Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing constraints on second-language segmental production and perception

A great deal of research has examined the production and perception of phonetic segments in a second language (L2). The impetus for much of this work has been the desire to understand why individuals who learn an L2especially those who began learning the L2 in late adolescence or adulthooddiffer from monolingual native speakers of the target L2. A variety of proposals have been offered as to whether L2 speech learning is constrained in comparison to L1 speech learning, what is the basis for such constraints (should they exist), whether constraints differ for production and perception, and whether L2 learners must inevitably differ from L2 native speakers. The purpose of this chapter is to review theory and evidence relating to the production and perception of L2 phonetic segments. Section 2 reviews theoretical issues, considering segmental production and perception separately. Section 3 summarizes the results of empirical research examining L2 vowel production and perception in light of the theoretical issues. The relation between segmental production and perception is considered in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 briefly sets goals for future research.
Uses of Virtual Reality for Diagnosis, Rehabilitation and Study of Unilateral Spatial Neglect: Review and Analysis

Unilateral spatial neglect is a disabling condition frequently occurring after stroke. People with neglect suffer from various spatial deficits in several modalities, which in many cases impair everyday functioning. A successful treatment is yet to be found. Several techniques have been proposed in the last decades, but only a few showed long-lasting effects and none could completely rehabilitate the condition. Diagnostic methods of neglect could be improved as well. The disorder is normally diagnosed with pen-and-paper methods, which generally do not assess patients in everyday tasks and do not address some forms of the disorder. Recently, promising new methods based on virtual reality have emerged. Virtual reality technologies hold great opportunities for the development of effective assessment and treatment techniques for neglect because they provide rich, multimodal, and highly controllable environments. In order to stimulate advancements in this domain, we present a review and an analysis of the current work. We describe past and ongoing research of virtual reality applications for unilateral neglect and discuss the existing problems and new directions for development.
Integrating Document Clustering and Topic Modeling

Document clustering and topic modeling are two closely related tasks which can mutually benefit each other. Topic modeling can project documents into a topic space which facilitates effective document clustering. Cluster labels discovered by document clustering can be incorporated into topic models to extract local topics specific to each cluster and global topics shared by all clusters. In this paper, we propose a multi-grain clustering topic model (MGCTM) which integrates document clustering and topic modeling into a unified framework and jointly performs the two tasks to achieve the overall best performance. Our model tightly couples two components: a mixture component used for discovering latent groups in document collection and a topic model component used for mining multi-grain topics including local topics specific to each cluster and global topics shared across clusters.We employ variational inference to approximate the posterior of hidden variables and learn model parameters. Experiments on two datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.
A pilot randomised controlled trial to compare changes in quality of life for participants with early diagnosis dementia who attend a ‘Living Well with Dementia’ group compared to waiting-list control

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to report a pilot study in which participants who had recently received a diagnosis of dementia were randomised to either a 10-week group intervention or a waiting-list control. Method: Memory clinic staff with limited previous experience of group therapy were trained to lead a 10-week group therapy intervention called ‘Living Well with Dementia’. Fifty-eight participants, all of whom had received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, vascular or Lewy body dementia within the previous 18 months, were randomised to receive either the intervention or treatment as usual (waiting-list control). Data collection occurred at baseline, within two weeks after the intervention finished and at 10-week follow-up. Results: The study met its recruitment targets, with a relatively low attrition rate for the intervention arm. The acceptability of the intervention and research methods was examined qualitatively and will be reported on elsewhere. For the primary outcome, measure of quality of life in Alzheimer's disease (QoL-AD), and secondary outcome, self-esteem, there was some evidence of improvement in the intervention group compared to the control group. There was, also, evidence of a reduction in cognitive functioning in the treatment group compared to the control. Such reported differences should be treated with caution because they are obtained from a pilot and not a definitive study. Conclusion: This pilot study succeeded in collecting data to inform a future definitive cost effectiveness clinical trial of Living Well with Dementia group therapy.
HSP90 Controls SIR2 Mediated Gene Silencing

In recent years, Hsp90 is found to interact with several telomeric proteins at various phases of cell cycle. The Hsp90 chaperone system controls assembly and disassembly of telomere structures and thus maintains the dynamic state of telomere. Here, for the first time we report that the activity of another telomeric protein Sir2p is modulated by Hsp82, the ortholog of Hsp90 from budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). In a temperature sensitive Hsp90 deficient yeast strain (iG170Dhsp82), less abundant Sir2p is observed, resulting in de-repression of telomere silencing and a complete loss of mating type silencing. Intriguingly, over expression of Hsp90, either by exposing cells to heat shock or by introducing HSP82 overexpression plasmid also yields reduced level of Sir2p, with a consequential loss of telomere silencing. Thus, Hsp90 homeostasis maintains the cellular pool of Sir2p and thereby controls the reversible nature of telomere silencing. Interestingly, such regulation is independent of one of its major co-chaperones Sba1 (human ortholog of p23).
A proof of a conjecture of Erdös

x s a,(mod b{)9 h < b% < • • • < bn, then there existed an x% 1 ^*x^2 , satisfying none of them. P. Erdös proved this with nl instead of 2 [ l ] and proposed the stronger conjecture that any system of n congruence classes not covering all integers omits a positive integer not exceeding 2 [ l ] , [2], [3]. Later John Selfridge proved Stein's conjecture [4]. We have proved Erdös's conjecture, and sketch the proof in this note. It is proper to mention that at the meeting of the American Mathematical Society in New Orleans in January 1969, Selfridge, in the course of a ten minute talk on another subject, made an informal preliminary announcement that he had also proved Erdös' conjecture. Let us suppose the conjecture is false and that n is the smallest number for which it fails. Claim 1. There exists a set of n congruences such that (A) each of the integers 1, 2, • • • , 2 satisfies at least one of the congruences but 0 does not, (B) all the moduli are prime, and (C) if k of the congruences have modulus p, then 2<p. PROOF. By our hypothesis there exist congruences #=a* (mod &<), l^i^n, such that if T is the set of integers satisfying none of the congruences, then x^Tt l f g # ^ 2 n , yet TT0. T contains negative integers; let x0 be the greatest nonpositive element of T. Then the congruences x=a,i—Xo (mod ô») satisfy (A). Now we assume we have n congruences satisfying. (A). Suppose x^a (mod b) is one. Since (A) implies b\a, there exists a prime p such that p\ b but p«\a. Suppose b =pq. Then we could replace this congruence with x=a (mod p) without losing (A). Moreover, if a > l and p\ay our original congruence could be replaced with x^a (mod p), still without losing (A). Thus we may assume all our congruences are of the form # = a (mod p) (for various primes p), where a> 1 implies p\ a. This is a start toward (B). We illustrate our proof of (C) by taking the case p = 2. By the last paragraph we can assume our congruences are of three types:
MIMO MAC-BC Duality With Linear-Feedback Coding Schemes

We show that the rate regions achieved by linear-feedback coding schemes over dual multi-antenna Gaussian multi-access channels (MACs) and broadcast channels (BCs) with independent noises coincide. By dual here we mean: (1) the channel matrices of the MAC and the BC are transposes of each other and (2) the same total input-power constraint P is imposed on both the channels. We also present multi-letter expressions for the linear-feedback capacity regions of the two channels, i.e., for the set of all rates that are achievable with the linear-feedback coding schemes. We identify a sub-class of MAC and BC linear-feedback coding schemes that achieve the respective linear-feedback capacity regions, and within these subclasses, we identify pairs of MAC and BC coding schemes that achieve the same rate regions. In the two-user case, when the transmitters or the receiver are single-antenna, the capacity region for the Gaussian MAC is known [20], [15] and the capacity-achieving scheme is a linear-feedback coding scheme. With our results, we can thus determine the linear-feedback capacity region of the two-user Gaussian BC when either transmitter or receivers are single-antenna and we can identify the corresponding linear-feedback capacity-achieving coding schemes. Our results show that the control-theory inspired linear-feedback coding scheme by Elia [11], Wu et al. [30], and Ardestanizadeh et al. [1] is sumrate optimal among all the linear-feedback coding schemes for the symmetric single-antenna Gaussian BC with equal channel gains. More generally, we show that the linear-feedback sum-capacity of the scalar Gaussian BC with independent noises is achieved using a simple rearrangement of Ozarow's MAC encodings and decodings. In the K 3-user case, Kramer [16] and Ardestanizadeh et al. [2] determined the linear-feedback sum-capacity for the symmetric single-antenna Gaussian MAC with equal channel gains. Using our duality result, in this paper, we identify the linear-feedback sum-capacity for the K 3-user single-antenna Gaussian BC with equal channel gains. It is equal to the sum-rate achieved by Ardestanizadeh et al.'s linear-feedback coding scheme [1].
Diagnostic Accuracy of Transesophageal Echocardiogram for the Detection of Patent Foramen Ovale: A Meta‐Analysis

Patent foramen ovale (PFO) is a remnant of the fetal circulation present in 20% of the population. Right‐to‐left shunting (RLS) through a PFO has been linked to the pathophysiology of stroke, migraine with aura, and hypoxemia. While different imaging modalities including transcranial Doppler, intra‐cardiac echo, and transthoracic echo (TTE) have often been used to detect RLS, transesophageal echo (TEE) bubble study remains the gold standard for diagnosing PFO. The aim of this study was to determine the relative accuracy of TEE in the detection of PFO.
Development and heritability of subcortical brain volumes at ages 9 and 12

Subcortical brain structures are involved in a variety of cognitive and emotional functions and follow different trajectories of increase and decrease in volume from childhood to adulthood. The heritability of development of subcortical brain volumes during adolescence has not been studied comprehensively. In a longitudinal twin study, we estimated to what extent subcortical brain volumes are influenced by genetic factors at ages 9 and 12. In addition, we assessed whether new genes are expressed at age 12 and whether there is evidence for genotype by sex interaction. Brain scans were acquired for 112 and 89 twin pairs at 9 and 12 years of age. In both boys and girls, there was an increase in volumes of the thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala and pallidum, and a decrease in volumes of the caudate and nucleus accumbens. The putamen showed a decrease in boys bilaterally and an increase in girls in the left hemisphere. Heritability was high (>50%) for all structures – except for the left nucleus accumbens – with heritabilities ranging from 0.50 to 0.91 at age 9, and from 0.59 to 0.88 at age 12. There were no significant new genetic effects coming into play at age 12, and there was no evidence for genotype by sex interactions. These findings suggest that despite their sensitivity to environmental effects, the heritability of subcortical brain structures is high from childhood on, resembling estimates found in adult samples.
Neocolonialism in education: Cooperative Learning in an Asian context

This article is concerned with the influence of western educational approaches in non‐western countries and societies. This influence is frequently referred to as educational neocolonialism in the sense that western paradigms tend to shape and influence educational systems and thinking elsewhere through the process of globalisation. Given the perceived pressure to modernise and reform in order to attain high international standards, educational policy makers in non‐western countries tend to look to the west. Thus they may ‘borrow’ policies and practices that were originally developed and operated, and which appeared to be effective, in a very different cultural context to that of their own societies. In effecting such transfer, detailed consideration of particular aspects of the culture and heritage of the originating country is often neglected. To illustrate some of the problems that result from this, the article presents a case study of the application of Cooperative Learning, an educational method developed in the west, within an Asian context. Drawing upon Trompenaars and Hampden‐Turner's typology of seven cultural dimensions, our examination of western method and eastern context reveals a complex web of cultural conflicts and mismatches. The paper concludes by suggesting that non‐western cultures should seek to reconstruct imported pedagogic practices in accordance with their own world views and in line with their own norms and values.
Development of Hematopoietic Cancers After Implantation of Total Joint Replacement

The evidence from the 4 epidemiologic studies published before mid 1995, which have investigated the incidence of cancers in patients who have undergone joint implants, is conflicting. The results of the 2 earlier studies suggested a sustained increase in the risk of lymphoma and leukemia after total hip arthro- plasty. The results of the 2 more recent studies have not confirmed this, although in 1 study an increased risk was observed in the first year after implantation. The heterogeneity may be statistical in origin, but could also have a biologic explanation in the greater proportion of metal on metal prostheses used before 1973. All 4 studies used national data as the comparison. Here are presented the results of 2 matched cohort studies and a case control study set in North America and Scotland, and an overview of the 4 previous studies. Neither the results of the matched studies of patients operated on after 1973 nor the results of the latter 2 published studies suggest an increased risk of lymphoma or leukemia. If metal on metal articulations are reintroduced, careful surveillance is essential.
Error Rate Estimation of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes Decoded by Quantized Soft-Decision Iterative Algorithms

This paper describes a combinatorial approach to estimate the error rate performance of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes decoded by (quantized) soft-decision iterative decoding algorithms. The method is based on efficient enumeration of input vectors with small distances to a reference vector whose elements are selected to be the most reliable values from the input alphabet. Several techniques, including modified cycle enumeration, and the efficient derivation of problematic inputs for finer quantizers from those of coarser ones are employed to reduce the complexity of the enumeration. The error rate estimate is derived by testing the input vectors of small distances followed by estimating the contribution of larger distance vectors. We demonstrate by a number of examples that the proposed method provides accurate estimates of error rate with computational complexity much lower than that of Monte Carlo simulations, especially at the error floor region.
Distributed Construction of Connected Dominating Set in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Connected dominating set (CDS) has been proposed as virtual backbone or spine of wireless ad hoc networks. Three distributed approximation algorithms have been proposed in the literature for minimum CDS. In this paper, we first reinvestigate their performances. None of these algorithms have constant approximation factors. Thus these algorithms cannot guarantee to generate a CDS of small size. Their message complexities can be as high as O(n2), and their time complexities may also be as large as O(n2) and O(n3). We then present our own distributed algorithm that outperforms the existing algorithms. This algorithm has an approximation factor of at most 8, O(n) time complexity and O(nlog n) message complexity. By establishing the Ω(nlog n) lower bound on the message complexity of any distributed algorithm for nontrivial CDS, our algorithm is thus message-optimal.
Step-up combination versus switching of non-biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs in rheumatoid arthritis: results from a retrospective observational study

Background: In rheumatoid arthritis (RA), treatment with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) frequently needs to be changed because of insufficient effectiveness. Aim: To compare the clinical outcomes of two potential strategies for patients experiencing DMARD discontinuations related to ineffectiveness: switching to another DMARD or step-up combination therapy of the present DMARD with a new one. Methods: In a large observational database of 4585 DMARD courses in 1214 patients with RA, all patients who had experienced a change in treatment regimen were identified, and retention, effectiveness and safety of these subsequent treatment courses between the two strategies (switching vs step-up combination). All analyses were stratified according to the type of the new DMARD into methotrexate (MTX), sulphasalazine (SSZ) or leflunomide (LEF); all other DMARDs were excluded. Results: Kaplan–Meier analysis for MTX courses showed no significant difference in overall retention rates between the strategies of adding MTX and switching to MTX (p = 0.49 by log rank test). Likewise, switching or adding did not result in significantly different retention rates for SSZ and LEF (p = 0.61 and 0.74, respectively). This similarity between strategies remained after adjusting for several confounding variables. The frequencies of treatment terminations related to ineffectiveness or toxicity were likewise similar between the two strategies for the MTX, SSZ and LEF groups. This was also confirmed by the similarity of erythrocyte sedimentation rates that were reached at the end of the two therapeutic strategies for all three drugs, in adjusted analysis. Conclusion: Given all limitations of observational studies, the present data indicate that in situations of ineffective DMARD treatments, step-up combination therapy using traditional DMARDs, such as MTX, SSZ or LEF, bears no clear clinical advantage over switching to the new DMARD. Our results do not implicate any predication about step-up design including biologicals, where the benefit of combination therapy has been suggested convincingly.
Large-Scale Identification of Gibberellin-Related Transcription Factors Defines Group VII ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTORS as Functional DELLA Partners 1(C)(W)

Instituto de Biologia Molecular y Celular de Plantas, 46022 Valencia, Spain (N.M.-d.l.R., B.S., D.A., M.A.B.); Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Umea Plant Science Center, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 90187 Umea, Sweden (P.M., R.B.); Division of Plant and Crop Sciences, School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Loughborough LE12 5RD, United Kingdom (D.J.G., J.V., M.J.H.); Centro de Biotecnologia y Genomica de Plantas, Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieros Agronomos, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo, 28223 Pozuelo de Alarcon, Spain (P.C., L.O.-S.); and College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (R.B.)
ACCF/AHA Expert Conseusus Document

WRITING COMMITTEE MEMBERS Vallerie V. McLaughlin, MD, FACC, FAHA, FCCP, Chair*; Stephen L. Archer, MD, FACC, FAHA†; David B. Badesch, MD, FCCP‡; Robyn J. Barst, MD, FACC, FAHA, FCCP†; Harrison W. Farber, MD, FAHA, FCCP†; Jonathan R. Lindner, MD, FACC; Michael A. Mathier, MD, FACC*; Michael D. McGoon, MD, FACC, FCCP§; Myung H. Park, MD, FACC*; Robert S. Rosenson, MD, FACC, FAHA*; Lewis J. Rubin, MD, FAHA, FCCP ; Victor F. Tapson, MD*; John Varga, MD, FACR¶
Two Modes of Release Shape the Postsynaptic Response at the Inner Hair Cell Ribbon Synapse

Cochlear inner hair cells (IHCs) convert sounds into receptor potentials and via their ribbon synapses into firing rates in auditory nerve fibers. Multivesicular release at individual IHC ribbon synapses activates AMPA-mediated EPSCs with widely ranging amplitudes. The underlying mechanisms and specific role for multivesicular release in encoding sound are not well understood. Here we characterize the waveforms of individual EPSCs recorded from afferent boutons contacting IHCs and compare their characteristics in immature rats (postnatal days 8–11) and hearing rats (postnatal days 19–21). Two types of EPSC waveforms were found in every recording: monophasic EPSCs, with sharp rising phases and monoexponential decays, and multiphasic EPSCs, exhibiting inflections on rising and decaying phases. Multiphasic EPSCs exhibited slower rise times and smaller amplitudes than monophasic EPSCs. Both types of EPSCs had comparable charge transfers, suggesting that they were activated by the release of similar numbers of vesicles, which for multiphasic EPSCs occurred in a less coordinated manner. On average, a higher proportion of larger, monophasic EPSCs was found in hearing compared to immature rats. In addition, EPSCs became significantly faster with age. The developmental increase in size and speed could improve auditory signaling acuity. Multiphasic EPSCs persisted in hearing animals, in some fibers constituting half of the EPSCs. The proportion of monophasic versus multiphasic EPSCs varied widely across fibers, resulting in marked heterogeneity of amplitude distributions. We propose that the relative contribution of two modes of multivesicular release, generating monophasic and multiphasic EPSCs, may underlie fundamental characteristics of auditory nerve fibers.