Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Speaker Adaptive Training using Deep Neural Networks

Among many speaker adaptation embodiments, Speaker Adaptive Training (SAT) has been successfully applied to a standard Hidden-Markov-Model (HMM) speech recognizer, whose state is associated with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). On the other hand, recent studies on Speaker-Independent (SI) recognizer development have reported that a new type of HMM speech recognizer, which replaces GMMs with Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), outperforms GMM-HMM recognizers. Along these two lines, it is natural to conceive of further improvement to a preset DNN-HMM recognizer by employing SAT. In this paper, we propose a novel training scheme that applies SAT to a SI DNN-HMM recognizer. We then implement the SAT scheme by allocating a Speaker-Dependent (SD) module to one of the intermediate layers of a seven-layer DNN, and elaborate its utility over TED Talks corpus data. Experiment results show that our speaker-adapted SAT-based DNN-HMM recognizer reduces the word error rate by 8.4% more than that of a baseline SI DNN-HMM recognizer, and (regardless of the SD module allocation) outperforms the conventional speaker adaptation scheme. The results also show that the inner layers of DNN are more suitable for the SD module than the outer layers.
Nano Indentation Inspection of the Mechanical Properties of Gold Nitride Thin Films

The morphology and the local mechanical properties of gold nitride thin films were studied by atomic force microscope (AFM). Gold nitride films were deposited for the first time on silicon substrate without any buffer layer at room temperature by reactive pulsed laser ablation deposition (RPLD). The films were fabricated on (100) Si wafers by RPLD technique in which KrF excimer laser was used to ablate a gold target in N2 atmosphere (0.1 GPa-100 Pa) and ambient temperature. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy inspections showed that the films were flat plane with rms roughness in the range of 35.1 nm-3.6 nm, depending on the deposition pressure. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) and energy dispersion spectroscopy (EDS) used to detect the nitrogen concentration in the films, have revealed a composition close to Au3N. The film's hardness, Young’s modulus, and scratch resistance were evaluated by nanoindentation and nanoscratch techniques in which AFM equipped with a diamond tip mounted on a metal foil cantilever was used to indent and scratch the film. Thus we were able to measure the mechanical properties along with the topography of the films characterization down to nanometer scale. Indentation and scratch measurements yielded hardness values of 2 GPa-3 GPa and a Young's modulus value close to 100 GPa. The experimental data are processed according to Oilver and Phar theory and discussed in terms of grain size, boundaries and dislocation pinning.
The Complexity of Circumscription in DLs

As fragments of first-order logic, Description logics (DLs) do not provide nonmonotonic features such as defeasible inheritance and default rules. Since many applications would benefit from the availability of such features, several families of nonmonotonic DLs have been developed that are mostly based on default logic and autoepistemic logic. In this paper, we consider circumscription as an interesting alternative approach to nonmonotonic DLs that, in particular, supports defeasible inheritance in a natural way. We study DLs extended with circumscription under different language restrictions and under different constraints on the sets of minimized, fixed, and varying predicates, and pinpoint the exact computational complexity of reasoning for DLs ranging from ALC to ALCIO and ALCQO. When the minimized and fixed predicates include only concept names but no role names, then reasoning is complete for NEXPNP. It becomes complete for NPNEXP when the number of minimized and fixed predicates is bounded by a constant. If roles can be minimized or fixed, then complexity ranges from NEXPNP to undecidability.
Pre‐employment drug testing of housestaff physicians at a large urban hospital

In an effort to address drug use and abuse among physicians beginning their graduate medical education. The Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center began a pre-employment drug testing program for housestaff physicians in 1987. Between 1987 and 1990, each of the 791 housestaff physicians beginning training at the hospital received a pre-employment urine toxicology examination. Despite the limitations of pre-employment drug testing, the program did identify two physicians who tested positive for illegal drugs. Based upon their test results and individual clinical evaluations, both physicians were denied a clinical appointment at the hospital. Their clinical training was temporarily interrupted while they received indicated treatment. The author suggests the main value of the program is to provide a focus for addressing issues related to substance abuse during graduate medical education.
Multilingual Ontology Acquisition from Multiple MRDs

In this paper, we outline the development of a system that automatically constructs ontologies by extracting knowledge from dictionary definition sentences using Robust Minimal Recursion Semantics (RMRS). Combining deep and shallow parsing resource through the common formalism of RMRS allows us to extract ontological relations in greater quantity and quality than possible with any of the methods independently. Using this method, we construct ontologies from two different Japanese lexicons and one English lexicon. We then link them to existing, handcrafted ontologies, aligning them at the word-sense level. This alignment provides a representative evaluation of the quality of the relations being extracted. We present the results of this ontology construction and discuss how our system was designed to handle multiple lexicons and languages.
Nitrogen and Hydrogen Adsorption by an Organic Microporous Crystal**

Quick on the uptake: Following its identification during a targeted search, the intriguing crystal structure of 3,3',4,4'-tetra(trimethylsilylethynyl)biphenyl was investigated. Simple removal of the included solvent provides an organic crystal with an open microporous structure that has a striking similarity to that of zeolite A (see picture). Reversible adsorption of nitrogen and hydrogen gases at 77 K confirms that the microporosity is permanent.
The Araucaria Project: An Accurate Distance to the Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822 from Near-Infrared Photometry of Cepheid Variables

We have measured near-infrared magnitudes in the J and K bands for 56 Cepheid variables in the Local Group galaxy NGC 6822 with well-determined periods and optical light curves in the V and I bands. Using the template light-curve approach of Soszyński and coworkers, accurate mean magnitudes were obtained from these data, which allowed us to determine with unprecedented accuracy the distance to NGC 6822 from a multiwavelength period-luminosity solution in the VIJK bands. From our data, we obtain a distance to NGC 6822 of (m - M)0 = 23.312 ± 0.021 (random error) mag, with an additional systematic uncertainty of ~3%. This distance value is tied to an assumed LMC distance modulus of 18.50. From our multiwavelength approach, we find for the total (average) reddening to the NGC 6822 Cepheids E(B - V) = 0.356 ± 0.013 mag, which is in excellent agreement with a previous determination by McGonegal and coworkers from near-infrared photometry and implies significant internal reddening of the Cepheids in NGC 6822. Our present, definitive distance determination of NGC 6822 from Cepheids agrees within 2% with the previous distance we had derived from optical photometry alone, but has significantly reduced error bars. Our Cepheid distance to NGC 6822 is in excellent agreement with the recent independent determination of Cioni & Habing from the I-band magnitude of the tip of the red giant branch. It also agrees well, within the errors, with the early determination of McGonegal et al. (1983) from random-phase H-band photometry of nine Cepheids.
Electrophysiology of Hypothalamic Magnocellular Neurons In vitro: A Rhythmic Drive in Organotypic Cultures and Acute Slices

Hypothalamic neurohormones are released in a pulsatile manner. The mechanisms of this pulsatility remain poorly understood and several hypotheses are available, depending upon the neuroendocrine system considered. Among these systems, hypothalamo-neurohypophyseal magnocellular neurons have been early-considered models, as they typically display an electrical activity consisting of bursts of action potentials that is optimal for the release of boluses of the neurohormones oxytocin and vasopressin. The cellular mechanisms underlying this bursting behavior have been studied in vitro, using either acute slices of the adult hypothalamus, or organotypic cultures of neonatal hypothalamic tissue. We have recently proposed, from experiments in organotypic cultures, that specific central pattern generator networks, upstream of magnocellular neurons, determine their bursting activity. Here, we have tested whether a similar hypothesis can be derived from in vitro experiments in acute slices of the adult hypothalamus. To this aim we have screened our electrophysiological recordings of the magnocellular neurons, previously obtained from acute slices, with an analysis of autocorrelation of action potentials to detect a rhythmic drive as we recently did for organotypic cultures. This confirmed that the bursting behavior of magnocellular neurons is governed by central pattern generator networks whose rhythmic drive, and thus probably integrity, is however less satisfactorily preserved in the acute slices from adult brains.
Modifying kernels using label information improves SVM classification performance

Kernel learning methods based on kernel alignment with semidefinite programming (SDP) are often memory intensive and computationally expensive, thus often impractical for problems with large-size dataset. We propose a method using label information to modify kernels based on SVD and a linear mapping. As a result, the new kernel matrix reflects the label-dependent separability of the data in a better way than the original kernel matrix. In addition, our experimental results on USPS handwritten digits and the SCOP dataset, show that the SVM classifier based on the improved kernels has better performance than the SVM classifier based on the original kernels; moreover, SVM based on the improved profile kernel with pull-in homologs (see experiment section for explanations) produced the best results for remote homology detection on the SCOP dataset compared to the published results.
A study on schema preservation by crossover

This paper considers the combinatorial optimization problem in which the solution (sample) can be decomposed linearly into multiple schemata. Focusing on an arbitrary kind of schema, the schema preservation mechanism of the crossover in the genetic algorithm is discussed from the viewpoint of the increase or decrease of the number of samples (considered samples) containing the considered schema in the set of sample bit strings. It is shown that the change in the number of considered samples with time is divided into two kind of phases (stable and unstable phases), depending on whether or not there exists a point of equilibrium for increase and decrease in copying during the course of selection, and for degradation by destruction in crossover and mutation. It is shown that the transition between the stable phase and the unstable phase occurs according to the magnitude relation between the average fitness of the considered samples and the average fitness of the whole set of sample bit strings. By setting the crossover ratio as a higher value in the genetic algorithm, the schema is uniformly embedded in the whole set of sample bit strings, which increases the average fitness of the considered samples, and generates an equilibrium point that maintains a constant number of considered samples. Lastly, a computer simulation is performed, and it is shown that the discussion of the schema preservation mechanism of the crossover is adequate. © 2002 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 33(2): 64–76, 2002
Frequency Synthesizer with Dual Loop and Wireless Bandwidth Optimization for Mobile Communication Applications

A fractional-N frequency synthesizer with dual Loop and loop bandwidth optimization operating at 5.0-GHz band is proposed and fabricated in TSMC 0.18-um CMOS process. The proposed design can be used for the IEEE 802.15. 4a unlicensed ultra-wideband healthcare applications such as body sensor network. The proposed PLL with a cross-coupled pair LC-tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) improved phase noise and loop bandwidth that achieves the fast locking advantage. For mobile computing and communication application, the proposed PLL achieves a wide tuning range from 4.71GHz to 5.12 GHz, a phase noise of -108.5 dBc/Hz at an offset frequency of 1 MHz from the carrier frequency of 5.0 GHz, a power consumption of 22.9 mW(without buffer) and a output power of -4.62 dBm for the local oscillator of the RF front-end circuits.
Device impact of photon recycling and luminescent coupling on InGaP/Si tandems

We numerically evaluate the device impact of photon re-absorption on InGaP/Si tandem solar cells using a coupled optical-electronic device model. The presented simulation results provide guidelines for designing high performance InGaP/Si tandem device. We find that including the effects of photon recycling (PR) and luminescent coupling (LC) results in a 12.5% increase in optimum top-cell thickness for a two-terminal configuration. Furthermore, PR and LC affect the sensitivity of the tandem's conversion efficiency to various device parameters. As the InGaP bulk lifetime increases, there is an absolute efficiency increase of up to 0.7% for the two-terminal as well as the four-terminal configuration. Considering PR and LC furthermore reduces the power generation sensitivity to shunting in the two-terminal configuration. For the four-terminal configuration, photon re-absorption has a less significant impact.
Thirty Year Follow-Up of Juvenile Homicide Offenders

Killings by juvenile offenders have been a matter of concern in the United States since the 1980s. Although the rate of juvenile-perpetrated murders has been declining since the 1990s, it remains problematic, in that juvenile offenders account for approximately 10% of all homicide arrests. Research on recidivism of juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs) is important, due to relatively short follow-up periods in prior studies and a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of murder. The present study was designed to explore long-term patterns of recidivism, and particularly violent recidivism, in a sample of 59 male JHOs from a Southeastern state who were prosecuted as adults for murder or attempted murder in the early 1980s, convicted, and sentenced to adult prison. Furthermore, the predictive utility of a juvenile homicide typology was analyzed, and the offenders who committed sexually-oriented murders were examined in-depth. The results indicated that close to 90% of released offenders have been rearrested during the 30-year followup period, and more than 60% have been rearrested for violent offenses. Five offenders completed (4 offenders) or attempted (1 offender) a new homicide. Out of 7 variables tested, race emerged as the only significant correlate of post-release violence. Release from prison, postrelease arrests, and post-release violent offenses were not significantly related to the circumstances of the index homicide (crime-oriented v. conflict-oriented). The subsample of juvenile sexual homicide offenders (JSHOs) consisted of 8 offenders; 6 of them were released from prison, 4 were rearrested, and 3 were rearrested for violent offenses. None of the released JSHOs were arrested for a homicide or any sexually-related crimes. The implications of the
Insider Perspectives vs. Public Perceptions of ICT: Toward Policy for Enhancing Female Student Participation in Academic Pathways to Professional Careers in ICT

This article reports findings of a national online survey of Australian women employed in Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related careers. The Women in ICT Industry Survey was the culminating stage of a larger Australian Research Council Linkage Grant project investigating factors associated with low and declining female participation rates in professional-level ICT pathways. The survey comprised a mix of forced-choice and open-ended short-response items, and was completed by 272 Australian women. Application of K-means cluster analysis to forced-choice item responses revealed three discrete groupings of female ICT professionals. Overall, respondents reported that their ICT career was rewarding, provided opportunities and challenges, and was beneficial to society. Respondents generally disagreed with Queensland high school girls' perceptions that ICT is boring, sedentary, and not relevant to their future career directions. They also disagreed that the industry fits the prevailing negative stereotype of being populated by ‘geeks' and ‘nerds’. Divergent opinions centered mainly around participants' confidence in their own technical ability, whether they would encourage young women to enter the ICT industry, and how they perceived and responded to industrial issues of equality and management approachability. These findings support suggestions for a range of policy and curriculum initiatives designed to enable more positive experiences of computing in school, and to optimize ICT career pathways in tandem with furthering wider educational ends.
Becoming Periphery - Israeli LGBT “Peripheralization”

Over the past decade, the Israeli LGBT community has undergone processes of mainstreaming, institutionalization and assimilation, most of which took place in Tel Aviv, the Israeli center. Simultaneously, the Israeli peripheries were perceived as “empty”, as spaces that have limited or no LGBT visibility and presence. This article focuses on LGBT activists’ experiences in LGBT activist spaces in the peripheries. I argue that rather than reproducing the center-periphery power structure, LGBT activists are subverting the paradigm, while creating practices and imaginaries that engender a mode of becoming periphery. This mode is comprised of three major processes of becoming: the first belies the notion of the peripheries as spaces LGBT individuals can only depart from; the second subverts the discourse of LGBT peripheries as empty spaces; and the third offers a dual consideration of the center-periphery power relationship, both accepting the structure and the peripheries’ place within it but also deviating from the passiveness, static stances, emptiness and restrictive forms of sexuality. LGBT in the peripheries have begun creating a distinct kind of peripheral notion that diverges both from being an LGBT individual in the center and from the framing of Israeli peripheries.
In Vitro Brucella suis Infection Prevents the Programmed Cell Death of Human Monocytic Cells

ABSTRACT During the complex interaction between an infectious agent and a host organism, the pathogen can interfere with the host cell's programmed death to its own benefit. Induction or prevention of host cell apoptosis appears to be a critical step for determining the infection outcome. Members of the gram-negative bacterial genusBrucella are intracellular pathogens which preferentially invade monocytic cells and develop within these cells. We investigated the effect of Brucella suis infection on apoptosis of human monocytic phagocytes. The present study provides evidence thatBrucella infection inhibited spontaneously occurring apoptosis in human monocytes. Prevention of monocyte apoptosis was not mediated by Brucella lipopolysaccharide and required bacterial survival within infected cells. Both invaded and noninvaded cells were protected, indicating that soluble mediators released during infection were involved in the phenomenon. Analysis ofBrucella-infected monocytes revealed specific overexpression of the A1 gene, a member of thebcl-2 family implicated in the survival of hematopoietic cells. Brucella infection also rendered macrophage-like cells resistant to Fas ligand- or gamma interferon-induced apoptosis, suggesting that Brucella infection protected host cells from several cytotoxic processes occurring at different steps of the immune response. The present data clearly show that Brucella suis modulated the monocyte/macrophage's apoptotic response to the advantage of the pathogen, thus preventing host cell elimination. This might represent a strategy for Brucella development in infected hosts.
Educational podcasts: some early evidence and thoughts

To investigate, using a non-specialist accounting module, when and where students use podcasts, analyse student views on their educational value and explore some of the potential barriers to their introduction. The paper uses a student questionnaire and usage statistics collected from the ‘Blackboard’ online tracking facility and draws on secondary research from a number of studies from the UK and USA to compare evidence from early adopters (Copley, 2007; Edirisingha and Salmon, 2007; Evans, 2008; Lane, 2006; Newnham and Miller, 2007; Shim et al. 2007). We found that students believe their learning experience is improved by podcasts and there is convincing evidence of their use as an additional learning tool; particularly for revision. As with other studies (Copley, 2007; Evans, 2008; Lane, 2006) there is little evidence of mobile learning or for a desire among students to abandon traditional teaching practices. We conclude that educators should consider using podcasts as an additional method to engage with students but should be aware that this resource may be primarily used during the revision period. Education policy makers should note that staff may be reluctant to introduce another method of communicating with students.
Integration of a 2D legacy GIS, legacy simulations, and legacy databases into a 3D geographic simulation

Legacy application systems have been widely used by user communities, and by individual users. They are currently providing a variety of functions required by system development requirements. For the development of a new 3D system using such legacy systems, we need both (i) the migration of legacy systems into a new 3D system environment, and (ii) interoperations among these systems. This paper proposes a framework for the ad hoc integration of a 2D legacy GIS, legacy simulators, and legacy databases, which are not a priori assumed to be integrated with each other. For this purpose, we first propose a mechanism to migrate a 2D legacy system with its GUI into a 3D environment. This mechanism is based on a special coordinate transformation for both the texture mapping and the event dispatching. It enables us to use a 3D terrain model with a shadow copy of a 2D legacy GIS. As for legacy geographic simulators and legacy databases without any GUI, we provide them with their proxy objects. These proxy objects can interoperate with each other, and also with the shadow copy of a 2D legacy GIS through their slot connections. As a result, our approach enables us to dynamically integrate multiple independent legacy simulators and/or legacy databases with a 2D legacy GIS simply through the composition of their 3D display objects