Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards single-channel blind dereverberation of speech from a moving speaker

An overview of some key issues involved in single-channel blind dereverberation is presented, beginning with a discussion on the nature of time-varying acoustic channels, the problem of long acoustic impulse responses and an introduction to model-based solutions. The paper then discusses an approach in which the acoustic source is modelled by a time-varying AR process, and the channel by a linear time-varying all-pole filter. In each case, the time-varying filter coefficients are modelled as a linear combination of basis functions. Bayesian inference is used to estimate these coefficients. Although the propsed model needs validating against real acoustic sources and channels, it is proposed as an initial step towards solving the single-channel blind dereverberation.
Automatic language identification using a segment-based approach

Automatic language Identification (ALI) is the problem of automatically identifying the language of an utterance through the use of a computer. In 1977, House and Neuburg proposed an approach to ALI which focused on the phonotactic constraints used effectively for language identification if an accurate phonetic representation of an utterance could be obtained from the acoustic signal. Our research utilizes House and Neuburg''s ideas as the starting point for a new segment-based approach to ALI. To develop a solid theoretical basis for the design of an ALI system, a formal probabilistic framework has been developed. This framework uses House and Neuburg''s ideas as its foundation but also utilizes additional information that may be useful for ALI. Specifically, phonotactic, acoustic and prosodic information are all incorporated into the framework which provides the structure for segment-based system. To investigate the capabilities of the new segment-based approach, the system was trained and tested using the OGI Multi-Language Telephone Speech Corpus, which consists of utterances in 10 different languages. the entire system was able to identify the language of a test utterance 48.6% of the times. To investigate the system''s performance in more detail, the entire system, as well as each component of the system, was evaluated as various test conditions were altered. Overall, the analyses of the system confirmed that the phonotactic constraints of languages can be used effectively for ALI. However, it was also discovered that additional information, such as prosodic and acoustic information, can also be useful to supplement the phonotactic information.
Extent and determinants of unintended pregnancy in Basrah

Background: The problem of unintended pregnancy exists in all societies, regardless of degree of development. Unintended pregnancy is associated with adverse health outcomes for both mother and child and it is a risk factor for poor health of both of them. Objective: To assess the extent of the problem of unintended pregnancy in Basrah, and to identify the main sociodemographic and reproductive factors associated with its occurrence. Methodology: The study was a cross sectional study involving 260 women who gave birth within the 6 months preceding the time of the study. The studied women were selected from 10 primary health care centers. Data were collected by direct interviewing of the women using a special questionnaire form constructed for the purpose of the study. The questionnaire included questions that covered socio-demographic and reproductive aspects of the participants, as well as details about their last pregnancy. Results: Sixty seven (25.8%) of the participants reported that their last pregnancy ending in a live birth was unintended at the time of conception. This included 33(12.7%) unwanted pregnancies and 34(13.1%) mistimed pregnancies. The study showed that old, illiterate and unemployed women were more likely to have an unintended pregnancy than young, educated and employed women. The prevalence of unintended pregnancy increased with the increase in the number of previous pregnancies. The study also showed that women who planned their last pregnancy, were more likely to attend the antenatal care clinic than those who did not. Conclusion: Unintended pregnancy is not a rare event in Basrah despite the fact that unintended pregnancies ended in abortion were not included in the present study. ا . د . ليجع نسحلادبع سجرن ١ و بيبطلا ة صاصتخلاا د . ميحرلادبع نسح قافو ٢ ١ عمتجملا بط عرف / بطلا ةيلك / ةرصبلا ةعماج فدهلا : دلا تيرجأ هب ةطبترملا لماوعلا ديدحتلو ةرصبلا يف هل ططخملا ريغ لمحلا ىدم سايقل ةسار . ثحبلا ةقيرط : تلمش ةيعطقم ةيضرع ةسارد ةيلاحلا ةساردلا ٢٦٠ ةرـصبلا ةـنيدم يـف ةيحـص زـكارم ةرـشع ةراـيزل نئج نمم ةأرما وــه راـيتخلاا راــيعم ناـكو نأ ةــساردلا تــقول ةقباـسلا ةتــسلا رهــشلأا للاـخ اــيح لاـفط تدــلو دــق ةأرـملا نوــكت . تاــنايبلا عــمج مـت م تنمـضتو ةـساردلاب ةـصاخ نايبتـسا ةرامتـسا مادختـساب باـجنلإا خيراـتو ةأرـملل ةيـصخش تاـمولع ةفاـضلإاب لـمحلا ليـصافت ىـلا ريخلأا . اتنلا جئ : نا ةـساردلا جئاـتن ترـهظأ ٢٥,٨ % رـيغ تـقوب اهلوـصحب اـمأ اـهل طـطخم رـيغ تـناك ءاـسنلا نيـب ةرـيخلأا تادلاوـلا نـم هـل طـطخم ) ١٣,١ % ( اـقلطم اـهب بوـغرم رـيغ وأ ) ١٢,٧ % . ( تافيعـض ،نـسلا يـف راـبكلا تاـهملأا تاـبر نـه نـممو ميـلعتلا هل ططخملا ريغ لمحلا لوصحل ةضرع رثكأ نك تويب ، لمحلا تارم ةدايزب دادزا هل ططخملا ريغ لمحلا راشتنا ىدم نا امك ةقباسلا . امك ترهظأ لـمحلل نـططخ يتاوـللا ءاـسنلا ناب ةساردلا جئاتن رـيخلأا نـك رـثكأ نـم لـماوحلا ةـياعر تامدـخل امادختـسا كلذل نططخي مل يتاوللا ءاسنلا . تاجاتنتسلاا : يـهتنملا لمحلا لومش مدع نم مغرلا ىلع ةرصبلا يف ثودحلا ردان ريغ هل ططخملا ريغ لمحلا ضاـهجلإاب يـف ةيلاحلا ةساردلا
Functional Changes during Hospital Stay in Older Patients Admitted to an Acute Care Ward: A Multicenter Observational Study

Objectives Changes in physical performance during hospital stay have rarely been evaluated. In this study, we examined functional changes during hospital stay by assessing both physical performance and activities of daily living. Additionally, we investigated characteristics of older patients associated with meaningful in-hospital improvement in physical performance. Methods The CRiteria to assess appropriate Medication use among Elderly complex patients project recruited 1123 patients aged ≥65 years, consecutively admitted to geriatric or internal medicine acute care wards of seven Italian hospitals. We analyzed data from 639 participating participants with a Mini Mental State Examination score ≥18/30. Physical performance was assessed by walking speed and grip strength, and functional status by activities of daily living at hospital admission and at discharge. Meaningful improvement was defined as a measured change of at least 1 standard deviation. Multivariable logistic regression models predicting meaningful improvement, included age, gender, type of admission (through emergency room or elective), and physical performance at admission. Results Mean age of the study participants was 79 years (range 65–98), 52% were female. Overall, mean walking speed and grip strength performance improved during hospital stay (walking speed improvement: 0.04±0.20 m/s, p<0.001; grip strength improvement: 0.43±5.66 kg, p = 0.001), no significant change was observed in activities of daily living. Patients with poor physical performance at admission had higher odds for in-hospital improvement. Conclusion Overall, physical performance measurements show an improvement during hospital stay. The margin for meaningful functional improvement is larger in patients with poor physical function at admission. Nevertheless, most of these patients continue to have poor performance at discharge.
Stationary countable dense random sets

We study the probability theory of countable dense random subsets of (uncountably infinite) Polish spaces. It is shown that if such a set is stationary with respect to a transitive (locally compact) group of symmetries then any event which concerns the random set itself (rather than accidental details of its construction) must have probability zero or one. Indeed the result requires only quasi-stationarity (null-events stay null under the group action). In passing, it is noted that the property of being countable does not correspond to a measurable subset of the space of subsets of an uncountably infinite Polish space.
Caring Behaviors Inventory-24 Revised: CBI-16 Validation and Psychometric Properties

Researchers examined psychometric properties of the Caring Behaviors Inventory (CBI)-24 on perceptions of nurse caring. Hospitalized adult patients (N = 303) completed the instrument. Investigators reduced the number of items on the English version. Item means, frequencies, written comments by patients, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, and initial principal components analysis (PCA) shaped revisions. A second PCA was calculated on 16 items; one component resulted, explaining 58.01% of the total variance. Contrasted groups and factorial validity and internal consistency reliability were established. Future research should test diverse samples on the 16 using contrasted groups, discriminant and criterion-related validity and test-retest reliability.
Adaptive OFDM Modulation for Underwater Acoustic Communications: Design Considerations and Experimental Results

In this paper, we explore design aspects of adaptive modulation based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) for underwater acoustic (UWA) communications, and study its performance using real-time at-sea experiments. Our design criterion is to maximize the system throughput under a target average bit error rate (BER). We consider two different schemes based on the level of adaptivity: in the first scheme, only the modulation levels are adjusted while the power is allocated uniformly across the subcarriers, whereas in the second scheme, both the modulation levels and the power are adjusted adaptively. For both schemes we linearly predict the channel one travel time ahead so as to improve the performance in the presence of a long propagation delay. The system design assumes a feedback link from the receiver that is exploited in two forms: one that conveys the modulation alphabet and quantized power levels to be used for each subcarrier, and the other that conveys a quantized estimate of the sparse channel impulse response. The second approach is shown to be advantageous, as it requires significantly fewer feedback bits for the same system throughput. The effectiveness of the proposed adaptive schemes is demonstrated using computer simulations, real channel measurements recorded in shallow water off the western coast of Kauai, HI, USA, in June 2008, and real-time at-sea experiments conducted at the same location in July 2011. We note that this is the first paper that presents adaptive modulation results for UWA links with real-time at-sea experiments.
Impact of response latency on user behavior in web search

Traditionally, the efficiency and effectiveness of search systems have both been of great interest to the information retrieval community. However, an in-depth analysis on the interplay between the response latency of web search systems and users' search experience has been missing so far. In order to fill this gap, we conduct two separate studies aiming to reveal how response latency affects the user behavior in web search. First, we conduct a controlled user study trying to understand how users perceive the response latency of a search system and how sensitive they are to increasing delays in response. This study reveals that, when artificial delays are introduced into the response, the users of a fast search system are more likely to notice these delays than the users of a slow search system. The introduced delays become noticeable by the users once they exceed a certain threshold value. Second, we perform an analysis using a large-scale query log obtained from Yahoo web search to observe the potential impact of increasing response latency on the click behavior of users. This analysis demonstrates that latency has an impact on the click behavior of users to some extent. In particular, given two content-wise identical search result pages, we show that the users are more likely to perform clicks on the result page that is served with lower latency.
A descriptive study of language and literacy skills of early school-aged children with unilateral and mild to moderate bilateral hearing loss

ABSTRACT According to population-based prevalence data, more than 40% of children diagnosed with a hearing impairment have a mild to moderate bilateral or unilateral hearing loss. Prior to newborn hearing screening, these degrees of loss were not identified until early school-age. While studies highlight the challenges of late-identified children with such a loss, little is known about the effects of early identification. This descriptive study explored the impact of mild to moderate bilateral and unilateral hearing loss on children in the early school years. Thirty-two children (aged 5–9 years) were evaluated cross-sectionally with a battery of tests to measure speech-language, phonology, and components of literacy skills. Parents also completed a questionnaire on functional auditory skills. Most outcomes were within the range of expected scores for children with typical hearing. In most cases, however, parent-reported functional auditory skills were lower than published norms. Some phonological processing skills were also below the average expected for children with typical hearing. In particular, 46.4% of children were below one standard deviation of the normative mean on the phonological memory score. Subgroup comparisons between children with unilateral (n = 17) and bilateral (n = 15) hearing loss showed no difference on all outcomes (p > 0.05). While scores should be interpreted with caution given the small sample size, findings reinforce the need for additional research on children with mild to moderate bilateral and unilateral hearing loss who benefit from early identification.
Simultaneous Estimation of Ocean Tides and Underwater Topography in the Weddell Sea

A new model for the M 2 , S 2 , K 1 , and O 1 tides in the Weddell Sea is developed by assimilating CryoSat-2 data into a barotropic tide model. A variational approach is used, which explicitly allows for errors in the water depth, that is, the bottom topography in open water and the water column thickness under floating ice shelves, so that an optimized estimate of the topography is obtained together with the tidal fields. In preparation for assimilation, the sensitivity of the tidal elevation to the interfacial drag at the sea floor and the ice-water interface (under the floating ice shelves) is investigated; this motivates the development of a new drag parameterization which is more accurate and physically plausible in comparison with the interfacial drag alone. The assimilation of CryoSat-2 data into the model results in tidal elevations with essentially the same accuracy as previous estimates, which is demonstrated by comparisons with independent in situ data and withheld CryoSat-2 data. The novelty of the present tidal estimates is that they are consistent with well-defined dynamics based on the Laplace Tidal Equations—augmented with the new parameterization of drag—and modifications of the prior estimate of underwater topography and water column thickness. Analysis of the sensitivity to the topography finds that, at this level of precision, the topography is not uniquely determined by the observed data.
Effects of Recruiting Midwives into a Family Physician Program on Women's Awareness and Preference for Mode of Delivery and Caesarean Section Rates in Rural Areas of Kurdistan

Background The accepted rate rate of caesarean section is 15%. It is expected that an increase in the density of midwives in the family physician program lead to a decrease in this indicator. This study aimed to compare the rates of caesarean section and women's awareness and preference for mode of delivery before and after the implementation of the family physician program in health centres with and without an increase in midwives density. Methods In this cross-sectional study, using multistage cluster sampling method a total of 668 mothers with two-month-old children were selected from among all mothers with two-month-old children who were living in rural areas of Kurdistan province. Using the difference-in-differences model and Matchit statistical model, the factors associated with caesarean section rates and women's awareness and preference for mode of delivery were compared in centres with and without an increase in midwives density after the implementation of the family physician program. To compare the changes before and after the program, we used the data collected from the same number of women in 2005 as the baseline. Results After adjusting for baseline data collected in 2005, the resutls showed no significant change in caesarean section rates and women's awareness and preference for mode of delivery in the centres with and without an increase in midwives density after the implementation of the family physician program. The Matchit model showed a significant mean increase 14%(0.03–0.25) in women’s awareness of the benefits of natural childbirth between 2005 and 2013 in health centres where the density of midwives increased compared with health centres where it did not. The difference-in-differences model showed that the odds ratio of women’s preference for caesarean section decreased by 41% among participants who were aware of the benefits of natural childbirth, (OR = 0.59, 95% CI: (0.22–0.85); P>0.001). Conclusions The results of this study showed that an increase in the density of midwives in the family physician program led to an increase in women's awareness of the benefits of natural childbirth. An increase in women’s awareness of the benefits of natural childbirth was associated with a decreased preference for caesarean section, however this reduction did not have a significant impact on caesarean section rates; possibly, this finding might be attributed to the complexity of this problem that needs a mixed strategy involving various stockholders.
Beyond activity recognition: skill assessment from accelerometer data

The next generation of human activity recognition applications in ubiquitous computing scenarios focuses on assessing the quality of activities, which goes beyond mere identification of activities of interest. Objective quality assessments are often difficult to achieve, hard to quantify, and typically require domain specific background information that bias the overall judgement and limit generalisation. In this paper we propose a framework for skill assessment in activity recognition that enables automatic quality analysis of human activities. Our approach is based on a hierarchical rule induction technique that effectively abstracts from noise-prone activity data and assesses activity data at different temporal contexts. Our approach requires minimal domain specific knowledge about the activities of interest, which makes it largely generalisable. By means of an extensive case study we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in the context of dexterity training of 15 medical students engaging in 50 attempts of surgical activities.
Subjective performance evaluation of super-resolution image enhancement

Image super-resolution creates an enhanced highresolution image using multiple low-resolution images of the same object. A typical image formation model introduces blurring, aliasing, and added noise. Super-resolution is designed to jointly reduce or remove all three. While the first super-resolution algorithm appeared over 20 years ago, only recently have people begun exploring the performance of these algorithms. However, these papers have explored only objective MSE performance. In this paper, we use subjective testing to explore the visual quality of images enhanced with super-resolution.
Automatic Labeling for Entity Extraction in Cyber Security

Timely analysis of cyber-security information necessitates automated information extraction from unstructured text. While state-of-the-art extraction methods produce extremely accurate results, they require ample training data, which is generally unavailable for specialized applications, such as detecting security related entities; moreover, manual annotation of corpora is very costly and often not a viable solution. In response, we develop a very precise method to automatically label text from several data sources by leveraging related, domainspecific, structured data and provide public access to a corpus annotated with cyber-security entities. Next, we implement a Maximum Entropy Model trained with the average perceptron on a portion of our corpus ( 750,000 words) and achieve near perfect precision, recall, and accuracy, with training times under 17 seconds.
Retinal remodeling in the Tg P347L rabbit, a large‐eye model of retinal degeneration

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is an inherited blinding disease characterized by progressive loss of retinal photoreceptors. There are numerous rodent models of retinal degeneration, but most are poor platforms for interventions that will translate into clinical practice. The rabbit possesses a number of desirable qualities for a model of retinal disease including a large eye and an existing and substantial knowledge base in retinal circuitry, anatomy, and ophthalmology. We have analyzed degeneration, remodeling, and reprogramming in a rabbit model of retinal degeneration, expressing a rhodopsin proline 347 to leucine transgene in a TgP347L rabbit as a powerful model to study the pathophysiology and treatment of retinal degeneration. We show that disease progression in the TgP347L rabbit closely tracks human cone‐sparing RP, including the cone‐associated preservation of bipolar cell signaling and triggering of reprogramming. The relatively fast disease progression makes the TgP347L rabbit an excellent model for gene therapy, cell biological intervention, progenitor cell transplantation, surgical interventions, and bionic prosthetic studies. J. Comp. Neurol. 519:2713–2733, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Impact of Homeownership on Criminal Activity: Empirical Evidence from United States' County Level Data

This paper utilizes county-level census data and Uniform Crime Reports for the United States to isolate the impact of homeownership on crime rates. After controlling for other influences, in particular income's impact on homeownership rates, we find that the homeownership itself has a strong and statistically significant negative effect on both violent and property crime rates. Moreover, we find that increases in homeownership rates reduce criminal activity over time. Our results suggest that federal, state, and local policies as well as other initiatives, such as Habitat for Humanity, that support homeownership, will have substantial positive spill-over effects on the social fabric of a given community.
Can we now reach a consensus on the management of benign papillary breast lesions?

Management of benign breast lesions diagnosed by core needle biopsy (CNB) remains a controversial topic. Specifically, there is no consensus on the management of intraductal papillomas, despite multiple studies to determine whether excision or observation should be the next best step (1-5). When CNB yields a diagnosis of intraductal papilloma with atypia, excisional biopsy of the lesion is generally performed. For intraductal papillomas without atypia, however, a large retrospective study recently published in the Annals of Surgical Oncology suggests that observation without excision is likely a safe alternative (6). This is based on a low rate of malignancy found on surgical excision of 327 lesions diagnosed as benign papillomas on CNB, as well as no incidence of cancer found on follow-up for those (n=61) who did not undergo excision.