Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of background normalization methods for text-independent speaker verification

This paper compares two approaches to background model representation for a text-independent speaker verification task using Gaussian mixture models. We compare speaker-dependent background speaker sets to the use of a universal, speaker-independent background model (UBM). For the UBM, we describe how Bayesian adaptation can be used to derive claimant speaker models, providing a structure leading to significant computational savings during recognition. Experiments are conducted on the 1996 NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation corpus and it is clearly shown that a system using a UBM and Bayesian adaptation of claimant models produces superior performance compared to speaker-dependent background sets or the UBM with independent claimant models. In addition, the creation and use of a telephone handset-type detector and a procedure called hnorm is also described which shows further, large improvements in verification performance, especially under the difficult mismatched handset conditions. This is believed to be the first use of applying a handset-type detector and explicit handset-type normalization for the speaker verification task.
An efficient and effective robust algorithm for the classification of Jakarta vegetation area

This paper discusses an efficient and effective robust algorithm applied to the classification of vegetation areas in the Jakarta Province. The input data is remote sensing data from the Landsat 7 Satellite. The classification process is guided over two steps, training and classification. The purpose of the training step is to determine the reference spectra of the vegetation area, and the purpose of the classification step is to classify Jakarta areas as either vegetation or nonvegetation. An efficient robust approach is used to classify the Jakarta area using the anomolous digital number resulting from a failed instrument. This paper discusses the application of an efficient and effective robust method to classify the remote sensing data with anomolous or inconsistent observations. The aim is to propose a new efficient subset robust approach - the subset minimum vector variance - to classify the vegetation area of Jakarta. The minimum vector variance (MVV) is a robust method having a minimum of the square of the length of a parallelotope diagonal.
Induction of a Stringent Metabolic Response in Intracellular Stages of Leishmania mexicana Leads to Increased Dependence on Mitochondrial Metabolism

Leishmania parasites alternate between extracellular promastigote stages in the insect vector and an obligate intracellular amastigote stage that proliferates within the phagolysosomal compartment of macrophages in the mammalian host. Most enzymes involved in Leishmania central carbon metabolism are constitutively expressed and stage-specific changes in energy metabolism remain poorly defined. Using 13C-stable isotope resolved metabolomics and 2H2O labelling, we show that amastigote differentiation is associated with reduction in growth rate and induction of a distinct stringent metabolic state. This state is characterized by a global decrease in the uptake and utilization of glucose and amino acids, a reduced secretion of organic acids and increased fatty acid β-oxidation. Isotopomer analysis showed that catabolism of hexose and fatty acids provide C4 dicarboxylic acids (succinate/malate) and acetyl-CoA for the synthesis of glutamate via a compartmentalized mitochondrial tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. In vitro cultivated and intracellular amastigotes are acutely sensitive to inhibitors of mitochondrial aconitase and glutamine synthetase, indicating that these anabolic pathways are essential for intracellular growth and virulence. Lesion-derived amastigotes exhibit a similar metabolism to in vitro differentiated amastigotes, indicating that this stringent response is coupled to differentiation signals rather than exogenous nutrient levels. Induction of a stringent metabolic response may facilitate amastigote survival in a nutrient-poor intracellular niche and underlie the increased dependence of this stage on hexose and mitochondrial metabolism.
Network analysis of a tourist destination.

This paper relates to the study of relationships within a tourist destination in order to prove the existence of structural models around which the entire supply system is developed. All this is made possible by the analysis of the links existing between businesses belonging to the destination. We have focused on the role played by three families within the tourist destination assessing their role as an aggregating and driving force. This has been made possible by using one of the tools provided by SNA, namely Ego network analysis. This tool has allowed us to focus our attention on the role that individual businesses belonging to the three main families in San Vito Lo Capo (that we call Ego) play in the management of the destination. In particular, since the network of business relationships at this scarcely developed destination (i.e., in terms of density), the subjects are more likely to form relationships with those individuals who are acknowledged leaders. Within these tighter networks (Ego networks), the entities involved are urged to share norms and values that characterize the Ego and in this sense one can understand why leadership creates the social capital. It is easy to note that each business, when taken alone, cannot manage the entire destination but needs the help and support of the family of belonging to expand its sphere of influence. Only the coordination and cooperation of the three families can create an informal network that supports and sustains the entire destination.
Polynomials on the two dimensional torus

We present a new viewpoint (namely, reproducing kernels) and new proofs for several recent results of J. Geronimo and H. Woerdeman on orthogonal polynomials on the two dimenional torus (and related subjects). In addition, we show how their results give a new proof of Ando's inequality via an equivalent version proven by Cole and Wermer. A simple necessary and sufficient condition for two variable polynomial stability is also given.
Average mean based feature extraction for image retrieval

This paper aims to improve the effectiveness of retrieving images on the basis of color content by Color averaging technique. In this paper, a new technique of feature extraction based on relative mean is proposed. Here, the relative mean based technique initially normalizes the mean value into a binary form to reduce the computational complexity and to increase the speed of retrieval. Later, the binary values are represented as hexadecimal strings and stored in feature database. The proposed relative mean technique is tested on generic image database and indexed image database. Results obtained are compared with the existing technique based on memory utilization and query execution time. The experimental results show that proposed relative mean gives the better performance in terms of higher precision and recall values with less computational complexity than the conventional techniques.
Long-term Expertise with Artificial Objects Increases Visual Competition with Early Face Categorization Processes

The degree of commonality between the perceptual mechanisms involved in processing faces and objects of expertise is intensely debated. To clarify this issue, we recorded occipito-temporal event-related potentials in response to faces when concurrently processing visual objects of expertise. In car experts fixating pictures of cars, we observed a large decrease of an evoked potential elicited by face stimuli between 130 and 200 msec, the N170. This sensory suppression was much lower when the car and face stimuli were separated by a 200-msec blank interval. With and without this delay, there was a strong correlation between the face-evoked N170 amplitude decrease and the subject's level of car expertise as measured in an independent behavioral task. Together, these results show that neural representations of faces and nonface objects in a domain of expertise compete for visual processes in the occipito-temporal cortex as early as 130200 msec following stimulus onset.
Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1976-2014

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has experienced the most outbreaks of Ebola virus disease since the virus' discovery in 1976. This article provides for the first time a description and a line list for all outbreaks in this country, comprising 996 cases. Compared to patients over 15 years old, the odds of dying were significantly lower in patients aged 5 to 15 and higher in children under five (with 100% mortality in those under 2 years old). The odds of dying increased by 11% per day that a patient was not hospitalised. Outbreaks with an initially high reproduction number, R (>3), were rapidly brought under control, whilst outbreaks with a lower initial R caused longer and generally larger outbreaks. These findings can inform the choice of target age groups for interventions and highlight the importance of both reducing the delay between symptom onset and hospitalisation and rapid national and international response. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.09015. 001
The discourse of climate change: a corpus-based approach

Based on Goffman’s definition that frames are general ‘schemata of interpretation’ that people use to ‘locate, perceive, identify, and label’, other scholars have used the concept in a more specific way to analyze media coverage. Frames are used in the sense of organizing devices that allow journalists to select and emphasise topics, to decide ‘what matters’ (Gitlin 1980). Gamson and Modigliani (1989) consider frames as being embedded within ‘media packages’ that can be seen as ‘giving meaning’ to an issue. According to Entman (1993), framing comprises a combination of different activities such as: problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. Previous research has analysed climate change with the purpose of testing Downs’s model of the issue attention cycle (Trumbo 1996), to uncover media biases in the US press (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004), to highlight differences between nations (Brossard et al. 2004; Grundmann 2007) or to analyze cultural reconstructions of scientific knowledge (Carvalho and Burgess 2005). In this paper we shall present data from a corpus linguistics-based approach. We will be drawing on results of a pilot study conducted in Spring 2008 based on the Nexis news media archive. Based on comparative data from the US, the UK, France and Germany, we aim to show how the climate change issue has been framed differently in these countries and how this framing indicates differences in national climate change policies.
THE PARTICIPATION IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES AND SCHOOLCHILDREN’S RELATIONS WITH TEACHERS

This article presents research data, the aim of which was to find out the relationship of schoolchildren’s participation in extracurricular activities and their trust in teachers and their inter respect. When analysing research data, the nature of extracurricular activities was also considered. The study included 1382 schoolchildren of different ages (sixth – eleventh grades) from various schools in Kaunas district (the main schools, secondary schools and gymnasiums). The results showed that schoolchildren usually choose sport activities, while artistic training activities are less chosen, and technical activities are the rarest. One fifth of schoolchildren attend several extracurricular activities at the same time. One third of schoolchildren do not attend extracurricular activity at all. The analysis of research data has revealed that schoolchildren, who attend extracurricular activity, trust in teachers more. Compared with schoolchildren who do not attend any after school activity, pupils who attend this activity are more inclined to reveal their personal problems to teachers and believe that teachers would listen to them. On the other hand, more than half of respondents, who attend and do not attend any extracurricular activities, named only several teachers to whom they could appeal for help. Research data has shown a tendency that schoolchildren who are engaged in sport activities trust teachers less if compared with those schoolchildren who attend other activities. Though schoolchildren who attend various extracurricular activities notice respect from teachers more, they themselves are not inclined to respect teachers more. While evaluating data according to the nature of extracurricular activities, no such differences were noticed.
Selecting Ministers in Times of Crisis: A Historical Analysis of the Role of Intra-Party Politics and Union Background in Swedish Cabinet Appointments 1917–2014

In this article, we connect intra-party politics to macro events by asking what types of ministers are selected in times of fiscal crisis. Drawing on the previous literature we present two alternative hypotheses about the role of the union background in cabinet selection: (1) ministers with union background are less likely to be appointed during crises, since they are likely to oppose necessary spending cuts and (2) ministers with union background are more likely to be appointed during crises, since there is a need to appease union factions within the party. We evaluate these hypotheses using a unique historical dataset on the background of ministers in Sweden between 1917 and 2014. Overall, we find strong support for the hypothesis that fiscal crises increase the likelihood that ministers will have a union background, suggesting that ministers are appointed to appease the union faction within the party in times of fiscal crisis.
Subshifts of multi-dimensional shifts of finite type

We show that every shift of finite type $X$ with positive entropy has proper subshifts of finite type with entropy strictly smaller than the entropy of $X$, but with entropy arbitrarily close to the entropy of $X$. Consequently, $X$ contains an infinite chain of subshifts of finite type which is strictly decreasing in entropy.
Cross-Promotion in Social Media: Choosing the Right Allies

This paper investigates the strategic use of cross-promotion for content producers in social media. In particular, we study how a producer chooses other producers to cross-promote so as to maximize the expected benefits of them cross-promoting him/her in return. Theories on homophily effect and social influence suggest that cross-promoted producers are more likely to cross-promote the initiator in return when they are in the similar categories or share more common friends and when the initiator has higher status. However, the cross-promotion from producers of different categories and social groups (i.e., share fewer common friends) tend to benefit the initiator more. The benefits also increase as the status of the initiator increases. We collected a panel of data consisting of 27,356 producers’ profile and status information, content categories, and their cross-promotion activities over a period of two months from YouTube. To test our hypotheses, we first employ a cox proportional hazard model to estimate the probability of cross-promotion in return. Then, we use a difference-in-differences method with panel fixed effects to evaluate the effect of cross-promotion in return on the initiator. Our results strongly support our hypotheses and provide valuable insights for both content producers and social media platforms.
How Was the Weekend? How the Social Context Underlies Weekend Effects in Happiness and Other Emotions for US Workers

In this paper we estimate the size of weekend effects for seven emotions and then explore their main determinants for the working population in the United States, using the Gallup/Healthways US Daily Poll 2008–2012. We first find that weekend effects exist for all emotions, and that these effects are not explained by sample selection bias. Full-time workers have larger weekend effects than do part-time workers. We then explore the sources of weekend effects and find that workplace trust and workplace social relations, combined with differences in social time spent with family and friends, together almost fully explain the weekend effects for happiness, laughter, enjoyment and sadness, for both full-time and part-time workers, with significant but smaller proportions explained for the remaining three emotions—worry, anger and stress. Finally, we show that workplace trust and social relations significantly improve emotions and life evaluations on both weekends and weekdays for all workers.
STABLE MEET SEMILATTICE FIBRATIONS AND FREE RESTRICTION CATEGORIES

The construction of a free restriction category can be broken into two steps: the construction of a free stable semilattice fibration followed by the construction of a free restriction category for this fibration. Restriction categories produced from such fibrations are "unitary", in a sense which generalizes that from the theory of inverse semigroups. Characterization theorems for unitary restriction categories are derived. The paper ends with an explicit description of the free restriction category on a directed graph.
Development and Standardization of an Alienation Scale for Visually Impaired Students

Introduction The present study was undertaken to develop a valid and reliable scale for measuring a feeling of alienation in students with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision). Methods In this study, a pool of 60 items was generated to develop an Alienation Scale for Visually Impaired Students (AL-VI) based on a review of the literature and discussions with colleagues and experts in the field. The items were organized into six dimensions of alienation, namely powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, social isolation, self-estrangement, and cultural estrangement, and were rated on the five-point Likert scale. The standardization of the scale was completed with 118 students with visual impairments in the age group of 10 to 25 years, selected randomly from specialized and inclusive schools in the state of Haryana, India. Results The item analysis was done by calculating t- and r-values; seven items were deleted, and a final 45 items were retained. The calculated value of Cronbach's alpha and split-half correlation came out to be 0.87 and 0.86, respectively. The construct validity was determined by computing the coefficient of correlation between scores of this scale and the scores obtained by using the Student Alienation scale (SAS) of R. R. Sharma (Sharma, 2012). The percentile norm for the scale was determined after verifying normality of the scores by using a Q-Q plot. Discussion The findings of the present study suggest that the AL-VI may serve as a useful tool in future research to assess alienation in persons with visual impairments in India. The findings further demonstrate that the AL-VI produced scores that are reliable and valid. The AL-VI can be used outside India after determining its reliability and validity in context-specific conditions. Implications for practitioners The AL-VI scale is applicable to students with visual impairments, teachers of students with visual impairments, principals, social workers, psychologists, and rehabilitation professionals. Practitioners could use this tool for assessing and understanding the level of alienation among students with visual impairments, thereby helping them in planning and executing strategies for remediating alienation.
A many-objective optimization model for construction scheduling

Abstract In recent years, the number of stakeholders of construction projects has significantly increased; this has required the simultaneous achievement of competing objectives, such as reductions in the time, cost, resources, and environmental impact of a project, for example. In order to achieve a balance between these objectives, several multiple-objective construction scheduling models have been reported in the literature. However, several challenges have been encountered, due to the complexities of modelling and visualizing more than three objectives simultaneously. Some of these challenges are addressed in this work via the development of a many-objective scheduling model (MOSM) based on a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm for the simultaneous optimization of four objectives: time, cost, resources and environmental impact. Coordinate plots are used to visualize the trade-offs made between all four of these objectives. A weighted sum is introduced that offers the project team the freedom to choose an optimal solution, depending on the specific priorities of the project, and the practical application of the model is demonstrated via a case study. Our MOSM allows the optimal outcome to be achieved in construction projects with multiple objectives.
Trait Appreciation of Beauty: A Story of Love, Transcendence, and Inquiry

This review of the trait of appreciation of beauty (AoB) draws from the literature in personality psychology, philosophy, religion, neuroscience, neuro-aesthetics, evolutionary psychology, and the psychology of morality. We demonstrate that AoB can be mapped onto a definition of appreciation that includes perceptual, cognitive, emotional, trait, virtue, and valuing elements. A classic component of defining beauty, unity-in-diversity, is described based on the works of a variety of major philosophers. We next describe that there are at least four channels of appreciation of beauty: natural beauty, artistic beauty, moral beauty, and beautiful ideas. Examining the neuro-aesthetics research indicates that many networks of the brain are involved in mental acts of appreciating beauty, but the medial orbital front cortex (mOFC) is implicated across all four channels of beauty. We then explain how the trait of AoB is a member of three different families of traits: traits of love, traits of transcendence, and traits of inquiry. Next we briefly explain why Kant may have been more correct than Hegel concerning beauty and the good soul. We then present evidence that women may appreciate beauty somewhat more than men. Data from many cultures and nations consistently indicate this. After that we claim AoB leads to individual and collective flourishing. We examine and summarize studies that indicate appreciation of natural beauty leads to a wide variety of positive outcomes; we focus on the importance of open-mindedness that accompanies engagement with artistic beauty; and we summarize studies regarding the moral emotion of elevation and appreciation of moral beauty. Suggested future directions for research are embedded in each subsection of the paper.
Foreign funding to an emerging market: the Monetary Premium Theory and the Brazilian Case, 1991 - 1998

We develop a framework to explain the private capital flows between the rest of the world and an emerging economy. The model, based on the monetary premium theory, relates an endogenous supply of foreign capitals to an endogenous differential of interest rates; its estimation uses the econometric techniques initiated by Heckman. Four questions regarding the capital flows phenomenon are explored, including the statistical process that governs the events of default and the impact of the probability of default on the interest rate differential. Using the methodology, we analyse the dynamics of foreign capital movements in Brazil during the 1991- 1998 period.