Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Speech Perception in Noise for Children with Auditory Neuropathy/Dys-Synchrony Type Hearing Loss

Objective: To evaluate the effect of background noise on speech perception in children with auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony (AN/AD) type hearing loss. Design: Open and closed-set speech perception abilities were assessed in 12 school-age children who had been diagnosed with AN/AD in infancy. Data were also obtained from a cohort of subjects with sensorineural (SN) hearing loss and from a group of normal-hearing children. Results: Closed-set speech understanding was more affected by the presence of a competing signal in the hearing impaired than in the normal-hearing subjects. The mean S/N ratio required to identify a spondee in noise was –11.5 ± 2.0 dB for the normal group, whereas the ratio required for the SN group was –5.4 ± 5.1 dB and for the AN/AD group was –2.5 ± 4.7 dB. Closed-set perception in noise was not significantly different for the AN/AD children and their SN counterparts although there was a trend toward poorer performance in the AN/AD group. The effect of background noise on open-set speech perception was also similar across hearing-impaired subjects although again, the AN/AD cohort tended to show greater difficulties in noise than their SN peers. Conclusions: Listening in background noise was more difficult for our group of children with AN/AD-type hearing loss than for their normal-hearing peers. However, the noise effects were not consistent across subjects and some children demonstrated reasonable perceptual ability at low signal-to-noise ratios. The ways in which speech understanding is affected by competing signals may be different for different types of hearing deficit, but the results of this investigation indicate that significant perceptual disruption occurs both in children with auditory neuropathy/dys-synchrony and sensorineural type hearing loss.
Variational Inference for the Indian Buffet Process

The Indian Buet Process (IBP) is a nonparametric prior for latent feature models in which observations are influenced by a combination of hidden features. For example, images may be composed of several objects and sounds may consist of several notes. Latent feature models seek to infer these unobserved features from a set of observations; the IBP provides a principled prior in situations where the number of hidden features is unknown. Current inference methods for the IBP have all relied on sampling. While these methods are guaranteed to be accurate in the limit, samplers for the IBP tend to mix slowly in practice. We develop a deterministic variational method for inference in the IBP based on a truncated stick-breaking approximation, provide theoretical bounds on the truncation error, and evaluate our method in several data regimes.
Contour tracking control in position domain for CNC machines

A common problem with modern manufacturing processes that utilize high speed machining is the ability to accurately track a contour of the end-effector. Various control methods have been developed to increase axial tracking performance in the time domain. This paper discusses a new control method developed in the position domain, and the developed position domain control is applied to a 3-axis CNC machine for contour tracking purpose. In theory, the contour tracking of a position domain controller should be improved when compared to an equivalent time domain controller. This is the case since the tracking error of a reference axis in the position domain does not contribute to the overall contouring error. Simulation of the position domain controller and time domain controller yielded positive result for the position domain controller with improved contour tracking for both linear and circular end-effector motions.
Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference

1. Experiments and Generalized Causal Inference 2. Statistical Conclusion Validity and Internal Validity 3. Construct Validity and External Validity 4. Quasi-Experimental Designs That Either Lack a Control Group or Lack Pretest Observations on the Outcome 5. Quasi-Experimental Designs That Use Both Control Groups and Pretests 6. Quasi-Experimentation: Interrupted Time Series Designs 7. Regression Discontinuity Designs 8. Randomized Experiments: Rationale, Designs, and Conditions Conducive to Doing Them 9. Practical Problems 1: Ethics, Participant Recruitment, and Random Assignment 10. Practical Problems 2: Treatment Implementation and Attrition 11. Generalized Causal Inference: A Grounded Theory 12. Generalized Causal Inference: Methods for Single Studies 13. Generalized Causal Inference: Methods for Multiple Studies 14. A Critical Assessment of Our Assumptions
A Virus Detection Framework based on SPMOS

Embedded systems have been used in many different areas in which sensitive information communication and storage are needed. This makes security a serious concern in embedded system design, especially in operating system design. At the same time computer virus has been mutating and developing as fast as the upgrading speed of embedded operating system. Even it is possible for some intelligent virus to destroy the anti-virus software process in the memory. The system-on-a-chip technology provides Scratch-Pad Memory(SPM) which is physically isolated with main memory and more efficient than other kind of memories. We construct a demilitarized zone(DMZ) on SPM and design a small OS named SPMOS in the DMZ. A watchdog is contained in GPOS to monitor the events occurred. If an abnormal event is detected, GPOS will trap itself to SPMOS which will invoke anti-virus program. It is a big challenge to switch the two OSes without any virtual layer support. The way to protect SPM showed that the anti-virus detection platform based on SPMOS is secure. Then the experiment results show that the platform is efficient while switching between OSes.
Automated Peritoneal Dialysis in Children and Adolescents—Benefits: A Survey of Patients and Parents on Health-Related Quality of Life

Automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) benefits children on dialysis and their parents by allowing for more daytime freedom and a more normal life. We carried out a survey on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in children and adolescents from our end-stage renal disease program, including those on APD and hemodialysis (HD), and those who had received a kidney transplant (TX). Parents of patients under 18 years of age were also interviewed. The questionnaire on QOL was adapted from the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory and grouped into seven aspects for which patients and parents were asked to assess the frequency of related problems during the preceding 3 months. We surveyed eligible children among the APD, HD, and TX patients enrolled in our program, and we surveyed the parents of the patients under 18 years of age. For APD, patients and parents both gave their most favorable scores to the peer activities and relationships and family activities and relationships aspects. In the TX group, the family activities and relationships aspect was also scored most favorably of all aspects. Notably, we observed no significant difference between the total scores for the APD and TX groups among patients and parents alike. Although the survey provided only a “snapshot” of HRQOL, the assessment by APD patients and their parents seems to be comparable to that by TX patients and their parents.
Curcumin attenuates neurotoxicity induced by fluoride: An in vivo evidence

Background: Curcumin (Cur), an active ingredient of turmeric is known to have multiple activities, including an antioxidant property and has been suggested to be useful in treatment of several neurological diseases. Objective: To investigate the neuroprotective effects of Cur to mitigate the effect of the Fluoride (F) induced neurotoxicity in mice brain using the histological and the biochemical parameters. Materials and Methods: Exposure of mice (30 days old male) to F (120 ppm) daily for 30 days. Result and Discussion: Treatment with the F causes an increase in lipid peroxidation (LPO) and also increase in the neurodegenerative cells in the hippocampal sub-regions. Interestingly, co-treatment with Cur (30 mg/kg BW) with F (120 ppm) for 30 days results in significant decreases in LPO with a concomitant decrease in neurodegeneration as compared with those treated with F alone. Conclusion: Our study reveals that Cur is useful in ameliorating degenerative effects of F in mice brain.
An adaptive organization index to characterize atrial fibrillation using wrist-type photoplethysmographic signals

The performance of photoplethysmography (PPG)-based wearable monitors to diagnose atrial fibrillation (AF) remains unknown to date. This study aims at assessing the performance of new indices quantifying the level of organization in PPG signals to diagnose AF. A database made of 18 adult patients undergoing catheter ablation of various cardiac arrhythmias was used. PPG signals were recorded using a wrist-type sensor A 12-lead ECG was used as gold standard. ECGs were annotated by experts and selected segments were divided into 4 categories: sinus rhythm (SR), regularly paced rhythm (RPR), irregularly paced rhythm (IPR) and AF. The level of organization of the various PPG signals was measured using an adaptive organization index (AOI), defined as the ratio of the power of the fundamental frequency and the first harmonic to the total power of the PPG signal, computed with adaptive band-pass filters. A total of 2806/803/852/287 10-second epochs were considered for AF/SR/RPR/IPR classes. The following mean AOI values were measured: 0.45±0.11 for AF, 0.73±0.19 for SR, 0.78±0.20 for RPR and 0.61±0.19 for IPR classes. Importantly, the AF AOI was significantly smaller than that of the other categories (p<0.001), indicating a higher degree of disorganization.
Elemental Distribution in Bone Impacted by Bacterial Diseases

Previous work, by this and other authors, noted several elements in bones and teeth are distributed non-uniformly. It was theorized that elemental distributions may be accentuated in the case of bacterial infections. Regions of bone surrounding Dental Abscess and Tuberculosis lesions were identified from, Varden (AdHa-1) and LeVesconte, Ontario; San Pedro, Belize and Kellis II Cemetery, Egypt. The abscess cavities were excised intact and cross-sectioned through the identified lesion. Elemental distributions in the bones were obtained using Synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence mapping. Maps of Zinc, Copper, Iron and Bromine were collected from the samples. The elements included in this study displayed no correlation between distribution patterns and the presence of a dental abscess. This conclusion is limited to the elements studied. Other elements or possible effects on bone structure, crystallinity or elemental chemistry will need to be addressed in future work. However, it was found that Zinc concentration correlates with active bone formation areas.
CFD Analysis of Helicopter Wakes in Ground Effect

The paper presents CFD results for the wake of a helicopter flying a low altitude at different advance ratios. The wakes are assessed in terms of topology and velocity magnitudes. The structure of the wake near ground changes rapidly with the advance ratio and its decay appears to be faster than what is suggested by theoretical analyses. The results show clear the potential of modern CFD for use in helicopter safety and highlights the need for detailed surveys of helicopter wakes using full-scale physical experiments.
Extraction of Synaptic Input Properties in Vivo

Knowledge of synaptic input is crucial for understanding synaptic integration and ultimately neural function. However, in vivo, the rates at which synaptic inputs arrive are high, so that it is typically impossible to detect single events. We show here that it is nevertheless possible to extract the properties of the events and, in particular, to extract the event rate, the synaptic time constants, and the properties of the event size distribution from in vivo voltage-clamp recordings. Applied to cerebellar interneurons, our method reveals that the synaptic input rate increases from 600 Hz during rest to 1000 Hz during locomotion, while the amplitude and shape of the synaptic events are unaffected by this state change. This method thus complements existing methods to measure neural function in vivo.
Inferring statin-induced gene regulatory relationships in primary human hepatocytes

MOTIVATION Statins are the most widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs. The primary target of statins is HMG-CoA reductase, a key enzyme in cholesterol synthesis. However, statins elicit pleitropic responses including beneficial as well as adverse effects in the liver or other organs. Today, the regulatory mechanisms that cause these pleiotropic effects are not sufficiently understood. RESULTS In this work, genome-wide RNA expression changes in primary human hepatocytes of six individuals were measured at up to six time points upon atorvastatin treatment. A computational analysis workflow was applied to reconstruct regulatory mechanisms based on these drug-response data and available knowledge about transcription factor (TF) binding specificities and protein-drug interactions. Several previously unknown TFs were predicted to be involved in atorvastatin-responsive gene expression. The novel relationships of nuclear receptors NR2C2 and PPARA on CYP3A4 were successfully validated in wet-lab experiments. AVAILABILITY Microarray data are available at the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database at www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/geo/, under accession number GSE29868. CONTACT andreas.zell@uni-tuebingen.de; adrian.schroeder@uni-tuebingen.de SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
The Sphingosine 1-Phosphate Transporter, SPNS2, Functions as a Transporter of the Phosphorylated Form of the Immunomodulating Agent FTY720*

FTY720 is a novel immunomodulating drug that can be phosphorylated inside cells; its phosphorylated form, FTY720-P, binds to a sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) receptor, S1P1, and inhibits lymphocyte egress into the circulating blood. Although the importance of its pharmacological action has been well recognized, little is known about how FTY720-P is released from cells after its phosphorylation inside cells. Previously, we showed that zebrafish Spns2 can act as an S1P exporter from cells and is essential for zebrafish heart formation. Here, we demonstrate that human SPNS2 can transport several S1P analogues, including FTY720-P. Moreover, FTY720-P is transported by SPNS2 through the same pathway as S1P. This is the first identification of an FTY720-P transporter in cells; this finding is important for understanding FTY720 metabolism.
The effect of cerebrospinal fluid pressure on the size of drainage pathways

The cerebrospinal fluid drainage pathways were studied using labeled molecules of different sizes. Following determination of the limiting size, the cerebrospinal fluid pressure was raised above the normal range and changes in transfer were measured. These data show that molecules smaller than the limiting size will transfer at an increased rate in response to elevated pressures. Larger molecules did not demonstrate an increased transfer with raised cerebrospinal fluid pressures, suggesting that the pathways did not enlarge.
Phenotypic plasticity in the scaling of avian basal metabolic rate

Many birds exhibit short-term, reversible adjustments in basal metabolic rate (BMR), but the overall contribution of phenotypic plasticity to avian metabolic diversity remains unclear. The available BMR data include estimates from birds living in natural environments and captive-raised birds in more homogenous, artificial environments. All previous analyses of interspecific variation in BMR have pooled these data. We hypothesized that phenotypic plasticity is an important contributor to interspecific variation in avian BMR, and that captive-raised populations exhibit general differences in BMR compared to wild-caught populations. We tested this hypothesis by fitting general linear models to BMR data for 231 bird species, using the generalized least-squares approach to correct for phylogenetic relatedness when necessary. The scaling exponent relating BMR to body mass in captive-raised birds (0.670) was significantly shallower than in wild-caught birds (0.744). The differences in metabolic scaling between captive-raised and wild-caught birds persisted when migratory tendency and habitat aridity were controlled for. Our results reveal that phenotypic plasticity is a major contributor to avian interspecific metabolic variation. The finding that metabolic scaling in birds is partly determined by environmental factors provides further support for models that predict variation in scaling exponents, such as the allometric cascade model.
Effect of Dopants on Epitaxial Growth of Silicon Nanowires

We investigated the effects of dopants on epitaxial growth of Si NWs, with an emphasis on synthesizing vertical epitaxial Si NW arrays on Si (111) substrates. We found that addition of boron with a B:Si feed-in atomic ratio greater than 1:1000 improved the percentage of Si NWs grown along the vertical <111> direction to more than 90%, compared to 38% for i-Si NWs. We also demonstrated a stemmed growth strategy and achieved a 93% percentage of i-Si NW segments along the vertical <111> direction on Si substrates. In summary, our study opens up potential for using chemical synthesized vertical Si NW arrays integrated on Si substrates for large-scale applications.
A display device abstraction for virtual reality applications

This paper presents a component based display device abstraction that is expressive enough to model all of the most commonly used display device configurations in virtual reality applications. Because of its modularity it can not only adapt to the device configuration, but also efficiently utilize multi-pipe graphics hardware on multi-processor machines to achieve optimal performance for any configuration. By separating the frustum definition into two independent components, the eye point and the virtual screen, devices with head-tracked viewers can be conveniently modeled. Moreover, by integrating the eye point and virtual screen definition into the scene graph, even complex camera control mechanisms can easily be implemented.
Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Workpiece Hardness and Cutting Speed on Surface Roughness in Hard Turning With CBN Tools

Hard turning is considered as a new machining process aimed at turning hardened steels with high surface qualities. This process is a good alternative for many grinding applications which were previously done through traditional machining processes. The goal of this paper is to test the empirical feasibility of using this new method instead of grinding in many industrial applications, and to determine the effects of independent parameters such as hardness of parts and cutting speeds on the surface quality and tool wear in hard turning operations. Hence parts made of AISI 4140 alloyed steel are exposed to different thermal treatments to achieve different hardness rates in the range of hard turning operations. These parts are then machined with CBN cutting tools and CNC lathing machines at different cutting speeds, and results are compared in terms of surface roughness.
HYDRAULIC MODELING FOR ECOLOGICAL RESEARCH.

Because of the problems and expenses of a continuous data collection program for large rivers, it was decided to develop an integrated hydrodynamic and biological model for the Illinois Large Rivers Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites and to calibrate the model with the data being collected. The hydrodynamic sub-model for sediment and nutrient transport consists of two models. The HEC-6 model is used to compute the flow hydraulics and sediment transport. The HEC-6 with an alternative format is capable of calculating hydraulic parameters for up to seven compartments within a reach of a river or reservoir. In the nutrient transport model each reach is subdivided into several flow tubes to generate two-dimensional information. The nutrient transport model includes equations to calculate longitudinal and lateral convection and diffusion within each tube and between adjacent tubes.
Interest points based on maximization of distinctiveness

Interest or salient points are typically meaningful points within an image which can be used for a wide variety of image understanding tasks. In this paper we present a novel algorithm for detecting interest points within images. The new technique is based on finding the locations in an image which exhibit local distinctiveness. We evaluate our algorithm on the Corel stock photography test set in the context of content based image retrieval from large databases and provide quantitative comparisons to the well known SIFT interest point and Harris corner detectors as a benchmark.
Rapid contemporary evolution and clonal food web dynamics

Character evolution that affects ecological community interactions often occurs contemporaneously with temporal changes in population size, potentially altering the very nature of those dynamics. Such eco-evolutionary processes may be most readily explored in systems with short generations and simple genetics. Asexual and cyclically parthenogenetic organisms such as microalgae, cladocerans and rotifers, which frequently dominate freshwater plankton communities, meet these requirements. Multiple clonal lines can coexist within each species over extended periods, until either fixation occurs or a sexual phase reshuffles the genetic material. When clones differ in traits affecting interspecific interactions, within-species clonal dynamics can have major effects on the population dynamics. We first consider a simple predator–prey system with two prey genotypes, parametrized with data from a well-studied experimental system, and explore how the extent of differences in defence against predation within the prey population determine dynamic stability versus instability of the system. We then explore how increased potential for evolution affects the community dynamics in a more general community model with multiple predator and multiple prey genotypes. These examples illustrate how microevolutionary ‘details’ that enhance or limit the potential for heritable phenotypic change can have significant effects on contemporaneous community-level dynamics and the persistence and coexistence of species.
A Reasoning System for a First-Order Logic of Limited Belief

Logics of limited belief aim at enabling computationally feasible reasoning in highly expressive representation languages. These languages are often dialects of first-order logic with a weaker form of logical entailment that keeps reasoning decidable or even tractable. While a number of such logics have been proposed in the past, they tend to remain for theoretical analysis only and their practical relevance is very limited. In this paper, we aim to go beyond the theory. Building on earlier work by Liu, Lakemeyer, and Levesque, we develop a logic of limited belief that is highly expressive while remaining decidable in the first-order and tractable in the propositional case and exhibits some characteristics that make it attractive for an implementation. We introduce a reasoning system that employs this logic as representation language and present experimental results that showcase the benefit of limited belief.