Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-linguistic vocalisation recognition based on hybrid GMM-SVM approach

This paper describes an algorithm for detection of nonlinguistic vocalisations, such as laughter or fillers, based on acoustic features. The algorithm proposed combines the benefits of Gaussian mixture models (GMM) and the advantages of support vector machines (SVMs). Three GMMs were trained for garbage, laughter, and fillers, and then an SVM model was trained in the GMM score space. Various experiments were run to tune the parameters of the proposed algorithm, using the data sets originating from the SSPNet Vocalisation Corpus (SVC) provided for the Social Signals Sub-Challenge of the INTERSPEECH 2013 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge. The results showed a remarkable growth of the unweighted average of the area under the receiver operating curve (UAAUC) compared to the baseline results (from 87.6% to over 94% for the development set), which confirmed the efficiency of the proposed method. Index Terms: paralingustics, social signals, laughter detection, filler, support vector machines, Gaussian mixture models, cepstrum
Incorporating user quality requirements in the software development process

The business worth of a computer system is a function of its quality in use ‐ the extent to which it is fitted for its purpose. ISO/IEC 14598-1 (Evaluation of Software Products) places quality in use as the overall goal for software development. The term quality in use recognises that software does not exist in isolation, but must fit with a socio-technological work environment if it is to work in practice. A major obstacle to achieving the goal of consistently usable systems is a lack of guidance on integrating the various techniques available to achieve the required process. Quality in use is increasingly recognised in industry as a primary goal in developing business systems and IT products. The objective of the EU TRUMP project was to directly increase the quality of products and systems by assisting in the integration of usability methods into the existing systems development processes, and by the promotion of usability awareness into the culture of the organisations. The methods were applied in trial projects over a 12-month period. In both cases the results were judged to be highly beneficial and cost effective, and the selected methods are now being formally incorporated into the organisations' development processes.
Vaccine-induced protection of chimpanzees against infection by a heterologous human immunodeficiency virus type 1

The extraordinary genetic diversity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is a major problem to overcome in the development of an effective vaccine. In the most reliable animal model of HIV-1 infection, chimpanzees were immunized with various combinations of HIV-1 antigens, which were derived primarily from the surface glycoprotein, gp160, of HIV-1 strains LAI and MN. The immunogens also included a live recombinant canarypox virus expressing a gp160-MN protein. In one experiment, two chimpanzees were immunized multiple times; one animal received antigens derived only from HIV-1LAI, and the second animal received antigens from both HIV-1LAI and HIV-1MN. In another experiment, four chimpanzees were immunized in parallel a total of five times over 18 months; two animals received purified gp160 and V3-MN peptides, whereas the other two animals received the recombinant canarypox virus and gp160. At 3 months after the final booster, all immunized and naive control chimpanzees were challenged by intravenous inoculation of HIV-1SF2; therefore, the study represented an intrasubtype B heterologous virus challenge. Virologic and serologic follow-up showed that the controls and the two chimpanzees immunized with the live recombinant canarypox virus became infected, whereas the other animals that were immunized with gp160 and V3-MN peptides were protected from infection. Evaluation of both cellular and humoral HIV-specific immune responses at the time of infectious HIV-1 challenge identified the following as possible correlates of protection: antibody titers to the V3 loop of MN and neutralizing antibody titers to HIV-1MN or HIV-1LAI, but not to HIV-1SF2. The results of this study indicate that vaccine-mediated protection against intravenous infection with heterologous HIV-1 strains of the same subtype is possible with some immunogens.
Recursive partitioning method for trajectory indexing

A trajectory is defined as the record of time-varying spatial phenomenon. The trajectory database is an important research area that has received a lot of interest in the last decade, with the objective of trajectory databases being to extend existing database technology to support the representation and querying of moving objects and their trajectories. Querying in trajectory databases can be very expensive due to the nature of the data and the complexity of the query processing algorithms. Given also that location-aware devices, like the GPS, are present everywhere these days, trajectory databases will soon face an enormous amount of data. Consequently the performance in the presence of a vast amount of data will be a significant problem and efficient indexing schemes are required to support both updates and searches efficiently. This paper provides the methodology for using the recursive partitioning technique for indexing trajectories in the unrestricted space, which is called the Recursively Partitioned Trajectory Index (RPTI). RPTI uses the two-level indexing structure, as does the state of art indexing scheme, SETI, and maintains separate indices for the space and time dimensions. We present the algorithms for constructing the RPTI and the algorithms for updates that include insertion and deletion. We also provide the results of the experimental study on the RPTI and have demonstrated that RPTI is better than SETI in handling trajectory-based queries and is competitive with SETI in handling coordinate-based queries. The structure of RPTI can be easily implemented by using any of the existing spatial indexing structures. The only design parameters required are the standard disk page size and maximum level of recursive partitioning.
The PCP genes Celsr1 and Vangl2 are required for normal lung branching morphogenesis

The lungs are generated by branching morphogenesis as a result of reciprocal signalling interactions between the epithelium and mesenchyme during development. Mutations that disrupt formation of either the correct number or shape of epithelial branches affect lung function. This, in turn, can lead to congenital abnormalities such as cystadenomatoid malformations, pulmonary hypertension or lung hypoplasia. Defects in lung architecture are also associated with adult lung disease, particularly in cases of idiopathic lung fibrosis. Identifying the signalling pathways which drive epithelial tube formation will likely shed light on both congenital and adult lung disease. Here we show that mutations in the planar cell polarity (PCP) genes Celsr1 and Vangl2 lead to disrupted lung development and defects in lung architecture. Lungs from Celsr1Crsh and Vangl2Lp mouse mutants are small and misshapen with fewer branches, and by late gestation exhibit thickened interstitial mesenchyme and defective saccular formation. We observe a recapitulation of these branching defects following inhibition of Rho kinase, an important downstream effector of the PCP signalling pathway. Moreover, epithelial integrity is disrupted, cytoskeletal remodelling perturbed and mutant endoderm does not branch normally in response to the chemoattractant FGF10. We further show that Celsr1 and Vangl2 proteins are present in restricted spatial domains within lung epithelium. Our data show that the PCP genes Celsr1 and Vangl2 are required for foetal lung development thereby revealing a novel signalling pathway critical for this process that will enhance our understanding of congenital and adult lung diseases and may in future lead to novel therapeutic strategies.
Novel Adhesion Promoter for Metal–Plastic Composites

Technological developments in the automobile industry are mainly driven forward by the aim to reduce the bonding partners, the size of the joining surfaces, and the processing temperature. In addition, the increase of the construction weight due to the increasing demand for resource and energy efficiency. That is why light metals like Alor Mg-based materials are increasingly coming into focus of research as potential substitutes for steel. Fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs) are further lightweight materials, which find application in the automobile production due to their high stiffness and strength, excellent corrosion resistance, and flexible fabrication. In order to reduce the weight of construction without neglecting its strength and stability and to overcome the disadvantages of FRPs such as low formability, low hardness, and high sensibility during drilling, FRP–metal hybrid components are applied. Mixed constructions made of different material groups are mainly produced in sequential process chains after the manufacturing of individual joining partners by means of different joining processes like adhesive bonding, mechanical, or thermal joining. Mechanical fastening by using bolts or rivets is a simple method to achieve a high joining strength with a small scatter, as summarized by Matsuzaki et al. However, this widely used technique shows disadvantages because of additional connecting elements, which increase the weight of the whole structure. The placing of the fastening elements results in increased contact surfaces, which require sealing and in a decrease of the cross-sectional area of the structures. Furthermore, mechanical fastening induces a high stress concentration due to broken and exposed fibers. Alternatively, various thermal joining processes like ultrasonic welding, friction spot welding, laser welding, and joining by means of monoand polychromatic radiation have recently been discussed in the literature. The application of these joining methods is limited by the thickness of the
On Controller Performance in Software-Defined Networks

Network architectures in which the control plane is decoupled from the data plane have been growing in popularity. Among the main arguments for this approach is that it provides a more structured software environment for developing network-wide abstractions while potentially simplifying the data plane. As has been adopted elsewhere [11], we refer to this split architecture as Software-Defined Networking (SDN). While it has been argued that SDN is suitable for some deployment environments (such as homes [17, 13], data centers [1], and the enterprise [5]), delegating control to a remote system has raised a number of questions on control-plane scaling implications of such an approach. Two of the most often voiced concerns are: (a) how fast can the controller respond to data path requests? ; and (b) how many data path requests can it handle per second? There are some references to the performance of SDN systems in the literature [16, 5, 3]. For example, an oft-cited study shows that a popular network controller (NOX) handles around 30k flow initiation events1 per second while maintaining a sub-10ms flow install time [14]. Unfortunately, recent measurements of some deployment environments suggests that these numbers are far from sufficient. For example, Kandula et al. [9] found that a 1500-server cluster has a median flow arrival rate of 100k flows per second. Also, Benson et al. [2] show that a network with 100 switches can have spikes of 10M flows arrivals per second in the worst case. In addition, the 10ms flow setup delay of an SDN controller would add a 10% delay to the majority of flows (short-lived) in such a network. This disconnect between relatively poor controller performance and high network demands has motivated a
AntFarm: Efficient Content Distribution with Managed Swarms

This paper describes Antfarm, a content distribution system based on managed swarms. A managed swarm couples peer-to-peer data exchange with a coordinator that directs bandwidth allocation at each peer. Antfarm achieves high throughput by viewing content distribution as a global optimization problem, where the goal is to minimize download latencies for participants subject to bandwidth constraints and swarm dynamics. The system is based on a wire protocol that enables the Antfarm coordinator to gather information on swarm dynamics, detect misbehaving hosts, and direct the peers' allotment of upload bandwidth among multiple swarms. Antfarm's coordinator grants autonomy and local optimization opportunities to participating nodes while guiding the swarms toward an efficient allocation of resources. Extensive simulations and a PlanetLab deployment show that the system can significantly outperform centralized distribution services as well as swarming systems such as BitTorrent.
A Magic Bullet for the "African" Mother?: Neo-Imperial Reproductive Futurism and the Pharmaceutical "Solution" to the HIV/AIDS Crisis

On the basis of a close reading of popular and medical texts which address a debate over the ethics of clinical drug trials funded by the United States and designed mainly for sub-Saharan Africa, I argue that international public health discourse about infant HIV infection in that region reflects and legitimates a neo-imperialist, anti-reproductive justice ideology. Participants share a fetal-centered logic that US-funded biomedicine must shoulder the burden of rescuing sub-Saharan Africa from itself by using the bodies of HIV-positive pregnant women to transmit biomedicine's magic bullet-antiretroviral drugs-to the next generation. The survival of the fetus, disguised as the well-being of the HIV-positive woman and accomplished by the magic of biomedical research, becomes the survival of a region otherwise doomed by its present state of economic, political, and medical incapacity. This version of what queer theorist Lee Edelman (2004, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive) calls "reproductive futurism" redounds to the benefit of the more explicitly women-hating and nationalist ideologies of still-powerful right-wing movements against reproductive and sexual rights.
Patterned Distribution of MÃ©tastases from Malignant Melanoma in Humans1

Malignant melanoma has an unpredictable clinical course in terms of metastatic behavior, and further understanding might lead to improved therapeutic intervention with immune agents or antagonists. To determine whether mA©tastasesshow patterns or are randomly distributed, we analyzed the distributions of mA©tastasesin the 56 patients with metastatic malignant mela noma, subjected to complete autopsy at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, using parametric statistics and cluster analysis. Varia bles examined included age, race, sex, location of primary tumor, length of survival, mode of therapy, histology of tumor, location of mA©tastases, and extent of tumor infiltration at each metastatic site. The results indicate that the distributions of mA©tastases from malignant melanoma are patterned such that significant positive correlations (p < 0.05 or better) were observed among various tissues and organs. We identified several aggregations with respect to the distributions of mA©tastases: (a) central nerv ous system; (b) mesodermal; (c) endocrine; (d) reticuloendothelial; and (e) foregut. Organs and tissues comprising each aggre gation were interrelated by their similar developmental origins or functions. A very highly significant negative correlation between central nervous system and hepatic mA©tastases (p < 0.001) was also demonstrated by cluster analysis. We concluded that the distributions of mA©tastasesfrom malignant melanoma are not random; the patterns of mA©tastasesmay be related to the embryological derivation of tissues involved.
Mutant strains (nit) of Salmonella typhimurium with a pleiotropic defect in nitrogen metabolism

We have isolated mutant strains (nit) of Salmonella typhimurium that are defective in nitrogen metabolism. They have a reduced ability to use a variety of compounds including glutamate, proline, arginine, N-acetyl-glucosamine, alanine, and adenosine as sole nitrogen source. In addition, although they grow normally on high concentrations of ammonium chloride (greater than 1 mM) as nitrogen source, they grow substantially more slowly than wild type at low concentrations (less than 1 mM). We postulated that the inability of these strains to utilize low concentrations of ammonium chloride accounts for their poor growth on other nitrogen sources. The specific biochemical lesion in strains with a nit mutation is not known; however, mutant strains have no detectable alteration in the activities of glutamine synthetase, glutamate synthetase, or glutamate dehydrogenase, the enzymes known to be involved in assimilation of ammonia. A nit mutation is suppressed by second-site mutations in the structural gene for glutamine synthetase (glnA) that decrease glutamine synthetase activity.
The relationship of topographical memory performance to regional neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease

The network activated during normal route learning shares considerable homology with the network of degeneration in the earliest symptomatic stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This inspired the virtual route learning test (VRLT) in which patients learn routes in a virtual reality environment. This study investigated the neural basis of VRLT performance in AD to test whether impairment was underpinned by a network or by the widely held explanation of hippocampal degeneration. VRLT score in a mild AD cohort was regressed against gray matter (GM) density and diffusion tensor metrics of white matter (WM) (n = 30), and, cerebral glucose metabolism (n = 26), using a mass univariate approach. GM density and cerebral metabolism were then submitted to a multivariate analysis [support vector regression (SVR)] to examine whether there was a network associated with task performance. Univariate analyses of GM density, metabolism and WM axial diffusion converged on the vicinity of the retrosplenial/posterior cingulate cortex, isthmus and, possibly, hippocampal tail. The multivariate analysis revealed a significant, right hemisphere-predominant, network level correlation with cerebral metabolism; this comprised areas common to both activation in normal route learning and early degeneration in AD (retrosplenial and lateral parietal cortices). It also identified right medio-dorsal thalamus (part of the limbic-diencephalic hypometabolic network of early AD) and right caudate nucleus (activated during normal route learning). These results offer strong evidence that topographical memory impairment in AD relates to damage across a network, in turn offering complimentary lesion evidence to previous studies in healthy volunteers for the neural basis of topographical memory. The results also emphasize that structures beyond the mesial temporal lobe (MTL) contribute to memory impairment in AD—it is too simplistic to view memory impairment in AD as a synonym for hippocampal degeneration.
Recombinant Tissue Plasminogen Activator Increases Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption in Acute Ischemic Stroke: An MR Imaging Permeability Study

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Although thrombolytic therapy (recombinant tissue plasminogen activator [rtPA]) represents an important step forward in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) management, there is a clear need to identify high-risk patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of quantitative permeability (KPS) MR imaging in patients with AIS treated with and without rtPA. We hypothesized that rtPA would increase KPS and that KPS MR imaging can be used to predict the risk of hemorrhagic transformation (HT). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-six patients with AIS were examined within a mean of 3.6 hours of documented symptom onset. KPS MR imaging was performed as part of our AIS protocol. KPS coefficients in the stroke lesion were estimated for all patients, and the relationship between KPS and both HT and rtPA was investigated by using Student t tests. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were computed for predicting HT from KPS. RESULTS: The occurrence rate of HT for patients who received rtPA and those who did not was 43% and 37%, respectively. Assessment of KPS in the lesion revealed significant differences between those who hemorrhaged and those who did not (P < .0001) as well as between rtPA-treated and untreated patients (P = .008). ROC analysis indicated a KPS threshold of 0.67 mL/100 g/min, with a sensitivity of 92% and a specificity of 78%. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that KPS is able to identify patients at higher risk of HT and may allow use of physiologic imaging rather than time from onset of symptoms to guide treatment decision.
Molecular and Cellular Pathobiology BRCA 2 and Nucleophosmin Coregulate Centrosome Amplification and Form a Complex with the Rho Effector Kinase ROCK 2

BRCA2 germline mutations account for the majority of heredity breast and ovarian cancer. Besides its role in DNA damage repair, BRCA2 also plays an important role in cytokinesis, transcription regulation, and cancer cell proliferation. Recently, we reported that BRCA2 localizes to centrosomes as well as nuclei and the dysfunction of BRCA2 in a centrosome causes abnormalities in cell division. Here, we identified a nucleolar phosphoprotein, nucleophosmin (NPM), as a novel BRCA2-associated protein. We also detected the binding of BRCA2 to ROCK2, an effector of Rho small GTPase. Because it is known that ROCK2 binds to NPM at centrosomes, these 3 proteins may form a complex. NPM-binding region was within amino acids 639–1,000 of BRCA2. Exogenous expression of this BRCA2 region resulted in aberrant centrosome amplification and a high frequency of multinucleated cells. Our results suggested that a complex consisting of BRCA2, NPM, and ROCK2 maintains the numerical integrity of centrosomes and accurate cell division and that dysfunction of this regulation might be involved in the tumorigenesis of breast cancer. Cancer Res; 71(1); 68–77. 2010 AACR.
Exposure to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and Male Reproductive Health

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) can interfere with normal hormonal balance and may exert adverse consequences on humans. The male reproductive system may be susceptible to the effects of such environmental toxicants. This review discusses the recent progress in scientific data mainly from epidemiology studies on the associations between EDCs and male reproductive health and our understanding of possible mechanisms associated with the effects of EDCs on male reproductive health. Finally, the review provides recommendations on future research to enhance our understanding of EDCs and male reproductive health. The review highlights the need for (1) well-defined longitudinal epidemiology studies, with appropriately designed exposure assessment to determine potential causal relationships; (2) chemical and biochemical approaches aimed at a better understanding of the mechanism of action of xenoestrogens with regard to low-dose effects, and assessment of identify genetic susceptibility factors associated with the risk of adverse effects following exposure to EDCs.