Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expanded Intonation Contours in Mothers' Speech to Newborns.

The prosodic characteristics of "motherese" were examined in the speech of 24 German mothers to their newborns. Each subject was recorded in three observational conditions, while addressing (a) her 3to 5-day-oId baby (M-B Speech); (b) the absent infant, as if present (Simulated M-B Speech); and (c) the adult interviewer (M-A Speech). For each subject, 2-minute speech samples from each condition were acoustically analyzed. It was found that in M-B Speech, mothers spoke with higher pitch, wider pitch excursions, longer pauses, shorter utterances, and more prosodic repetition than in M-A Speech. Furthermore, 77% of the utterances in the M-B Speech sample conformed to a limited set of prosodic patterns that occurred only rarely in adult-directed speech, i.e., they consisted of characteristic "expanded" intonation contours, or they were whispered. The prosody of mothers' speech is discussed in terms of its immediate influence within the context of motherinfant interaction, as well as its potential long-range contribution to perceptual, social, and linguistic development.
A block coding method that leads to significantly lower entropy values for the proteins of Haemophilus Influenzae and its coding sections

A simple statistical block code in combination with the LZW-based compression utilities gzip and compress has been found to increase by a significant amount the level of compression possible for the proteins encoded in Haemophilus Influenzae (hi), the first fully sequenced genome. The method yields an entropy of 3.665 bits per symbol (bps), which is 0.657 bps below the maximum of 4.322 bps. This is an improvement of 0.452 bps over the best known to date of 4.118 bps using the lza-CTW algorithm of Matsumoto, Sadakane, and Imai, the next best being 4.143 bps using Nevill-Manning and Witten's cp algorithm. Using an efficient inverse map from the 20 amino acids to the 61 triplets that code for them, the genome too is found to be compressible, although the gain is not as high. Calculated estimates based on this latter method yield an entropy of 1.757 bps for the coding portions of the genome, with a possibly lower actual entropy. Both of these results, which flow from the sequential use of statistics-based encoding techniques followed by substitution-based text compression algorithms (gzip, compress), hint at the existence of hitherto unexplored redundancies at both the global and the local level in hi and the proteins coded by it. Further work may help determine whether such decreases in entropy are possible with other proteins and genomes or hi is a rarity (perhaps even unique) in this respect.
Inverse filtering in singing voice: a critical analysis

Inverse filtering provides a noninvasive method to extract the voice source, and thus get insight into voice quality. Although this technique is widely used in speech analysis, this is not the case in singing voice, where its use has been even questioned by some authors. In this paper, a comparative study of some representative inverse filtering techniques will be presented in order to identify their main limitations in singing voice analysis. After a rough classification of the inverse filtering techniques, three representative procedures will be selected in order to cover all kind of approaches, and then evaluated taking into account two relevant features: their fundamental frequency limitation, and their sensitivity to the source-tract interaction. To make this comparative study possible, an interactive source-filter model we propose will be used such that the source-tract interaction can be controlled. In this way, the above-mentioned effects will be evaluated based on a simulation analysis, with a realistic singing production model. Natural singing voice results will be also reported to validate the simulations. This study will allow concluding that the main limiting aspect of inverse filtering in singing voice analysis is the fundamental frequency limitation, whereas the source-tract interaction represents a less relevant issue
Outdoor Leadership: Theory and Practice

Part I: Foundations of Outdoor Leadership Chapter 1: The Journey Begins Chapter 2: History of Outdoor Leadership Chapter 3: Professional Development Part II: Outdoor Leadership Theory Chapter 4: Theories of Leadership Chapter 5: Leadership in Practice Chapter 6: Judgment and Decision Making Chapter 7: Values and Ethics Part III: Teaching and Facilitation Chapter 8: Understanding Facilitation Chapter 9: Facilitating Personal Development Chapter 10: Facilitating Group Development Chapter 11: Challenge Course Leadership Chapter 12: Teaching Strategies Part IV: Resource and Program Management Chapter 13: Parks and Protected Areas Management Chapter 14: Environmental Stewardship Chapter 15: Program Management Chapter 16: Safety and Risk Management Chapter 17: Expedition Planning.
Social Dynamics of Adolescent Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa

Adolescent fertility tends to be valued and sanctioned in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa when parents have had adequate ritual or training preparation for adulthood and the child has a recognized father. Young women and adolescents who conceive and bear children within this context are widely accepted by society; those who conceive outside of marriage however are strongly condemned by society. Over the past 2-3 decades most African countries have successfully raised their levels of education. Girls and women are increasingly privy to formal school education and training in trade apprenticeships domestic service and ritual initiation which had otherwise been denied in the past. These factors combined with declining menarche in a few areas and changing economic opportunities law and religion make it more difficult to define the exact date of entry into marriage. Many girls are taking advantage of these changing circumstances and their opportunities to obtain educations and resist early marriage and cildbearing. While defying the traditional entry into early marriage many young women do not however refrain from engaging in sexual activities. Pregnancies to unwed mothers are thereby on the rise and may constitute the most profound change observed in the social context of adolescent fertility on the continent. Once pregnant many women find themselves shut out by family planning programs and prenatal clinics which serve only married women. This paper ultimately concludes that the social context of adolescent childbearing has an effect on the outcome for mother and child which is as important as the physiological maturity of the mother.
A version of o-minimality for the p-adics

In this paper we formulate a notion similar to o-minimality but appropriate for the p-adics. The paper is in a sense a sequel to [11] and [5]. In [11] a notion of minimality was formulated, as follows. Suppose that L, L+ are first-order languages and + is an L+-structure whose reduct to L is . Then + is said to be -minimal if, for every N+ elementarily equivalent to +, every parameterdefinable subset of its domain N+ is definable with parameters by a quantifier-free L-formula. Observe that if L has a single binary relation which in is interpreted by a total order on M, then we have just the notion of strong o-minimality, from [13]; and by a theorem from [6], strong o-minimality is equivalent to o-minimality. If L has no relations, functions, or constants (other than equality) then the notion is just strong minimality. In [11], -minimality is investigated for a number of structures . In particular, the C-relation of [1] was considered, in place of the total order in the definition of strong o-minimality. The C-relation is essentially the ternary relation which naturally holds on the maximal chains of a sufficiently nice tree; see [1], [11] or [5] for more detail, and for axioms. Much of the motivation came from the observation that a C-relation on a field F which is preserved by the affine group AGL(1,F) (consisting of permutations (a,b) : x ↦ ax + b, where a ∈ F \ {0} and b ∈ F) is the same as a non-trivial valuation: to get a C-relation from a valuation ν, put C(x;y,z) if and only if ν(y − x) < ν(y − z).
Repositioning in the Global Apparel Value Chain in the Post‐MFA Era: Strategic Issues and Evidence from Sri Lanka

A widely-held view in the lead-up to the abolition of the Multi-fiber Arrangement (MFA) quotas in 2005 was that, in a quota-free global market, large low cost countries (in particular China and India) and countries in proximity to the major markets (such as Mexico, Turkey and countries in the European periphery) would crowd out export performance of the other developing countries. The post-MFA world apparel trade has, however, brought in many surprises: a number of 'predicted losers' have maintained or increased their market shares, while some 'predicted gainers' have performed poorly. This paper aims to broaden our understanding of the determinants of these inter-country differences through a case study of the export-oriented apparel industry in Sri Lanka. The evidence suggests that apparel is a bundle of differentiated products, not a homogenous commodity as commonly assumed by the trade flow modelers, and individual exporting countries have room for carving out a niche in specific products. Sri Lankan apparel industry has managed to maintain growth dynamism through specialization in fashion-basic products, in particular intimate apparel (lingerie) and upmarket casualwear.
Effect of electro-acupuncture, massage, mud, and sauna therapies in patient with rheumatoid arthritis

A 48-year-old married woman diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in 2007, came to our hospital in July 2014 with the complaint of severe pain and swelling over multiple joints, especially over small joints, which was associated with stiffness (more in morning), deformities of fingers and toes, with disturbed sleep and poor quality of life (QOL) for the past 7 years. She received a combination of electro acupuncture (14 sessions), massage (18 sessions), mud (18 sessions), and sauna (3 sessions) (EMMS) therapies for 30-min, 45-min, 30-min, and 15-min per session, respectively for 3 weeks. During and postintervention assessment showed reduction in visual analog scale score for pain, Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores. It also showed an increase in the scores of 10-Meter Walk Test, isometric hand-grip test, and short form-36 version-2 health survey. This result suggest that, the EMMS therapy might be considered as an effective treatments in reducing pain, depression, anxiety, and stress with improvement in physical functions, quality of sleep and QOL in patient with RA. EMMS therapies were tolerated and no side effects were reported by the patient. Though the results are encouraging, further studies are required with larger sample size and advanced inflammatory markers.
Effects of Glossopharyngeal Insufflation in Ankylosing Spondylitis: A Pilot Study

In Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), thoracic range of motion is often greatly limited. The objective of the study was to describe the effects of 12 weeks of Glossopharyngeal Insufflation (GI) training in patients with AS. Dynamic spirometry included vital capacity, forced expiratory volume, and peak expiratory flow. Thoracic and lumbar range of motion was assessed by tragus-to-wall distance, modified Schober test, and tape measure. Disease activity, activity limitation, and health perception were assessed using the BAS-Indices, and tension in the thoracic region during GI was assessed using the Borg CR-10 scale. Adherence to training was recorded in an activity log, along with any remarks on the training. Ten patients were recruited and six male patients fulfilled the study protocol. Three patients were able to learn GI by exceeding their maximal vital capacity with 5% using GI. A significant increase in thoracic range of motion both on costae IV (P = 0.04) and at the level of the xiphoid process (P = 0.04) was seen. Thus, patients with AS can practice GI, it is safe if maximal exertion is avoided, and patients with some mobility in the chest can increase their lung function substantially by performing GI during 12 weeks.
Toward a Unified Sub-symbolic Computational Theory of Cognition

This paper proposes how various disciplinary theories of cognition may be combined into a unifying, sub-symbolic, computational theory of cognition. The following theories are considered for integration: psychological theories, including the theory of event coding, event segmentation theory, the theory of anticipatory behavioral control, and concept development; artificial intelligence and machine learning theories, including reinforcement learning and generative artificial neural networks; and theories from theoretical and computational neuroscience, including predictive coding and free energy-based inference. In the light of such a potential unification, it is discussed how abstract cognitive, conceptualized knowledge and understanding may be learned from actively gathered sensorimotor experiences. The unification rests on the free energy-based inference principle, which essentially implies that the brain builds a predictive, generative model of its environment. Neural activity-oriented inference causes the continuous adaptation of the currently active predictive encodings. Neural structure-oriented inference causes the longer term adaptation of the developing generative model as a whole. Finally, active inference strives for maintaining internal homeostasis, causing goal-directed motor behavior. To learn abstract, hierarchical encodings, however, it is proposed that free energy-based inference needs to be enhanced with structural priors, which bias cognitive development toward the formation of particular, behaviorally suitable encoding structures. As a result, it is hypothesized how abstract concepts can develop from, and thus how they are structured by and grounded in, sensorimotor experiences. Moreover, it is sketched-out how symbol-like thought can be generated by a temporarily active set of predictive encodings, which constitute a distributed neural attractor in the form of an interactive free-energy minimum. The activated, interactive network attractor essentially characterizes the semantics of a concept or a concept composition, such as an actual or imagined situation in our environment. Temporal successions of attractors then encode unfolding semantics, which may be generated by a behavioral or mental interaction with an actual or imagined situation in our environment. Implications, further predictions, possible verification, and falsifications, as well as potential enhancements into a fully spelled-out unified theory of cognition are discussed at the end of the paper.
Trust, confidence and economic growth: An evaluation of the Beugelsdijk Hypothesis

This paper analyses the hypothesis that the robust relationship between trust - as measured by the World Values Survey's question "In general, do you think that most people can be trusted, or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people? " - and economic growth, established by empirical macroeconomic growth literature (Knack & Keefer, 1997; Zak & Knack, 2001; Beugelsdijk, de Groot, & van Schaik, 2004; Dearmon & Grier, 2009) in fact captures the well-functioning of institutions. Our results reveal that the correlation between trust and economic growth is robust in terms of statistical significance and sign of the estimated coefficient, when controling for the respondents' perceived well-functioning of institutions. While underlining the existing empirical evidence that trust matters in explaining differences in economic performance, our results also show that this influence is largely independent of institutional well-functioning.
Adversarial and Clean Data Are Not Twins

Adversarial attack has cast a shadow on the massive success of deep neural networks. Despite being almost visually identical to the clean data, the adversarial images can fool deep neural networks into the wrong predictions with very high confidence. Adversarial training, as the most prevailing defense technique, suffers from class-wise unfairness and model-dependent challenges. In this paper, we propose to detect and eliminate adversarial data in databases prior to data processing in supporting robust and secure AI workloads. We empirically show that we can build a binary classifier separating the adversarial apart from the clean data with high accuracy. We also show that the binary classifier is robust to a second-round adversarial attack. In other words, it is difficult to disguise adversarial samples to bypass the binary classifier. Furthermore, we empirically investigate the generalization limitation which lingers on all current defensive methods, including the binary classifier approach. And we hypothesize that this is the result of the intrinsic property of adversarial crafting algorithms. Our experiments ascertain that adversarial and clean data are two different datasets that can be separated with a binary classifier, which can serve as a portable component to detect and eliminate adversarial data in an end-to-end data management pipeline.
A study on factors affecting affective organizational commitment among knowledge workers in Malaysia

In 2002, Datuk Tan Chai Ho (Tan, 2002) from the Ministry of Energy, Communications and Multimedia had said that Malaysia should attract knowledge workers and technopreneurs in order to make Malaysia the global test bed for technology. The cry for knowledge workers in knowledge organizations has been the result of a knowledge-based economy or Keconomy. One of the biggest challenges for most knowledge organizations in these highly competitive times comes from changes in work behaviours of the new generation of workers â€“ knowledge workers (Amar, 2002). Understanding knowledge workers and what makes them stay and continue to contribute to the organization is a formidable task for most managers. In this context, knowledge workers affective organizational commitment is a measurement which determines if the employee will still continue to work with the current organization. Thus is the nature of this study as it aims to determine the factors which will influence affective organizational commitment among knowledge workers. This research has identified and will examine how five factors of organizational practices namely Knowledge Sharing Practices, Task Orientation, Fairness of performance management and promotion, Opportunities of training and development and finally Compensation will influence affective organizational commitment among knowledge workers. Thus, this research will contribute significantly to organizations wanting to encourage knowledge workers to be committed and continue their service with them in this knowledgeâ€“based economy.
Find Duplicates among the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library Databases in Systematic Review

Background Finding duplicates is an important phase of systematic review. However, no consensus regarding the methods to find duplicates has been provided. This study aims to describe a pragmatic strategy of combining auto- and hand-searching duplicates in systematic review and to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of duplicates. Methods and Findings Literatures regarding portal vein thrombosis (PVT) and Budd-Chiari syndrome (BCS) were searched by the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane library databases. Duplicates included one index paper and one or more redundant papers. They were divided into type-I (duplicates among different databases) and type-II (duplicate publications in different journals/issues) duplicates. For type-I duplicates, reference items were further compared between index and redundant papers. Of 10936 papers regarding PVT, 2399 and 1307 were identified as auto- and hand-searched duplicates, respectively. The prevalence of auto- and hand-searched redundant papers was 11.0% (1201/10936) and 6.1% (665/10936), respectively. They included 3431 type-I and 275 type-II duplicates. Of 11403 papers regarding BCS, 3275 and 2064 were identified as auto- and hand-searched duplicates, respectively. The prevalence of auto- and hand-searched redundant papers was 14.4% (1640/11403) and 9.1% (1039/11403), respectively. They included 5053 type-I and 286 type-II duplicates. Most of type-I duplicates were identified by auto-searching method (69.5%, 2385/3431 in PVT literatures; 64.6%, 3263/5053 in BCS literatures). Nearly all type-II duplicates were identified by hand-searching method (94.9%, 261/275 in PVT literatures; 95.8%, 274/286 in BCS literatures). Compared with those identified by auto-searching method, type-I duplicates identified by hand-searching method had a significantly higher prevalence of wrong items (47/2385 versus 498/1046, p<0.0001 in PVT literatures; 30/3263 versus 778/1790, p<0.0001 in BCS literatures). Most of wrong items originated from EMBASE database. Conclusion Given the inadequacy of a single strategy of auto-searching method, a combined strategy of auto- and hand-searching methods should be employed to find duplicates in systematic review.
N-Palmitoylethanolamine depot injection increased its tissue levels and those of other acylethanolamide lipids

N-Palmitoylethanolamine (NAE 16:0) is an endogenous lipid signaling molecule that has limited water solubility, and its action is short-lived due to its rapid metabolism. This poses a problem for use in vivo as oral administration requires a high concentration for significant levels to reach target tissues, and injection of the compound in a dimethyl sulfoxide- or ethanol-based vehicle is usually not desirable during long-term treatment. A depot injection of NAE 16:0 was successfully emulsified in sterile corn oil (10 mg/kg) and administered in young DBA/2 mice in order to elevate baseline levels of NAE 16:0 in target tissues. NAE 16:0 levels were increased in various tissues, particularly in the retina, 24 and 48 hours following injections. Increases ranged between 22% and 215% (above basal levels) in blood serum, heart, brain, and retina and induced an entourage effect by increasing levels of other 18 carbon N-Acylethanolamines (NAEs), which ranged between 31% and 117% above baseline. These results indicate that NAE 16:0 can be used as a depot preparation, avoiding the use of inadequate vehicles, and can provide the basis for designing tissue-specific dosing regimens for therapies involving NAEs and related compounds.
Integration or Segmentation of the Malaysian Equity Market: An Analysis of Pre- and Post-Capital Controls

Abstract This paper utilizes cointegration and vector autoregression (VAR) to assess integration or segmentation of the Malaysian equity market both prior to the Asian crisis and after the imposition of capital controls. We consider both regional and international financial forces represented respectively by the ASEAN markets and the advanced markets of US and Japan. We form three systems of share prices: (i) ASEAN markets; (ii) US, Japan and Malaysia; and (iii) US, Japan and ASEAN. Our findings suggest no long run relation among share prices in all systems either before the Asian crisis or after the imposition of capital controls. However, there are substantial short run dynamic interactions among regional markets of ASEAN. We note significant responses of the Malaysian market to ASEAN shocks regardless of the sample periods. By contrast, its responses to innovations in US and Japan, while significant before the Asian crisis, turn insignificant after the imposition of capital controls. The US market is comparatively more influential in accounting for fluctuations in the ASEAN markets. From these results, we contend that capital controls played some role in insulating the Malaysian market from international disturbances.