Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust PCA-GMM-SVM System for Speaker Verification Task

This paper presents an automatic speaker verification system based on the hybrid GMM-SVM model working in real environment. An important step in speaker verification is extracting features that best characterized the speaker. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and their firt and second derivatives are commonly used as acoustic features for speaker verification. To reduce the high dimensionality required for training the feature vectors, we use a dimension reduction method called Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in front-end step. Performance evaluations are conducted using the AURORA database and the robustness of the performed systems was evaluated under different noisy environments. The experimental results show that PCA dimensionality reduction improves significantly the recognition accuracy in speaker verification task, especially in noisy environments.
Safe human robot interaction via energy regulation control

This paper presents an energy-based control strategy to be used in robotic systems working closely or cooperating with humans. The presented method bounds the dangerous behavior of the robot during the first instants of the impact by limiting the energy stored into the system to a maximum imposed value.Two critical physical human robot interaction (pHRI) cases are studied, these are the collision either against a free or a clamped head. Safe energy values that can be used as reference were retrieved by analysing experimental data of energy absorption to failure of cranium bones and cervical spinal cords.The energy regulation control is implemented in a series elastic actuator prototype joint. The model and the control scheme of the system are analysed. The proposed control scheme is a position-based controller that adjusts the position trajectory reference in function of the maximum energy value imposed by the user. Preliminary results are presented to show that the actuator unit and this control scheme are capable of limiting the energy to a maximum imposed value.
The Sad1-UNC-84 homology domain in Mps3 interacts with Mps2 to connect the spindle pole body with the nuclear envelope

The spindle pole body (SPB) is the sole site of microtubule nucleation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae; yet, details of its assembly are poorly understood. Integral membrane proteins including Mps2 anchor the soluble core SPB in the nuclear envelope. Adjacent to the core SPB is a membrane-associated SPB substructure known as the half-bridge, where SPB duplication and microtubule nucleation during G1 occurs. We found that the half-bridge component Mps3 is the budding yeast member of the SUN protein family (Sad1-UNC-84 homology) and provide evidence that it interacts with the Mps2 C terminus to tether the half-bridge to the core SPB. Mutants in the Mps3 SUN domain or Mps2 C terminus have SPB duplication and karyogamy defects that are consistent with the aberrant half-bridge structures we observe cytologically. The interaction between the Mps3 SUN domain and Mps2 C terminus is the first biochemical link known to connect the half-bridge with the core SPB. Association with Mps3 also defines a novel function for Mps2 during SPB duplication.
Logistics of the supplies of selected forest tree species' cones. Part 1. Cone density and substitution coefficient

Logistyka dostaw szyszek wybranych gatunkow drzew leśnych. Cześc 1. Gestośc szyszek i wspolczynnik zamienny. Szyszki drzew leśnych mozna wykorzystywac jako źrodlo ciepla powstającego podczas ich spalania. Problemem podczas transportu szyszek jest ich mala gestośc usypowa. W artykule przedstawiono analize gestości wlaściwej, usypowej i wspolczynnika zamiennego pustych szyszek sosny zwyczajnej, świerka pospolitego i modrzewia europejskiego pozyskanych w wyluszczarniach nasion. Gestośc wlaściwa szyszek poszczegolnych gatunkow wahala sie w zakresie 1144-1306 kg.m-1 i byla mniejsza niz gestośc masy drzewnej podawana w literaturze, natomiast zblizona do gestości peletu sosnowego. Gestośc usypowa szyszek stanowila od 9 do 18% ich gestości wlaściwej - najwieksza byla dla szyszek modrzewia, a najmniejsza dla szyszek świerka. Wspolczynniki zamienne wyznaczone metodą PN-EN 15103:2010 i za pomocą piknometru helowego wyniosly odpowiednio 0,26 i 0,15 dla szyszek sosny, 0,23 i 0,09 dla świerka oraz 0,55 i 0,18 dla modrzewia. Otrzymane wartości pozwolą na oszacowanie wielkości ladunku i masy transportowej szyszek dla roznych pojazdow, jak rowniez na ocene oplacalności ich transportu. Ze wzgledu na malą wartośc wspolczynnika zamiennego, szczegolnie dla szyszek świerka, nalezaloby wykonac jego oszacowanie dla szyszek po ich rozdrobnieniu, z zastosowaniem dodatkowo aglomeracji ciśnieniowej.
The YPWM motif links Antennapedia to the basal transcriptional machinery

HOX genes specify segment identity along the anteroposterior axis of the embryo. They code for transcription factors harbouring the highly conserved homeodomain and a YPWM motif, situated amino terminally to it. Despite their highly diverse functions in vivo, HOX proteins display similar biochemical properties in vitro, raising the question of how this specificity is achieved. In our study, we investigated the importance of the Antennapedia (Antp) YPWM motif for homeotic transformations in adult Drosophila. By ectopic overexpression, the head structures of the fly can be transformed into structures of the second thoracic segment, such as antenna into second leg, head capsule into thorax (notum) and eye into wing. We found that the YPWM motif is absolutely required for the eye-to-wing transformation. Using the yeast two-hybrid system, we were able to identify a novel ANTP-interacting protein, Bric-à-brac interacting protein 2 (BIP2), that specifically interacts with the YPWM motif of ANTP in vitro, as well as in vivo, transforming eye to wing tissue. BIP2 is a TATA-binding protein associated factor (also known as dTAFII3) that links ANTP to the basal transcriptional machinery.
Nicotine Elicits Convulsive Seizures by Activating Amygdalar Neurons

Nicotinic acetylcholine (nACh) receptors are implicated in the pathogenesis of epileptic disorders; however, the mechanisms of nACh receptors in seizure generation remain unknown. Here, we performed behavioral and immunohistochemical studies in mice and rats to clarify the mechanisms underlying nicotine-induced seizures. Treatment of animals with nicotine (1–4 mg/kg, i.p.) produced motor excitement in a dose-dependent manner and elicited convulsive seizures at 3 and 4 mg/kg. The nicotine-induced seizures were abolished by a subtype non-selective nACh antagonist, mecamylamine (MEC). An α7 nACh antagonist, methyllycaconitine, also significantly inhibited nicotine-induced seizures whereas an α4β2 nACh antagonist, dihydro-β-erythroidine, affected only weakly. Topographical analysis of Fos protein expression, a biological marker of neural excitation, revealed that a convulsive dose (4 mg/kg) of nicotine region-specifically activated neurons in the piriform cortex, amygdala, medial habenula, paratenial thalamus, anterior hypothalamus and solitary nucleus among 48 brain regions examined, and this was also suppressed by MEC. In addition, electric lesioning of the amygdala, but not the piriform cortex, medial habenula and thalamus, specifically inhibited nicotine-induced seizures. Furthermore, microinjection of nicotine (100 and 300 μg/side) into the amygdala elicited convulsive seizures in a dose-related manner. The present results suggest that nicotine elicits convulsive seizures by activating amygdalar neurons mainly via α7 nACh receptors.
Every Packet Counts: Fine-Grained Delay and Loss Measurement with Reordering

Delay is an important metric to understand and improve system performance. While existing approaches focus on aggregate delay statistics in pre-programmed granularity, providing only statistical results such as averages and deviations, those approaches fail to provide fine-grained delay measurement at a flexible level and thus may miss important delay characteristics. For example, delay anomalies, which are critical system performance indicators, may not be captured by existing coarse grained approaches. In this work, we propose a fine-grained delay measurement approach based on a new measurement structure design called order preserving aggregator (OPA). OPA can efficiently encode the ordering and loss information by exploiting inherent data characteristics. Based on OPA, we propose a two layer design to convey both ordering and time stamp information, and then derive per-packet delay/loss measurement with a small overhead. We evaluate our approach both analytically and experimentally with widely used real-world data sets. The results show that our approach can achieve accurate per-packet delay measurement with an average of per-packet relative error at 2%, and an average of aggregated relative error at 10-5, while introducing less than 4 × 10-4 additional overhead.
Network Forensic Analysis Using Visualization Effect

A numerous property and information are transferred to electronic and computerized while internet and networks are expanded. Behind the convenience, problems such as cyber terror, computer crime, and privacy trespassers are growing constantly. There are a number of evidences showing that damaged computers and the related systems are used for tracking the criminal or proving the crime. In the part of computer forensics, there have been many efforts to find the evidences in the network. A new efficient network forensic analysis using visualization, that supports panoramical views and human centralized analysis is proposed in this paper. In this work, the emphasis on maximizing the visualization effect related to network components is made to build more efficient forensic system. The experimental results show that visualized network forensic analysis utilizes resource and time more efficiently compared to the traditional methods.
ASL recognition based on a coupling between HMMs and 3D motion analysis

We present a framework for recognizing isolated and continuous American Sign Language (ASL) sentences from three-dimensional data. The data are obtained by using physics-based three-dimensional tracking methods and then presented as input to Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for recognition. To improve recognition performance, we model context-dependent HMMs and present a novel method of coupling three-dimensional computer vision methods and HMMs by temporally segmenting the data stream with vision methods. We then use the geometric properties of the segments to constrain the HMM framework for recognition. We show in experiments with a 53 sign vocabulary that three-dimensional features outperform two-dimensional features in recognition performance. Furthermore, we demonstrate that context-dependent modeling and the coupling of vision methods and HMMs improve the accuracy of continuous ASL recognition.
Data-driven image captioning via salient region discovery

In the past few years, automatically generating descriptions for images has attracted a lot of attention in computer vision and natural language processing research. Among the existing approaches, data-driven methods have been proven to be highly effective. These methods compare the given image against a large set of training images to determine a set of relevant images, then generate a description using the associated captions. In this study, the authors propose to integrate an object-based semantic image representation into a deep features-based retrieval framework to select the relevant images. Moreover, they present a novel phrase selection paradigm and a sentence generation model which depends on a joint analysis of salient regions in the input and retrieved images within a clustering framework. The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of their proposed approach on Flickr8K and Flickr30K benchmark datasets and show that their model gives highly competitive results compared with the state-of-the-art models.
Characterisation of Alpine summer sport tourists

Diverse natural characteristics and different landscapes allow for a wide range of sporting activities within the European Alps (Egner 2000; Lehar / Frischhut 2009; Pomfret 2006). Considerable research exists on winter sports in general and alpine ski tourism in particular (e.g. Hallmann et al. 2014; Miragaia / Martins 2015). The summer sport tourist remains a vital but relatively little researched phenomenon although sport tourism has the potential to beneficially enliven alpine summer tourism development (Pröbstl-Haider et al. 2015). Existing research has mostly focused on sporting activities such as hiking or mountain biking (e.g. Faullant et al. 2011; Muhar et al. 2007) despite a continuous development of so called adventure sports (Bourdeau et al. 2002). Although sport tourists may participate in a variety of different sporting activities during their holiday, most of the research focuses on one specific sporting activity only (Hallmann et al. 2012; Plaz / Schmid 2014). As a consequence, little is known about multioptional sporting behaviour and common preferences across different activities. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to characterise alpine summer sport tourists with findings that span across different outdoor sporting activities. The focus is on four prevailing themes: 1) sporting characteristics; 2) multioptional sporting behaviour; 3) importance of sporting infrastructure and natural environments when choosing a sport tourism destination; 4) satisfaction with sporting infrastructure and natural environments in Tyrol, Austria. A questionnaire survey of sport tourists (n=582) in ten Tyrolian destinations took place in the summer months of 2015 and 2016. Findings highlight the multi-optionality of summer sport tourists and the high importance of natural destination characteristics when choosing a sport tourism destination. A high performance of attributes related to such characteristics can be confirmed within this research into Tyrolean destinations. In addition to contributing to the research scene, results of the study should allow alpine destinations to optimize offers which are specifically tailored to summer sport tourists, to identify new sport tourism opportunities and to further enhance sport tourism infrastructure and environments. Sport tourism, summer sports, outdoor recreation, mountain sports The alpine summer sport tourist is a complex phenomenon (Roth et al. 2004). Diverse natural characteristics and different landscapes allow for a wide range of sporting activities (Egner 2000; Lehar / Frischhut 2009; Pomfret 2006). Reasons for an increased interest in sport tourism during the last decade are conceptual novelty and economic value for the tourism industry (Kim 2004; Ritchie / Adair 2002; Weed / Jackson 2008). Considerable research exists on winter sports in general and alpine ski 119 – Tourism in Transition
PET of brain amyloid and tau in mild cognitive impairment.

BACKGROUND Amyloid senile plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles are neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease that accumulate in the cortical regions of the brain in persons with mild cognitive impairment who are at risk for Alzheimer's disease. Noninvasive methods to detect these abnormal proteins are potentially useful in developing surrogate markers for drug discovery and diagnostics. METHODS We enrolled 83 volunteers with self-reported memory problems who had undergone neurologic and psychiatric evaluation and positron-emission tomography (PET). On the basis of cognitive testing, 25 volunteers were classified as having Alzheimer's disease, 28 as having mild cognitive impairment, and 30 as having no cognitive impairment (healthy controls). PET was performed after injection of 2-(1-{6-[(2-[F-18]fluoroethyl)(methyl)amino]-2-naphthyl}ethylidene)malononitrile (FDDNP), a molecule that binds to plaques and tangles in vitro. All subjects also underwent 2-deoxy-2-[F-18]fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) PET, and 72 underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). RESULTS Global values for FDDNP-PET binding (average of the values for the temporal, parietal, posterior cingulate, and frontal regions) were lower in the control group than in the group with mild cognitive impairment (P<0.001), and the values for binding in the group with mild cognitive impairment were lower than in the group with Alzheimer's disease (P<0.001). FDDNP-PET binding differentiated among the diagnostic groups better than did metabolism on FDG-PET or volume on MRI. CONCLUSIONS FDDNP-PET scanning can differentiate persons with mild cognitive impairment from those with Alzheimer's disease and those with no cognitive impairment. This technique is potentially useful as a noninvasive method to determine regional cerebral patterns of amyloid plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles.
Reversible and tissue‐specific activation of MAP kinase signaling by tamoxifen in brafV637ERT2 mice

Deregulated MAP kinase (MAPK) signaling plays key roles in developmental and adult disease processes, but the experimental activation of MAPK is a currently unresolved task. For the reversible induction of MAPK signaling, we generated transgenic mice harboring a tamoxifen inducible BRAFV637EERT2 fusion protein. The expression of the inducible BRAF kinase can be directed by Cre/loxP‐mediated recombination to selected cell types and enables the highly specific activation of MAPK signalling in vivo. We show that MAPK signaling can be transiently activated in the brain, liver, or kidney of BrafV637EERT2 mice by a single injection of tamoxifen. BrafV637EERT2 mice provide a new versatile tool to study disease mechanisms elicited by MAPK activation, complementing gene knockout technology that is restricted to the analysis of loss‐of‐function phenotypes. genesis 51:448–455. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Parallel Multivariate Meta-Theorems

Fixed-parameter tractability is based on the observation that many hard problems become tractable even on large inputs as long as certain input parameters are small. Originally, "tractable" just meant "solvable in polynomial time," but especially modern hardware raises the question of whether we can also achieve "solvable in polylogarithmic parallel time. " A framework for this study of parallel fixed-parameter tractability is available and a number of isolated algorithmic results have been obtained in recent years, but one of the unifying core tools of classical FPT theory has been missing: algorithmic meta-theorems. We establish two such theorems by giving new upper bounds on the circuit depth necessary to solve the model checking problem for monadic second-order logic, once parameterized by the tree width and the formula (this is a parallel version of Courcelle's Theorem) and once by the tree depth and the formula. For our proofs we refine the analysis of earlier algorithms, especially of Bodlaender's, but also need to add new ideas, especially in the context where the parallel runtime is bounded by a function of the parameter and does not depend on the length of the input.
On plane-based camera calibration: A general algorithm, singularities, applications

We present a general algorithm for plane-based calibration that can deal with arbitrary numbers of views and calibration planes. The algorithm can simultaneously calibrate different views from a camera with variable intrinsic parameters and it is easy to incorporate known values of intrinsic parameters. For some minimal cases, we describe all singularities, naming the parameters that can not be estimated. Experimental results of our method are shown that exhibit the singularities while revealing good performance in non-singular conditions. Several applications of plane-based 3D geometry inference are discussed as well.
Spatio-temporal Good Features to Track

This paper presents two fundamental contributions that can be very useful for any autonomous system that requires point correspondences for visual odometry. First, the Spatio-Temporal Monitor (STM) is an efficient method to identify good features to track by monitoring their spatiotemporal (x-y-t) appearance without any assumptions about motion or geometry. The STM may be used with any spatial (x-y) descriptor, but it performs best when combined with our second contribution, the Histogram of Oriented Magnitudes (HOM) descriptor, which is based on spatially oriented multiscale filter magnitudes. To fulfil the real-time requirements of autonomous applications, the same descriptor can be used for both, track generation and monitoring, to identify low-quality feature tracks at virtually no additional computational cost. Our extensive experimental validation on a challenging public dataset demonstrates the excellent performance of STM and HOM, where we significantly outperform the well known "Good Features to Track" method and show that our proposed feature quality measure highly correlates with the accuracy in structure and motion estimation.
Optimal Spline Approximation via ℓ0‐Minimization

Splines are part of the standard toolbox for the approximation of functions and curves in ℝd. Still, the problem of finding the spline that best approximates an input function or curve is ill‐posed, since in general this yields a “spline” with an infinite number of segments. The problem can be regularized by adding a penalty term for the number of spline segments. We show how this idea can be formulated as an ℓ0‐regularized quadratic problem. This gives us a notion of optimal approximating splines that depend on one parameter, which weights the approximation error against the number of segments. We detail this concept for different types of splines including B‐splines and composite Bézier curves. Based on the latest development in the field of sparse approximation, we devise a solver for the resulting minimization problems and show applications to spline approximation of planar and space curves and to spline conversion of motion capture data.
Brain-computer Interfaces Workshops of the Sixth International Brain–computer Interface Meeting: Brain–computer Interfaces Past, Present, and Future Workshops of the Sixth International Brain–computer Interface Meeting: Brain– Computer Interfaces Past, Present, and Future

The conference included 28 workshops covering topics in BCI and brain–machine interface research. Topics included BCI for specific populations or applications, advancing BCI research through use of specific signals or technological advances, and translational and commercial issues to bring both implanted and non-invasive BCIs to market. BCI research is growing and expanding in the breadth of its applications, the depth of knowledge it can produce, and the practical benefit it can provide both for those with physical impairments and the general public. Here we provide summaries of each workshop, illustrating the breadth and depth of BCI research and highlighting important issues and calls for action to support future research and development.
Routing Over Multi-Hop Fading Wiretap Networks With Secrecy Outage Probability Constraint

We consider a wireless network where two nodes (source and destination) aim at exchanging a message that must be kept secret from a third eavesdropper node. Other legitimate nodes relay the message from the source to the destination over multiple hops. Channels are subject to fading and only a partial channel state information at the transmitter is available before transmission. Assuming that each transmission has an entangled cost, e.g., delay or energy, we aim at finding the optimal routing policy that minimizes the cost with a constraint on the average secrecy outage probability. We model the problem as the search for a control policy of a stochastic dynamic system that minimizes a discounted expected cost objective, with a discounted expectation constraint. A Lagrange-multiplier based solution is proposed. Numerical results show the merits of the proposed solution over a multi-hop wireless network.