Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
I-vector-based speaker adaptation of deep neural networks for French broadcast audio transcription

State of the art speaker recognition systems are based on the i-vector representation of speech segments. In this paper we show how this representation can be used to perform blind speaker adaptation of hybrid DNN-HMM speech recognition system and we report excellent results on a French language audio transcription task. The implemenation is very simple. An audio file is first diarized and each speaker cluster is represented by an i-vector. Acoustic feature vectors are augmented by the corresponding i-vectors before being presented to the DNN. (The same i-vector is used for all acoustic feature vectors aligned with a given speaker.) This supplementary information improves the DNN's ability to discriminate between phonetic events in a speaker independent way without having to make any modification to the DNN training algorithms. We report results on the ETAPE 2011 transcription task, and show that i-vector based speaker adaptation is effective irrespective of whether cross-entropy or sequence training is used. For cross-entropy training, we obtained a word error rate (WER) reduction from 22.16% to 20.67% whereas for sequence training the WER reduces from 19.93% to 18.40%.
Non-Linear Models for Time Series Using Mixtures of Autoregressive Models

We consider a novel class of non-linear models for time series analysis based on mixtures of local autoregressive models, which we call MixAR models. MixAR models are constructed so that at any given point time, one of a number of alternative AR models describes its dynamics. The driving AR model is randomly selected from the set of m possible models via according to a state (lag vector) dependent probability distribution. Thus, the MixAR process is a Markov chain with a transition kernel that takes the form of a mixture distribution with non-constant (state dependent) weights. This structure gives MixAR models considerable flexibility, as will be indicated both theoretically and via example. The theoretical aspects of MixAR models that we examine include stochastic stability of MixAR processes, parameter estimation algorithms, and approximation of quite general underlying prediction functions, when the true process is not of the MixAR family. We complement this study with some numerical examples, which seem to indicate that the outof-sample performance is competitive, in spite of the fairly large number of parameters in MixAR models. Prediction results on benchmark time series are compared to linear and non-linear models.
Phosphorylation and inactivation of yeast fructose-bisphosphatase in vivo by glucose and by proton ionophores. A possible role for cAMP.

Addition of glucose to yeast cells causes a phosphorylation and an inactivation of the gluconeogenic enzyme fructose-bisphosphatase [Mazón, M.J., Gancedo, J.M. , and Gancedo, C. (1982) J. Biol. Chem. 257, 1128-1130]. We report here that the addition of the proton ionophores 2,4-dinitrophenol and carbonylcyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone to yeast cells produces the same effect as that of glucose. Both glucose and ionophores produced: (a) phosphorylation and inactivation of fructose-bisphosphatase, (b) an immediate rise in the intracellular concentration of cAMP, (c) an instant inhibition of the transport of amino acids driven by the membrane potential. It is proposed that the effect of glucose on fructose-bisphosphatase involves as a first step the depolarization of the plasma membrane resulting in an increase of the intracellular concentration of cAMP. This in turn would stimulate phosphorylation of fructose-bisphosphatase.
T Cell Activation Results in Conformational Changes in the Src Family Kinase Lck to Induce Its Activation

T cell activation involves the conformational activation of the tyrosine kinase Lck. Conformational Kinase Activation Lck is a tyrosine kinase that is critical for T cell activation, and its activity is induced by the T cell receptor (TCR). Phosphorylation of Lck at various residues either promotes or inhibits its activity, and Lck exists in various phosphorylated states in a T cell. With fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopic analysis of live human T cells and biochemical analyses, Stirnweiss et al. found that TCR activation produced a conformational change in Lck. In vitro studies showed that this “open” conformation of Lck exhibited enhanced kinase activity. Thus, phosphorylation, location, and conformation all potentially contribute to the regulation of Lck activity. The lymphocyte-specific Src family protein tyrosine kinase p56Lck (Lck) is essential for T cell development and activation and, hence, for adaptive immune responses. The mechanism by which Lck activity is directed toward specific substrates in response to T cell receptor (TCR) activation remains elusive. We used fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy to assess the activation-dependent spatiotemporal changes in the conformation of Lck in live human T cells. Kinetic analysis of the fluorescence lifetime of Lck biosensors enabled the direct visualization of the dynamic local opening of 20% of the total amount of Lck proteins after activation of T cells with antibody against CD3 or by superantigen-loaded antigen-presenting cells. Parallel biochemical analysis of TCR complexes revealed that the conformational changes in Lck correlated with the induction of Lck enzymatic activity. These data show the dynamic, local activation through conformational change of Lck at sites of TCR engagement.
Acute HIV infection is beneficial for controlling chronic hepatitis B.

BACKGROUND Coinfection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) is common. Most studies have concentrated on the effects of chronic HIV infection on HBV infection; however, studies on the effects of acute HIV infection on HBV infection are especially important to elucidate the potential mechanisms leading to complications from HIV/HBV coinfection. METHODS We evaluated the HBV DNA, hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), and hepatitis B "e" antigen (HBeAg) in stored serum samples from 25 men with chronic hepatitis B who had acquired acute HIV infection. RESULTS All of the 25 men had decreased HBV DNA levels during acute HIV infection. Three men converted from HBsAg positive before HIV infection to HBsAg negative during acute HIV infection, and 10 men converted from HBeAg positive before HIV infection to HBeAg negative during acute HIV infection. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that the early effects of HIV infection improve the immune response against HBV.
Evaluating the role of motor regulation in figural fluency: Partialing variance in the Ruff Figural Fluency Test

Figural fluency is often thought to assess the ability to “think fluently and flexibly in the visual-spatial mode” (Ruff, 1988). However, the contribution of motor regulation to the performance of this task has not been previously examined. The goal of this study was to evaluate the potential relationship between motor sequence fluency (without a visual-spatial component) and figural fluency. A total of 55 participants (ages 18 to 68 years) were administered (a) the Ruff Figural Fluency Task (RFFT), (b) the Trail Making Test Part B (TMT-B), which overlaps with the RFFT in visual tracking and graphomotor demands, (c) an electronically administered Motor Sequence Fluency Test (MSFT), which overlaps with the RFFT in generation of novel hand movements in the absence of visual stimuli, and (d) a Complex Motor Programming Task. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to determine whether complex motor programming uniquely contributes to RFFT performance above and beyond the processes that are traditionally assumed to be required, as well as to determine whether the ability to generate novel motor sequences uniquely contributes to RFFT performance. Age and education were also added to the regression models in order to determine the contribution of demographic variables to the current findings. Results indicated that age, specific components of motor programming, and nonvisual motor generative fluency represent the most prominent predictors of RFFT performance. Consequently, the role of motor regulation and motor flexibility may in fact be more important for RFFT performance than previously thought, whereas visual-spatial processing may play a lesser role.
USE OF SATELLITE IMAGERY FOR DEM EXTRACTION , LANSCAPE MODELING AND GIS APPLICATIONS

This paper describes a workflow for the DEM extraction from unrectified satellite stereo scenes, its visualization and integration in GIS environment. The results obtained using a stereo scene acquired by EOS-AM1/ASTER over Switzerland are presented and commented. The images are oriented with a rigorous photogrammetric model for CCD linear array sensors developed at IGP (ETH Zurich). The model estimates the sensor internal and external orientation with least squares adjustment, using a suitable number of ground control points. For the DEM generation, the points are automatically extracted in the images at sub-pixel accuracy with a least squares matching algorithm and their 3D coordinates are then calculated with forward intersection using the external and internal parameters estimated during the image orientation. The accuracy of the DEM was evaluated in three test areas using the DHM25 by Swisstopo as reference. The RMSE of the 3D distance between the recovered and reference terrain models is in the order of 1 pixel. After the surface generation, the terrain model is used for further investigations within a commercial GIS package. This includes not only the DEM analysis and comparison with already available geodata, but also the integration of cartographic information (i.e. existing vector features). The achieved results demonstrate the great potential of ASTER satellite imagery for geomatic applications at medium scales. Finally the DEM is imported in commercial software for a photo-realistic visualization.
Sex Differences in Pulse Pressure Trends With Age Are Cross-Cultural

Sex differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels and trends with age have been consistently observed in both industrialized and unindustrialized populations. However, the impact of sex on pulse pressure, an index of vascular aging, in unindustrialized populations has not been addressed. The objective of this report was to characterize sex differences in aging trends of pulse pressure within unindustrialized populations. Using PubMed and Medline, we identified 60 articles with blood pressure data from unacculturated or partially acculturated populations. Data on 27 populations from 22 articles were included for analysis, on the basis of adequate description of study design and blood pressure measurement. Blood pressure means of adult age groups were modeled by linear and polynomial regression. The pulse pressure levels of women were lower than those of men in early adulthood and higher in older ages. Women had a steeper, steady increase in pulse pressure with age than men (P<0.001), whereas men had a stronger curvilinear upswing in pulse pressure with age (P=0.006). Partially acculturated populations had higher pulse pressures than unacculturated populations. Sex had a stronger effect on pulse pressure than acculturation. Pulse pressure trajectories of unindustrialized populations were slightly attenuated compared with those seen in National Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys III and IV of the US population. A sex effect on pulse pressure trends with age prevails across unacculturated and acculturated populations. Accordingly, the biological principles of arterial aging, as expressed in pulse pressure, are the same in all humans, regardless of demography.
Fully Character-Level Neural Machine Translation without Explicit Segmentation

Most existing machine translation systems operate at the level of words, relying on explicit segmentation to extract tokens. We introduce a neural machine translation (NMT) model that maps a source character sequence to a target character sequence without any segmentation. We employ a character-level convolutional network with max-pooling at the encoder to reduce the length of source representation, allowing the model to be trained at a speed comparable to subword-level models while capturing local regularities. Our character-to-character model outperforms a recently proposed baseline with a subword-level encoder on WMT’15 DE-EN and CS-EN, and gives comparable performance on FI-EN and RU-EN. We then demonstrate that it is possible to share a single character-level encoder across multiple languages by training a model on a many-to-one translation task. In this multilingual setting, the character-level encoder significantly outperforms the subword-level encoder on all the language pairs. We observe that on CS-EN, FI-EN and RU-EN, the quality of the multilingual character-level translation even surpasses the models specifically trained on that language pair alone, both in terms of the BLEU score and human judgment.
Aberrant infection and persistence of varicella-zoster virus in human dorsal root ganglia in vivo in the absence of glycoprotein I

Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) causes varicella, establishes latency in sensory ganglia, and reactivates as herpes zoster. Human dorsal root ganglia (DRGs) xenografts in immunodeficient mice provide a model for evaluating VZV neuropathogenesis. Our investigation of the role of glycoprotein I (gI), which is dispensable in vitro, examines the functions of a VZV gene product during infection of human neural cells in vivo. Whereas intact recombinant Oka (rOka) initiated a short replicative phase followed by persistence in DRGs, the gI deletion mutant, rOkaΔgI, showed prolonged replication with no transition to persistence up to 70 days after infection. Only a few varicella-zoster nucleocapsids and cytoplasmic virions were observed in neurons, and the major VZV glycoprotein, gE, was retained in the rough endoplasmic reticulum in the absence of gI. VZV neurotropism was not disrupted when DRG xenografts were infected with rOka mutants lacking gI promoter elements that bind cellular transactivators, specificity factor 1 (Sp1) and upstream stimulatory factor (USF). Because gI is essential and Sp1 and USF contribute to VZV pathogenesis in skin and T cells in vivo, these DRG experiments indicate that the genetic requirements for VZV infection are less stringent in neural cells in vivo. The observations demonstrate that gI is important for VZV neurotropism and suggest that a strategy to reduce neurovirulence by deleting gI could prolong active infection in human DRGs.
Why the Data Train Needs Semantic Rails

While catchphrases such as big data, smart data, dataintensive science, or smart dust highlight different aspects, they share a common theme: Namely, a shift towards a data-centric perspective in which the synthesis and analysis of data at an ever-increasing spatial, temporal, and thematic resolution promises new insights, while, at the same time, reducing the need for strong domain theories as starting points. In terms of the envisioned methodologies, those catchphrases tend to emphasize the role of predictive analytics, i.e., statistical techniques including data mining and machine learning, as well as supercomputing. Interestingly, however, while this perspective takes the availability of data as a given, it does not answer the question how one would discover the required data in today’s chaotic information universe, how one would understand which datasets can be meaningfully integrated, and how to communicate the results to humans and machines alike. The Semantic Web addresses these questions. In the following, we argue why the data train needs semantic rails. We point out that making sense of data and gaining new insights works best if inductive and deductive techniques go hand-in-hand instead of competing over the prerogative of interpretation.
Simultaneous quantification of arachidonic acid metabolites in cultured tumor cells using high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry.

A validated method is described for the simultaneous analysis of PGE2, 11-, 12-, and 5-HETEs from cultured cells using HPLC negative electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS). This method permits quantification of selected individual arachidonic acid metabolites from cell extracts without derivatization, multiple purification steps, or lengthy separation times required by traditional GC-MS- or HPLC-UV -based methods. Accuracy assessments of values calculated using this method showed deviations from nominal values were < or =15%. An average relative deviation of 7% of mean calculated values was observed for values taken on separate days. The lower limit of detection for all metabolites was 1.3 pg. The method was used to quantify arachidonic acid metabolites present in various cancer cell lines after incubation with arachidonic acid and the selective cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitor celecoxib. Results showed that the presence of celecoxib in lung cancer A549 cells reduced production of both PGE2 and 11-HETE in a concentration-dependent manner.
Gift Exchange and Interpretations of Captain Cook in the Traditional Kingdoms of the Hawaiian Islands

The relationship between the kanaka maoli people of the traditional kingdoms of the Hawaiian Islands and Captain James Cook and his crew is interpreted in the context of a theory of gift exchange. It is argued that interpretations of kanaka maoli behaviour based on an implicit assumption that social relations were structured primarily by property rights leads to error. Instead, sense can be made of kanaka maoli behaviour only if a logic based on rights of person is taken into account.
Arrest Decision Making by School Resource Officers

Over the past two decades, school resource officers (SROs) have become an increasingly common fixture on the American educational landscape. Despite their prominence in schools, significant investigation into their arrest-making behavior has not occurred. This article uses responses to a statewide survey of SROs in Delaware to explore SRO arrest decision making. Guided by Black’s general theory of arrest, it analyzes the effect of the school context on SROs’ arrest decisions. The SROs’ survey responses indicate that the factors highlighted by Black as influential to arrest decisions remain prominent in SRO arrest decision making, but the school context influences their arrest decisions in a variety of critical ways.
Brain Inflammation and Microglia: Facts and Misconceptions

The inflammation that accompanies acute injury has dual functions: bactericidal action and repair. Bactericidal functions protect damaged tissue from infection, and repair functions are initiated to aid in the recovery of damaged tissue. Brain injury is somewhat different from injuries in other tissues in two respects. First, many cases of brain injury are not accompanied by infection: there is no chance of pathogens to enter in ischemia or even in traumatic injury if the skull is intact. Second, neurons are rarely regenerated once damaged. This raises the question of whether bactericidal inflammation really occurs in the injured brain; if so, how is this type of inflammation controlled? Many brain inflammation studies have been conducted using cultured microglia (brain macrophages). Even where animal models have been used, the behavior of microglia and neurons has typically been analyzed at or after the time of neuronal death, a time window that excludes the inflammatory response, which begins immediately after the injury. Therefore, to understand the patterns and roles of brain inflammation in the injured brain, it is necessary to analyze the behavior of all cell types in the injured brain immediately after the onset of injury. Based on our experience with both in vitro and in vivo experimental models of brain inflammation, we concluded that not only microglia, but also astrocytes, blood inflammatory cells, and even neurons participate and/or regulate brain inflammation in the injured brain. Furthermore, brain inflammation played by these cells protects neurons and repairs damaged microenvironment but not induces neuronal damage.
Caching in Wireless Small Cell Networks: A Storage-Bandwidth Tradeoff

Caching contents at the network edge is an efficient mean for offloading traffic, reducing latency, and improving users' quality-of-experience. In this letter, we focus on aspects of storage-bandwidth tradeoffs in which small cell base stations are distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process and cache contents according to a given content popularity distribution, subject to storage constraints. We provide a closed-form expression of the cache-miss probability, defined as the probability of not satisfying users requests over a given coverage area, as a function of signal-to-interference ratio, cache size, base stations density, and content popularity. In particular, it is shown that for a given minimum cache size, the popularity-based caching strategy achieves lower outage probability for a given base station density compared to uniform caching. Furthermore, we show that popularity-based caching attains better performance in terms of cache-miss probability for the same amount of spectrum.
A Null Relationship between Media Multitasking and Well-Being

There is a rapidly increasing trend in media-media multitasking or MMM (using two or more media concurrently). In a recent conference, scholars from diverse disciplines expressed concerns that indulgence in MMM may compromise well-being and/or cognitive abilities. However, research on MMM's impacts is too sparse to inform the general public and policy makers whether MMM should be encouraged, managed, or minimized. The primary purpose of the present study was to develop an innovative computerized instrument – the Survey of the Previous Day (SPD) – to quantify MMM as well as media-nonmedia and nonmedia-nonmedia multitasking and sole-tasking. The secondary purpose was to examine whether these indices could predict a sample of well-being related, psychosocial measures. In the SPD, participants first recalled (typed) what they did during each hour of the previous day. In later parts of the SPD, participants analysed activities and their timing and duration for each hour of the previous day, while relevant recall was on display. Participants also completed the Media Use Questionnaire. The results showed non-significant relationship between tasking measures and well-being related measures. Given how little is known about the associations between MMM and well-being, the null results may offer some general reassurance to those who are apprehensive about negative impacts of MMM.
The HPM Applied to MHD Nanofluid Flow over a Horizontal Stretching Plate

The nonlinear two-dimensional forced-convection boundary-layer magneto hydrodynamic (MHD) incompressible flow of nanofluid over a horizontal stretching flat plate with variable magnetic field including the viscous dissipation effect is solved using the homotopy perturbation method (HPM). In the present work, our results of the HPM are compared with the results of simulation using the finite difference method, Keller's box-scheme. The comparisons of the results show that the HPM has the capability of solving the nonlinear boundary layer MHD flow of nanofluid with sufficient accuracy.