Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyzing Hidden Representations in End-to-End Automatic Speech Recognition Systems

Neural models have become ubiquitous in automatic speech recognition systems. While neural networks are typically used as acoustic models in more complex systems, recent studies have explored end-to-end speech recognition systems based on neural networks, which can be trained to directly predict text from input acoustic features. Although such systems are conceptually elegant and simpler than traditional systems, it is less obvious how to interpret the trained models. In this work, we analyze the speech representations learned by a deep end-to-end model that is based on convolutional and recurrent layers, and trained with a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) loss. We use a pre-trained model to generate frame-level features which are given to a classifier that is trained on frame classification into phones. We evaluate representations from different layers of the deep model and compare their quality for predicting phone labels. Our experiments shed light on important aspects of the end-to-end model such as layer depth, model complexity, and other design choices.
Prevalence and determinants of caesarean section in private and public health facilities in underserved South Asian communities: cross-sectional analysis of data from Bangladesh, India and Nepal

Objectives To describe the prevalence and determinants of births by caesarean section in private and public health facilities in underserved communities in South Asia. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting 81 community-based geographical clusters in four locations in Bangladesh, India and Nepal (three rural, one urban). Participants 45 327 births occurring in the study areas between 2005 and 2012. Outcome measures Proportion of caesarean section deliveries by location and type of facility; determinants of caesarean section delivery by location. Results Institutional delivery rates varied widely between settings, from 21% in rural India to 90% in urban India. The proportion of private and charitable facility births delivered by caesarean section was 73% in Bangladesh, 30% in rural Nepal, 18% in urban India and 5% in rural India. The odds of caesarean section were greater in private and charitable health facilities than in public facilities in three of four study locations, even when adjusted for pregnancy and delivery characteristics, maternal characteristics and year of delivery (Bangladesh: adjusted OR (AOR) 5.91, 95% CI 5.15 to 6.78; Nepal: AOR 2.37, 95% CI 1.62 to 3.44; urban India: AOR 1.22, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.38). We found that highly educated women were particularly likely to deliver by caesarean in private facilities in urban India (AOR 2.10; 95% CI 1.61 to 2.75) and also in rural Bangladesh (AOR 11.09, 95% CI 6.28 to 19.57). Conclusions Our results lend support to the hypothesis that increased caesarean section rates in these South Asian countries may be driven in part by the private sector. They also suggest that preferences for caesarean delivery may be higher among highly educated women, and that individual-level and provider-level factors interact in driving caesarean rates higher. Rates of caesarean section in the private sector, and their maternal and neonatal health outcomes, require close monitoring.
Mutational escape from CD8+ T cell immunity

The mechanisms by which the hepatitis C virus (HCV) establishes persistence are not yet fully understood. Previous chimpanzee and now human studies suggest that mutations within MHC class I–restricted HCV epitopes might contribute to viral escape from cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. However, there are several outstanding questions regarding the role of escape mutations in viral persistence and their fate in the absence of immune selection pressure.
Subcortical somatosensory evoked potentials to median nerve stimulation.

1. Somatosensory evoked potentials to median nerve stimulation recorded from neck-scalp derivation consisted of four components: two negativities (N10 and N12) which were recorded from the neck electrode and two positivities (P11 and P13) which were recorded from the scalp electrode. 2. Evidence is presented pointing to the following origin of these components: N10 = afferent volley at the peripheral nerve immediately before it enters the intervertebral foramen; P11 = afferent volley at the dorsal rootlets of C6; N12 = postsynaptic dorsal cord potentials (ipsilateral dorsal horns of C6, C7); P13 = afferent volley in dorsal column at the level of the foramen magnum. 3. In the neck-scalp derivation the two main upward deflections are best identified by using a low cervical recording electrode and filtering out slow components of less than 150 Hz. Applying this technique the two main upward deflections can be consistently identified in all controls and correspond exactly to the latencies of peaks P11 and P13. The cervical components N10 and N12 are obscured by the more prominent positivities from the scalp. 4. Evidence is presented which suggest that the three far field potentials recorded from Fpz are due to the abrupt change in current flow produced when the afferent volley enters the cervicothoracic muscle groups at the axilla (P8), the sP1nal canal (P11) and finally the skull (P13). 5. The fact is stressed that in recording far field potentials, both recording electrodes (grid I and grid II) are usually active. Proof is presented that even the frequently used contralateral shoulder or hand noncephalic reference P1cks up a triphasic wave which reflects the afferent volley as it passes through the neck. 6. No evidence was obtained that the ascending volley in the cervical dorsal columns (‘travelling wave’) contributes to any significant degree to the potentials recorded from cervical electrodes. 7. For routine recordings of subcortical somatosensory evoked potentials the following procedures are recommended. (a) Low cervical-midfrontal montage complemented by noncephalic ‘reference’ recording (low neck-contralateral shoulder and midfrontal-contralateral shoulder). (b) Filtering out of slow frequencies under 150 Hz for selective recording of the afferent volley. This can be complemented by open low frequency filter settings to amplify selectively the dorsal cord potential (N12). (c) Measurement of relative latencies with respect to the negative peak recorded at the clavicle (P11-N9; P13-N9; P20-N9). (d) Transformation of amplitudes into logarithms for statistical analysis and the use of logarithms of ratio of amplitudes (left/right and unilateral/bilateral) to define abnormalities of amplitudes.
Pediatric Chronic Nonbacterial Osteomyelitis

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Little information is available concerning the natural history and optimal treatment of chronic nonbacterial osteomyelitis (CNO). We conducted a retrospective review to assess the clinical characteristics and treatment responses of a large cohort of pediatric CNO patients. METHODS: Children diagnosed with CNO at 3 tertiary care centers in the United States between 1985 and 2009 were identified. Their charts were reviewed, and clinical, laboratory, histopathologic, and radiologic data were extracted. RESULTS: Seventy children with CNO (67% female patients) were identified. Median age at onset was 9.6 years (range 3–17), and median follow-up was 1.8 years (range 0–13). Half of the patients had comorbid autoimmune diseases, and 49% had a family history of autoimmunity. Patients with comorbid autoimmune diseases had more bone lesions (P < .001), higher erythrocyte sedimentation rate (P < .05), and higher use of second line therapy (P = .02). Treatment response to nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), sulfasalazine, methotrexate, tumor necrosis factor α inhibitors, and corticosteroids was evaluated. The only significant predictor of a positive treatment response was the agent used (P < .0001). Estimated probability of response was 57% for NSAIDs, 66% for sulfasalazine, 91% for methotrexate, 91% for tumor necrosis factor α inhibitors, and 95% for corticosteroids. CONCLUSIONS: In a US cohort of 70 children with CNO, coexisting autoimmunity was a risk factor for multifocal involvement and treatment with immunosuppressive agents. Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and biologics were more likely to lead to clinical improvement than NSAIDs.
Magnetic resonance temperature imaging validation of a bioheat transfer model for laser‐induced thermal therapy

Purpose: Magnetic resonance‐guided laser‐induced thermal therapy (MRgLITT) is currently undergoing initial safety and feasibility clinical studies for the treatment of intracranial lesions in humans. As studies progress towards evaluation of treatment efficacy, predictive computational models may play an important role for prospective 3D treatment planning. The current work critically evaluates a computational model of laser induced bioheat transfer against retrospective multiplanar MR thermal imaging (MRTI) in a canine model of the MRgLITT procedure in the brain. Methods: A 3D finite element model of the bioheat transfer that couples Pennes equation to a diffusion theory approximation of light transport in tissue is used. The laser source is modelled conformal with the applicator geometry. Dirichlet boundary conditions are used to model the temperature of the actively cooled catheter. The MRgLITT procedure was performed on n = 4 canines using a 1‐cm diffusing tip 15‐W diode laser (980 nm). A weighted norm is used as the metric of comparison between the spatiotemporal MR‐derived temperature estimates and model prediction. Results: The normalised error history between the computational models and MRTI was within 1–4 standard deviations of MRTI noise. Active cooling models indicate that the applicator temperature has a strong effect on the maximum temperature reached, but does not significantly decrease the tissue temperature away from the active tip. Conclusions: Results demonstrate the computational model of the bioheat transfer may provide a reasonable approximation of the laser–tissue interaction, which could be useful for treatment planning, but cannot readily replace MR temperature imaging in a complex environment such as the brain.
2 Status “ Leakage ” in the Executive Suite : The Impact of CEO Status Attainment on the Economic Outcomes of Other Senior Managers

In this paper we develop and test predictions regarding the impact of CEO status on the economic outcomes of members of his or her top management team. Using a unique data set incorporating Financial World’s widely publicized CEO of the Year contest, we found that non-CEO top management team members received higher pay when they worked for a high status CEO and were also more likely to become CEOs themselves. At the same time, however, the pay gap between the CEO and the rest of the top management team was wider in firms with high status CEOs. We also show that there is a “burden of celebrity” in that the above relationships are contingent on how well a firm performs.
Play and Learn: Using Video Games to Train Computer Vision Models

Video games are a compelling source of annotated data as they can readily provide fine-grained groundtruth for diverse tasks. However, it is not clear whether the synthetically generated data has enough resemblance to the real-world images to improve the performance of computer vision models in practice. We present experiments assessing the effectiveness on real-world data of systems trained on synthetic RGB images that are extracted from a video game. We collected over 60000 synthetic samples from a modern video game with similar conditions to the real-world CamVid and Cityscapes datasets. We provide several experiments to demonstrate that the synthetically generated RGB images can be used to improve the performance of deep neural networks on both image segmentation and depth estimation. These results show that a convolutional network trained on synthetic data achieves a similar test error to a network that is trained on real-world data for dense image classification. Furthermore, the synthetically generated RGB images can provide similar or better results compared to the real-world datasets if a simple domain adaptation technique is applied. Our results suggest that collaboration with game developers for an accessible interface to gather data is potentially a fruitful direction for future work in computer vision.
Wireless-Enabled Telemedicine System for Remote Monitoring

Telemedicine services are increasingly utilized by patients, clinicians, and institutions. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of wireless-enabled telemedicine system using Bluetooth. Our proposed system will provide doctors with the ability to monitor, diagnose and help their patients in case of emergencies remotely over the Internet. The system is capable of receiving a serial stream of data and extracting relevant packets from the measurements of the patient's vital signs. The implemented software allows patients to easily access their doctors and to send their data via Internet. The system is fairly low-cost, fully functional and user friendly.
MAFFT version 5: improvement in accuracy of multiple sequence alignment

The accuracy of multiple sequence alignment program MAFFT has been improved. The new version (5.3) of MAFFT offers new iterative refinement options, H-INS-i, F-INS-i and G-INS-i, in which pairwise alignment information are incorporated into objective function. These new options of MAFFT showed higher accuracy than currently available methods including TCoffee version 2 and CLUSTAL W in benchmark tests consisting of alignments of >50 sequences. Like the previously available options, the new options of MAFFT can handle hundreds of sequences on a standard desktop computer. We also examined the effect of the number of homologues included in an alignment. For a multiple alignment consisting of ∼8 sequences with low similarity, the accuracy was improved (2–10 percentage points) when the sequences were aligned together with dozens of their close homologues (E-value < 10−5–10−20) collected from a database. Such improvement was generally observed for most methods, but remarkably large for the new options of MAFFT proposed here. Thus, we made a Ruby script, mafftE.rb, which aligns the input sequences together with their close homologues collected from SwissProt using NCBI-BLAST.
conditions : insights from models of natural action selection Understanding decision-making deficits in neurological

Supplementary data ml http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/suppl/2009/03/09/362.1485. 1641.DC1. ht "Data Supplement" References http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/362/1485/1641.full. html#related-urls Article cited in: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing. org/content/362/1485/1641.full. html#ref-list-1 This article cites 121 articles, 32 of which can be accessed free Email alerting service here right-hand corner of the article or click Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article sign up in the box at the top
Analysis of quasispecies variation in single and mixed viral infection

Abstract Population diversity was examined in individual and natural mixed infections of Cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) and Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) isolates in two systemic hosts, cowpea and Nicotiana benthamiana. Isolates of CCMV and CMV obtained from a cowpea field in Arkansas were separated biologically in cowpea and tobacco plants, respectively. After separation, individual and mixed cultures of both viruses were serially passaged ten times by mechanical inoculation in cowpea and N. benthamiana. High-fidelity reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (HiFi RT-PCR) of RNA 3, followed by cDNA cloning and sequence analysis was used to assess the quasispecies cloud size of CCMV and CMV populations in passages zero and ten of each host species. The levels of population variation were generally higher in individual infections of CCMV-Car1 and-Car2 isolates, and the CMV-Car2 isolate compared with mixed infections, in both host species, although the significance of the differences varied depending on how mutations were counted. There were no significant differences in the levels of population variation in individual and mixed infections of the CMV-Car1 isolate. Partially fixed mutations were observed in both individual and mixed infections of the CCMV-Car2 isolate in N. benthamiana and CMV-Car1 and-Car2 isolates in both cowpea and N. benthamiana.
Deal or No Deal? - Asessing the Daily Deal Shopper

We build upon previous work done in online shopping segmentation but follow a customer-revealed approach by using an explorative cluster analysis on a sample of 11,848 daily deal shoppers located in Switzerland. We identify six segments into which the daily deal shoppers can be categorized: recreational shoppers, mobile shoppers, traditionalists, bargain hunters, socializers, and convenience seekers. These clusters are distinctively different in terms of shopping motives, online behavior, and demographics. By following these clusters, our research maps for the first time the field of daily deal shopping in Switzerland. Our findings have implications for business, as they suggest how to best serve different segments to enhance the customer experience, and for research, as they complement daily deal literature by identifying daily deal shopper segments.
DNA-Binding Ability of NF-κB is Affected Differently by ERα and ERβ and Its Activation Results in Inhibition of Estrogen Responsiveness

Estrogenic effects involve interactions between estrogen receptors (ERs), response elements, and nuclear proteins. It is hypothesized that interaction between ER and NF-κ B may affect the regulation of responsive genes. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) was performed to assess if the interaction of ERs and NF- κB affect their respective DNA-binding activities, and alkaline phosphatase assay was done to evaluate estrogenic activity. EMSA revealed that ERs inhibit DNA-binding of p50 and p65, whereas p50 did not impair ER α binding. Stimulation with estradiol inhibited DNA binding of NF-κB in ERα-transfected endometrial stromal cells (ESCs). Moreover, activation of NF-κB significantly decreased estrogen responsiveness of Ishikawa cells and ERα-transfected ESC. Our results suggest that ERs downregulate NF-κB-dependent gene activation by directly preventing DNA binding. However, NF-κB-mediated inhibition of ER-dependent gene activation may be carried out indirectly rather than through a direct inhibition of ER-DNA binding. These findings offer new insight into the specific role of ERα and could eventually help in developing therapeutics for endometriosis.
Electro-optics of polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal displays

Electro-optics of polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal displays (BP LCDs) is analyzed and validated experimentally. A numerical model for characterizing and optimizing the electro-optical and display properties of BP LCDs in in-plane switching and fringe field switching cells is developed. The simulated voltage-dependent transmittance curves agree well with the measured results. To lower the operating voltage while keeping a high transmittance, both electrode width and gap, and large Kerr constant make important contributions. A wide-view BP LCD using a single biaxial compensation film is simulated.
Phenotypic plasticity and diversity in insects

Phenotypic plasticity in general and polyphenic development in particular are thought to play important roles in organismal diversification and evolutionary innovation. Focusing on the evolutionary developmental biology of insects, and specifically that of horned beetles, I explore the avenues by which phenotypic plasticity and polyphenic development have mediated the origins of novelty and diversity. Specifically, I argue that phenotypic plasticity generates novel targets for evolutionary processes to act on, as well as brings about trade-offs during development and evolution, thereby diversifying evolutionary trajectories available to natural populations. Lastly, I examine the notion that in those cases in which phenotypic plasticity is underlain by modularity in gene expression, it results in a fundamental trade-off between degree of plasticity and mutation accumulation. On one hand, this trade-off limits the extent of plasticity that can be accommodated by modularity of gene expression. On the other hand, it causes genes whose expression is specific to rare environments to accumulate greater variation within species, providing the opportunity for faster divergence and diversification between species, compared with genes expressed across environments. Phenotypic plasticity therefore contributes to organismal diversification on a variety of levels of biological organization, thereby facilitating the evolution of novel traits, new species and complex life cycles.
Multiply- and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated in the German Democratic Republic in 1985 and 1986

SUMMARY Multiply- and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains have been isolated from five small outbreaks of nosocomial infection in five different hospitals. The MRSA were typed by phage patterns, biochemical traits, resistance phenotypes and plasmid patterns. Three different groups of strains can be distinguished. The MRSA from three outbreaks in one country share identical characters. Phage typing by the use of the International Basic Set for Phage Typing staphylococci as well as experimental phages does not completely discriminate between the strains. Attribution of several resistance determinants to plasmids in two of the described strain groups proved valuable for strain differentiation. These multiply-resistant strains are sensitive to vancomycin and to rifampicin.