Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Vocal Tract Resonances on the Sound Spectrum of the Saxophone

Variation in the radiated sound spectrum, prad, is an expressive technique that can be achieved on the saxophone by employing different vocal tract configurations that change the vocal tract impedance spectrum Zmouth. However, the relation between prad and the vocal tract impedance spectrum Zmouth has not previously been measured for orchestral instruments. In this study, prad and Zmouth were measured simultaneously over the frequency range from 100 to 10000 Hz while saxophonists played. For notes sounded over the normal and altissimo playing range, experienced saxophonists are able to produce distinctive variations in the spectral envelope of the radiated sound, without changing the pitch or the amplitude of the fundamental, using different vocal tract configurations. When Zmouth was adjusted to have magnitudes comparable with the input impedance of the bore, Zbore, harmonics of prad were usually increased at nearby frequencies, both for the range over which the saxophone has strong resonances (1002000 Hz) and for the higher range (2-10 kHz). Less experienced players who are unable to produce strong peaks in Zmouth produce much smaller variations in prad. prad correlates more strongly with the series impedance Zmouth + Zbore: for large values of |Zmouth|, larger series impedance at a particular frequency always produced larger radiated power. The change in sound inside the mouth is proportionally larger than that in prad, which explains why players judge the timbre to be more changed than do listeners.
Detailed analysis of coherence collapse in semiconductor lasers

Experimental and theoretical studies of coherence collapse in GaAs/AlGaAs laser diodes with weak optical feedback show two distinct routes to chaos. In each case we observe undamped relaxation oscillations, then external cavity mode beating, and finally coherence collapse. When there is frequency locking between the relaxation oscillations and external cavity modes, a period doubling sequence is followed, otherwise the route to chaos is via quasiperiodicity. >
Origin and spatial distribution of metals in agricultural soils

ABS TRACT: Presence of toxic metals in agricultural soils can impose adverse health impact on consumers. The main purpose of this study was to determine spatial distribution of elements Fe, Sb, Mn in agriculture soils and crops of Hamedan Province in Iran. Soil samples (0-20 cm depth) were collected from an area of 2831 km 2 . Iron, Antimony and Manganese in samples of soil and agricultural crops were extracted and their amount was determined using atomic absorption spectrometer. The spatial distribution map of the studied elements was developed using Kriging method. The main concentration of Fe, Sb and Mn in the soil of the study area is about 3.8%, 2.5 and 403 mg/kg, respectively. According to chemical partitioning studies, the anthropogenic share of Fe, Sb and Mn is about 28.51%, 34.83% and 30.35%, respectively. Results of comparison of heavy metals pollution intensity in the agricultural soil with geoaccumulation index and also pollution index, illustrated that iron and manganese are classified in the Non-polluted class and antimony is in the moderately polluted class. Analysis of zoning map of pollution index showed that Fe, Sb and Mn are of geological sources. In fact, these metals are naturally found in soil. However, anthropogenic activities have led to more accumulation of these metals in the soil. The obtained health risk for metals in agricultural crops is indicative of safe value for consumers.
Government quality determinants of ICT adoption in sub-Saharan Africa

This study investigates government quality determinants of ICT adoption using Generalised Method of Moments on a panel of 49 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2000-2012. ICT is measured with mobile phone penetration, internet penetration and telephone penetration rates while all governance dimensions from the World Bank Governance Indicators are considered, namely: political governance (consisting of political stability and “voice & accountability”); economic governance (entailing government effectiveness and regulation quality) and institutional governance (encompassing the rule of law and corruption-control). The following findings are established. First, political stability and the rule of law have positive short-run and negative long-term effects on mobile phone penetration. Second, the rule of law has a positive (negative) short-run (long-term) effect on internet penetration. Third, government effectiveness and corruption-control have positive short-run and long-term effects on telephone penetration. Institutional governance appears to be most significant in determining ICT adoption in SSA.
Motor Imagery Effect on Gait in Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Review

Motor imagery (MI) represents the cognitive aspect of a motor act and may be defined as the ability to construct a mental action without actually executing it. It may be built mentally through two strategies (visual and kinesthetic). Parkinson's disease (PD) has an unknown etiology and is probably related to multiple causes. PD has been described as a neurodegenerative disease in which neuronal rarefaction and inclusion of Lewy bodies may occur in the small part of the nigra substance and consequent deficit in dopaminergic transmission. Despite all efforts to understand PD and the identification of several non-motor signs and symptoms, such as cognitive changes, the disease diagnosis still depends on motor manifestations such as bradykinesia, stiffness, and tremor at rest. In this context, with the PD evolution, gait disturbances are verified. MI has been used as a gait management strategy in PD since the technique seems to modulate its characteristics immediately. Objective: Investigate, through a review, the MI effects on gait in PD. Methods: To analyze indexed articles in the databases: PubMed/Medline; PEDro and Google Scholar. The studies found were classified according to the PEDro level of evidence and Oxford Center for Evidence-Based Medicine. Results: In total, nine relevant studies on this topic were found. Three of the studies suggest that kinesthetic MI is useful in the PD treatment with and without freezing of gait (FOG) when compared to visual MI. One study evidenced discrepancies between motion and MI, indicating that this may contribute to FOG. Another suggests that Levodopa increases activity in the motor regions (midbrain and supplemental motor area), putamen, thalamus and cerebellum, as well as reduces the activity of the premotor, parietal and brainstem regions of patients with advanced PD. A sixth study showed a decrease in the globus pallidus activity and increased activity in the supplemental motor area during the MI of gait in PD. The seventh study showed no benefit in gait improvement when MI associated with physiotherapy or relaxation. Two studies pointed to the efficacy of the questionnaires applied in PD: 1) It addresses the FOG as a gold standard to diagnose PD (NFOG-Q). 2) Analysed the vividness of the imagined movement by comparing two questionnaires (KVIQ and GIQ). Final considerations: It seems that kinaesthetic MI has a relevant effect in the PD treatment when compared to visual MI, especially in gait characteristics. However, the results still have to be interpreted with caution.
Effects of biochar amendment on greenhouse gas emissions, net ecosystem carbon budget and properties of an acidic soil under intensive vegetable production

Biochar addition to soils has been frequently proposed as a means to increase soil fertility and carbon (C) sequestration. However, the effect of biochar addition on greenhouse gas emissions from intensively managed soils under vegetable production at the field scale is poorly understood. The effects of wheat straw biochar amendment with mineral fertilizer or an enhanced‐efficiency fertilizer (mixture of urea and nitrapyrin) on N2O efflux and the net ecosystem C budget were investigated for an acidic soil in southeast China over a 1‐yr period. Biochar addition did not affect the annual N2O emissions (26–28 kg N/ha), but reduced seasonal N2O emissions during the cold period. Biochar increased soil organic C and CO2 efflux on average by 61 and 19%, respectively. Biochar addition greatly increased C gain in the acidic soil (average 11.1 Mg C/ha) compared with treatments without biochar addition (average −2.2 Mg C/ha). Biochar amendment did not increase yield‐scaled N2O emissions after application of mineral fertilizer, but it decreased yield‐scaled N2O by 15% after nitrapyrin addition. Our results suggest that biochar amendment of acidic soil under intensive vegetable cultivation contributes to soil C sequestration, but has only small effects on both plant growth and greenhouse gas emissions.
Crustal structure of the southernmost Ryukyu subduction zone: OBS, MCS and gravity modelling

SUMMARY In 1995, a combined ocean-bottom-seismometric (OBS) and multichannel seismic (MCS) survey with strong air-gun shots was carried out in the southernmost Ryukyu subduction zone. A crustal velocity structure constructed from the layer-stripping Monte Carlo inversion of three OBS/MCS profiles and the associated density models inverted from gravity data in the SW end of the Ryukyu arc-trench system are presented. Parallel to the arc in the southernmost Ryukyu subduction system, the OBS/MCS profiles show sedimentary layers of the Hoping, Nanao and East-Nanao forearc basins from west to east, warping of the arc basement and buckling of the subducted slab beneath the Hoping basement rise. The arc-parallel variation of the crustal structure may result from increasing lateral compression westward due to oblique subduction of the Philippine Sea plate and collision with the Luzon arc near the northwestern edge of the forearc region. Northward subduction and arc-parallel compression of the slab also have generated thrust faulting along the subduction interface and strike-slip faulting within the subducted slab, respectively. On 2002 March 31, an earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.84 was induced by buckling of the subducted slab and strongly affected cities within an epicentral distance of 100 km. The velocity-interface models, the density models and the focal mechanisms presented in this paper therefore suggest that earthquakes induced by slab buckling or arc-parallel compression have been stronger but less frequent than those generated by northward subduction in the Ryukyu seismogenic zone off Taiwan.
Longitudinal Evaluation Nocturnal Sleep Behaviors of Healthy and Well Developed Children Born Prematurely

The aim of the study is to examine nocturnal sleep measures of healthy and well developed pre-term infants by birth weight when they were averaged 15 corrected months and became elementary school children. Sleep measures were collected by actigraphs (Micro-mini RC, Ambulatory Monitoring Inc., New York, USA). Nocturnal sleep quality of children born as extremely low birth weight (ELBW) was significantly inferior with that of children born as very low birth weight (VLBW) at 15 corrected months [number of night waking: 6.0 (4.5 - 8.0), ELBW 8.5 (7.0 - 10.3) (Z = 2.47, p < 0.01), wake after sleep onset: VLBW 99.0 (73.0 - 115.0) min, ELBW 146.5 (94.8 - 171.3) min (Z = 2.89, p < 0.01)]. However, these measures did not show any significant differences by birth weight at second data collection period [number of night waking: VLBW 0.0 (0.0-1.0), ELBW 1.0 (0.0 - 2.5) (Z = —0.62, n.s.), wake after sleep onset: VLBW 16.0 (8.0 - 27.0) min, ELBW 15.0 (6.0 - 32.5) min (Z = 0.00, n.s.)]. It was assumed that nocturnal measures were affected by the birth weight at the age of 15 corrected months in ELBW infants, but could not predict the future sleep problems at this point.
The role of vegetation-topographic interactions in a barrier island system: island migration in a changing climate

THE ROLE OF VEGETATION-TOPOGRAPHIC INTERACTIONS IN A BARRIER ISLAND SYSTEM: ISLAND MIGRATION IN A CHANGING CLIMATE By Benjamin P Nettleton, M.S. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2018. Major Director: Dr. Julie Zinnert, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology Islands have been characterized based on vegetation and topography as exhibiting different disturbance regimes reinforcing or resisting. This study had two objectives: quantify barrier island upland migration and vegetation cover change over 32 years (1984-2016), and assess tolerance of two prevalent dune grass species, A. breviligulata, and S. patens to sand burial. Using Landsat imagery from the Virginia Coast Reserve, islands were categorized within the disturbance resistance/reinforcing framework based on dune elevation. Resistant areas were associated with woody cover and low marsh to upland migration while reinforcing areas had low vegetation cover and high rates of migration. System-wide, migration rates increased over time and large losses of upland and marsh, paired with expansions of woody cover occurred. In the field, each grass species was subject to repeated burials. S. patens was able to maintain biomass and height in high rates of burial, whereas A. breviligulata did not survive.
Wave train selection by invasion fronts in the FitzHugh–Nagumo equation

We study invasion fronts in the FitzHugh–Nagumo equation in the oscillatory regime using singular perturbation techniques. Phenomenologically, localized perturbations of the unstable steady-state grow and spread, creating temporal oscillations whose phase is modulated spatially. The phase modulation appears to be selected by an invasion front that describes the behavior in the leading edge of the spreading process. We construct these invasion fronts for large regions of parameter space using singular perturbation techniques. Key ingredients are the construction of periodic orbits, their unstable manifolds, and the analysis of pushed and pulled fronts in the fast system. Our results predict the wavenumbers and frequencies of oscillations in the wake of the front through a phase locking mechanism. We also identify a parameter regime where nonlinear phase locked fronts are inaccessible in the singularly perturbed geometry of the traveling-wave equation. Direct simulations confirm our predictions and point to interesting phase slip dynamics.
Cadmium concentration stabilization in a continuous sulfate reducing bioreactor via sulfide concentration control

Cadmium concentration stabilization in a single input-single output continuous bioreactor via sulfide concentration, as the controlled and measured output state variable, was assumed. For the above process, a novel kinetic model of the sulfate-reducing process for cadmium removal was proposed and experimentally confirmed. This model has been extended to continuous operation, which is employed as a virtual plant to enable the implementation of the proposed controller. The considered nonlinear control law contains a sigmoid feedback of the given control error in order to regulate the sulfide concentration at the maximum value indirectly leading to cadmium concentrations meeting the environmental regulations. A theoretical frame of the closed-loop stability of the bioreactor is provided under the assumption that bounded trajectories occur in the bioreactor. Finally, numerical experiments proved satisfactory performance of the proposed methodology in comparison with the standard sliding-mode and linear PI controllers.
The Evolution of Productivity Gaps and Specialization Patterns

This paper presents an industry-level model of growth and trade, in which evolving specialization patterns are the endogenous result of innovation, international technology spillovers, learning-by-doing and balance of payments-restricted growth. Differences between industries with regard to their share in consumption are shown to reinforce or mitigate the effects of specialization on aggregate productivity convergence patterns, depending on other parameters. The implications of the model are studied by means of simulation analyses for a wide range of parameter configurations.
Recent breakthroughs in carrier depletion based silicon optical modulators

Abstract The majority of the most successful optical modulators in silicon demonstrated in recent years operate via the plasma dispersion effect and are more specifically based upon free carrier depletion in a silicon rib waveguide. In this work we overview the different types of free carrier depletion type optical modulators in silicon. A summary of some recent example devices for each configuration is then presented together with the performance that they have achieved. Finally an insight into some current research trends involving silicon based optical modulators is provided including integration, operation in the mid-infrared wavelength range and application in short and long haul data transmission links.
The First Multilingual Surface Realisation Shared Task (SR’18): Overview and Evaluation Results

We report results from the SR’18 Shared Task, a new multilingual surface realisation task organised as part of the ACL’18 Workshop on Multilingual Surface Realisation. As in its English-only predecessor task SR’11, the shared task comprised two tracks with different levels of complexity: (a) a shallow track where the inputs were full UD structures with word order information removed and tokens lemmatised; and (b) a deep track where additionally, functional words and morphological information were removed. The shallow track was offered in ten, and the deep track in three languages. Systems were evaluated (a) automatically, using a range of intrinsic metrics, and (b) by human judges in terms of readability and meaning similarity. This report presents the evaluation results, along with descriptions of the SR’18 tracks, data and evaluation methods. For full descriptions of the participating systems, please see the separate system reports elsewhere in this volume.
Coherent adequate forcing and preserving CH

We develop a general framework for forcing with coherent adequate sets on H(λ) as side conditions, where λ ≥ ω2 is a cardinal of uncountable cofinality. We describe a class of forcing posets which we call coherent adequate type forcings. The main theorem of the paper is that any coherent adequate type forcing preserves CH. We show that there exists a forcing poset for adding a club subset of ω2 with finite conditions while preserving CH, solving a problem of Friedman [Forcing with finite conditions, in Set Theory: Centre de Recerca Matematica, Barcelona, 2003–2004, Trends in Mathematics (Birkhauser-Verlag, 2006), pp. 285–295. ].
Neural Network Approaches to Dialog Response Retrieval and Generation

In this work, we propose a new statistical model for building robust dialog systems using neural networks to either retrieve or generate dialog response based on an existing data sources. In the retrieval task, we propose an approach that uses paraphrase identification during the retrieval process. This is done by employing recursive autoencoders and dynamic pooling to determine whether two sentences with arbitrary length have the same meaning. For both the generation and retrieval tasks, we propose a model using long short term memory (LSTM) neural networks that works by first using an LSTM encoder to read in the user’s utterance into a continuous vector-space representation, then using an LSTM decoder to generate the most probable word sequence. An evaluation based on objective and subjective metrics shows that the new proposed approaches have the ability to deal with user inputs that are not well covered in the database compared to standard example-based dialog baselines. key words: example-based dialog system, dialog system, response retrieval, response generation, long short term memory neural network
THE INFLUENCE OF CARBONIZATION TEMPERATURE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CARBON MEMBRANE WITH SUPERIOR CO 2 / CH 4 SEPARATION

In this study, P84-based carbon tubular membranes were fabricated and characterized in terms of their structural morphology and gas permeation properties, by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and pure gas permeation system, respectively. The polymer tubular membranes were then carbonized under nitrogen atmosphere at different carbonization temperatures of 600, 700, 800 and 900 °C, with heating rate of 3°C/min and thermal soak time of 30 minutes. The manipulation of carbonization temperatures was required to see if it could enhance the permeation properties as desired. Pure gas permeation tests were performed using CO2 and CH4 gases. The CO2/CH4 selectivity was found increasing as the carbonization temperature was increased from 600 to 800 °C. The carbon membrane carbonized at 800°C showed the most promising result for CO2/CH4 selectivity, rendering 69.48 and CO2 permeance of 206.1 GPU.
Using Gamification and Gaming in Order to Promote Risk Taking in the Language Learning Process

Taking risks is an important part of learning. The current study explores the relationship between risk taking and other pertinent factors in the second language acquisition process. Participants (N = 526) performed a foreign vocabulary learning task, followed by a questionnaire evaluating several aspects of their experience, as well as their tendency to take language-related risks. High levels of language risk taking were associated with improved performance in the task, increased self-confidence, and reduced anxiety, all of which are beneficial to learning. This indicates that the willingness to take risks is positively associated with learners’ ability to successfully acquire a foreign language. The paper further examines the use of gamification and gaming as educational tools, which can be used in order to promote risk taking in learners. The idea of using gamification and gaming for pedagogical purposes is strongly supported by a theoretical framework, as well as by numerous real world examples where these techniques were successfully implemented. Overall, this paper highlights the importance of risk taking in the language learning process, and frames gamification and gaming as tools that can be used in order to promote it in learners.
Growth Uncertainty and Risksharing

We propose a new methodology to evaluate the gains from global risksharing that is closely connected to the empirical growth literature. We obtain estimates of residual risk (growth uncertainty) at various horizons from regressions of country-specific deviations from world growth on a wide set of variables in the information set. Since this residual risk can be entirely hedged, we use it to obtain a measure of welfare gain that can be achieved by a representative country. We find that nations can reap very large benefits from engaging in such risksharing arrangements. Using post-war data, the gain for a 35-year horizon, corresponding to an equivalent permanent increase in consumption, is 6.6% when based on a set of 49 countries, and 1.5% when based on 21 OECD countries. Using historical data from 1870 to 1990, we find that the potential gain for a 120-year horizon ranges from 4.9% for a small set of rich countries to 16.5% for a broad set of 24 countries.
The role of LiDAR in sustainable forest management

Forest characterization with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data has recently garnered much scientific and operational attention. The number of forest inventory attributes that may be directly measured with LiDAR is limited; however, when considered within the context of all the measured and derived attributes required to complete a forest inventory, LiDAR can be a valuable tool in the inventory process. In this paper, we present the status of LiDAR remote sensing of forests, including issues related to instrumentation, data collection, data processing, costs, and attribute estimation. The information needs of sustainable forest management provide the context within which we consider future opportunities for LiDAR and automated data processing.