Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acoustic-labial Speaker Verication 1

This paper describes a multimodal approach for speaker verication. The system consists o f t wo c l a ssiers, one using visual features and the other using acoustic features. A lip tracker is used to extract visual information from the speaking face which provides shape and intensity features. We d e s c r ibe an approach for normalizing and mapping dierent modalities onto a common conndence interval. We also descri b e a n o vel method for integrating the scores of multiple classiers. Veriication experiments are reported for the individual modalities and for t he combined classi-er. The performance of the integrated system outperformed each subsystem and reduced the false acceptance rate of the acoustic subsystem from 2.3% to 0.5%. 1 This work has been performed within the framework of the M2VTS (Multi Modal Veriication for Teleservices and Security applications) project, granted by t he
Embryo as an active granular fluid: stress-coordinated cellular constriction chains

Mechanical stress plays an intricate role in gene expression in individual cells and sculpting of developing tissues. However, systematic methods of studying how mechanical stress and feedback help to harmonize cellular activities within a tissue have yet to be developed. Motivated by our observation of the cellular constriction chains (CCCs) during the initial phase of ventral furrow formation in the Drosophila melanogaster embryo, we propose an active granular fluid (AGF) model that provides valuable insights into cellular coordination in the apical constriction process. In our model, cells are treated as circular particles connected by a predefined force network, and they undergo a random constriction process in which the particle constriction probability P is a function of the stress exerted on the particle by its neighbors. We find that when P favors tensile stress, constricted particles tend to form chain-like structures. In contrast, constricted particles tend to form compact clusters when P favors compression. A remarkable similarity of constricted-particle chains and CCCs observed in vivo provides indirect evidence that tensile-stress feedback coordinates the apical constriction activity. Our particle-based AGF model will be useful in analyzing mechanical feedback effects in a wide variety of morphogenesis and organogenesis phenomena.
Pricing strategy and revenue models:A multiple case study from the IT service sector in Finland

Objectives of the Study The goal of this research is to study the two managerially and academically important issues of 1) the level of value based pricing used in SMEs and 2) pricing strategy as a tool for partnerships. Academic background and methodology In one of the staple articles on the issue of value-based pricing, Hinterhuber explains that although the effect of pricing on profitability is quite clear, managers often see pricing as a zero sum game, where the company’s gain comes only at the customer’s expense. (2004) Managers often do not pursue value pricing because they perceive customers as quite price sensitive. However, in their research, Avila and Dodds found that purchasing managers ranked price as the least important criteria in the decision making process (1993). Although the literature has attempted to describe pricing as a tool for partnerships (Voeth & Herbst, 2006; Johnston & Lawrence, 1988; Porrini, 2006), there has been no attempt to explain what aspects of pricing and revenue strategies make the most significant contribution to the success of partnerships. Sainio and Marjakoski describe value based pricing and revenue logic as key determinants of business models, but do not make the connection between these inputs and the goal of building partnerships (2009). We addressed this gap in the literature by proposing a framework to assess pricing as a tool for partnerships based on these two dimensions: 1) value versus market pricing and 2) on-going versus one-time revenue models. The multiple case study method employed in this study helped to overcome the knowledge gap of novel pricing concepts by providing clarification of concepts to the interviewees. The interviews were structured which encouraged comparability between the cases. The integrity of the interview data was ensured by conducting all interviews within a short time frame, producing full transcripts of interviewee comments, and translating the complete texts. Findings and conclusions The proposed framework was tested and can be used as a strategic tool to build deeper partnerships with clients. The dimensions used in the framework were supported by the stated goals of the interviewees, who each hoped to build and maintain partnerships with their clients.
Preoxygenation for tracheal intubation in critically ill patients: one technique does not fit all.

Tracheal intubation is a common procedure in critically ill patients (1). Despite its frequent occurrence, tracheal intubation in this setting remains a risky procedure (2,3), mainly due to the combination of two synergistic and negative factors: the unique respiratory and hemodynamic instability of critically ill patients, and the high incidence of difficult airway in this population (4). Intubation-related life-threatening hypoxemia, hypotension, arrythmia, cardiac arrest and death are frequently reported (2,3). Recently, a multicenter retrospective trial on tracheal intubation in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) observed a 2.7% rate of cardiac arrest (strongly predicted by hypoxemia prior to intubation and lack of preoxygenation), with a high 28-day mortality in patients who had experienced an intubation-related cardiac arrest (5).
p53 Stabilization Induces Cell Growth Inhibition and Affects IGF2 Pathway in Response to Radiotherapy in Adrenocortical Cancer Cells

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a very rare endocrine tumour, with variable prognosis, depending on tumour stage and time of diagnosis. However, it is generally fatal, with an overall survival of 5 years from detection. Radiotherapy usefulness for ACC treatment has been widely debated and seems to be dependent on molecular alterations, which in turn lead to increased radio-resistance. Many studies have shown that p53 loss is an important risk factor for malignant adrenocortical tumour onset and it has been reported that somatic mutations in TP53 gene occur in 27 to 70% of adult sporadic ACCs. In this study, we investigated the role of somatic mutations of the TP53 gene in response to ionizing radiation (IR). We studied the status of p53 in two adrenocortical cell lines, H295R and SW-13, harbouring non-functioning forms of this protein, owing to the lack of exons 8 and 9 and a point mutation in exon 6, respectively. Moreover, these cell lines show high levels of p-Akt and IGF2, especially H295R. We noticed that restoration of p53 activity led to inhibition of growth after transient transfection of cells with wild type p53. Evaluation of their response to IR in terms of cell proliferation and viability was determined by means of cell count and TUNEL assay.wtp53 over-expression also increased cell death by apoptosis following radiation in both cell lines. Moreover, RT-PCR and Western blotting analysis of some p53 target genes, such as BCL2, IGF2 and Akt demonstrated that p53 activation following IR led to a decrease in IGF2 expression. This was associated with a reduction in the active form of Akt. Taken together, these results highlight the role of p53 in response to radiation of ACC cell lines, suggesting its importance as a predictive factor for radiotherapy in malignant adrenocortical tumours cases.
Ieee Computer Graphics and Applications 71 the Wiimote and Beyond: Spatially Convenient Devices for 3d User Interfaces the Wiimote as a Spatially Convenient Device

D evices such as the Nintendo Wii Remote, or Wiimote, (see Figure 1) provide an inexpensive and robust packaging of several useful but limited sensors, with the ability to rapidly relay information to a computer. They offer such an impressive array of sensors and hardware that 3D user interface (3DUI) researchers have largely been caught off-balance. How do we use and classify these devices? Are they the sought-after silver bullet for 3D tracking or just a step on the path to a common hardware platform for ubiquitous 3DUIs? Although the Wiimote can be useful for 3DUI input, in almost every important way it differs from general-purpose input hardware 1 found in research labs and commercial applications (see the sidebar). Despite this, no one has systematically evaluated the device in terms of what it offers 3DUIs. This might be due to the high quality of Wiimote hacking (for example, as head trackers, finger trackers, and whiteboards 2), which has led people to overestimate the Wiimote's capabilities. Our experience with the Wiimote and related hardware has led us to conclude that it's an imperfect har-binger of a new class of spatially convenient devices. This tutorial discusses techniques for exploiting the Wiimote's capabilities as such a device. We also discuss its strengths and methods to compensate for its limitations in 3DUIs, arguing that you can extrapolate these methods to future spatially convenient devices. Spatially convenient devices involve three important aspects: ■ Spatial data. The device provides 3D input data, be it partial, error-prone, or conditional. ■ Functionality. The device packs a range of useful sensors, emitters, and interface implements. Regarding spatial data, traditional 3D hardware trackers present information in 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) in a tracked space with relatively good precision. In contrast, a Wiimote presents three axes of acceleration data in no particular frame of reference, with intermittent optical sensing. (The Wii Mo-tionPlus gyroscope attachment can add three axes of orientation change, or angular velocity .) Although this means the Wiimote's spatial data doesn't directly map to a real-world position , the device can be employed effectively under constrained use. 3–8 Regarding functionality, traditional 3D hardware might come with a few buttons. The Wiimote incorporates several buttons, some in a gamepad and trigger configuration, and has a speaker, pro-grammable LEDs, and a rumble device. Regarding commodity design, 3D hardware can require extensive installations and environment in-strumentation and can be difficult to …
Optimization of Tensor Reconstruction by Excluding Outliers from DWIs

Outliers in Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) data appear frequently due to subjects' motion and the system noise, which are deleterious to the accuracy of diffusion tensor (DT) reconstruction. By detecting artifacts in the resulting DT data and minimizing a criteria score in the consequent FA map and positive definite map, we propose an optimization algorithm for Tensor Reconstruction by Excluding Outliers from DWIs (TREOD) that effectively improves the quality of tensor data reconstructed based on a selected subset of the raw DWI data in which outliers are excluded. Extensive experiments with both simulated and real datasets demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of our proposed method.
Intelligent PID Controller Tuning Using PSO for Linear System

In chemical industries in mid 90’s, process engineers were using the classical controller tuning methods to find the controller parameter values like Kp, Ki ,and Kd. The classical controller tuning methods may require complex computations to identify the controller parameters. With the evolution of soft computing methods these classical control methods were eliminated. This paper focus on design method for determining the optimal proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller parameters of linear system using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The proposed approach had superior features, including easy implementation, stable convergence characteristic, and good computational efficiency. At first genetic algorithm (GA) of automatic voltage regulator(AVR) setting is designed and compared with PSO based PID controller settings. The proposed method has more robust stability and efficiency, and can solve the searching and tuning problems of PID controller parameters more easily and quickly than the GA method.
LSI-REC: A Link State Indicator based gesture recognition scheme in a RFID system

This paper presents a novel gesture recognition scheme that utilizes RFID system to enable gesture recognition. The gesture feature of a certain object is captured by its shadow area in an arrayed RFID tags. We use the variance of counts of a tag being successfully read to represent the state of an obstructed link. The relative collection of tags determines the shape of an obstruction. We define a link state indicator (LSI) to indicate the signal changes caused by certain obstruction. In the proposed scheme, a gesture matrix is then introduced to represent gestures of a human being intuitively and fisher's linear discriminant method is used to recognize gestures. The scheme achieves the goal of gesture recognition without requiring any additional instruments of a human body. We build an experimental system and evaluate the scheme through a group of experiments, the result shows that the scheme can identify and classify a set of twelve defined gestures with an average accuracy of 94%.
Muscular bases and mechanisms of variable resistance training efficacy

The use of chain or elastic band-resisted variable resistance has become popular in the training of athletes. A number of studies have investigated the utilization of variable resistance vs. traditional resistance training on both acute and chronic performance measures. However, the mechanisms of the observed outcome measures are not fully understood. This review aims to propose a four-part theory regarding the bases by which chain and elastic band-based variable resistance have been shown to be effective. Additionally, it compares methodologies in studies utilizing variable resistance and provides practitioners with recommendations on the use of variable resistance based on the current literature.
A general dynamical statistical model with possible causal interpretation

Summary. We develop a general dynamical model as a framework for possible causal interpretation. We first state a criterion of local independence in terms of measurability of processes involved in the Doob-Meyer decomposition of stochastic processes, as in Aalen (1987); then we define direct and indirect influence. We propose a definition of causal influence using the concepts of “physical system”. This framework makes it possible to link descriptive and explicative statistical models, and encompasses quantitative processes and events. One of the features of this paper is the clear distinction between the model for the system and the model for the observation. We give a dynamical representation of a conventional joint model for HIV load and CD4 counts. We show its inadequacy to capture causal influences
Marathoner tracking algorithms for a high speed mobile robot

This paper presents tracking algorithms of a mobile robot that follows a human body moving at high speed in unstructured outdoor environment. The mobile robot, which is a differential-driven wheel type, is equipped with one laser range finder to perform high-speed human tracking and obstacle avoidance. Initially, the waist part of the human body is found the best part of the human body for robust tracking by a laser range finder. Next an obstacle avoidance algorithm considering the relative velocity between the robot and obstacles is proposed. It is shown that the proposed human tracking algorithms based on the Kalman filter performs well even in the case of the target occlusions and temporary losses. These tracking algorithms have been applied to a marathoner following robot that carries the marathoner's personal belongings in many different outdoor environments.
Syllable Segmentation of Continuous Speech Using Auditory Attention Cues

Segmentation of speech into syllables is beneﬁcial for many spoken language processing applications since it provides information about phonological and rhythmic aspects of speech. Traditional methods usually detect syllable nuclei using features such as energies in critical bands, linear predictive coding spectra, pitch, voicing, etc. Here, a novel system that uses auditory attention cues is proposed for predicting syllable boundaries. The auditory attention cues are biologically inspired and capture changes in sound characteristic by using 2D spectro-temporal receptive ﬁlters. When tested on TIMIT, it is shown that the proposed method successfully predicts syllable boundaries and performs as good as or better than the state-of-the art syllable nucleus detection methods
Increased Methylglyoxal and Oxidative Stress in Hypertensive Rat Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Methylglyoxal can yield advanced glycation end products via nonenzymatic glycation of proteins. Whether methylglyoxal contributes to the pathogenesis of hypertension has not been clear. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the levels of methylglyoxal and methylglyoxal-induced advanced glycation end products were enhanced and whether methylglyoxal increased oxidative stress, activated nuclear factor–&kgr;B (NF-&kgr;B), and increased intracellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) content in vascular smooth muscle cells from spontaneously hypertensive rats. Basal cellular levels of methylglyoxal and advanced glycation end products were more than 2-fold higher (P <0.05) in cells from hypertensive rats than from normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats. This correlated with levels of oxidative stress and oxidized glutathione that were significantly higher in cells from hypertensive rats, whereas levels of glutathione and activities of glutathione reductase and glutathione peroxidase were significantly lower. Basal levels of nuclearly localized NF-&kgr;B p65 and ICAM-1 protein expression were higher in cells from hypertensive rats than from normotensive rats. Addition of exogenous methylglyoxal to the cultures induced a greater increase in oxidative stress and advanced glycation end products in cells from hypertensive rats compared with normotensive rats and significantly decreased the activities of glutathione reductase and glutathione peroxidase in cells of both rat strains. Methylglyoxal activated NF-&kgr;B p65 and increased ICAM-1 expression in hypertensive cells, which was inhibited by N-acetylcysteine. Our study demonstrates an elevated methylglyoxal level and advanced glycation end products in cells from hypertensive rats, and methylglyoxal increases oxidative stress, activates NF-&kgr;B, and enhances ICAM-1 expression. Our findings suggest that that elevated methylglyoxal and associated oxidative stress possibly contribute to the pathogenesis of hypertension.
Evaluation of an MPI-Based Implementation of the Tascell Task-Parallel Language on Massively Parallel Systems

Tascell is a task parallel language that supports distributed memory environments. The conventional implementation of Tascell realizes inter-node communication with TCP/IP communication via Tascell servers. This implementation is suitable for dynamic addition of computation nodes and wide-area distributed environments. On the other hand, in supercomputer environments, TCP/IP may not be available for inter-node communication and there may be no appropriate places for deploying Tascell servers. In this study, we have developed a server-less implementation of Tascell that realizes inter-node communication with MPI communication in order to evaluate its performance on massively parallel systems. It performs well on four Xeon Phi coprocessors (with 456 workers) and the K computer, for instance, our 19-queens solver achieves a 4615-fold speedup relative to a serial implementation with 7168 workers on the K computer. Our server-less implementation realizes deadlock freedom, although it only requires the two-sided communication paradigm and the MPI_THREAD_FUNNELED support level. On Xeon Phi coprocessors, we compare our implementation with other implementations that employ TCP/IP or the MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE support level.
PSO Based Adaptive Terminal Sliding Mode Controllers for a DC-DC Converter

Abstract—This paper presents an adaptive non-singular terminal sliding mode (ANTSM) tracking control design for DC-DC buck converter. An adaptive Terminal sliding mode control method is presented for nonlinear systems with parameter uncertainty and external disturbance. The method estimates the boundary of parameter uncertainty and external disturbance by adaptive law. The idea behind this strategy is to use the terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) approach to assure finite time convergence of the output voltage error to the equilibrium point and integrate an adaptive law to the TSMC strategy so as to achieve a dynamic sliding line during the load variations. The convergence rate is fast, and a strong robustness can be achieved. Control parameters are optimized using a Particles Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to further enhance performances.
FROBENIUS CIRCULANT GRAPHS OF VALENCY FOUR

Abstract A first kind Frobenius graph is a Cayley graph Cay(K,S) on the Frobenius kernel of a Frobenius group $K \rtimes H$ such that S=aH for some a∈K with 〈aH〉=K, where H is of even order or a is an involution. It is known that such graphs admit ‘perfect’ routing and gossiping schemes. A circulant graph is a Cayley graph on a cyclic group of order at least three. Since circulant graphs are widely used as models for interconnection networks, it is thus highly desirable to characterize those which are Frobenius of the first kind. In this paper we first give such a characterization for connected 4-valent circulant graphs, and then describe optimal routing and gossiping schemes for those which are first kind Frobenius graphs. Examples of such graphs include the 4-valent circulant graph with a given diameter and maximum possible order.
Lunar Laser Ranging, Gravitomagnetism and Frame-Dragging

During the past century Einstein's theory of General Relativity gave rise to an experimental triumph, however, there are still aspects of this theory to be measured or more accurately tested. One of the main challenges in experimental gravitation, together with the direct detection of gravitational waves, is today the accurate measurement of the gravitomagnetic field generated by the angular momentum of a body. Here, after a description of frame-dragging and gravitomagnetism and of the main experiments to detect these relativistic phenomena, we show that the fundamental tests of General Relativity performed by Lunar Laser Ranging do not, however, include a measurement of the intrinsic gravitomagnetic field generated by the angular momentum of a body.
Information Sharing in Supply Chains: A Survey of Australian Manufacturing

Information sharing has been cited as one of major means of improving supply chain performance. It allows companies to better coordinate their activities with their supply chain partners and generate improved performance. This paper reports results from a survey of information sharing practices in Australian manufacturing companies. The results indicate that the level of coordination between members of a supply chain is quite low as firms only share information pertaining to day-to-day operation and each firm still acts independently. The results pose challenges both for practitioners and academics and warrant further investigation.