Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Including human expertise in speaker recognition systems: report on a pilot evaluation

The 2010 NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE10) included a test of Human Assisted Speaker Recognition (HASR) in which systems based in whole or in part on human expertise were evaluated on limited sets of trials. Participation in HASR was optional, and sites could participate in it without participating in the main evaluation of fully automatic systems. Two HASR trial sets were offered, with HASR1 including 15 trials, and HASR2 a superset of 150 trials. Results were submitted for 20 systems from 15 sites from 6 countries. The trial sets were carefully selected, by a process that combined automatic processing and human listening, to include particularly challenging trials. The performance results suggest that the chosen trials were indeed difficult, and the HASR systems did not appear to perform as well as the best fully automatic systems on these trials.
Associations Between the Five-Factor Model of Personality and Health Behaviors Among College Students

Objective: In fall 2006, the authors examined associations between the five-factor model of personality and several key health behaviors. Methods: College students (N = 583) completed the American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment and the International Personality Item Pool Big Five short-form questionnaire. Results: Highly conscientious individuals were more likely to wear seat belts, utilize alcohol-related harm reduction, exercise, get enough sleep, and consume fruits and vegetables. They were also less likely to smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol, and binge drink. Highly extraverted individuals were more likely to smoke cigarettes, consume alcohol, binge drink, and have multiple sexual partners, and they were less likely to engage in alcohol-related harm reduction, use condoms, and get enough sleep. Conclusions: These findings are supportive of a growing body of evidence indicating that conscientiousness and extraversion are robust concomitants of health behaviors among college students.
Computer Simulation and Analysis of a Growing Mammalian Cell Colony

All living creatures are made of cells small membrane-bounded compartments filled with a concentrated aqueous solution of chemicals. This paper deals with simulation and characterization of a growing mammalian cell colony. A colony is modeled as a set of contacting deformable particles. Variation of size, orientation and form of a cell is assumed, although ellipsoidal shape of a cell is used as a basic form. Modeled cells were compared to AHH-1 human lymphocyte culture cells by visual inspection and with the help of the fractal analysis methods.
Development of an Antioxidant Phytoextract of Lantana grisebachii with Lymphoprotective Activity against In Vitro Arsenic Toxicity

Phytochemicals have been presumed to possess prophylactic and curative properties in several pathologies, such as arsenic- (As-) induced immunosuppression. Our aim was to discover a lymphoprotective extract from Lantana grisebachii Stuck. (Verbenaceae) (LG). We assessed its bioactivity and chemical composition using cell-based assays. Fractions produced from a hexane extract acutely induced nitrite formation in T-activated cell cultures (P < 0.0001). Water extraction released a fraction lacking nitrite inducing activity in both lymphocyte types. Aqueous LG was found to be safe in proliferated and proliferating cells. The infusion-derived extract presented better antioxidant capacity in proportion to phenolic amount in lymphocytes (infusive LG-1i at 100 μg/mL), which protected them against in vitro As-induced lymphotoxicity (P < 0.0001). This infusive LG phytoextract contained 10.23 ± 0.43 mg/g of phenolics, with 58.46% being flavonoids. Among the phenolics, the only predominant compound was 0.723 mg of chlorogenic acid per gram of dry plant, in addition to 10 unknown minor compounds. A fatty acid profile was assessed. It contained one-third of saturated fatty acids, one-third of ω9, followed by ω6 (~24%) and ω3 (~4%), and scarce ω7. Summing up, L. grisebachii was a source of bioactive and lymphoprotective compounds, which could counteract As-toxicity. This supports its phytomedical use and research in order to reduce As-related dysfunctions.
A Language and an Inference Engine for Twitter Filtering Rules

We consider the problem of the filtering of Twitter posts, that is, the hiding of those posts which the user prefers not to visualize on his/her timeline. We define a language for specifying filtering policies suitable for Twitter posts. The language allows each user to decide which posts to filter out based on his/her sensibility and preferences. Since average users may not have the skills necessary to translate their filtering needs into a set of rules, we also propose a method for inferring a policy automatically, based solely on examples of the desired filtering behavior. The method is based on an evolutionary approach driven by a multi-objective optimization scheme. We assess our proposal experimentally on a real Twitter dataset and the results are highly promising.
Design of reversible Quantum equivalents of classical circuits using Hybrid Quantum Inspired Evolutionary Algorithm

This paper illustrates the application of a Hybrid Quantum Inspired Evolutionary Algorithm (HQIEA) in evolving a variety of Quantum equivalents of classical circuits. Taking the matrix corresponding to an oracle as input, this HIQEA designs classical circuits using quantum gates. A library consisting of single, two and three qubit Quantum gates and the desired circuit matrix were given as input and algorithm was able to successfully design half adder, full adder and binary-gray conversion circuits apart from circuits for two, three and four qubit Boolean functions, using Quantum gates. The circuits obtained compare favorably with earlier attempts in terms of number of gates, ancillary inputs and garbage outputs required for constructing these circuits and the time taken to evolve them.
Chromosomal Instability in BRAF Mutant, Microsatellite Stable Colorectal Cancers

The BRAF oncogene is mutated in 15% of sporadic colorectal cancers. Approximately half of these BRAF mutant cancers demonstrate frequent frameshift mutations termed microsatellite instability (MSI), but are diploid and chromosomally stable. BRAF wild type cancers are typically microsatellite stable (MSS) and instead acquire chromosomal instability (CIN). In these cancers, CIN is associated with a poor outcome. BRAF mutant cancers that are MSS, typically present at an advanced stage and have a particularly poor prognosis. We have previously demonstrated clinical and molecular similarities between MSS cancers with or without a BRAF mutation, and therefore hypothesised that CIN may also be frequent in BRAF mutant/MSS cancers. BRAF mutant/MSS (n = 60), and BRAF wild type/MSS CRCs (n = 90) were investigated for CIN using loss of heterozygosity analysis over twelve loci encompassing chromosomal regions 5q, 8p, 17p and 18q. CIN was frequent in BRAF mutant/MSS cancers (41/57, 72%), which was comparable to the rate found in BRAF wild type/MSS cancers (74/90, 82%). The greatest loss in BRAF mutant/MSS cancers occurred at 8p (26/44, 59%), and the least at 5q (19/49, 39%). CIN in BRAF mutant/MSS cancers correlated with advanced stage (AJCC III/IV: 15/17, 88%; p = 0.02); showed high rates of co-occurrence with the CpG Island Methylator Phenotype (17/23, 74%); and CIN at 18q and 8p associated with worse survival (p = 0.02, p<0.05). This study demonstrates that CIN commonly occurs in advanced BRAF mutant/MSS colorectal cancers where it may contribute to poorer survival, and further highlights molecular similarities occurring between these and BRAF wild type cancers.
Foreign Direct Investment and Output Growth Volatility: A Worldwide Analysis

The decades preceding the recent financial crisis and global downturn were a period of unusually mild output volatility for many developed and developing market economies. We analyse data from 85 countries and report findings consistent with the hypothesis that foreign direct investment had a stabilising effect on output during the era of the “Great Moderation”. These findings are consistent with, but not a direct test of, the theory that relates the waning of output volatility during these decades to the international diversification of net worth and a corresponding reduction in the strength of the Financial Accelerator.
Retinal Vessel Extraction Using Multiscale Matched Filters, Confidence and Edge Me

A telephone subscriber station with a lower housing component on which there are pivotably mounted a chassis, which contains all the main components of the subscriber station, and the upper housing component. The chassis, which is mounted so that it is displaceable in the horizontal plane, is fixed in both the vertical and horizontal planes. For this purpose the upper housing component possesses a projection which, when the station is in the assembled state, presses on a spring-like lug of the chassis in the vertical plane. The chassis is also provided with an operating array which engages a recess in the upper housing component. By displacing the chassis in the horizontal plane it is possible to introduce the operating array into the correct position in the recess.
China, Japan, and Maintaining an International Competitive Balance under a Fixed Exchange Rate

Post-World War II Japan and China from the 1980s to the present are two of the greatest success stories of economic development in the twentieth century. Interestingly, much of this economic development took place while both countries fixed their respective dollar exchange rates. With both countries expanding much more rapidly than the United States, competitive balance—in the sense of alignment in the price of tradable goods—had to be maintained by the adjustment of macroeconomic variables other than the nominal exchange rate. We show that in the case of both China and Japan nearly all of this adjustment came in the form of money wage growth in the manufacturing sector that far outstripped that in America. On the monetary side, between 1950 and 1971 (under the Bretton-Woods system of fixed dollar exchange rates) Japan did not have to deal with continual pressure to appreciate the yen as China has had with the yuan since 1994. This uneasiness about the credibility of the fixed dollar exchange rate in China, coupled with a massive accumulation of foreign denominated assets, has led to the syndrome of conflicted virtue there. We examine the effects of this, as well as its implications in terms of the sustainability of the yuan-dollar exchange rate into the future.
3-D drawing system via hand motion recognition from two cameras

The authors propose a novel human interface system, 3-D Drawing System, which allows a user to draw on virtual 3D space in a computer with a user's hand motions and hand poses. The system has two cameras; one camera takes a top-view of the desktop and another takes a side-view. The input image of the top camera is transformed into the distance-transformed image, which is used for deciding Palm Square that gives the base size, position, and direction of hand. The Palm Square determines Finger Windows which are used for detecting each finger's expansion that is decided by the number of pixels in the Finger Window. The user's command is input to the system by the finger's expansion. At the same time, we extract the fingertip and estimate the 3D position by comparison with the image obtained with the side camera. The procedures are very simple so we can develop the real time 3D drawing system, which allows the user to draw figures in 3D space, and handle 3D virtual objects.
Simultaneous Identification of Duplications and Lateral Gene Transfers

The incongruency between a gene tree and a corresponding species tree can be attributed to evolutionary events such as gene duplication and gene loss. This paper describes a combinatorial model where so-called DTL-scenarios are used to explain the differences between a gene tree and a corresponding species tree taking into account gene duplications, gene losses, and lateral gene transfers (also known as horizontal gene transfers). The reasonable biological constraint that a lateral gene transfer may only occur between contemporary species leads to the notion of acyclic DTL-scenarios. Parsimony methods are introduced by defining appropriate optimization problems. We show that finding most parsimonious acyclic DTL-scenarios is NP-hard. However, by dropping the condition of acyclicity, the problem becomes tractable, and we provide a dynamic programming algorithm as well as a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for finding most parsimonious DTL-scenarios.
Modeling Inter- and Intra-Part Deformations for Object Structure Parsing

Part deformation has been a longstanding challenge for object parsing, of which the primary difficulty lies in modeling the highly diverse object structures. To this end, we propose a novel structure parsing model to capture deformable object structures. The proposed model consists of two deformable layers: the top layer is an undirected graph that incorporates inter-part deformations to infer object structures; the base layer is consisted of various independent nodes to characterize local intra-part deformations. To learn this two-layer model, we design a layer-wise learning algorithm, which employs matching pursuit and belief propagation for a low computational complexity inference. Specifically, active basis sparse coding is leveraged to build the nodes at the base layer, while the edge weights are estimated by a structural support vector machine. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets (i.e., faces and horses) demonstrate that the proposed model yields superior parsing performance over state-of-the-art models.
A Brief Introduction to Cortical Representations of Objects

To understand how objects are recognized and represented in the human brain is still one of the ultimate goals of cognitive science. In this article, we will collect evidence from mainly neurophysiological studies which suggest that object recognition is achieved by hierarchical processing in the brain and that the representation of objects is distributed and view-based. Furthermore, these studies propose that the temporal coherence of the visual input plays a fundamental role in the learning of object representations.
The seven deadly sins of comparative analysis

Phylogenetic comparative methods are extremely commonly used in evolutionary biology. In this paper, I highlight some of the problems that are frequently encountered in comparative analyses and review how they can be fixed. In broad terms, the problems boil down to a lack of appreciation of the underlying assumptions of comparative methods, as well as problems with implementing methods in a manner akin to more familiar statistical approaches. I highlight that the advent of more flexible computing environments should improve matters and allow researchers greater scope to explore methods and data.
Design and Analysis of Knee Ankle Foot Orthosis (KAFO) for Paraplegia Person

Knee ankle foot orthoses (KAFOs) are prescribed to paraplegic patients with low level spinal cord injury and with good control of the trunk muscles. Three types of KAFOs were used in this work (plastic-metal, metal-metal and composite materials), the composite materials were depended on the number of perlon layers (13 layers & 9 layers) with one layer of carbon-fiber and (6 layers) without carbonfiber. The mechanical properties of most of the KAFOs’ materials were tested by tensile test and fatigue machines. The data of gait cycle (Ground Reaction Force (GRF), and pressure distribution) were collected from one patient with poliomyelitis (wearing brace type KAFO) and one normal subject. In this paper, the FEM (ANSYS) was used to compute the safety factor of fatigue for all types of KAFOs’ models and the equivalent stress (Von-Mises). The interface pressure between the patient’s leg and the brace was tested by using a piezoelectric sensor. The results obtained from ANSYS gave the profile of safety factor of fatigue, for metal-metal KAFO (3.69), plastic-metal model (0.88). While, the (13) layers for composite material was about (1.4), but (1.07) & (0.41) for (9) layers and (6) layers, respectively. The value of safety factor increased with the composite material for the suggested design.
Prognostic value of rho GTPases and rho guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitors in human breast cancers.

PURPOSE Rho family members are small GTPases that are known to regulate malignant transformation and motility of cancer cells. The activities of Rhos are regulated by molecules such as guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitors (GDIs). This study determined the levels of expression and the distribution of Rho-A, -B, -C, and -G, and Rho-6, -7, and -8, as well as Rho-GDI-beta, and Rho-GDI-gamma, in breast cancer and assessed their prognostic value. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN The distribution and location of Rhos and RhoGDIs were assessed using immunohistochemical staining of frozen sections. The levels of transcripts of these molecules were determined using a real-time quantitative PCR. Levels of expression were analyzed against nodal involvement and distant metastasis, grade, and survival over a 6-year follow-up period. RESULTS The levels of Rho-C, Rho-6, and Rho-G were significantly higher in breast cancer tissues (n = 120) than in background normal tissues (n = 32). However, the level of Rho-A and -B and rho-7 and -8 was found to be similar in tumor and normal tissues. Immunohistochemical staining revealed the high level of staining of Rho-C protein in tumor cells. The levels of Rho-GDI-gamma transcripts were found to be significantly lower in tumor tissues than in normal tissues (P < 0.05 and P < 0.001, respectively). Node-positive tumors have significantly higher levels of Rho-C and Rho-G, and lower levels of Rho-GDI and Rho-GDI-gamma transcripts, than do node-negative tumors. Significantly higher levels of Rho-C and Rho-G were seen in patients who died of breast cancer than in those who remained disease free. Patients with recurrent disease, with metastasis or who died of breast cancer, also exhibited higher levels of Rho-6 but lower levels of Rho-GDI-gamma. Higher-grade tumors were also associated with low levels of Rho-GDI and Rho-GDI-gamma. CONCLUSIONS Raised levels of Rho-C, Rho-G and Rho-6 and reduced expression of Rho-GDI and -GDI-gamma in breast tumor tissues are correlated with the nodal involvement and metastasis. This suggests that the expression of Rhos and Rho-GDIs in breast cancer is unbalanced and that this disturbance has clinical significance in breast cancer.
Global Internet-based Crisis Communication: A case Study on SARS

Crisis Communication is an effective communication mechanism in the world. The outbreak of the SARS disease and the way information on it was disseminated has illustrated the importance of effective and efficient crisis communication management. Consequently, we would like to highlight the viability of incorporating an intelligent agent software robot into a crisis communication portal (CCNet) to send the alert news to subscribed users via email and others mobile services such as SMS, MMS and GPRS. This study is in the framework design and prototyping stage. The proposed system consists of the integration of an intelligent agent, which comprises of a conversation agent that is employed to gain trust from the portal’s users, and an Automated Knowledge Extraction Agent, which retrieves first hand information from sources such as WHO.org, ABCNews.com and Sars.gov. sg for public awareness.
An exposition of consumer behaviour in the financial services industry

Deregulation and the emergence of new forms of technology have created highly competitive market conditions which have had a critical impact upon consumer behaviour. Bank providers must, therefore, attempt to better understand their customers in an attempt not only to anticipate but also to influence and determine consumer buying behaviour. The paper accordingly presents and develops a model which attempts to articulate and classify consumer behaviour in the purchasing of financial products and services. The theoretical insights generated by this model are then used to examine qualitative research data gained from focus group discussions on consumers’ attitudes to their financial providers and their financial products. Finally, these findings are examined for the potential insights they provide to bank providers attempting to identify appropriate strategies which are conducive to increased customer retention and profitability.
A Survey of Modulation of Gut Microbiota by Dietary Polyphenols

Dietary polyphenols present in a broad range of plant foods have been related to beneficial health effects. This review aims to update the current information about the modulation of the gut microbiota by dietary phenolic compounds, from a perspective based on the experimental approaches used. After referring to general aspects of gut microbiota and dietary polyphenols, studies related to this topic are presented according to their experimental design: batch culture fermentations, gastrointestinal simulators, animal model studies, and human intervention studies. In general, studies evidence that dietary polyphenols may contribute to the maintenance of intestinal health by preserving the gut microbial balance through the stimulation of the growth of beneficial bacteria (i.e., lactobacilli and bifidobacteria) and the inhibition of pathogenic bacteria, exerting prebiotic-like effects. Combination of in vitro and in vivo models could help to understand the underlying mechanisms in the polyphenols-microbiota-host triangle and elucidate the implications of polyphenols on human health. From a technological point of view, supplementation with rich-polyphenolic stuffs (phenolic extracts, phenolic-enriched fractions, etc.) could be an effective option to improve health benefits of functional foods such as the case of dairy fermented foods.
3 D Adaptive Reconstruction of Human Motion From Multi-Sensors

In wireless body sensor networks, sensors may be installed on various body limbs to wirelessly collect body information for homecare services. The orientations and accelerations on each limb are different for various motion states. For example, each limb has different acceleration when walking versus running, and orientation when standing versus lying. According to the above information, the body motion state may be decided. Furthermore, each person has unique body characteristics such as height, foot pitch, and motion habit to effect the body reconstruction. Therefore, it is a challenging issue how to present human motions through 3D skeleton system simulation, and achieve an adaptive reconstruction of human motion according to the different body characteristics of each person. In this study, we proposed a novel scheme to utilize multiple triple axis accelerometer and gyroscopes to measure limb accelerations, then calculated the locations of limbs and try to employ kinematic theory to reconstruct human body skeleton, called 3D Adaptive human Motion Reconstruction (AMR). And we applied Body Correction Algorithm (BCA) to correct human body characteristics and fighted the error of transmission noise. This system was tested and validated with success.
Bivariate line‐fitting methods for allometry

Fitting a line to a bivariate dataset can be a deceptively complex problem, and there has been much debate on this issue in the literature. In this review, we describe for the practitioner the essential features of line‐fitting methods for estimating the relationship between two variables: what methods are commonly used, which method should be used when, and how to make inferences from these lines to answer common research questions.