Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Syllable Stress and Position in Young Infants ' Retention of Speech Information

Syllables are important units of speech processing for infants. Bertoncini & Mehler (1981) found that infants discriminate stimuli with syllabic (CVC) structures better than nonsyllabic (CCC) patterns. More recently, Jusczyk et al. (1995) found that the availability of a common syllable structure improved 2-month-olds"memory for speech information. Infants familiarized with a set of 4 bisyllables that included a common initial stressed syllable (e.g., [baD remembered the items well enough to detect the addition of a new item after a 2-minute delay. In contrast, infants familiarized with a set of 4 bisyllables, that shared two phonetic segments from different syllables, did not detect the addition of a new item after the delay period. Jusczyk et al. concluded that the presence of the common syllable facilitated infants' encoding of the speech sounds. The common syllables used by Jusczyk et al. were stressed and always occurred in utterance-initial position. Consequently, it is not clear whether infants gain advantage from the presence of any common syllable, or only ones with particular stress and utterance-position properties. The present studies were designed to explore this issue.
The deconfining phase transition in D=2+1 SU(N) gauge theories

We study the deconfining transition of SU(N) gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions for N ranging between N=2 and N=8. We confirm that the transition is second order for N 4. For the more delicate case of SU(4) all our evidence points to the transition being weakly first order. After extrapolating to the continuum limit, we obtain a deconfining temperature that can be well fitted by Tc/sqrt(sigma) = 0.9026(23) + 0.880(43)/N^2 for all N.
Angular momentum evolution of galaxies over the past 10 Gyr: a MUSE and KMOS dynamical survey of 400 star-forming galaxies from z = 0.3 to 1.7

We present a MUSE and KMOS dynamical study 405 star-forming galaxies at redshift z=0.28-1.65 (median redshift z=0.84). Our sample are representative of star-forming, main-sequence galaxies, with star-formation rates of SFR=0.1-30Mo/yr and stellar masses M=10^8-10^11Mo. For 49+/-4% of our sample, the dynamics suggest rotational support, 24+/-3% are unresolved systems and 5+/-2% appear to be early-stage major mergers with components on 8-30kpc scales. The remaining 22+/-5% appear to be dynamically complex, irregular (or face-on systems). For galaxies whose dynamics suggest rotational support, we derive inclination corrected rotational velocities and show these systems lie on a similar scaling between stellar mass and specific angular momentum as local spirals with j*=J/M*\propto M^(2/3) but with a redshift evolution that scales as j*\propto M^{2/3}(1+z)^(-1). We identify a correlation between specific angular momentum and disk stability such that galaxies with the highest specific angular momentum, log(j*/M^(2/3))>2.5, are the most stable, with Toomre Q=1.10+/-0.18, compared to Q=0.53+/-0.22 for galaxies with log(j*/M^(2/3))
Underemployment and Meaningful Work: The Role of Psychological Needs

Underemployment is a global problem that is increasing in the context of recovering economic recessions and insecure job markets. In this context, vocational psychologists can play a unique role by determining the processes by which underemployment relates to aspects of work well-being, such as meaningful work. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the relation between underemployment and meaningful work as well as to investigate potential mediators of this relation. Specifically, with a sample of 351 working adults in the United States, we investigated how underemployment related to the meaningful work via the self-determination needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Partially supporting hypotheses, underemployment was negatively related to autonomy and relatedness but positively related to competence. In turn, autonomy and competence were positively related to meaningful work, whereas relatedness was unrelated to meaningful work. These results offer insights into how underemployment might affect the meaningfulness of work and how employers and practitioners can help underemployed workers.
Estimation of distributed parameters in permittivity models of composite dielectric materials using reflectance

Abstract We investigate the feasibility of quantifying properties of a composite dielectric material through the reflectance, where the permittivity is described by the Lorentz model in which an unknown probability measure is placed on the model parameters. We summarize the computational and theoretical framework (the Prohorov metric framework) developed by our group in the past two decades for nonparametric estimation of probability measures using a least-squares method, and point out the limitation of the existing computational algorithms for this particular application. We then improve the algorithms, and demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed methods by numerical results obtained for both simulated data and experimental data for inorganic glass when considering the resonance wavenumber as a distributed parameter. Finally, in the case where the distributed parameter is taken as the relaxation time, we show using simulated data how the addition of derivative measurements improves the accuracy of the method.
Contrasting immunohistochemical localizations in rat brain of two novel K+ channels of the Shab subfamily

We have localized CDRK and DRK1, two novel K+ channels of the Shab subfamily by immunohistochemistry. The two channels are closely related in structure with about 90% amino acid identity in the N-terminal and middle portions and 60% identity in the C-terminal region. We observe striking differences in cellular localizations of the two channels. DRK1 tends to localize to cell bodies and proximal dendrites discretely, while CDRK is diffusely present in cell bodies and is also found on fibers in specific brain areas. In the cerebral cortex DRK1 is localized to pyramidal cells, whereas CDRK occurs in small cells, presumably interneurons. These localizations may reflect specialized delayed rectifier functions and targeting properties manifested differentially by K+ channel subfamily members.
Dimensional perturbation theory for vibration–rotation spectra of linear triatomic molecules

A very efficient large-order perturbation theory is formulated for the nuclear motion of a linear triatomic molecule. All coupling between vibration and rotation is included. To demonstrate the method, all of the experimentally observed rotational energies, with values of J almost up to 100, for the ground and first excited vibrational states of CO2 and for the ground vibrational states of N2O and of OCS are calculated. The perturbation expansions reported here are rapidly convergent. The perturbation parameter is D−1/2, where D is the dimensionality of space. Increasing D is qualitatively similar to increasing the angular momentum quantum number J. Therefore, this approach is especially suited for states with high rotational excitation. The computational cost of the method scales only in proportion to JNv5/3, where Nv is the size of the vibrational basis set.
Generating Domain-Specific Dictionaries using Bayesian Learning

This paper aims to operationalize subjective information processing in financial news disclosures. In order to measure news tone, previous research commonly utilizes manually-selected positive and negative word lists, such as the Harvard-IV psychological dictionary. However, such dictionaries may not be suitable for the domain of financial news because positive and negative entries could have different connotations in a financial context. To overcome the problem of words that are selected ex ante, we incorporate several Bayesian variable selection methods to select the relevant positive and negative words from financial news disclosures. These domain-specific dictionaries outperform existing dictionaries in terms of both their explanatory power and predictive performance, resulting in an improvement of up to 93.25 % in the correlation between news sentiment and stock market returns. According to our findings, the interpretation of words strongly depends on the context and managers need to be cautious when framing negative content using positive words.
Distributed system for lawful interception in VoIP networks

Voice over IP is one of the most propulsive technologies today. Significant advantages of VoIP over conventional telephone system provide a major incentive for enterprises and service providers to use the new technology. There is a variety of IP telephony standards, which provide basic models for implementation of VoIP. However, some significant problems still need to be adequately solved. Security, global administration and billing, emergency dialing plans and lawful interception are some of the areas that are being researched. This paper proposes a distributed system for the lawful interception in IP telephony networks. The proposed system has scalable architecture, supports various interception methods, and can be deployed on various network infrastructures. In addition, the system design addresses various issues present in IP networks, for instance; security protocols, network configuration, and standardized data formats. A prototype of the interception system, based on the proposed architecture, has been implemented and tested.
Promising Practices for Curbing Disproportionate Representation of Minority Students in Special Education.

The disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs has been a persistent problem in American education. Being labeled as disabled often has a negative impact on social relationships and self-concept (Hallahan & Kauffman, 2004; Pavri & Monda-Amaya, 2001) and long-term outcomes such as graduation and employment (Blackorby & Wagner, 1996). Disproportionate identification of students from certain ethnic and racial groups begins in general education when teachers view a child’s poor academic performance and/ or behavior as a problem inherent to the child. It is critical for general education teachers and administrators to understand the relationship between insufficient supports and interventions in the classroom —
Understanding mobile learning from the perspective of self-regulated learning

Cognizant of the research gap in the theorization of mobile learning, this paper conceptually explores how the theories and methodology of self-regulated learning (SRL), an active area in contemporary educational psychology, are inherently suited to address the issues originating from the defining characteristics of mobile learning: enabling student-centred, personal, and ubiquitous learning. These characteristics provide some of the conditions for learners to learn anywhere and anytime, and thus, entail learners to be motivated and to be able to self-regulate their own learning. We propose an analytic SRL model of mobile learning as a conceptual framework for understanding mobile learning, in which the notion of self-regulation as agency is at the core. The rationale behind this model is built on our recognition of the challenges in the current conceptualization of the mechanisms and processes of mobile learning, and the inherent relationship between mobile learning and SRL. We draw on work in a 3-year research project in developing and implementing a mobile learning environment in elementary science classes in Singapore to illustrate the application of SRL theories and methodology to understand and analyse mobile learning. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Tiotropium HandiHaler® and Respimat® in COPD: a pooled safety analysis

Introduction Tiotropium is prescribed for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and delivered via HandiHaler® (18 μg once daily) or Respimat® Soft Mist™ inhaler (5 μg once daily). The recent TIOtropium Safety and Performance In Respimat® (TIOSPIR™) study demonstrated that both exhibit similar safety profiles. This analysis provides an updated comprehensive safety evaluation of tiotropium® using data from placebo-controlled HandiHaler® and Respimat® trials. Methods Pooled analysis of adverse event (AE) data from tiotropium HandiHaler® 18 μg and Respimat® 5 μg randomized, double-blind, parallel-group, placebo-controlled, clinical trials in patients with COPD (treatment duration ≥4 weeks). Incidence rates, rate ratios (RRs), and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were determined for HandiHaler® and Respimat® trials, both together and separately. Results In the 28 HandiHaler® and 7 Respimat® trials included in this analysis, 11,626 patients were treated with placebo and 12,929 with tiotropium, totaling 14,909 (12,469 with HandiHaler®; 2,440 with Respimat®) patient-years of tiotropium exposure. Mean age was 65 years, and mean prebronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) was 1.16 L (41% predicted). The risk (RR [95% CI]) of AEs (0.90 [0.87, 0.93]) and of serious AEs (SAEs) (0.94 [0.89, 0.99]) was significantly lower in the tiotropium than in the placebo group (HandiHaler® and Respimat® pooled results), and there was a numerically lower risk of fatal AEs (FAEs) (0.90 [0.79, 1.01]). The risk of cardiac AEs (0.93 [0.85, 1.02]) was numerically lower in the tiotropium group. Incidences of typical anticholinergic AEs, but not SAEs, were higher with tiotropium. Analyzed separately by inhaler, the risks of AE and SAE in the tiotropium groups remained lower than in placebo and similarly for FAEs. Conclusion This analysis indicates that tiotropium is associated with lower rates of AEs, SAEs, and similar rates of FAEs than placebo when delivered via HandiHaler® or Respimat® (overall and separately) in patients with COPD.
Why Is the Business Cycle Behavior of Fundamentals Alike Across Exchange Rate Regimes

This paper develops a two-country, two-sector general equilibrium business cycle model with nominal rigidities featuring deviations from the law of one price. We show that a model with such building blocks can quantitatively account for the empirical fact that, of the statistical properties of most macroeconomic variables, only the volatility of the real and nominal exchange rates has dramatically changed after the fall of the Bretton Woods system. In particular, we replicate some explicit benchmark tests proposed in the literature (for instance, by Flood and Rose (1995)) with simulated data from our artificial economy. The presence of firms pricing-to-market and different speeds of price adjustment across sectors is important in generating the results. We show that these features dampen the upward impact of monetary policy shocks, following the introduction of a flexible exchange rate regime, on the volatility of output, consumption and especially net exports. In our model, the increase in the volatility of the real exchange rate, when the currency floats is due to an increase in the covariance of relative prices across countries. Since the variance of relative prices is not affected by the exchange rate regime, neither is that of most other macroeconomic variables.
A Markup Theory of Bank Loan Rates

Within Post Keynesian monetary economics, the demand for money is for financial credit primarily by the business sector. It is the flow of credit-money that counts, not an exogenous stock of money. In this particular approach, the focus is on bank lending, or the asset side of the balance sheet. The liability side is seen as causally reacting to changes on the asset side. Portfolio theory is therefore downplayed and a Kaleckian approach to the banking industry becomes possible. For the nonfinancial sector of production, markup theory assumes an economy in which there are large concentrations of market power. Oligopolistic firms operate at a planned level of excess capacity and the degree of monopoly in each industry allows a markup over unit prime costs (Kalecki, 1971). It is, basically, this model that will be applied to the financial sector, where the interest rate on bank loans is to be seen as the "price" of the financial "goods" provided by that sector. A markup theory of bank loan rates, as in the case for prices in the production sector, rejects the demand-supply analysis of competitive market behavior. An increase in demand relative to supply does not automatically transform itself into an increase in the loan rate. An "equilibrium" market approach to the rate of interest charged by banks, in other words, is not applicable to the financial sector. It will be necessary, however, to translate the terms of markup pricing for real goods into their equivalents for the financial sector and to adjust the importance of the various components of markup theory. The markup equation for nonbank firms, P = k(u), can be rewritten for commercial banks as i = k(u), where i is the interest rate on loans, k the degree of monopoly or market power exercised by individual banks, or,
Renegotiation-Proof Third-Party Contracts under Asymmetric Information

This paper characterizes the equilibrium outcomes of two-stage games in which the second mover has private information and can sign renegotiable contracts with a neutral third-party. Our aim is to understand whether renegotiation-proof third-party contracts can confer a strategic advantage on the second mover. We first analyze non-renegotiable contracts and show that a “folk theorem” holds: Any outcome in which the second mover best responds to the first mover’s action and the first mover obtains a payoff at least as large as his “individually rational payoff” can be supported. Renegotiation-proofness imposes some restrictions, which is most transparent in games with externalities, i.e., games in which the first mover’s payoff increases (or decreases) in the second mover’s action. In such games, a similar folk theorem holds with renegotation-proof contracts as well, but the firstmover’s individually rational payoff is in general higher.
Static interpolation of exponential n-gram models using features of features

The best language model performance for a task is often achieved by interpolating language models built separately on corpora from multiple sources. While common practice is to use a single set of fixed interpolation weights to combine models, past work has found that gains can be had by allowing weights to vary by n-gram, when linearly interpolating word n-gram models. In this work, we investigate whether similar ideas can be used to improve log-linear interpolation for Model M, an exponential class-based n-gram model with state-of-the-art performance. We focus on log-linear interpolation as Model M's combined via (regular) linear interpolation cannot be statically compiled into a single model, as is required for many applications due to resource constraints. We present a general parameter interpolation framework in which a weight prediction model is used to compute the interpolation weights for each n-gram. The weight prediction model takes a rich representation of n-gram features as input, and is trained to optimize the perplexity of a held-out set. In experiments on Broadcast News, we show that a mixture of experts weight prediction model yields significant perplexity and word-error rate improvements as compared to static linear interpolation.
Video needs at the different stages of television program making process

The paper reports a field study on the needs for archive video in different stages of the television program making process. The work process typically consists of six basic stages: idea generation, planning, shooting, pre-selecting, script writing and editing. During the stages, the journalist gradually develops the program idea into a detailed script. The needs for archive video also evolve with the stages towards increasing specificity. The high level of uncertainty at the planning stage often leads to intense and unfocused searching of the archive and to a collection of a pile of textual listings of video material potentially useful in the task. The pile of materials at hand was consulted frequently especially in lengthy productions like documentaries. The perceived availability of archive and shot video obviously affected the content of the final script. A special limitation of the conventional archive and one reason for maintaining the pile of textual listings is that the journalist often sees the audiovisual contents of retrieved videos very late in the work process. The paper discusses the potential changes in the journalistic work process and the needs for archive video in the case of integrated video retrieval systems supporting instant access to audiovisual contents in addition to textual annotations.
The Degradation of the Academic Ethic: Teaching, Research, and Self Regulation ∗

There is increasing evidence that the academic ethic – the environment of social controls and norms by which the profession regulates academic standards -- has been degraded over time An underlying cause of this degradation is the emergence of a culture of “hollowed collegiality” in many universities. The strong incentives for research, the tradition of specialization, and contemporary interpretations of academic freedom encourage many faculty members with regard teaching and student learning to work in isolation and to avoid the necessary activities of professional communication and coordination that will help improve academic standards. There are emerging examples of how professional self-regulation could be renewed through more effective processes of academic governance. These include collegially designed and implemented processes for promoting and recognizing departmental practices in academic quality assurance, the implementation of university-wide grading standards, and in a negative case, the lack of rigorous institutional processes for approving new academic curricula. The degradation of the academic ethic will likely become a more serious problem as market-based reforms and increased international competition alter the context for academic work. Scholars and researchers in higher education can therefore make an important contribution to renewing professional self-regulation by inquiring more deeply and objectively into the academic beliefs and governance procedures that influence the quality of teaching and student learning in higher education.
Smart-Sensor Infrastructure in the IPAC Architecture

The exploitation of modern sensing technologies constitutes an essential issue when targeting to context-aware applications in mobile environments. However, most of the existing solutions (commercial products, research pilots) assume proprietary sensor platforms, thus restricting the deployment of these applications only to computing nodes that are compatible with these platforms. This paper discusses how this topic is addressed in the context of the EU ICT project IPAC. The architecture and design of the proposed sensor framework exhibit a significant degree of portability across different platforms as they are based on the IEEE 1451 family of standards.