Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of hearing and aging on sentence-level time-gated word recognition.

PURPOSE Aging is known to influence temporal processing, but its relationship to speech perception has not been clearly defined. To examine listeners' use of contextual and phonetic information, the Revised Speech Perception in Noise test (R-SPIN) was used to develop a time-gated word (TGW) task. METHOD In Experiment 1, R-SPIN sentence lists were matched on context, target-word length, and median word segment length necessary for target recognition. In Experiment 2, TGW recognition was assessed in quiet and in noise among adults of various ages with normal hearing to moderate hearing loss. Linear regression models of the minimum word duration necessary for correct identification and identification failure rates were developed. Age and hearing thresholds were modeled as continuous predictors with corrections for correlations among multiple measurements of the same participants. RESULTS While aging and hearing loss both had significant impacts on task performance in the most adverse listening condition (low context, in noise), for most conditions, performance was limited primarily by hearing loss. CONCLUSION Whereas hearing loss was strongly related to target-word recognition, the effect of aging was only weakly related to task performance. These results have implications for the design and evaluation of studies of hearing and aging.
GPUfs: Integrating a file system with GPUs

As GPU hardware becomes increasingly general-purpose, it is quickly outgrowing the traditional, constrained GPU-as-coprocessor programming model. This article advocates for extending standard operating system services and abstractions to GPUs in order to facilitate program development and enable harmonious integration of GPUs in computing systems. As an example, we describe the design and implementation of GPUFs, a software layer which provides operating system support for accessing host files directly from GPU programs. GPUFs provides a POSIX-like API, exploits GPU parallelism for efficiency, and optimizes GPU file access by extending the host CPU's buffer cache into GPU memory. Our experiments, based on a set of real benchmarks adapted to use our file system, demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of the GPUFs approach. For example, a self-contained GPU program that searches for a set of strings throughout the Linux kernel source tree runs over seven times faster than on an eight-core CPU.
An Approach to Social Relationship Ranking on Internet-Based Social Platforms by Tempo-spatial Data Mining Using Location Prediction Technique

During the last decade, we have witnessed the prosperity of the Internet-based social platforms and mobile social applications such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Meanwhile, due to the popularity of mobile terminals such as smart phones and variety of PADs, it is feasible to obtain relatively accurate tempo-spatial data from mobile terminal holders when they visit and upload geo-tagged messages or pictures to Internet based social platform. Therefore, it is observed that the volume of tempo-spatial social data posted on social platforms keeps increasing. This brings us more opportunities to mine the semantic information according to the analysis on the tempo spatial social information collected from Internet-based social platforms. In this paper, we present an approach to social relationship ranking by mining the tempo-spatial social data. To deal with the sparsity of raw tempo-spatial social data, the location prediction technique is employed. According to the comparison between the social relationship ranking method with location prediction and its version without location prediction, it shows that the former outperforms the latter substantially. Finally, we make several helpful observations about the social relationship ranking method when location prediction technique is adopted.
The Role of Environmental Accounting in Organizational Change: An Exploration of Spanish Companies

Critique originated by earlier theorization of environmental accounting, as a way of building environmentalist visibility of business, led Gray et al., to study environmental accounting in the dynamics of organizational change. They concluded that environmental accounting is being used to “negotiate the conception of the environment” by companies that have not significantly changed. In order to investigate whether Gray et al.’s model and conclusions apply to a different cultural context, we have conducted nine case studies in Spain. We found that Spanish organizations are not truly changing their conventional perception of the environment, even in those cases where generalized structural and organizational changes are taking place. Moreover, the use of environmental accounting is coupled with an attempt to negotiate and control the environmental agenda.
Pictorial Instrument for Children and Adolescents (PICA-III-R).

OBJECTIVE The Pictorial Instrument for Children and Adolescents (PICA-III-R) is presented as part of a comprehensive review of the tools used to diagnose psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. METHOD The PICA-III-R's development, content, initial psychometric properties, and directions for use are described. RESULTS The PICA-III-R assesses all DSM-III-R Axis I psychiatric disorders in children aged 6 to 16 years, categorically (diagnosis present or absent) and dimensionally (range of severity). It comprises 137 pictures organized in modules that cover 5 diagnostic categories, including disorders of anxiety, mood, psychosis, disruptive behavior, and substance abuse. Its initial psychometric properties are promising, with good internal consistency, significant discriminative power for diagnoses, and sensitivity to changes. CONCLUSIONS Despite great interest expressed by child and adolescent psychiatrists, further testing has not been possible for practical reasons unrelated to the scientific importance of such work. Although it needs to be modified to follow DSM-IV criteria, the PICA-III-R can be of significant help to child and adolescent psychiatrists, for clinical as well as research diagnostic purposes. In addition, it can be used for the assessment of non-English-speaking or hearing/speech-impaired children.
Image sensor noise profiling by voting based curve fitting

The output quality of an image filter for reducing noise without damaging the underlying signal, strongly depends on the accuracy of the noise model in characterizing the noise introduced by the acquisition device. In this paper we provide a solution for characterizing signal dependent noise injected at shot time by the image sensor. Different fitting models describing the behavior of noise samples are analyzed, with the aim of finding a model that offers the most accurate coverage of the sensor noise under any of its operating conditions. The noise fitting equation minimizing the residual error is then identified. Moreover, a novel algorithm able to obtain the noise profile of a generic image sensor without the need of a controlled environment is proposed. Starting from a set of heterogeneous CFA images, by using a voting based estimator, the parameters of the noise model are estimated.
Practical Attack Graph Generation for Network Defense

Attack graphs are a valuable tool to network defenders, illustrating paths an attacker can use to gain access to a targeted network. Defenders can then focus their efforts on patching the vulnerabilities and configuration errors that allow the attackers the greatest amount of access. We have created a new type of attack graph, the multiple-prerequisite graph, that scales nearly linearly as the size of a typical network increases. We have built a prototype system using this graph type. The prototype uses readily available source data to automatically compute network reachability, classify vulnerabilities, build the graph, and recommend actions to improve network security. We have tested the prototype on an operational network with over 250 hosts, where it helped to discover a previously unknown configuration error. It has processed complex simulated networks with over 50,000 hosts in under four minutes
Empowered victims? Women’s contradictory positions in the discourse of violence prevention

Violence against women is a salient outcome of systemic gender inequality across the globe. In the US, the societal discourse of violence prevention simultaneously frames women in positions of victimhood and of empowerment. This study investigates the ways women draw upon these contradictory constructions in their meaning-making and practices related to violence prevention. Twenty women aged 18–62 discussed their experiences of risk and safety around an urban university campus in an in-depth interview. Women’s selective appropriation of victim and empowerment scripts produced multiple and tension-filled constructions of risk, in ways inflected by gender, ‘race,’ class, sexuality, and age. Themes included the endorsement of a “safety checklist” that functioned to construct women’s risk as unmanageable and victimhood as inevitable; complex generational differences in women’s willingness to identify fears of gendered bodily harm as legitimate and in the ways they did so; and the creation and maintenance of imagined communities of safety and danger, implicitly inflected by ‘race’ and class.
The HrpB–HrpA two‐partner secretion system is essential for intracellular survival of Neisseria meningitidis

In this study we used HeLa cells to investigate the role of the HrpB–HrpA two‐partner secretion (TPS) system in the meningococcal infection cycle. Although there is evidence that several pathogenic microorganisms may use TPS systems to colonize epithelial surfaces, the meningococcal HrpB–HrpA TPS system was not primarily involved in adhesion to or invasion of HeLa cells. Instead, this system was essential for intracellular survival and escape from infected cells. Gentamicin protection assays, immunofluorescence and transmission electron microscopy analyses demonstrated that, in contrast to the wild‐type strain, HrpB–HrpA‐deficient mutants were primarily confined to late endocytic vacuoles and trapped in HeLa cells. Haemolytic tests using human erythrocytes suggested that the secreted HrpA proteins could act as manganese‐dependent lysins directly involved in mediating vacuole escape. In addition, we demonstrated that escape of wild‐type meningococci from infected cells required the use of an intact tubulin cytoskeleton and that the hrpB–hrpA genes, which are absent in other Neisseria spp. , were upregulated during infection.
Impact of combining quality measures on biometric sample matching

Biometric matching involves a comparison of two biometric data samples. In practical applications, one or both of the samples may be of degraded quality, in respect to the nominal quality of similar samples acquired in controlled conditions. It has been shown in prior art that in such situations, the integration of quality information into the process of bio-metric matching can lead to significantly improved classification performance of the biometric matcher. To facilitate such an integration, quality measures originating from both compared biometric samples are usually combined into one quality score. In this paper, we analyze the merit of doing so. We revisit the problem from a pattern classification perspective, and show that using individual quality measures as separate classification features frequently leads to a superior performance of a biometric system in comparison with the system in which quality measures are mapped into one quality score. We provide experimental support of this claim using synthetic data, as well as real biometric database, on the examples of face, fingerprint and multi-modal matching.
Detection and Classification of Moving Object for Smart Vision Sensor

Conventional surveillance system requires human power to monitor and thus not applicable for a long hour monitoring. An automated method is proposed here, an integration of a moving object detection and recognition. First, the moving object is detected and segmented by using selectiveness adaptive background subtraction technique followed by noise and shadow removal algorithm for removing disturbances. Then, standardize moment invariant is employed to extract the features for each moving blobs. To recognize these blobs, the calculated moment values are fed to a neural network module that is equipped with trained extracted moment values for human and vehicle silhouettes. The results of the experiments showed a satisfied performance with the proposed approach
Detection of hepatitis A virus RNA in oyster meat

Detection of low concentrations of viruses in shellfish is possible with nucleic acid amplification by PCR. Hepatitis A virus (HAV) has been detected in oyster meat by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR). We developed a method to identify HAV RNA by RT-PCR of total RNA extracted from oyster meat contaminated by adsorption, bioaccumulation, or injection. With dot blot hybridization detection of amplicons from the RT-PCR, rapid screening of a large number of samples is feasible. As few as 8 PFU of HAV/g of oyster meat can be detected.
Spatial and temporal changes in promoter activity of the astrocyte glutamate transporter GLT1 following traumatic spinal cord injury

After traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI), there is an opportunity for preserving function by attenuating secondary cell loss. Astrocytes play crucial roles in the adult CNS and are responsible for the vast majority of glutamate buffering, potentially preventing excitotoxic loss of neurons and oligodendrocytes. We examined spatial and temporal changes in gene expression of the major astrocyte glutamate transporter GLT1 following moderate thoracic contusion SCI using transgenic BAC‐GLT1‐eGFP promoter reporter mice. In dorsal column white matter, total intensity of GLT1‐eGFP expression per region was significantly reduced following SCI at both lesion epicenter and at rostral and caudal areas where no tissue loss occurred. This regional decrease in GLT1 expression was due to significant loss of GLT1‐eGFP+ cells, partially accounted for by apoptosis of eGFP+/GFAP+ astrocytes in both white and gray matter. There were also decreased numbers of GLT1‐eGFP‐expressing cells in multiple gray matter regions following injury; nevertheless, there was sustained or even increased regional GLT1‐eGFP expression in gray matter as a result of up‐regulation in astrocytes that continued to express GLT1‐eGFP. Although there were increased numbers of GFAP+ cells both at the lesion site and in surrounding intact spinal cord following SCI, the majority of proliferating Ki67+/GFAP+ astrocytes did not express GLT1‐eGFP. These findings demonstrate that spatial and temporal alterations in GLT1 expression observed after SCI result from both astrocyte death and gene expression changes in surviving astrocytes. Results also suggest that following SCI a significant portion of astrocytes lacks GLT1 expression, possibly compromising the important role of astrocytes in glutamate homeostasis. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Biomechanical basis of choosing the rational mass and its distribution throughout the lower limb prosthesis segments.

A solution for finding a rational distribution of mass in lower limb prostheses has been considered based on the formal premise favoring the identification of the movements of a prosthetic and an intact leg. For the purpose of simplicity, and analysis has been carried out for only the swing phase, the data about the properties of moving segments being determined without integrating differential equations of motion. At the formation of equations of motion, an assumption that body segments are absolutely rigid and have constant moments of inertia and locations of the center of mass was taken into consideration. Based on independent proportions formed of combinations of the coefficients of equations of motion, a system of three equations has been formulated and solved in relation to the mass values sought: a static radius and a radius of inertia of the prosthesis complex link "shin + foot + footwear. " From the six unknowns included in the equations, three values are chosen as mean values determined empirically. The solution of obtained equations results in the following conclusions: the parameters of the mass distribution in a "shin + foot + footwear" complex link depend on the amputation level and the patient's mass. These data, reported in appropriate tables, may be used in prosthetics practice. Recommendations have also been presented with regard to a prosthesic mass relative to the age of the person with amputation and a method of a balancing of prostheses aimed at the achievement of a rational distribution of masses. The analysis of obtained equations has also allowed us to make recommendations about the artificial foot mass. It has been concluded that a reasonable desire to reduce the mass of the prosthetic segments is not an end in itself, but is only the means of a rational distribution by means of balancing. It has been proved that rational prosthetic fitting results in decreased energy costs and overloads are decreased and a normalized gait.
Phonological short-term store and sentence processing

Abstract The grammatical and semantic processing of auditorily presented sentences and passages of prose was investigated in a left brain-damaged patient (PV), who has a reduced auditory memory span, interpreted in terms of a selective deficit of the phonological short-term store component of working memory. In the case of short sentences the patient's performance is well within the normal range, whether tested by sentence-picture matching or by the detection of syntactic or semantic anomalies. She retains an intact capacity to detect semantic anomalies whether tested using short sentences, long sentences, or prose passages. She retains some capacity for detecting syntactic anomalies even in long sentences, provided these are tested under conditions where such mismatches are very frequent; when they are embedded in more varied material, however, her performance deteriorates. Finally, when the syntactic anomaly involves an anaphoric mismatch across sentences, her performance drops to chance level. These re.
A CAD System for the Acquisition and Classification of Breast TMA in Pathology

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and the fifth leading cause of death in women over 40. Therefore, prompt diagnostic and treatment is essential. In this work a TMA Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system has been implemented to provide support to pathologists in their daily work. For that purpose, the tool covers each and every process from the TMA core image acquisition to their individual classification. The first process includes: tissue core location, segmentation and rigid registration of digital microscopic images acquired at different magnifications (5x, 10x, 20x, 20x and 40x) from different devices. The classification process allows performing the core classification selecting different types of color models, texture descriptors and classifiers. Finally, the cores are classified into three categories: malignant, doubtful and benign.
Self-perceptions following social interaction.

Recent research has indicated that a perceiver's expectancies about a target person can lead that perceiver to channel social interaction with the target in such a way that the target person's behavioral response may confirm the original expectancy, thus producing a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is suggested that once the target person behaves, the target may undergo a self-perception process and internalize the very disposition that the perceiver expected him or her to possess. Such a change in the target person's self-concept is apt to affect his or her behavior in future and different situations not involving the original perceiver. To test this hypothesis, subjects first participated in an initial interaction with the experimenter, which purposefully was biased to produce either introverted or extraverted behavior on the part of the target subject. On both a subsequent self-description measure and on a variety of behavioral measures involving a subsequent interaction with a confederate, the subjects displayed evidence of having internalized the dispositions implied by their earlier responses during this initial interaction. The implications of this rinding for the self-fulfilling prophecy are discussed.
Turbo‐coded APSK modulations design for satellite broadband communications

This paper investigates the design of power and spectrally efficient coded modulations based on amplitude phase shift keying (APSK) modulation with application to satellite broadband communications. APSK represents an attractive modulation format for digital transmission over nonlinear satellite channels due to its power and spectral efficiency combined with its inherent robustness against nonlinear distortion. For these reasons APSK has been very recently introduced in the new standard for satellite Digital Video Broadcasting named DVB‐S2. Assuming an ideal rectangular transmission pulse, for which no nonlinear inter‐symbol interference is present and perfect pre‐compensation of the nonlinearity, we optimize the APSK constellation. In addition to the minimum distance criterion, we introduce a new optimization based on the mutual information; this new method generates an optimum constellation for each spectral efficiency. To achieve power efficiency jointly with low bit error rate (BER) floor we adopt a powerful binary serially concatenated turbo‐code coupled with optimal APSK modulations through bit‐interleaved coded modulation. We derive tight approximations on the maximum‐likelihood decoding error probability, and results are compared with computer simulations. The proposed coded modulation scheme is shown to provide a considerable performance advantage compared to current standards for satellite multimedia and broadcasting systems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Stage-oriented Analysis on Factors Impacting Bug Fixing Time

The timely fixing of bugs is important to ensure software quality. In Open Source Software (OSS) development, behaviors of stakeholders impact the bug fixing process, especially the different stages respectively. However, most of the existing studies on impact factors of bug fixing time usually treat bug fixing process as a whole, while neglecting the particularity at its different stages. Ignoring the detail of different stages cannot let us understand why the fixing time is longer or shorter. In this paper, we aimed at investigating whether the factors have different impacts on the time of different stages and the whole process. Three stages of the whole fixing process were formalized, and twenty-four factors were defined and extracted from three aspects: bug reports, their associated source code and code changes. An empirical study based on two OSS projects, Eclipse JDT Core and Linux Kernel, was conducted for the investigation. The results of our study provide a very positive validation that the influence of factors on bug fixing time is stage related, rather than for the whole process. Our results can help developers better understand influences of factors on the bug fixing process, and thus provide opportunities to improve their process effectively.