Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lattice-Based Unsupervised Test-Time Adaptation of Neural Network Acoustic Models

Acoustic model adaptation to unseen test recordings aims to reduce the mismatch between training and testing conditions. Most adaptation schemes for neural network models require the use of an initial one-best transcription for the test data, generated by an unadapted model, in order to estimate the adaptation transform. It has been found that adaptation methods using discriminative objective functions - such as cross-entropy loss - often require careful regularisation to avoid over-fitting to errors in the one-best transcriptions. In this paper we solve this problem by performing discriminative adaptation using lattices obtained from a first pass decoding, an approach that can be readily integrated into the lattice-free maximum mutual information (LF-MMI) framework. We investigate this approach on three transcription tasks of varying difficulty: TED talks, multi-genre broadcast (MGB) and a low-resource language (Somali). We find that our proposed approach enables many more parameters to be adapted without over-fitting being observed, and is successful even when the initial transcription has a WER in excess of 50%.
Guidelines for developing optical clocks with 10-18 fractional frequency uncertainty

There has been tremendous progress in the performance of optical frequency standards since the first proposals to carry out precision spectroscopy on trapped, single ions in the 1970s. The estimated fractional frequency uncertainty of today's leading optical standards is currently in the $10^{-18}$ range, approximately two orders of magnitude better than that of the best caesium primary frequency standards. This exceptional accuracy and stability is resulting in a growing number of research groups developing optical clocks. While good review papers covering the topic already exist, more practical guidelines are needed as a complement. The purpose of this document is therefore to provide technical guidance for researchers starting in the field of optical clocks. The target audience includes national metrology institutes (NMIs) wanting to set up optical clocks (or subsystems thereof) and PhD students and postdocs entering the field. Another potential audience is academic groups with experience in atomic physics and atom or ion trapping, but with less experience of time and frequency metrology and optical clock requirements. These guidelines have arisen from the scope of the EMPIR project "Optical clocks with $1 \times 10^{-18}$ uncertainty" (OC18). Therefore, the examples are from European laboratories even though similar work is carried out all over the world. The goal of OC18 was to push the development of optical clocks by improving each of the necessary subsystems: ultrastable lasers, neutral-atom and single-ion traps, and interrogation techniques. This document shares the knowledge acquired by the OC18 project consortium and gives practical guidance on each of these aspects.
Empirical process results for exchangeable arrays

Exchangeable arrays are natural tools to model common forms of dependence between units of a sample. Jointly exchangeable arrays are well suited to dyadic data, where observed random variables are indexed by two units from the same population. Examples include trade flows between countries or relationships in a network. Separately exchangeable arrays are well suited to multiway clustering, where units sharing the same cluster (e.g. geographical areas or sectors of activity when considering individual wages) may be dependent in an unrestricted way. We prove uniform laws of large numbers and central limit theorems for such exchangeable arrays. We obtain these results under the same moment restrictions and conditions on the class of functions as those typically assumed with i.i. d. data. We also show the convergence of bootstrap processes adapted to such arrays.
Critical behavior of the bulk viscosity in QCD

We study the behavior of the bulk viscosity $\zeta$ in QCD near a possible critical endpoint in the phase diagram. We verify the expectation that $(\zeta/s)\sim a(\xi/\xi_0)^{x_\zeta}$, where $s$ is the entropy density, $\xi$ is the correlation length, $\xi_0$ is the non-critical correlation length, $a$ is a constant and $x_\zeta\simeq 3$. Using a recently developed equation of state that includes a critical point in the universality class of the Ising model we estimate the constant of proportionality $a$. We find that $a$ is typically quite small, $a\sim O(10^{-4})$. We observe, however, that the result is sensitive to the commonly made assumption that the Ising temperature axis is approximately aligned with the QCD baryon chemical potential axis. If this is not the case, then the critical $\zeta/s$ can approach the non-critical value of $\eta/s$, where $\eta$ is the shear viscosity, even if the enhancement of the correlation length is modest, $\xi/\xi_0\sim 2$.
Emergence of Cracklike Behavior of Frictional Rupture: The Origin of Stress Drops

The process of frictional rupture, i.e. the failure of frictional systems, abounds in the technological and natural world around us, ranging from squealing car brake pads to earthquakes along geological faults. A general framework for understanding and interpreting frictional rupture commonly involves an analogy to ordinary crack propagation, with far-reaching implications for various disciplines, from engineering tribology to geophysics. An important feature of the analogy to cracks is the existence of a reduction in the stress-bearing capacity of the ruptured interface, i.e. of a drop from the applied stress, realized far ahead of a propagating rupture, to the residual stress left behind it. Yet, how and under what conditions such finite and well-defined stress drops emerge from basic physics are not well understood. Here we show that for rapid rupture a stress drop is directly related to wave radiation from the frictional interface to the bodies surrounding it and to long-range bulk elastodynamics, and not exclusively to the physics of the contact interface. Furthermore, we show that the emergence of a stress drop is a transient effect, affected by the wave travel time in finite systems and by the decay of long-range elastic interactions. Finally, we supplement our results for rapid rupture with predictions for slow rupture. All of the theoretical predictions are supported by available experimental data and by extensive computations. Our findings elucidate the origin of stress drops in frictional rupture, i.e. they offer a comprehensive and fundamental understanding of why, how and to what extent frictional rupture might be viewed as an ordinary fracture process.
Hard Pixels Mining: Learning Using Privileged Information for Semantic Segmentation

Semantic segmentation has achieved significant progress but is still challenging due to the complex scene, object occlusion, and so on. Some research works have attempted to use extra information such as depth information to help RGB based semantic segmentation. However, extra information is usually unavailable for the test images. Inspired by learning using privileged information, in this paper, we only leverage the depth information of training images as privileged information in the training stage. Specifically, we rely on depth information to identify the hard pixels which are difficult to classify, by using our proposed Depth Prediction Error (DPE) and Depth-dependent Segmentation Error (DSE). By paying more attention to the identified hard pixels, our approach achieves the state-of-the-art results on two benchmark datasets and even outperforms the methods which use depth information of test images.
Baryon number fluctuations in the QCD phase diagram from Dyson-Schwinger equations

We present results for fluctuations of the baryon number for QCD at nonzero temperature and chemical potential. These are extracted from solutions to a coupled set of truncated Dyson-Schwinger equations for the quark and gluon propagators of Landau-gauge QCD with $N_f = 2 + 1$ quark flavors, that has been studied previously. We discuss the changes of fluctuations and ratios thereof up to fourth order for several temperatures and baryon chemical potential up to and beyond the critical endpoint. In the context of preliminary STAR data for the skewness and kurtosis ratios, the results are compatible with the scenario of a critical endpoint at large chemical potential and slightly offset from the freeze-out line. We also discuss the caveats involved in this comparison.
Reducing Popularity Bias in Recommendation Over Time

Many recommendation algorithms suffer from popularity bias: a small number of popular items being recommended too frequently, while other items get insufficient exposure. Research in this area so far has concentrated on a one-shot representation of this bias, and on algorithms to improve the diversity of individual recommendation lists. In this work, we take a time-sensitive view of popularity bias, in which the algorithm assesses its long-tail coverage at regular intervals, and compensates in the present moment for omissions in the past. In particular, we present a temporal version of the well-known xQuAD diversification algorithm adapted for long-tail recommendation. Experimental results on two public datasets show that our method is more effective in terms of the long-tail coverage and accuracy tradeoff compared to some other existing approaches.
Atomic limit and inversion-symmetry indicators for topological superconductors

Symmetry indicators have proven to be extremely helpful in identifying topologically non-trivial crystalline insulators using symmetry-group representations of their Bloch states. An extension of this approach to superconducting systems requires defining an appropriate atomic limit for Bogoliubov-de-Gennes Hamiltonians. Here, we introduce such a notion of atomic limit and derive a $\mathbb{Z}_{2^d}$-valued symmetry indicator for inversion-symmetric superconductors of $d$ dimensions. This indicator allows for a refined topological classification including higher-order phases for systems in the superconducting symmetry classes D and DIII. We further elucidate the bulk-boundary correspondence of these phases using Dirac surface theories. Requiring only the normal-state band structure and the superconducting order-parameter symmetry as an input, this indicator is well suited for a search of topological superconductors using first-principles calculations.
The Influence of Web-Writing Styles on Reader' Mental Text Representation

The increasingly popular avenue of web-based distance education places high demand on distance educators to format web pages that facilitate learning. Guidelines regarding appropriate writing styles for web-based distance education, however, do not currently exist. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of four different writing styles on the reader's mental representation of web text. Participants will study hypertext written in one of four web-writing styles (e.g., concise, scannable, objective, and combined) and then be given a cued association task intended to measure participants' mental representations of the studied information. It is hypothesized that the scannable and combined styles will bias readers to scan rather than elaborately read which may result in less dense mental representations relative to the objective and concise writing styles. Further, the use of more descriptors in the objective writing style will lead to better integration of ideas and more dense mental representations than the concise writing style.
Discovering How Accessible Electroacoustic Music Can Be: the Intention/Reception project

The Intention/Reception (I/R) project concerns an investigation of the relationship between composer intention and listener response in electroacoustic (E/A) compositions. Phase one of the project focuses on E/A compositions that contain or are perceived to contain real-world sound references (RWE/A). The methodology involves introducing works that are unknown to the listening subjects and then evaluating their listening experience. Through repeated listening and the introduction of the composers' articulation of intent (through a work's title, inspiration, elements that the composer intends to be communicated, eventually elements of the compositional process itself – in short, the ‘dramaturgy’ of the work) listening responses are monitored. The purpose here is to investigate to what extent familiarity contributes to access and appreciation and to what extent intention and reception are meeting in this particular corpus of E/A art music. This paper offers an introduction to the I/R project outlining its background, its context and presenting pertinent points concerning the design and operation of its methodology. Following this, some of the key results discovered thus far, including the first presentation of test data that formed the basis of the conclusions of a recently completed doctoral thesis, will be shared.
Web-based essay critiquing system and EFL students' writing: a quantitative and qualitative investigation

The paper first describes a web-based essay critiquing system developed by the authors using latent semantic analysis (LSA), an automatic text analysis technique, to provide students with immediate feedback on content and organisation for revision whenever there is an internet connection. It reports on its effectiveness in enhancing adult EFL students' writing quantitatively and qualitatively. Finally it suggests ways to use the system effectively. An experimental study was conducted. Twenty-seven student writers, who were assigned to the control and experimental groups randomly, wrote a 300-word argumentative essay, a genre usually tested in local and public examinations, over an 80-minute duration. The experimental group received two modes of feedback from the system whereas the control group typed and revised their essays on the computer in the traditional pen and paper way only. Their final submissions were co-marked by two raters, and comparison on essay length and final scores between the two groups was made. Although it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in these two aspects, the experimental group's writing strategies shed some light on pedagogy.
A Machine Learning based Classification for Social Media Messages

A social media is a mediator for communication among people. It allows user to exchange information in a useful way. Twitter is one of the most popular social networking services, where the user can post and read the tweet messages. The tweet messages are helpful for biomedical, research and health care fields. The data are extracted from the Twitter. The Twitter data cannot classify directly since it has noisy information. This noisy information is removed by preprocessing. The plain text is classified into health and non-health data using CART algorithm. The performance of classification is analyzed using precision, error rate and accuracy. The result is compared with the Naive Bayesian and the proposed method yields high performance result than the Naive Bayesian. It performs well with the large data set and it is simple and effective. It yields high classification accuracy and the resulting data could be used for further mining.
A Note on Attribute Hierarchy Method

Two new similarity indexes are introduced to explain the logic behind the classification methods A and B with attribute hierarchy model. Several kinds of new classification methods proposed are based on variations of the similarity between the expected response pattern and the observed response pattern. The results of simulation indicate that the new methods are better than methods A and B. And with the slips increasing the advantage is especially obvious.
Filter Design Based on the Theory of the Generalized Morphological Filter with Omnidirectional Structuring Element

The close-opening or open-closing filter based on the morphological filters with the same size structuring element cannot remove all the positive or negative impulse noise effectively. To improve the performance of these two kinds of filter, the generalized close- opening and open-closing filter based on the morphological filter with the different size structuring element are put forward. Based on the generalized morphological filter, this paper suggests a kind of designing project of the filter that applies a new structuring element to the generalized morphological filter. The theoretical analysis and the simulation experiments of the image processing indicate that this kind of filter can not only remove noise effectively but also keep the details of the image sufficiently.
Employment Networks in a High-Unemployment Rural Area

Higher rates of unemployment are found among African-American men in rural communities in the US. As part of a community-based participatory research project, we sought to identify characteristics of job-seeking networks of African-American and white employed and unemployed men and women in a rural community in Missouri. We collected cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative information about job-seeking networks through in-depth interviews with 39 local residents. Descriptive network measures were used to compare the gender, race, and employment status of the people comprising participant job-seeking networks. A novel network approach was used to simulate a whole network from individual networks depicting likely patterns of job-seeking relationships across the community. Unemployed participants had larger networks, with the exception of white women. Men had more racially homogenous networks than women; many networks had no racial diversity. Men had longer relationships than women, while women had stronger relationships. Employed participants had more linkages to alters with connections to community organizations than unemployed participants. Unemployed participants had many connections, but lacked connections to the right people and organizations to aid in their job search. Increasing employment opportunities in this community, and similar communities, will require effort from job-seekers and others to develop new relationships, programs, and policies.
Password Security: What Users Know and What They Actually Do

Summary: This study investigated the common password generation practices of online users. Three hundred and fifteen undergraduate and graduate students completed a survey querying (1) the types and number of different password protected accounts maintained; (2) actual practices used in generating, storing and using passwords; (3) practices believed they should use in generating and storing passwords; and (4) general demographic information. Results indicate that, in general, users do not vary the complexity of passwords depending on the nature of the site (bank account vs. instant messenger) or change their passwords on any regular basis if it is not required by the site. Users report using lower case letters, numbers or digits, personally meaningful numbers and personally meaningful words when creating passwords, despite the fact that they realize that these methods may not be the most secure.
Improved error control techniques for data transmission

Error control coding is frequently used to minimise the errors which occur naturally in the transmission and storage of digital data. Many methods for decoding such codes already exist. The choice falls mainly into two areas: hard-decision algebraic decoding, a computationally-efficient method, and soft-decision combinatorial decoding, which although more complex offers better error-correction. The work presented in this Thesis is intended to provide practical decoding algorithms which can be implemented in real systems. Soft-decision maximum-likelihood decoding of Reed-Solomon codes can be obtained by using the Viterbi algorithm over a suitable trellis. Two-stage decoding of Reed-Solomon codes is presented. It is an algorithm by which near-optimum performance may be achieved with a complexity lower than the Viterbi algorithm. The soft-output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) has been investigated as a means of providing soft-decision information for subsequent decoders. Considerations of how to apply SOVA to multi-level codes are given. The use of SOVA in a satellite downlink channel is discussed. The results of a computer simulation, which showed a 1.8dB improvement in coding gain for only a 20% increase in decoding complexity, are presented. SOVA was also used to improve the decoding performance when applied to an RS product code. Several different decoding methods were evaluated, including cascade decoding, and a method where the row and columns were decoded alternately. A complexity measurement was developed which allows accurate comparisons of decoding complexity for trellis-based and algebraic decoders. With this technique the decoding complexity of all the algorithms implemented are compared. Also included in the comparison are the Euclidean and Berlekamp-Massey algorithms.
Optimizing Logarithmic Arithmetic on FPGAs

This paper proposes optimizations of the methods and parameters used in both mathematical approximation and hardware design for logarithmic number system (LNS) arithmetic. First, we introduce a general polynomial approximation approach with an adaptive divide-in-halves segmentation method for evaluation of LNS arithmetic functions. Second, we develop a library generator that automatically generates optimized LNS arithmetic units with a wide bit-width range from 21 to 64 bits, to support LNS application development and design exploration. The basic arithmetic units are tested on practical FPGA boards as well as software simulation. When compared with existing LNS designs, our generated units provide in most cases 6% to 37% reduction in area and 20% to 50% reduction in latency. The key challenge for LNS remains on the application level. We show the performance of LNS versus floating-point for realistic applications: digital sine/cosine waveform generator, matrix multiplication and radiative Monte Carlo simulation. Our infrastructure for fast prototyping LNS FPGA applications allows us to efficiently study LNS number representation and its tradeoffs in speed and size when compared with floating-point designs.
Admission Control Algorithm for Real-Time Services in Packet-Switched OFDM Wireless Networks - norm

We propose a new connection admission control algorithm called DAC for real-time services in packet-switched OFDM wireless cellular networks. The main idea of DAC is to use maximum acceptance ratio for real-time services according to the desired packet-level and call-level QoS requirements. The control mechanism is periodical. At the beginning of the control period, the admission controller gathers the loading information from its own and neighboring cells. Then, according to the information, the maximum acceptance ratio is calculated by using a Markovian queueing model and time-dependent distribution of the number of connections. Finally the admission controller uses the computed ratio to admit connection requests in this control period. Extensive simulation results show that our algorithm satisfies packet-level and call-level QoS requirements for real-time services while maintaining high bandwidth utilization.
Performance of trellis coded CPM with iterative demodulation and decoding

Interleaved trellis coded systems with continuous phase modulation (TCCPM) are considered. Upper bounds and lower bounds on the bit error rate (BER) performance are derived for coherent detection on the additive white Gaussian noise and flat Rayleigh fading channels by considering the trellis code, interleaver and CPM modulator as a serially concatenated convolutional code. A coherent receiver that performs iterative demodulation and decoding is shown to provide performance close to the lower bounds developed.