Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MFCC Feature Vectors Vector Quantization Codebook C 1 C 2 Ck . . . Concatenation & Feature Extraction Feature Vectors to Strings Voting Experts Entropy

A phonemic representation of speech is necessary for many real world applications, but the algorithms for deriving these representations are generally either language specific, or require heavy amounts of manual preprocessing. We use a developmental approach to the problem to arrive at an unsupervised algorithm for discretizing continuous speech into a sequence of phonemes which is inspired by algorithms used for text segmentation. In this paper we outline the algorithm and demonstrate its use on multi-speaker continuous speech. 1 Problem and Motivation Many real-world problems in Computer Science – such as speaker modeling, speech recognition, and text-to-speech – require a representation of human speech at the phonemic level. However, the abundance of natural speech data means that manually annotating all such existent data would be unfeasible. Rather than training an algorithm on a specific language, we hope to develop a process that is language independent, allowing users to work with underrepresented languages and novel speaker data without requiring large amounts of manual preprocessing. While focusing on a developmental approach to the problem, we propose a solution based in unsupervised learning. Our work centers around the task of taking an algorithm initially developed for use in the domain of text-segmentation and modifying it to discover phoneme boundaries in multi-speaker continuous speech. 2 Background and Related Work In the past, unsupervised phoneme discovery in speech has centered around algorithms focused purely on acoustic features (frequency, pitch, and zero-crossings) as well as signal processing techniques [3, 10]. However, these methods generally require the maximum number of phonemes in a sentence to be passed to the algorithm, limiting the possibilities for unsupervised learning. Our approach draws inspiration from word and text segmentation literature based on a text processing inspired algorithm, Voting Experts (VE), developed by Cohen, Heeringa, and Adams [6]. VE utilizes both frequency and entropy experts which vote on segment boundaries: the frequency expert votes to place segmentation points in order to maximize segment counts, while the entropy expert votes for locations where the next character is difficult to predict, taking advantage of the internal cohesion inherent in language segments. In short, this entropy expert would vote to place a segmentation point anywhere the text had a relatively high entropy. Figure 1 shows how a passage of text is read as input and formed into a trie based on a fixed window. Frequency and entropy are calculated for each node. After the trie is formed, the text is iterated over and votes are made based on these node values. If a potential boundary has a
REFLECTION DETECTION AND REMOVAL FROM IMAGE SEQUENCES

The aim of the Master’s thesis was to study existing methods for detection and removal of specular reflection from image sequences, to find their limitations and to suggest possibilities of their improvements. Particularly, an attention was paid to planar specular (i.e. mirrorlike) surfaces whose appearance can be modeled by linear superposition of reflection and transmission layer. We reviewed the existing motion-based methods and described their common degenerate case in terms of their disability to correctly recover regions with low frequency in the direction of camera motion. A new method designed to eliminate this degenerate case was suggested. Its contribution is a new approach to layer gradients estimation with a special treatment of the gradients forming edges of the problematic regions. The estimated layer gradients, together with estimated layer depth maps, are then used for recovery of layer colors which can be treated as a quadratic programming problem or can be done by a more efficient alternative approach which we introduced. The suggested method was shown to outperform the existing methods, especially in the problematic regions. Klíčová slova spekulární odlesk, detekce, odstranění, oddělení odrazové a přenosové vrstvy
Experimental response modification of a four‐span bridge retrofit with shape memory alloys

A unique shape memory alloy (SMA) restrainer cable is developed and tested to evaluate its effectiveness in limiting the hinge opening in bridges. The SMA cables, connected at the deck–abutment interface, are tested on a four‐span, one‐quarter scale, concrete slab bridge. The bridge is subjected to a suite of ground motion to assess the performance of the SMAs under different magnitudes of loading. The results of the experimental tests show that the SMA cables were effective in reducing the potential for unseating by reducing the as‐built openings by 47 and 32% for low‐level and high‐level loading, respectively. In addition, the hinge displacements were also accompanied by reductions in column drift. A detailed finite element (FEM) model of the test setup is developed and comparisons are made with the experimental tests. The results of the FEM compare favorably with the experimental tests. Using the FEM, a suite of 40 ground motion records are used to compare the expected performance of the bridge with SMA cables. The results of the analysis show that the SMA cables reduce the mean hinge openings by 57 and 69% for the low‐level and high‐level loading, respectively. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
AGILE METHODOLOGY IN CMM FRAMEWORK : AN APPROACH TO SUCCESS FOR SOFTWARE COMPANIES IN CHINA

CMM has been well accepted by the world as the standard for software development process control, quality improvement, and software company capacity evaluation. Aiming at the software outsourcing service market, more and more Chinese software companies are involved in the CMM certifications rush. However, to most of them, CMM is a very challenging goal. As China's software industry is still at a primitive stage, it becomes critical to seek a suitable way to promote the competence of the small-and mid-sized Chinese software companies in worldwide competition. This research-in-progress paper suggests that Chinese software companies adopt agile development methodologies (ADM) while following the CMM standard. Using eXtreme Programming (XP) as the example, the paper shows that the ADM methodology can well fit the CMM framework. A further research plan is proposed for the case study in order to obtain the evidence to support the arguments in the paper.
The When and Where of Reading in the Brain

Skilled readers scan a text without apparent effort and, from successive glimpses, construct meaningful representations. Reading involves far more than simply identifying individual words, yet word recognition remains an indispensable component of written language comprehension and is a prudent point of entry for understanding concurrent brain activity. Within this domain, there is still much uncertainty: When in our brains are individual words recognized? Where exactly does this occur? What factors influence the word recognition process? Recording eye movements on-line is a methodology that has succeeded in uncovering facts about the time course of language processing without imposing artificial constraints on normal reading. The eye movement technique offers several advantages over traditional behavioral techniques. First, no secondary task is required of the reader. Second, it is well documented that processing a word in text is reflected in its fixation time (see Rayner, 1998, for a review). Readers spend less time fixating words that are shorter, occur more frequently, or are more predictable in context. Finally, fixation time as a response measure (about 250 ms) is much shorter than comparable lexical decision or naming times (about 500–800 ms) and less contaminated by response bias. Because eye movements reflect moment-to-moment cognitive processes, the average fixation duration of 250 ms constrains the time for lexical processing. Measured forward from the start of a fixation, it takes about 60 ms for information about the fixated word to travel from the retina to higher cortical areas where lexical processing begins. Measured backward from the
Detecting First-Star Lyα Spheres through Gravitational Telescopes

Lyα spheres, that is, regions around the first stars that are illuminated by Lyα photons and exhibit a 21 cm absorption feature against the cosmic microwave background, are smoking guns at the dawn of the reionization epoch. Although an overwhelming radio foreground makes their detection extremely difficult, we point out that strong gravitational lensing can significantly improve the feasibility of observing these objects. Since Lyα spheres have ~10'' sizes, comparable to the size of galaxy-cluster caustics, the individual images of a strongly lensed Lyα sphere will often merge together and form an irregularly shaped single structure in the 21 cm sky. Using high-resolution N-body ΛCDM simulations, we find that the lensing probability to have a magnification greater than 10 is ~10-5. This results in ≳106 strongly lensed Lyα spheres across the sky, which should be the primary targets for first detections of Lyα spheres. Although the required total radio-array collecting area for their detection is large (~100 km2), a design composed of long fixed cylindrical reflectors can significantly reduce the total cost of such a radio telescope to the level of the Square Kilometre Array and make the detection of these very first objects feasible.
The Adviceptron: Giving Advice to the Perceptron

We propose a novel approach for incorporating prior knowledge into the perceptron. The goal is to update the hypothesis taking into account both label feedback and prior knowledge, in the form of soft polyhedral advice, so as to make increasingly accurate predictions on subsequent rounds. Advice helps speed up and bias learning so that good generalization can be obtained with less data. The updates to the hypothesis use a hybrid loss that takes into account the margins of both the hypothesis and advice on the current point. Analysis of the algorithm via mistake bounds and experimental results demonstrate that advice can speed up learning.
Modeling and rendering of walkthrough environments with panoramic images

An important, potential application of image-based techniques is to create photo-realistic image-based environments for interactive walkthrough. However, existing image-based studies are based on different assumptions with different focuses. There is a lack of a general framework or architecture for evaluation and development of a practical image-based system. In this paper, we propose an architecture to unify different image-based methods. Based on the architecture, we propose an image-based system to support interactive walkthrough of scalable environments. In particular, we introduce the concept of angular range, which is useful for designing a scalable configuration, recovering geometric proxy as well as rendering. We also propose a new method to recover geometry information even from outdoor scenes and a new rendering method to address the problem of abrupt visual changes in a scalable environment.
The Behavioural Paths to Wellbeing: An Exploratory Study to Distinguish Between Hedonic and Eudaimonic Wellbeing From an Activity Perspective

Hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing are two prevailing approaches to wellbeing. However, remarkably little research has distinguished them from an activity perspective; the knowledge of behavioural paths for achieving these two wellbeings is poor. This study first clarified the behavioural contents of the two approaches through a bottom-up method and then analysed the representativeness of activities to indicate to what extent activities contributed to wellness. We found that the paths to hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing overlapped and differed from each other. Furthermore, this study explained why hedonic activity differed from eudaimonic activity by analysing activity characteristics. We found that people reported higher frequency, sensory experience, and affective experience in hedonic activity, whereas they reported higher intellectual experience, behavioural experience, and spiritual experience in eudaimonic activity. Finally, we explored the behavioural pattern of wellbeing pursuit in both an unthreatening situation and a threatening situation. We found that the overlap between the two approaches increased in the threatening situation. Moreover, people in the threatening situation tended to score lower on all characteristics except frequency relative to those in the unthreatening situation. It seemed that the behavioural pattern in the threatening situation was less effective than its equivalent in the unthreatening situation.
Analyzing earthquake clustering features by using stochastic reconstruction

[1] On the basis of the epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model and the thinning procedure, this paper gives the method about how to classify the earthquakes in a given catalogue into different clusters stochastically. The key points of this method are the probabilities of one event being triggered by another previous event and being a background event. Making use of these probabilities, we can reconstruct the functions associated with the characteristics of earthquake clusters to test a number of important hypotheses about the earthquake clustering phenomena. We applied this reconstruction method to the shallow seismic data in Japan and also to a simulated catalogue. The results show the following assertions: (1) The functions for each component in the formulation of the space-time ETAS model are good enough as a first-order approximation for describing earthquake clusters; (2) a background event triggers less offspring in expectation than a triggered event of the same magnitude; (3) the magnitude distribution of the triggered event depends on the magnitude of its direct ancestor; (4) the diffusion of the aftershock sequence is mainly caused by cascades of individual triggering processes, while no evidence shows that each individual triggering process is diffusive; and (5) the scale of the triggering region is still an exponential law, as formulated in the model but not the same one for the expected number of offspring.
Snitkin with Whole-Genome Sequencing pneumoniae Klebsiella Tracking a Hospital Outbreak of Carbapenem-Resistant

causes of nosocomial infections in real time. informing improvements in hospital preventive measures. If applied rapidly, such analysis can even expose the Sophisticated deployment of whole-genome sequencing revealed the weaknesses in this medical who-done-it, contamination of a ventilator that had been cleaned by thorough methods. initial transmission events. Particularly disturbing was the fact that one of the infections could be linked to two different sites on her body, rather than by independently introduced bacteria. There were at least three different cases likely originated with the index patient, from at least K. pneumoniae The authors concluded that all of the this evolutionary information with the physical tracking of the patients pointed to the most likely transmission scenario. relationships among them by comparing the variations at single nucleotides that arise as bacteria grow. Combining whole-genome sequencing on all of the bacteria that were found, determining the most likely evolutionary deadly path: The first patient did not even come into contact with any of the others. So the authors performed A careful survey of the bed locations of each patient did not shed much light on how the bacteria traveled on its finally contained by rigorous control procedures. a week to a total of 18 by the end of 2011. Six people ultimately died as a result of the bacteria. The outbreak was about 1 −− second infected patient was discovered, followed by a series of other patients with infection or colonization bacteria was seen for the month she was in the hospital. Although all seemed well, a few weeks later on August 5th, a Center on 13 June 2011. Enhanced isolation procedures were immediately implemented, and no spread of the was admitted to the NIH Clinical K. pneumoniae A patient known to be infected with a drug-resistant form of that defied standard containment methods, yielding lessons for the future. bacteria was spreading through the hospital. The results outline a complicated path of transmission within the hospital Using a combination of whole-genome sequencing and patient tracking, Snitkin and his colleagues examined how the infected 18 patients, causing the death of 6 of them. Klebsiella pneumoniae which an outbreak of drug-resistant problem. An example of this occurred in 2011 at the Clinical Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), in successes is the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens. And, ironically enough, hospitals are at the center of the plague, syphilis. The unfortunate result of these antibiotic-driven −− Some infections are largely a thing of the past A Detective Story
RED with optimized dynamic threshold deployment on shared buffer

Prior survey of RED algorithm deployment on multiqueue system with shared buffer was unfair and sensitive to congestion level by statically setting the parameters. In this paper, our goal is to deploy the Random Early Detection (RED) algorithm in routers on shared buffer and solve these problems. A novel buffer management scheme that dynamically adjusts the parameters of RED named RED-ODT is proposed. Simulations under uniform traffic load and nonuniform traffic load are given, the results of which ascertain and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme in terms of low packet drop ratio, satisfying buffer utilization and fairness. Simulation also shows that RED-ODT is insensitive to congestion level.
Super-extended noncommutative Landau problem and conformal symmetry

A supersymmetric spin-1/2 particle in the noncommutative plane, subject to an arbitrary magnetic field, is considered, with particular attention paid to the homogeneous case. The system has three different phases, depending on the magnetic field. Due to supersymmetry, the boundary critical phase which separates the sub- and super-critical cases can be viewed as a reduction to the zero-energy eigensubspace. In the sub-critical phase the system is described by the superextension of exotic Newton-Hooke symmetry, combined with the conformal so(2,1) ~ su(1,1) symmetry; the latter is changed into so(3) ~ su(2) in the super-critical phase. In the critical phase the spin degrees of freedom are frozen and supersymmetry disappears.
A fast embedded selection approach for color texture classification using degraded LBP

We propose a fast embedded selection approach for color texture classification using Local Binary Pattern (LBP). This texture descriptor transforms an image by thresholding the neighborhood of each pixel and coding the result as a binary number. The selection approach presented in this paper is based on a degraded definition of the color LBPs. To compute these degraded LBPs, we take care of choosing a relevant reduced neighborhood - or a combination of reduced neighborhoods - with respect to the analysed textures. This leads to consider histograms with a lower dimension and so to reduce the computation times. We thus propose to determine the dimension of the selected feature subspace with these degraded color LBPs and to use this dimension for the classification with the classic LBPs. Experimental results carried out with benchmark databases in different color spaces show that this approach allows to obtain such good classification results than when the basic definition of LBP is used, while significantly reducing the learning time.
Evaluation of saturation and cross-magnetization effects in interior permanent magnet synchronous motor

The paper presents the evaluation of saturation and cross-magnetization effects in interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) over the entire range of direct and quadrature axis excitation. The conventional two-axis machine model is modified in order to include the influence of saturation and cross-coupling effects on the variation of self and cross-coupling inductances in the direct and the quadrature axis. The two-axis machine model parameters are evaluated by experiments performed on a IPMSM using a controlled voltage source inverter and are compared with parameters values evaluated by the finite element method. The evaluation of two-axis machine model parameters reveals significant saturation and cross-magnetization effects in both axes, especially in the flux-weakening regime.
Matching, Regression Discontinuity, Difference in Differences, and Beyond

This book reviews the three most popular methods (and their extensions) in applied economics and other social sciences: matching, regression discontinuity, and difference in differences. The book introduces the underlying econometric/statistical ideas, shows what is identified and how the identified parameters are estimated, and then illustrates how they are applied with real empirical examples. The book emphasizes how to implement the three methods with data: many data and programs are provided in the online appendix. All readers---theoretical econometricians/statisticians, applied economists/social-scientists and researchers/students---will find something useful in the book from different perspectives.
Fast and effective stripification of polygonal surface models

A fundamental algorithmic problem in computer graphics is t hat of computing a succinct encoding of a triangulation of a polygo nal surface model in order to be able to transmit and render it efficie ntly. The goal is to take a given polygonal surface model, whose fac ts are given by (possibly multiply-connected) polygons, tria ngulate its facets, and then decompose the triangulation into a small nu mber of “tristrips,” each of which has its connectivity stored im plicitly in the ordering of the data points. We develop methods that ar e effective in solving the stripification problem, both in the ory (provably good encodings) and in practice. Our methods are based o n carefully constructed search trees in the dual graph, follo wed by algorithms to decompose dual trees into tristrips. One decomp osition algorithm is provably optimal (based on dynamic programmin g), allowing us a sound basis of comparison among our other (heur istic) algorithms. We demonstrate the speed and effectivenes s of our algorithms through a battery of experiments. In comparison with the recently released STRIPE system for stripification, we find that our stripifier,FTSG, produces comparable or better quality encodings, while requiring significantly less computing time on a large variety of datasets. Further, FTSG is carefully engineered and implemented to be robust, even in the face of highly degenerate and corrupted real-world data. CR Categories: I.3. 3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—displaying algorithms; I.3. 5 [Computer Graph ics]: Computational Geometry and Object Modeling—Geometric alg orithm, languages, and systems.