Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Integrated Solution for Online Multichannel Noise Tracking and Reduction

Noise statistics estimation is a paramount issue in the design of reliable noise-reduction algorithms. Although significant efforts have been devoted to this problem in the literature, most developed methods so far have focused on the single-channel case. When multiple microphones are used, it is important that the data from all the sensors are optimally combined to achieve judicious updates of the noise statistics and the noise-reduction filter. This contribution is devoted to the development of a practical approach to multichannel noise tracking and reduction. We combine the multichannel speech presence probability (MC-SPP) that we proposed in an earlier contribution with an alternative formulation of the minima-controlled recursive averaging (MCRA) technique that we generalize from the single-channel to the multichannel case. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MC-SPP and multichannel noise estimator, we integrate them into three variants of the multichannel noise reduction Wiener filter. Experimental results show the advantages of the proposed solution.
Effects of Perception of Organizational Politics on Employee’s Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Trust and Interpersonal Conflicts

Perception of organizational politics (POP) is a critical issue for all organizations. Most of the researchers indicate that it has a negative effect on employee’s performance. This study finds the relationship between POP and employee’s well-being (EWB) by using interpersonal conflicts at work (ICW) and interpersonal trust at work (ITW) as mediators. The well-being of employees is an important factor to be studied because it covers overall happiness of employees which includes job satisfaction, performance, job loyalty etc. Therefore, without concerning the employee’s well-being, no organization can compete or lead in the competitive environment. So there is a research gap which needs to conduct a research study on employee’s well-being with the reference to perception of organizational politics. The main focus of this study is to find out the relationship between employee’s well-being and perception of organizational politics with the mediating effect of interpersonal conflicts at work and interpersonal trust at work. The sample size of this study is in a number of 223 with cross-sectional study and conducted in the famous city Lahore, Pakistan.
Inversion Using Images Model Inversion of Co and No X Emissions Using the Adjoint of the Images Model Inversion Using Images Model Inversion Using Images Model

Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures Back Close Abstract Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures Back Close Abstract We use ground-based observations of CO mixing ratios and vertical column abundances together with tropospheric NO 2 columns from the GOME satellite instrument as constraints for improving the global annual emission estimates of CO and NO x for the year 1997. The agreement between concentrations calculated by the global 3-5 dimensional CTM IMAGES and the observations is optimized using the adjoint modelling technique, which allows to invert for CO and NO x fluxes simultaneously, taking their chemical interactions into account. Our analysis quantifies a total of 39 flux parameters, comprising anthropogenic and biomass burning sources over large continental regions, soil and lightning emissions of NO x , biogenic emissions of CO and 10 non-methane hydrocarbons, as well as the deposition velocities of both CO and NO x. Comparison between observed, prior and optimized CO mixing ratios at NOAA/CMDL sites shows that the inversion performs well at the northern mid-and high latitudes, and that it is less efficient in the Southern Hemisphere, as expected due to the scarsity of measurements over this part of the globe. The inversion, moreover, brings the model 15 much closer to the measured NO 2 columns over all regions. Sensitivity tests show that anthropogenic sources exhibit weak sensitivity to changes of the a priori errors associated to the bottom-up inventory, whereas biomass burning sources are subject to a strong variability. Our best estimate for the 1997 global top-down CO source amounts to 2760 Tg CO. Anthropogenic emissions increase by 28%, in agreement with previous 20 inverse modelling studies, suggesting that the present bottom-up inventories underestimate the anthropogenic CO emissions in the Northern Hemisphere. The magnitude of the optimized NO x global source decreases by 14% with respect to the prior, and amounts to 42.1 Tg N, out of which 22.8 Tg N are due to anthropogenic sources. The NO x emissions increase over Tropical regions, whereas they decrease over Europe 25 and Asia. Our inversion results have been evaluated against independent observations from aircraft campaigns. This comparison shows that the optimization of CO emissions constrained by both CO and NO 2 observations leads to a better agreement 7986 Abstract Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures Back Close Full Screen / Esc Print Version Interactive Discussion EGU between modelled and observed values, especially in the Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere, compared to …
IDENTIFICATION OF THE INTEREST OF TURKISH MIDDLE-SCHOOL STUDENTS IN STEM CAREERS: GENDER AND GRADE LEVEL DIFFERENCES

In Turkey, it is predicted that the need for STEM employment in the 2016-2023 period will be close to one million and that about 31% of this need will not be met. Therefore, the identification of students’ interest in STEM careers in middle-school is regarded as important. The aim of this research was to identify the interest of middle-school students in STEM careers. The sample of the research was made up of 892 students who received education in four middle-schools in the Aegean region of Turkey. In this research which was of the descriptive survey model, the STEM Career Interest Questionnaire was used to collect data. As a result of research, it was determined that the interest of male students in STEM careers is more positive compared to the female students. It was found that the interest in careers in terms of grade level did not display any differences in the area of technology, whereas it displayed differences in the areas of science, engineering and mathematics. In addition, it was identified that the interest in STEM careers displayed differences in terms of grade level and that as the grade level increases, the interest in STEM careers decreases.
New resources, or just better old ones? The Holy Grail of representativeness

This paper runs counter to the majority of papers in this volume in focusing on the argument that, while welcoming opportunities to use new resources and methods, we should not neglect to improve and refine the resources and methods we already have. The path of progress in corpus linguistics is strewn with unfinished business. Because no other realistic course is available, corpus linguists have understandably been following the path of practicality, pragmatism and opportunism. By and large, we have built up the resources and techniques of the present generation by taking advantage of what is already available and what can be relatively easily obtained. Our research efforts have consequently been limited and skewed by what resources we have been able to lay our hands on. In this paper, I illustrate the skewing effect with reference to corpus design and composition, focusing on the desiderata of representativeness, ‘balancedness’ and comparability. After arguing that we need to give more consideration to these basic requirements, I briefly address the issue of representativity (a term used to mean ‘the degree to which a corpus is representative’) in relation to the use of the world-wide web as a source of corpus data, both with respect to ‘the web as corpus’ and with respect to ‘corpus building from www-material’.
Pharmacological Treatment of Mild Cognitive Impairment as a Prodromal Syndrome of Alzheimer´s Disease

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a syndrome which, depending on various neurobiological, psychological and social factors, carries a high risk of developing into dementia. As far as diagnostic uncertainty and the heterogeneous underlying pathophysiological mechanisms are concerned, only limited therapeutic options are currently available. Clinical trials involving a wide range of substances have failed to show efficacy on primary and secondary outcome parameters. Most results reflect not only a lack of effectiveness of drug therapy but also methodological constraints in true prodromal Alzheimer´s disease (AD) based on clinical criteria. Biomarkers may help to identify MCI as a prodromal phase of dementia, so it is important to use them to improve specificity of case selection in future studies. For MCI as a prodromal syndrome of AD, clinical trials with disease modifying drugs that target underlying pathological mechanisms such as amyloid-beta accumulation and neurofibrillary tangle formation may help develop effective treatment options in the future. Alternative pharmacological approaches are currently being evaluated in ongoing phase 1 and phase 2 studies. Nevertheless, a lack of approved pharmacotherapeutic options has led to specific interventions that focus on patient education and life-style related factors receiving increasing attention.
Average Effects of School Choice on Educational Attainment: Evidence from Japanese High School Attendance Zones

Empirical studies on the effects of competition among schools rarely identified the effects on all affected students. Using heterogeneous variations in the boundaries of public high school attendance zones in Japan, I estimated the average effect of high school competition on the college advancement rate. The data covering nearly all fulltime high schools in Japan over 12 years permitted control for unobservable school characteristics and regional trends and the within-zone sorting of students. I found that the college advancement rate of public schools increases when they compete with more schools while vocational schools show mixed results and private schools show negative results. The average college advancement rate of all high schools improved with increased competition in urban areas with no negative effect on rural schools. I found evidence that the education quality at urban schools improved with an increased choice, but its contribution to the average student's achievement was very small relative to the students｡ｯ enhanced effort or sorting.
Formal modelling of a robust Wireless Sensor Network routing protocol

Because of their low cost, small size, low resources and self-organizing nature a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a potential solution in hostile environments including military applications. However, the broadcasting nature of radio transmission; their limited computing, power and communication resources; unattended and potentially hostile nature of the environment they operate in make WSNs prone to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Although many schemes have been proposed to address DoS attacks their effectiveness is yet to be proven. The traditional methods used (i.e. visual inspection, computer simulations and hardware implementations) can only detect errors but cannot verify that the whole system is error free. Therefore, new techniques to automatically determine the worst cases and hidden errors in WSNs are much desired. After an initial investigation using a formal verification which clearly shows that Arrive routing protocol is vulnerable to different DoS attacks, this paper proposes a method for its security. The finding contradicts the claim of the developers of Arrive that it is immune to black hole attacks. Several other DoS attacks were also found to be successful in Arrive routing protocol. The formal model generates the trace to confirm how an attack is possible in the protocol. However, it was found that INA attacks are addressed by Arrive protocol. To our best knowledge the results discussed in this paper have not been presented, proved or published before.
Cultural heritage and Indigenous tourism

ABSTRACT Tourism is acknowledged as a vehicle that can help sustain both tangible and intangible elements of Indigenous cultural heritage, including languages, stories, song, art, dance, hunting methods, rituals and customs. Often, cultural heritage products developed for tourism promise to provide many socio-economic opportunities for the communities involved, however, tourism can also present a challenge as the self-management of Indigenous cultural product and cultural identity can be problematic. Given the pivotal role culture plays in the sustainability of Indigenous tourism products, it is time for a twenty-first century examination of the nexus between cultural heritage and Indigenous tourism. This paper reflects upon tourism and contemporary Indigenous cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. Through a review of the current literature on Indigenous tourism and cultural heritage, the authors identify key areas for future research and aim to stimulate further discussion around the ways Indigenous tourism may be developed to sustain Indigenous cultural heritage.
Immunogenicity, Efficacy, Safety, and Mechanism of Action of Epitope Vaccine (Lu AF20513) for Alzheimer's Disease: Prelude to a Clinical Trial

The Alzheimer's disease (AD) process is understood to involve the accumulation of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain. However, attempts at targeting the main culprits, neurotoxic Aβ peptides, have thus far proven unsuccessful for improving cognitive function. Recent clinical trials with passively administrated anti-Aβ antibodies failed to slow cognitive decline in mild to moderate AD patients, but suggest that an immunotherapeutic approach could be effective in patients with mild AD. Using an AD mouse model (Tg2576), we tested the immunogenicity (cellular and humoral immune responses) and efficacy (AD-like pathology) of clinical grade Lu AF20513 vaccine. We found that Lu AF20513 induces robust “non-self” T-cell responses and the production of anti-Aβ antibodies that reduce AD-like pathology in the brains of Tg2576 mice without inducing microglial activation and enhancing astrocytosis or cerebral amyloid angiopathy. A single immunization with Lu AF20513 induced strong humoral immunity in mice with preexisting memory T-helper cells. In addition, Lu AF20513 induced strong humoral responses in guinea pigs and monkeys. These data support the translation of Lu AF20513 to the clinical setting with the aims of: (1) inducing therapeutically potent anti-Aβ antibody responses in patients with mild AD, particularly if they have memory T-helper cells generated after immunizations with conventional tetanus toxoid vaccine, and (2) preventing pathological autoreactive T-cell responses.
Using query context models to construct topical search engines

Today, if a website owner or blogger wants to provide a search interface on their web site, they have essentially two options: web search or site search. Site search is often too narrow and web search often too broad. We propose a context-specific alternative: the use of 'topical search engines' (TopS) providing results focused on a specific topic determined by the site owner. For example a photography blog could offer a search interface focused on photography. In this paper, we describe a promising new approach to easily create such topical search engines with minimal manual effort. In our approach, whenever we have enough contextual information, we alter ambiguous topic related queries issued to a generic search engine by adding contextual keywords derived from (topic-specific) query logs; the altered queries help focus the search engine's results to the specific topic of interest. Our solution is deployed as a query wrapper, requiring no change in the underlying search engine. We present techniques to automatically extract queries related to a topic from a web click graph, identify suitable query contexts from these topical queries, and use these contexts to alter queries that are ambiguous or under-specified. We present statistics on three topical search engine prototypes we created. We then describe an evaluation study with the prototypes we developed in the areas of photography and automobiles. We conducted three tests comparing these prototypes to baseline engines with and without fixed query refinements. In each test, we obtained preference judgments from over a hundred participants. Users showed a strong preference for TopS prototypes in all three tests, with statistically significant preference differences ranging from 16% to 42%.
Version 2 of Dynamic vulnerability functions, Systemic vulnerability and Social vulnerability

Maria Polese, Giulio Zuccaro, Stefano Nardone, Salvatore La Rosa, Marco Marcolin, AMRA Christophe Coulet, Marianne Grisel, Mehdi-Pierre Daou, AEE Karoliina Pilli-Sihvola, FMI Christoph Aubrecht, Klaus Steinnocher, Heinrich Humer, Hermann Huber, AIT Kuldar Taveter, Stanislav Vassiljev, TTU Francesco Reda, Pekka Tuomaala, Kalevi Piira, Riitta Molarius, VTT Miguel Almeida, Luís Ribeiro, Carlos Viegas, ADAI Robert Miskuf, Marie-Christine Bonnamour, PSCE
Within species support for the expensive tissue hypothesis: a negative association between brain size and visceral fat storage in females of the Pacific seaweed pipefish

Abstract The brain is one of the most energetically expensive organs in the vertebrate body. Consequently, the high cost of brain development and maintenance is predicted to constrain adaptive brain size evolution (the expensive tissue hypothesis, ETH). Here, we test the ETH in a teleost fish with predominant female mating competition (reversed sex roles) and male pregnancy, the pacific seaweed pipefish Syngnathus schlegeli. The relative size of the brain and other energetically expensive organs (kidney, liver, heart, gut, visceral fat, and ovary/testis) was compared among three groups: pregnant males, nonpregnant males and egg producing females. Brood size in pregnant males was unrelated to brain size or the size of any other organ, whereas positive relationships were found between ovary size, kidney size, and liver size in females. Moreover, we found that the size of energetically expensive organs (brain, heart, gut, kidney, and liver) as well as the amount of visceral fat did not differ between pregnant and nonpregnant males. However, we found marked differences in relative size of the expensive organs between sexes. Females had larger liver and kidney than males, whereas males stored more visceral fat than females. Furthermore, in females we found a negative correlation between brain size and the amount of visceral fat, whereas in males, a positive trend between brain size and both liver and heart size was found. These results suggest that, while the majority of variation in the size of various expensive organs in this species likely reflects that individuals in good condition can afford to allocate resources to several organs, the cost of the expensive brain was visible in the visceral fat content of females, possibly due to the high costs associated with female egg production.
Perirhinal cortex represents nonspatial, but not spatial, information in rats foraging in the presence of objects: Comparison with lateral entorhinal cortex

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) is involved in mnemonic processing. The perirhinal cortex (PRC) plays a role in object recognition memory, while the hippocampus is required for certain forms of spatial memory and episodic memory. The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) receives direct projections from PRC and is one of the two major cortical inputs to the hippocampus. The transformations that occur between PRC and LEC neural representations are not well understood. Here, we show that PRC and LEC had similarly high proportions of neurons with object‐related activity (PRC 52/94; LEC 72/153), as expected from their locations in the “what” pathway into the hippocampus. However, LEC unit activity showed more spatial stability than PRC unit activity. A minority of LEC neurons showed stable spatial firing fields away from objects; these firing fields strongly resembled hippocampal place fields. None of the PRC neurons showed this place‐like firing. None of the PRC or LEC neurons demonstrated the high firing rates associated with interneurons in hippocampus or medial entorhinal cortex, further dissociating this information processing stream from the path‐integration based, movement‐related processing of the medial entorhinal cortex and hippocampus. These results provide evidence for nonspatial information processing in the PRC‐LEC pathway, as well as showing a functional dissociation between PRC and LEC, with more purely nonspatial representations in PRC and combined spatial‐nonspatial representations in LEC. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Challenge job demands and job resources to university teacher well-being: the mediation of teacher efficacy

ABSTRACT This study investigated the associations between challenge job demands, job resources, emotional exhaustion and work engagement, and examined the mediation effect of teacher efficacy as a personal resource in the job demands-resources model. The results of a questionnaire survey of 2758 university teachers from 25 universities in mainland China indicated that challenge job demands were positively related to emotional exhaustion and negatively related to work engagement. Job resources were positively related to work engagement and negatively related to emotional exhaustion. Teacher efficacy mediated the effect of challenge job demands and job resources on work engagement. These results have implications for understanding different types of job demands and improving university teachers’ well-being, and these implications are identified in this paper.
Continuing professional education in transition : visions for the professions and new strategies for lifelong learning

This text considers important dimensions of the current changing environment of continuing education. These include the racial and ethnic diversity of professionals, the impact of technological development on professional practice and therefore continuing education, and the need to move beyond a simple delivery of content to educating for empowerment, wellness, critical thinking and entrepreneurship. A discussion shows how continuing education is being used to resolve critical issues in the structure and practice of 13 different professions.
Persistent Preferences for Product Attributes: The Effects of the Initial Choice Context and Uninformative Experience

This research investigates the conditions under which persistent preferences for product attributes occur and the processes that lead to these effects. Our theoretical framework suggests that ambiguity in the context in which the initial choices are made determines the level of certainty in the initial preference. Certainty in the initial preference combines with uninformative additional experience to create a shift in the relevance of the attributes and biased information gathering in subsequent choices. These tendencies in turn lead to persistent preferences for the attributes of a previously chosen brand. In experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C, we varied the levels of ambiguity in the initial choice context and additional experience with a chosen brand and studied their effect on preference persistence. The findings offer support to the processes we propose. In experiment 2, we found that additional experience caused persistent preferences even for an irrelevant attribute as long as it was a differentiating attribute in the initial choice. Experiments 3 and 4 found that (a) the relative attractiveness of the chosen brand in the initial choice context and (b) a deliberation that compared the competing attributes in terms of their ability to render certain benefits attenuated the effects found in experiments 1A and 1B.