Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Segmental Bayesian Information Criterion and Its Applications to Speaker Diarization

This paper discusses the use of the BIC with respect to speaker diarization, i.e., the problem of assigning the observation vectors of an audio file to a set of speakers of unknown cardinality. Our primary goals are to examine the two dominant approaches of the BIC, namely the global and the local and combine the strengths of the two variants into one intuitive criterion, the segmental-BIC. We then consider the asymptotic behavior of the segmental-BIC, when dealing with models that are highly misspecified, as the ones commonly used in the speaker diarization task. Our main result is a modified version of the BIC, which significantly outperforms the current variants over the entire range of operating points, and achieves performance close to those of highly computationally demanding algorithms.
Prediction of novel drug target Involved in psychosis in AlzheimerDisease: A Computational Network study

Alzheimer (AD) disease is the most frequent form of dementia. Several structural and functional genomic factors are strongly associated with AD candidate genes, including age of onset, cognitive decline and amyloid depositions. Serotonin (5- TH) receptors play an important role in psychosis in AD with cognitive impairment. This study is based on insilco identification and prioritization of the differentially expressed genes of the genetic network involved in AD. Fourteen 5-HT candidate genes interaction network associated with AD was generated using agilent literature search cytoscape plugin. The organic layout shows cross-interaction between the genes set. On merging the genetic network with gene expression profile data, notable changes in interaction patterns were observed. These changes revealed 5-HTR2A, 5-HTR2C and 5-HTR4 as important genes in AD. Further refinement with Enrichment Map indicated 5-HTR2C as novel candidate gene that showed high functional significance in correlation to Alzheimer's disease. Our result will be a crucial factor for better understanding of the genetic pathways involved in causing psychosis in AD and will form a future landmark in developing target based drug therapies against this disease
Impact of viability and scar tissue on response to cardiac resynchronization therapy in ischaemic heart failure patients.

AIMS At present, 20-30% of patients do not respond to cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). In this study, the relation between the extent of viable myocardium and scar tissue vs. response to CRT was evaluated. In addition, the presence of scar tissue in the left ventricular (LV) lead position was specifically related to response to CRT. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 51 consecutive patients with ischaemic heart failure and substantial LV dyssynchrony undergoing CRT were included. All patients underwent gated SPECT before CRT implantation to determine the extent of scar tissue and viable myocardium. Clinical and echocardiographic parameters were assessed at baseline and after 6 months of CRT. The results demonstrated direct relations between the response to CRT and the extent of viable myocardium and scar tissue. In addition, the 15 patients (29%) with transmural scar tissue (< 50% tracer activity) in the region of the LV pacing lead showed no improvement after 6 months of CRT. CONCLUSION The extent of scar tissue and viable myocardium were directly related to the response to CRT. Furthermore, scar tissue in the LV pacing lead region may prohibit response to CRT. Evaluation for viability and scar tissue may be considered in the selection process for CRT.
Kernel principal component analysis for texture classification

Kernel principal component analysis (PCA) has recently been proposed as a nonlinear extension of PCA. The basic idea is to first map the input space into a feature space via a nonlinear map and then compute the principal components in that feature space. This letter illustrates the potential of kernel PCA for texture classification. Accordingly, supervised texture classification was performed using kernel PCA for texture feature extraction. By adopting a polynomial kernel, the principal components were computed within the product space of the input pixels making up the texture patterns, thereby producing a good performance.
Discovery of a Hard X-Ray Source, SAX J0635+0533, in the Error Box of the Gamma-Ray Source 2EG 0635+0521

We have discovered an X-ray source, SAX J0635+0533, with a hard spectrum within the error box of the GeV gamma-ray source in Monoceros, 2EG J0635+0521. The unabsorbed flux from the source is 1.2 × 10-11 ergs cm-2 s-1 in the 2-10 keV band. The X-ray spectrum is consistent with a simple power-law model with absorption. The photon index is 1.50 ± 0.08, and we detect emission out to 40 keV. Optical observations identify a counterpart with a V magnitude of 12.8. The counterpart has broad emission lines and the colors of an early B-type star. If the identification of the X-ray/optical source with the gamma-ray source is correct, then the source would be a gamma-ray-emitting X-ray binary.
AN ALGORITHM FOR DETECTING AND LABELING DRUM EVENTS IN POLYPHONIC MUSIC

This document describes an algorithm that tries to locate and label drum events in polyphonic musical audio. The three main parts of the algorithm are described in detail and an overview of the developed applications is given. Finally, the results of an evaluation performed in the context of the ISMIR2005 MIREX “contest” [1] are reported.
An Investigation of Adaptive Signal Processing Approaches to Active Combustion Control

Abstract : There has been significant progress made in understanding dynamic models and control system designs for active control of thermoacoustic instabilities. During the past several years, there has been an increasing trend away from mostly empirical or experimentally-based active combustion control (ACC) methods in exchange for control systems that rely on more accurate understanding of the dynamic processes involved in the thermoacoustic limit cycling response. Early demonstrations of phase-shifting ACC designs (Gutmark et al., 1993; McManus et al., 1990) relied simply on a measurement of the acoustic pressure and actuation of the unsteady heat release after appropriate delay (i.e. phase shift) relative to the measured pressure signal. The phase-shifting controllers proved to be effective in many situations but were plagued by inadequacy knowledge of how to predict the required phase, and gain, of the controller for varying operating conditions of the combustor. These problems naturally led to investigations of adaptive control methods.
Univalent Baker domains and boundary of deformations

For $f$ an entire transcendental map with a univalent Baker domain $U$ of hyperbolic type I, we study pinching deformations in $U$, the support of this deformation being certain laminations in the grand orbit of $U$. We show that pinching along a lamination that contains the geodesic $\lambda_{\infty}$ (See Section 3.1) does not converges. However, pinching at a lamination that does not contains such $\lambda_{\infty}$, converges and converges to a unique map $F$ if: the Julia set of $f$, $J(f)$ is connected, the postcritical set of $f$ is a positive (plane) distance away from $J(f)$, and it is thin at $\infty$. We show that $F$ has a simply connected wandering domain that stays away from the postcritical set. We interpret these results in terms of the Teichm\"uller space of $f$, $Teich(f)$, included in $M_{f}$ the marked space of topologically equivalent maps to $f$.
Application of Search Algorithms for Model Based Regression Testing

UML models have gained their significance as reported in the literature. The use of a model to describe the behavior of a system is a proven and major advantage to test. With the help of Model Based Testing (MBT), it is possible to automatically generate test cases. When MBT is applied on large industrial systems, there is problem to sampling the test cases from the suit of entire test because it is difficult to execute the huge number of test cases being generated. The motivation of this study is to design a multi objective genetic algorithm based test case selection technique which can select the most appropriate subset of test cases. NSGA (Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm) is used as an optimization algorithm and its fitness function is improved for selecting test cases from the dataset. It is concluded that there is a room to improve the performance of NSGA algorithm by means of tailoring its respective fitness function.
The importance of nest cleaning in egg rejection behaviour of great reed warblers Acrocephalus arundinaceus

We tested the importance of nest cleaning in egg rejection behaviour of the great reed warbler Acrocephalus arundinaceus in a highly parasitised population in which about 64% of nests are parasitised by the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus. Three types of objects of the same weight, texture and colour but with different shapes (dummy cuckoo eggs, sticks and disks) were placed into great reed warbler nests. We investigated the response of hosts in two stages of breeding: pre-incubation when the risk of brood parasitism is high, and during incubation when the risk of parasitism is low. The dummy cuckoo eggs were rejected less often than the other objects in both breeding stages, although we did not find any difference in the frequency of rejection between pre-incubation and incubation. We integrate these results into current views on the evolution of host–parasite interactions, and propose a hierarchical concept to understand egg rejection behaviour: (1) hosts reject all non-egg shaped objects as a general cleaning mechanism; (2) adaptations for the hosts’ ability to recognise their own eggs allows them to distinguish these eggs from similar objects and parasitic eggs.
On the feasibility of frequency reuse and spatial occupation in wireless device-to-device networks

Advanced, dynamic spectrum management techniques are needed for frequency reuse in tiered and heterogeneous wireless networks. For reuse of transmission resources, feasibility in a power control sense is of prime interest. In this paper, it is shown that by transforming the signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) to a power fraction, feasibility of resource reuse can be identified. The influence of maximum transmission powers and noise on feasibility are evaluated. It is motivated that a degree of spatial occupation can be defined with power fractions and that infeasibility occurs when the overall required occupation exceeds a finite value. Based on these findings, a system model is presented that can be used to identify communication pairs for feasible resource reuse.
Construction Principle and Torque Solution of the Translational Meshing Motor

A new type of actuator, named translational meshing motor was developed. The aim of this research is to develop a new motor which integrates the reduction gear into the drive. Compared with traditional motors, the noticeable features of this motor are short active length, high respond speed, stability at low speed, big output torque. The prototype is designed to run at 204 step/rev which is found to star-up with the load of 0.42 Nm under the current of 1.5A(under 2 rpm) and reach 20 rpm with the voltage of 12 V. In this paper, the construction principle and mechanism characteristics of this new motor are introduced. The quasi-linear model is founded and the star-up torque of the motor is calculated. Through the prototype experiments, the mathematic model is proved comparatively precise, and the motor is testified to be a direct drive motor which can be applied to robot joint.
A robust control approach to formation control

This paper considers formation control for multiagent systems (vehicles, robots, satellites, etc.) and is based on the work of Fax and Murray [1], which provides a link between graph theory and the formation control problem for a given communication topology. We propose a distributed controller H∞ and μ synthesis techniques that can guarantee the stability of the multi-agent system for any number of agents and any communication topology. Two examples illustrate the proposed method.
Interoperability and testing in broadband satellite networks

By combining satellite and terrestrial (wireless) technologies, full coverage and high capacity can be achieved for true broadband services. The interoperability of such diverse networks imposes a number of challenges regarding service provision and management. The end-to-end quality of service (QoS) management implies that features such as service scalability between different networks have to be available. On the other hand, wireless QoS capabilities provide a promising diversity for a wide range of seamless applications. However, differences in QoS properties between both the wired and the wireless applications have a considerable effect on the quality level as well as platform and application dimensions of network interoperability. This paper examines the so-called interoperability requirements in integrated uses of satellite communication technology together with terrestrial (wireless) network technology for seamless delivery of broadband services (using ISABEL and CLIX e-learning applications) in rural and remote areas. This is demonstrated with an example of two educational, real-time and recorded, eLearning services.
Design of a DSP-based biaxial solar tracking system

This paper focuses on design a digital signal processor based (DSP-based) biaxial solar tracking system to control the voltage and current to track the maximum power point. The efficiency of the solar tracker is affected by the solar elevation and azimuth angles. Therefore, the principle of passive tracking system is that the rotation angle and tilt angle of the solar tracker is controlled according to the entrained different longitude, latitude, and time. In this paper, the PD-like fuzzy controller is designed to control the motor to complete the maximum poser point tracking (MPPT). Finally, the different methods are implemented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method PD-like fuzzy controller with the developed solar tracking system.
A Novel Tri-Factor Mutual Authentication with Biometrics for Wireless Body Sensor Networks in Healthcare Applications

Abstract User authentication, as a fundamental security protocol, has been addressed with more concerns recently. Unlike normal authentication processes invoked by a user to access the network, biosensors with healthcare applications normally need to be validated automatically, followed by data transmission to the remote server without any explicit request. Hence, implied authentication procedure involved in such application scenarios shall be addressed. In this paper, a novel tri-factor user authentication protocol with mutual access is proposed for the body sensor networks (BSN) in healthcare application. It is demonstrated that the proposed protocol has its advantages over the existing two-factor user authentication schemes.
Analysis of Frequent Item set Mining on Variant Datasets

Association rule mining is the process of discovering relationships among the data items in large database. It is one of the most important problems in the field of data mining. Finding frequent itemsets is one of the most computationally expensive tasks in association rule mining. The classical frequent itemset mining approaches mine the frequent itemsets from the database where presence of an item in a transaction is certain. Frequent itemset mining under uncertain data model is a new area of research. In this case the presence of an item is given by some likelihood measure. In this thesis, we have developed a hyper structure based pattern growth method for frequent itemset mining from uncertain data. We have also developed a maximal clique based candidate pruning method for uncertain data. We have implemented and analyzed the performance of the well known algorithms for frequent itemset mining for both binary and uncertain data model. Our empirical results show that in case of dense binary datasets, FP-growth outperforms all other algorithms, whereas in case of sparse data H-mine outperforms other algorithms.
Result merging in meta-search engine using genetic algorithm

In the recent years, the internet has become one of the most important resource of information. Whenever a user poses a query to the Meta-search engine then a large number of documents are retrieved from underlying search engines, but providing the rank list of relevant documents with respect to the user query is one of the most challenging tasks for any Meta-search engine. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for merging the results of retrieved documents from underlying search engines. The proposed algorithm makes use of genetic algorithm to find the single rank list of retrieved documents for the user query. The results show that the retrieved documents of rank list are more comprehensive and relevant. The results also motivate to explore and optimize the information retrieval in Meta-search engines.
Symmetric Complementation

This paper introduces a class of 1 player games of perfect information, which we call complementing games; the player is allowed moves which complement the value of successive plays. A complementing game is symmetric if all noncomplement moves are reversible (i.e., form a symmetric relation). These games are naturally related to a class of machines we call synznetric oomplementing machines. Symmetric nondeterministic machines were studied in [Lewis and Papadimitriou, 80]; they are identical to our symmetric complementing machines with complement moves allowed only on termination. (A companion paper to appear describes the computational complexity of symmetric complementing and alternating machines.) Of particular interest is the complexity class ~,CSYMLOG, which contains the outcome problem of symmetric complementing games with constant complement bound with game positions encoded in log space, and next move relations computable in log space. We show that the decision problem for a restricted quantified Boolean logic ~,QBFG is complete in ~,CSYMLOG. We also show that ~,CSYMLOG contains many well-known and common combinatorial problems:
New insights into short-term synaptic facilitation at the frog neuromuscular

25 26 Short-term synaptic facilitation occurs during high frequency stimulation, is known to be dependent on 27 presynaptic calcium ions, and persists for tens of milliseconds after a presynaptic action potential. We 28 have used the frog neuromuscular junction as a model synapse for both experimental and computer 29 simulation studies aimed at testing various mechanistic hypotheses proposed to underlie short-term 30 synaptic facilitation. Building off our recently reported excess-calcium-binding-site model of synaptic 31 vesicle release at the frog neuromuscular junction (Dittrich et al., 2013), we have investigated several 32 mechanisms of short-term facilitation at the frog neuromuscular junction. Our studies place constraints 33 on previously proposed facilitation mechanisms, and conclude that the presence of a second class of 34 calcium sensor proteins distinct from synaptotagmin, can explain known properties of facilitation 35 observed at the frog neuromuscular junction. We were further able to identify a novel facilitation 36 mechanism, which relied on the persistent binding of calcium bound synaptotagmin molecules to lipids 37 of the presynaptic membrane. In a real physiological context, both mechanisms identified in our study 38 (and perhaps others) may act simultaneously to cause the experimentally observed facilitation. In 39 summary, using a combination of computer simulations and physiological recordings, we have 40 developed a stochastic computer model of synaptic transmission at the frog neuromuscular junction, 41 which sheds light on the facilitation mechanisms in this model synapse. 42 43 44
Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics: Transforming Political Structures into Just Institutions through the Critical Appropriation of Political Power

In this paper, I aim to show that the critical appropriation of political power can be a potential tool in transforming political structures into just institutions. To achieve this aim, I employ Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols because in his different political essays, he consistently regards political power as akin to a symbol. Thus, for him, the critical appropriation of political power requires a hermeneutical procedure. And so in my discussion, I devote one section for Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols, one for his thoughts on political power, and another one for the critical appropriation of political power through the hermeneutics of symbols. To put Ricoeur’s political and hermeneutical thoughts in a better light, I introduce these sections with a separate section on his philosophical anthropology. In my conclusion, I affirm that transforming political structures into just institutions is very much possible through the critical appropriation of political power. It is such a potential tool in effecting these transformations because the critical appropriation of political power involves a hermeneutical procedure that follows a three-step process of reflection. And reflection, which makes way for the critical appropriation of political power, is what ensures that power rests only in the hands of those who are more likely to advance the common good, resulting into a greater possibility for the transformation of political structures into just institutions.
Epigenetic intervention with a BET inhibitor ameliorates acute retinal ganglion cell death in mice

Purpose The bromo and extraterminal (BET) epigenetic “reader” family is becoming an appealing new therapeutic target for several common diseases, yet little is known of its role in retinal neurodegeneration. We explored the potential of BET inhibition in the protection of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). Methods To test the therapeutic effect of JQ1, an inhibitor highly selective for the BET family of proteins, we used an acute RGC damage model induced by N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) excitotoxicity. Adult C57BL/6 mice received an intravitreal injection of NMDA with (or without) JQ1 in one eye and vehicle control in the contralateral eye; RGC loss was assessed on retinal sections and whole mounts. Gene expression and apoptosis were analyzed by quantitative real time (RT)-PCR and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL), respectively. For counting RGCs, immunostaining of the marker protein BRN3A was performed on whole mounts. Results NMDA treatment eliminated RGCs (day 7 and day 14 post injection) and diminished the expression (mRNAs) of RGC-selective genes, including Thy1, Nrn1, Sncg, and Nfl (day 3 and day 7). In contrast, co-injection with JQ1 maintained the number and gene expression of RGCs at ~2 fold of the control (NMDA only, no JQ1), and it decreased NMDA-induced TUNEL-positive cells in the RGC layer by 35%. While NMDA treatment dramatically upregulated mRNAs of inflammatory cytokines (TNFα, IL-1β, MCP-1, RANTES) in retinal homogenates, co-injection with JQ1 suppressed their upregulation by ~50%. Conclusions Intravitreal injection of a BET inhibitor (JQ1) ameliorates NMDA-induced RGC death, revealing the RGC-protective potential of pharmacological blockage of the BET family. This new strategy of epigenetic intervention may be extended to other retinal degenerative conditions.