Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
End-to-end Speech Recognition with Adaptive Computation Steps

In this paper, we present Adaptive Computation Steps (ACS) algorithm, which enables end-to-end speech recognition models to dynamically decide how many frames should be processed to predict a linguistic output. The model that applies ACS algorithm follows the encoder-decoder framework, while unlike the attention-based models, it produces alignments independently at the encoder side using the correlation between adjacent frames. Thus, predictions can be made as soon as sufficient acoustic information is received, which makes the model applicable in online cases. Besides, a small change is made to the decoding stage of the encoder-decoder framework, which allows the prediction to exploit bidirectional contexts. We verify the ACS algorithm on a Mandarin speech corpus AIShell-1, and it achieves a 31.2% CER in the online occasion, compared to the 32.4% CER of the attention-based model. To fully demonstrate the advantage of ACS algorithm, offline experiments are conducted, in which our ACS model achieves an 18.7% CER, outperforming the attention-based counterpart with the CER of 22.0%.
Children's Consonant Acquisition in 27 Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review.

Purpose The aim of this study was to provide a cross-linguistic review of acquisition of consonant phonemes to inform speech-language pathologists' expectations of children's developmental capacity by (a) identifying characteristics of studies of consonant acquisition, (b) describing general principles of consonant acquisition, and (c) providing case studies for English, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Method A cross-linguistic review was undertaken of 60 articles describing 64 studies of consonant acquisition by 26,007 children from 31 countries in 27 languages: Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Jamaican Creole, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Maltese, Mandarin (Putonghua), Portuguese, Setswana (Tswana), Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Turkish, and Xhosa. Results Most studies were cross-sectional and examined single word production. Combining data from 27 languages, most of the world's consonants were acquired by 5;0 years;months old. By 5;0, children produced at least 93% of consonants correctly. Plosives, nasals, and nonpulmonic consonants (e.g., clicks) were acquired earlier than trills, flaps, fricatives, and affricates. Most labial, pharyngeal, and posterior lingual consonants were acquired earlier than consonants with anterior tongue placement. However, there was an interaction between place and manner where plosives and nasals produced with anterior tongue placement were acquired earlier than anterior trills, fricatives, and affricates. Conclusions Children across the world acquire consonants at a young age. Five-year-old children have acquired most consonants within their ambient language; however, individual variability should be considered. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6972857.
Toward harmonizing ecotoxicity characterization in life cycle impact assessment

Ecosystem quality is an important area of protection in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Chemical pollution has adverse impacts on ecosystems on a global scale. To improve methods for assessing ecosystem impacts, the Life Cycle Initiative hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme established a task force to evaluate the state‐of‐the‐science in modeling chemical exposure of organisms and the resulting ecotoxicological effects for use in LCIA. The outcome of the task force work will be global guidance and harmonization by recommending changes to the existing practice of exposure and effect modeling in ecotoxicity characterization. These changes will reflect the current science and ensure the stability of recommended practice. Recommendations must work within the needs of LCIA in terms of 1) operating on information from any inventory reporting chemical emissions with limited spatiotemporal information, 2) applying best estimates rather than conservative assumptions to ensure unbiased comparison with results for other impact categories, and 3) yielding results that are additive across substances and life cycle stages and that will allow a quantitative expression of damage to the exposed ecosystem. We describe the current framework and discuss research questions identified in a roadmap. Primary research questions relate to the approach toward ecotoxicological effect assessment, the need to clarify the method's scope and interpretation of its results, the need to consider additional environmental compartments and impact pathways, and the relevance of effect metrics other than the currently applied geometric mean of toxicity effect data across species. Because they often dominate ecotoxicity results in LCIA, we give metals a special focus, including consideration of their possible essentiality and changes in environmental bioavailability. We conclude with a summary of key questions along with preliminary recommendations to address them as well as open questions that require additional research efforts. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:2955–2971. © 2018 SETAC
Intracranial Inoculation Is More Potent Than Intranasal Inoculation for Inducing Optic Neuritis in the Mouse Hepatitis Virus-Induced Model of Multiple Sclerosis

Neurotropic strains of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) induce acute inflammation and chronic demyelination in the spinal cord and optic nerves mediated by axonal spread following intracranial inoculation in mice, with pathologic features similar to the human demyelinating disease multiple sclerosis. Spinal cord demyelination is also induced following intranasal inoculation with neurotropic MHV strains, however much higher viral doses are required as compared to intracranial inoculation. Recently, it was shown that intranasal administration of low concentrations of proteins leads to significant, rapid accumulation of protein in the optic nerve and in the eye, with only low levels reaching spinal cord and other brain regions. Thus, we examined whether intranasal inoculation with MHV at doses equivalent to those given intracranially could induce optic neuritis—inflammation, demyelination and loss of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the optic nerve with or without inducing spinal cord demyelination. Four week old male C57BL/6J mice were inoculated intracranially with the recombinant demyelinating strain RSA59, or intranasally with RSA59 or the non-demyelinating strain RSMHV2 as control. One month post-inoculation, mice inoculated intracranially with RSA59 had significant myelin loss in both spinal cord and optic nerves, with significant loss of RGCs as well, consistent with prior studies. As expected, intranasal inoculation with RSA59 failed to induce demyelination in spinal cord; however, it also did not induce optic nerve demyelination. No acute inflammation was found, and no viral antigen was detected, in the optic nerve or retina 1 day after inoculation. Results confirm the neurotropic effects of RSA59 following intracranial inoculation, and suggest that direct infection with axonal transport of virus from brain to spinal cord and optic nerve is required to induce demyelinating disease. These studies suggest that MHV does not selectively concentrate in optic nerve and retina to sufficient levels to induce demyelination following intranasal inoculation. Intracranial inoculation should continue to be considered a preferred method for studies of MHV-induced optic neuritis and central nervous system (CNS) demyelinating disease.
Immersive Robot-Assisted Virtual Reality Therapy for Neurologically-Caused Gait Impairments

This paper presents an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) therapy system for gait rehabilitation after neurological impairments, e.g., caused by accidents or strokes: The system targets increase of patients' motivation to perform the repeated exercise by providing stimulating virtual exercise environments with the final goal to increase therapy efficiency and effectiveness. Instead of simply working out on immobile stationary devices, the system allows them to walk through and explore a stimulating virtual world. Patients are immersed in the virtual environments using a Head-Mounted Display (HMD). Walking patterns are captured by motion sensors attached to the patients' feet to synchronize locomotion speed between the real and the virtual world. A user-centered design process evaluated usability, user experience, and feasibility to confirm the overall goals of the system before any sensitive clinical trials with impaired patients can start. Overall, the results demonstrated an encouraging user experience and acceptance while it did not induce any unwanted side-effects, e.g., nausea or cyber-sickness.
Correlation of concentrations of activin A with occurrence and severity of knee osteoarthritis

Background: Activin A plays as an anticatabolic autocrine cytokine in articular cartilage. Thus, this study aims to evaluate whether activin Aconcentration is correlated with the occurrence and severity of knee osteoarthritis (OA). Methods: A total of 210 knee OA patients and 150 healthy controls were enrolled in this cross-sectional study, to evaluate the severity of OA by Kellgren-Lawrence (KL) grading method. Results: It was found that the concentration of activin A in knee OA group was higher than that in healthy subjects. Furthermore, results of of activin A concentration in serum and synovial fluid (SF) suggested that activin A concentration was the highest in Kellgren-Lawrence (KL) grade 4, and the lowest in KL grade 2. Concentrations of activin A in serum and SF showed significant correlation with disease severity measured by KL grading criteria. Conclusions: It was indicated that concentrations of activin A in serum and SF showed a positive correlation with the occurrence and severity of knee OA.
Integrated Single-Phase Electric Vehicle Charging Using a Dual-Inverter Drive

Electric vehicles have the potential to reduce emissions from the transportation sector. However, the lack and/or expense of charging infrastructure has slowed their adoption. As such, vehicles are often equipped with small on-board chargers, which serve as the primary charging method. These chargers are discrete devices, with additional power electronics and magnetics, which increase the cost and weight of the vehicle. Another solution is to look at redeploying the existing drivetrain components to serve as an integrated charging system. This work proposes a charging scheme that utilizes the inverter and motor in a dual-inverter drive to directly charge from a single-phase AC grid, at power levels greater than existing on-board chargers. In concept, the dual-inverter drive is shown to be operable similar to a PFC based charger with high input voltage. The challenge addressed in this paper relates to how charging power can be arbitrarily divided amongst the energy sources of the dual-inverter drive. This ability to divide charging power is a critical feature needed to prevent overcharging of the batteries and is also a key feature required in a hybrid energy storage configuration.
MoT: A Deterministic Latency MAC Protocol for Mission-Critical IoT Applications

With the growing demand on the IoT market and limited wireless resources, it is essential to fully utilize the available spectrum by improving the total throughput of the network. Many MAC protocols for IoT rely on pure ALOHA-based channel access. Being that these are contention-based the packet collisions cause a massive drop in both the throughput and packet d elivery ratio. The se, proto cols a re unsuitable formission-critical applications which usually req uire long-range communication with guaranteed packet delivery and high throughput. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid scheduling-based protocol MAC on Time (MoT) that guarantees the delivery of all uplink packets in the network and addresses mos t of the importantparameters re qui red by mission-critical a pplica tio.MoT improves the utilization of the bandwidth ca pacity while providing deterministic latency and increased throughput when compared to other IoT MAC protocols. We then designed a simulator for MoT to allow us to compare its performance against that of LoRaWAN. This work provides valuable insight on the performance of both protocols and will aid future research.
Word Retrieval System for Ancient Arabic Manuscripts

Many museums and libraries that have archives containing historical Arabic manuscripts are beginning to digitize their collections to enable researchers and the general public access to them. Most of these collections are available in digital format with no annotation, limiting researchers to fully utilize them efficiently. This paper reports on a system we developed for word retrieval in Historical Arabic Handwritten manuscripts. Unlike other systems, this system does not use Optical Character Recognition or word spotting techniques. The system performs three different steps: segmentatlon, annotation, and word search. We designed a new interface to read and query Historical Arabic Handwritten manuscripts using text queries. The queried word is then highlighted in the page image of the manuscript.
Ubiquitin-specific protease 7 sustains DNA damage response and promotes cervical carcinogenesis

Central to the recognition, signaling, and repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are the MRE11-RAD50-NBS1 (MRN) complex and mediator of DNA damage checkpoint protein 1 (MDC1), the interplay of which is essential for initiation and amplification of the DNA damage response (DDR). The intrinsic rule governing the regulation of the function of this molecular machinery remains to be investigated. We report here that the ubiquitin-specific protease USP7 was physically associated with the MRN-MDC1 complex and that the MRN-MDC1 complex acted as a platform for USP7 to efficiently deubiquitinate and stabilize MDC1, thereby sustaining the DDR. Accordingly, depletion of USP7 impaired the engagement of the MRN-MDC1 complex and the consequent recruitment of the downstream factors p53-binding protein 1 (53BP1) and breast cancer protein 1 (BRCA1) at DNA lesions. Significantly, USP7 was overexpressed in cervical cancer, and the level of its expression positively correlated with that of MDC1 and worse survival rates for patients with cervical cancer. We demonstrate that USP7-mediated MDC1 stabilization promoted cervical cancer cell survival and conferred cellular resistance to genotoxic insults. Together, our study reveals a role for USP7 in regulating the function of the MRN-MDC1 complex and activity of the DDR, supporting the pursuit of USP7 as a potential therapeutic target for MDC1-proficient cancers.
Safety and Efficacy of PrabotulinumtoxinA (Nabota®) Injection for Cervical and Shoulder Girdle Myofascial Pain Syndrome: A Pilot Study

Myofascial pain syndrome is a common painful condition encountered in the general population. Previous studies evaluating the efficacy of botulinum toxin for the treatment of myofascial pain syndrome are limited, with variable results. This prospective study investigated the efficacy and safety of direct injection of Prabotulinumtoxin A (Nabota®) into painful muscle groups for cervical and shoulder girdle myofascial pain. Twelve patients with chronic myofascial pain syndrome of the neck and shoulder underwent an injection of Prabotulinumtoxin A. Painful muscles containing trigger points were injected in the mid-belly. Pain scores and quality of life measurements were assessed at baseline, as well as 6 weeks and 12 weeks post-injection. Safety and tolerability were also assessed. This trial is registered under clinical research information service (CRIS) number KCT0001634. Patients injected with Prabotulinumtoxin A showed a significant improvement in pain at 12 weeks (p < 0.001). At 6 weeks, the pain had not significantly improved compared with baseline (p = 0.063). However, at that time, 41.7% of patients were characterized as Prabotulinumtoxin A responders, with a 30% reduction in pain rating score compared to baseline. In the Neck Disability Index scores, the patients demonstrated significant improvement at both 6 weeks and 12 weeks. No serious adverse effects occurred during the study. Prabotulinumtoxin A injection into chronically painful muscles associated with cervical and shoulder girdle myofascial pain syndrome resulted in an improvement in pain scores and quality of life lasting at least 12 weeks. Additionally, the injections were well tolerated. As these are preliminary findings in a pilot study, future studies should carefully consider using randomized, controlled, prospective trials.
The Benefits of Receiving Gratitude for Helpers: A Daily Investigation of Proactive and Reactive Helping at Work

Although gratitude is a key phenomenon that bridges helping with its outcomes, how and why helping relates to receipt of gratitude and its relation with helper’s eudaimonic well-being have unfortunately been overlooked in organizational research. The purpose of this study is to unravel how helpers successfully connect to others and their work via receipt of gratitude. To do so, we distinguish different circumstances of helping—reactive helping (i.e., providing help when requested) versus proactive helping (i.e., providing help without being asked)—and examine their unique effect on the gratitude received by helpers, which, in turn, has downstream implications for helpers’ perceived prosocial impact and work engagement the following day. Using daily experience sampling (Study 1) and critical incident (Study 2) methods, we found that reactive helping is more likely to be linked to receipt of gratitude than proactive helping. Receipt of gratitude, in turn, is associated with increases in perceived prosocial impact and work engagement the following day. Our study contributes to the helping literature by identifying receipt of gratitude as a novel mechanism that links helping to helper well-being, by distinguishing proactive and reactive helping, and by highlighting eudaimonic well-being as an outcome of helping for helpers.
Associations between Prospective and Retrospective Subjective Memory Complaints and Neuropsychological Performance in Older Adults: The Finger Study

Abstract Objectives: Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) are among the key concerns in the elderly, but their role in detecting objective cognitive problems is unclear. The aim of this study was to clarify the association between SMCs (both prospective and retrospective memory complaints) and neuropsychological test performance in older adults at risk of cognitive decline. Methods: This investigation is part of the FINGER project, a multicenter randomized controlled trial aiming at preventing cognitive decline in high-risk individuals. The cognitive assessment of participants was conducted at baseline using a modified neuropsychological test battery (NTB). SMCs were evaluated with the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) in a sub-sample of 560 participants (mean age, 69.9 years). Results: Having more prospective SMCs was associated with slower processing speed, but not with other NTB domains. Retrospective SMCs were linked to poorer function on NTB total score, processing speed, and memory. Executive function domain was not associated with any PRMQ ratings. Depressive symptoms and poor quality of life diluted the observed associations for NTB total score and memory. However, the association between PRMQ and processing speed remained even after full adjustments. Conclusions: Our results indicate that self-reported memory problems, measured with PRMQ, are associated with objectively measured cognitive performance. Such complaints in healthy elderly people also seem to reflect reduced mental tempo, rather than memory deficits. Slowing of processing speed may thus be negatively related to memory self-efficacy. It is also important to consider affective factors among those who report memory problems. (JINS, 2018, 24, 1099–1109)
Multi-Layer Terahertz Imaging of Non-Overlapping Contents

This paper considers terahertz (THz) imaging of multi-layer nonoverlapping contents with compressed measurements. One issue here is the shadow effect from front layers to deep layers due to the non-uniform penetrating illumination. In the case of nonoverlapping contents in layered structures, the shadow effect can be utilized to improve recovery performance and reduce the number of measurements. To this end, we propose several approaches based on the total variation (TV) minimization principle and take into account individual-layer sparsity, group sparsity over layers, and hierarchical group sparsity over layers to reduce the number of measurements. Numerical evaluation confirms the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
Adaptive Cyber-Security Scheme Incorporating QoS Requirements for WAMC Applications

Smart Grid integrates power systems and communication systems to support intelligent control and operation applications. The inputs of those applications are normally measured data collected anywhere in the system and they are transmitted over Wide Area Networks (WAN). Challenges associated with Quality of Service (QoS) and cyber-security in the delivery of these data need to be addressed. In most research work in Smart Grid, QoS and cyber-security are considered separately. However, there is tension between the two: in order to maintain a certain level of QoS security might have to be compromised. The relationship is not, however, deterministic as both QoS and the performance of cyber-security countermeasures may vary over time. To address such challenges, this paper proposes a novel adaptive cyber-security scheme. It quantifies experts opinions of available cyber-security algorithms into a metric called security coverage. Then security coverage is adaptively optimized, by switching cyber-security algorithms, depending on observed data link QoS performance. The scheme is validated with simulation studies on a typical Wide Area Monitoring Control (WAMC) application, power oscillation damping control. The proposed adaptive cyber-security scheme is generally applicable to Smart Grid or power system applications that face varying communication performance during operation.