Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Concept of Mental Pain

inadequacy. When negative outcomes fall far below one’s standards of the ideal self and aspirations, and outcomes are attributed to the self, that person experiences mental pain. The basic emotion in mental pain is, thus, self-disappointment. Shneidman [5] defined psychache as an acute state of intense psychological pain associated with feelings of guilt, anguish, fear, panic, angst, loneliness and helplessness. The primary source of severe psychache ‘is frustrated psychological needs’ [6] . Psychache is the mental pain of being perturbed [7] . Perturbation refers to one’s inner turmoil, or being upset or mentally disturbed [7] . Bolger [8] defined emotional pain as a state of ‘feeling broken’ that involved the experience of being wounded, loss of self, disconnection, and critical awareness of one’s more negative attributes. Essential characteristics of emotional pain were described as a sense of loss or incompleteness of self and an awareness of one’s own role in the experience of emotional pain [8] . Orbach et al. [9, 10] have defined mental pain as ‘a wide range of subjective experiences characterized as a perception of negative changes in the self and its function that is accompanied by strong negative feelings’. Intense ‘unbearable’ mental (psychological) pain is defined as an emotionally based extremely aversive feeling which can Mental pain is no less real than other types of pain related to parts of the body, but does not seem to get adequate attention. A major problem is the lack of agreement about its distinctive features, conceptualization and operational definition. I will examine some suggested descriptions of mental pain, its association with psychiatric disorders and grief, its assessment and the implications that research in this field may entail.
Correlation Between Expression of High Temperature Requirement Serine Protease A1 (HtrA1) in Nucleus Pulposus and T2 Value of Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Background Degrading enzymes play an important role in the process of disc degeneration. The objective of this study was to investigate the correlation between the expression of high temperature requirement serine protease A1 (HtrA1) in the nucleus pulposus and the T2 value of the nucleus pulposus region in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Material/Methods Thirty-six patients who had undergone surgical excision of the nucleus pulposus were examined by MRI before surgery. Pfirrmann grading of the target intervertebral disc was performed according to the sagittal T2-weighted imaging, and the T2 value of the target nucleus pulposus was measured according to the median sagittal T2 mapping. The correlation between the Pfirrmann grade and the T2 value was analyzed. The expression of HtrA1 in the nucleus pulposus was analyzed by RT-PCR and Western blot. The correlation between the expression of HtrA1 and the T2 value was analyzed. Results The T2 value of the nucleus pulposus region was 33.11–167.91 ms, with an average of 86.64±38.73 ms. According to Spearman correlation analysis, there was a rank correlation between T2 value and Pfirrmann grade (P<0.0001), and the correlation coefficient (rs)=−0.93617. There was a linear correlation between the mRNA level of HtrA1 and T2 value in nucleus pulposus tissues (a=3.88, b=−0.019, F=112.63, P<0.0001), normalized regression coefficient=−0.88. There was a linear correlation between the expression level of HtrA1 protein and the T2 value in the nucleus pulposus tissues (a=3.30, b=−0.016, F=93.15, P<0.0001) and normalized regression coefficient=−0.86. Conclusions The expression of HtrA1 was strongly related to the T2 value, suggesting that HtrA1 plays an important role in the pathological process of intervertebral disc degeneration.
Gene–environment interactions involving functional variants: Results from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium

Investigating the most likely causal variants identified by fine‐mapping analyses may improve the power to detect gene–environment interactions. We assessed the interplay between 70 single nucleotide polymorphisms identified by genetic fine‐scale mapping of susceptibility loci and 11 epidemiological breast cancer risk factors in relation to breast cancer. Analyses were conducted on up to 58,573 subjects (26,968 cases and 31,605 controls) from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium, in one of the largest studies of its kind. Analyses were carried out separately for estrogen receptor (ER) positive (ER+) and ER negative (ER–) disease. The Bayesian False Discovery Probability (BFDP) was computed to assess the noteworthiness of the results. Four potential gene–environment interactions were identified as noteworthy (BFDP < 0.80) when assuming a true prior interaction probability of 0.01. The strongest interaction result in relation to overall breast cancer risk was found between CFLAR‐rs7558475 and current smoking (ORint = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.67–0.88, pint = 1.8 × 10−4). The interaction with the strongest statistical evidence was found between 5q14‐rs7707921 and alcohol consumption (ORint =1.36, 95% CI: 1.16–1.59, pint = 1.9 × 10−5) in relation to ER– disease risk. The remaining two gene–environment interactions were also identified in relation to ER– breast cancer risk and were found between 3p21‐rs6796502 and age at menarche (ORint = 1.26, 95% CI: 1.12–1.43, pint =1.8 × 10−4) and between 8q23‐rs13267382 and age at first full‐term pregnancy (ORint = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.83–0.95, pint = 5.2 × 10−4). While these results do not suggest any strong gene–environment interactions, our results may still be useful to inform experimental studies. These may in turn, shed light on the potential interactions observed.
Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey

Recent developments and technological advancements in wireless communication, MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and integrated circuits has enabled low-power, intelligent, miniaturized, invasive/non-invasive micro and nano-technology sensor nodes strategically placed in or around the human body to be used in various applications, such as personal health monitoring. This exciting new area of research is called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) and leverages the emerging IEEE 802.15. 6 and IEEE 802.15. 4j standards, specifically standardized for medical WBANs. The aim of WBANs is to simplify and improve speed, accuracy, and reliability of communication of sensors/actuators within, on, and in the immediate proximity of a human body. The vast scope of challenges associated with WBANs has led to numerous publications. In this paper, we survey the current state-of-art of WBANs based on the latest standards and publications. Open issues and challenges within each area are also explored as a source of inspiration towards future developments in WBANs.
Cross Likelihood Ratio Based Speaker Clustering Using Eigenvoice Models

This paper proposes the use of eigenvoice modeling techniques with the Cross Likelihood Ratio (CLR) as a criterion for speaker clustering within a speaker diarization system. The CLR has previously been shown to be a robust decision criterion for speaker clustering using Gaussian Mixture Models. Recently, eigenvoice modeling techniques have become increasingly popular, due to its ability to adequately represent a speaker based on sparse training data, as well as an improved capture of differences in speaker characteristics. This paper hence proposes that it would be beneficial to capitalize on the advantages of eigenvoice modeling in a CLR framework. Results obtained on the 2002 Rich Transcription (RT-02) Evaluation dataset show an improved clustering performance, resulting in a 35.1% relative improvement in the overall Diarization Error Rate (DER) compared to the baseline system.
Age-Related Voice Disguise and its Impact on Speaker Verification Accuracy

This study focuses in the impact of age-related intentional voice modiﬁcation, or age disguise, on the performance of automatic speaker veriﬁcation (ASV) systems. The data collected for this study includes 60 native Finnish speakers (29 males, 31 females) with age range between 18 and 73 years. The corpus consist of two sessions of read speech per speaker. Our experiments demonstrate vulnerability of modern ASV systems when a person attempts to conceal his or her identity, by modifying the voice to sound like an old or young person. For our i-vector PLDA system, the increase in equal error rate (EER), in the case of male speakers, was 7-fold for the attempt of old voice and 11-fold for young voice. Similar degradation in performance is observed for female speakers with a 5-fold increase in EER for old voice disguise and a 6-fold increase for young voice disguise. We further analyze the factors affecting the performance of ASV systems for the studied speech data. In our experiments, male speakers were found more successful in disguising their voices. The effect on fundamental frequency ( F 0 ) was also studied. The mean F 0 distributions showed a shift towards higher frequencies when speakers attempted a young voice, which relates to the perception that younger speakers’ F 0 values tend to be higher than for older speakers.
A New Molecular Mechanism To Engineer Protean Agonism at a G Protein–Coupled Receptor

Protean agonists are of great pharmacological interest as their behavior may change in magnitude and direction depending on the constitutive activity of a receptor. Yet, this intriguing phenomenon has been poorly described and understood, due to the lack of stable experimental systems and design strategies. In this study, we overcome both limitations: First, we demonstrate that modulation of the ionic strength in a defined experimental set-up allows for analysis of G protein–coupled receptor activation in the absence and presence of a specific amount of spontaneous receptor activity using the muscarinic M2 acetylcholine receptor as a model. Second, we employ this assay system to show that a dualsteric design principle, that is, molecular probes, carrying two pharmacophores to simultaneously adopt orthosteric and allosteric topography within a G protein–coupled receptor, may represent a novel approach to achieve protean agonism. We pinpoint three molecular requirements within dualsteric compounds that elicit protean agonism at the muscarinic M2 acetylcholine receptor. Using radioligand-binding and functional assays, we posit that dynamic ligand binding may be the mechanism underlying protean agonism of dualsteric ligands. Our findings provide both new mechanistic insights into the still enigmatic phenomenon of protean agonism and a rationale for the design of such compounds for a G protein–coupled receptor.
Implementing reverse mentoring to address social isolation among older adults

ABSTRACT Reverse mentoring is a means to address the social work Grand Challenge of social isolation. Among older adults, reverse mentoring can improve social connection by increasing the digital competence of older adults so they can use technology for social benefit, and by facilitating intergenerational connections with young adult mentors. In this paper, reverse mentoring is examined within an intergenerational program that serves older adults and utilizes the native technological knowledge and skills of young adults who mentor older adult participants. Qualitative data were collected through young adult mentor logs of each session, and through open-ended questions on the post-surveys collected from older adults and young adult mentors. Qualitative analysis revealed three themes related to social connection: (1) an increased sense of self-efficacy for older adults as they build confidence in technological use, and for young adults as they develop leadership skills through mentoring, (2) the breaking down of age-related stereotypes, and (3) intergenerational engagement and connection. The findings demonstrate that reverse mentoring can be used in various settings to decrease the social isolation of older adults by developing intergenerational connections and increasing older adult usage of technology.
Impact of male fertility status on the transcriptome of the bovine epididymis

STUDY QUESTION Can region-specific transcriptional profiling of the epididymis from fertile and sub-fertile bulls predict the etiology of fertility/sub-fertility in males? SUMMARY ANSWER The highly regulated gene expression along the bovine epididymis is affected by the fertility status of bulls used for artificial insemination. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY In mammals, sperm maturation and storage occur in the epididymis. Each epididymal segment has his own transcriptomic signature that modulates the intraluminal composition and consequently governs sequential modifications of the maturing male gamete. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION Epididymides from six Holstein bulls with documented fertility were used. These bulls were divided into two groups: high fertility (n = 3), and medium-low fertility (n = 3) and their epididymal transcriptomic profiles were analyzed. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS Bovine cDNA microarray probing and bioinformatic tools were used to identify genes that are differentially expressed in caput, corpus and cauda epididymidal tissues of bulls with the documented fertility index. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis revealed a clear separation between caput, corpus and cauda epididymides. Some transcripts characterize a particular anatomical segment, whereas others are expressed in two out of three epididymal segments. Gene ontology analysis allowed deduction of specific functions played by each epididymal segment. The transcriptional profiles between fertile versus sub-fertile conditions clustered most closely in the corpus and cauda segments, whereas the profiles in the caput segment were distinct between fertile and sub-fertile bulls. Of the differently expressed genes, 10 (AKAP4, SMCP, SPATA3, TCP11, ODF1, CTCFL, SPATA18, ADAM28, SORD and FAM161A) were found to exert functions related to reproductive systems and 5 genes (DEAD, CYST11, DEFB119, DEFB124 and MX1) were found to be associated with the defense response. LARGE SCALE DATA The GEO number for public access of bovine epididymis microarray data is GSE96602. LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION Further work is required to link these modulations of epididymal functions with sperm fertilizing ability in order to understand the etiology of certain cases of idiopathic infertility in livestock and men. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS As fertility can be quantified in bulls used for artificial insemination, this species is a unique model to aid in the understanding of male fertility/sub-fertility in man. Our data provide a molecular characterization that will facilitate advances in understanding the involvement of epididymal physiology in sub/infertility etiology. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) This work was supported by a grant to R.S. from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. C.L. , A.A. , E.C. and R.S. have no conflict of interest to declare. P.B. is R&D director at Alliance Boviteq Inc., a bovine artificial insemination company.
A spoken-based question answering system for train route service using the frame-based approach

A frame-based approach is a simple yet highly effective for a Question Answering (QA) system. In this research, a prototype of speech based QA system that provides information about train route service and departure schedule is developed based on that technique. There are three main components of the system, the automatic speech recognizer (ASR) that transcribes user speech input into sequence of words query, a QA system that translates the transcribed text into a query and search for relevant answer, and the automatic speech synthesizer (ASS) that output the relevant answer using speech. The ASR and ASS were developed based-on the hidden markov model for its acoustic model, and the n-gram model for its language model, while some techniques such as frame-based, keyword spotting, data fetching, and canned answer were employed in the QA system.
Efficacy of Extended-Interval Dosing of Micafungin Evaluated Using a Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic Study with Humanized Doses in Mice

ABSTRACT The pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) characteristics of the echinocandins favor infrequent administration of large doses. The in vivo investigation reported here tested the utility of a range of humanized dose levels of micafungin using a variety of prolonged dosing intervals for the prevention and therapy of established disseminated candidiasis. Humanized doses of 600 mg administered every 6 days prevented fungal growth in prophylaxis. Humanized doses of 300 to 1,000 mg administered every 6 days demonstrated efficacy for established infections.
A Scalable Near-Memory Architecture for Training Deep Neural Networks on Large In-Memory Datasets

Most investigations into near-memory hardware accelerators for deep neural networks have primarily focused on inference, while the potential of accelerating training has received relatively little attention so far. Based on an in-depth analysis of the key computational patterns in state-of-the-art gradient-based training methods, we propose an efficient near-memory acceleration engine called NTX that can be used to train state-of-the-art deep convolutional neural networks at scale. Our main contributions are: (i) a loose coupling of RISC-V cores and NTX co-processors reducing offloading overhead by <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$7\times$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>7</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schuiki-ieq1-2876312.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> over previously published results; (ii) an optimized IEEE 754 compliant data path for fast high-precision convolutions and gradient propagation; (iii) evaluation of near-memory computing with NTX embedded into residual area on the Logic Base die of a Hybrid Memory Cube; and (iv) a scaling analysis to meshes of HMCs in a data center scenario. We demonstrate a <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.7\times$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>. </mml:mo><mml:mn>7</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schuiki-ieq2-2876312.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> energy efficiency improvement of NTX over contemporary GPUs at <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4.4\times$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mo>. </mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schuiki-ieq3-2876312.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> less silicon area, and a compute performance of 1.2 Tflop/s for training large state-of-the-art networks with full floating-point precision. At the data center scale, a mesh of NTX achieves above 95 percent parallel and energy efficiency, while providing <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.1\times$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>. </mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schuiki-ieq4-2876312.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> energy savings or <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.1\times$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>3</mml:mn><mml:mo>. </mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="schuiki-ieq5-2876312.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula> performance improvement over a GPU-based system.
Auditory mask estimation by RPCA for monaural speech enhancement

Mask estimation has shown a IoT of promise in speech enhancement for its simplicity and large speech intelligibility improvement. In this paper, the gammachirp filter banks are applied on the contaminated speech signal to get the auditory time-frequency representation. Robust principal component analysis with non-negative constraint is employed to decompose the auditory time-frequency representation into sparse and low-rank components using alternating direction method of multipliers optimization algorithm. Auditory Mask is estimated by these two parts which are correspond to the speech and noise. Consider that binary mask produces separated sources with more distortion than soft mask estimation. Auditory mask estimation is based on the ideal ratio mask estimation. Experimental results show that the proposed method could achieve better performance in terms of PESQ and LSD compared with multiband spectral subtraction and Robust principal component analysis methods.
Finance and Society: On the Foundations of Corporate Social Responsibility

This thesis consists of six chapters. The first four chapters explore different foundations of CSR. Chapter 1 studies the legal and institutional foundations of CSR around the world. Chapter 2 studies the agency foundations of CSR, with a focus on whether CSR should be regarded as an agency problem or value-enhancing tool. Chapter 3 studies the ownership foundations of CSR by investigating the role of family ownership and state ownership in driving corporate shareholder-stakeholder relationship. Chapter 4 investigates the cultural and cognitive foundations of CSR by focusing on how languages people speak around the world may explain cross-country and cross-firm variations in CSR practice. The fifth and sixth chapters look at the social influence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the social context of corporate governance using Chinese data. Chapter 5 investigates how state presence in corporations through shareholdings and political connections affects managerial compensation, and how such state influence is attenuated following the removal of market friction. Chapter 6 extends the analysis of state influence to the context of international investment, and investigates how two major state control mechanisms – state ownership and managerial political connections – can influence globalization decisions and the degree of globalization of SOEs during different time and in different stages of international investment.
Hemispheric Asymmetries in Speech Perception: Sense, Nonsense and Modulations

Background The well-established left hemisphere specialisation for language processing has long been claimed to be based on a low-level auditory specialization for specific acoustic features in speech, particularly regarding ‘rapid temporal processing’. Methodology A novel analysis/synthesis technique was used to construct a variety of sounds based on simple sentences which could be manipulated in spectro-temporal complexity, and whether they were intelligible or not. All sounds consisted of two noise-excited spectral prominences (based on the lower two formants in the original speech) which could be static or varying in frequency and/or amplitude independently. Dynamically varying both acoustic features based on the same sentence led to intelligible speech but when either or both acoustic features were static, the stimuli were not intelligible. Using the frequency dynamics from one sentence with the amplitude dynamics of another led to unintelligible sounds of comparable spectro-temporal complexity to the intelligible ones. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to compare which brain regions were active when participants listened to the different sounds. Conclusions Neural activity to spectral and amplitude modulations sufficient to support speech intelligibility (without actually being intelligible) was seen bilaterally, with a right temporal lobe dominance. A left dominant response was seen only to intelligible sounds. It thus appears that the left hemisphere specialisation for speech is based on the linguistic properties of utterances, not on particular acoustic features.