Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
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We report on the progress with respect to an emotion-aware voice portal concerning several directions. A comprehensive new data collection has been carried out and gives new insight on the nature of real life data. The labeling process and the structure of the data will be discussed. Experiments with the anger detector on that data indicate that the acoustic features based on voicing don’t play an important role for this data. It shows once again, that classification problems are highly data specific as this data contains a lot of noise. Also using Support Vector Machines instead of Gaussian Mixture Models as classification algorithm turned out to give better results with respect to anger recall. As a consequence for these findings we plan for a new classifier that’s more flexible with respect to choice of features and algorithm in order to adapt for different data.
The Globular Cluster ω Centauri and the Oosterhoff Dichotomy

CCD observations obtained by the OGLE team for 128 RR Lyrae variables in ω Centauri have been analyzed. The period-luminosity and period-amplitude plots indicate that, in addition to fundamental (RRab) and first overtone (RRc) pulsators, the ω Centauri RR Lyrae population seems to include second overtone (RRe) and possibly third-overtone pulsators. The mean period for the 59 RRab stars is 0. ͩ649, for the 48 RRc stars, it is 0. ͩ383, and for the 21 RRe stars, it is 0. ͩ304. The mean periods derived for the RRab and RRc stars are typical values for an Oosterhoff type II (OoII) cluster. Nevertheless, the period-amplitude plot also shows that some of the RR Lyrae variables have "Oosterhoff type I" (OoI) characteristics. Most of the second-overtone variables exhibit nonradial pulsations similar to those recently detected in some of the RR Lyrae variables in the clusters M55 and M5, in the Galactic bulge, and in the LMC. Relative luminosities derived for the RRc variables from Fourier coefficients correlate with the observed apparent magnitudes. Masses for the RRc stars have been calculated from Fourier coefficients. A comparison of the derived masses for RRc stars in the four OoII clusters ω Cen, M15, M55, and M68 indicates that the masses of the RRc stars in M15 and M68 are almost 0.2 M⊙ greater than those in the other two. Since M15 and M68 have a high frequency of RRd stars among their first-overtone pulsators, while none have been identified in ω Cen or M55, this suggests that the double-mode pulsation phenomenon may be associated with mass. Among the RRc variables in ω Cen, the OoII variables have lower derived masses and higher luminosities than the OoI variables. An application of the period-density law to pairs of OoI and OoII RRab stars selected according to their position in the period-amplitude plot also indicates that the OoII variables in general have lower masses and higher luminosities. These findings support the hypothesis that the RR Lyrae variables in OoII systems are evolved horizontal-branch stars that spend their zero-age horizontal-branch phase on the blue side of the instability strip.
Involvement of a 1-Cys Peroxiredoxin in Bacterial Virulence

The killing of bacterial pathogens by macrophages occurs via the oxidative burst and bacteria have evolved to overcome this challenge and survive, using several virulence and defense strategies, including antioxidant mechanisms. We show here that the 1-Cys peroxiredoxin LsfA from the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa is endowed with thiol-dependent peroxidase activity that protects the bacteria from H2O2 and that this protein is implicated in pathogenicity. LsfA belongs to the poorly studied Prx6 subfamily of peroxiredoxins. The function of these peroxiredoxins has not been characterized in bacteria, and their contribution to host-pathogen interactions remains unknown. Infection of macrophages with the lsfA mutant strains resulted in higher levels of the cytokine TNF-α production due to the activation of the NF-kB and MAPK pathways, that are partially inhibited by the wild-type P. aeruginosa strain. A redox fluorescent probe was more oxidized in the lsfA mutant-infected macrophages than it was in the macrophages infected with the wild-type strain, suggesting that the oxidative burst was overstimulated in the absence of LsfA. Although no differences in the phagocytosis rates were observed when macrophages were infected with wild-type and mutant bacteria in a gentamicin exclusion assay, a higher number of wild-type bacterial cells was found in the supernatant. This difference was not observed when macrophages were pre-treated with a NADPH oxidase inhibitor, confirming the role of LsfA in the bacterial resistance to ROS generated via NADPH oxidase. In an acute pneumonia model, mice infected with the mutant strains presented higher cytokine release in the lungs and increased activated neutrophil recruitment, with reduced bacterial burden and improved survival rates compared to mice infected with the wild-type bacteria. LsfA is the first bacterial 1-Cys Prx shown to modulate host immune responses and its characterization will allow a better understanding of the role of redox signaling in host-pathogen interactions.
Edge detection by wavelet scale correlation

The spatial and scale space domain techniques are used independently to detect edges of the noisy images. When noise density surpasses a limit, classical operators are unable to detect the edges. The frequency domain filtering for edge detection in a noisy scenario is inadequate due to Fourier's global behavior. Wavelet analysis for noisy images also reveals dominance of noisy pixels over the edges. Even multiresolution analysis falls short to distinguish noise and edge points in the synthesized image for depleted signal to noise ratio. In this paper noisy images have been decomposed up to fourth level through multilevel wavelet decomposition. The wavelet details coefficients are thresholded by four times the mean value of the image matrix. The lower dimensional wavelet detail's coefficient matrices are interpolated up to the original size of the image. The noisy pixels are partially eliminated at each scale. However in the process, few edge points are also deteriorated. Independently multiplying each detail matrix by its three higher scale image matrices respectively significantly reduces the noise and enhances the directional edges. The reconstruction results in enhanced horizontal, vertical and diagonal details. The three images are synthesized to obtain the augmented edge map of the image.
Hierarchical Understandability Assessment Model for Large-Scale OO System

Understanding software, especially in large-scale, is an important issue for software modification. In large-scale software systems, modularization provides help for understanding them. But, even if a system has a well-modularized design, the modular design can be deteriorated by system change over time. Therefore it is needed to assess and manage modularization in the view of understandability. However, there are rarely studies of a quality assessment model for understandability in the module-level. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical model to assess understandability of modularization in large-scale object-oriented software. To assess understandability, we define several design properties, which capture the characteristics influencing on understandability, and design metrics based on the properties, which are used to quantitatively assess understandability. We validate our model and its usefulness by applying the model to an open-source software system.
Ações e Fundos de Investimento em Ações: Fatores de Risco Comuns?

RESUMO: Neste artigo analisa-se a capacidade de apreçamento e previsão de retorno para os principais fundos de investimento em ações no mercado brasileiro, utilizando o Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) e as modelagens de fatores a la Fama e French (1993) e Carhart (1997). Os resultados iniciais evidenciam um resultado esperado: uma melhor performance de apreçamento do CAPM vis-à-vis os demais modelos usados para os fundos de investimento que possuem desempenho similar ao Índice de BOVESPA. A principal contribuição, porém consiste na evidência de que os modelos de fatores passam a ter uma melhor performance quando do apreçamento e da previsão in-sample de fundos de investimento em ações que possuam um maior patrimônio líquido e que tenham “batido o mercado”. Esta evidência sugere que se construam modelos de fatores específicos para fundos de investimento que captem estes efeitos, o que vem sendo corroborado por resultados preliminares de Linhares e Matos (2008).
Variable-Voltage Class-E Power Amplifiers

The class-E power amplifier is widely used due to its high efficiency, resulting from switching at zero voltage and zero slope of the switch voltage. In this paper, we extend general analytical solutions for the class-E power amplifier to the ideal single-ended variable-voltage class-E (class-EVV) power amplifier that switches at zero slope but not necessarily at zero voltage. The theory is verified by simulations and measurements, and show that the peak switch voltage of class-EVV power amplifier is lower (up to ap 30% ) than in the conventional class-E power amplifier; which can be utilized to obtain e.g. higher output power (up to ap 200% more) with lower power-added efficiency (maximum ap 20% less) from technologies with low-breakdown voltages.
Stock Returns and Inflation in India: An Empirical Analysis

This paper investigates the relationship between stock returns and inflation in India during 1991:4 to 2009:3. Weekly, monthly and quarterly indexes of BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty are used. Weekly, monthly and quarterly Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) are used as measures of inflation. The analysis is also carried for the subperiod 2002:4-2009:3, and the pre-crisis and post-crisis analysis is conducted through the analysis of the subperiod 2005:1-2009:4. Unit root tests, Granger causality test and regressions are performed for examining the nexus between the variables. Vector Autoregression (VAR) methodology has been employed to investigate the causal link between stock returns and inflation. Impulse Response Functions (IRF) check the response to disturbance in the system. The results suggest that there is no significant relation between stock returns and inflation in post-reform period in India.
Influence of relative humidity on surface charge decay on epoxy resin insulators

The influence of relative air humidity on the surface charge decay on epoxy resin insulators initially charged by DC corona and on their surface resistivity is investigated at room temperature. It has been observed, that surface resistivity of the epoxy resin insulators decreases significantly at higher relative humidity. Thus, at higher relative humidity surface charge decay is dominated by electric conduction along the insulator surface. This effect has been verified by both, measurement and simulation of the surface charge decay.
Long-term effect of physical activity on energy balance and body composition

We studied the effect of an increase in physical activity on energy balance and body composition without interfering with energy intake (EI). Sixteen women and sixteen men, aged 28–41 years, body mass index 19.4–26.4 kg/m2, not participating in any sport before the start of the experiment, prepared to run a half-marathon competition after 44 weeks. Measurements of body composition, EI and energy expenditure (EE) were performed before (0 weeks), and 8, 20, and 40 weeks after the start of training. Body composition was measured with hydrodensitometry and isotope dilution, and EI with a 7 d dietary record. EE was measured overnight in a respiration chamber (sleeping metabolic rate (SMR)) and in a number of subjects over 2-week intervals with doubly-labelled water (average daily metabolic rate (ADMR)). ADMR showed an average increase of 30% in both sexes from the start of training onwards while SMR tended to decrease. EI showed a tendency to drop from week 20 to week 40 in the men and a tendency to increase from week 20 to week 40 in the women. Body mass (BM) did not change in both sexes until the observation at 40 weeks when the median value of the change in men was –1.0kg (P < 0.01; Wilcoxon signed-rank) while the corresponding change of –0.9 kg in the women was not statistically significant. Body composition changes were most pronounced in men as well. Based on changes in BM, body volume and total body water, men lost 3.8 kg fat mass (FM) (P < 0.001; Wilcoxon signed-rank) and gained 1.6 kg protein mass (P < 0.01; Wilcoxon signed-rank) while the corresponding changes in women were 2.0 kg (P < 0.05; Wilcoxon signed-rank) and 1.2 kg (P < 0.05; Wilcoxon signed-rank). In men the loss of FM was positively correlated with the initial percentage body fat (Pearson r 0.92, P < 0.001). In conclusion, body fat can be reduced by physical activity although women tend to compensate for the increased EE with an increased EI, resulting in a smaller effect on BM and FM compared with men.
Fault Tolerant Coverage and Connectivity in Presence of Channel Randomness

Some applications of wireless sensor network require K-coverage and K-connectivity to ensure the system to be fault tolerance and to make it more reliable. Therefore, it makes coverage and connectivity an important issue in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we proposed K-coverage and K-connectivity models for wireless sensor networks. In both models, nodes are distributed according to Poisson distribution in the sensor field. To make the proposed model more realistic we used log-normal shadowing path loss model to capture the radio irregularities and studied its impact on K-coverage and K-connectivity. The value of K can be different for different types of applications. Further, we also analyzed the problem of node failure for K-coverage model. In the simulation section, results clearly show that coverage and connectivity of wireless sensor network depend on the node density, shadowing parameters like the path loss exponent, and standard deviation.
A Sufficient Statistics Construction of Bayesian Nonparametric Exponential Family Conjugate Models

Conjugate pairs of distributions over infinite dimensional spaces are prominent in statistical learning theory, particularly due to the widespread adoption of Bayesian nonparametric methodologies for a host of models and applications. Much of the existing literature in the learning community focuses on processes possessing some form of computationally tractable conjugacy as is the case for the beta and gamma processes (and, via normalization, the Dirichlet process). For these processes, proofs of conjugacy and requisite derivation of explicit computational formulae for posterior density parameters are idiosyncratic to the stochastic process in question. As such, Bayesian Nonparametric models are currently available for a limited number of conjugate pairs, e.g. the Dirichlet-multinomial and beta-Bernoulli process pairs. In each of these above cases the likelihood process belongs to the class of discrete exponential family distributions. The exclusion of continuous likelihood distributions from the known cases of Bayesian Nonparametric Conjugate models stands as a disparity in the researcher's toolbox. In this paper we first address the problem of obtaining a general construction of prior distributions over infinite dimensional spaces possessing distributional properties amenable to conjugacy. Second, we bridge the divide between the discrete and continuous likelihoods by illustrating a canonical construction for stochastic processes whose Levy measure densities are from positive exponential families, and then demonstrate that these processes in fact form the prior, likelihood, and posterior in a conjugate family. Our canonical construction subsumes known computational formulae for posterior density parameters in the cases where the likelihood is from a discrete distribution belonging to an exponential family.
Incremental Evaluation of Nest and Unnest Operators in Nested Relations

Incremental expressions are important in materialized view maintenance, query optimization, and constraint checking. In this paper, we derive incremental expressions for the nest and unnest operators in nested relations. The expressions are derived for both general nested relations using set operators for updating relations and for partition-normal form (PNF) relations using extended set operators for updating relations After deriving the incremental expressions, two algorithms are presented for maintaining views deened by nest and unnest operators in PNF.
From Quantitative to Qualitative Studies: Developments in Chinese Computational and Corpus Linguistics

Adopting corpus-based empirical approaches to linguistics, this paper has two main goals: the first is to propose formal methodology to extract meaningful quantitative characterizations from Chinese corpora, the second is to achieve generalizations about theoretically significant linguistic qualities based on these quantitative data. The quantitative scales discussed include mutual information, entropy, vector, and frequency. The linguistics generalizations studied include morphological versatility, semantic classes, and categorical ambiguity.
Virus-Induced Gene Silencing Using Tobacco Rattle Virus as a Tool to Study the Interaction between Nicotiana attenuata and Rhizophagus irregularis

Most land plants live in a symbiotic association with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) that belong to the phylum Glomeromycota. Although a number of plant genes involved in the plant-AMF interactions have been identified by analyzing mutants, the ability to rapidly manipulate gene expression to study the potential functions of new candidate genes remains unrealized. We analyzed changes in gene expression of wild tobacco roots (Nicotiana attenuata) after infection with mycorrhizal fungi (Rhizophagus irregularis) by serial analysis of gene expression (SuperSAGE) combined with next generation sequencing, and established a virus-induced gene-silencing protocol to study the function of candidate genes in the interaction. From 92,434 SuperSAGE Tag sequences, 32,808 (35%) matched with our in-house Nicotiana attenuata transcriptome database and 3,698 (4%) matched to Rhizophagus genes. In total, 11,194 Tags showed a significant change in expression (p<0.05, >2-fold change) after infection. When comparing the functions of highly up-regulated annotated Tags in this study with those of two previous large-scale gene expression studies, 18 gene functions were found to be up-regulated in all three studies mainly playing roles related to phytohormone metabolism, catabolism and defense. To validate the function of identified candidate genes, we used the technique of virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) to silence the expression of three putative N. attenuata genes: germin-like protein, indole-3-acetic acid-amido synthetase GH3.9 and, as a proof-of-principle, calcium and calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CCaMK). The silencing of the three plant genes in roots was successful, but only CCaMK silencing had a significant effect on the interaction with R. irregularis. Interestingly, when a highly activated inoculum was used for plant inoculation, the effect of CCaMK silencing on fungal colonization was masked, probably due to trans-complementation. This study demonstrates that large-scale gene expression studies across different species induce of a core set of genes of similar functions. However, additional factors seem to influence the overall pattern of gene expression, resulting in high variability among independent studies with different hosts. We conclude that VIGS is a powerful tool with which to investigate the function of genes involved in plant-AMF interactions but that inoculum strength can strongly influence the outcome of the interaction.
Comparative Analysis of the Transcriptome in Tissues Secreting Purple and White Nacre in the Pearl Mussel Hyriopsis cumingii

The triangle sail mussel Hyriopsis cumingii (Lea) is the most important mussel species used for commercial freshwater pearl production in China. Mussel color is an important indicator of pearl quality. To identify genes involved in the nacre coloring, we conducted RNA-seq and obtained 541,268 sequences (298 bp average size) and 440,034 sequences (293 bp average size) in secreting purple and white nacre libraries (P- and W-libraries), respectively. The 981,302 Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) were assembled into 47,812 contigs and 289,386 singletons. In BLASTP searches of the deduced protein, 22,495 were proteins with functional annotations. Thirty-three genes involved in pearl or shell formation were identified. Digital expression analysis identified a total of 358 differentially expressed genes, and 137 genes in the P-library and 221 genes in the W-library showed significantly higher expression. Furthermore, a set of SSR motifs and SNPs between the two samples was identified from the ESTs, which provided the markers for genetic linkage, QTL analysis and future breeding. These EST sequences provided valuable information to further understand the molecular mechanisms involved in the formation, color determination and evolution of the pearl or shell.
A Parallel Access Method for Spatial Data Using GPU

— Spatial access methods (SAMs) are used for information retrieval in large spatial databases. Many of the SAMs use sequential tree structures to search the result set of the spatial data which are contained in the given query region. In order to improve performance for the SAM, this paper proposes a parallel method using GPU. Since the searching process needs intensive computation but is independently examined on a lot of the MBRs of the spatial data, the spatial search function can be efficiently computed on GPU in a massive parallel way. The proposed method achieves high speed by efficiently utilizing the parallelism of the GPU throughout the whole process and by reducing the transfer latency between CPU and GPU with the memory structure which resides in GPU memory at all times and with the usage of bit-wise operation for the result set. In order to measure the speedup achieved by the proposed parallel method, the execution time is compared with the sequential R*-tree that is loaded in the main memory and executed on CPU.
Corporate Signaling with Dividends, Stock Repurchases, and Accounting Disclosures: An Empirical Study

This paper examines corporate signaling practices in a framework that includes dividends, stock repurchases, and accounting disclosures. Using analysts' ratings of firms' disclosure practices as a proxy for the level of accounting disclosures, this study investigates the substitutability among these signals. Prior studies have questioned how costly signals, such as dividends and stock repurchases, coexist with presumably less costly alternatives, such as annual reports or other accounting disclosures. The signaling models in the finance literature generally assume that because of the problems of moral hazard, accounting disclosures are not viewed credibly by investors. This study presents evidence for an alternative explanation. For some firms, dividends and stock repurchases may be less costly than accounting disclosures. Prior studies model the trade-off the firm faces between the benefits of conveying favorable information to the financial markets and its need to protect proprietary information from potential competitors. Consistent with the predictions of these studies, my results indicate that “good news” firms that operate in markets with lower industry concentration ratios, and therefore lower entry barriers, are more likely to convey favorable news via dividends or stock repurchases instead of accounting disclosures. These firms appear to rely on dividend and stock repurchase signals as a means of conveying favorable news to investors without releasing specific proprietary information.