Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-channel signal enhancement with speech and noise covariance estimates computed by a probabilistic localization model

Classic approaches to multi-channel signal enhancement rely on model assumptions regarding speech source relative transfer functions and noise covariance matrix, or on estimates thereof obtained in, e.g., speech pauses. To alleviate these constraints, we here investigate an approach to adaptive estimation of the speech (target) source and noise related acoustic parameters based on localized speech probability estimates. The latter are computed from a discriminatively trained speech localization algorithm previously proposed [1]. A-priori knowledge of temporal segments that contain noise only, thus, is not required. A standard MVDR system is employed for subsequent signal enhancement. Evaluation is carried out for anechoic and reverberant conditions using 6-channel input signals recorded with a bilateral hearing-aid geometry. Results indicate that the proposed method outperforms an anechoic, isotropic-noise model when a-priori information is unavailable: I.e., in (a) anechoic conditions with localized interferer in addition to isotropic noise, and (b) reverberant conditions. In these conditions, the proposed method and constrained versions thereof improve upon the free-field isotropic noise model by up to 16.1 dB and 7.7 dB SINR, respectively.
Predictive valley-peak current control of isolated bidirectional dual active bridge DC-DC converter

This paper proposes the novel predictive valley-peak current control for the dual active bridge (DAB) converter to improve dynamic responses. Theoretically, the reference current can be achieved in one switching cycle with this control strategy. Since the inductor valley and peak currents are both controlled, the predictive valley-peak current control strategy offers a fast over-current switch protection, and meanwhile eliminates the possible saturation of the high-frequency transformer. In this paper, detailed analyses of stability properties of the predictive current control are presented. Further, this paper discusses the influences of the measured deviations on the proposed predictive current control strategy. Finally, A DAB converter is modeled in Matlab/Simulink. The theoretical analyses are confirmed by the simulation results.
New-Onset Diabetes and Antiretroviral Treatments in HIV-Infected Adults in Thailand

Background:Use of several antiretrovirals (ARVs) has been shown to be associated with a higher risk of diabetes in HIV-infected adults. We estimated the incidence of new-onset diabetes and assessed the association between individual ARVs and ARV combinations, and diabetes in a large cohort in Thailand. Methods:We selected all HIV-1–infected, nondiabetic, antiretroviral-naive adults enrolled in the Program for HIV Prevention and Treatment cohort (NCT00433030) between January 2000 and December 2011. Diabetes was defined as confirmed fasting plasma glucose ≥126 mg/dL or random plasma glucose ≥200 mg/dL. Incidence was the number of cases divided by the total number of person-years of follow-up. Association between ARVs and ARV combinations, and new-onset diabetes was assessed using Cox proportional hazards models. Results:Overall, 1594 HIV-infected patients (76% female) were included. Median age at antiretroviral therapy initiation was 32.5 years. The incidence rate of diabetes was 5.0 per 1000 person-years of follow-up (95% confidence interval: 3.8 to 6.6) (53 cases). In analyses adjusted for potential confounders, exposure to stavudine + didanosine [adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 3.9; P = 0.001] and cumulative exposure ≥1 year to zidovudine (aHR = 2.3 vs. no exposure; P = 0.009) were associated with a higher risk of diabetes. Conversely, cumulative exposure ≥1 year to tenofovir (aHR = 0.4 vs. no exposure; P = 0.02) and emtricitabine (aHR = 0.4 vs. no exposure; P = 0.03) were associated with a lower risk. Conclusions:The incidence of diabetes in this predominantly female, young, lean population was relatively low. Although stavudine and didanosine have now been phased out in most antiretroviral therapy programs, our analysis suggests a higher risk of diabetes with zidovudine, frequently prescribed today in resource-limited settings.
Identification of Budesonide and Prednisone as Substrates of the Intestinal Drug Efflux Pump P-glycoprotein

Steroid resistance is a major problem in the management of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. In Crohn disease, poor response to corticosteroids has been related to increased expression of the drug efflux pump, P-glycoprotein. However, it has not been investigated thoroughly whether corticosteroids commonly used for drug therapy in inflammatory bowel disease are substrates of P-glycoprotein. We tested the hypothesis that budesonide and prednisone are substrates of P-glycoprotein thereby possibly contributing to variable therapeutic effects. Polarized, basal to apical transport of [3H]budesonide and [3H]prednisone was studied in monolayers of L-MDR1 cells (LLC-PK1 cells stably transfected with human MDR1 cDNA) and Caco-2 cells, both of which express P-glycoprotein in their apical membrane. Drug transport was measured during 4 hours at substrate concentrations of 5 μM. Net transport rates and permeability coefficients were calculated. Inhibition of P-glycoprotein–mediated transport across Caco-2 monolayers was determined after addition of the P-glycoprotein inhibitor PSC-833. The net transport rate from the basolateral to the apical side was significantly higher in L-MDR1 than in LLC-PK1 cells for both budesonide and prednisone. Apparent permeability coefficients of budesonide and prednisone reflected polarized transport from basal to apical. PSC-833 inhibited the polarized transport of both corticosteroids. In conclusion, budesonide and prednisone were identified as substrates of the intestinal drug efflux pump, P-glycoprotein. Therefore, drug secretion via P-glyco-protein into gut lumen might play a more important role in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of these corticosteroids than currently appreciated in gastroenterological practice.
Usefulness of Transesophageal Bronchoscopic Ultrasound-guided Fine-Needle Aspiration in the Pathologic and Molecular Diagnosis of Lung Cancer Lesions Adjacent to the Esophagus

Background:The discovery of driver oncogenes has increased the need to obtain a sufficient amount of tissue specimens for lung cancer diagnosis. Although endoscopic ultrasound (with bronchoscope)-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-B-FNA) is reportedly a feasible and well-tolerated modality, additional advantages of EUS-B-FNA are yet to be thoroughly investigated. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the ability of EUS-B-FNA to obtain sufficient tissue specimens for pathologic and molecular diagnoses of lung cancer. Methods:Among lung cancer patients who were diagnosed between December 2010 and December 2012 in our institute, patients who underwent EUS-B-FNA to diagnose lung cancer were enrolled (n=26). EUS-B-FNA was performed when bronchoscopic diagnosis was impossible or difficult to obtain sufficient samples. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations and echinoderm microtubule-associated protein-like 4 and the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (EML4-ALK) fusion gene were evaluated using EUS-B-FNA samples of non–small cell lung cancer. Results:EUS-B-FNA was performed on 28 lesions in 26 patients. Among the target lesions, 23 were mediastinal lymph nodes including nodal stations 2L, 4L, 7, 8, and 10L. The remaining 5 were intrapulmonary lesions. EUS-B-FNAs were completed without complications in all the patients. The diagnostic yield of EUS-B-FNA in diagnosing lung cancer was 100% (26/26). Additional diagnostic gain of EUS-B-FNA was 69.2% (18/26) as compared to bronchoscopy alone. EGFR mutations and EML4-ALK fusion gene could be evaluated in all patients with non–small cell lung cancer (n=20) using EUS-B-FNA samples. One case with EGFR mutation and 1 case with ALK fusion gene were diagnosed. Six non–small cell carcinomas were also diagnosed by bronchoscopy, but all bronchoscopic samples were insufficient to evaluate mutation analyses. Conclusions:EUS-B-FNA is a practical and feasible method to obtain abundant tumorous tissue samples for pathologic diagnosis and molecular analysis, particularly when the target lesions are inaccessible by other modalities because of their locations or because of the patient’s poor physical condition.
Induction of frameshift mutations in cultured mammalian cells within a transfected sequence containing a poly(dC‐dA) · poly(dT‐dG) microsatellite

A cultured mouse cell line with an integrated copy of a plasmid that contains a short dinucleotide repeat sequence (microsatellite) has been used to determine the frequencies and types of mutation induced by two frameshift mutagens. The presence of the microsatellite, which consists of 17 repeats of a poly(dC‐dA) · poly(dT‐dG) sequence, disrupts the reading frame of a gene coding for neomycin resistance. Revertants were selected in G418, and mutations were analyzed by PCR. ICR‐170 was found to increase the reversion frequency by ten‐ to 15‐fold at its LD50, although most of the frameshifts that it induced were single‐base insertions outside the microsatellite sequence. NA‐AAF brought about a more modest increase in mutation frequency, but nearly all of the revertants in the NA‐AAF‐treated cultures had insertions or deletions of multiples of two base pairs within the DNA segment that included the microsatellite. This system can be modified to include different short tandem repeat sequences as targets for testing of compounds that are suspected of having frameshift‐inducing activities. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Design of Low Latency Random Access Preamble Detector for LTE Uplink Receiver

This paper presents a hardware design of high throughput, low latency preamble detector for 3GPP LTE physical random access channel (PRACH) receiver. The presented PRACH receiver uses the pipelined structure to improve the throughput of power delay profile (PDP) generation which is executed multiple times during the preamble detection. In addition, to reduce detection latency, we propose an instantaneous preamble detection method for both restricted and unrestricted set. The proposed preamble detection method can detect all existing preambles directly and instantaneously from PDP output while conducting PDP combining for restricted set. The PDP combining enables the PRACH receiver to detect preambles robustly even in severe Doppler effect or frequency error exist. Using proposed method, the worst case preamble detection latency time can be less than 1 ms with 136 MHz clock and the proposed PRACH receiver can be implemented with approximately 237k equivalent ASIC gates count or occupying 30.2% of xc6vlx130t FPGA device. key words: LTE, uplink, random access, PRACH, latency, throughput
Emotional processing in Colombian ex-combatants and its relationship with empathy and executive functions

In this work, the neural correlates of emotional processing in Colombian ex-combatants with different empathy profiles were compared to normal controls matched for age, gender and educational level. Forty ex-combatants and 20 non ex-combatants were recruited for this study. Empathy levels as well as executive functions were measured. Empathy level was used to create three groups. Group 1 (G1) included ex-combatants with normal empathy scores, and Group 2 included ex-combatants with low scores on at least one empathy sub-scales. In control group (Ctrl), participants with no antecedents of being combatants and with normal scores in empathy were included. Age, gender, educational and intelligence quotients level were controlled among groups. event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while individuals performed an affective picture processing task that included positive, neutral and negative emotional stimuli, which elicit an early modulation of emotion categorization (Early Posterior Negativity (EPN)) and late evaluative process (LPP). EPN differences were found among affective categories, but no group effects were observed at this component. LPP showed a main effect of category and group (higher amplitudes in ex-combatants). There was an inverse correlation between empathy and executive functions scores and ERPs. Results are discussed according to the impact of emotional processing on empathy profile.
Machine learning-based system to estimate the performance of exploration algorithms for robots in a bi-dimensional grid

The work presented here arises from the need to find a tool for computing the performance metric of a given exploration algorithm under arbitrary test conditions. Such tool would allow to find the most suitable algorithm for a predefined scenario without performing time consuming tests or simulations. The work here is a first approximation to develop the proposed tool, in order to validate the suitability of our approach we choose simple and well-known exploration algorithms and scenarios, but in the future we plan to expand to state-of-the-art algorithms and complex scenarios. A Machine Learning system using supervised learning is proposed as a practical method to predict the desired evaluation metric, such estimation will be used for algorithm comparison instead of the conventional method of performing tests or simulations. Other estimation methods, such as a multivariate regression model and approximation to probability distribution functions, are cumbersome and usually require performing additional experiments to gather further data. For testing and evaluation, we use two sample exploration algorithms based on the principle of two-dimensional random walk and a exploration scenario based on a bi-dimensional rectangular grid.
Defibrination of Blood Plasma for Use in Serological Tests for Syphilis

ABSTRACT Syphilitic plasma can be salvaged from discarded blood donations and converted to serum by defibrination. Sixty-nine units of plasma were treated with a stock solution of 100 U of thrombin per ml in 1 M calcium chloride and then with a 10% (wt/vol) solution of kaolin. Fibrinogen concentrations detected in initial plasma samples ranged from 94 to 4,970 mg/liter (mean, 2,532 mg/liter) for samples that were reactive by the rapid plasma reagin circle card test (RPR) and from 314 to 2,742 mg/liter (mean 1,528 mg/liter) for samples that were not reactive by the RPR. The treated samples showed no measurable fibrinogen remaining after the defibrination process. In the nontreponemal RPR for syphilis, 86% of the treated plasma samples retained the same endpoint titer as that of the initial plasma sample. When the Treponema pallidum passive-particle-agglutination test was used, 98% retained the same reactivity. In the Captia Syphilis-G enzyme immunoassay, 89% of the treated samples demonstrated no change in reactivity index, and in the fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test, 96% showed no reduction in fluorescence. Human sera containing antibodies to syphilis are used at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the preparation of reference controls or as samples for proficiency testing. Finding reactive sera is becoming more difficult due to the general decline of syphilis cases in the United States. The decreasing availability of these sera can be alleviated by salvaging plasma and converting it to serum.
Dynamics of electrical double layer formation in room-temperature ionic liquids under constant-current charging conditions

We report detailed simulation results on the formation dynamics of an electrical double layer (EDL) inside an electrochemical cell featuring room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) enclosed between two planar electrodes. Under relatively small charging currents, the evolution of cell potential from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations during charging can be suitably predicted by the Landau–Ginzburg-type continuum model proposed recently (Bazant et al 2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 046102). Under very large charging currents, the cell potential from MD simulations shows pronounced oscillation during the initial stage of charging, a feature not captured by the continuum model. Such oscillation originates from the sequential growth of the ionic space charge layers near the electrode surface. This allows the evolution of EDLs in RTILs with time, an atomistic process difficult to visualize experimentally, to be studied by analyzing the cell potential under constant-current charging conditions. While the continuum model cannot predict the potential oscillation under such far-from-equilibrium charging conditions, it can nevertheless qualitatively capture the growth of cell potential during the later stage of charging. Improving the continuum model by introducing frequency-dependent dielectric constant and density-dependent ion diffusion coefficients may help to further extend the applicability of the model. The evolution of ion density profiles is also compared between the MD and the continuum model, showing good agreement.
Finite Element Modeling of scattered electromagnetic waves for stroke analysis

Stroke has become one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide and about 800 in every 100,000 people suffer from stroke each year. The occurrence of stroke is ranked third among the causes of acute death and first among the causes for neurological dysfunction. Currently, Neurological examinations followed by medical imaging with CT, MRI or Angiography are used to provide better identification of the location and the type of the stroke, however they are neither fast, cost-effective nor portable. Microwave technology has emerged to complement these modalities to diagnose stroke as it is sensitive to the differences between the distinct dielectric properties of the brain tissues and blood. This paper investigates the possibility of diagnosing the type of stroke using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). The object of interest is a simulated head phantom with stroke, created with its specifying material characteristics like electrical conductivity and relative permittivity. The phantom is then placed in an electromagnetic field generated by a dipole antenna radiating at 1 GHz. The FEM forward model solver computes the scattered electromagnetic field by finding the solution for the Maxwell's wave equation in the head volume. Subsequently the inverse scattering problem is solved using the Contrast Source Inversion (CSI) method to reconstruct the dielectric profile of the head phantom.
The DNA Binding Properties of the Escherichia coli RecQ Helicase*

The RecQ helicase family is highly conserved from bacteria to men and plays a conserved role in the preservation of genome integrity. Its deficiency in human cells leads to a marked genomic instability that is associated with premature aging and cancer. To determine the thermodynamic parameters for the interaction of Escherichia coli RecQ helicase with DNA, equilibrium binding studies have been performed using the thermodynamic rigorous fluorescence titration technique. Steady-state fluorescence anisotropy measurements of fluorescein-labeled oligonucleotides revealed that RecQ helicase bound to DNA with an apparent binding stoichiometry of 1 protein monomer/10 nucleotides. This stoichiometry was not altered in the presence of AMPPNP (adenosine 5′-(β,γ-imido) triphosphate) or ADP. Analyses of RecQ helicase interactions with oligonucleotides of different lengths over a wide range of pH, NaCl, and nucleic acid concentrations indicate that the RecQ helicase has a single strong DNA binding site with an association constant at 25 °C of K = 6.7 ± 0.95 × 106 m-1 and a cooperativity parameter of ω = 25.5 ± 1.2. Both single-stranded DNA and double-stranded DNA bind competitively to the same site. The intrinsic affinities are salt-dependent, and the formation of DNA-helicase complex is accompanied by a net release of 3–4 ions. Allosteric effects of nucleotide cofactors on RecQ binding to DNA were observed only for single-stranded DNA in the presence of 1.5 mm AMPPNP, whereas both AMPPNP and ADP had no detectable effect on double-stranded DNA binding over a large range of nucleotide cofactor concentrations.
Teen options for change: an intervention for young emergency patients who screen positive for suicide risk.

OBJECTIVE Previous research has documented the feasibility of screening in emergency departments for adolescent suicide risk. This randomized trial examined the effectiveness of Teen Options for Change (TOC), an intervention for adolescents seeking general medical emergency services who screen positive for suicide risk. METHODS Participants were 49 youths, ages 14 to 19, seeking services for nonpsychiatric emergencies. They screened positive for suicide risk because of recent suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, or depression plus substance abuse. Youths were randomly assigned to the TOC intervention or to enhanced treatment as usual. Depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation were assessed at baseline and two months later. RESULTS Adolescents assigned to TOC showed greater reductions in depression than adolescents assigned to the comparison group (Cohen's d=1.07, a large effect size). Hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse outcomes trended positively (nonsignificantly), with small to moderate effect sizes. CONCLUSIONS TOC may be a promising, brief intervention for adolescents seeking emergency services and at risk of suicide.
Characterization of Erythromycin-Resistant Isolates of Staphylococcus aureus Recovered in the United States from 1958 through 1969

ABSTRACT We tested 16 erythromycin-resistant clinical isolates of S. aureus, recovered from patients hospitalized in the United States from 1958 to 1969, for the presence of ermA,ermB, and ermC by using PCR. Fifteen of 16 isolates contained at least one copy of ermA; the remaining isolate, which was also clindamycin resistant, containedermB. Eight of the 15 isolates harboring ermA, all of which were inducible, contained a single copy of the gene in the chromosome, while the remaining seven isolates had two copies of the gene. ermB was plasmid encoded and mediated constitutive resistance to erythromycin.