Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigation of unsupervised adaptation of DNN acoustic models with filter bank input

Adaptation to speaker variations is an essential component of speech recognition systems. One common approach to adapting deep neural network (DNN) acoustic models is to perform global constrained maximum likelihood linear regression (CMLLR) at some point of the systems. Using CMLLR (or more generally, generative approaches) is advantageous especially in unsupervised adaptation scenarios with high baseline error rates. On the other hand, as the DNNs are less sensitive to the increase in the input dimensionality than GMMs, it is becoming more popular to use rich speech representations, such as log mel-filter bank channel outputs, instead of conventional low-dimensional feature vectors, such as MFCCs and PLP coefficients. This work discusses and compares three different configurations of DNN acoustic models that allow CMLLR-based speaker adaptive training (SAT) to be performed in systems with filter bank inputs. Results of unsupervised adaptation experiments conducted on three different data sets are presented, demonstrating that, by choosing an appropriate configuration, SAT with CMLLR can improve the performance of a well-trained filter bank-based speaker independent DNN system by 10.6% relative in a challenging task with a baseline error rate above 40%. It is also shown that the filter bank features are advantageous than the conventional features even when they are used with SAT models. Some other insights are also presented, including the effects of block diagonal transforms and system combination.
Sparse Bump Sonification : a New Tool for Multichannel EEG Diagnosis of Brain Disorders

The purpose of this paper is to investigate utilization of music and multimedia technology to create a computational intelligence procedure for EEG multichannel signals analysis that would be of clinical utility to medical practitioners and researchers. We propose here a novel approach based on multi channel sonification, with a time-frequency representation and sparsification process using bump modeling. Specific focus is given to applications in early detection and diagnosis of early stage of Alzheimer’s disease. The fundamental question explored in this paper is whether clinically valuable information, not available from the conventional graphical EEG representation, might become apparent through an audio representation. Preliminary evaluation of the obtained music score – by sample entropy, number of notes, and synchronous activity – show promising results.
Domain specific commonsense relation extraction from bag of concepts metadata

Existing semantic knowledge bases such as WordNet and Yago contain the information of relations between entities. They do not hold the information about domain specific commonsense relations between concepts like "horse" and "farm" which intuitively have close relations on semantics in the domains of image description. Metadata which is used to describe data is widespread in the data collections of various domains and can be useful resources for relation extraction. However, keywords and tags which are important form of metadata are only list of user generated words. They do not contain syntactic information which many existing works use to extract relations. In this paper we propose an approach to collect commonsense relations for specific domains by mining knowledge of global structure and internal association in the bag of concepts from metadata of data collections. We extract commonsense relations of concepts from social tags of image datasets to show the efficiency of our solution.
Regional Difference in Colonic Motility Response to Electrical Field Stimulation in Guinea Pig

Background/Aims In isolated guinea-pig colon, we investigated regional differences in peristalsis evoked by intrinsic electrical nerve stimulation. Methods Four colonic segments from mid and distal colon of Hartley guinea pigs, were mounted horizontally in an organ bath. Measurement of pellet propulsion time, intraluminal pressure, electrical field stimulation (EFS; 0.5 ms, 60 V, 10 Hz), and response of pharmacological antagonists, were performed to isolated segments of colon to determine the mechanisms underlying peristaltic reflexes evoked by focal electrical nerve stimuli. Results In fecal pellet propulsion study, the velocity of pellet propulsion was significantly faster in the distal colon and decreased gradually to the proximal part of the mid colon. Intraluminal pressure recording studies showed that luminal infusion initiated normal peristaltic contractions (PCs) in 82% trials of the distal colon, compared to that of mid colon. In response to EFS, the incidence of PCs was significantly increased in the distal colon in contrast, the incidence of non-peristaltic contractions (NPCs) was significantly higher in the middle-mid colon, distal-mid colon and distal colon, compared to that of proximal-mid colon. Addition of L-NAME into the bath increased the frequency of NPCs. EFS failed to cause any PCs or NPCs contractions in the presence of hexamethonium, atropine or tetrodotoxin. Conclusions This study has revealed that electrical nerve stimulation of distal colon is the most likely region to elicit a peristaltic wave, compared with the mid or proximal colon. Our findings suggest that EFS-evoked PCs can be modulated by endogenous nitric oxide.
Policing 802.11 MAC Misbehaviours

With the increasing availability of flexible wireless 802.11 devices, the potential exists for users to selfishly manipulate their channel access parameters and gain a performance advantage. Such practices can have a severe negative impact on compliant stations. To enable access points to counteract these selfish behaviours and preserve fairness in wireless networks, in this paper we propose a policing mechanism that drives misbehaving users into compliant operation without requiring any cooperation from clients. This approach is demonstrably effective against a broad class of misbehaviours, soundly-based, i.e., provably hard to circumvent and amenable to practical implementation on existing commodity hardware.
The HemoCop Telemetric Sensor System: Technology and Results of in-vivo Assessment

Upper gastrointestinal bleeding is considered the most frequent emergency in endoscopy units. Decisive for successful treatment of acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding is a timely recognition. We have developed a telemetric implant containing a novel optical sensor principle able to detect the presence of blood in the lumen of the GI tract. In-vivo experiments demonstrated the possibility to detect bleeding in situ and to send an alert signal to an extracorporeal receiver.
From Social Group Utility Maximization to Personalized Location Privacy in Mobile Networks

With increasing popularity of location-based services (LBSs), there have also been growing concerns for location privacy. To protect location privacy in an LBS, mobile users in physical proximity can work in concert to collectively change their pseudonyms, in order to hide spatial-temporal correlation in their location traces. In this paper, we leverage mobile users’ social tie structure to motivate them to participate in pseudonym change. Drawing on a social group utility maximization framework, we cast users’ decision making of whether to change pseudonyms as a socially aware pseudonym change game (SA-PCG). The SA-PCG further assumes a general anonymity model that allows a user to have its specific anonymity set for personalized location privacy. For the SA-PCG, we show that there exists a socially aware Nash equilibrium (SNE), and quantify the system efficiency of SNEs with respect to the optimal social welfare. Then, we develop a greedy algorithm that myopically determines users’ strategies, based on the social group utility derived from only the users whose strategies have already been determined. We show that this algorithm efficiently finds an SNE that enjoys desirable properties: 1) it is socially aware coalition-proof, and thus is also Pareto-optimal; 2) it achieves higher social welfare than any SNE for the socially oblivious pseudonym change game. We further quantify the system efficiency of this SNE with respect to the optimal social welfare. We also show that this SNE can be achieved in a distributed manner. Numerical results using real data corroborate that social welfare can be significantly improved by exploiting social ties.
The association between perceived and observed ability to use everyday technology in people of working age with ABI

Abstract Objective: Everyday technology (ET), including computers and automated telephone services, is increasingly required for everyday functioning. However, people with acquired brain injury (ABI) may have difficulty with ET use. To design interventions to support ET use, further knowledge of how to assess dimensions of such use is needed. Methods: This study investigated the relationship between the perceived difficulty of ET use (self-reported using the short version of the Everyday Technology Use Questionnaire, S-ETUQ) and observed ability to use ET (observed using the Management of Everyday Technology Assessment, META) in a sample of people with ABI (n = 81). Data were analysed using a Rasch measurement model, and person measures of perceived difficulty and observed ability to use ET were identified and correlated. Results and conclusions. The person measures had a correlation of 0.49 (p < 0.001). In groups of different severity levels after ABI, significant associations were found in the moderate (0.36) and severe (0.47) disability groups. In the good recovery group, only a non-significant correlation was found (0.21). This indicates that the S-ETUQ and the META measure different but complementary dimensions of ET use. Hence, the assessments are proposed to be used together in clinical practice to more fully understand the ability of people with ABI to use ET.
Sharing Control of Dispersed Situated Displays between Nomadic and Residential Users

As the number of public displays in the environment increases, new opportunities open up to improve situated interaction and to enable new kinds of applications. In order to make distributed display resources available to nomadic users, a key issue to address is how control can be dynamically shared between display users. It is important to study how control over a shared display can be acquired, released or shared by nomadic and residential users given their competing demands for display resources. In this paper, we present a system and a user study investigating these issues in the context of two applications both competing for display resources provided by a deployment of interactive office doorplates. The first application (Hermes II) provides situated note leaving and messaging services whereas the second one (GAUDI) supports user navigating a university department. Office occupants (i. e. residential users) can control whether the navigation application may (temporarily) use their doorplate display (thus giving priority to the navigation needs of nomadic users to the department). We report on findings from a user study, and discuss interface design implications for specifying display control.
Compassion Fatigue

Abstract This article explores the history, causes, treatments and prevention of compassion fatigue (the negative effects of helping others), contextualized for application to the trauma recovery efforts from the events of September 11, 2001. The author draws upon experience with development and implementation of the Accelerated Recovery Program for Compassion Fatigue, the Certified Compassion Fatigue Specialist Training, and the provision of treatment and training to hundreds of caregivers suffering from compassion fatigue symptoms. A model for understanding the multiple causes of compassion fatigue is presented, along with distillation of the active ingredients for effective treatment and prevention of its symptoms. Symptoms of compassion fatigue are conceptualized not only as disruptive and deleterious effects of caring for the traumatized, but also as a catalyst for positive change, transformation, maturation, and resiliency in the lives of these caregivers. Specific suggestions for compassion fatigue prevention and resiliency are reviewed.
Area burned in the western United States is unaffected by recent mountain pine beetle outbreaks

Significance Across western North America, abundant susceptible pine hosts and a suitable climate during the early 21st century have promoted widespread mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks, leading to concern that dead fuels may increase wildfire risk. The assumption that outbreaks raise fire risk is driving far-reaching policy decisions involving expenditures of hundreds of millions of dollars. Contrary to the expectation that an MPB outbreak increases fire risk, spatial overlay analysis shows no effect of outbreaks on subsequent area burned during years of extreme burning across the West. These results refute the assumption that increased bark beetle activity has increased area burned; therefore, policy discussions should focus on societal adaptation to the effects of the underlying drivers: warmer temperatures and increased drought. In the western United States, mountain pine beetles (MPBs) have killed pine trees across 71,000 km2 of forest since the mid-1990s, leading to widespread concern that abundant dead fuels may increase area burned and exacerbate fire behavior. Although stand-level fire behavior models suggest that bark beetle-induced tree mortality increases flammability of stands by changing canopy and forest floor fuels, the actual effect of an MPB outbreak on subsequent wildfire activity remains widely debated. To address this knowledge gap, we superimposed areas burned on areas infested by MPBs for the three peak years of wildfire activity since 2002 across the western United States. Here, we show that the observed effect of MPB infestation on the area burned in years of extreme fire appears negligible at broad spatial extents. Contrary to the expectation of increased wildfire activity in recently infested red-stage stands, we found no difference between observed area and expected area burned in red-stage or subsequent gray-stage stands during three peak years of wildfire activity, which account for 46% of area burned during the 2002–2013 period. Although MPB infestation and fire activity both independently increased in conjunction with recent warming, our results demonstrate that the annual area burned in the western United States has not increased in direct response to bark beetle activity. Therefore, policy discussions should focus on societal adaptation to the effects of recent increases in wildfire activity related to increased drought severity.
Patterns for finding objects within designs

To design a program, first find your objects. Unfortunately, the right objects are not easy to find, and as a result most programs are not as well designed as they could be. This paper presents four patterns which describe how objects can be found within the designs of existing programs. By using these patterns, programs and designs can be made more simple, more general, and more easy to change.
Educational leadership, autonomy and mentoring provided: investigating the moderating influence of educational leadership

The main purpose of this article is to study the influence of autonomy on mentoring provided and the moderating influence of having an educational leadership position. This cross-sectional survey was based on a questionnaire that was sent to 435 employees from 29 preschools in Norway. A total of 284 responses were returned, a response rate of 65.3%. Two research hypotheses were formulated. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to develop three measurement models and structural equation modeling based on multi-group analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that autonomy increases the occurrence of mentoring provided at work and educational leadership moderates this relationship. The use of convenience sampling and self-reports are discussed, especially related to representativeness and reporting biases. This is an understudied area and no previous research has used a confirmatory approach to investigate how autonomy and educational leadership influence the occurrence of mentoring provided.
Impact of Imf Programme on Sacrifice Ratio in Pakistan

Submitted: May 21, 2013; Accepted: Jun 30, 2013; Published: Jul 20, 2013 Abstract: This study examines the impact of IMF programs on the inflation output trade off by using the time series data of Pakistan from the period 1973 to 2010. Results of cointegration approach found the long run relationship among variables. Moreover, results of binary logistic regression model shows that IMF loans do not extensively influence the output inflation tradeoff in the short run. But in the long run it leads to influence the sacrifice ratio.
Computerized Lesion Segmentation on DCE-MRI using Active Contours and Spectral Embedding .

Introduction: Accurate lesion segmentation is an important component of determining quantitative features for lesions on MRI. In this study, we develop an automated lesion segmentation method for delineating lesions on dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-MRI. We present a new active contour model which uses spectral embedding (SE), a process that partitions images in order to maximize intercluster similarity and minimize intracluster similarity while preserving object adjacencies [1]. SE has been used previously for classification of high dimensional data [2], but this is the first known application of SE in the context of segmentation. SE transforms the images into a data representation that accentuates the gradients at the lesion borders which allows the active contour to accurately identify the lesion boundaries. This will allow better characterization of lesion morphology, which facilitates discrimination between lesions with subtle shape differences. We demonstrate on a cohort of 50 breast lesions imaged on DCE-MRI that automated segmentation using our spectral embedding based active contour (SEAC) model is more similar to the manual lesion segmentation performed by a radiologist who is a breast imaging specialist than the popular fuzzy c-means (FCM) method [3] combined with an active contour model. Methods: DCE-MRIs of 50 breast lesions from 50 patients were collected under IRB approval. Sagittal T1‐weighted, spoiled gradient echo sequences with fat suppression consisting of one series before contrast injection of Gd‐DTPA (precontrast) and 3‐8 series after contrast injection (postcontrast) were acquired at either 1.5 Tesla or 3 Tesla (Siemens Magnetom or Trio, respectively). Single slice dimensions were 384x384, 512x512, or 896x896 pixels with a slice thickness of 3 mm. Temporal resolution between postcontrast acquisitions was a minimum of 90 seconds. An attending radiologist selected the 2D slice that was most representative of the lesion, and the radiologist manually delineated the boundary of the lesion. SE is performed along the time dimension to reduce the dimensionality of the time domain from 4-9 (i.e., total number of time points) to 3. Each resulting dimension is then represented as one color channel of a hue/saturation/value (HSV) color space. A color active contour method is then evolved on the embedding color map. For the comparison FCM method [3], voxels in each image were clustered into 3 data classes. The 3 channel color map resulting from these 3 data classes was then used in conjunction with the same color active contour method used with SEAC.
Smooth Handoff Based on Virtual Interface in Wireless Network

The IEEE 802.11 based network is the most popular wireless network, but its packet latency and loss rate in mobility support disable a lot of interactive real-time network applications to run on wireless mobile station. The existing handoff schemes can only resolve the problems of inner ESS domain handoff, but cannot effectively resolve that of inter ESS domains handoff because the handoff between two ESS domains involves network layer operations. In this paper, a smooth handoff scheme based on virtual interface in wireless network is proposed. This scheme applies a time-sharing policy on physical wireless interface, which enables mobile station to establish new wireless link with the right new access point at the same time to keep normal communication in present wireless link with the previous access point, so it can resolve the problems of packet latency and loss ratio not only for inner ESS domain handoff but also for inter ESS domain handoff perfectly. And the simulation results on NS2 confirms that it could satisfy the demand of interactive real-time applications in wireless mobile network.
Exploiting Model Equivalences for Solving Interactive Dynamic Influence Diagrams

We focus on the problem of sequential decision making in partially observable environments shared with other agents of uncertain types having similar or conflicting objectives. This problem has been previously formalized by multiple frameworks one of which is the interactive dynamic influence diagram (I-DID), which generalizes the well-known influence diagram to the multiagent setting. I-DIDs are graphical models and may be used to compute the policy of an agent given its belief over the physical state and others' models, which changes as the agent acts and observes in the multiagent setting. As we may expect, solving I-DIDs is computationally hard. This is predominantly due to the large space of candidate models ascribed to the other agents and its exponential growth over time. We present two methods for reducing the size of the model space and stemming its exponential growth. Both these methods involve aggregating individual models into equivalence classes. Our first method groups together behaviorally equivalent models and selects only those models for updating which will result in predictive behaviors that are distinct from others in the updated model space. The second method further compacts the model space by focusing on portions of the behavioral predictions. Specifically, we cluster actionally equivalent models that prescribe identical actions at a single time step. Exactly identifying the equivalences would require us to solve all models in the initial set. We avoid this by selectively solving some of the models, thereby introducing an approximation. We discuss the error introduced by the approximation, and empirically demonstrate the improved efficiency in solving I-DIDs due to the equivalences.