Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intelligent hearing aids: The next revolution

The first revolution in hearing aids came from nonlinear amplification, which allows better compensation for both soft and loud sounds. The second revolution stemmed from the introduction of digital signal processing, which allows better programmability and more sophisticated algorithms. The third revolution in hearing aids is wireless, which allows seamless connectivity between a pair of hearing aids and with more and more external devices. Each revolution has fundamentally transformed hearing aids and pushed the entire industry forward significantly. Machine learning has received significant attention in recent years and has been applied in many other industries, e.g., robotics, speech recognition, genetics, and crowdsourcing. We argue that the next revolution in hearing aids is machine intelligence. In fact, this revolution is already quietly happening. We will review the development in at least three major areas: applications of machine learning in speech enhancement; applications of machine learning in individualization and customization of signal processing algorithms; applications of machine learning in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of clinical tests. With the advent of the internet of things, the above developments will accelerate. This revolution will bring patient satisfactions to a new level that has never been seen before.
A Methodology for Word Sense Disambiguation at 90% based on large-scale CrowdSourcing

Word Sense Disambiguation has been stuck for many years. In this paper we explore the use of large-scale crowdsourcing to cluster senses that are often confused by non-expert annotators. We show that we can increase performance at will: our in-domain experiment involving 45 highly polysemous nouns, verbs and adjective (9.8 senses on average), yields an average accuracy of 92.6 using a supervised classifier for an average polysemy of 6.1. Our proposal has the advantage of being cost-effective and being able to produce different levels of granularity. Our analysis shows that the error reduction with respect to finegrained senses is higher, and manual inspection show that the clusters are sensible when compared to those of OntoNotes and WordNet Supersenses.
Rapid and comprehensive determination of cytochrome P450 CYP2D6 poor metabolizer genotypes by multiplex polymerase chain reaction

The liver enzyme cytochrome P450 CYP2D6 (debrisoquine 4‐hydroxylase) metabolizes numerous drugs, including many antidepressants, neuroleptics, antiarrhythmics, and antihypertensive agents. Variability in the gene that encodes this enzyme is an important factor underlying variable drug treatment responses. Some 5–10% of Caucasians lack functional CYP2D6, and the genetic basis of most of these “poor metabolizer” alleles is now well defined. As the CYP2D6 status of a patient can have profound effects on response to drug treatment, it is important to devise methods that permit rapid and economical determination of CYP2D6 genotype. We have developed a robust polymerase chain reaction method that simultaneously identifies the variants CYP2D6 *3, *4, *6, *8, *11, *12, *14, *15, *19, and *20. This constitutes most of the poor metabolizer alleles described in Caucasian and Asian populations. Separate PCR reactions or Southern blots are required for *7, the *5 deletion, and the hybrid alleles *13 and *16. The multiplex assay was validated on 100 individuals previously genotyped by specific polymerase chain reaction‐restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, and proved 100% accurate in this sample. The assay performed consistently with Taq DNA polymerases from various suppliers, within a broad range of temperatures and MgCl2 concentrations, and using genomic DNA prepared by a range of methods including extraction from dried blood spots on card. This multiplexed, amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) method is reliable, rapid, relatively cheap, amenable to automation, and offers the advantages of minimal sample handling with no requirement for restriction enzymes as in earlier CYP2D6 assays. Hum Mutat 16:77–85, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The physiological measurements as a critical indicator in users' experience evaluation

This paper presents a new approach for assessing user’s emotional experience during Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The presented approach is based on the use of physiological signals derived from users during interaction with software, a system or a product. Most of the times the physiological signal provide an objective view about someone’s emotional state and offers to the researchers or practitioners an extra ability to create continuous recording of these states. Therefore the overall number of emotional states could be a starting point for a further analysis of transition between emotions. The specific analysis it will be able to provide with a number of new special indices in order to support the way of evaluation. In order to support the proposed approach, suitable software will be implemented and a first version of its functionality issues is also presented in this paper.
Immunoperoxidase technics in diagnostic pathology. Report of a workshop sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.

The use of immunoperoxidase technics has spread dramatically in recent years to almost daily use in certain clinical and surgical pathology laboratories. A wide variety of cell products, including enzymes, polypeptide and steroid hormones, immunoglobulins, oncodevelopmental antigens, viral antigens, and other cell-specific proteins, have been demonstrated in frozen or conventionally fixed and embedded tissue sections by the use of these methods. Major applications of these technics at present include demonstration of various immunoglobulin classes in tumors of lymphoreticular origin and atypical lymphoproliferative processes, identification of polypeptide hormones in endocrine tumors, and demonstration of various tumor markers such as carcinoembryonic antigen and alpha fetoprotein in neoplastic and preneoplastic conditions. The indirect peroxidase conjugate and peroxidase antiperoxidase procedures are presented and reviewed in detail with emphasis on tissue preparative procedures, evaluation of tissue and immunologic controls, background staining, and evaluation of results. The danger of false-negative and false-positive results should be dealt with in a precise manner so that results from different laboratories are both reliable and reproducible. The application of immunoperoxidase technics represents a major advance for the surgical pathologist, but additional evaluation, development, and standardization are required. To accomplish this, comparative studies of the same material, including known positive and negative tissue controls, by different laboratories should be encouraged.
Penetration and Precision of Subsurface Photodisruption in Porcine Skin Tissue With Infrared Femtosecond Laser Pulses

The surgical precision of photodisruption with ultrafast optical pulses depends on the accurate delivery of optical energy to sites of interest. As light penetration is limited in turbid tissues, localization and precision of subsurface breakdown highly depend on the interacting effects of increased power requirements and external focusing conditions. Infrared femtosecond breakdown extent in excised porcine skin tissue was investigated using a high-frequency ultrasonic technique which sensitively detected laser-induced bubbles. Using a focused laser source, optical parameters including laser fluence and focusing numerical aperture (NA) were controlled. Decreasing NA improved penetration, while increasing NA improved precision. At lower NA, penetrations of up to 1 mm could be achieved with a single laser excitation at the cost of an expanded breakdown region which reduced precision. Even at higher NA, however, maximum penetration reduced to 400 mum and precision was still limited with extended breakdown regions for focusing depths greater than 100 mum. Glycerol was used as an index matching material, which helped reduce scattering and improved penetration by 150 to 400 mum for all NAs. Nonetheless, multiple breakdown sites and the corresponding reduction in precision were observed even with glycerol treatment.
Interaction of POB1, a Downstream Molecule of Small G Protein Ral, with PAG2, a Paxillin-binding Protein, Is Involved in Cell Migration*

POB1 was previously identified as a RalBP1-binding protein. POB1 and RalBP1 function downstream of small G protein Ral and regulate receptor-mediated endocytosis. To look for additional functions of POB1, we screened for POB1-binding proteins using a yeast two-hybrid method and found that POB1 interacts with mouse ASAP1, which is a human PAG2 homolog. PAG2 is a paxillin-associated protein with ADP-ribosylation factor GTPase-activating protein activity. POB1 formed a complex with PAG2 in intact cells. The carboxyl-terminal region containing the proline-rich motifs of POB1 directly bound to the carboxyl-terminal region including the SH3 domain of PAG2. Substitutions of Pro423 and Pro426 with Ala (POB1(PA)) impaired the binding of POB1 to PAG2. Expression of PAG2 inhibited fibronectin-dependent migration and paxillin recruitment to focal contacts of CHO-IR cells. Co-expression with POB1 but not with POB1(PA) suppressed the inhibitory action of PAG2 on cell migration and paxillin localization. These results suggest that POB1 interacts with PAG2 through its proline-rich motif, thereby regulating cell migration.
Guarded fixed point logic

Guarded fixed point logics are obtained by adding least and greatest fixed points to the guarded fragments of first-order logic that were recently introduced by H. Andreka et al. (1998). Guarded fixed point logics can also be viewed as the natural common extensions of the modal p-calculus and the guarded fragments. We prove that the satisfiability problems for guarded fixed point logics are decidable and complete for deterministic double exponential time. For guarded fixed point sentences of bounded width, the most important case for applications, the satisfiability problem is EXPTIME-complete.
Stereo-based stochastic noise compensation based on trajectory GMMS

This paper proposes a novel stereo-based stochastic noise compensation technique based on trajectory GMMs. Although the GMM-based noise compensation techniques such as SPLICE work effective, their performance sometimes degrades due to the inappropriate dynamic characteristics caused by the frame-by-frame mapping. While the use of dynamic feature constraints on the mapping stage can alleviate this problem, it also introduces an inconsistency between training and mapping. The recently proposed trajectory GMM-based feature mapping technique can solve this inconsistency while keeping the benefits of the use of dynamic features, and offers an entire sequence-level transformation rather than the frame-by-frame mapping. Results from a noise compensation experiment on the AURORA-2 task show that the proposed trajectory GMM-based noise compensation technique outperforms the conventional ones.
Increased intima–media thickness of the common carotid artery in primary aldosteronism in comparison with essential hypertension

Background Aldosterone contributes to the accumulation of collagen fibers and extracellular matrix in arterial wall. The aim of this study was to compare intima–media thickness (IMT) of the common carotid artery and carotid bifurcation in patients with primary aldosteronism, essential hypertension and healthy controls. Methods Carotid ultrasound studies were carried out in 33 patients aged 42–72 years with primary aldosteronism, 52 patients with essential hypertension and in 33 normotensive controls. Results The patients with primary aldosteronism had significantly higher IMT of the common carotid artery than patients with essential hypertension and controls (0.987 ± 0.152 mm; 0.892 ± 0.154 mm versus 0.812 ± 0.124 mm; P < 0.001; P < 0.05). There was also significantly higher IMT of the common carotid in patients with essential hypertension compared to control group (0.892 ± 0.154 mm versus 0.812 ± 0.124 mm; P < 0.01). The differences between both hypertensive groups remained statistically significant after adjustment for age and 24-h systolic blood pressure (P = 0.001). The differences of the IMT in the carotid bifurcation were statistically significant only between patients with primary aldosteronism and controls (1.157 ± 0.243 mm versus 0.994 ± 0.199 mm; P <0.05). Conclusion Patients with primary aldosteronism have increased common carotid IMT compared to the patients with essential hypertension. This finding could be caused by the deleterious effects of aldosterone excess on the fibrosis and thickening of the arterial wall, mainly in the straight segments of vessels.
Vocal fold lateralization using carbon dioxide laser and fibrin glue

Abstract Lateralization of one or both vocal folds is a generally accepted surgical principle for the relief of the airway obstruction caused by bilateral vocal fold paralysis. A modified, entirely endoscopic method of lateralization has been developed, employing a carbon dioxide laser to reduce the bulk of the fold, and fibrin glue to maintain the lateral position. The results of 18 operations on 15 patients, including six who had unsatisfactory results after previous surgery, were analyzed and compared retrospectively with the results from 22 patients operated on before the introduction of the method. The patient's ability to perform everyday activities improved in 12 cases, which paralleled the results of the previous, more cumbersome methods. The incidence of re-operation was comparable, given the shorter follow-up after the more recent method.
Lava Flow Hazard Assessment, as of August 2007, for Kilauea East Rift Zone Eruptions, Hawai`i Island

The most recent episode in the ongoing Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō – Kupaianaha eruption of Kīlauea Volcano is currently producing lava flows north of the east rift zone. Although they pose no immediate threat to communities, changes in flow behavior could conceivably cause future flows to advance downrift and impact communities thus far unaffected. This report reviews lava flow hazards in the Puna District and discusses the potential hazards posed by the recent change in activity. Members of the public are advised to increase their general awareness of these hazards and stay up-to-date on current conditions.
Observations of near-inertial surface currents off Oregon: Decorrelation time and length scales

[1] High-resolution (km in space and hourly in time) surface currents observed by an array of high-frequency radars off Oregon are analyzed to quantify the decorrelation time and length scales of their near-inertial motions. The near-inertial surface currents are dominantly clockwise with amplitudes of 9–12 cm s−1. However, they appear asymmetric and elliptical as a result of counterclockwise inertial motions with magnitudes in a range of 2–5 cm s−1. The decorrelation time and length scales are computed from the decay slope of the near-inertial peak and the spatial coherence in the near-inertial frequency band, respectively. Decorrelation time scales of clockwise near-inertial motions increase from 2 days nearshore (within 30 km from the coast) to 6 days offshore, and their length scales increase from 30 to 90 km seaward possibly due to coastal inhibition. The local spatial coherence has an exponentially decaying structure for both clockwise and counterclockwise rotations, and their phases propagate northwestward (offshore) for clockwise and northeastward (onshore) for counterclockwise rotations.
The Direct Route: Mediated Priming in Semantic Space

McKoon and Ratcliff (1992) presented a theory of mediated priming where the priming effect is due to a direct but weak relatedness between prime and target. They also introduced a quantitative measure of word relatedness based on pointwise mutual information (Church and Hanks; 1990), and showed that stimuli chosen with the measure produced graded priming effects as predicted by their theory. Using stimuli from Balota and Lorch (1986), Livesay and Burgess (Livesay and Burgess; 1997, 1998) replicated the mediated priming effect in humans, but found that in HAL, a corpusderived semantic space (Lund, Burgess and Atchley; 1995), mediated primes were in fact further from their targets than unrelated words. They concluded from this that mediated priming is not due to direct but weak relatedness. In this paper we present an alternative semantic space model based on earlier work (McDonald and Lowe; 1998). We show how this space allows a) a detailed replication of Ratcliff and McKoon’s experimental results using their stimuli and b) a replication of Livesay and Burgess’s human experimental results showing mediated priming. We discuss the implications for McKoon and Ratcliff’s theory of mediated priming.
QAS: Real-Time Quadratic Approximation of Subdivision Surfaces

We introduce QAS, an efficient quadratic approximation of subdivision surfaces which offers a very close appearance compared to the true subdivision surface but avoids recursion, providing at least one order of magnitude faster rendering. QAS uses enriched polygons, equipped with edge vertices, and replaces them on-the-fly with low degree polynomials for interpolating positions and normals. By systematically projecting the vertices of the input coarse mesh at their limit position on the subdivision surface, the visual quality of the approximation is good enough for imposing only a single subdivision step, followed by our patch fitting, which allows real-time performances for million polygons output. Additionally, the parametric nature of the approximation offers an efficient adaptive sampling for rendering and displacement mapping. Last, the hexagonal support associated to each coarse triangle is adapted to geometry processors.
Single-Shot Turbo Spin-Echo Diffusion-Weighted Imaging for Retinoblastoma: Initial Experience

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Retinoblastoma may exhibit variable hyperintensities on DWI, resulting in different values in the ADC maps, depending on their histology and cellularity. However, EP-based DWI has susceptibility artifacts and image distortions, which make DWI of the orbit a challenging technique. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of single-shot turbo spin-echo (HASTE) DWI in the evaluation of children with retinoblastoma and to assess the value of ADC maps in differentiating viable and necrotic tumor tissue. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two radiologists assessed conventional MR images, DWI, and ADC maps of 17 patients with retinoblastoma (n = 17 eyes). Non-EP DWI was performed by using a HASTE sequence with b-values of 0 and 1000 s/mm2. ADC values were measured for enhancing and nonenhancing tumor tissue. ADC maps were compared with histopathologic findings regarding tumor differentiation and viability. RESULTS: On DWI, vital tumor tissue showed hyperintensity with negligible intensity of surrounding vitreous. The difference in mean (range) ADC values between enhancing (1.03 [0.72–1.22] × 10−3 mm2 s−1) and nonenhancing (1.47 [0.99–1.80] × 10−3 mm2 s−1) parts of retinoblastoma was statistically significant (P < .0005). Nonenhancing tumor parts showed a significantly lower ADC compared with vitreous (2.67 [2.24–3.20]×10−3 mm2 s−1) (P < .0005) and subretinal fluid (2.20 [1.76–2.96] × 10−3 mm2 s−1) (P < .0005). Histopathologically, low ADC values (enhancing tumor part) correlated to viable tumor tissue, whereas intermediate ADC values (nonenhancing tumor parts) correlated to necrotic tumor tissue. CONCLUSIONS: HASTE DWI allowed adequate characterization of retinoblastoma, and ADC is a helpful tool to differentiate viable and necrotic tumor tissue and might be valuable in monitoring the response to eye-preserving therapies.
Neuron/target plasticity in the peripheral gustatory system

Taste bud volume on the anterior tongue in adult rats is matched by an appropriate number of innervating geniculate ganglion cells. The larger the taste bud, the more geniculate ganglion cells that innervate it. To determine if such a match is perturbed in the regenerated gustatory system under different dietary conditions, taste bud volumes and numbers of innervating neurons were quantified in adult rats after unilateral axotomy of the chorda tympani nerve and/or maintenance on a sodium‐restricted diet. The relationship between taste bud size and innervation was eliminated in rats merely fed a sodium‐restricted diet; individual taste bud volumes were smaller than predicted by the corresponding number of innervating neurons. Surprisingly, the relationship was disrupted in a similar way on the intact side of the tongue in unilaterally sectioned rats, with no diet‐related differences. The mismatch in these groups was due to a decrease in average taste bud volumes and not to a change in numbers of innervating ganglion cells. In contrast, individual taste bud volumes were larger than predicted by the corresponding number of innervating neurons on the regenerated side of the tongue; again, with no diet‐related differences. However, the primary variable responsible for disrupting the function on the regenerated side was an approximate 20% decrease in geniculate ganglion cells available to innervate taste buds. Therefore, the neuron/target match in the peripheral gustatory system is susceptible to surgical and/or dietary manipulations that act through multiple mechanisms. This system is ideally suited to model sensory plasticity in adults. J. Comp. Neurol. 472:183–192, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cross-Layer Scheduling and Power Control Combined With Adaptive Modulation for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Efficient resource management is a major challenge in the operation of wireless systems, especially energy-constrained ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer optimization framework to jointly design the scheduling and power control in wireless ad hoc networks. We study the system performance by combining scheduling, power control, and adaptive modulation. Specifically, the transmitted power and constellation size are dynamically adapted based on the packet arrival, quality of service (QoS) requirements, power limits, and channel conditions. A key feature of the proposed method is that it facilitates a distributed implementation, which is desirable in wireless ad hoc networks. The performance of our proposed methodology will be investigated in ad hoc networks supporting unicast as well as multicast traffic. Simulation results will show that the proposed scheme achieves significant gains in both the single-hop throughput and power efficiency compared with the existing method, which implements the scheduling through a central controller, and adopts power control with fixed modulation