Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring children's phonemic awareness through blending tasks

In this paper, speech recognition techniques are applied to automatically evaluate children’s phonemic awareness through three blending tasks (phoneme blending, onset-rhyme blending and syllable blending). The system first applies disfluency detection to filter out disfluent phenomena such as false-starts, sounding out, self-repair and repetitions, and to localize the target answer. Since most of the children studied are Hispanic, accent detection is applied to detect possible Spanish accent. The accent information is then used to update the pronunciation dictionaries and duration models. For valid words, forced alignment is applied to generate sound segmentations and produce the corresponding HMM log likelihood scores. Normalized spectral likelihoods and duration ratio scores are combined to assess the overall quality of the children’s productions. Results show that the automatic system correlates well with teachers, and requires no human supervision.
Attractor neural networks storing multiple space representations: A model for hippocampal place fields

A recurrent neural network model storing multiple spatial maps, or ``charts'', is analyzed. A network of this type has been suggested as a model for the origin of place cells in the hippocampus of rodents. The extremely diluted and fully connected limits are studied, and the storage capacity and the information capacity are found. The important parameters determining the performance of the network are the sparsity of the spatial representations and the degree of connectivity, as found already for the storage of individual memory patterns in the general theory of auto-associative networks. Such results suggest a quantitative parallel between theories of hippocampal function in different animal species, such as primates (episodic memory) and rodents (memory for space).
Fully pipelined VLSI architecture of a real-time block-based object detector for intelligent video surveillance systems

This paper presents a VLSI architecture of real-time object detection design for the intelligent video surveillance systems. In order to achieve the targets of high performance, low cost, and high accuracy, an efficient block-based background subtraction (BBS) algorithm had been created for VLSI implementation. It included a background model, a luminance generator, and a block difference model. The warning signals in the intelligent video surveillance systems will be triggered once more than a threshold number of blocks are marked as object discovered blocks. The VLSI architecture of this work contained 4.6-K gate counts and consumed 2.05 mW when it operated at 100 MHz processing rate by using a TSMC 0.18 um CMOS process. Compared with previous low-complexity designs, this work had the benefits of lower cost, higher performance and higher accuracy.
Body Mass Index Genetic Risk Score and Endometrial Cancer Risk

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified common variants that predispose individuals to a higher body mass index (BMI), an independent risk factor for endometrial cancer. Composite genotype risk scores (GRS) based on the joint effect of published BMI risk loci were used to explore whether endometrial cancer shares a genetic background with obesity. Genotype and risk factor data were available on 3,376 endometrial cancer case and 3,867 control participants of European ancestry from the Epidemiology of Endometrial Cancer Consortium GWAS. A BMI GRS was calculated by summing the number of BMI risk alleles at 97 independent loci. For exploratory analyses, additional GRSs were based on subsets of risk loci within putative etiologic BMI pathways. The BMI GRS was statistically significantly associated with endometrial cancer risk (P = 0.002). For every 10 BMI risk alleles a woman had a 13% increased endometrial cancer risk (95% CI: 4%, 22%). However, after adjusting for BMI, the BMI GRS was no longer associated with risk (per 10 BMI risk alleles OR = 0.99, 95% CI: 0.91, 1.07; P = 0.78). Heterogeneity by BMI did not reach statistical significance (P = 0.06), and no effect modification was noted by age, GWAS Stage, study design or between studies (P≥0.58). In exploratory analyses, the GRS defined by variants at loci containing monogenic obesity syndrome genes was associated with reduced endometrial cancer risk independent of BMI (per BMI risk allele OR = 0.92, 95% CI: 0.88, 0.96; P = 2.1 x 10−5). Possessing a large number of BMI risk alleles does not increase endometrial cancer risk above that conferred by excess body weight among women of European descent. Thus, the GRS based on all current established BMI loci does not provide added value independent of BMI. Future studies are required to validate the unexpected observed relation between monogenic obesity syndrome genetic variants and endometrial cancer risk.
Mechanism-Based Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic Modeling of the Electroencephalogram Effects of GABAA Receptor Modulators: In Vitro-in Vivo Correlations

A mechanism-based pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model for neuroactive steroids, comprising a separate characterization of 1) the receptor activation process and 2) the stimulus-response relationship, was applied to various nonsteroidal GABAA receptor modulators. The EEG effects of nine prototypical GABAAreceptor modulators (six benzodiazepines, one imidazopyridine, one cyclopyrrolone, and one β-carboline) were determined in rats in conjunction with plasma concentrations. Population PK/PD modeling revealed monophasic concentration-EEG effect relationships with large differences in potency (EC50) and intrinsic activity between the compounds. The data were analyzed on the basis of the mechanism-based PK/PD model for (synthetic) neuroactive steroids on the assumption of a single and unique stimulus-response relationship. The model converged yielding estimates of both the apparent in vivo receptor affinity (K PD) and the in vivo intrinsic efficacy (e PD). The values ofK PD ranged from 0.41 ± 0 ng·ml−1 for bretazenil to 436 ± 72 ng·ml−1 for clobazam and the values fore PD from −0.27 ± 0 for methyl 6,7-dimethoxy-4-ethyl-β-carboline-3-carboxylate to 0.54 ± 0.02 for diazepam. Significant linear correlations were observed between K PD for unbound concentrations and the affinity in an in vitro receptor bioassay (r = 0.93) and between e PD and the GABA-shift in vitro (r = 0.95). The findings of this investigation show that the in vivo effects of nonsteroidal GABAA receptor modulators and (synthetic) neuroactive steroids can be described on the basis of a single unique transducer function. In this paradigm, the nonsteroidal GABAA receptor modulators behave as partial agonists relative to neuroactive steroids.
Energy efficient routing techniques with guaranteed reliability based on multi-level uncertain graph

In recent years, an emerging low-power system “wireless sensor networks (WSNs)” attracts significant research interests. The energy of the distributed sensors is an essential constraint in such a complex distributed embedded system. Routing techniques in WSNs always follow a high-performance and energy-efficient way. However, conventional routing schemes of WSNs generally do not take the timing and reliability requirements into account when making routing decisions to prolong the lifetime of WSNs. Moreover, due to environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and signal interference, the bandwidths of links in a WSN various from time to time like random variables, which demands special considerations when timing and reliability requirements are presented for routing. In this paper, we introduce a graph model called Multi-level Uncertain Graph (MUG) to deal with the situation. Based on the MUG model, we define the new problem as the Energy-Balanced Transmission (EBT) Problem, and propose a EBT-Solver to maximize the lifetime of the WSN subject to timing and reliability constraints. Experimental results show that EBT-Solver solves EBT problem to the best advantage of energy balance and network's lifetime.
Power-aware routing with rate-adaptive network elements

Current Internet service-provider networks are typically over-provisioned, with the actual traffic through a network element often being much less than the capacity of the network element. However, current network element power consumption is largely independent of actual traffic. This presents an opportunity to reduce network power usage. Such an opportunity may be exploited locally, by redesigning individual network elements to make them rate-adaptive, or globally, by power-aware traffic routing. Instantiating either approach requires significant engineering effort. We attempt to quantify, as realistically as possible, the power-savings opportunity that can be obtained using these two approaches, in isolation or together. In particular, we investigate whether power-aware routing provides any additional benefit if network elements are rate-adaptive. We adopt a fairly simple model of network power use, where power consumption is attributed to links. A link may be turned off, in which case its power usage is zero. Otherwise, a link that is turned on consumes no less than a certain amount of power, called base power, and power use increases further with traffic. A significant parameter of the model is the ratio of base power over full-capacity power. Since it is difficult to estimate feasible values for this ratio, we investigate multiple scenarios in which its value ranges from 0 to 100%. We demonstrate that the combination of rate-adaptivity and power-aware routing saves a significant fraction of network power consumption, for a wide variety of network topologies, traffic loads, and base power ratios. More specifically, if the base power ratio is 50% or more, then power-aware routing appears to be of significant additional benefit over rate adaptivity alone; if the ratio is 25% or less, then power-aware routing offers a relatively small additional benefit.
A boosted SVM based ensemble classifier for sentiment analysis of online reviews

In recent years, several approaches have been proposed for sentiment based classification of online text. Out of the different contemporary approaches, supervised machine learning techniques like Naive Bayes (NB) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) are found to be very effective, as reported in literature. However, some studies have reported that the conditional independence assumption of NB makes feature selection a crucial problem. Moreover, SVM also suffers from other issues like selection of kernel functions, skewed vector spaces and heterogeneity in the training examples. In this paper, we propose a hybrid method by integrating "weak" support vector machine classifiers using boosting techniques. The proposed model exploits classification performance of Boosting while using SVM as the base classifier, applied for sentiment based classification of online reviews. The results on movies and hotel review corpora of 2000 reviews have shown that the proposed approach has succeeded in improving the performance of SVM. The resultant ensemble classifier has performed better than the single base SVM classifier, and the results confirm that ensemble SVM with boosting, significantly outperforms single SVM in terms of accuracy.
Academic Procrastination: The Relationship Between Academic Procrastination and Multidimension Perfectionism, Motivation and Self-Efficacy

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between academic procrastination and constructs motivation (intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation), multidimensional perfectionism and self-efficacy and to explore the prevalence of procrastination on certain academic tasks. Participants consisted of 77 college students, (females 62.3 and males 37.7) age ranged from 18 to 48 (SD= 5.02) acquired through convenience sampling. Participants completed a total of 4 self-report scales: Procrastination Assessment Scale for Students (PASS), Academic Motivation Scale (AMS-C 28), General Self-Efficacy Scale--Revised (GSES-R) and the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS). Correlation analysis found no significant relationship between the three variables tested and academic procrastination. Results found that the tasks participants reported to procrastinate the most included “Writing a Term Paper” and “Reading Assignments”. An overwhelming 63.7% of participants reported to “always” and “almost always” procrastinate on “Keeping up with Weekly Reading Assignments” and 62.4% of participants reported to “always” and “almost always” procrastinate on “Writing a Term Paper”. Limitations and Implications are discussed.
The silver cation (Ag+): antistaphylococcal activity, mode of action and resistance studies.

OBJECTIVES To examine several poorly understood or contentious aspects of the antibacterial activity of silver (Ag(+)), including its cidality, mode of action, the prevalence of resistance amongst clinical staphylococcal isolates and the propensity for Staphylococcus aureus to develop Ag(+) resistance. METHODS The effects of Ag(+) on the viability, macromolecular synthesis and membrane integrity of S. aureus SH1000 were assessed using established methodology. Silver nitrate MICs were determined for a collection of staphylococcal isolates (n = 1006) collected from hospitals across Europe and Canada between 1997 and 2010. S. aureus biofilms were grown using the Calgary Biofilm Device. To examine the in vitro development of staphylococcal resistance to Ag(+), bacteria were subjected to continuous subculture in the presence of sub-MIC concentrations of Ag(+). RESULTS Silver was bactericidal against S. aureus in buffered solution, but bacteriostatic in growth medium, and was unable to eradicate staphylococcal biofilms in vitro. Challenge of S. aureus with Ag(+) caused rapid loss of membrane integrity and inhibition of the major macromolecular synthetic pathways. All clinical staphylococcal isolates were susceptible to ≤ 16 mg/L silver nitrate and prolonged exposure (42 days) to Ag(+) in vitro failed to select resistant mutants. CONCLUSIONS The rapid and extensive loss of membrane integrity observed upon challenge with Ag(+) suggests that the antibacterial activity results directly from damage to the bacterial membrane. The universal susceptibility of staphylococci to Ag(+), and failure to select for resistance to Ag(+), suggest that silver compounds remain a viable option for the prevention and treatment of topical staphylococcal infections.
MoPex19, which Is Essential for Maintenance of Peroxisomal Structure and Woronin Bodies, Is Required for Metabolism and Development in the Rice Blast Fungus

Peroxisomes are present ubiquitously and make important contributions to cellular metabolism in eukaryotes. They play crucial roles in pathogenicity of plant fungal pathogens. The peroxisomal matrix proteins and peroxisomal membrane proteins (PMPs) are synthesized in the cytosol and imported post-translationally. Although the peroxisomal import machineries are generally conserved, some species-specific features were found in different types of organisms. In phytopathogenic fungi, the pathways of the matrix proteins have been elucidated, while the import machinery of PMPs remains obscure. Here, we report that MoPEX19, an ortholog of ScPEX19, was required for PMPs import and peroxisomal maintenance, and played crucial roles in metabolism and pathogenicity of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. MoPEX19 was expressed in a low level and Mopex19p was distributed in the cytoplasm and newly formed peroxisomes. MoPEX19 deletion led to mislocalization of peroxisomal membrane proteins (PMPs), as well peroxisomal matrix proteins. Peroxisomal structures were totally absent in Δmopex19 mutants and woronin bodies also vanished. Δmopex19 exhibited metabolic deficiency typical in peroxisomal disorders and also abnormality in glyoxylate cycle which was undetected in the known mopex mutants. The Δmopex19 mutants performed multiple disorders in fungal development and pathogenicity-related morphogenesis, and lost completely the pathogenicity on its hosts. These data demonstrate that MoPEX19 plays crucial roles in maintenance of peroxisomal and peroxisome-derived structures and makes more contributions to fungal development and pathogenicity than the known MoPEX genes in the rice blast fungus.
What in the world is a Shahab?: Wide Coverage Named Entity Recognition for Arabic

This paper describes the development of CiceroArabic, the first wide coverage named entity recognition (NER) system for Modern Standard Arabic. Capable of classifying 18 different named entity classes with over 85% F, CiceroArabic utilizes a new 800,000-word annotated Arabic newswire corpus in order to achieve high performance without the need for hand-crafted rules or morphological information. In addition to describing results from our system, we show that accurate named entity annotation for a large number of semantic classes is feasible, even for very large corpora, and we discuss new techniques designed to boost agreement and consistency among annotators over a long-term annotation effort.
The role of GABA in the regulation of GnRH neurons

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons form the final common pathway for the central regulation of reproduction. Gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) has long been implicated as one of the major players in the regulation of GnRH neurons. Although GABA is typically an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mature adult central nervous system, most mature GnRH neurons show the unusual characteristic of being excited by GABA. While many reports have provided much insight into the contribution of GABA to the activity of GnRH neurons, the precise physiological role of the excitatory action of GABA on GnRH neurons remains elusive. This brief review presents the current knowledge of the role of GABA signaling in GnRH neuronal activity. We also discuss the modulation of GABA signaling by neurotransmitters and neuromodulators and the functional consequence of GABAergic inputs to GnRH neurons in both the physiology and pathology of reproduction.
Sliding Mode Active Vibration Control and Three Axis Attitude Control using Four Reaction Wheels

The most important problems in satellites are their energy supply and decreasing weight. One of the solutions is using flexible appendages. Flexibility can supply both energy and weight loss in satellites. Also other appendages like antennas and mechanical arms can be flexible. But flexibility can produce some vibrations. These vibrations cause complexity attitude control systems due to flexible appendages. In this paper, the attitude control of flexible satellite by using four reaction wheels in presence of gravity gradient and orbit frequency has been considered. The dynamic of flexible appendages have been derived from energy equations and Lagrange method. Also, momentum management and minimization of the momentum have been employed to avoid of reaction wheels saturation. Then, the control command law using the quaternion error vector for attitude control of rigid body and sliding mode control (SMC) for active suppuration of flexible appendages have been used. Finally the performance of control system between presence and absence of reaction wheels has been compared.
Summer thermal comfort and overheating in the elderly

Atypically warm summers such as 2003 and 2018 are predicted to become normal by 2050. If current climate projections are accurate, this could cause heat-related mortality to rise by 257% by 2050, the majority of which will be in vulnerable groups such as the elderly. However, little is known about the temperatures achieved in the homes of the elderly even in typical summers, and even less on whether these are comfortable. This study examines, for the first time, the validity of current thermal comfort models in predicting summer comfort levels in the 65+ demographic over a typical and an atypically warm summer. This was achieved through the first longitudinal study of thermal conditions in homes of the elderly in the South West UK, utilising repeated standardised monthly thermal comfort and health surveys with continuous temperature monitoring in both living and bed rooms. Results show that neither the PMV/PPD model (ISO 7730) nor the adaptive model (ISO 15251) accurately predict true thermal comfort in our sample. Overheating analysis using CIBSE TM59 (based on ISO 15251) suggests significantly more homes (50% living room, 94% bed room = 94% overall) overheated during the atypically warm summer, compared to the typical summer (3% living room, 57% bed room = 57% overall). These are worrying results, especially for the elderly, given the projected increases in both the severity and the frequency of extreme summers in a future, changed, climate. Practical application: This paper provides new data on the performance of the homes of the elderly in both a typical and atypically warm summer. Our results could be considered for building performance evaluation in homes with elderly occupants to mitigate overheating risk. Crucially, we not only examine the impact of CIBSE criteria on these homes but also look at thermal acceptance, which is important to understand the true impact of elevated temperatures in this demographic.
Fair and easy: the effect of perceived fairness, effort expectancy and user experience on online slot machine gambling intention

ABSTRACT The growth of online gambling necessitates that both marketers and regulators have a better understanding of the gambling intention of players. Perceived fairness of customers towards operators has often been raised as a concern in the industry, but it has received limited attention in research on gambling intention. Theories that seek to explain purchase intention are considered and a model is proposed that investigates the role and impact that perceived fairness and system effort expectancy have on online gambling intention together with the moderating influence of user experience. Data from 255 online gambling customers are gathered and analysed using Hayes PROCESS analyses. Results indicate that perceived fairness impacts gambling intention directly, and indirectly strengthening the effect of effort expectancy on gambling intention. However, user experience weakens both these impacts. The research provides support for the inclusion of perceived fairness in theories that consider drivers of online gambling intention. In addition, the important role that perceived fairness plays offers support for gambling regulators who in recent years have sought to promote a fairer and more transparent deal to players. Firms in the online gambling industry can also look positively at activities enhancing fairness as its promotion can also enhance their performance.
Leptin Regulates Dopamine Responses to Sustained Stress in Humans

Neural systems that identify and respond to salient stimuli are critical for survival in a complex and changing environment. In addition, interindividual differences, including genetic variation and hormonal and metabolic status likely influence the behavioral strategies and neuronal responses to environmental challenges. Here, we examined the relationship between leptin allelic variation and plasma leptin levels with DAD2/3R availability in vivo as measured with [11C]raclopride PET at baseline and during a standardized pain stress challenge. Allelic variation in the leptin gene was associated with varying levels of dopamine release in response to the pain stressor, but not with baseline D2/3 receptor availability. Circulating leptin was also positively associated with stress-induced dopamine release. These results show that leptin serves as a regulator of neuronal function in humans and provides an etiological mechanism for differences in dopamine neurotransmission in response to salient stimuli as related to metabolic function. The capacity for leptin to influence stress-induced dopaminergic function is of importance for pathological states where dopamine is thought to play an integral role, such as mood, substance-use disorders, eating disorders, and obesity.