thermally coupled to the pair of cold plates and operable for warming the pair of cold plates and the biological sample during a rewarming process.

In some embodiments, the present invention comprises a new metrology device (apparatus) comprising a camera, an optical imaging system, and a reference target for the non-destructive evaluation of samples as well as methods and systems thereto. In some embodiments, the device includes a methodology to measure vision rays that enter the optical system at a specific angle by analyzing the patterns of a reference target at different locations. This apparatus also allows measuring the vision rays deflected by samples placed in front of the optical system. The deflection may have occurred through refraction by transparent samples or by reflection of reflective samples. The obtained vision rays provide information on the geometric wavefront, and hence, the sample surface.

Methods and compositions of storing a biological material are described herein. In some embodiments, these methods provide one or more advantages over current methods. For example, methods described herein can be used to prepare and process biological materials for storage at elevated temperatures. In one aspect, a method of storing a biological material comprises providing a preservation composition and exposing the preservation composition to electromagnetic radiation to form an amorphous solid matrix containing the biological material. In some embodiments, the method further comprises monitoring temperature of the preservation composition during the exposure to the electromagnetic radiation.

The present invention relates to methods for monitoring the immune status of a population by detecting and/or quantifying antibodies present in wastewater. The invention further provides methods and kits for monitoring the presence of an antibody to SARS-CoV-2 or a variant thereof within a population by detecting and/or quantifying SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies in wastewater.

An artificial intelligence (AI) software product for providing scalable intelligent video surveillance for the artificial intelligence of things. The AI software product performs operations including receiving, at an edge node, a sequence of images of a target environment, where the AI software product resides in the edge node, and where the edge node is local to the target environment. The AI software product further observes one or more target objects in the sequence of images of the target environment in real time. The AI software product further detects at the edge node one or more anomalies in the target environment based on the observing of the one or more target objects in real time, where the one or more anomalies are specific to the target environment.

Provided are antibodies, and fragments, derivatives, and nanoparticle conjugates thereof, particularly humanized derivatives thereof, which bind to tumor antigens. Also provided are nucleic acid molecules encoding chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that bind to tumor antigens, polypeptides and CARs encoded by the nucleic acid molecules, vectors and host cells that include the nucleic acid molecules, methods of making the same, and methods for using the same to generate a persisting population of genetically engineered T cells in a subject, expanding a population of genetically engineered T cells in a subject, modulating the amount of cytokine secreted by a T cell, reducing the amount of activation-induced calcium influx into a T cell, providing an anti-tumor immunity to a subject, treating a mammal having a MUC1-associated disease or disorder, stimulating a T cell-mediated immune response to a target cell population or tissue in a subject, and imaging a MUC1-associated tumor.

A quantitative phase contrast imaging system comprises a light source configured to generate light and to direct the light to a sample, wherein the light comprises nonlinearly polarized light; a first lens configured to receive light from the sample; a phase filter, wherein the first lens is configured to focus the light from the sample onto the phase filter, and the phase filter is configured to modulate multiple components of the nonlinearly polarized light simultaneously (e.g., geometric phase interferometry); a second lens configured to receive light from the phase filter; and a polarized camera, wherein the second lens is configured to collimate the light beam from the phase filter to the polarized camera and the polarized camera is configured to image the sample in response to the light from the phase filter. In absence of the second lens, the camera can be placed at the image plane.

An example apparatus for controlling one or more inverters is provided herein. In some embodiments, the apparatus for controlling one or more inverters may include one or more controllers. In some embodiments, each of the one or more inverters is associated with at least one power source. In some embodiments, each of the one or more controllers may configured to provide droop control, voltage magnitude control, phase control, frequency control and inertia control for an associated inverter of the one or more inverters. In some embodiments, each of the one or more controllers comprises a voltage control loop, a virtual inertia control loop, and a droop control loop enabling the power supplies to sync with a power grid and/or other power supplies when the power supply is disconnected from the power grid and/or other power supplies and/or connected to a power supply to the power grid and/or other power supplies.

Methods for surfactant enhanced laser-induced vapor bubbles for use in laser lithotripsy. Urinary tract stone disease is a common and costly disease that effects approximately 10% of the United States population. A preferred minimally invasive method for treatment of urinary tract stones is laser lithotripsy, which involves insertion of a flexible ureteroscope through the urinary tract to the stone's location, and then transmission of infrared (IR) laser energy through a flexible optical fiber, which is in turn placed through the single working channel of the ureteroscope. The IR laser energy is used for ablation of the urinary tract stone which is then removed. In order to have a more efficient ablation, the ureteroscope is fed with a surfactant composition which is flowed into the ureter and/or kidney of the subject. The laser causes larger bubbles to form in the surfactant composition, making a robust and longer lasting bubble.

A computer-implemented method includes converting by a pose tokenizer, based on a learned codebook, pose parameters of a body into a sequence of discrete pose tokens; randomly masking a portion of the sequence of discrete pose tokens; predicting the randomly masked sequence of discrete pose tokens based on multi-scale features extracted from a monocular image by an image conditioned masked transformer; optimizing the sequence of discrete pose tokens by aligning a re-projected three-dimensional (3D) pose with an estimated two-dimensional (2D) pose; directly regressing, from the multi-scale features, a shape parameter of the body and a weak perspective camera parameter; and generating a 3D mesh reconstruction of the body based on the shape parameter and the weak perspective camera parameter.