Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Automatic Close Copy Speech Synthesis Tool for Large-Scale Speech Corpus Evaluation

The production of rich multilingual speech corpus resources on a large scale is a requirement for many linguistic, phonetic and technological tasks, in both research and application domains. It is also time-consuming and therefore expensive. The human component in the resource creation process is also prone to inconsistencies, a situation frequently documented in cross-transcriber consistency studies. In the present case, corpora of three languages were to be evaluated and corrected: (1) Polish, a large automatically annotated and manually corrected single-speaker TTS unit-selection corpus in the BOSS Label File (BLF) format, (2) German and (3) English, the second and third being manually annotated multi-speaker story-telling learner corpora in Praat TextGrid format. A method is provided for supporting the evaluation and correction of time-aligned annotations for the three corpora by permitting a rapid audio screening of the annotations by an expert listener for the detection of perceptually conspicuous systematic or isolated errors in the annotations. The criterion for perceptual conspicuousness was provided by converting the annotation formats into the interface format required by the MBROLA speech synthesiser. The audio screening procedure is complementary to other methods of corpus evaluation and does not replace them.
The Stellar Populations of M33's Outer Regions

We have modelled the observed colour–magnitude diagram (CMD) at one location in M33’s outskirts under the framework of a simple chemical evolution scenario which adopts instantaneous and delayed recycling for the nucleosynthetic products of Type II and Ia supernovae. In this scenario, interstellar gas forms stars at a rate modulated by the Kennicutt–Schmidt relation and gas outflow occurs at a rate proportional to the star formation rate (SFR). With this approach, we put broad constraints on the role of gas flows during this region’s evolution and compare its [α/Fe] versus [Fe/H] relation with that of other Local Group systems. We find that models with gas inflow are significantly better than the closed-box model at reproducing the observed distribution of stars in the CMD. The best models have a majority of gas inflow taking place in the last 7 Gyr, and relatively little in the last 3 Gyr. These models predict most stars in this region to have [α/Fe] ratios lower than the bulk of the Milky Way’s halo. The predictions for the present-day SFR, gas mass and oxygen abundance compare favourably to independent empirical estimates. Our results paint a picture in which M33’s outer disc formed from the protracted inflow of gas over several Gyr with at least half of the total inflow occurring since z ∼ 1.
Development of an Objective Scheme to Estimate Tropical Cyclone Intensity from Digital Geostationary Satellite Infrared Imagery

The standard method for estimating the intensity of tropical cyclones is based on satellite observations (Dvorak technique) and is utilized operationally by tropical analysis centers around the world. The technique relies on image pattern recognition along with analyst interpretation of empirically based rules regarding the vigor and organization of convection surrounding the storm center. While this method performs well enough in most cases to be employed operationally, there are situations when analyst judgment can lead to discrepancies between different analysis centers estimating the same storm. In an attempt to eliminate this subjectivity, a computer-based algorithm that operates objectively on digital infrared information has been developed. An original version of this algorithm (engineered primarily by the third author) has been significantly modified and advanced to include selected ‘‘Dvorak rules,’’ additional constraints, and a time-averaging scheme. This modified version, the Objective Dvorak Technique (ODT), is applicable to tropical cyclones that have attained tropical storm or hurricane strength. The performance of the ODT is evaluated on cases from the 1995 and 1996 Atlantic hurricane seasons. Reconnaissance aircraft measurements of minimum surface pressure are used to validate the satellite-based estimates. Statistical analysis indicates the technique to be competitive with, and in some cases superior to, the Dvorak-based intensity estimates produced operationally by satellite analysts from tropical analysis centers. Further analysis reveals situations where the algorithm needs improvement, and directions for future research and modifications are suggested.
The Use of Price in the Purchase Decision

Price awareness is often measured by price knowledge. The author attempts to provide a broader view of price awareness using three distinct constructs, price knowledge, price search in the store and price search between stores, and a methodology that was developed by Dickson and Sawyer. The author studies the factors that can influence price awareness. A related issue, whether deal-prone shoppers are responding simply to promotion or the real price is investigated, as well. Across categories the results show that price awareness of Hungarian supermarket shoppers are quite high and that they are much more price aware than promotion aware. Interestingly demographic factors have no significant relationship with any price awareness construct.
Knowledge Representation in W ERKL , an Architecture for Intelligent Multimedia Information Systems

Multimedia information systems handle vast quantities of media resources. As a consequence, it is difficult to keep track of the semantic content of these items, especially if they were produced by different users of the system. We are interested in developing a formalism and corresponding tools that will be capable of abstracting concepts, ideas, and lines of thought expressed in the media by inferring relationships between the content of different resources. The tools will emphasize the role of the system as a partner augmenting the capabilities of the human user. As such they will tackle the problems of collaboration (human-to-human, human-to-machine), knowledgesharing, and knowledge-retrieval in multimedia information systems. Users are not (indeed, cannot be) assumed to have complete knowledge of the dynamically changing content of the system; instead, they engage in an exploration of the available resources,during which they are offered opportunities to analyse their information need from different points of view.
A Bi-LSTM-RNN Model for Relation Classification Using Low-Cost Sequence Features

Relation classification is associated with many potential applications in the artificial intelligence area. Recent approaches usually leverage neural networks based on structure features such as syntactic or dependency features to solve this problem. However, high-cost structure features make such approaches inconvenient to be directly used. In addition, structure features are probably domain-dependent. Therefore, this paper proposes a bi-directional long-short-term-memory recurrent-neural-network (Bi-LSTM-RNN) model based on low-cost sequence features to address relation classification. This model divides a sentence or text segment into five parts, namely two target entities and their three contexts. It learns the representations of entities and their contexts, and uses them to classify relations. We evaluate our model on two standard benchmark datasets in different domains, namely SemEval-2010 Task 8 and BioNLP-ST 2016 Task BB3. In the former dataset, our model achieves comparable performance compared with other models using sequence features. In the latter dataset, our model obtains the third best results compared with other models in the official evaluation. Moreover, we find that the context between two target entities plays the most important role in relation classification. Furthermore, statistic experiments show that the context between two target entities can be used as an approximate replacement of the shortest dependency path when dependency parsing is not used.
Cellular source of interferons in the circulation of mice with delayed hypersensitivity

The cellular origins of type I and type II interferons released into the circulation of mice with delayed hypersensitivity were investigated. We determined the effect of treatment with various immunosuppressive agents, including cyclophosphamide, cycloheximide, antithymocyte serum, and whole-body X-irradiation, on the release of interferons after intravenous injection of specific (old tuberculin) or nonspecific (lipopolysaccharide) stimuli. The results suggest that (i) a heterogeneous population of lymphocytes (T and B cells) produces type II interferon, (ii) type I interferon is produced by a different cell population, and (iii) type II interferon is produced de novo after challenge with old tuberculin of mice sensitized with Mycobacterium bovis BCG.
Policy Evaluation with Variance Related Risk Criteria in Markov Decision Processes

In this paper we extend temporal difference policy evaluation algorithms to performance criteria that include the variance of the cumulative reward. Such criteria are useful for risk management, and are important in domains such as finance and process control. We propose both TD(0) and LSTD(lambda) variants with linear function approximation, prove their convergence, and demonstrate their utility in a 4-dimensional continuous state space problem.
An Augmented Stripboard for Air Traffic Control

This paper describes an augmented reality prototype that precisely tracks the position of paper flight strips used by air traffic controllers. By embedding resistors with different values into slightly modified plastic stripholders and inserting contacts along the sides of a stripboard frame, we can detect the exact position of individual stripholders (and their corresponding paper flight strips). When placed over a graphics tablet or touch sensitive screen, and properly calibrated, we have a simple, inexpensive solution for identifying paper flight strips and linking them to capture and display technologies.
Pressure Drop Measurements in Microchannel Heat Exchanger

Single-phase pressure drops inside a microchannel heat exchanger were tested systematically. Local pressure drop coefficients were determined from the experimental data and compared with published correlations. Results confirmed the Moody Chart to be applicable for the submillimeter channel flows used in heat exchangers explored. Based on nonintrusive testing followed by destructive evaluation, two types of manufacturing defects were quantified: variation of microchannel port diameters; and port blockage by brazing flux. A pressure drop model for the whole heat exchanger was developed, and predicted the pressure and mass flow rate distribution inside the heat exchanger. It can also be used as a design tool to optimize microchannel tube dimensions and heat exchanger circuiting. Most importantly, simple nitrogen flow tests can now be used to control the quality of the brazing process by detecting the presence of blocked or deformed ports in the finished product.
FlexECC: Partially Relaxing ECC of MLC SSD for Better Cache Performance

The ever-growing capacity and continuously-dropping price have enabled flash-based MLC SSDs to be widely deployed as large non-volatile cache for storage systems. As MLC SSDs become increasingly denser and larger-capacity, more complex and complicated Error Correction Code (ECC) schemes are required to fight against the decreasing raw reliability associated with shrinking cells. However, sophisticated ECCs could impose excessive overhead on page decoding latency and thus hurt performance. In fact, we could avoid employing expensive ECC schemes inside SSDs which are utilized at the cache layer. We propose FlexECC, a specifically designed MLC SSD architecture for the purpose of better cache performance without compromising system reliability and consistency. With the help of an upper-layer cache manager classifying and passing down block access hints, FlexECC chooses to apply either regular ECC or lightweight Error Detection Code (EDC) for blocks. To reduce performance penalty caused by retrieving backend copies for corrupted blocks from the next-level store, FlexECC periodically schedules a scrubbing process to verify the integrity of blocks protected by EDC and replenish corrupted ones into the cache in advance. Experimental results of a proof-of-concept FlexECC implementation show that compared to SSDs armed with regular ECC schemes, FlexECC improves cache performance by up to 30.8% for representative workloads and 63.5% for read-intensive workloads due to reduced read latency and garbage collection overhead. In addition, FlexECC also retains its performance advantages even under various faulty conditions without sacrificing system resiliency.
Comparison Pan Evaporation Data with Global Land-surface Evaporation GLEAM in Java and Bali Island Indonesia

This paper evaluates the variability of pan evaporation (Epan) data in Java and Bali during 2003-2012 and compares to GLEAM (Global Land-surface Evaporation: the Amsterdam Methodology) data version v3.b namely actual evaporation (E) and potential evaporation (Ep) in the same period with statistical method. Gleam combines a wide range of remotely sensed observations to the estimation of terrestrial evaporation and root-zone soil moisture at a global scale (0.25-degree). The aim is to assess the accuracy of Gleam data by examining correlation, mean absolute error, Root mean square error and mean error between Epan and Gleam data in Java and Bali Island. The result shows the correlation between Epan with Ep Gleam is higher than Epan with E Gleam. Generally, the accuracy of Gleam data is a good performance to estimate the land evaporation in Java and Bali at annual and monthly scale. In daily scale, the correlation is less than 0.50 both between Epan with E Gleam and between Epan with Ep Gleam. In daily scale, the average errors ranging from 0.15 to 3.09 mm according to RMSE, MAE, and ME.The result of this study is essential in providing valuable recommendation for choosing alternative evaporation data in regional or local scale from satellite data.
Speaker adaptive training in deep neural networks using speaker dependent bottleneck features

The paper proposes an approach to perform speaker adaptive training (SAT) in deep neural networks using a two-stage DNN. The first-stage DNN extracts speaker dependent bottleneck (SDBN) features by updating the weights of the BN layer with speaker specific data. Using the SDBN features, a second-stage DNN is trained in the SAT framework. Choosing the BN layer as the speaker dependent layer instead of one of the hidden layers reduces the number of parameters to be tuned using speaker specific data. Experiments are presented on the Aurora4 task, where the input features are normalised with constrained maximum likelihood linear regression (CMLLR) and speaker information is appended in the form of D-vectors. Following an unsupervised adaptation of BN layer, the proposed approach provides a relative gain of 8.6% and 8.9% WER on top of DNNs trained with FBANK features appended with and without D-vectors respectively. A relative gain of 10.3% WER is observed when applied on top of DNNs trained with CMLLR transformed FBANK features, but the gain in performance saturated when combined with D-vectors. It is observed that supervised adaptation with as little as one minute of audio from a specific speaker improved the performance when compared with the baseline.
Extraction of Biological Motifs by Gibbs Sampler from the Promoters of Homo Sapiens, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Bacillus subtilis

Microarray analysis provides us with new information about genes regulatory network, and manynovel candidates of co-regulated genes are being identi ed. It is assumed that co-regulated genesshare cis-acting regulatory motifs in their upstream regions, and it is still a big challenge for manybioinformaticians to develop an algorithm for their accurate elucidation. Although many motif ex-traction programs exist nowadays, and some of them have become more or less popular, molecularbiologists still meet a serious problem when they have to decide which program should be used andhow to maintain it for it works more eciently. On the other hand, even a program was chosen bysome reason, theUserdoesnot know howto evaluate the outputifthere is noa prioriknowledge aboutthe motif he/she is looking for, such as length, mismatches level, number per sequence, nucleotidescomposition.How the real biological motifs look like and how to charge about the signi cance of the outputtedresults? The same output may be signi cant in the case of one genome and meaningless in the caseof the others. To answer it we investigated the characteristics of real biological motifs and evaluatedthe elucidation performance of the original Gibbs sampler [1] on the biological motifs incorporated inthe datasets constructed on the base of Homo Sapiens, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Bacillus subtilisgenomic sequences. We hope that our results will provide the Users with an important knowledgeabout reliability of Gibbs sampler concerning to the elucidation of the real biological motifs from thepromoters of these three genomes.
The first record of Rhamphomyia (Pararhamphomyia) intersita (Diptera: Empididae) in Europe

A dance fly (Diptera: Empididae) Rhamphomyia (Pararhamphomyia) intersita Collin, 1960, previously known from Israel and Turkey, is recorded for the first time in Europe (Croatia). A new record is presented, with a photo of the voucher specimen. A key to the Palaearctic species of Rhamphomyia (Pararhamphomyia) with black legs, multiserial dorsocentrals and an at least partly pale setose body is provided.
Automated Quantification of 18F-Flutemetamol PET Activity for Categorizing Scans as Negative or Positive for Brain Amyloid: Concordance with Visual Image Reads

Clinical trials of the PET amyloid imaging agent 18F-flutemetamol have used visual assessment to classify PET scans as negative or positive for brain amyloid. However, quantification provides additional information about regional and global tracer uptake and may have utility for image assessment over time and across different centers. Using postmortem brain neuritic plaque density data as a truth standard to derive a standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) threshold, we assessed a fully automated quantification method comparing visual and quantitative scan categorizations. We also compared the histopathology-derived SUVR threshold with one derived from healthy controls. Methods: Data from 345 consenting subjects enrolled in 8 prior clinical trials of 18F-flutemetamol injection were used. We grouped subjects into 3 cohorts: an autopsy cohort (n = 68) comprising terminally ill patients with postmortem confirmation of brain amyloid status; a test cohort (n = 172) comprising 33 patients with clinically probable Alzheimer disease, 80 patients with mild cognitive impairment, and 59 healthy volunteers; and a healthy cohort of 105 volunteers, used to define a reference range for SUVR. Visual image categorizations for comparison were from a previous study. A fully automated PET-only quantification method was used to compute regional neocortical SUVRs that were combined into a single composite SUVR. An SUVR threshold for classifying scans as positive or negative was derived by ranking the PET scans from the autopsy cohort based on their composite SUVR and comparing data with the standard of truth based on postmortem brain amyloid status for subjects in the autopsy cohort. The derived threshold was used to categorize the 172 scans in the test cohort as negative or positive, and results were compared with categorization using visual assessment. Different reference and composite region definitions were assessed. Threshold levels were also compared with corresponding thresholds derived from the healthy group. Results: Automated quantification (using pons as the reference region) demonstrated 91% sensitivity and 88% specificity and gave 3 false-positive and 4 false-negative scans. All 3 false-positive cases were either borderline-normal by standard of truth or had moderate to heavy cortical diffuse plaque burden. In the test cohort, the concordance between quantitative and visual read categorization ranged from 97.1% to 99.4% depending on the selection of reference and composite regions. The threshold derived from the healthy group was close to the histopathology-derived threshold. Conclusion: Categorization of 18F-flutemetamol amyloid imaging data using an automated PET-only quantification method showed good agreement with histopathologic classification of neuritic plaque density and a strong concordance with visual read results.
Requirement of functional telomeres for metaphase chromosome alignments and integrity of meiotic spindles

Telomerase deficiency in the mouse eventually leads to loss of telomeric repeats from chromosome ends and to end‐to‐end chromosome fusions, which result in defects in highly proliferative tissues. We show that telomere dysfunction resulting from telomerase deficiency leads to disruption of functional meiotic spindles and misalignment of chromosomes during meiotic division of oocytes in late‐generation (G4) mice. However, oocytes from first‐generation (G1) mice lacking telomerase showed no appreciable telomere dysfunction and exhibited chromosome alignment at the metaphase plates of meiotic spindles, in a manner similar to that of wild‐type mouse oocytes. These findings suggest that telomerase does not directly influence chromosome alignment and spindle integrity. Rather, functional telomeres may be involved in mediating metaphase chromosome alignment and maintaining functional spindles during meiotic division.
Choreography: a pattern language

Purpose – This paper aims to outline recent developments in the field of choreography, especially focusing on the influence of Gregory Bateson's ideas. Choreography is progressing towards a form of art that not only deals with the creation and manipulation of systems of rules, but does so in a non‐deterministic, open way. The author argues that if the world is approached as a reality constructed of interactions, relationships, constellations and proportionalities and choreography is seen as the aesthetic, creative practice of setting those relations – or setting the conditions for those relations – to emerge.Design/methodology/approach – Based on ten years practical research and artistic creations, the author introduces choreography as the creative act of ordering, outlining the shift and developments in this field by introducing ideas of system theory and cybernetics, especially as described by Gregory Bateson.Findings – Choreography has become a metaphor for dynamic constellations of any kind, conscious.