Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving pronunciation modeling for non-native speech recognition

In this paper, three different approaches to pronunciation modeling are investigated. Two existing pronunciation modeling approaches, namely the pronunciation dictionary and n-best rescoring approach are modified to work with little amount of non-native speech. We also propose a speaker clustering approach, which capable of grouping the speakers based on their pronunciation habits. Given some speech, the approach can also be used for pronunciation adaptation. This approach is called latent pronunciation analysis. The results show that conventional pronunciation dictionary perform slightly better than n-best list rescoring, while the latent pronunciation analysis has shown to be beneficial for speaker clustering, and it can produce nearly the same improvement as the pronunciation dictionary approach, without the need to know the origin of the speaker.
Omnidirectional Video Camera

Conventional video cameras have limited elds of view that make them restrictive in a variety of vision applications. There are several ways to enhance the eld of view of an imaging system. However, the entire imaging system must have a single eeective viewpoint to enable the generation of pure perspective images from a sensed image. A new camera with a hemispherical eld of view is presented. Two such cameras can be placed back-to-back without violating the single viewpoint constraint, to arrive at a truly omnidirec-tional sensor. Results are presented on the software generation of pure perspective images from an omnidirectional image, given any user-selected viewing direction and magniication. The paper concludes with a discussion on the spatial resolution of the proposed camera.
A logic meta-programming foundation for example-driven pattern detection in object-oriented programs

This paper summarizes the doctoral dissertation in which we introduced an example-driven approach to pattern detection. This approach enables specifying pattern characteristics in a familiar language: through a code excerpt that corresponds to their prototypical implementation. Such excerpts are matched against the program under investigation according to various matching strategies that vary in leniency. Each match is quantified by the extent to which it exhibits the exemplified characteristics. The smaller this extent, the more likely the match is a false positive—thus establishing a ranking which facilitates assessing a large amount of matches. Unique to the matching process is that it incorporates whole-program analyses in its comparison of individual program elements. This way, we are able to recall implicit implementation variants (i.e., those implied by the semantics of the programming language) of a pattern of which only the prototypical implementation has been exemplified.
Analysis of interrelationships between Suppliers configuration and performance within the supply network: A simulation approach

The objective of this work is to examine the strategic types of organisations suppliers. Moreover, it is to investigate the interrelationship between various ratios of suppliers' strategic types and the effect on the performance of the hub company in a supply network. Also, to suggest the configuration ratio that produces enhanced performance. The supply network considered in this study is the Multiple Driven supply network of Dai and Zhang's [4] supply network. Three indicating variables were used for grouping the suppliers' strategic types based on Miles and Snow typologies [11]; Defender, Prospector and Analyser. This is a case study of 30 printing organisations suppliers of a Multiple Driven Supply Network with three different Miles and Snow typologies [11]. The choice of measuring of the organisation's performance is the quantity produced and price. Questionnaires, Semi- structured interviews and the Discrete Simulation Software were adopted for analysing the hypotheses and to suggest the improvement of the organisations performance. The first experimental work is the ‘AS IS’ scenario which is the real situation of the hub organisation and its suppliers. This is followed by the ‘WHAT IF’ scenario which are; All Defenders, All Analyser, All Prospectors, Ratio (1∶1∶1) and (3∶2∶1) of (Analyser: Defender: Prospectors). Simulation provides the performances of the scenarios both in terms of profit and the quantity produced. The suppliers typological ratio that gives enhanced performance in terms of quantity produced is (3∶2∶1) with respect to (Analyser: Defender: Prospector). However, the profit is the greatest when the suppliers are all Analysers.
Export Performance and the Role of Foreign Direct Investment

This paper explores the relationship between the location of production and the trade performance of eleven OECD countries since 1971. The paper augments a standard export demand model, which includes relative prices, market size, and measures of relative innovation, with indicators of both inward and outward investment levels. Common long-run parameters are accepted for market size, relative prices, and relative patenting, but not for the direct investment effects. The sign and magnitude of the direct investment effects vary by country. Outward investment has a generally negative impact on trade shares, while inward investment has a generally positive one. Copyright 1998 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd and The Victoria University of Manchester
Attracting and Retaining Boys in Ballet

ABSTRACT Dance provides both psychological and physical benefits, and yet many boys miss out due to societal perceptions surrounding the feminization of dance. These perceptions can lead to the bullying of boys who dance. Because dance teachers are in a unique position to engage boys in dance, it is important to investigate their perceptions. This article reports the experiences of ten female dance teachers from the United Kingdom vis-à-vis attracting and retaining boys in dance, especially ballet. Here we focus on three salient themes that emerged from the data: dancing boys in social context, parental and teacher support, and improving the dancing boy’s milieu. The dance teachers identified a number of strategies for engaging and retaining boys in ballet, such as privileging boys within the dance studio and improving opportunities to dance in schools. This article posits potential strategies to engage boys in ballet that could potentially empower all genders within the dance world.
Recoverable prevalence in growing scale-free networks and the effective immunization

We study the persistent recoverable prevalence and the extinction of computer viruses via e-mails on a growing scale-free network with new users, which structure is estimated form real data. The typical phenomenon is simulated in a realistic model with the probabilistic execution and detection of viruses. Moreover, the conditions of extinction by random and targeted immunizations for hubs are derived through bifurcation analysis for simpler models by using a mean-field approximation without the connectivity correlations. We can qualitatively understand the mechanisms of the spread in linearly growing scale-free networks.
Simulated annealing based solution for limited spectrum availability in composite wireless network

Requirement of multiple services from the customers has compelled the wireless service providers (WSPs) to maintain multiple radio access networks (RANs) of different radio access technologies (RATs). Further, dynamic spectrum allocation (DSA) approach offers a great opportunity to the WSPs to utilize their available spectrum in more efficient manner. As the growth of demand for wireless services is expected to continue unabated, the WSPs may also face a scenario in which, spectrum demands from the RANs is more than the availability of spectrum with the WSP. In this work, we have addressed this limited spectrum availability scenario in the composite wireless network (CWN) considering realistic constraints such as different propagation characteristics of channels at different spectrum region and discrete channelizations of the RANs. The problem has been posed as a bankruptcy game and Shapley value solution of the game has been computed. For maintaining the fairness of spectrum allocation, maximizing equality of distribution (MED) is considered to be the objective of the WSPs. Subsequently, we have proposed simulated annealing (SA) based spectrum allocation solution that would maximize the objective. Our simulation result shows that the SA based solution outperforms existing solutions such as Shapley value and max-min fairness by wide margin as far as objective MED in concerned.
State evaluation of Power-Shift Steering Transmission based on hypersphere support vector machine

The hypersphere support vector machine is an efficient method to evaluate the state of mechanism. The state of Power-Shift Steering Transmission (PSST) is studied using hypersphere support vector machine. The theory of hypersphere support vector machine is researched and an evaluation model is developed. The generalization of the model is analyzed. The spectrometric oil analysis data are processed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method and the selection of parameters is made. The influence of abnormal for performance of hypersphere support vector machine is analyzed. On the basis of training samples, the state of test samples is evaluated. It has been proved that hypersphere support vector machine is suitable for evaluating the state of PSST. Moreover, the correct rate of model can be improved greatly if abnormal samples are taken into account.
Comprehensive numerical simulations of sediment transport and flushing of a Peruvian reservoir

Numerical modeling of sediment transport in reservoirs, especially for sudden events such as flushing, is still a challenging research topic. In the present study, sediment transport and sediment flushing are simulated for a Peruvian reservoir. Situated in the Peruvian Andes, the watershed is affected by high erosion rates and the river carries high amounts of suspended sediment whose estimated annual volume is about 5 Million m3. This study aims to investigate the reservoir sedimentation using different numerical models. A one-dimensional (1D) sediment transport model, a horizontal two-dimensional (2D) hydraulic model and a vertical 2D model are used for this purpose. Annual sedimentation, full drawdown flushing, and sediment concentration in power intakes are particularly investigated.
Biological soil crusts affect small-scale spatial patterns of inorganic N in a semiarid Mediterranean grassland

The influence of biological soil crusts (BSCs) on the small-scale spatial distribution of inorganic nitrogen (N) in drylands is largely unknown, despite their known impact and importance on the N cycle in these environments. We evaluated how perennial plants and BSCs affected small-scale spatial patterns of soil inorganic N (ammonium and nitrate) availability in a semiarid grassland from Spain. The data were analyzed by using geostatistical methods. The range of semivariograms for ammonium and nitrate, and the coefficient of variation of nitrate, were lower in BSC-dominated microsites than in plant-dominated microsites. Our results suggest that BSCs modulate the small-scale spatial pattern of inorganic N, producing more homogeneous conditions for spatial distribution of inorganic N forms than microsites provided by plants. These results may have important repercussions for the foraging strategies and ability of plant roots to uptake N. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Sharing a Medium Between Concurrent Protocols Without Overhead Using the Capture Effect

Most wireless systems suffer from the lack of a dedicated control plane. High-priority control messages have to contend for medium access the same as any other message. Existing methods providing QoS guarantees in this setting rely upon opportunistic sending or on scheduling mechanisms, and as a result incur undesirable tradeoffs in either latency or impact on regular non-priority traffic. We present a technique to simultaneously execute multiple protocols of different priorities, without compromising bandwidth or latency of regular traffic not affected by priority traffic. Using power control and moderately tight synchronization we exploit the capture effect to give each protocol almost complete access to the network's resources as long as no protocol of higher priority wishes to use them. We examine which impact the properties of the network graph and the capabilities of the wireless hardware have on the effectiveness of our technique. We suggest an example scenario of a wireless sensor network of fire detectors, with a low-priority protocol collecting statistical data and confirming aliveness, while a high-priority protocol wishes to report fire alarms to a base station as quickly as possible. For this example application we deploy an implementation based on Contiki on a wireless testbed of TelosB motes and achieve near optimal latency and bandwidth for priority traffic while not disturbing low-priority traffic where it is separated sufficiently in space or time.
Probabilistic graphical models for multi-source fusion from text sources

In this paper we present probabilistic graph fusion algorithms to support information fusion and reasoning over multi-source text media. Our methods resolve misinformation by combining knowledge similarity analysis and conflict identification with source characterization. For experimental purposes, we used the dataset of the articles about current military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. We show that automated knowledge fusion and conflict detection is feasible and high accuracy of detection can be obtained. However, to correctly classify mismatched knowledge fragments as misinformation versus additionally reported facts, the knowledge reliability and credibility must be assessed. Since the true knowledge must be reported by many reliable sources, we compute knowledge frequency and source reliability by incorporating knowledge provenance and analyzing historical consistency between the knowledge reported by the sources in our dataset.
Sensory substitution of force and torque using 6-DoF tangential and normal skin deformation feedback

When a person interacts with an environment using a tool, he/she receives tactile information in the form of fingerpad skin deformation. Different interaction forces and torques on the tool cause different skin deformation patterns on the fingerpads. We designed a 6-degree-of-freedom tactile device that creates similar skin deformation patterns on the fingerpads. The device communicates force and torque information by translating and rotating skin deformation tactors relative to the fingerpads. An experiment was conducted to determine participants' ability to use skin deformation tactile cues to perform a peg-in-hole insertion task. Results show that participants can use the tactile cues to reduce interaction force and torque, and they use the tactile force cues to reduce interaction force more than they use the tactile torque cues to reduce interaction torque. Rendering force and torque cues simultaneously causes device saturation and degrades user performance. These results suggest that additional training may help participants use the skin deformation torque cues, and motivate a tactile device design that decouples force and torque skin deformation rendering to minimize device saturation. Fingerpad skin deformation is a promising form of tactile feedback to convey force and torque information in teleoperation systems such as robot-assisted surgery, where force feedback may be undesirable due to stability and safety concerns.
Association between Tumor Vasculogenic Mimicry and the Poor Prognosis of Gastric Cancer in China: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background. Vasculogenic mimicry can promote tumor growth and metastasis. This article is aimed at conducting a systematic meta-analysis to explore the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of vasculogenic mimicry and gastric cancer. Methods. We searched Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and the VIP and Wanfang Database for eligible studies. We manually searched for printed journals and relevant textbooks. Subgroups analyses were performed based on the region, manuscript quality, methods of vasculogenic mimicry identification, pathology, and number of patients. Results. Nine studies with 997 patients were included in this meta-analysis. A significant association was observed between vasculogenic mimicry-positive patients and those with gastric cancer with poor overall survival (hazard ratio = 2.24, 95% confidence interval: 1.45–3.47), poor pathological grading, high tumor node metastasis clinical stage, lymph node metastasis, deep tumor invasion, and distant metastasis. Conclusions. Vasculogenic mimicry is associated with a poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer in China. Clinical studies with large samples are needed worldwide and standardized protocols should be adopted in the future to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between gastric cancer and vasculogenic mimicry.
Automatic Identification of Non-compositional Phrases

Non-compositional expressions present a special challenge to NLP applications. We present a method for automatic identification of non-compositional expressions using their statistical properties in a text corpus. Our method is based on the hypothesis that when a phrase is non-composition, its mutual information differs significantly from the mutual informations of phrases obtained by substituting one of the word in the phrase with a similar word.
Least Squares Methods for Equidistant Tree Reconstruction

UPGMA is a heuristic method identifying the least squares equidistant phylogenetic tree given empirical distance data among $n$ taxa. We study this classic algorithm using the geometry of the space of all equidistant trees with $n$ leaves, also known as the Bergman complex of the graphical matroid for the complete graph $K_n$. We show that UPGMA performs an orthogonal projection of the data onto a maximal cell of the Bergman complex. We also show that the equidistant tree with the least (Euclidean) distance from the data is obtained from such an orthogonal projection, but not necessarily given by UPGMA. Using this geometric information we give an extension of the UPGMA algorithm. We also present a branch and bound method for finding the best equidistant tree. Finally, we prove that there are distance data among $n$ taxa which project to at least $(n-1)! $ equidistant trees.
Understanding Cultural Differences The Values in a Cross-Cultural Context

Increasing migration, international business, foreign direct investments, expatriateswork and any international cooperation require understanding of differences between cultures. For example business negotiations, expatriate professionals, management of foreign personnel, and running cross-cultural teams presuppose a good knowledge of cultural differences. However, research on expatriates indicates that failed expatriate assignments are still costly and numerous. Along with globalization, values from a cross-cultural perspective have awakened great interest in recent years. Value types and work goals of people differ in different cultures. Knowing the relationship between values and cultures can assist the business person or traveler in better understanding the intercultural differences within regions. Values in terms of value types and work goals were compared in two different cultures. The sample consisted of 390 Finnish people and 98 Pakistani people. It was found that there are culture- based stresses in the values and work goals that must be taken into consideration in international business. The study revealed that there is a certain amount of conformity among members of a society concerning their values.
Large‐Area Carbon Nanosheets Doped with Phosphorus: A High‐Performance Anode Material for Sodium‐Ion Batteries

Large‐area phosphorus‐doped carbon nanosheets (P‐CNSs) are first obtained from carbon dots (CDs) through self‐assembly driving from thermal treatment with Na catalysis. This is the first time to realize the conversion from 0D CDs to 2D nanosheets doped with phosphorus. The sodium storage behavior of phosphorus‐doped carbon material is also investigated for the first time. As anode material for sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs), P‐CNSs exhibit superb performances for electrochemical storage of sodium. When cycled at 0.1 A g−1, the P‐CNSs electrode delivers a high reversible capacity of 328 mAh g−1, even at a high current density of 20 A g−1, a considerable capacity of 108 mAh g−1 can still be maintained. Besides, this material also shows excellent cycling stability, at a current density of 5 A g−1, the reversible capacity can still reach 149 mAh g−1 after 5000 cycles. This work will provide significant value for the development of both carbon materials and SIBs anode materials.
Teachers’ Ratings of Effective Principal Leadership: A Comparison of Magnet and Nonmagnet Elementary Schools

This study explores teachers’ ratings of principal leadership in magnet and nonmagnet elementary schools. The article provides potential explanations for nonmagnet teachers’ ratings of their principals as more effective leaders than their magnet school counterparts. First, more permeable boundaries characteristic of magnet schools may compel magnet principals to allocate additional time to external management. Second, the enrollments and staff sizes in magnet schools are larger; therefore, magnet principals have less time for each individual. Third, nonmagnet schools serve more low SES children and have fewer resources to do so. Confronting these challenges may help explain why nonmagnet teachers rate their principals as more effective. Finally, magnet teachers report greater autonomy and expertise, which may make principal leadership in specific domains extraneous.
Preparative Isolation of Three Anthraquinones from Rumex japonicus by High-Speed Counter-Current Chromatography

Three anthraquinones—emodin, chrysophanol, and physcion—were successfully purified from the dichloromethane extract of the Chinese medicinal herb Rumex japonicus by high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC). The extract was separated with n-hexane–ethanol–water (18:22:3, v/v/v) as the two-phase solvent system and yielded 3.4 mg of emodin, 24.1 mg of chrysophanol, and 2.0 mg of physcion from 500 mg of sample with purities of 99.2 %, 98.8% and 98.2%, respectively. The HSCCC fractions were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the chemical structures of the three anthraquinones were confirmed by 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR analysis. This is the first time these anthraquinones have been obtained from R. japonicus by HSCCC.
Present status of insulin therapy for type 2 diabetes treated by general practitioners and diabetes specialists in Japan: Third report of a cross‐sectional survey of 15,652 patients

Aims/Introduction: Insulin therapy is often required to achieve good glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, some providers, particularly general practitioners (GPs), are reluctant to prescribe insulin to their patients. The aim of the present study was to clarify any differences in, as well as any problems associated with, insulin therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes being treated by either a GP or a diabetes specialist in Japan.