Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining non-negative matrix factorization and deep neural networks for speech enhancement and automatic speech recognition

Sparse Non-negative Matrix Factorization (SNMF) and Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have emerged individually as two efficient machine learning techniques for single-channel speech enhancement. Nevertheless, there are only few works investigating the combination of SNMF and DNN for speech enhancement and robust Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). In this paper, we present a novel combination of speech enhancement components based-on SNMF and DNN into a full-stack system. We refine the cost function of the DNN to back-propagate the reconstruction error of the enhanced speech. Our proposal is compared with several state-of-the-art speech enhancement systems. Evaluations are conducted on the data of CHiME-3 challenge which consists of real noisy speech recordings captured under challenging noisy conditions. Our system yields significant improvements for both objective quality speech enhancement measurements with relative gain of 30%, and a 10% relative Word Error Rate reduction for ASR compared to the best baselines.
Malthus, gender and the demarcation of ‘dangerous’ bodies in 1996 US welfare reform

This article argues that populationism as a gendered narrative provides a crucial rhetorical architecture for welfare reform debates in the USA during the 1990s. Populationism, which Joni Seager defines as ‘the dogma and the rhetoric of population alarmism and population control,’ subtly legitimized efforts to control and marginalize poor women's bodies in the context of welfare reform. The populationism underlying welfare reform hinges on a deep fear of engulfing social chaos if ‘we’ do not check the fertility of poor women, and particularly women of color. This article historically situates contemporary welfare politics by tracing in some detail how Malthus' original writings on population were constitutively linked to debates about ‘poor relief’ in early nineteenth century England. Exploring the gendered linkages between Malthus and social welfare policy in the 1800s allows us to understand how Malthus continues to haunt discourses about social welfare in the 1990s and beyond, with direct consequences for poor women and particularly poor women of color.
How Healthy Discs Herniate: A Biomechanical and Microstructural Study Investigating the Combined Effects of Compression Rate and Flexion

Study Design. Microstructural investigation of compression-induced disruption of the flexed lumbar disc. Objective. To provide a microstructural analysis of the mechanisms of annular wall failure in healthy discs subjected to flexion and an elevated rate of compression. Summary of Background Data. At the level of the motion segment failure of the disc in compression has been extensively studied. However, at the microstructural level the exact mechanisms of disc failure are still poorly understood, especially in relation to loading posture and rate. Methods. Seventy-two healthy mature ovine lumbar motion segments were compressed to failure in either a neutral posture or in high physiological flexion (10°) at a displacement rate of either 2 mm/min (low) or 40 mm/min (high). Testing at the high rate was terminated at stages ranging from initial wall tearing through to facet fracture so as to capture the evolution of failure up to full herniation. The damaged discs were then analyzed microstructurally. Results. Approximately, 50% of the motion segments compressed in flexion at the high rate experienced annulus or annulus-endplate junction failure, the remainder failed via endplate fracture with no detectable wall damage. The average load to induce disc failure in flexion was 18% lower (P < 0.05) than that required to induce endplate fracture. Microstructural analysis indicated that wall rupture occurred first in the posterior mid-then-outer annulus. Conclusion. Disc wall failure in healthy motion segments requires both flexion and an elevated rate of compression. Damage is initiated in the mid-then-outer annular fibers, this a likely consequence of the higher strain burden in these same fibers arising from endplate curvature. Given the similarity in geometry between ovine and human endplates, it is proposed that comparable mechanisms of damage initiation and herniation occur in human lumbar discs. Level of Evidence: N/A
Generating 4-regular Hamiltonian Plane Graphs

This paper describes the study of a special class of 4-regular plane graphs which are Hamiltonian. These graphs are of special interest in knot theory. An algorithm is presented that randomly generates such graphs with n vertices with a fixed (and oriented) Hamiltonian cycle in O(n) time. An exact count of the number of such graphs with n vertices is obtained and the asymptotic growth rate of this number is determined. Numerical evidence is presented to show that the algorithm can be modified to generate these graphs with a near uniform probability. This can be considered as a first step in generating large random knots without bias.
Boundary Work

This article explores the joint production and consumption of health information and advice in the context of NHS Direct, the new telephone health information and advice service. NHS Direct is an atypical call centre environment in so far as its core staff (nurses) are highly skilled professionals. These nurses are required to collaborate closely with, and are to some extent dependent upon, non-professional lower skilled staff (call handlers) to define and prioritize their work. This introduces a number of tensions between the two groups. Nurses respond to these tensions by engaging in ‘boundary work’, the micropolitical strategies through which work identities and occupational margins are negotiated, to protect their own status. Call handlers are more subject to the pressures of work ‘speed-up’, highly aware of the risks inherent in their role, but are unable to call upon professional status, either in their resistance to managerial imperatives or in their interactions with health consumers. They are required to manage the tension between offering a safe and high quality service, characterized in their training as ‘professional’, and nurses’ boundary work, which positions them as ‘non-professional’. Here we draw on qualitative research, including call interaction data between call handler and consumer, to show how call handlers’ occupation of the contested territory between professional and non-professional status leaves them wide open to the agency of consumers, as consumers attempt to shape the service in their own interests.
Digitising Dictionaries for Advanced Look-up and Lexical Knowledge Research in Malay

Electronic dictionaries need not be mere OCR digitised versions of their paper-form counterparts: they can be made more computer-tractable to facilitate more meaningful operations and data exchange. For instance, explicitly annotating different fields in a dictionary entry allows more targeted look-ups, as we will show using Kamus Dewan as an example. Dictionary data can also be re-organised to enable semantic-based search. The wordnet lexical database is one such model, for which we created a prototype for the Malay language. As both the proposed annotated Kamus Dewan and Malay WordNet are compiled according to established standards and guidelines, the data can be aligned with similar lexical resources of other languages. This provides a means for mutual sharing, interchange and enrichment of lexical data and knowledge between Malay and other languages.
Combining Adaptation and Mitigation: A Game Theoretic Approach

Abstract This paper deals with an application of dynamic games for the design of efficient climate policies involving both adaptation and mitigation elements. More precisely, this paper extends the integrated assessment model Ada-BaHaMa to a game theoretic framework where several world regions define non-cooperatively their energy and climate policies all the while being affected by climate change damages induced by their total greenhouse gas emissions. The paper provides also a numerical illustration for a setting with two players.
Female Overrepresentation in Public and Nonprofit Sector Jobs

Women are overrepresented in the public and nonprofit sectors. This article aims to bring to light the reasons behind this phenomenon. The originality of the employer–employee matched data used allows us to consider a large scope of potential reasons. Using a nonlinear decomposition technique, we find that in addition to the well-known occupational segregation effect, the overrepresentation of women in the public and nonprofit sectors is associated with two common factors: greater offerings of family-friendly practices and higher attraction of men for certain fringe benefits that are more frequently provided by the for-profit sector. Sector-specific factors also exist. The higher wage advantage obtained by women compared with men working in the public sector rather than in the for-profit sector contributes to the feminization of the public sector. Similarly, the overrepresentation of women in the nonprofit sector is linked to greater access to part-time jobs and shorter workweeks there.
Network Position and Cognition in a Computer Software Firm

Gordon Walker The present study examined the relationship between differences in cognition among the members of a software firm and the position a member occupied in the network of task relationships in the organization. Cognition was measured through judgments about means-ends associations relevant to software product success. The network was analyzed as a blockmodel, and positions in the network were defined as blocks of structurally equivalent individuals. Network position was found to be a stronger and more stable predictor of differences in cognition than the type of function an individual had and the type of product worked on. Both tenure in the industry and tenure in the firm also were found to have strong and stable effects. The generalizability of the findings is discussed in terms of the type of cognition studied and the firm's size, technology, and level of market uncertainty. *
A location-based push service architecture with clustering method

The rapid advances in wireless devices and positioning technologies boost various kinds of location-based services. Location-based push service plays an important role in the mobile environment as it foresees useful information to mobile users according to their current location, but the large number and continuous location changing of users make the system load heavy. This paper first proposes a novel location-based push service architecture, which employs the method of clustering moving objects to balance the system load. To support the location-based service on clusters, we present a grid-based approach to efficiently relate a cluster to the information around it. Then, an advanced push service model is proposed which achieves the advantages of both pull service and push service. This model allows user to share the information pulled from the server with other users in the cluster.
IMaxer: A Unified System for Evaluating Influence Maximization in Location-based Social Networks

Due to the popularity of social networks with geo-tagged activities, so-called location-based social networks (LBSN), a number of methods have been proposed for influence maximization for applications such as word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM), and out-of-home marketing (OOH). It is thus important to analyze and compare these different approaches. In this demonstration, we present a unified system IMaxer that both provides a complete pipeline of state-of-the-art and novel models and algorithms for influence maximization (IM) as well as allows to evaluate and compare IM techniques for a particular scenario. IMaxer allows to select and transform the required data from raw LBSN datasets. It further provides a unified model that utilizes interactions of nodes in an LBSN, i.e., users and locations, for capturing diverse types of information propagations. On the basis of these interactions, influential nodes can be found and their potential influence can be simulated and visualized using Google Maps and graph visualization APIs. Thus, IMaxer allows users to compare and pick the most suitable IM method in terms of effectiveness and cost.
Prediction of Partition Coefficients of Organic Compounds between SPME/PDMS and Aqueous Solution

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is commonly used as the coated polymer in the solid phase microextraction (SPME) technique. In this study, the partition coefficients of organic compounds between SPME/PDMS and the aqueous solution were compiled from the literature sources. The correlation analysis for partition coefficients was conducted to interpret the effect of their physicochemical properties and descriptors on the partitioning process. The PDMS-water partition coefficients were significantly correlated to the polarizability of organic compounds (r = 0.977, p < 0.05). An empirical model, consisting of the polarizability, the molecular connectivity index, and an indicator variable, was developed to appropriately predict the partition coefficients of 61 organic compounds for the training set. The predictive ability of the empirical model was demonstrated by using it on a test set of 26 chemicals not included in the training set. The empirical model, applying the straightforward calculated molecular descriptors, for estimating the PDMS-water partition coefficient will contribute to the practical applications of the SPME technique.
Mechanisms of Change in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: Preliminary Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an effective treatment for reducing depressive relapse as well as residual depressive symptoms among adults with recurrent depression but the specific mechanisms through which this treatment works have yet to be examined. This study investigated MBCT's immediate (pre to post) effects on depressive symptoms and its potential theory-driven change mechanisms in a wait-list randomized control trial. Recurrently depressed patients, the majority of them in partial remission, were randomized to either an 8-week MBCT group (N = 26) or a wait-list control group (N = 19). Participants completed measures of depressive symptoms as well as measures of rumination and trait mindfulness before and after the intervention. Consistent with the MBCT change theory, bootstrapping-based mediation analyses demonstrated that reductions in brooding (an aspect of rumination) and increases in mindfulness independently and uniquely (accounting for other mediators) mediated the effects of .
The Crossing Number

We define the crossing number, a natural invariant in topological graph theory, and survey general results on the crossing number in the Euclidean plane. We also discuss progress on conjectures for two particular cases: complete bipartite graphs and complete graphs. Finally, we show some applications of the crossing number to problems in incidence geometry and VLSI chip design.
The ethical claim of partiality: practical reasoning, the discipline, and teacher education

Practical reasoning refers to a teacher's capacity to discern particulars and make wise judgements about how to act in pedagogical situations. But how do teachers know what is right? How are teachers' preferences to be grounded and their choices justified? I explore the disciplines as one source of moral perception. Assuming that narrative unities underscore the coherence and continuity of an individual's experience, I generated data in the context of a 2‐year teacher education programme. The case study of an aspiring teacher of secondary school language arts illustrates how the intellectual virtues of a discipline can influence a student teacher's practical reasoning. I conclude that teacher educators must attend to the complex ways in which a prospective teacher's prior discipline may influence aspiring teachers' orientations to experience, their consideration of educational ends, and, finally, their characters.
How price increases affect future purchases: The role of mental budgeting, income, and framing

This article suggests that mental budgeting processes provide afurther understanding of how and to what degree price increases negatively affect a customer's future purchase behavior in a particular category of expenses. Furthermore, the authors analyze how customer income and different price presentation tactics alter this reaction. Results of two experimental studies using both students and non-students show that customer income attenuates the negative effect of a price increase on the likelihood of a future purchase in a particular expense category. As an underlying mechanism, the influence of customer income on future purchase behavior is partially mediated by the degree to which customers engage in mental budgeting. Moreover, mental budgeting strengthens the negative effect of a price increase on a future purchase in the same category of expenses, whereas it does not alter the effect of a price increase on a future purchase in another category. Finally, the framing of a price increase as a percentage versus in absolute terms leads to a lower likelihood of a future category purchase. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Citizens’ Attitudes Toward Wrongful Convictions

Perhaps no problem challenges the legitimacy of the criminal justice system more than the conviction of factually innocent individuals. Numerous highly publicized exonerations that occurred since 1989 have raised the visibility of wrongful conviction, eliciting the attention of both scholars and policy makers. Much of the research in this area focuses on the causes and incidence of the phenomenon. Despite the growing body of research, however, there has been no examination of how citizens view this problem. Using data from a statewide survey of Michigan residents, the present study aims to fill that gap in the literature by reporting on citizens’ attitudes regarding the issue of wrongful conviction. Overall, the results of this exploratory study suggest that respondents not only recognize the incidence of wrongful conviction but also believe that such errors occur with some regularity. Further results show that respondents believe wrongful convictions occur frequently enough to justify major criminal justice system reform. Attitudes varied significantly across demographic groups as well. Additional findings and policy implications are discussed.
Finitely coordinated models for low-temperature phases of amorphous systems

We introduce models of heterogeneous systems with finite connectivity defined on random graphs to capture finite-coordination effects on the low-temperature behaviour of finite-dimensional systems. Our models use a description in terms of small deviations of particle coordinates from a set of reference positions, particularly appropriate for the description of low-temperature phenomena. A Born–von Karman-type expansion with random coefficients is used to model effects of frozen heterogeneities. The key quantity appearing in the theoretical description is a full distribution of effective single-site potentials which needs to be determined self-consistently. If microscopic interactions are harmonic, the effective single-site potentials turn out to be harmonic as well, and the distribution of these single-site potentials is equivalent to a distribution of localization lengths used earlier in the description of chemical gels. For structural glasses characterized by frustration and anharmonicities in the microscopic interactions, the distribution of single-site potentials involves anharmonicities of all orders, and both single-well and double-well potentials are observed, the latter with a broad spectrum of barrier heights. The appearance of glassy phases at low temperatures is marked by the appearance of asymmetries in the distribution of single-site potentials, as previously observed for fully connected systems. Double-well potentials with a broad spectrum of barrier heights and asymmetries would give rise to the well-known universal glassy low-temperature anomalies when quantum effects are taken into account.
A Biomimetic steering robot for Minimally invasive surgery application

Minimally Invasive Surgery represents the future of many types of medical inter- ventions such as keyhole neurosurgey or transluminal endoscopic surgery. These procedures involve insertion of surgical instruments such as needles and endoscopes into human body through small incision/ body cavity for biopsy and drug delivery. However, nearly all surgical instruments for these procedures are inserted manually and there is a long learning curve for surgeons to use them properly. Many research efforts have been made to design active instruments (endoscope, needles) to improve this procedure during last decades. New robot mechanisms have been designed and used to improve the dexterity of current endoscope. Usually these robots are flexible and can pass the constrained space for fine manipulations. In recent years, a con- tinuum robotic mechanism has been investigated and designed for medical surgery. Those robots are characterized by the fact that their mechanical components do not have rigid links and discrete joints in contrast with traditional robot manipula- tors. The design of these robots is inspired by movements of natural animals such as tongues, elephant trunks and tentacles. The unusual compliance and redundant degrees of freedom of these robots provide strong potential to achieve delicate tasks successfully even in cluttered and unstructured environments. This chapter will present a complete application of a continuum robot for Mini- mally Invasive Surgery of colonoscopy. This system is composed of a micro-robotic tip, a set of position sensors and a real-time control system for guiding the explo- ration of colon. Details will be described on the modeling of the used pneumatic actuators, the design of the mechanical component, the kinematic model analysis and the control strategy for automatically guiding the progression of the device inside the human colon. Experimental results will be presented to check the perfor- mances of the whole system within a transparent tube.
Multiple approaches to the treatment of violent couples

Abstract The first step in treating violent couples is to determine which of the three basic approaches is most suitable for the client: unilateral (noninteractive treatment of the individual); bilateral (noninteractive treatment of each partner separately); and dyadic (mutual and interactive conjoint treatment). Accurate assessment using defined criteria is absolutely crucial in order to ascertain whether the couple can or cannot be treated together safely. A broad array of established clinical techniques (specific to aggressive couples) can be utilized within each of the three designated modalities. Both assessment criteria and specific clinical techniques are described.
Perceived intensity of tool-transmitted vibration: Effects of amplitude and frequency

In this study, we measured the perceived intensity of vibrations in the hand for mechanically grounded objects. We conducted an absolute magnitude estimation experiment for two within-subject factors: the amplitude and the frequency of vibration. We revised the vibration generation method and the experimental design adopted in our previous study. As a result, the measured perceived intensity was precisely modeled as nonlinear functions based on Stevens' power law. The slope and exponent of the estimated power function decreased with frequency until 200 Hz. We also compared our experimental design and the perceived intensity model with those of related studies. Our results can be utilized for effective information transfer of vibration in handle type devices.