Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Word duration modeling for word graph rescoring in LVCSR

A well-known unfavorable property of HMMs in speech recognition is their inappropriate representation of phone and word durations. This paper describes an approach to resolve this limitation by integrating explicit word duration models into an HMM-based speech recognizer. Word durations are represented by log-normal densities using a back-off strategy that approximates durations of words that have been observed seldom by a combination of the statistics of suitable sub-word units. Furthermore, two different normalization procedures are compared which reduce the inﬂuence of the implicit HMM duration distribution resulting from the state-to-state transition probabilities. Experiments on European parliamentary speeches in English and Spanish language show that the proposed approaches are effective and lead to small, but consistent reductions in the word error rate for large-vocabulary speech recognition tasks.
Non-commutative Geometry from Strings 1 Noncommutative Geometry from String Theory

One of the most important recent developments in string theory is the discovery of Dbranes and a deeper understanding of their properties. Among other things, this allows one to derive for the first time noncommutative geometry from string theory. The resulting noncommutative geometry has stimulated a wide range of physical applications and has leaded to new insights into a fundamental formulation of string theory.
Channel Slope Effect on Energy Dissipation of Flow over Broad Crested Weirs

The main purpose of broad crested weir used in open channels is to raise and control upstream (U/S) water level. In this study, a new performance was added to this weir, by making a step at downstream (D/S) of weir. The energy dissipation, the height of the weir/the upstream water height ratio and Froude number relationships (E% – P/h – Fr) for three range of flume slop S = 0.0, 0.002 and 0.004 were simulated. The experiments were performed in a laboratory horizontal channel of 4.6 m length, 0.3 m width and 0.3 m depth for a wide range of discharge. The D/S step height of the weir was 7.5 cm. FLUENT software was used as numerical model which represent a type of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model in order to simulate flow over weirs. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method with the Standard k – e turbulence model was used to estimate the free surface profile and the structured mesh with high concentration near the wall regions. The experimental results of the water surface profile gave a high agreement with the results of the numerical models. The maximum value 28.78 of E% was obtained in single step broad crested weir in the experimental result and 27.35 in numerical result at S = 0.004. Finally, the range of the relative error of the energy dissipation between experimental and numerical results was achieved and the maximum was 6.76 in all runs.
Eradication of HIV-1 from the Macrophage Reservoir: An Uncertain Goal?

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) establishes latency in resting memory CD4+ T cells and cells of myeloid lineage. In contrast to the T cells, cells of myeloid lineage are resistant to the HIV-1 induced cytopathic effect. Cells of myeloid lineage including macrophages are present in anatomical sanctuaries making them a difficult drug target. In addition, the long life span of macrophages as compared to the CD4+ T cells make them important viral reservoirs in infected individuals especially in the late stage of viral infection where CD4+ T cells are largely depleted. In the past decade, HIV-1 persistence in resting CD4+ T cells has gained considerable attention. It is currently believed that rebound viremia following cessation of combination anti-retroviral therapy (cART) originates from this source. However, the clinical relevance of this reservoir has been questioned. It is suggested that the resting CD4+ T cells are only one source of residual viremia and other viral reservoirs such as tissue macrophages should be seriously considered. In the present review we will discuss how macrophages contribute to the development of long-lived latent reservoirs and how macrophages can be used as a therapeutic target in eradicating latent reservoir.
International Journal of Computer Science and Technology 527

The paper outlines an efficient brain MRI region based segmentation techniques which can significantly distinguish between abnormal and normal tissue. All the segmentation methods are region based and are noise independent. A comparison between three different brain MRI segmentation methods, viz., improved level segmentation method, local region based active contour and variational level set formulation method can be apprehended effectively and their results are also discussed. These methods are applied to both 2D as well as 3D images. I. Introduction Medical imaging plays an important role in patient diagnosis. To examine the disease of patient imaging technology is used. MRI and PET/CT is vital diagnostic imaging techniques. MRI and PET/CT provides a good contrast between the different soft tissues of the brain. Combined PET/CT instrumentation is a new type of advanced medical imaging equipments which is a high-performance combination of PET and CT scanners [1]. Segmentation is a challenging task. Segmentation helps in diagnosis of various diseases. We can apply research on the segmented data such as classifying a voxels, volumetric analysis of particular tissues and structures. We can categorize the active contour model into two parts edge based models [2] and region based models [3]. This paper presents the segmentation methods Improved Level Set [4], Local Region based active contour[5] and variational level set method [6], for extracting the abnormal tissue from the brain MRI images. This paper presents the method that applies on both homogenous and non homogenous method. Intensity homogeneity occurs due to technical limitations or an artifact introduced by the object and it is mainly present in real images. The radio frequency coils produces nonuniform magnetic field that arise inhomogenity in Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI). We require segmentation method to correct the intensity inhomogenity as a pre-processing step [7]. The paper is organized as follows. In section II, we present different image segmentation methods. Section III, describes the experimental results and discussion Section IV, describe the comparison of all segmentation method Section V, conclude the paper.
The influence of facial attractiveness on recognition memory: behavioural findings and electrophysiological evidence

Die Fahigkeit, Gesichter gut zu erkennen ist entscheidend fur unsere sozialen Interaktionen, aber anfallig fur Verzerrungen zugunsten bestimmter Gesichtergruppen, bspw. einem besseren Gedachtnis fur Gesichter der eigenen Ethnie (Own-Race-Bias). Die Literatur diskutiert potentiell zugrundeliegende Mechanismen kontrovers: Einerseits argumentieren Theorien sozialer Kognition, dass Menschen motivierter seien, Gesichter ihrer eigenen sozialen Gruppe zu individualisieren, was zu effizienterer Verarbeitung und damit besseren Gedachtnisleistung fuhre. Andererseits gehen Theorien der Wahrnehmungsexpertise davon aus, dass ein besseres Gedachtnis fur bestimmte Gesichtergruppen aus Lernprozessen durch regelmasigen Kontakt mit verschiedenen Gesichtern dieser Kategorie resultiert. Anliegen dieser Arbeit war es, die Vorhersagen dieser Theorien fur das Gedachtnis fur attraktive, mittelattraktive und unattraktive Gesichter gegeneinander zu testen unter Kontrolle von wahrgenommenen Distinktheit, einer Determinante des Gesichtergedachtnisses. In der ersten Studie wurde untersucht, ob die Erinnerung an Gesichter linear oder auf komplexere Art mit Attraktivitat zusammenhangt. Die zweite Studie untersucht den kombinierten Einfluss von Attraktivitat und Geschlecht auf das Gesichtergedachtnis. Wahrend sich diese ersten Experimente auf Gedachtniseffekte beim Abruf konzentrierten, untersucht eine dritte Studie enkodierungsrelatierte neuronale Korrelate des Attraktivitatseffekts. Es fand sich wiederholt ein besseres Gedachtnis fur unattraktive Gesichter gegenuber attraktiven und mittelattraktiven Gesichtern. Mittelattraktive Gesichter wurden weiterhin schlechter erinnert als attraktive Gesichter. Letzterer Unterschied beruht mutmaslich auf emotionaler Relevanz, d. h. Valenz und Erregung. In den ereigniskorrelierten Potentialen im EEG zeigten sich erhohte P2-Amplituden fur mittelattraktive Gesichter beim Gedachtnisabruf, und ein ausgepragter Dm-Effekt in derselben Komponente, die mit Prozessen der perzeptuellen Verarbeitung von Gesichtern in Verbindung gebracht wird. Diese Befunde sprechen ubergreifend fur Theorien der Wahrnehmungsexpertise, basierend auf der Dichte von Gesichterreprasentationen.
A Possibilistic Decision Logic with Applications

In this paper, we investigate a knowledge representation formalism in the context of fuzzy data tables. A possibilistic decision logic incorporating linguistic terms is proposed for representing and reasoning about knowledge in fuzzy data tables. Two applications based on the logic are described. The first is the extraction of fuzzy rules from general fuzzy data tables. In this application, the knowledge in the tables may be made explicit by the formulas of the logic or used implicitly in decision-making. The second is for the fuzzy quantization problem of precise data tables. It can be viewed as a special case of the first, however, due to some special properties of the problem, a polynomial time rule extraction process can be obtained. Finally, the relationship of the logic with some works for handling uncertain information in data tables is also discussed.
Specifying the role of linguistic information in verb learning

Decades of research have documented that acquiring the meanings of verbs is, on average, more difficult than acquiring the meanings of nouns. This is likely because verb learning requires more information, and information of a different kind, than noun learning. One particularly powerful source of information for verb learning is linguistic context. For example, Naigles (1990) demonstrated in a classic study that 2-year-olds infer that verbs appearing in transitive sentences carry causative meanings. The present study explores in more detail what aspects of the linguistic information that is typically carried in a transitive sentence—the syntactic structure itself, and/or the semantic content of the noun phrases introducing the arguments—are most useful for these young verb learners.
A distributed data space for music-related information

In this paper, we describe how some key Semantic Web technologies can be used to gather in a single distributed knowledge environment several music-related sources of information, from digital archives to feature extractors or personal music collections. Such knowledge can then be used for a wide range of purposes, such as aggregation and information retrieval, visualisation and enriched access, or cross-repository interlinking. We also describe on-going efforts aiming at bootstrapping such a data-space, as well as preliminary results.
Multi-oriented Text Extraction from Information Graphics

Existing research on analyzing information graphics assume to have a perfect text detection and extraction available. However, text extraction from information graphics is far from solved. To fill this gap, we propose a novel processing pipeline for multi-oriented text extraction from infographics. The pipeline applies a combination of data mining and computer vision techniques to identify text elements, cluster them into text lines, compute their orientation, and uses a state-of-the-art open source OCR engine to perform the text recognition. We evaluate our method on 121 infographics extracted from an open access corpus of scientific publications. The results show that our approach is effective and significantly outperforms a state-of-the-art baseline.
An investigation into affecting factors on acceptance of e-government service counters as a service delivery channel: a case of developing country

The acceptance of e-government and utilizing it, are among the consequential issues that are dealt with in putting new technologies to use. This subject is of special importance because as long as e-government services are not utilized by citizens, new investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) sector would lead to the wastage of assets and resources. Accepting of e-services by citizens assures efficiency and usefulness of those services. In Iran, e-government services are delivered to citizens via service offices named e-government service counters. This study was intended to investigate the factors affecting on acceptance of e-services of e-government counters in Mashhad, Iran. Our research method was based on applied, survey research. The data was collected from citizens who were using e-government service counters via a questionnaire. The construct validity was scrutinized through factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha coefficient > 0.7 for different constructs of the questionnaire, affirmed its reliability. Statistical analysis of data was performed by method of structural equation modeling. The results showed that, first of all, organizational and social factors had significant positive effects on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Additionally, the influences of perceived ease of use and usefulness on attitude towards utilizing these services and, ultimately, influence of this variable on behavioral intention were confirmed. Finally, we proposed some practical recommendations for future studies and enumerated research limitations.
Extracting singing voice from music recordings by cascading audio decomposition techniques

The problem of extracting singing voice from music recordings has received increasing research interest in recent years. Many proposed decomposition techniques are based on one of the following two strategies. The first approach is to directly decompose a given music recording into one component for the singing voice and one for the accompaniment by exploiting knowledge about specific characteristics of singing voice. Procedures following the second approach disassemble the recording into a large set of fine-grained components, which are classified and reassembled afterwards to yield the desired source estimates. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that combines the strengths of both strategies. We first apply different audio decomposition techniques in a cascaded fashion to disassemble the music recording into a set of mid-level components. This decomposition is fine enough to model various characteristics of singing voice, but coarse enough to keep an explicit semantic meaning of the components. These properties allow us to directly reassemble the singing voice and the accompaniment from the components. Our objective and subjective evaluations show that this strategy can compete with state-of-the-art singing voice separation algorithms and yields perceptually appealing results.
MapReduce — a two-page explanation for laymen

Map and Reduce are generic, useful notions for computing science; together they are equally expressive as simple inductive definitions over trees/lists/bags/sets. 1. Datatypes Let A be a set. Consider the datatype of finite binary trees over A; it consists of a set TA and two constructors tip and join: TA : set tip : A → TA join : TA × TA → TA join
Exploring the Role of Spirituality in the Context of the Five Factor Model of Personality in a South African Sample

The study explored the relationship between the Five Factor Model of personality and spirituality by using the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Spiritual Transcendence Scale (STS) (Piedmont, 1999) respectively. Participants were 94 psychology undergraduate students at a large South African university (mean age = 19.1 years; SD =1.43, males =19, females=75). Data were analyzed using both correlations as well as principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Evidence from both correlations and factor analysis suggest separate domains within the FFM as well as a separate factor for spirituality. These results provide support for claims that aspects of spirituality are not accounted for by the FFM as operationalised by the NEO-PI-R and by implication the FFM may not be a complete taxonomy of personality.
Microbial Diagnostic Microarrays for the Detection and Typing of Food- and Water-Borne (Bacterial) Pathogens

Reliable and sensitive pathogen detection in clinical and environmental (including food and water) samples is of greatest importance for public health. Standard microbiological methods have several limitations and improved alternatives are needed. Most important requirements for reliable analysis include: (i) specificity; (ii) sensitivity; (iii) multiplexing potential; (iv) robustness; (v) speed; (vi) automation potential; and (vii) low cost. Microarray technology can, through its very nature, fulfill many of these requirements directly and the remaining challenges have been tackled. In this review, we attempt to compare performance characteristics of the microbial diagnostic microarrays developed for the detection and typing of food and water pathogens, and discuss limitations, points still to be addressed and issues specific for the analysis of food, water and environmental samples.
ADAM23, a Gene Related to LGI1, Is Not Linked to Autosomal Dominant Lateral Temporal Epilepsy

Autosomal dominant lateral temporal epilepsy (ADTLE) is an inherited epileptic syndrome characterized by ictal auditory symptoms or aphasia, negative MRI findings, and relatively benign evolution. Mutations responsible for ADLTE have been found in the LGI1 gene. The functions of the Lgi1 protein apparently are mediated by interactions with members of the ADAM protein family: it binds the postsynaptic receptor ADAM22 to regulate glutamate-AMPA currents at excitatory synapses and also the ADAM23 receptor to promote neurite outgrowth in vitro and dendritic arborization in vivo. Because alteration of each of these neuronal mechanisms may underlie ADLTE, ADAM22 and ADAM23 are candidate genes for this syndrome. In a previous work, we excluded a major role of ADAM22 in the aetiology of ADLTE. Here, we performed linkage analysis between microsatellite markers within or flanking the ADAM23 gene and ADLTE in 13 Italian families. The results exclude ADAM23 as major causative gene for ADLTE.
Explaining Geographic Gradients in Winter Selection of Landscapes by Boreal Caribou with Implications under Global Changes in Eastern Canada

Many animal species exhibit broad-scale latitudinal or longitudinal gradients in their response to biotic and abiotic components of their habitat. Although knowing the underlying mechanism of these patterns can be critical to the development of sound measures for the preservation or recovery of endangered species, few studies have yet identified which processes drive the existence of geographical gradients in habitat selection. Using extensive spatial data of broad latitudinal and longitudinal extent, we tested three hypotheses that could explain the presence of geographical gradients in landscape selection of the endangered boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) during winter in Eastern Canadian boreal forests: 1) climate-driven selection, which postulates that geographic gradients are surrogates for climatic gradients; 2) road-driven selection, which proposes that boreal caribou adjust their selection for certain habitat classes as a function of proximity to roads; and 3) an additive effect of both roads and climate. Our data strongly supported road-driven selection over climate influences. Thus, direct human alteration of landscapes drives boreal caribou distribution and should likely remain so until the climate changes sufficiently from present conditions. Boreal caribou avoided logged areas two-fold more strongly than burnt areas. Limiting the spread of road networks and accounting for the uneven impact of logging compared to wildfire should therefore be integral parts of any habitat management plan and conservation measures within the range of the endangered boreal caribou. The use of hierarchical spatial models allowed us to explore the distribution of spatially-structured errors in our models, which in turn provided valuable insights for generating alternative hypotheses about processes responsible for boreal caribou distribution.
Secure and flexible grid computing based intrusion detection system using mobile agents and cryptographic traces

Grid Computing is one of the new and innovative information technologies that attempt to make resources sharing global and more easier. Integrated in networked areas, the resources and services in grid are dynamic, heterogeneous and they belong to multiple spaced domains, which effectively enables a large scale collection, sharing and diffusion of data. However, grid computing stills a new paradigm that raises many security issues and conflicts in the computing infrastructures where it is integrated. In this paper, we propose an intrusion detection system (IDS) based on the autonomy, intelligence and independence of mobile agents to record the behaviors and actions on the grid resource nodes to detect malicious intruders. This is achieved through the use of cryptographic traces associated with chaining mechanism to elaborate hashed black statements of the executed agent code, which are then compared to depict intrusions. We have conducted experiments basing three metrics: network load, response time and detection ability to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed IDS.
High-Intensity Statin Therapy Alters the Natural History of Diabetic Coronary Atherosclerosis: Insights From SATURN

OBJECTIVE Although statins can induce coronary atheroma regression, this benefit has yet to be demonstrated in diabetic individuals. We tested the hypothesis that high-intensity statin therapy may promote coronary atheroma regression in patients with diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The Study of Coronary Atheroma by Intravascular Ultrasound: Effect of Rosuvastatin Versus Atorvastatin (SATURN) used serial intravascular ultrasound measures of coronary atheroma volume in patients treated with rosuvastatin 40 mg or atorvastatin 80 mg for 24 months. This analysis compared changes in biochemistry and coronary percent atheroma volume (PAV) in patients with (n = 159) and without (n = 880) diabetes. RESULTS At baseline, patients with diabetes had lower LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) and HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) levels but higher triglyceride and CRP levels compared with patients without diabetes. At follow-up, diabetic patients had lower levels of LDL-C (61.0 ± 20.5 vs. 66.4 ± 22.9 mg/dL, P = 0.01) and HDL-C (46.3 ± 10.6 vs. 49.9 ± 12.0 mg/dL, P < 0.001) but higher levels of triglycerides (127.6 [98.8, 163.0] vs. 113.0 mg/dL [87.6, 151.9], P = 0.001) and CRP (1.4 [0.7, 3.3] vs. 1.0 [0.5, 2.1] mg/L, P = 0.001). Both patients with and without diabetes demonstrated regression of coronary atheroma as measured by change in PAV (−0.83 ± 0.13 vs. −1.15 ± 0.13%, P = 0.08). PAV regression was less in diabetic compared with nondiabetic patients when on-treatment LDL-C levels were >70 mg/dL (−0.31 ± 0.23 vs. −1.01 ± 0.21%, P = 0.03) but similar when LDL-C levels were ≤70 mg/dL (−1.09 ± 0.16 vs. −1.24 ± 0.16%, P = 0.50). CONCLUSIONS High-intensity statin therapy alters the progressive nature of diabetic coronary atherosclerosis, yielding regression of disease in diabetic and nondiabetic patients.