Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Tail of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow

One of the most famous sound features of Scottish English is the short/long timing alternation of /i u ai/ vowels, which depends on the morpho-phonemic environment, and is known as the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR). These alternations make the status of vowel quantity in Scottish English (quasi-)phonemic but are also susceptible to change, particularly in situations of intense sustained dialect contact with Anglo-English. Does the SVLR change in Glasgow where dialect contact at the community level is comparably low? The present study sets out to tackle this question, and tests two hypotheses involving (1) external influences due to dialect-contact and (2) internal, prosodically induced factors of sound change. Durational analyses of /i u a/ were conducted on a corpus of spontaneous Glaswegian speech from the 1970s and 2000s; four speaker groups were compared, two of middle-aged men, and two of adolescent boys. Our hypothesis that the development of the SVLR over time may be internally constrained and interact with prosody was largely confirmed. We observed weakening effects in its implementation which were localised in phrase-medial unaccented positions in all speaker groups, and in phrase-final positions in the speakers born after the Second World War. But unlike some other varieties of Scottish or Northern English which show weakening of the Rule under a prolonged contact with Anglo-English, dialect contact seems to be having less impact on the durational patterns in Glaswegian vernacular, probably because of the overall reduced potential for a regular, everyday contact in the West of Scotland.
Modelling of large scale linear discrete time interval systems using K-means algorithm

This paper proposes a new method for the reduction of discreet time interval systems based on pattern recognition algorithm. The proposed method always yields a stable reduced order model for a stable original higher order system. As the method does not have random assumptions in it, the method gives a unique reduced order model. The denominator polynomial is formulated using K-Means algorithm and numerator polynomial is formulated by matching the ration of like powers of original system with that of the reduced order model. Numerical examples were presented and compared with existing methods in the literature.
Synchronized Cooperative Learning for Coordinating Cognitive Network Management Functions

Self-organizing networks (SONs) have been deployed typically with the SON functions (SFs) as rule-based controllers that evaluate metrics and decide actions based on a set of rules. Atop SFs, SON coordination ensures that the SFs do not conflict with one another during operations. However, as SONs evolve toward cognitive network management, with SFs as cognitive, learning-based agents, called cognitive functions (CFs), coordination gets extremely complicated. The coordinator must track the multiple dynamic agents each having non-deterministic behavior owing to the learning. Yet, if smart enough, the agents could also learn to minimize the conflicts or at least the related effects negating need for a coordinator. We present a distributed coordination approach called synchronized cooperative learning, where CFs learn to minimize their effects on one another. We apply the concept to a network with CFs for mobility robustness optimization and mobility load balancing, with results showing that using this approach, the functions learn to find a good compromise between maximizing individual metrics and minimizing cross effects on their peers.
How Do Learners of English Overcome Non-Understanding?: A Sequential Analysis of "English as a Lingua Franca" Interaction.

Although there seems to be no doubt that English as a lingua franca paradigm has affected the focus of English language teaching toward the issue of mutual intelligibility, studies involving only non-native English speakers (NNS-NNS interaction) are still in their infancy. Using a sequential analysis, this study examines how Japanese learners of English communicate with non-native English interlocutors who do not share their L1 background, and analyzes how they overcome non-understanding when a breakdown in communication occurs from the perspective of English as a lingua franca. Data from video-recording and interviews were collected and the interactions in the three groups, including L1 speakers of Japanese, Malay and Chinese, were analyzed. The analysis reveals that ELF users’ interactional modifications probably vary depending on the interlocutors and the given context, and also that non-understanding might not be overcome only through a particular modification pattern, but that a few different types of modifications and negotiation of meaning may be needed for a successful communication among the interlocutors. These observations suggest that English as a lingua franca interaction is cooperative and mutually supportive. Based on these findings, raising teachers’ awareness of the lingua franca role of English and the need for implementing the training of negotiation skills for a successful communication are also discussed.
The Value of Clinical Colorectal Cancer Registries in Colorectal Cancer Research: A Systematic Review

Importance Clinical colorectal cancer registries (CCCRs) are potentially powerful tools in colorectal cancer research. They are resource intensive, but to our knowledge, no formal review of their value exists. While quality control, clinical audit, and benchmarking are important factors in assessing the value of maintaining CCCRs, they are difficult to quantify. This study focuses on registry research output as a measure of value; the study hypothesizes that CCCRs do not produce sufficient published research output of clinical significance to justify the resources required to maintain them. Objective To assess the value of maintaining CCCRs by identifying and characterizing existing CCCRs and measuring their comparative research impact. Evidence Review We searched MEDLINE (PubMed) and Google Scholar for articles published from January 1990 to July 2016 that identified multi-institutional CCCRs with peer-reviewed published outcomes. Purely population-based registries were excluded. We then searched the same databases in the same time period for articles that were published by each included CCCR. The articles must have been based on outcomes relating to individual CCCR data. We categorized published outcomes into oncological, surgical, or other outcomes. We measured the research impact of each CCCR using the number of articles, citation index, impact factor, and Altmetric score. Findings A total of 18 CCCRs were identified, with sample sizes between 104 and 1 400 000 cases. Data fields, published aims, and outcomes were similar between registries. The most frequently published outcomes related to anastomotic leak following colorectal surgery. The National Cancer Database formed the basis of the highest number of publications (66), the Northern Region Colorectal Cancer Audit Group had the highest median article citation number (28.5), the National Bowel Cancer Audit had the highest median impact factor (4.72), and the National Cancer Database had the highest median Altmetric score (4.5). Conclusions and Relevance There is a significant body of colorectal cancer outcomes research generated from the CCCRs. However, given the enormous resources required, the overall research output and impact of CCCRs is low in proportion to the size of the data sets. These registries hold key oncological and surgical outcomes data; focusing on data linkage between registries and developing automated data collection will enable international comparisons in colorectal cancer management and will increase the research impact of CCCRs, thereby increasing their value.
Benign paroxysmal torticollis, benign paroxysmal vertigo, and benign tonic upward gaze are not benign disorders

Benign paroxysmal torticollis (BPT), benign paroxysmal vertigo (BPV), and benign tonic upward gaze (BTU) are characterized by transient and recurrent episodes of neurological manifestations. The purpose of this study was to analyse the clinical relationships between these syndromes, associated comorbidities, and genetic bases.
Defamiliarizing the Domestic: Exploring "M-Kopa Solar" and Sustainable Practices in Rural Kenyan Households

Domestic environments remain a topic of interest in HCI/Ubicomp, including how Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) can be designed to support sustainable practices in them. In this paper, we broaden the community's knowledge of these topics by studying them in rural Kenya. Specifically, we explore users' experiences with 'M-Kopa Solar', a commercially-available solar-powered lighting system for homes. We draw from our fieldwork, which primarily involved conducting interviews and observations at 21 households. In the process of learning about people's experiences with M-Kopa, we also learned about other sustainable practices that were central to their everyday lives. Our findings suggest that M-Kopa is a "green" solution to limited access to electricity in rural Kenya; in particular, we find that the system's design contributes to its success. These findings also raise questions about the long-term implications of such systems---especially in terms of how M-Kopa's marketing practices introduce people to consumption practices. We discuss this and other findings; in particular, the continued significance of "defamiliarization" as design strategy within HCI/ubicomp.
Synthesizing Diverse, High-Quality Audio Textures

Texture synthesis techniques based on matching the Gram matrix of feature activations in neural networks have achieved spectacular success in the image domain. In this paper we extend these techniques to the audio domain. We demonstrate that synthesizing diverse audio textures is challenging, and argue that this is because audio data is relatively low-dimensional. We therefore introduce two new terms to the original Grammian loss: an autocorrelation term that preserves rhythm, and a diversity term that encourages the optimization procedure to synthesize unique textures. We quantitatively study the impact of our design choices on the quality of the synthesized audio by introducing an audio analogue to the Inception loss which we term the VGGish loss. We show that there is a trade-off between the diversity and quality of the synthesized audio using this technique. We additionally perform a number of experiments to qualitatively study how these design choices impact the quality of the synthesized audio. Finally we describe the implications of these results for the problem of audio style transfer.
Debt Dynamics and Monetary Policy: A Note

"Leaning against the wind" – a tighter monetary policy than necessary for stabilizing inflation around the inflation target and unemployment around a long-run sustainable rate – has been justified as a way of reducing household indebtedness. In a recent paper Lars Svensson claims that this policy is counterproductive, since a higher policy rate actually leads to an increase (and not a decrease) in real debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio. In this note we offer some comments and extensions to Svensson´s analysis. In particular, we take Svensson´s debt model to the data and show that it provides an incomplete account of short term debt dynamics. Further, the overall analysis of the effects of monetary policy on debt rests on the rather strong assumption that debt is independent of the policy rate, conditional on housing prices. The policy responses advocated by Svensson can therefore be questioned. More importantly, our exercises with a modified model of debt dynamics enables further understanding of how different assumptions affect the assessment of the effects of monetary policy on debt.
Body Mass Index as a Predictor of Acute Kidney Injury in Critically Ill Patients: A Retrospective Single-Center Study

Background The aim of this study was to examine the influence of body mass index (BMI) on the development of acute kidney injury (AKI) in critically ill patients in intensive care unit (ICU). Methods Data of patients admitted to medical ICU from December 2011 to May 2014 were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were classified into three groups according to their BMI: underweight (<18.5 kg/m2), normal (18.5–24.9 kg/m2), and overweight (≥25 kg/m2). The incidence of AKI was compared among these groups and factors associated with the development of AKI were analyzed. AKI was defined according to the Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss of kidney function, and End-stage (RIFLE) kidney disease criteria. Results A total of 468 patients were analyzed. Their mean BMI was 21.5±3.9 kg/m2, including 102 (21.8%) underweight, 286 (61.1%) normal-weight, and 80 (17.1%) overweight patients. Overall, AKI occurred in 82 (17.5%) patients. The overweight group had significantly (p<0.001) higher incidence of AKI (36.3%) than the underweight (9.8%) or normal group (15.0%). In addition, BMI was significantly higher in patients with AKI than that in those without AKI (23.4±4.2 vs. 21.1±3.7, p<0.001). Multivariate analysis showed that BMI was significantly associated with the development of AKI (odds ratio, 1.893; 95% confidence interval, 1.224–2.927). Conclusion BMI may be associated with the development of AKI in critically ill patients.
Locally favoured structures and dynamic length scales in a simple glass-former C

We investigate the static and dynamic properties of a weakly polydisperse hard sphere system in the deeply supercooled state, i.e. at densities higher than that corresponding to the mode-coupling transition. The structural analysis reveals the emergence of icosahedral locally favoured structures, previously only found in trace quantities. We present a new approach to probe the shape of dynamically heterogeneous regions, which is insensitive to particle packing eects that can hamper such analysis. Our results indicate that the shape of the dynamically heterogeneous regions changes only weakly and moreover hint that the often-used four-point correlation length may exhibit a growth in excess of that which our method identifies. The growth of the size of the dynamically heterogeneous regions appears instead to be in line with the one of structural and dynamic propensity correlations.
The Effect of Coenzyme Q10 Administration on DNA Damage in Diabetic Polyneuropathy. A Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Phase Iia Clinical Trial

Aim: To evaluate the effect of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) administration on DNA damage in diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN). Methods: We performed a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial. A single daily dose of Placebo or CoQ10 (400 mg) was given for 16 weeks in patients with DPN. Serum levels of 8-hydroxy-2 ́deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), 8-oxoguanine-DNAN-glycosylase (hOGG1), endogenous CoQ10, and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were analyzed. We included 9 healthy control subjects (HC) to compare baseline final levels for each group. Results: Baseline levels of 8-OHdG in Placebo patients were 5.15 ± 0.59, and final levels, 5.95 ± 1.21 ng/mL (p=0.715). Baseline levels of 8-OHdG in the CoQ10 patients had 6.60 ± 0.80 ng/mL, and final, 7.10 ± 0.74 ng/mL (p=0.768). Baseline levels of hOGG1 in HC were 0.39 ± 0.01 ng/mL, while in the Placebo patients was 0.42 ± 0.01 ng/mL (p=0.027 vs. HC) and final 0.41 ± 0.00 ng/mL (p=0.353 baseline-final). The CoQ10 patients had baseline levels of hOGG1, 0.43 ± 0.01 ng/mL (p=0.01 vs. HC), and final of 0.43 ± 0.01 ng/ mL. A significant reduction of SOD activity was found in both groups. Superoxide dismutase baseline in Placebo patients was 6.29 ± 0.74 (p=0.025 vs. HC) and the CoQ10 patients had 5.37 ± 0.58 U/L (p=0.006 vs. HC). At the end of the study, tendency for SOD to increase was noted in the CoQ10 patients to 6.07 ± 0.68 U/L (p=0.15). Baseline levels of CoQ10 in HC were 1380.12 ± 135.51 ng/mL and the Placebo patients had 579.56 ± 67.91 ng/mL (p<0.001 vs. HC). The CoQ10 patients had tendency to improve levels from baseline from 999.09 ± 108.49 ng/mL to 1062.39 ± 152.10 ng/mL at the final result. Conclusion: The administration of CoQ10 offering antioxidant benefits with tendency to augment the SOD activity and improve endogenous CoQ10 concentrations. No effect of supplementation with CoQ10 on oxidative DNA damage in DPN patients was observed.
10-Mb/s Quantum Key Distribution

We report the first quantum-key-distribution (QKD) systems capable of delivering sustainable, real-time secure keys continuously at rates exceeding 10 Mb/s. To achieve such rates, we developed high-speed postprocessing modules, achieving maximum data throughputs of 60 MC/s, 55 Mb/s, and 108 Mb/s for standalone operation of sifting, error correction, and privacy amplification modules, respectively. The photonic layer of the QKD systems features high-speed single-photon detectors based on self-differencing InGaAs avalanche photodiodes, phase encoding using an asymmetric Mach–Zehnder interferometer, and active stabilization of the interferometer phase and photon polarization. An efficient variant of the decoy-state BB84 protocol is implemented for the security analysis, with a large dataset size of $10^8$ bits selected to mitigate finite-size effects. Over a 2-dB channel, a record secure key rate of 13.72 Mb/s has been achieved averaged over 4.4 days of operation. We confirm the robustness and long-term stability on a second QKD system continuously running for 1 month without any user invention.
Determination of the kinetic parameters of batch fermentation of Lactobacillus paracasei RN 5 with probiotic potential

Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms that confer beneficial effects to the health of the host when administered in adequate amounts [2; 8]. Not all lactobacilli can be included in the composition of probiotics and probiotic foods, but only those which have certain properties [6], one of which is to enable the conduction of industrial processes industrial cultivation, aimed at obtaining of concentrates with high content of viable cells; immobilization and lyophilization, and to maintain their activity during the storage of the lyophilisates. Providing optimal conditions for the growth of the microbial cells that would ensure the accumulation of a high concentration of viable cells is of particular importance in the culturing process. According to Pirt, 1975 [5], in batch fermentation of lactic acid bacteria each microbial species increases its biomass at a rate which is a function of the chemical and physical conditions of the medium. The composition of the culture medium is of particular importance. Proper implementation of the fermentation process in respect not only to the culture conditions, but also to the change of the morphology of the microbial cells provides the obtaining of preparations that contain a high concentration of viable cells. Culturing in a bioreactor allows better development of the microbial cells and also provides an opportunity for culturing of mixed cultures. Conditions for obtaining standardized starters with homogeneous properties and biochemical activity are created [3]. Knowledge of the kinetic parameters of the microbial population is necessary for the study, implementation and management of cultivation processes, for their scaling from laboratory to industrial scale. Furthermore, knowledge of the kinetic features of development of the population allows the selection of the most appropriate probiotic strain, namely the one that has the highest maximum specific growth rate and the maximum specific rate of acidformation. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possibilities for batch fermentation in a bioreactor with continuous agitation and under static conditions of Lactobacillus paracasei RN5 with probiotic properties and to determine the kinetic parameters of the processes.
Inactivated Piscine orthoreovirus vaccine protects against heart and skeletal muscle inflammation in Atlantic salmon.

Heart- and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI) caused by infection with Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV) is one of the most common viral diseases in farmed Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in Norway, and disease outbreaks have been reported in most countries with large-scale Atlantic salmon aquaculture. Currently there is no vaccine available for protection against HSMI, partly due to the lack of a cell line for efficient virus propagation. Erythrocytes are the primary target cells for PRV in vivo and a potential source for isolation of PRV particles. In this study, PRV was purified from infected erythrocytes, inactivated and used in a vaccination trial against HSMI. A single immunization with adjuvanted, inactivated PRV induced protection against HSMI in Atlantic salmon infected by virus injection 6 weeks later, while a moderate protection was obtained in fish infected through natural transmission, i.e. cohabitation. The PRV vaccine significantly reduced PRV loads and histopathological lesions typical for HSMI compared to the unvaccinated control group. This is the first demonstration of protective vaccination against PRV, and promising for future control of HSMI in Atlantic salmon aquaculture.
Are Volatility Expectations in Different Countries Interdependent? A Data-Driven Solution to Structural VAR Identification for Implied Equity Volatility Indices

Over the past couple of decades, the number of volatility indices has increased rapidly. Although the dynamics of realized volatility spillover have been studied extensively, very few studies exist that examine the spillover between these implied volatility indices. By using DAG-based structural vector autoregression, this paper provides evidence that implied volatility spillover differs from realized volatility spillover. Through solving the well-known VAR identification problem for these indices, this paper finds that Asia, more specifically Hong Kong, plays a central role in implied volatility spillover during and after the 2008 financial crisis.
Early colonisation and temporal dynamics of the gut microbial ecosystem in Standardbred foals

BACKGROUND Even if horses strictly depend on the gut microbiota for energy homeostasis, only a few molecular studies have focused on its characterisation and none on the perinatal gut microbial colonisation process. OBJECTIVES To explore the perinatal colonisation process of the foal gut microbial ecosystem and the temporal dynamics of the ecosystem assembly during the first days of life. STUDY DESIGN Longitudinal study. METHODS Thirteen Standardbred mare-foal pairs were included in the study. For each pair, at delivery we collected the mare amniotic fluid, faeces and colostrum, and the foal meconium. Milk samples and faeces of both mare and foal were also taken longitudinally, until day 10 post-partum. Samples were analysed by means of next-generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene on Illumina MiSeq. RESULTS Our findings suggest that microbial components derived from the mare symbiont communities establishes in the foal gut since fetal life. After birth, an external transmission route of mare microorganisms takes place. This involves a rapid and dynamic process of assembling the mature foal gut microbiome, in which the founder microbial species are derived from both the milk and the gut microbial ecosystems of the mare. MAIN LIMITATIONS The inability to discriminate between live and dead cells, the possible presence of contaminating bacteria in low biomass samples (e.g. meconium and amniotic fluid), the limits of the phylogenetic assignment down to species level, and the presence of unassigned operational taxonomic units. CONCLUSIONS Our data highlight the importance of mare microbiomes as a key factor for the establishment of the gut microbial ecosystem of the foal.