Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust Session Variability Compensation for SVM Speaker Verification

This paper presents an enhanced nuisance attribute projection (NAP) method to improve the performance of speaker verification systems in mismatched train and test conditions. Unlike the conventional NAP training method that does not take any scheme to discriminate the source of nuisance, the proposed method quantitatively estimates the source of nuisance based on the statistics of given background speakers' eigenvalues. The estimated values are used for defining a discriminative weight for each of background speakers and selectively including the statistics of between-class scatter or of within-class scatter from them. Through the scheme, we intend to design a more robust projection matrix which involves less speaker-dependent or speaker-intrinsic variability while including more latent nuisance factors beyond the common within-class scatter of backgrounds. Experimental results on the recent NIST SRE evaluations demonstrate that the proposed algorithms produce consistent improvement over the previous NAP approaches.
Judgement and Decision-Making Performance in Personnel Selection: Partial Feedback and the Role of Confidence

In most organisations, outcomes of personnel selection will not always be known, and therefore the selection officer has access to partial feedback only. In personnel selection, feedback, or knowledge of results, is more likely to follow a decision to hrie than a decision to reject, particularly if the applicant was unsuitable. The present study investigated efefcts of asymmetric partial feedback on decision-making performance using an artifical personnel selection task.
Perceptual Evaluation of Video-Realistic Speech

abstract With many visual speech animation techniques now available, there is a clear need for systematic perceptual evaluation schemes. We describe here our scheme and its application to a new video-realistic (potentially indistinguishable from real recorded video) visual-speech animation system, called Mary 101. Two types of experiments were performed: a) distinguishing visually between real and synthetic image- sequences of the same utterances, (ﬁTuring testsﬂ) and b) gauging visual speech recognition by comparing lip-reading performance of the real and synthetic image-sequences of the same utterances (ﬁIntelligibility testsﬂ). Subjects that were presented randomly with either real or synthetic image-sequences could not tell the synthetic from the real sequences above chance level. The same subjects when asked to lip-read the utterances from the same image-sequences recognized speech from real image-sequences significantly better than from synthetic ones. However, performance for both, real and synthetic, were at levels suggested in the literature on lip-reading. We conclude from the two experiments that the animation of Mary 101 is adequate for providing a percept of a talking head. However, additional effort is required to improve the animation for lip-reading purposes like rehabilitation and language learning. In addition, these two tasks could be considered as explicit and implicit perceptual discrimination tasks. In the explicit task (a), each stimulus is classified directly as a synthetic or real image-sequence by detecting a possible difference between the synthetic and the real image-sequences. The implicit perceptual discrimination task (b) consists of a comparison between visual recognition of speech of real and synthetic image-sequences. Our results suggest that implicit perceptual discrimination is a more sensitive method for discrimination between synthetic and real image-sequences than explicit perceptual discrimination. ___________________________________________________________________________________
Selecting Students at Risk of Academic Difficulties

This paper aims to translate for practitioners the principles and methods for evaluating screening measures in education, including benchmark goals and cut points, from our technical manuscript “Evaluation of Diagnostic Systems: The Selection of Students at Risk of Academic Difficulties” (this issue). We offer a brief description of procedures developed over the past 50 years including the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, the area under the ROC curve as a general measure of screener accuracy, and approaches to selecting a specific cut score to indicate risk. We also provide reporting standards to help practitioners evaluate research on screeners supported by best practices and to encourage researchers to attend to key reporting principles, such as using confidence bounds as estimates of precision. We then discuss examples from the literature and emphasize the imprecision of statistical estimates from small samples. Screeners and diagnostic tests, developed and evaluated with care and implemented consistently in schools, can improve educators’ decisions about resource allocation and ultimately improve the delivery of supports to students.
Biochemical Characterization and Substrate Specificity of Autophagin-2 from the Parasite Trypanosoma cruzi*

Background: Successful colonization of humans by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi critically depends on intact parasite autophagy and autophagin-2. Results: T. cruzi autophagin-2, in contrast to human autophagin-1, exhibits substantial preference toward the unnatural amino acid cyclohexylalanine in the P2 position. Conclusion: Selective fluorogenic substrates, which are only recognized by T. cruzi autophagin-2, were synthesized. Significance: These selective substrates have a potential for screening of T. cruzi autophagin-2 specific inhibitors. The genome of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi encodes two copies of autophagy-related cysteine proteases, Atg4.1 and Atg4.2. T. cruzi autophagin-2 (TcAtg4.2) carries the majority of proteolytic activity and is responsible for processing Atg8 proteins near the carboxyl terminus, exposing a conserved glycine. This enables progression of autophagy and differentiation of the parasite, which is required for successful colonization of humans. The mechanism of substrate hydrolysis by Atg4 was found to be highly conserved among the species as critical mutations in the TcAtg4.2, including mutation of the conserved Gly-244 residue in the hinge region enabling flexibility of the regulatory loop, and deletion of the regulatory loop, completely abolished processing capacity of the mutants. Using the positional scanning-substrate combinatorial library (PS-SCL) we determined that TcAtg4.2 tolerates a broad spectrum of amino acids in the P4 and P3 positions, similar to the human orthologue autophagin-1 (HsAtg4B). In contrast, both human and trypanosome Atg4 orthologues exhibited exclusive preference for aromatic amino acid residues in the P2 position, and for Gly in the P1 position, which is absolutely conserved in the natural Atg8 substrates. Using an extended P2 substrate library, which also included the unnatural amino acid cyclohexylalanine (Cha) derivative of Phe, we generated highly selective tetrapeptide substrates acetyl-Lys-Lys-Cha-Gly-AFC (Ac-KKChaG-AFC) and acetyl-Lys-Thr-Cha-Gly-AFC (Ac-KTChaG-AFC). Althoughthese substrates were cleaved by cathepsins, making them unsuitable for analysis of complex cellular systems, they were recognized exclusively by TcAtg4.2, but not by HsAtg4B nor by the structurally related human proteases SENP1, SENP2, and UCH-L3.
Wireless intelligent sensor network for autonomous structural health monitoring

Life cycle monitoring of civil infrastructure such as bridges and buildings is critical to the long-term operational cost and safety of aging structures. The widespread use of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems is limited due to unavailability of specialized data acquisition equipment, high cost of generic equipment, and absence of fully automatic decision support systems. The goals of the presented project include: first, design of a Wireless Intelligent Sensor and Actuator Network (WISAN) and creation of an inexpensive set of instrumentation for the tasks of structural health monitoring; second, development of a SHM method, which is suitable for autonomous structural health monitoring. The design of the wireless sensor network is aimed at applications of structural health monitoring, addressing the issues of achieving a low cost per sensor, higher reliability, sources of energy for the network nodes, energy-efficient distribution of the computational load, security and coexistence in the ISM radio bands. The practical applicability of the sensor network is increased through utilization of computational intelligence and support of signal generation capabilities. The automated SHM method is based on the method of modal strain energy, though other SHM methods will be supported as well. The automation tasks include automation of the modal identification through ambient vibrations, classification of the acquired mode shapes, and automatic evaluation of the structural health.
ANISOMETRIC GOLD NANOPARTICLE SELF-ASSEMBLY AT WATER / AIR INTERFACE

We present gold nanorods (AuNRs) self-assembly at liquid/gas interface. Gold nanoparticles of various shapes (spheres, rods, cubes) forms 2D packed arrays at water/air interface during controlled drying from aqueous colloidal solution. The formed AuNR arrays are deposited on optically transparent substrate and identified by white-light transmission optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The two methods are used to correlate the differing rod orientation/assembly to the far-field optical response of formed 2D arrays. AuNRs are synthesized by modification of seeded growth method and used in the form of colloidal solution with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as stabilizing surfactant. We utilize self-assembly of AuNRs in aqueous environment using simple system of AuNR/CTAB/water.
Research Progress and Promise: The Role of Perceptions in Cognitive Adaptation to Disability

If science is to tell us anything about the world, if it is to be of any use in our dealings with the world, it must somewhere contain empirical elements . it is in the empirical component that science is differentiated from fantasy. it is precisely the accumulation of empirical evidence which shapes a welter of opinions into scientific knowledge common to many minds. -Abraham Kaplan (1963, pp. 34-36)
Dynamic epigenetic states of maize centromeres

The centromere is a specialized chromosomal region identified as the major constriction, upon which the kinetochore complex is formed, ensuring accurate chromosome orientation and segregation during cell division. The rapid evolution of centromere DNA sequence and the conserved centromere function are two contradictory aspects of centromere biology. Indeed, the sole presence of genetic sequence is not sufficient for centromere formation. Various dicentric chromosomes with one inactive centromere have been recognized. It has also been found that de novo centromere formation is common on fragments in which centromeric DNA sequences are lost. Epigenetic factors play important roles in centromeric chromatin assembly and maintenance. Non-disjunction of the supernumerary B chromosome centromere is independent of centromere function, but centromere pairing during early prophase of meiosis I requires an active centromere. This review discusses recent studies in maize about genetic and epigenetic elements regulating formation and maintenance of centromere chromatin, as well as centromere behavior in meiosis.
Signal Estimation with Arbitrary Error Metrics in Compressed Sensing

Compressed sensing typically deals with the estimation of a system input from its noise-corrupted linear measurements, where the number of measurements is smaller than the number of input components. The performance of the estimation process is usually quantified by some standard error metric such as squared error or support set error. In this correspondence, we consider a noisy compressed sensing problem with any arbitrary error metric. We propose a simple, fast, and highly general algorithm that estimates the original signal by minimizing the error metric defined by the user. We verify that our algorithm is optimal owing to the decoupling principle, and we describe a general method to compute the fundamental information-theoretic performance limit for any error metric. We provide two example metrics — minimum mean absolute error and minimum mean support error — and give the theoretical performance limits for these two cases. Experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms methods such as relaxed belief propagation (relaxed BP) and compressive sampling matching pursuit (CoSaMP), and reaches the suggested theoretical limits for our two example metrics.
Skeletal muscle density predicts prognosis in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated with targeted therapies

Studies have shown that skeletal muscle and adipose tissue are linked to overall survival (OS) and progression‐free survival (PFS). Because targeted therapies have improved the outcome in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), new prognostic parameters are required. The objective of the current study was to analyze whether body composition parameters play a prognostic role in patients with mRCC.
Depletion of the p43 Mitochondrial T3 Receptor Increases Sertoli Cell Proliferation in Mice

Among T3 receptors, TRα1 is ubiquitous and its deletion or a specific expression of a dominant-negative TRα1 isoform in Sertoli cell leads to an increase in testis weight and sperm production. The identification of a 43-kDa truncated form of the nuclear receptor TRα1 (p43) in the mitochondrial matrix led us to test the hypothesis that this mitochondrial transcription factor could regulate Sertoli cell proliferation. Here we report that p43 depletion in mice increases testis weight and sperm reserve. In addition, we found that p43 deletion increases Sertoli cell proliferation in postnatal testis at 3 days of development. Electron microscopy studies evidence an alteration of mitochondrial morphology observed specifically in Sertoli cells of p43−/− mice. Moreover, gene expression studies indicate that the lack of p43 in testis induced an alteration of the mitochondrial-nuclear cross-talk. In particular, the up-regulation of Cdk4 and c-myc pathway in p43−/− probably explain the extended proliferation recorded in Sertoli cells of these mice. Our finding suggests that T3 limits post-natal Sertoli cell proliferation mainly through its mitochondrial T3 receptor p43.
Bending Stress Induced Performance Change in Plastic Oxide Thin-Film Transistor and Recovery by Annealing at 300 °C

We report the effect of repeated tensile bending on the performance of amorphous indium–gallium–zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs) on 15-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> polyimide substrate. Bending direction is vertical or parallel to the current path in a-IGZO TFT. With increasing bending time, the transfer curve shifts to the negative gate voltage direction. It is noted that the shift is smaller for longer channel length TFT. We performed technology computer aided design simulation for the TFT transfer curves and found that donorlike and acceptorlike states increase, respectively, by <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.5\times 10^{17}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.4\times 10^{17}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> cm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{-3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> after 10k bending. The recovery of the transfer curve is studied by thermal annealing of the stressed TFT as a variation of annealing temperature and it is found that the performance can be completely recovered by thermal annealing at 300 °C for 1 h.
Drawing High-degree Graphs with Small Grid-size Drawing High-degree Graphs with Small Grid-size

In this paper, we present a general scheme to produce interactive and static orthogonal drawings of graphs. As opposed to most known algorithms, we do not restrict ourselves to graph with maximum degree 4, but allow arbitrary degrees. We show here how, with one speciic implementation of the scheme, we can obtain an m+n 2 m+n 2-grid for all simple connected graphs without nodes of degree 1. Furthermore, there is at most one bend per edge, and the number of bends is at most m. Th dimension of node v is at most deg (v) 2. The algorithm works in linear time.
International Conference on Information Systems ( ICIS ) 1-1-2008 Beyond Annoyance : The Latent Benefits of Distracting Website Features

The conventional wisdom in web design literature is that an online shopping website should be free of distracting features; such as animated banners, pop-ups and floating advertisements, as they cause annoyance and disrupt the process of pre-purchase evaluation, leading to poorer purchase decisions. Yet, the recently formulated Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) suggests that the use of these features can lead to better purchase decisions in certain contexts. To resolve this conflict, an experiment was conducted to validate the propositions of the UTT in the context of online shopping. The results from the experiment indicate that: (1) distracting website features lead to better purchase decisions when the decision to be made is complex, (2) distracting website features give rise to annoyance, and (3) the positive effect of better decision quality as a result of using distracting features is able to mitigate the negative effect of annoyance on online consumer satisfaction.
Making Sense, Making Good, or Making Meaning? Cognitive Distortions as Targets of Change in Offender Treatment

Most structured sex-offender programs are based on a cognitive-behavioural model of behaviour change. Within this overarching theoretical paradigm, extensive use of cognitive distortions is seen as a central core symptom among sex offenders. However, the literature on cognitive distortions lacks a clear and consistent definition of the term. It is unclear whether cognitive distortions are consciously employed excuses or unconscious processes serving to protect the offender from feelings of guilt or shame. In this article, the dominant cognitive-behavioural interpretation of cognitive distortions is contrasted with two alternative interpretations. One is based on an attributional perspective and the notion of attributional biases. The other explanation is based on a narrative approach focusing on the action elements of cognitive distortions, that is, as something people do rather than something they have. Clinical implications of these alternative conceptualizations are discussed and illustrated throughout by a case example.
Paternity analysis reveals opposing selection pressures on crown coloration in the blue tit (Parus caeruleus)

In socially monogamous species, extra–pair paternity can increase the variance in reproductive success and thereby the potential for sexual selection on male ornaments. We studied whether male secondary sexual ornaments are selected through within– and/or extra–pair reproductive success in the blue tit (Parus caeruleus). Male blue tits display a bright blue crown plumage, which reflects substantially in the ultraviolet (UV) and previously has been indicated to be an important sexual signal. We show that males with a more UV–shifted crown hue were less cuckolded, which probably resulted from female preference for more ornamented mates. By contrast, however, older males and males with a less UV–shifted hue sired more extra–pair young. This probably did not reflect direct female preference, since cuckolders were not less UV–ornamented than the males they cuckolded. Alternatively, a trade–off between UV ornamentation and other traits that enhance extra–pair success could explain this pattern. Our results might reflect two alternative male mating tactics, where more UV–ornamented males maximize within–pair success and less UV–ornamented males maximize extra–pair success. Since crown colour was selected in opposite directions by within–pair and extra–pair paternity, directional selection through extra–pair matings seemed weak, at least in this population and breeding season. Reduced intensity of sexual selection due to alternative mating tactics constitutes a potential mechanism maintaining additive genetic variance of male ornaments.
Extensive study of HD 25558, a long-period double-lined binary with two SPB components

We carried out an extensive observational study of the Slowly Pulsating B (SPB) star, HD 25558. The ≈2000 spectra obtained at different observatories, the ground-based and MOST satellite light curves revealed that this object is a double-lined spectroscopic binary with an orbital period of about nine years. The observations do not allow the inference of an orbital solution. We determined the physical parameters of the components, and found that both lie within the SPB instability strip. Accordingly, both show line-profile variations due to stellar pulsations. 11 independent frequencies were identified in the data. All the frequencies were attributed to one of the two components based on pixel-by-pixel variability analysis of the line profiles. Spectroscopic and photometric mode identification was also performed for the frequencies of both stars. These results suggest that the inclination and rotation of the two components are rather different. The primary is a slow rotator with ≈6 d period, seen at ≈60° inclination, while the secondary rotates fast with ≈1.2 d period, and is seen at ≈20° inclination. Spectropolarimetric measurements revealed that the secondary component has a magnetic field with at least a few hundred Gauss strength, while no magnetic field can be detected in the primary. © 2014 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.
On Making Light Maps Dynamic

This paper presents a real-time global illumination method for static scenes illuminated by arbitrary, dynamic light sources. The method consists of a preprocessing phase and a real-time rendering phase. The real-time rendering algorithm obtains the indirect illumination caused by the multiple scattering of the light from partial light paths that are precomputed and stored in the preprocessing phase. The starting points of partial light paths are called entry points and are sampled randomly on the surfaces. The end points of partial light paths, called exit points, correspond to texel centers of a texture atlas. During preprocessing the radiance of exit points are determined assuming that the entry point has unit irradiance, and the results are stored in texture maps, called Precomputed Radiance Maps. Precomputed Radiance Maps represent the self-illumination capabilities of the whole scene. Introducing light sources and the camera in the real-time animation phase, the direct illumination of the real light sources can be computed by evaluating local illumination at the entry points. Modulating the Precomputed Radiance Maps by the obtained entry point irradiance values, the indirect illumination due to multiple reflections can be calculated at the exit points. Adding the direct illumination, the global illumination solution can be obtained instantly even when the camera or the light sources move. The role of the proposed method in games and interactive applications is similar to that of light maps. It also renders indirect lighting of static geometry, but unlike light maps, it allows for dynamic lighting and updates indirect shadows and color bleeding effects when light sources move.