Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Speaker-based Segmentation and Adaptation in Automatic Speech Recognition Automation and Control Technology Title: Speaker-based Segmentation and Adaptation in Automatic Speech Recognition

With proper training, automatic speech recognition works quite well when tested in conditions similar to the training conditions, but with a new speaker or a new environment the system performance often degrades. Speaker-based adaptation alters the speech recognition system to better match a specific speaker and thus improves the speech recognition results. In order to use speaker adaptation, the speech recognition system would, however, need to know who spoke and when. When no prior information about the speakers is available, automatic speakerbased segmentation methods are needed. Speaker segmentation should divide the speech data to speaker turns, that indicate when speakers change, and then label the speaker turns according to the speaker. In this work, a metric-based approach is presented for speaker change detection and two methods for clustering and labelling the detected speaker turns are discussed. The methods are evaluated in speaker segmentation and adaptation in large vocabulary continuous speech recognition task with Finnish and English broadcast news audio. The results show that the coupled automatic speaker segmentation and adaptation developed in this thesis improves the overall speech recognition performance significantly. Pages: 68
The Design of Two Versions of 3D Mouse

As the substitute of standard mice, 3D mice (Air mice) have been widely researched. Compared with standard mice, 3D mice are able to operate off table. Many types of 3D mice have been developed and tested for computer or TV. These 3D mice can be utilized as 3 dimensional interfaces with the PC for various applications such as 3D images and 3D games. Although most of them are more intuitive than standard mice, they pay the price of higher expense. This paper presents two intuitive, low-cost 3D mice. One is the Android phone based 3D mouse; another is the MCU based 3D mouse. Both of them implemented the same functions and share the same drive program. Setup of the project consists of a computer drive and a hand held motion detector. The motion detector measures the rate of rotation and acceleration of itself at three dimensions. And these data are then sent to the computer and converted into the movement of the cursor on the computer screen.
Talis — A Design Study for a Wearable Device to Assist People with Depression

One of the major diseases affecting the global population, depression has a strong emotional impact on its sufferers. In this design study, "Talis" is presented as a wearable device which uses emotion recognition as an interface between patient and machine to support psychotherapeutic treatment. We combine two therapy methods, "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" and "Well-Being Therapy", with interactive methods thought to increase their practical application potential. In this study, we draw on the results obtained in the area of "affective computing" for the use of emotions in empathic devices. The positive and negative phases experienced by the patient are identified through speech recognition and used for direct communication and later evaluation. After considering the design possibilities and suitable hardware, the future realization of such technology appears feasible. In order to design the wearable, user studies and technical experiments were carried out. The results of these suggest that the device could be beneficial for the treatment of patients with depression.
XML Cache Management Based On XPath Containment Relationship

We propose a cache management method of XML Databases in this research. XQuery is the most popular XML query language in XML Databases. The tree-structured XML data can be traversed along XPath expressions used in part of XQuery. Two XPath expressions being compared, the containment relationship of these results could be judged. In this work, we pay attention to the relationship and propose a method of cache management using it as meta information when doing the cache replacement. Although the cache management by the unit of page or tuple was a main technique in the relational databases, the merit and demerit of doing the cache management by the unit of query in the XUL databmes are discussed in this paper.
Depth Attenuation Degree Based Visualization for Cardiac Ischemic Electrophysiological Feature Exploration

Although heart researches and acquirement of clinical and experimental data are progressively open to public use, cardiac biophysical functions are still not well understood. Due to the complex and fine structures of the heart, cardiac electrophysiological features of interest may be occluded when there is a necessity to demonstrate cardiac electrophysiological behaviors. To investigate cardiac abnormal electrophysiological features under the pathological condition, in this paper, we implement a human cardiac ischemic model and acquire the electrophysiological data of excitation propagation. A visualization framework is then proposed which integrates a novel depth weighted optic attenuation model into the pathological electrophysiological model. The hidden feature of interest in pathological tissue can be revealed from sophisticated overlapping biophysical information. Experiment results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for intuitively exploring and inspecting cardiac electrophysiological activities, which is fundamental in analyzing and explaining biophysical mechanisms of cardiac functions for doctors and medical staff.
Specific Oxidase Activity of Cord Serum Ceruloplasmin in the Newborn

Abstract In a study of 50 full-term newborns, we found serum levels of ceruloplasmin, its oxidase activity and specific oxidase activity (activity per unit mass of enzyme protein) which were significantly lower than in adult subjects (p<0.001). A significant correlation was obtained between the specific oxidase activity of the neonatal ceruloplasmin and the transferrin/α-fetoprotein ratio (p<0.01), which reflects the maturity of the fetal hepatocyte through its ability to synthesise fetaland non-fetal-associated proteins. The lower specific oxidase activity of the ceruloplasmin in newborns would be due to a higher relative proportion of apoprotein, and/or other molecular forms with a poor copper content in the oxidase sites. This could be due to an inability to transfer copper into a common intracellular pool for holoceruloplasmin synthesis and biliary copper excretion. A high interindividual variability was found for the specific oxidase activity of the neonatal ceruloplasmin, and in the newborns with higher levels of ceruloplasmin this, from a catalytic point of view, is more similar to the adult form.
Formal security analysis of authentication in SNMPv3 protocol by an automated tool

Recently, the verification of network management protocols has been the subject of many research works. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a widely used protocol for monitoring and managing devices on IP networks. Three significant security features (authentication, encryption, access control) are added to SNMPv3 under the User-based Security Model (USM). Until now, no formal and automated verification methods have been proposed for network management protocols and they have been analyzed only with informal techniques or with symbolic methods which is a hard, time-consuming and error-prone task when done by hand. Hence, in this paper, we first describe the SNMPv3 protocol and propose an abstract model of it to formalize our understanding of SNMP, and provide a specification of SNMPv3 in the applied π-calculus. We verify authenticity in SNMPv3 protocol without bounding the number of sessions of the protocol, using an automated protocol verifier, ProVerif and we show a proof of authenticity for the SNMPv3 protocol.
Dynamic routing and wavelength assignment using first policy iteration

With standard assumptions the routing and wavelength assignment problem (RWA) can be viewed as a Markov decision process (MDP). The problem, however defies an exact solution because of the huge size of the state space. Only heuristic algorithms have been presented up till now. We propose an approach where, starting from a given heuristic algorithm, one obtains a better algorithm by the first policy iteration. In order to estimate the relative costs of states, we make a simulation on the fly studying, at each decision epoch, the consequences of all the alternatives actions. Being computationally intensive, this method can be used in real time only for systems with slow dynamics. Offline it can be used to assess how close the heuristic algorithms come to the optimal policy. Numerical examples are given about the policy improvement.
Dairy Consumption and Risk of Stroke in Swedish Women and Men

Background and Purpose Epidemiological studies of the associations of low-fat dairy and specific dairy food consumption with risk of stroke are sparse. Our aim was to examine the association between consumption of total, low-fat, full-fat, and specific dairy foods and risk of stroke in a prospective cohort study. Methods We followed 74 961 Swedish women and men who were free from cardiovascular disease and cancer and who completed a 96-item food frequency questionnaire in 1997. Incident cases of stroke were ascertained from the Swedish Hospital Discharge Registry. Results During a mean follow-up of 10.2 years, we ascertained 4089 cases of stroke, including 3159 cerebral infarctions, 583 hemorrhagic strokes, and 347 unspecified strokes. Consumption of low-fat dairy foods was inversely associated with risk of total stroke (P for trend=0.03) and cerebral infarction (P for trend=0.03). The multivariable relative risks for the highest compared with the lowest quintile of low-fat dairy consumption were 0.88 (95% CI, 0.80–0.97) for total stroke and 0.87 (95% CI, 0.78–0.98) for cerebral infarction. Consumption of total dairy, full-fat dairy, milk, sour milk/yogurt, cheese, and cream/crème fraiche was not associated with stroke risk. Conclusions These results suggest that low-fat dairy consumption is inversely associated with the risk of stroke.
Partitioning of soil phosphorus regulates competition between Vaccinium vitis-idaea and Deschampsia cespitosa

It has been hypothesized that the wide range of forms and complexities of phosphorus (P) in soil may result in resource partitioning that contributes to the maintenance of plant species diversity. Here, we test whether the graminoid, Deschampsia cespitosa, and the ericaceous shrub, Vaccinium vitis-idaea, which often coexist, display preferences in utilization of P forms, and differ in their production of extracellular P-degrading enzymes. We provided plants with no additional P, or P forms with decreasing lability, namely sodium phosphate (SP), D-glucose 6 phosphate (DG6P), sodium phytate (PASS), and a combination of SP, DG6P, and PASS. We also tested if preferences for P forms affected the competitive outcomes between the two species compared between conspecifics, as indicated by shoot biomass and acquisition of nitrogen (N) and P. Both D. cespitosa and V. vitis-idaea produced the greatest biomass when supplied with a mix of all three forms of P. Of the three forms of P tested alone, shoot biomass produced by both species was least when supplied with SP. D. cespitosa performed better when grown with PASS or a mix of all P forms compared with the performance of V. vitis-idaea on these substrates. This was reflected by substantially greater phytase activity on the surface of its roots compared with V. vitis-idaea. In contrast, V. vitis-idaea produced more phosphomonoesterase to hydrolyze the simple organic P form, DG6P. Although N was kept constant in the treatments, the ability of plants to acquire it was dependent on species identity, competition, and P supply. These findings provide direct evidence for preferences toward specific forms of P and indicate a key role played by organic forms of P. The results support the idea that partitioning for soil P is one factor regulating plant competition, and ultimately, community composition. Our data also highlight the importance of the interplay between P supply and N acquisition.
Channel Assignment in Cognitive Radio Networks: A Joint Utility and Stable Matching Approach

Channel assignment is a key problem in Cognitive Radio Networks. The channels are leased to the secondary users when the licensed or primary users are OFF, provided that the secondary users will leave those channels as soon as the primary users are reactivated. Therefore, to achieve a high performance of the network, we should lease a channel to a secondary user while both of them achieve the best possible utility. In this paper, we first define two utility functions, one for the secondary user and another for the channel. Then, in the pre-matching stage, we find a trade-off between these two utilities for each secondary user-channel pair by defining a joint utility function. Next, using the maximal secondary user utility and the maximal channel utility corresponding to the trade-off point as a measure of their preference for each other, we match secondary users and channels to each other by the Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm. We also obtain the optimal transmission power of the secondary user and the optimal bandwidth of the channel. Finally, we provide numerical results by computer simulation of our scheme.
Tillarom: an AJAX based folk song search and retrieval system with gesture interface based on kodály hand

A digital folk song search and retrieval system with a hand gesture based interface is presented. Tillarom is a comprehensive collection of original Hungarian folk songs recorded using different technologies such as phonographs and/or stereo DAT cassettes. This digital archive contains professional quality metadata records as well as MIDI recordings for presenting the different types of clustered folk songs. An AJAX based search and retrieval interface was developed that can be used together with optically recognized Kodály's hand signs to formulate queries through a web browser. The appearance based recognition of hand gestures utilizes contour analysis and SVM based classification. We evaluated the performance of the recognition of hand signs and investigated the main problems of their usage in our system.
Identification of a Novel Subset of Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells During Chronic Staphylococcal Infection That Resembles Immature Eosinophils

We have previously reported that myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC), which are a heterogeneous population of immunosuppressive immature myeloid cells, expanded during chronic Staphylococcus aureus infection and promoted bacterial persistence by inhibiting effector T cells. Two major MDSC subsets, including monocytic MDSC and granulocytic MDSC, have been described to date. Here, we identified a new subset of MDSC (Eo-MDSC) in S. aureus-infected mice that phenotypically resembles eosinophils. Eo-MDSC exhibit eosinophilic cytoplasmic granules and express CD11b, the eosinophil marker Syglec-F, variable levels of CCR3, and low levels of interleukin-5Rα. Furthermore, Eo-MDSC accumulated at the site of infection and exerted a potent immunosuppressive effect on T-cell responses that was mediated by nitric oxide-dependent depletion of l-arginine. Increases in the number of Eo-MDSC by adoptive transfer caused a significant exacerbation of infection in S. aureus-infected mice. This study sheds new light on the heterogeneity and complexity of MDSC during chronic infection.
A BCI Teleoperated Museum Robotic Guide

Brain Computer Interface is a system that offers also a support to the patients with neuromuscular diseases as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.In this paper are presented some works with the aim to integrate brain computer interfaces and mobile robots.The two aim of this project are: (i) to test an improved BCI experience through the help of a physical robot, so that brain signals are stronger stimulate. (ii) to use a remote robot controlled by a highly paralyzed patient via a BCI through a friendly Graphic User.Some preliminary experiments are presented in this paper about one of the possible application: a robotic museum guide(PeopleBot and Pioneer3 robot), that can transmit remote visual perceptions to the patient.
Bounds on tail probabilities for negative binomial distributions

In this paper we present various new inequalities for tail proabilities for distributions that are elements of the most improtant exponential families. These families include the Poisson distributions, the Gamma distributions, the binomial distributions, the negative binomial distributions and the inverse Gaussian distributions. All these exponential families have simple variance functions and the variance functions play an important role in the exposition. All the inequalities presented in this paper are formulated in terms of the signed log-likelihood. The inequalities are of a qualitative nature in that they can be formulated either in terms of stochastic domination or in terms of an intersection property that states that a certain discrete distribution is very close to a certain continuous distribution.
A word clustering approach to domain adaptation: Robust parsing of source and target domains

We present a technique to improve out-of-domain statistical parsing by reducing lexical data sparseness in a PCFG-LA architecture. We replace ter- minal symbols with unsupervised word clusters acquired from a large news- paper corpus augmented with target-domain data. We also investigate the impact of guiding out-of-domain parsing with predicted part-of-speech tags. We provide an evaluation for French, and obtain improvements in perfor- mance for both non-technical and technical target domains. Though the im- provements over a strong baseline are slight, an interesting result is that the proposed techniques also improve parsing performance on the source do- main, contrary to techniques such as self-training, thus leading to a more ro- bust parser overall. We also describe new target domain evaluation treebanks, freely available, that comprise a total of about 3,000 annotated sentences from the medical domain, regional newspaper articles, French Europarl and French Wikipedia.
Energetics and Location of Phosphoinositide Binding in Human Kir2.1 Channels*

Background: Kir2.1 channels are uniquely activated by PI(4,5)P2 and can be inhibited by other PIPs. Results: A different subset of residues controls channel binding to each PIP. PIPs can encompass multiple orientations in two sites. Conclusion: Selective activation by PI(4,5)P2 involves orientational specificity, and other PIPs inhibit through direct competition. Significance: Our findings reveal unanticipated complexities of PIP interactions. Kir2.1 channels are uniquely activated by phosphoinositide 4,5-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P2) and can be inhibited by other phosphoinositides (PIPs). Using biochemical and computational approaches, we assess PIP-channel interactions and distinguish residues that are energetically critical for binding from those that alter PIP sensitivity by shifting the open-closed equilibrium. Intriguingly, binding of each PIP is disrupted by a different subset of mutations. In silico ligand docking indicates that PIPs bind to two sites. The second minor site may correspond to the secondary anionic phospholipid site required for channel activation. However, 96–99% of PIP binding localizes to the first cluster, which corresponds to the general PI(4,5)P2 binding location in recent Kir crystal structures. PIPs can encompass multiple orientations; each di- and triphosphorylated species binds with comparable energies and is favored over monophosphorylated PIPs. The data suggest that selective activation by PI(4,5)P2 involves orientational specificity and that other PIPs inhibit this activation through direct competition.
Important Issues, Some Rhetoric, and a Few Straw Men

In this article, the authors respond to the eight commentaries on “Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education: A Proposed Direction Forward Based on Psychological Science” using several themes to organize their response. These themes include ability, developmental trajectories, effort and opportunity, psychosocial factors, eminence, and equity. The authors reaffirm the contention that eminence is an appropriate standard for assigning the gifted label in individuals with well-developed talents.
Differential Release and Phagocytosis of Tegument Glycoconjugates in Neurocysticercosis: Implications for Immune Evasion Strategies

Neurocysticercosis (NCC) is an infection of the central nervous system (CNS) by the metacestode of the helminth Taenia solium. The severity of the symptoms is associated with the intensity of the immune response. First, there is a long asymptomatic period where host immunity seems incapable of resolving the infection, followed by a chronic hypersensitivity reaction. Since little is known about the initial response to this infection, a murine model using the cestode Mesocestoides corti (syn. Mesocestoides vogae) was employed to analyze morphological changes in the parasite early in the infection. It was found that M. corti material is released from the tegument making close contact with the nervous tissue. These results were confirmed by infecting murine CNS with ex vivo–labeled parasites. Because more than 95% of NCC patients exhibit humoral responses against carbohydrate-based antigens, and the tegument is known to be rich in glycoconjugates (GCs), the expression of these types of molecules was analyzed in human, porcine, and murine NCC specimens. To determine the GCs present in the tegument, fluorochrome-labeled hydrazides as well as fluorochrome-labeled lectins with specificity to different carbohydrates were used. All the lectins utilized labeled the tegument. GCs bound by isolectinB4 were shed in the first days of infection and not resynthesized by the parasite, whereas GCs bound by wheat germ agglutinin and concavalinA were continuously released throughout the infectious process. GCs bound by these three lectins were taken up by host cells. Peanut lectin-binding GCs, in contrast, remained on the parasite and were not detected in host cells. The parasitic origin of the lectin-binding GCs found in host cells was confirmed using antibodies against T. solium and M. corti. We propose that both the rapid and persistent release of tegumental GCs plays a key role in the well-known immunomodulatory effects of helminths, including immune evasion and life-long inflammatory sequelae seen in many NCC patients.
Does “Feminist” Plus “Therapist” Equal “Feminist Therapist”?: An Empirical Investigation of the Link Between Self-Labeling and Behaviors

This research examined the therapy behaviors self-identified feminist therapists engaged in. Practicing therapists (N = 101) were asked to endorse various feminist self-labels and to indicate how often they engaged in a variety of feminist (as assessed by the Feminist Therapy Behaviors-Revised [FTB-R] scale; and other therapy behaviors with both women and men clients. The following results were found. First, incrementally specific feminist self-labeling by therapists improved the prediction of therapy behaviors reflecting the notion that the personal is political. Second, the most strongly identified feminist therapists were distinguished from other therapists by their attention to issues of oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, heterosexism) and socialization. Third, therapists reported engaging in FTB-R behaviors with men clients almost as much as with women clients. And finally, FTB-R and other therapy behaviors emerged as distinct, both in terms of the underlying structure of therapists' responses and in terms of the links to feminist self-labeling.