Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coarticulation and prosodic hierarchy i

This paper attempts to discuss the relationship between segmental coarticulation and prosodic structure in Mandarin Chinese. The discussion is mainly based on the EPG measurements to a set of phrases and short sentences produced in moderate speed. Main parameters measured in this study include (1) inter-gesture timing: temporal intervals overlapped between different articulatory gestures of V1#C2 at prosodic boundaries with different strength. (2) articulatory integrality: linguo-palatal contact state of different articulatory gestures for the related segments. The preliminary EPG evidences obtained from this study show that, all the pre-boundary vowels (V1) at PW level strongly coarticulate with post-boundary consonants (C2); while there are less cross-boundary coarticulation between V1 and C2 at PP and IP levels; especially in IP level, the pre-boundary vowels are almost not interfered from the post-boundary consonants. These evidences suggest a close link between segmental articulation and prosodic control in speech production. The results of data analysis show that there exist a negative correlativity between the extent of coarticulation and the height of prosodic hierarchy, it offers an account of that the higher the prosodic level, the less the cross-boundary segmental overlapping, and the more sufficient segmental articulation. These evidences indicate that segmental coarticulation and suprsegmental (prosodic) organization is originally indivisible in speech production. Therefore, in modeling of articulatory planning of speech production, one must take account of the close link between prosodic structure and segmental phonetic manifestation.
Living with dementia : the burden of guilt

Previous research has identified guilt as a significant emotion for both people with dementia and their caregivers. As guilt has been associated with psychopathology and depression, it is important to explore the nature, prevalence and clinical implications of this self-conscious emotion within the context of the dementia caregiving dyad. Chapter 1 presents a critical review of the quantitative and qualitative literature exploring feelings of guilt and caregiver burden in informal caregivers of people with dementia. The paper particularly focuses on evidence regarding the relationship of guilt to the construct of caregiver burden, the conceptualisation and measurement of guilt and burden in dementia caregivers and the factors associated with caregiver guilt and burden. Methodological limitations are discussed in relation to the clarity of the results. Clinical implications and future research suggestions are identified. Chapter 2 presents a mixed methods research paper on the development and validation of a measure of guilt for people with dementia. The results reveal strong item-total correlation in the new scale. Good reliability and convergent validity of the measure are also demonstrated. Study limitations, clinical implications and future directions are discussed. Chapter 3 offers a reflective account of my experience of the research process as well as my reflective learning, personal and professional development during this process and clinical training my generally
Strategic Mechanisms, Functional Modeling and Experimental Design in Neurolaw

This paper has four goals. The first is to provide an overview of the emerging sub-discipline of “Neurolaw. ” Incorporating the insights of neuroscience into legal analysis and policy-setting is a rapidly expanding enterprise. The second goal is to focus on game theory and mechanism design, which provide useful analytic starting points for applying cognitive neuroscience in a social context. This leads to the third goal. This paper suggests that the formal structures of the mechanisms of sociality may be represented in the structures of the cognitive processes which implement them. I do not mean to suggest that there is a simple and direct homology between such mechanisms and any particular physical structures within the brain. It is widely recognized, however, that the brain is a computational device, and the brain processes which carry out a particular type of computation will necessarily reflect the requirements of the computation being made. Finally, the paper suggests an application of this mechanism-based approach to a particular instance: understanding the nature of human moral commitment.
Scene augmentation via the fusion of industrial drawings and uncalibrated images with a view to marker-less calibration

The application presented augments uncalibrated images of factories with industrial drawings. Industrial drawings are among the most important documents used during the lifetime of industrial environments. They are the only common documents used during design, installation, monitoring and control, maintenance, update and finally dismantling of industrial units. Leading traditional industries towards the full use of virtual and augmented reality technology is impossible unless industrial drawings are integrated into our systems. We provide the missing link between industrial drawings and digital images of industrial sites. On one hand, this could enable us to calibrate cameras and build a 3D model of the scene without using any calibration markers. On the other hand it brings industrial drawings, floor map, images and 3D models into one unified framework. This provides a solid foundation for building efficient enhanced virtual industrial environments. The augmented scene is obtained by perspective warping of an industrial drawing of the factory onto its floor, wherever the floor is visible. The visibility of the floor is determined using probabilistic reasoning over a set of clues including (1) floor color/intensity (2) image warping and differencing between an uncalibrated stereoscopic image pair using the ground plane homography. Experimental results illustrate the approach.
Multiple-source localization in binary sensor networks

The binary sensor generates one bit of information of target: whether it detects the target or not. So it is a low-power and bandwidth-efficient solution for wireless sensor networks. Most of the multiple-source localization methods are focus on the signal strength. This paper investigates multiple-source localization using data from binary sensors. We firstly introduce a multiple sources detection model based on Neyman-Pearson criterion for binary sensor. Then an iterative fuzzy C-means (IFCM) algorithm is proposed to solve the multiple sources localization problem. We compare proposed algorithm with fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm in three deployment strategies. Simulation results show that our proposed IFCM algorithm outperforms the FCM algorithm.
A hierarchical SVM based multiclass classification by using similarity clustering

This paper presents a new strategy to build multi tree hierarchical structure SVM which can get a more efficient and accuracy classification model for multiclass problems. Base on the theory of Binary Tree SVM (BTS), we proposed an improvement algorithm which extend binary tree structure to a multi tree structure, In the multi tree hierarchical structure, similarity clustering method was proposed to cluster classes to groups in each non-leaf node. In order to get a multi node division, one-against-all (OAA) was applied to train those groups rather than classes. The proposed method can avoid data imbalanced problem occurred in OAA, also the classification area of classifier in the upper layer is larger than classifier in lower layer. Compared with other several well-known methods, experiments on many data sets demonstrate that our method can reduce the number of classifiers in the testing phase and get a higher accuracy.
Desynchronization and rebound of beta oscillations during conscious and unconscious local neuronal processing in the macaque lateral prefrontal cortex

Accumulating evidence indicates that control mechanisms are not tightly bound to conscious perception since both conscious and unconscious information can trigger control processes, probably through the activation of higher-order association areas like the prefrontal cortex. Studying the modulation of control-related prefrontal signals in a microscopic, neuronal level during conscious and unconscious neuronal processing, and under control-free conditions could provide an elementary understanding of these interactions. Here we performed extracellular electrophysiological recordings in the macaque lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) during monocular physical alternation (PA) and binocular flash suppression (BFS) and studied the local scale relationship between beta (15–30 Hz) oscillations, a rhythmic signal believed to reflect the current sensory, motor, or cognitive state (status-quo), and conscious or unconscious neuronal processing. First, we show that beta oscillations are observed in the LPFC during resting state. Both PA and BFS had a strong impact on the power of this spontaneous rhythm with the modulation pattern of beta power being identical across these two conditions. Specifically, both perceptual dominance and suppression of local neuronal populations in BFS were accompanied by a transient beta desynchronization followed by beta activity rebound, a pattern also observed when perception occurred without any underlying visual competition in PA. These results indicate that under control-free conditions, at least one rhythmic signal known to reflect control processes in the LPFC (i.e., beta oscillations) is not obstructed by local neuronal, and accordingly perceptual, suppression, thus being independent from temporally co-existing conscious and unconscious local neuronal representations. Future studies could reveal the additive effects of motor or cognitive control demands on prefrontal beta oscillations during conscious and unconscious processing.
Radiation hardness comparison of MOS capacitors using tungsten polycide and cobalt polycideas gate electrode materials

In this letter, we investigate the radiation hardness of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors with tungsten polycide (WSi/sub x/) and those with cobalt polycide (CoSi/sub 2/) as gate electrode materials. CoSi/sub 2/ has been considered as a gate/contact material for MOS devices in 0.18 /spl mu/m integrated circuit fabrication due to its low resistivity and good thermal stability. However, we found that MOS capacitors with a CoSi/sub 2/ gate electrode exhibited an increase in radiation-induced interface trap density shift of more than one order of magnitude, and more than eighteen times larger in radiation-induced flatband voltage shifts compared with those with the WSi/sub x/ gate electrode, after 1 Mrad Co/sup 60/ /spl gamma/-ray irradiation under no applied bias.
Specific Induction of Tumor Neovasculature Death by Modified Murine PPE-1 Promoter Armed with HSV-TK

Background: One strategy to increase tissue specificity of gene therapy is to use promoters or enhancers. Objectives: (1) To enhance the selectivity of a murine preproendothelin-1 (PPE-1) promoter in tumor angiogenesis by using a positive endothelial transcription-binding element. (2) To test the specificity and efficiency of the modified PPE-1 promoter [PPE-1(3X)] in vitro and in vivo by using reporter genes, and the therapeutic gene herpes simplex virus-thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) in a mouse model of Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC). Results: The modified PPE-1 promoter specifically induced expression in the tumor angiogenic vascular bed with a 35-fold higher expression compared to the normal vasculare bed of the lung. Thus, when the HSV-TK gene controlled by the modified PPE-1 promoter was used systemically, it induced tumor-specific necrosis, apoptosis and mononuclear infiltrates, leading to massive destruction of the neovasculature of the pulmonary metastasis, which suppressed metastasis development. Conclusions: These results show that an adenoviral vector armed with HSV-TK controlled by the endothelial-selective murine PPE-1(3X) promoter is efficient and safe to target tumor neovasculature.
Hyperphosphorylation of the C-terminal Repeat Domain of RNA Polymerase II Facilitates Dissociation of Its Complex with Mediator*

The Mediator complex associates with RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) at least partly via the RNAPII C-terminal repeat domain (CTD). This association greatly stimulates the CTD kinase activity of general transcription factor TFIIH, and subsequent CTD phosphorylation is involved in triggering promoter clearance. Here, highly purified proteins and a protein dissociation assay were used to investigate whether the RNAPII·Mediator complex (holo-RNAPII) can be disrupted by CTD phosphorylation, thereby severing one of the bonds that stabilize promoter-associated initiation complexes. We report that CTD phosphorylation by the serine 5-specific TFIIH complex, or its kinase module TFIIK, is indeed sufficient to dissociate holo-RNAPII. Surprisingly, phosphorylation by the CTD serine 2-specific kinase CTDK1 also results in dissociation. Moreover, the Mediator-induced stimulation of CTD phosphorylation previously reported for TFIIH is also observed with CTDK1 kinase. An unrelated CTD-binding protein, Rsp5, is capable of stimulating this CTD kinase activity as well. These data shed new light on mechanisms that drive the RNAPII transcription cycle and suggest a mechanism for the enhancement of CTD kinase activity by the Mediator complex.
Next Generation Data Analytics at IBM Research

IBM Research has a rich history of innovation in information management with several revolutionary breakthroughs, including the invention of relational databases, advanced text analytics demonstrated by Watson, and the first data mining algorithms to name a few. IBM Research has been committed to contributing to the community via seminal papers, exemplified by several 10-year awards received by IBM researchers. This short abstract is intended as a quick tour of some of the current information management projects, and not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means. There has been many disruptive technological developments over the last decade. The emergence of cloud computing, and several large scale data processing platforms, advances in on-line social media, the explosion of data volumes, and the advances in hardware have all forced us to rethink the information management architectures and platforms. Today, enterprises are dealing with myriad of data modalities (unstructured, semi-structured, and structured) and very complex and diverse analytics on ever-expanding data volumes to drive business decisions. At IBM Research we are reinventing classical data management solutions to this high speed and volume demand (Section 2), building complex analytical platforms for end-to-end analysis of data (Section 3), building technologies for supporting large scale analytics (Section 4) and graph data (Section 5), as well as solutions that exploit new hardware (Section 6).
History and Economics

In a well-known paper published some years ago Donald McCloskey (1976) addressed his fellow economists on the importance of history to their discipline. He argued that greater emphasis on economic history would make for better economics and for better economists. It cannot be said that McCloskey’s arguments were taken to heart. The tendency for economists to expend their effort on (and award their honors for) the refinement of mathematical models and statistical techniques has continued unabated and perhaps has increased. This has led many scholars in related disciplines, social science historians in particular, to believe that economists are uninterested in history and unreceptive to arguments based on historical evidence.
Molecular Characterization of the Glycerol-Oxidative Pathway of Clostridium butyricum VPI 1718

ABSTRACT The glycerol oxidative pathway of Clostridium butyricum VPI 1718 plays an important role in glycerol dissimilation. We isolated, sequenced, and characterized the region coding for the glycerol oxidation pathway. Five open reading frames (ORFs) were identified: dhaR, encoding a putative transcriptional regulator; dhaD (1,142 bp), encoding a glycerol dehydrogenase; and dhaK (995 bp), dhaL (629 bp), and dhaM (386 bp), encoding a phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP)-dependent dihydroxyacetone (DHA) kinase enzyme complex. Northern blot analysis demonstrated that the last four genes are transcribed as a 3.2-kb polycistronic operon only in glycerol-metabolizing cultures, indicating that the expression of this operon is regulated at the transcriptional level. The transcriptional start site of the operon was determined by primer extension, and the promoter region was deduced. The glycerol dehydrogenase activity of DhaD and the PEP-dependent DHA kinase activity of DhaKLM were demonstrated by heterologous expression in different Escherichia coli mutants. Based on our complementation experiments, we proposed that the HPr phosphoryl carrier protein and His9 residue of the DhaM subunit are involved in the phosphoryl transfer to dihydroxyacetone-phosphate. DhaR, a potential regulator of this operon, was found to contain conserved transmitter and receiver domains that are characteristic of two-component systems present in the AraC family. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first molecular characterization of a glycerol oxidation pathway in a Gram-positive bacterium.
Anterograde Transport of Herpes Simplex Virus Capsids in Neurons by both Separate and Married Mechanisms

ABSTRACT Anterograde transport of herpes simplex virus (HSV) from neuronal cell bodies into, and down, axons is a fundamentally important process for spread to other hosts. Different techniques for imaging HSV in axons have produced two models for how virus particles are transported in axons. In the Separate model, viral nucleocapsids devoid of the viral envelope and membrane glycoproteins are transported in axons. In the Married model, enveloped HSV particles (with the viral glycoproteins) encased within membrane vesicles are transported in the anterograde direction. Earlier studies of HSV-infected human neurons involving electron microscopy (EM) and immunofluorescence staining of glycoproteins and capsids supported the Separate model. However, more-recent live-cell imaging of rat, chicken, and mouse neurons produced evidence supporting the Married model. In a recent EM study, a mixture of Married (75%) and Separate (25%) HSV particles was observed. Here, we studied an HSV recombinant expressing a fluorescent form of the viral glycoprotein gB and a fluorescent capsid protein (VP26), observing that human SK-N-SH neurons contained both Separate (the majority) and Married particles. Live-cell imaging of rat superior cervical ganglion (SCG) neuronal axons in a chamber system (which oriented the axons) also produced evidence of Separate and Married particles. Together, our results suggest that one can observe anterograde transport of both HSV capsids and enveloped virus particles depending on which neurons are cultured and how the neurons are imaged.
An Improved Algorithm to Generate a Wi-Fi Fingerprint Database for Indoor Positioning

The major problem of Wi-Fi fingerprint-based positioning technology is the signal strength fingerprint database creation and maintenance. The significant temporal variation of received signal strength (RSS) is the main factor responsible for the positioning error. A probabilistic approach can be used, but the RSS distribution is required. The Gaussian distribution or an empirically-derived distribution (histogram) is typically used. However, these distributions are either not always correct or require a large amount of data for each reference point. Double peaks of the RSS distribution have been observed in experiments at some reference points. In this paper a new algorithm based on an improved double-peak Gaussian distribution is proposed. Kurtosis testing is used to decide if this new distribution, or the normal Gaussian distribution, should be applied. Test results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the positioning accuracy, as well as reduce the workload of the off-line data training phase.
Organization of the facial nucleus and corticofacial projection in the monkey

The somatotopic organization of the facial nucleus and the distribution of the corticofacial projection in the monkey were studied by the use of retrograde and anterograde transport of horseradish peroxidase. Facial motor neurons innervating lower facial muscles were primarily found in the lateral part of the nucleus, those supplying upper facial muscles in the dorsal part of the nucleus, and those innervating the platysma and posterior auricular muscles in the medial part of the nucleus. Descending corticofacial fibers innervated the lower facial motor nuclear region bilaterally, although with contralateral predominance. The upper facial motor nuclear regions received scant direct cortical innervation on either side of the brain. Our results indicate that upper facial movement, like that at the shoulder, is relatively preserved in upper motor neuron palsy because these motor neurona receive little direct cortical input. By contrast, the lower facial muscles, like those of the hand, are more severely affected because their motor neurons normally depend upon significant cortical innervation.
PERSO : A system to build dynamically personalized courses in an e-learning environment ( ITHET 2003 )

The aim of this work is to design an intelligent e-Learning Environment. We propose a system that initializes the student model with the affective and the cognitive information, which constitutes his background. When integrated in an elearning platform, PERSO, offers to the student an individualized training program. The system is based on two approaches: Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Case Based Reasoning (CBR). The first one is used to represent the curriculum and to analyze semantically the student responses. The second one is used to propose an individual training program to each student.
Localized statistical 3D thermal analysis considering Electro-Thermal coupling

In this paper, we propose a novel method for analyzing fewer hot spots in a chip. The method, called SNSOR (Single-Node Successive Over Relaxation), is based on a novel localized relaxed iterative approach to perform statistical analysis on one hot spot at a time. Based on SNSOR, we propose an approximation method, called ET-SNSOR (Electro-Thermal SNSOR), to deal with the electro-thermal coupling (ETC) effects. ET-SNSOR first uses the iterative method to update correlations from ETC, and then computes standard temperature deviations for hot spots, according to ETC and updated correlations. Experiments show that ET-SNSOR is three orders of magnitude faster than the Monte-Carlo method with small errors (less than 4.76% on maximum). It only takes an average of 0.18 second to analyze one hot spot statistically for a large test case of 1.3M nodes with ETC effects.
Fault detection and identification for bimodal piecewise affine systems

This paper presents for the first time a fault detection and identification technique for bimodal piecewise affine (PWA) systems. A Luenberger-based observer structure is applied to the state estimation problem of the PWA system. The unknown value of the fault parameter is estimated by an observer equation obtained from a Lyapunov function. The design procedure is formulated as a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and guarantees global asymptotic stability of the estimation error, provided the norm of the input is upper and lower bounded by positive constants. The proposed method is applied to estimation of the amount of partial loss in control authority for a PWA model of a wheeled Mobile Robot (WMR).