Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Retargeting cued speech hand gestures for different talking heads and speakers

Cued Speech is a communication system that complements lip-reading with a small set of possible handshapes placed in different positions near the face. Developing a Cued Speech capable system is a time-consuming and difficult challenge. This paper focuses on how an existing bank of reference Cued Speech gestures, exhibiting natural dynamics for hand articulation and movements, could be reused for another speaker (augmenting some video or 3D talking heads). Any Cued Speech hand gesture should be recorded or considered with the concomitant facial locations that Cued Speech specifies to leverage the lip reading ambiguities (such as lip corner, chin, cheek and throat for French). These facial target points are moving along with head movements and because of speech articulation. The post-treatment algorithm proposed here will retarget synthesized hand gestures to another face, by slightly modifying the sequence of translations and rotations of the 3D hand. This algorithm preserves the coarticulation of the reference signal (including undershooting of the trajectories, as observed in fast Cued Speech) while adapting the gestures to the geometry, articulation and movements of the target face. We will illustrate how our Cued Speech capable audiovisual synthesizer – built using simultaneously recorded hand trajectories and facial articulation of a single French Cued Speech user – can be used as a reference signal for this retargeting algorithm. For the ongoing evaluation of our algorithm, an intelligibility paradigm has been retained, using natural videos for the face. The intelligibility of some video VCV sequences with composited hand gestures for Cued Speech is being measured using a panel of Cued Speech users. Index Terms: Cued Speech, hand motion retargeting, augmented speech
Effect of body mass index on pulmonary function in children

Introduction The relationship between obesity or overweight and pulmonary functions has not been investigated in Sri Lankan children previously. Therefore, we aimed to study the effects of obesity/overweight on dynamic lung functions in healthy school children in Sri Lanka. Methods Results Of 275 children 55 (20%) were ‘obese/ overweight’. BMI has no significant relationship to any of the pulmonary function parameters. However, in contrast to what is expected, mean values of FVC, FEV1 and FEF 25-75% were lower in ‘normal weight’ group (Table 2). Conclusions No significant difference was detected in spirometry parameters between obese/overweight and normal weight school children in our study.
Effectiveness of Blood Pressure Control Outside the Medical Setting

We studied the effectiveness of blood pressure (BP) control outside the clinic by using ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) among a large number of hypertensive subjects treated in primary care centers across Spain. The sample consisted of 12 897 treated hypertensive subjects who had indications for ABPM. Office-based BP was calculated as the average of 2 readings. Twenty-four–hour ABPM was then performed using a SpaceLabs 90207 monitor under standardized conditions. A total of 3047 patients (23.6%) had their office BP controlled, and 6657 (51.6%) were controlled according to daytime ABPM. The proportion of office resistance or underestimation of patients’ BP control by physicians in the office (office BP ≥140/90 mm Hg and average daytime ambulatory BP <135/85 mm Hg) was 33.4%, and the proportion of isolated office control or overestimation of control (office BP <140/90 mm Hg and average daytime ambulatory BP ≥135/85 mm Hg) was 5.4%. BP control was more frequently underestimated in patients who were older, female, obese, or with morning BP determination than in their counterparts. BP control was more frequently overestimated in those who were younger, male, nonobese, smokers, or with evening BP determination. Ambulatory-based hypertension control was far better than office-based hypertension control. This conveys an encouraging message to clinicians, namely that they are actually doing better than is evidenced by office-based data. However, the burden of underestimation and overestimation of BP control at the office is still remarkable. Physicians should be aware that the likelihood of misestimating BP control is higher in some hypertensive subjects.
Plankton Patch Feasibility Experiments

Abstract : My long - term goal is to increase our understanding of the biological - biological, physical - biological and chemical - biological interactions that control the initiation, maintenance and dissipation of plankton patches. This goal can most readily be achieved by directly measuring processes thought to control plankton patch dynamics, experimentally testing their importance, incorporating those processes into conceptual plankton dynamics models, and then testing the models in the ocean.
Characterization of Drosophila mini-me, a Gene Required for Cell Proliferation and Survival

In the developing Drosophila eye, the morphogenetic furrow is a developmental organizing center for patterning and cell proliferation. The furrow acts both to limit eye size and to coordinate the number of cells to the number of facets. Here we report the molecular and functional characterization of Drosophila mini-me (mnm), a potential regulator of cell proliferation and survival in the developing eye. We first identified mnm as a dominant modifier of hedgehog loss-of-function in the developing eye. We report that mnm encodes a conserved protein with zinc knuckle and RING finger domains. We show that mnm is dispensable for patterning of the eye disc, but required in the eye for normal cell proliferation and survival. We also show that mnm null mutant cells exhibit altered cell cycle profiles and contain excess nucleic acid. Moreover, mnm overexpression can induce cells to proliferate and incorporate BrdU. Thus, our data implicate mnm as a regulator of mitotic progression during the proliferative phase of eye development, possibly through the control of nucleic acid metabolism.
Mutation analysis of hepatitis B virus reverse transcriptase region among untreated chronically infected patients in Ahvaz city (South-West of Iran).

BACKGROUND It has been revealed that mutations can occur spontaneously and naturally in HBV reverse transcriptase (RT) region among untreated patients. These HBV mutants pre-exist as minor viral population in naive patients and can emerge as major viral population, conferring drug resistance and treatment failure. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to investigate and identify prevalent mutations of RT region of hepatitis B virus genome in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) untreated with antiviral drugs in South-West of Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 45 cases with CHB who did not receive the treatment of lamivudine and any other antivirus drugs within the last one year were randomly chosen. After sample collection and HBV DNA extraction, RT region was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Then PCR products were sequenced and HBV RT region mutations and amino acid changes were analyzed either manually or using web-based programs, on the basis of comparison of the obtained sequences with a set of HBV reference sequences. RESULTS A total of 23 (51.1%) mutations and amino acid changes were detected in studied 45 untreated patients. Of these, 3 (6.6%) patients had primary resistance mutation (rtM204I, rtA181T and rtA181S) and 20 (44.4%) patients had secondary resistance mutations. CONCLUSION High prevalence of mutations was found in HBV RT region of untreated patients. Most of these mutations were associated with resistance to adefovir and one patient had primary resistance mutation to lamivudine. Awareness of these resistance patterns might help in the antiviral therapy and for predicting clinical outcomes.
Historical aspects of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria: ‘defining the disease’

This history of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH) is divided into two parts. Part I, the Early History, begins with a review of the initial description of the disease (published in the latter part of the 19th century) and concludes with a recounting of the discovery of the alternative pathway of complement by Pillemer in the early 1950s. Part II, the Modern History, begins with a review of the studies of Dacie and Rosse. The results of their experiments, published in the mid-1960s, defined many of the unique features of the disease. This chronicle ends with a summary of the studies that built on the seminal discovery in 1993 by Kinoshita and colleagues of the genetic basis of PNH.
Regulation by the H-2 gene complex of macrophage-lymphoid cell interactions in secondary antibody responses in vitro

The ability of antigen-bearing syngeneic and allogeneic peptone-induced peritoneal exudate macrophages to support development of primary and secondary antibody responses by murine lymphoid or spleen cells in vitro has been investigated. The antigen used was the terpolymer of L- glutamic acid60-L-alanine30-L-tyrosine10 (GAT). Syngeneic and allogeneic macrophages supported development of comparable primary antibody responses to GAT, indicating that genetic restrictions do not limit efficient macrophage-lymphocyte interactions in primary responses. By contrast, immunized spleen or lymphoid cells developed secondary antibody responses preferentially when stimulated in vitro with GAT on macrophages syngeneic to the macrophages used to present GAT during in vivo immunization. Thus, genetic restrictions regulate efficient macrophage-lymphocyte interactions in secondary antibody responses. These restrictions have been demonstrated from 2 to 8 wk after a single immunization with limiting quantities of GAT and are controlled by the H-2 gene complex. The implications that immune lymphocytes selectively recognize and respond to antigen presented in the context of the macrophage membrane-antigen complex which sensitized the lymphocytes initially are considered.
A Preliminary Report on the CO2 Laser for Lumbar Fusion: Safety, Efficacy and Technical Considerations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate potential technical advantages of the CO2 laser technology in mini-open transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) surgeries and report our preliminary clinical data on the safety and clinical outcomes. There is currently no literature discussing the recently redeveloped CO2 laser technology application for lumbar fusion. Safety and clinical outcomes were compared between two groups: 24 patients that underwent CO2 laser-assisted one-level TLIF surgeries and 30 patients that underwent standard one-level TLIF surgeries without the laser. There were no neural thermal injuries or other intraoperative laser-related complications encountered in this cohort of patients. At a mean follow-up of 17.4 months, significantly reduced lower back pain scores (P=0.013) were reported in the laser-assisted patient group compared to a standard fusion patient group. Lower extremity radicular pain intensity scores were similar in both groups. Laser-assisted TLIF surgeries showed a tendency (P = 0.07) of shorter operative times that was not statistically significant. Based on this preliminary clinical report, the safety of the CO2 laser device for lumbar fusion surgeries was assessed. There were no neural thermal injuries or other intraoperative laser-related complications encountered in this cohort of patients. Further investigation of CO2 laser-assisted lumbar fusion procedures is warranted in order to evaluate its effect on clinical outcomes.
Shared acoustic codes underlie emotional communication in music and speech—Evidence from deep transfer learning

Music and speech exhibit striking similarities in the communication of emotions in the acoustic domain, in such a way that the communication of specific emotions is achieved, at least to a certain extent, by means of shared acoustic patterns. From an Affective Sciences points of view, determining the degree of overlap between both domains is fundamental to understand the shared mechanisms underlying such phenomenon. From a Machine learning perspective, the overlap between acoustic codes for emotional expression in music and speech opens new possibilities to enlarge the amount of data available to develop music and speech emotion recognition systems. In this article, we investigate time-continuous predictions of emotion (Arousal and Valence) in music and speech, and the Transfer Learning between these domains. We establish a comparative framework including intra- (i.e., models trained and tested on the same modality, either music or speech) and cross-domain experiments (i.e., models trained in one modality and tested on the other). In the cross-domain context, we evaluated two strategies—the direct transfer between domains, and the contribution of Transfer Learning techniques (feature-representation-transfer based on Denoising Auto Encoders) for reducing the gap in the feature space distributions. Our results demonstrate an excellent cross-domain generalisation performance with and without feature representation transfer in both directions. In the case of music, cross-domain approaches outperformed intra-domain models for Valence estimation, whereas for Speech intra-domain models achieve the best performance. This is the first demonstration of shared acoustic codes for emotional expression in music and speech in the time-continuous domain.
Interaction between tool and talk: how instruction and tools support consensus building in collaborative inquiry-learning environments

The process of collaborative inquiry learning requires maintaining a mutual understanding of the task, along with reaching consensus on strategies, plans and domain knowledge. In this study, we explore how different supportive measures affect students' consensus-building process, based on a re-analysis of data from four studies. We distinguish between scaffolds that aim at supporting students' collaborative processes and scaffolds that aim primarily at supporting the inquiry learning process. The overall picture that emerges from the re-analysis is that integration-oriented consensus-building activities are facilitated by scaffolds that provide explicit instruction in rules for effective collaboration and by scaffolds that encourage students to collaboratively construct a representation. Scaffolds that display inter-individual differences between students' opinions resulted primarily in quick consensus-building activities.
Clinical and functional outcomes and proprioception after a modified accelerated rehabilitation program following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction with patellar tendon autograft.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical and functional outcomes and proprioceptive function in patients who received a modified accelerated rehabilitation program after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction with a patellar tendon (PT) graft. METHODS The study included 38 patients (33 men, 5 women; mean age 27.6 ± 6.4 years; range 18 to 45 years) who underwent ACL reconstruction with a PT graft and participated in a modified accelerated rehabilitation program. Only six patients were athletes. Isokinetic strengths of concentric knee extension and flexion were measured with the Cybex isokinetic dynamometer, and static balance was tested with the Sport-KAT device. For proprioceptive assessment, active repositioning was measured at knee flexions of 40°, 20°, and 5° with an isokinetic dynamometer. Activity levels and subjective functional results were evaluated with the Tegner activity scale and Lysholm knee score, respectively. For objective functional testing, single leg hop, triple leg hop, and one-legged crossover hop tests were used. Knee stability was assessed with the Lachman test and anterior drawer test and knee range of motion was measured. The mean follow-up period was 16.2 ± 9.8 months. RESULTS There was no graft failure during the follow-up. Twenty patients (52.6%) had hypoesthesia at the donor site and 15 patients (39.5%) had anterior knee pain. Before surgery, all the patients had positive results in the Lachman and anterior drawer tests. After surgery, the Lachman test was negative in 32 patients (84.2%), while six patients (15.8%) had grade 1 laxity. The mean Lysholm knee score showed a significant increase postoperatively (p<0.001). The mean preoperative and postoperative Tegner activity scores were not significantly different (p>0.05). There were no significant differences in the range of motion between operated and uninjured extremities (p>0.05). The two extremities were similar in proprioception and balance (p>0.05). Isokinetic quadriceps muscle strength was significantly decreased in the operated extremity only in extension at 60°/sec angular velocity (p<0.05). Other muscle strength measurements were similar in both extremities. The ratios of flexion/extension muscle strength were significantly greater in the involved extremity at all angular velocities (p<0.05). The mean performance scores of three functional tests were more than 85% of the uninvolved extremity. All the patients returned to preinjury daily activities or sports activities in 6 to 12 months postoperatively. CONCLUSION We had satisfactory clinical, proprioceptive, and functional results in achieving dynamic and static stability of the knee with the modified accelerated rehabilitation program after ACL reconstruction with a PT graft.
Kazrin regulates keratinocyte cytoskeletal networks, intercellular junctions and differentiation

Kazrin is an evolutionarily conserved protein that is upregulated during keratinocyte terminal differentiation. Kazrin localizes to desmosomes and binds the epidermal cornified envelope protein periplakin. Kazrin overexpression in human epidermal keratinocytes caused profound changes in cell shape, reduced filamentous actin, reorganized keratin filaments, and impaired assembly of intercellular junctions. These effects were attributable to decreased Rho activity in kazrin-overexpressing cells. Kazrin overexpression also stimulated terminal differentiation and reduced clonal growth in culture. Knockdown of kazrin decreased expression of differentiation markers and stimulated proliferation without changing total Rho activity. We conclude that kazrin is a dual regulator of intercellular adhesion and differentiation in keratinocytes and regulates these processes by Rho-dependent and -independent mechanisms.
Corrosion Performances Of Modified 13Cr For Octg In Oil And Gas Environments

Martensitic and duplex steels are increasingly used in the oil and gas industries when high CO{sub 2} environments are encountered. Nevertheless, very often the field conditions make traditional 13% Cr steel insufficient due to its limited corrosion resistance and the duplex being too expensive. This paper is aimed at evaluating the performances of new 95 ksi grade and new 110 ksi grade supermartensitic 13Cr-5Ni-2Mo steel for sweet and slightly sour environments. Mechanical properties at room temperature and high temperatures, Sulfide Stress Cracking (SSC) and Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) resistance, and localized and weight loss corrosion resistance have been investigated on both modified 13% Cr, traditional 13% Cr and duplex 22% Cr and 25% Cr. Supermartensitic 13Cr-5Ni-2Mo proved to be an interesting alternative to the traditional CRAs for use as Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) in typical North Sea environments (high chloride, high temperature, high CO{sub 2} wells containing H{sub 2}S) with improved corrosion resistance properties.
Calculating the Power Demand in Turning of AISI 316L Stainless Steel Through the Cutting Forces Data

Abstract—Austenitic stainless steel AISI 316L has been widely used for orthopedic implants due to its mechanical properties, corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. Machining of austenitic stainless steel are often regarded as 'difficult to machine' and classed a single group of steels, based on experience with the most common austenitic types. This paper presents a methodology for practical calculation of power demand based on cutting force that will be compared with experimental results especially turning process. Based on a previously proposed definition, the power demand in metal cutting is the energy required cutting. This paper provides a complete list of mathematical expressions needed for the calculation of power demand and demonstrates their utility for turning operation of austenitic stainless steel using coated and uncoated carbide.
Hepatitis B Virus Pregenomic RNA Is Present in Virions in Plasma and Is Associated With a Response to Pegylated Interferon Alfa-2a and Nucleos(t)ide Analogues.

BACKGROUND Treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) with nucleos(t)ide analogues (NAs) suppresses hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA production but does not affect the synthesis of the RNA pregenome or HBV messenger RNA. Whether HBV RNA-containing particles continue to be secreted into the bloodstream remains controversial. METHODS We developed a sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay to quantify the HBV RNA load in a supernatant of NA-treated HepG2-2.2. 15 cells and in plasma specimens from 20 patients with CHB who were receiving NA therapy and 86 patients treated with pegylated interferon alfa (Peg-IFN) and adefovir. RESULTS Treatment of HepG2-2.2. 15 cells with NAs for 9 days reduced HBV DNA levels (by 1.98 log10 copies/mL), whereas HBV RNA levels increased (by 0.47 log10 copies/mL; P < .05). During long-term NA treatment of patients with CHB, HBV RNA levels remained higher than HBV DNA levels. Peg-IFN-based treatment induced a stronger decrease in the HBV RNA load than NA monotherapy, and this decline was more pronounced in responders than in nonresponders. In HBV e antigen-negative patients, a lower baseline plasma HBV RNA level was independently associated with response to Peg-IFN and adefovir (odds ratio, 0.44; P = .019). Immunoprecipitation with HBV core antigen-specific antibodies after removal of the HBV surface antigen envelope demonstrated the association of plasma HBV RNA with virions. CONCLUSIONS HBV RNA is present in virions in plasma specimens from patients with CHB. HBV RNA levels vary significantly from those of established viral markers during antiviral treatment, which highlights its potential as an independent marker in the evaluation of patients with CHB.