Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A semi-automatic method for transcription error correction for Indian language TTS systems

Database for building text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis systems consist of text sentences and the corresponding spoken waveform. Errors in transcription is an important factor that leads to poor synthesis quality. Mismatches between recorded speech and the corresponding text transcriptions occur mainly due to addition, deletion and substitution of words or phrases in the text or speech data. Presently, such mismatches are identified and corrected manually after listening to individual speech waveforms. In this work, this process of transcription error correction is made semi-automatic by flagging off the error units at phone level, based on the log-likelihood values of each phone after forced Viterbi alignment. A user interface is developed that highlights the errors. The errors only need to be manually corrected. TTS systems are built for two languages with the complete dataset and with the dataset after removing the data with wrong units. Result of listening test conducted showed that there is a significant improvement in synthesis quality.
Exocrine pancreatic insufficiency: accuracy and clinical value of the uniformly labelled 13C-Hiolein breath test.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The 13C-Hiolein breath test (98% [U-13C] labelled long chain triglyceride mixture (highly labelled triolein) was evaluated as a non-invasive, non-radioactive test for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Accuracy and clinical validity were examined with reference to both the secretin pancreozymin test and faecal fat analysis. METHODS: A secretin pancreozymin test and faecal fat analysis were performed in 46 patients, 30 with exocrine pancreatic insufficiency and 16 with normal pancreatic function. In all of these patients and in seven healthy volunteers (controls), a 13C-Hiolein breath test was performed using 2 mg/kg [U-13C] labelled Hiolein with a standard risk snack (1.5 g/kg; 25% fat). 13CO2/12CO2 enrichment in the exhaled breath was measured by isotope ratio mass spectrometry. RESULTS: In patients with pancreatic steatorrhoea the 13CO2 response was below the 95% confidence interval of 13CO2 exhalation in the controls. These responses were also diminished (p < 0.001) compared with patients with impaired lipase output but normal fat excretion and with disease as well as healthy controls. There was a linear correlation between stimulated lipase output and the ratio of lipase output/13CO2 response (r = 0.95). Among the 40 patients in whom direct pancreatic function testing was clinically indicated, the sensitivity of the 13C-Hiolein test for detecting steatorrhoea was 91.7%, with a specificity of 85.7%. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with pancreatic disease the 13C-Hiolein breath test reflects impaired lipase output and indicates decompensated lipolysis. The 13C-Hiolein breath test is a convenient alternative to faecal fat analysis.
Migration of Nucleocapsids in Vesicular Stomatitis Virus-Infected Cells Is Dependent on both Microtubules and Actin Filaments

ABSTRACT The distribution of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) nucleocapsids in the cytoplasm of infected cells was analyzed by scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy using a newly developed quantitative approach called the border-to-border distribution method. Nucleocapsids were located near the cell nucleus at early times postinfection (2 h) but were redistributed during infection toward the edges of the cell. This redistribution was inhibited by treatment with nocodazole, colcemid, or cytochalasin D, indicating it is dependent on both microtubules and actin filaments. The role of actin filaments in nucleocapsid mobility was also confirmed by live-cell imaging of fluorescent nucleocapsids of a virus containing P protein fused to enhanced green fluorescent protein. However, in contrast to the overall redistribution in the cytoplasm, the incorporation of nucleocapsids into virions as determined in pulse-chase experiments was dependent on the activity of actin filaments with little if any effect on inhibition of microtubule function. These results indicate that the mechanisms by which nucleocapsids are transported to the farthest reaches of the cell differ from those required for incorporation into virions. This is likely due to the ability of nucleocapsids to follow shorter paths to the plasma membrane mediated by actin filaments. IMPORTANCE Nucleocapsids of nonsegmented negative-strand viruses like VSV are assembled in the cytoplasm during genome RNA replication and must migrate to the plasma membrane for assembly into virions. Nucleocapsids are too large to diffuse in the cytoplasm in the time required for virus assembly and must be transported by cytoskeletal elements. Previous results suggested that microtubules were responsible for migration of VSV nucleocapsids to the plasma membrane for virus assembly. Data presented here show that both microtubules and actin filaments are responsible for mobility of nucleocapsids in the cytoplasm, but that actin filaments play a larger role than microtubules in incorporation of nucleocapsids into virions.
An Adaptive Role for BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism in Motor Recovery in Chronic Stroke

Little is known about the influence of genetic diversity on stroke recovery. One exception is the polymorphism in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a critical neurotrophin for brain repair and plasticity. Humans have a high-frequency single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the prodomain of the BDNF gene. Previous studies show that the BDNF Val66Met variant negatively affects motor learning and severity of acute stroke. To investigate the impact of this common BDNF SNP on stroke recovery, we used a mouse model that contains the human BDNF Val66Met variant in both alleles (BDNFM/M). Male BDNF+/+ and BDNFM/M littermates received sham or transient middle cerebral artery occlusion. We assessed motor function regularly for 6 months after stroke and then performed anatomical analyses. Despite reported negative association of the SNP with motor learning and acute deficits, we unexpectedly found that BDNFM/M mice displayed significantly enhanced motor/kinematic performance in the chronic phase of motor recovery, especially in ipsilesional hindlimb. The enhanced recovery was associated with significant increases in striatum volume, dendritic arbor, and elevated excitatory synaptic markers in the contralesional striatum. Transient inactivation of the contralateral striatum during recovery transiently abolished the enhanced function. This study showed an unexpected benefit of the BDNFVal66Met carriers for functional recovery, involving structural and molecular plasticity in the nonstroked hemisphere. Clinically, this study suggests a role for BDNF genotype in predicting stroke recovery and identifies a novel systems-level mechanism for enhanced motor recovery.
Endothelial injury and vascular reactivity in monocrotaline pulmonary hypertension.

We used awake, unsedated rats with indwelling cardiovascular catheters to study the role of endothelial injury and increased pulmonary vascular reactivity in the pathogenesis of monocrotaline (MC)-induced pulmonary hypertension. Hemodynamic findings were correlated with morphometric analyses of alterations in the vascular endothelium assessed by electron microscopy and of muscularization of pulmonary arteries assessed by light microscopy. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (200-250 g) were injected with MC (60 mg/kg) or with saline vehicle. The hemodynamic response to acute hypoxia (10% O2 for 10 min) was studied at 4, 8, and 12 days postinjection. Pulmonary artery pressures and resistances (Ppa, Rp) were similar in saline- and MC-injected rats at 4 and 8 days postinjection. In response to acute hypoxia, the rise in Ppa was also similar, but there was a slight but significant rise in Rp, (P less than 0.05) in the 8-day group, due largely to a decrease in cardiac output. At 12 days after injection, base-line Ppa was increased in MC-injected rats (P less than 0.01) and there was a heightened response to hypoxia assessed both as a significant increase in Ppa and Rp (P less than 0.05 each). Endothelial injury was observed as early as 4 days postinjection with pallor and swelling evident qualitatively and by a decreased proportion of microfilaments (P less than 0.05) assessed quantitatively. By light microscopy, extension of smooth muscle into normally nonmuscularized pulmonary arteries was evident by 8 days postinjection. By 12 days postinjection there was marked extension of smooth muscle present (P less than 0.01) with medial hypertrophy of muscular arteries. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A volatile-by-default JVM for server applications

A *memory consistency model* (or simply *memory model*) defines the possible values that a shared-memory read may return in a multithreaded programming language. Choosing a memory model involves an inherent performance-programmability tradeoff. The Java language has adopted a *relaxed* (or *weak*) memory model that is designed to admit most traditional compiler optimizations and obviate the need for hardware fences on most shared-memory accesses. The downside, however, is that programmers are exposed to a complex and unintuitive semantics and must carefully declare certain variables as `volatile` in order to enforce program orderings that are necessary for proper behavior. This paper proposes a simpler and stronger memory model for Java through a conceptually small change: *every* variable has `volatile` semantics by default, but the language allows a programmer to tag certain variables, methods, or classes as `relaxed` and provides the current Java semantics for these portions of code. This *volatile-by-default* semantics provides *sequential consistency* (SC) for all programs by default. At the same time, expert programmers retain the freedom to build performance-critical libraries that violate the SC semantics. At the outset, it is unclear if the `volatile`-by-default semantics is practical for Java, given the cost of memory fences on today's hardware platforms. The core contribution of this paper is to demonstrate, through comprehensive empirical evaluation, that the `volatile`-by-default semantics is arguably acceptable for a predominant use case for Java today -- server-side applications running on Intel x86 architectures. We present VBD-HotSpot, a modification to Oracle's widely used HotSpot JVM that implements the `volatile`-by-default semantics for x86. To our knowledge VBD-HotSpot is the first implementation of SC for Java in the context of a modern JVM. VBD-HotSpot incurs an average overhead versus the baseline HotSpot JVM of 28% for the Da Capo benchmarks, which is significant though perhaps less than commonly assumed. Further, VBD-HotSpot incurs average overheads of 12% and 19% respectively on standard benchmark suites for big-data analytics and machine learning in the widely used Spark framework.
Philanthropic Support of National Parks

Ostrom’s social-ecological systems (SES) framework infrequently has been applied to civil society research. But its focus on collective action may help explain why some national parks are more successful at attracting philanthropic resources to supplement stagnant public funding. We examine two types of charitable supporting organizations: “Friends of” Groups (FOGs), which typically emphasize fundraising, and Cooperating Associations (CAs), which typically emphasize visitor support. We identify their partnership patterns across more than 300 national park units. Our findings suggest that FOGs and CAs fill different niches. CAs are drawn to more popular parks or memorials, and FOGs are found in parks with smaller budgets or offering fewer activities. Actor characteristics play a secondary role in explaining nonprofit incidence. The holistic approach of the SES perspective demonstrates the importance of connecting resource systems to institutional settings and actor attributes.
Androgen and Estrogen Treatment, Alone or in Combination, Differentially Influences Bone Maturation and Hypothalamic Mechanisms that Time Puberty in the Male Rhesus Monkey (Macaca mulatta)

In higher primates, the mechanisms that govern the ontogeny of gonadotropin-releasing hormone pulse generator activity and that, therefore, dictate the timing of the onset of puberty remain intriguingly elusive. Groups of three infant agonadal male monkeys were treated with sex steroids [17β-estradiol (E2), testosterone (T), or dihydrotestosterone (DHT)] for the first year of life to advance bone age (BA). E2 and T resulted in a significant advancement of BA, and a pubertal BA of 130 wk was attained at a mean chronological age of 64 and 67 wk, respectively. In contrast, DHT failed to advance BA during treatment but stimulated linear growth. All animals exhibited a pubertal resurgence in LH secretion, but the timing of this developmental event did not differ between treatment and control groups (the mean for all animals was 117.7 ± 8.9 wk). Two of the three T-treated animals, however, displayed a pubertal LH resurgence at a remarkably young age (70 and 76 wk of age) that coincided with T withdrawal. During the period of steroid treatment, all three groups were significantly heavier than the controls. The rate of body weight gain was most rapid in the DHT-treated group. Steroid treatments also resulted in accelerated linear growth. Body weight gain and linear growth continued at the same rate as controls after withdrawal of treatment. These data indicate that attainment of a pubertal BA may be a necessary but not a sufficient factor to trigger the onset of puberty. The results not only are consistent with the view that androgen-induced skeletal maturation in males is mediated by estrogen receptor activity but also indicate that androgen receptor activity contributes to the pubertal growth spurt in males.
Threading a database of protein cores

We present an analysis of 10 blind predictions prepared for a recent conference, “Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction. ”1 The sequences of these proteins are not detectably similar to those of any protein in the structure database then available, but we attempted, by a threading method, to recognize similarity to known domain folds. Four of the 10 proteins, as we subsequently learned, do indeed show significant similarity to then‐known structures. For 2 of these proteins the predictions were accurate, in the sense that a similar structure was at or near the top of the list of threading scores, and the threading alignment agreed well with the corresponding structural alignment. For the best predicted model mean alignment error relative to the optimal structural alignment was 2.7 residues, arising entirely from small “register shifts” of strands or helices. In the analysis we attempt to identify factors responsible for these successes and failures. Since our threading method does not use gap penalties, we may readily distinguish between errors arising from our prior definition of the “cores” of known structures and errors arising from inherent limitations in the threading potential. It would appear from the results that successful substructure recognition depends most critically on accurate definition of the “fold” of a database protein. This definition must correctly delineate substructures that are, and are not, likely to be conserved during protein evolution. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Molecular Characterization of Copepod Photoreception

Copepod crustaceans are an abundant and ecologically significant group whose basic biology is guided by numerous visually guided behaviors. These behaviors are driven by copepod eyes, including naupliar eyes and Gicklhorn’s organs, which vary widely in structure and function among species. Yet little is known about the molecular aspects of copepod vision. In this study we present a general overview of the molecular aspects of copepod vision by identifying phototransduction genes from newly generated and publicly available RNA-sequencing data and assemblies from 12 taxonomically diverse copepod species. We identify a set of 10 expressed transcripts that serve as a set of target genes for future studies of copepod phototransduction. Our more detailed evolutionary analyses of the opsin gene responsible for forming visual pigments found that all of the copepod species investigated express two main groups of opsins: middle-wavelength-sensitive (MWS) opsins and pteropsins. Additionally, there is evidence from a few species (e.g., Calanus finmarchicus, Eurytemora affinis, Paracyclopina nana, and Lernaea cyprinacea) for the expression of two additional groups of opsins—the peropsins and rhodopsin 7 (Rh7) opsins—at low levels or distinct developmental stages. An ontogenetic analysis of opsin expression in Calanus finmarchicus found the expression of a single dominant MWS opsin, as well as evidence for differences in expression across development in some MWS, pteropsin, and Rh7 opsins, with expression peaking in early naupliar through early copepodite stages.
Predicting clinical instability of older patients in post‐acute care units: A nationwide cohort study

Although patients admitted to post‐acute care (PAC) units are usually clinically stable, unexpected medical conditions requiring acute ward readmissions still occur and can jeopardize the clinical effectiveness of PAC services. The main purpose of the present study was to evaluate predictive factors for clinical instability of patients in PAC units to improve the quality of PAC services.
Predictors of Heart Failure in Patients With Stable Coronary Artery Disease: A PEACE Study

Background—Heart failure (HF) is a disease commonly associated with coronary artery disease. Most risk models for HF development have focused on patients with acute myocardial infarction. The Prevention of Events with Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibition population enabled the development of a risk model to predict HF in patients with stable coronary artery disease and preserved ejection fraction. Methods and Results—In the 8290, Prevention of Events with Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibition patients without preexisting HF, new-onset HF hospitalizations, and fatal HF were assessed over a median follow-up of 4.8 years. Covariates were evaluated and maintained in the Cox regression multivariable model using backward selection if P<0.05. A risk score was developed and converted to an integer-based scoring system. Among the Prevention of Events with Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibition population (age, 64±8; female, 18%; prior myocardial infarction, 55%), there were 268 cases of fatal and nonfatal HF. Twelve characteristics were associated with increased risk of HF along with several baseline medications, including older age, history of hypertension, and diabetes. Randomization to trandolapril independently reduced the risk of HF. There was no interaction between trandolapril treatment and other risk factors for HF. The risk score (range, 0 to 21) demonstrated excellent discriminatory power (c-statistic 0.80). Risk of HF ranged from 1.75% in patients with a risk score of 0% to 33% in patients with risk score ≥16. Conclusion—Among patients with stable coronary artery disease and preserved ejection fraction, traditional and newer factors were independently associated with increased risk of HF. Trandolopril decreased the risk of HF in these patients with preserved ejection fraction.
A stereotaxic image-guided surgical robotic system for depth electrode insertion

This article constructs a surgical robotic system for the stereotactic insertion of the depth electrodes for stereoelectroencephalogram (SEEG). The purpose is to increase the efficiency of the stereotactic insertion of the electrodes. The registration method of this system is based on the noninvasive fiducial markers. After registration, the robotic system can locate all the preplanned electrode trajectories automatically. The validation of this proposed system has been performed by testing the time consumption of the system workflow and measuring the positioning accuracy on phantoms. From the result, we conclude that this surgical robotic system can assist surgeons in performing the stereotactic insertion of the depth electrodes accurately and efficiently.
Realization of Discrete Fourier Transform and Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform on One Single Multimode Interference Coupler

In this letter, we propose to realize optical discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) on one single multimode interference (MMI) coupler. In comparison to the previous MMI coupler-based DFT device, this device does not require any couplers or cascaded structures. The simulation results show that it can realize the DFT/IDFT precisely.
Translating human genetics into mouse: The impact of ultra‐rapid in vivo genome editing

Gene‐targeted mutant animals, such as knockout or knockin mice, have dramatically improved our understanding of the functions of genes in vivo and the genetic diversity that characterizes health and disease. However, the generation of targeted mice relies on gene targeting in embryonic stem (ES) cells, which is a time‐consuming, laborious, and expensive process. The recent groundbreaking development of several genome editing technologies has enabled the targeted alteration of almost any sequence in any cell or organism. These technologies have now been applied to mouse zygotes (in vivo genome editing), thereby providing new avenues for simple, convenient, and ultra‐rapid production of knockout or knockin mice without the need for ES cells. Here, we review recent achievements in the production of gene‐targeted mice by in vivo genome editing.
Psychological disidentification with the academic domain among ethnic minority adolescents in The Netherlands.

BACKGROUND Among ethnic minority group adolescents, experiences with discrimination and prejudice in school settings are thought to lead to a defensive detachment of the self from the school domain. That is, these adolescents may disengage their self-feelings from their academic performances causing the academic self to become a less important part of global self-worth. However, there is limited empirical evidence for this assumption and the existing research is on African American students. AIMS To examine among ethnic minority adolescents in the Netherlands the hypothesis that under conditions of perceived discrimination minority group members tend to psychologically disengage their self-feelings from educational performance. SAMPLES Study 1 was conducted among 161 Turkish students between 13 and 16 years of age. The sample in Study 2 consisted of 112 Turkish participants of 11 and 12 years of age. METHODS Two questionnaire studies were conducted and participants responded to questions on perceived academic performance, academic self-esteem, global self-worth and perceived discrimination in school. RESULTS In both studies, academic self-esteem mediated the relationship between perceived educational performance and feelings of global self-worth. More importantly, perceived discrimination in school moderated the relationship between academic self-esteem and global self-worth. Discrimination did not moderate the relationship between academic performance and academic self-esteem. CONCLUSION The results indicate that for ethnic minorities perceived discrimination in school can lead to psychological disidentification from the academic domain whereby global self-worth is less based on performances and competencies in the academic domain.