Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Restricted Domain Malay Speech Synthesizer Using Syntax-Prosody Representation

The speech synthesis approach required in restricted domain speech application is a synthesizer that has high quality like the speech output of ‘slot-filler’ approach but have at least the least flexibility of the ‘genuine’ speech synthesizer. Thus, in this research study, we propose an alternative approach of creating a speech synthesizer to be used in a restricted domain speech application. In our approach, we use word unit as the primary unit and our speech corpus is represented by syntax-prosody tree structures. Speech synthesis is performed by constructing a syntax-prosody tree of a target input sentence. The construction of the tree is by done by adapting an example-based syntactic parsing approach and the concatenated of synthesis units from the constructed tree nodes will be the synthesized utterance. For evaluation, we performed MOS subjective evaluation on our speech synthesizer with natural speech and two other Malay TTS system. Based on an ANOVA and T-Tests analysis, we found the overall MOS scores of our speech synthesizer output, sound B was (mean = 3.34, sd = 1.10), the other two Malay TTS system; C (mean = 1.95, sd = 0.72) and D (mean = 1.80, sd = 1.04) and the natural speech, A (mean = 4.71, sd = 0.21). We conclude that our Malay speech synthesizer sounded more natural, easier to listen, more pleasant and more fluent compared to the sounds of the other two Malay TTS systems. As expected, the recorded speech was perceived more natural than the output of our Malay speech synthesizer.
Fusion of Lysosomes with Late Endosomes Produces a Hybrid Organelle of Intermediate Density and Is NSF Dependent

Using a cell-free content mixing assay containing rat liver endosomes and lysosomes in the presence of pig brain cytosol, we demonstrated that after incubation at 37°C, late endosome–lysosome hybrid organelles were formed, which could be isolated by density gradient centrifugation. ImmunoEM showed that the hybrids contained both an endocytosed marker and a lysosomal enzyme. Formation of the hybrid organelles appeared not to require vesicular transport between late endosomes and lysosomes but occurred as a result of direct fusion. Hybrid organelles with similar properties were isolated directly from rat liver homogenates and thus were not an artifact of cell-free incubations. Direct fusion between late endosomes and lysosomes was an N-ethylmaleimide–sensitive factor– dependent event and was inhibited by GDP-dissociation inhibitor, indicating a requirement for a rab protein. We suggest that in cells, delivery of endocytosed ligands to an organelle where proteolytic digestion occurs is mediated by direct fusion of late endosomes with lysosomes. The consequences of this fusion to the maintenance and function of lysosomes are discussed.
Hedgehog signaling pathway regulated the target genes for adipogenesis in silkworm Bombyx mori

Hedgehog (Hh) signals regulate invertebrate and vertebrate development, yet the role of the pathway in adipose development remains poorly understood. In this report, we found that Hh pathway components are expressed in the fat body of silkworm larvae. Functional analysis of these components in a BmN cell line model revealed that activation of the Hh gene stimulated transcription of Hh pathway components, but inhibited the expression of the adipose marker gene AP2. Conversely, specific RNA interference‐mediated knockdown of Hh resulted in increased AP2 expression. This further showed the regulation of Hh signal on the adipose marker gene. In silkworm larval models, enhanced adipocyte differentiation and an increase in adipocyte cell size were observed in silkworms that had been treated with a specific Hh signaling pathway antagonist, cyclopamine. The fat‐body‐specific Hh blockade tests were consistent with Hh signaling inhibiting silkworm adipogenesis. Our results indicate that the role of Hh signaling in inhibiting fat formation is conserved in vertebrates and invertebrates.
Endoscopy for Nonvariceal Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Endoscopy for acute nonvariceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding plays an important role in primary diagnosis and management, particularly with respect to identification of high-risk stigmata lesions and to providing endoscopic hemostasis to reduce the risk of rebleeding and mortality. Early endoscopy, defined as endoscopy within the first 24 hours after presentation, improves patient outcome and reduces the length of hospitalization when compared with delayed endoscopy. Various endoscopic hemostatic methods are available, including injection therapy, mechanical therapy, and thermal coagulation. Either single treatment with mechanical or thermal therapy or a treatment that combines more than one type of therapy are effective and safe for peptic ulcer bleeding. Newly developed methods, such as Hemospray powder and over-the-scope clips, may provide additional options. Appropriate decisions and specific treatment are needed depending upon the conditions.
Experimental Comparison of the Comprehensibility of a UML-based Formal Specification versus a Textual One

The primary objective of software specification is to promote understanding of the system properties between stakeholders. Specification comprehensibility is essential particularly during software validation and maintenance as it permits the understanding of the system properties more easily and quickly prior to the required tasks. Formal notation such as B increases a specification's precision and consistency. However, the notation is regarded as being difficult to comprehend due to its unfamiliar symbols and rules of interpretation. Semi-formal notation such as the Unified Modelling Language (UML) is perceived as more accessible but it cannot be verified systematically to ensure a specification's accuracy. Integrating the UML and B could perhaps produce an accurate and approachable specification. This paper presents an experimental comparison of the comprehensibility of a UML-based graphical formal specification versus a purely textual formal specification. The measurement focused on the efficiency in performing the comprehension tasks. The experiment employed a cross-over design and was conducted on forty-one third-year and masters students. The results show that the integration of semi-formal and formal notations expedites the subjects' comprehension tasks with accuracy even with limited hours of training.
Immigrant and Minority Political Incorporation in Canada

The primary aim of this article is to represent the current state of knowledge about the nature and extent of immigrant and minority political incorporation in Canada at the national level. It pays particular attention to activities associated with mass-level political participation, although some consideration is given to office seeking and office holding as indicators of involvement in elite-level politics. The most general conclusion available from the literature is that newcomers and minorities are significantly engaged in Canadian politics. Also identified in the literature are various independent variables that contribute to explaining why some individuals and groups, including different origin categories, are more politically engaged than others. Some of these variables have relevance in the context of a secondary goal pursued here, namely, reflecting on and illustrating how dedicated comparative research of the Canadian and American cases can enhance understanding of political incorporation in one or both countries. The discussion leads to the conclusion that there is enormous potential for many fruitful lines of inquiry.
3D Reconstruction in the presence of glasses by acoustic and stereo fusion

We present a practical and inexpensive method to reconstruct 3D scenes that include piece-wise planar transparent objects. Our work is motivated by the need for automatically generating 3D models of interior scenes, in which glass structures are common. These large structures are often invisible to cameras or even our human visual system. Existing 3D reconstruction methods for transparent objects are usually not applicable in such a room-size reconstruction setting. Our approach augments a regular depth camera (e.g., the Microsoft Kinect camera) with a single ultrasonic sensor, which is able to measure distance to any objects, including transparent surfaces. We present a novel sensor fusion algorithm that first segments the depth map into different categories such as opaque/transparent/infinity (e.g., too far to measure) and then updates the depth map based on the segmentation outcome. Our current hardware setup can generate only one additional point measurement per frame, yet our fusion algorithm is able to generate satisfactory reconstruction results based on our probabilistic model. We highlight the performance in many challenging indoor benchmarks.
Consensus for Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer Treatment, Part II: Squamous Cell Carcinoma, Including a Cost Analysis of Treatment Methods

BACKGROUND Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is the second most common cancer in the United States. Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma has an estimated incidence of more than 700,000 new cases per year and a 5% risk of metastasis. OBJECTIVE To provide clinicians with guidelines for the management of cSCC based on evidence from a comprehensive literature review and consensus among the authors. MATERIALS AND METHODS The authors conducted an extensive review of the medical literature on treatment methods for cSCC, taking into consideration cure rates, recurrence and metastatic rates, aesthetic and functional outcomes, and cost effectiveness of the procedures. RESULTS Surgical treatments provide the best outcomes for cSCC. Mohs micrographic surgery is a cost-effective procedure that affords the highest cure rate, maximal tissue preservation, and superior cosmetic outcomes. Nonsurgical methods may be used as a primary treatment for low-risk squamous cell carcinomas, but the cure rates are lower. CONCLUSION The cure rate remains the most important consideration in choosing the treatment method, but additional factors, such as the patient's general medical condition, psychosocial circumstances, the location of the tumor and cost effectiveness of the therapy should be considered. Mohs micrographic surgery remains the preferred treatment for high-risk tumors and tumors located in cosmetically sensitive areas.
Filtrated Algebraic Subspace Clustering

Subspace clustering is the problem of clustering data that lie close to a union of linear subspaces. In the abstract form of the problem, where no noise or other corruptions are present, the data are assumed to lie in general position inside the algebraic variety of a union of subspaces, and the objective is to decompose the variety into its constituent subspaces. Prior algebraic-geometric approaches to this problem require the subspaces to be of equal dimension, or the number of subspaces to be known. Subspaces of arbitrary dimensions can still be recovered in closed form, in terms of all homogeneous polynomials of degree $m$ that vanish on their union, when an upper bound m on the number of the subspaces is given. In this paper, we propose an alternative, provably correct, algorithm for addressing a union of at most $m$ arbitrary-dimensional subspaces, based on the idea of descending filtrations of subspace arrangements. Our algorithm uses the gradient of a vanishing polynomial at a point in the variety to find a hyperplane containing the subspace S passing through that point. By intersecting the variety with this hyperplane, we obtain a subvariety that contains S, and recursively applying the procedure until no non-trivial vanishing polynomial exists, our algorithm eventually identifies S. By repeating this procedure for other points, our algorithm eventually identifies all the subspaces by returning a basis for their orthogonal complement. Finally, we develop a variant of the abstract algorithm, suitable for computations with noisy data. We show by experiments on synthetic and real data that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art methods on several occasions, thus demonstrating the merit of the idea of filtrations.
Generalized Newton-Type Methods for Energy Formulations in Image Processing

Many problems in image processing are addressed via the minimization of a cost functional. The most prominently used optimization technique is gradient-descent, often used due to its simplicity and applicability where other techniques, e.g., those coming from discrete optimization, cannot be applied. Yet, gradient-descent suffers from slow convergence, and often to just local minima which highly depend on the initialization and the condition number of the functional Hessian. Newton-type methods, on the other hand, are known to have a faster, quadratic convergence. In its classical form, the Newton method relies on the $L^2$-type norm to define the descent direction. In this paper, we generalize and reformulate this very important optimization method by introducing Newton-type methods based on more general norms. Such norms are introduced both in the descent computation (Newton step) and in the corresponding stabilizing trust-region. This generalization opens up new possibilities in the extraction of the Newton step, including benefits such as mathematical stability and the incorporation of smoothness constraints. We first present the derivation of the modified Newton step in the calculus of variation framework needed for image processing. Then, we demonstrate the method with two common objective functionals: variational image deblurring and geometric active contours for image segmentation. We show that in addition to the fast convergence, norms adapted to the problem at hand yield different and superior results.
Signal phase estimation for measurement of respiration waveform using a microwave Doppler sensor

This paper proposes and compares five methods for phase estimation to measure slight change of chest movement with respiration using a dual type microwave Doppler sensor. A body direction to the sensor affects the performance of the respiration measurement, because microwave reflection is sensitive to the surface direction. The phase estimation from two sensor signals is the most important part to measure respiration. Thus, we developed new five methods for phase estimation. These methods were evaluated by calculating correlation coefficients between estimated waveforms and reference ones. The results demonstrated that the phase estimation based on least square method is the best for respiration measurement with respect to both waveform estimation accuracy and calculation time.
Analysis of genes induced in peripheral nerve after axotomy using cDNA microarrays

One of the most striking features of neurons in the mature peripheral nervous system is their ability to survive and to regenerate their axons following axonal injury. To perform a comprehensive survey of the molecular mechanisms that underlie peripheral nerve regeneration, we analyzed a cDNA library derived from the distal stumps of post‐injured sciatic nerve which was enriched in non‐myelinating Schwann cells using cDNA microarrays. The number of up‐ and down‐regulated genes in the transected sciatic nerve was 370 and 157, respectively, of the 9596 spotted genes. In the up‐regulated group, the number of known genes was 216 and the number of expressed sequence tag (EST) sequences was 154. In the down‐regulated group, the number of known genes was 103 and that of EST sequences was 54. We obtained several genes that were previously reported to be involved in regeneration of the injured neurons, such as cathepsin D, ninjurin 1, tenascin C, and co‐receptor for glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor family of trophic factors. In addition to unknown genes, there seemed to be a lot of annotated genes whose role in nerve regeneration remains unknown.
Web Service Composition Verification of Safety Properties Based on Predicate Abstraction

State space explosion is one of the biggestproblem in model checking. Predicate abstraction technique is used to reducethe size of state space of colored Petrinet models, and an algorithm was proposed to obtain the abstracted state spaceof a colored Petri net model without its original state space generated. Amethod to verify safety properties of Web service composition by abstractedstate space and the Counterexample-Guided AbstractionRefinement wasproposed. The problem of state space explosion is solved to some extend by thisway. Finally, with an example, an application of this method is illustrated,which its efficiency shown.
Determinants of consistent condom use by adolescents: the impact of experience of sexual intercourse

The determinants of consistent condom use were investigated in a cross-sectional study of 1018 students 12-19 years of age from 18 Dutch secondary schools. The study was prompted by concern over the lack of acceptance of condoms on the part of young people in The Netherlands despite extensive acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) prevention campaigns. Components of the variance in behavioral intention to use condoms included intuitive attitude regarding personal consequences 34%; self-efficacy (degree to which students considered themselves able to obtain and negotiate condom use) 12%; subjective social norms derived from parents peers and sexual partners 3%; perceived vulnerability to AIDS 2%; and perceived beliefs and behaviors of peer 2%. Adolescents with significant sexual experience (intercourse more than 5 times) were less likely than their inexperienced counterparts to respond positively to condom use as a means of avoiding transmission of AIDS. Students with extensive sexual experience were less likely to express discomfort with the idea of raising the subject of condom use with a new partner than their inexperienced peers but were likely to anticipate problems with consistent condom use with a well-known sexual partner. Those who reported consistent condom use also expressed confidence in their ability to use condoms even when drunk and to interrupt lovemaking to apply a condom. In addition consistent users were less likely to focus on the unpleasant aspects of condom use (decreased sexual stimulation messiness) and to perceive a positive social norm regarding this method of AIDS prevention. Given the finding that condoms decline in popularity as adolescents gain sexual experience behavioral skills programs that increase confidence in purchasing condoms and negotiating their use with sex partners should be implemented.
"Oddball SGD": Novelty Driven Stochastic Gradient Descent for Training Deep Neural Networks

Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) is arguably the most popular of the machine learning methods applied to training deep neural networks (DNN) today. It has recently been demonstrated that SGD can be statistically biased so that certain elements of the training set are learned more rapidly than others. In this article, we place SGD into a feedback loop whereby the probability of selection is proportional to error magnitude. This provides a novelty-driven oddball SGD process that learns more rapidly than traditional SGD by prioritising those elements of the training set with the largest novelty (error). In our DNN example, oddball SGD trains some 50x faster than regular SGD.
Dynamic slicing based on redex trails

Tracing computations is a widely used methodology for program debugging. Lazy languages, in particular, pose new demands on tracing techniques since following the actual trace of a computation is generally useless. Typically, they rely on the construction of a redex trail, a graph that describes the reductions of a computation and its relationships. While tracing provides a significant help for locating bugs, the task still remains complex. A well-known debugging technique for imperative programs is based on dynamic slicing, a method to find the program statements that influence the computation of a value for a specific program input.In this work, we introduce a novel technique for dynamic slicing in lazy functional logic languages. Rather than starting from scratch, our technique relies on (a slight extension of) redex trails. We provide a method to compute a correct and minimal dynamic slice from the redex trail of a computation. A clear advantage of our proposal is that one can enhance existing tracers with slicing capabilities with a modest implementation effort, since the same data structure (the redex trail) can be used for both tracing and slicing.
Adaptive Frequency Oscillators and Applications

In this contribution we present a generic mechanism to transform an oscillator into an adaptive frequency oscillator, which can then dynamically adapt its parameters to learn the frequency of any periodic driving signal. Adaptation is done in a dynamic way: it is part of the dynamical system and not an offline process. This mechanism goes beyond entrainment since it works for any initial frequencies and the learned frequency stays encoded in the system even if the driving signal disappears. Interestingly, this mechanism can easily be applied to a large class of oscillators from harmonic oscillators to relaxation types and strange attractors. Several practical applications of this mechanism are then presented, ranging from adaptive control of compliant robots to frequency analysis of signals and construction of limit cycles of arbitrary shape.
Using Interactive Journal Writing as a Strategy for Professional Growth

In recent years journal writing as a tool for reflective practice has gained prominence in teacher education programs. This paper reports the investigation of journal writing as a means for student teachers and university to better understand the process of learning to teach. The aims of the study were to examine how journals are used; to explore what students learn and what university teachers learn; and to identify which strategies work best. Survey and interview data were collected from the student authors of the journals. Analysis of the data contributed to our understanding of the process of interactive journal writing and the strategies we used as university teachers. Students used the journals in a number of ways. They used the journals to get direction on practice and planning, as a tool for analysis, as an emotion release, and as a way of 'sorting things out'. Students identified a number of strategies used by the university teachers as journal respondents which contributed to students' learning about teaching. This research focused our attention on interactive journal writing as a strategy that has the potential to promote reflective practice.