Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mask-based enhancement for very low quality speech

We propose a mask-based enhancer for very low quality speech that is able to preserve important cues in a noise-robust manner by identifying the time-frequency regions that contain significant speech energy. We use a classifier to estimate a time-frequency mask from an input feature set that provides information about the energy distribution of both voiced and unvoiced speech. We evaluate the enhancer on a range of noisy speech signals and demonstrate that it yields consistent improvements in an objective intelligibility measure.
Antidiarrheal Efficacy and Cellular Mechanisms of a Thai Herbal Remedy

Screening of herbal remedies for Cl− channel inhibition identified Krisanaklan, a herbal extract used in Thailand for treatment of diarrhea, as an effective antidiarrheal in mouse models of secretory diarrheas with inhibition activity against three Cl− channel targets. Krisanaklan fully inhibited cholera toxin-induced intestinal fluid secretion in a closed-loop mouse model with ∼50% inhibition at a 1∶50 dilution of the extract. Orally administered Krisanaklan (5 µL/g) prevented rotavirus-induced diarrhea in neonatal mice. Short-circuit current measurements showed full inhibition of cAMP and Ca2+ agonist-induced Cl− conductance in human colonic epithelial T84 cells, with ∼50% inhibition at a 1∶5,000 dilution of the extract. Krisanaklan also strongly inhibited intestinal smooth muscle contraction in an ex vivo preparation. Together with measurements using specific inhibitors, we conclude that the antidiarrheal actions of Krisanaklan include inhibition of luminal CFTR and Ca2+-activated Cl− channels in enterocytes. HPLC fractionation indicated that the three Cl− inhibition actions of Krisanaklan are produced by different components in the herbal extract. Testing of individual herbs comprising Krisanaklan indicated that agarwood and clove extracts as primarily responsible for Cl− channel inhibition. The low cost, broad antidiarrheal efficacy, and defined cellular mechanisms of Krisanaklan suggests its potential application for antisecretory therapy of cholera and other enterotoxin-mediated secretory diarrheas in developing countries.
Dual Roadside Seismic Sensor for Moving Road Vehicle Detection and Characterization

This paper presents a method for using a dual roadside seismic sensor to detect moving vehicles on roadway by installing them on a road shoulder. Seismic signals are split into fixed time intervals in recording. In each interval, the time delay of arrival (TDOA) is estimated using a generalized cross-correlation approach with phase transform (GCC-PHAT). Various kinds of vehicle characterization information, including vehicle speed, axle spacing, detection of both vehicle axles and moving direction, can also be extracted from the collected seismic signals as demonstrated in this paper. The error of both vehicle speed and axle spacing detected by this approach has been shown to be less than 20% through the field tests conducted on an urban street in Seattle. Compared to most existing sensors, this new design of dual seismic sensor is cost effective, easy to install, and effective in gathering information for various traffic management applications.
Energy efficient transmission in wireless communication networks

To my parents and my wife Bomi Acknowledgments I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my advisor, Prof. Sriram Vishwanath, for his support, patience, and encouragement throughout my graduate studies. I would not finish my Ph.D without his expert guidance and generous help. I am extremely proud and honored to have the opportunity to associate my name with him. I also would like to extend my sincere thanks to my dissertation committee members, Prof. Zitkovic and Dr. Kome Oteri. They were very kind to agree to be on my committee , and I am grateful to them for their time and effort at various stages of my dissertation. I would love to say thank you to my parents. They have been a source of unconditional love and encouragement without which I would not have reached so far. I also thank my parents in law for their prayers for my peace of mind. I appreciate the friendship from my colleagues at WNCG group members during the past years. Especially, I want to say thanks to LINC group members. In addition, I would like to express my appreciation to Yung Yi, Chan-Byoung Chae, People93s and El Camponians for their kindness to discuss anything related to my research and life. Finally, last but not least, I am deeply indebted to my dear wife Bomi for her love, support, and encouragement. I love you with all my heart and soul. In this dissertation, we study energy efficient transmission in wireless communication networks. The general problem of energy efficient transmission over wireless networks is formulated into optimization problems for the following distinct (but interrelated) settings: Problem Setting 1: The minimization of energy (power) consumption given a system throughput and other constraints, and Problem Setting 2: The maximization of system throughput given energy (power) constraints. Under Problem Setting 1, we focus on energy efficient transmission problems over wideband channels. The first result we obtain is as follows: We consider a two user multiple access channel. In this multiple access channel, previous research shows that cooperation with respect to block error rate is only possible if two transmitters share their sources completely. However, we find that a modified pulse position modulation with synchronization enables vi cooperation without complete sharing of their sources between two transmitters if we replace a block error rate requirement with a normalized error rate constraint. Normalized error rate, a …
Predistortion and precoding vector assignment in codebook-based downlink beamforming

This paper considers codebook-based downlink beamforming proposing a linear adaptive channel predistortion method to close the performance gap between codebook and non-codebook based beamforming defined in wireless standards, e.g., LTE-A. The proposed channel predistortion method does not involve any additional signalling overhead. In our novel beamforming concept, we optimize the codebook-based precoding vector assignment, the power allocation, and the channel predistortion matrix jointly to minimize the transmitted power of the base station (BS) while guaranteeing the quality-of-service (QoS) of the mobile stations (MSs) and satisfying the smoothness conditions on the channel predistortion matrix. The joint channel predistortion and codebook-based beamforming (PCB) problem represents a non-convex mixed integer program (MIP). An alternating optimization algorithm (ATOA) and an alternating feasibility search algorithm (AFSA) are developed to approximately solve the PCB problem. Simulation results show that the proposed codebook-based beamforming achieves significant reductions of the transmitted power of the BS and remarkable increases of the percentage of feasible cases of all Monte Carlo runs, as compared to the standard codebook-based beamforming. Numerical results also show that the proposed design performs very close to the non-codebook based beamforming in the given settings and that the proposed ATOA and AFSA are close-to-optimal.
Hierarchical Conditional Random Field for Multi-class Image Classification

Multi-class image classification has made significant advances in recent years through the combination of local and global features. This paper proposes a novel approach called hierarchical conditional random field (HCRF) that explicitly models region adjacency graph and region hierarchy graph structure of an image. This allows to set up a joint and hierarchical model of local and global discriminative methods that augments conditional random field to a multi-layer model. Region hierarchy graph is based on a multi-scale watershed segmentation.
A Secure Private Information Retrieval in Cloud Environment

Private information retrieval is an important application of homomorphic encryption. As a hot topic in recent years, homomorphic encryption scheme can operate on the ciphertext and the decryption result is equal to the same operation on the plaintext. Trivial PIR protocol faces the plaintext retrieval, so it could not guarantee the database privacy. In the cloud environment, it is unsafe to store the plaintext in the server. In order to settle the above problem, based on a somewhat homomorphic encryption scheme, we design a multi-server PIR. It can not only achieves the privacy and resisting the colluding attack, but also reaches the information-theoretic security.
On Modeling and Testing of Lithography Related Open Faults in Nano-CMOS Circuits

Scaling of transistor feature size over time has been facilitated by corresponding improvement in lithography technology. However, in recent times the wavelength of the optical light source used for photolithography has not scaled in the same rate as that of the minimum feature size of the transistor. In fact, starting with 180 nm devices, the wavelength of optical source has remained the same (at 193 nm) due to difficulties in finding a flicker-free, high energy, coherent light source with compatible improvement in lens material for focusing this light. Consequently, upcoming technology nodes (65 nm, 45 nm, 32 nm and 22 nm) will be using a light source with wavelength much greater than the feature size. This creates a peculiar problem where line width on manufactured devices is a function of relative spacing between adjacent lines. Despite numerous restriction on layout rules, interconnects may still suffer from constriction due to this peculiarity also known as forbidden pitch problem. A small manufacturing variation turns the constrictions to open faults. Gate leakage current is a significant concern for present and upcoming technology nodes. Due to gate leakage, an open fault is not truly an open circuit. Our simulation studies show that the leakage current steers the floating input of a gate to certain meta- stable states. This property actually makes it easier to detect open faults either through side channel excitation or by stuck-at tests. The major contributions of this paper are (i) lithographic simulation based identification of potential open fault sites, (ii) identification of meta-stable input states for these open inputs, (iii) length calculation for side channel signals for definitive detection of open faults. Together, they provide a complete CAD framework for testing lithography related open faults.
Ecophysiological Plasticity and Bacteriome Shift in the Seagrass Halophila stipulacea along a Depth Gradient in the Northern Red Sea

Halophila stipulacea is a small tropical seagrass species. It is the dominant seagrass species in the Gulf of Aqaba (GoA; northern Red Sea), where it grows in both shallow and deep environments (1–50 m depth). Native to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean, this species has invaded the Mediterranean and has recently established itself in the Caribbean Sea. Due to its invasive nature, there is growing interest to understand this species’ capacity to adapt to new conditions, which might be attributed to its ability to thrive in a broad range of ecological niches. In this study, a multidisciplinary approach was used to depict variations in morphology, biochemistry (pigment and phenol content) and epiphytic bacterial communities along a depth gradient (4–28 m) in the GoA. Along this gradient, H. stipulacea increased leaf area and pigment contents (Chlorophyll a and b, total Carotenoids), while total phenol contents were mostly uniform. H. stipulacea displayed a well conserved core bacteriome, as assessed by 454-pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene reads amplified from metagenomic DNA. The core bacteriome aboveground (leaves) and belowground (roots and rhizomes), was composed of more than 100 Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) representing 63 and 52% of the total community in each plant compartment, respectively, with a high incidence of the classes Alphaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, and Deltaproteobacteria across all depths. Above and belowground communities were different and showed higher within-depth variability at the intermediate depths (9 and 18 m) than at the edges. Plant parts showed a clear influence in shaping the communities while depth showed a greater influence on the belowground communities. Overall, results highlighted a different ecological status of H. stipulacea at the edges of the gradient (4–28 m), where plants showed not only marked differences in morphology and biochemistry, but also the most distinct associated bacterial consortium. We demonstrated the pivotal role of morphology, biochemistry (pigment and phenol content), and epiphytic bacterial communities in helping plants to cope with environmental and ecological variations. The plant/holobiont capability to persist and adapt to environmental changes probably has an important role in its ecological resilience and invasiveness.
Restructuring Partitioned Normal Form Relations without Information Loss

Nested relations in partitioned normal form (PNF) are an important subclass of nested relations that are useful in many applications. In this paper we address the question of determining when every PNF relation stored under one nested relation scheme can be transformed into another PNF relation stored under a different nested relation scheme without loss of information, referred to as the two schemes being data equivalent. This issue is important in many database application areas such as view processing, schema integration, and schema evolution. The main result of the paper provides two characterizations of data equivalence for nested schemes. The first is that two schemes are data equivalent if and only if the two sets of multivalued dependencies induced by the two corresponding scheme trees are equivalent. The second is that the schemes are equivalent if and only if the corresponding scheme trees can be transformed into the other by a sequence of applications of a local restructuring operator and its inverse.
DESIGN OF BPF USING INTERDIGITAL BANDPASS FILTER ON CENTER FREQUENCY 3 GHZ .

Abstract— In this paper a high performance Bandpass micro strip filter is presented. The filter is designed using interdigital bandpass filter to improve the performance of Bandpass filter. The designed filter is based on 5th order chebyshev low pass prototype with . 1 dB passband ripples. The filter operates with passband from 2GHz-4 GHz, produces a fractional bandwidth of 66%. The filter is designed on a FR4 substrate with relative dielectric constant of 4.4 and a thickness of 1.57mm. The simulated result using HFSS shows an insertion loss (S21) less than -1.8dB and return loss (S11) better than -8 dB.
Networked games: a QoS-sensitive application for QoS-insensitive users?

Research into providing different levels of network Quality of Service (QoS) often assumes that there is a large market for QoS-sensitive applications that will be fulfilled once QoS-enabled networks have been deployed. Multiplayer networked games are an example of such an application that requires QoS, and hence will only become popular if QoS is made widely available. The prima facie evidence, however, is that games are already popular, in spite of the existing QoS-free best-effort Internet.Networked games may have become popular despite the lack of QoS because players "make do" with what is available to them. Such popularity is a double-edged sword. It may mean that there is a demand, as yet unfulfilled, from game players for QoS-enabled networks. On the other hand, it may mean that players have become accustomed to playing games without QoS, and therefore might be less willing to pay for higher QoS when it does eventually become available.In this paper we present the results of a short experiment to examine the QoS tolerances of game players. We use a set of popular First Person Shooter (FPS) game servers that are publicly available to Internet users at large. By systematically altering the network latency to the servers, we attempt to study whether degraded QoS (in the form of higher network delay) affects a user's decision to participate in the game.We find that increased network delay has an effect on a user's decision to join a game server. It appears, however, that there is no significant difference in the number of players who leave the game as a result of increased delay. We speculate that this may be due to a user's enjoyment exceeding their QoS-sensitivity, and discuss the implications of our findings with respect to providing and charging for QoS.
Indirect readout in drug-DNA recognition: role of sequence-dependent DNA conformation

DNA-binding drugs have numerous applications in the engineered gene regulation. However, the drug-DNA recognition mechanism is poorly understood. Drugs can recognize specific DNA sequences not only through direct contacts but also indirectly through sequence-dependent conformation, in a similar manner to the indirect readout mechanism in protein-DNA recognition. We used a knowledge-based technique that takes advantage of known DNA structures to evaluate the conformational energies. We built a dataset of non-redundant free B-DNA crystal structures to calculate the distributions of adjacent base-step and base-pair conformations, and estimated the effective harmonic potentials of mean force (PMF). These PMFs were used to calculate the conformational energy of drug-DNA complexes, and the Z-score as a measure of the binding specificity. Comparing the Z-scores for drug-DNA complexes with those for free DNA structures with the same sequence, we observed that in several cases the Z-scores became more negative upon drug binding. Furthermore, the specificity is position-dependent within the drug-bound region of DNA. These results suggest that DNA conformation plays an important role in the drug-DNA recognition. The presented method provides a tool for the analysis of drug-DNA recognition and can facilitate the development of drugs for targeting a specific DNA sequence.
Identifying Solid-Fluid Parameters of the Subsea Tunnel Based on Evolutionary ANN

How to determine the fluid-solid geophysical parameters of subsea tunnel is the basement of calculation and construction. Aiming at the problems of long time of forward numerical calculation and locally optimal solution, the paper proposed an identification method for fluid-solid parameters based on difference evolution (DE) arithmetic and artificial neural network (ANN). This paper adopts orthogonal experimental design and numerical simulation to produce learning samples, utilizes the nonlinear reflection of ANN and global optimization of DE, then establishes the evolution ANN model relating the solid-fluid parameters and character indices. Furthermore, we use the relative error between predictive and observed character indices as fitness of DE, searches the solid-fluid parameters in agreement with observation. This method can utilize the large engineering software. The calculation case study states that the method is feasible and can get satisfactory result.
A PSpice model of MQW-LD applicably for E-filed probe

A PSpice model of MQW semiconductor laser is given. This model is applicable for E-filed probe. The model is based on the rate equation of MQW-LD, and the rate equation is characterized as a equivalent circuit. The circuit is made up of linear circuit elements. This equivalent model is simulated and analyzed by PSpice, and its practicability and veracity are verified.
Improving the performance of actor model runtime environments on multicore and manycore platforms

The actor model is present in many systems that demand substantial computing resources which are often provided by multicore and multiprocessor platforms such as non-uniform memory access architectures (NUMA) and manycore processors. Yet, no mainstream actor model runtime environment (RE) currently in use takes into account the hierarchical memory characteristics of these platforms. These REs essentially assume a flat-memory space therefore not performing as well as they could. In this paper we present our proposal to improve the performance of these systems. Using knowledge about the general characteristics of actor-based applications and the underlying platform, we propose techniques spanning from memory management to scheduling and load-balancing. Based on previous work, we present our design guidelines for the RE adaptation to the Kalray MPPA-256 manycore processor.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-EVALUATION IN NON-COGNITIVE COMPETENCE

In recent years, researches are emphasizing the importance of investigating non-cognitive competence, but few of them apply integrative assessment approach to understand several noncognitive capabilities at one time. The purpose of this study was to develop an integrative selfevaluation questionnaire for non-cognitive competence. The questionnaire has three dimensions which are Grit, Optimism and Gratitude. The Grit dimension consists of three categories, Concentration, Ability of problem solving and Independence. The Optimism dimension includes the positive and negative thinking. The Gratitude dimension consists of the degree and the content of appreciation. The participants are 27 students of a girl’s high school in southern Taiwan. The questionnaire uses 5point scale. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics. This questionnaire is a combination of the Grit scale by Angela Duckworth, the Optimism and Pessimism Inventory (OPI) by William N. Dember, and the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) by Michal E. McCullough. A factor analysis was executed to explore the latent factors of the integrated questionnaire. The Cronbach α coefficients for individual dimensions are between . 79 to . 87. The questionnaire has good internal consistency and reliability. The result of this preliminary study showed that this self-evaluation questionnaire has good reliability. A more comprehensive self-evaluation questionnaire would be proposed in the future study. More non-cognitive dimensions will be included like Zest, Curiosity and Self-control.
Business intelligence meets big data : an overview on security and privacy

Today big data are the target of many research activities focusing on big data management and analysis, definition of zero latency approaches to data analytics, and protection of big data security and privacy. In particular, security and privacy are two important, while contrasting, requirements. Big data security usually refers to the use of big data to implement solutions increasing security, reliability, and safety of a distributed system. Big data privacy, instead, focuses on the protection of big data from unauthorized use and unwanted inference. In this paper, we start from the manifesto on Business Intelligence Meets Big Data [8] and the notions of full data and zero-latency analysis to discuss new challenges in the context of big data security and privacy.