Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-phone strings as subword units for speech recognition

The choice of speech unit affects the accuracy, complexity, expandability and ease of adaptation of ASRs to speaker and environmental variations. This paper explores a method of subword modelling based on the concept of multi-phone strings. The motivation in using the longer duration multi-phone strings is to reduce the loss of contextual information, cross-phone correlation, and transitions. Multi-phone strings are an alternative to context-dependent phones and they include many of the syllables. An advantage of muti-phone units is the existence of more than one valid multi-phone transcription for each monophone sequence, this can be used to improve ASR accuracy. A particular case of multi-phone strings namely phone-pairs is investigated in detail. Experimental Evaluation on TIMIT and WSJCAM0 are presented.
The impact of interpersonal environment on burnout and organizational commitment

Summary Organizational commitment and burnout were related to interpersonal relationships of nurses in a small general hospital. Regular communication contacts among personnel were differentiated as supervisor or coworker contact, and these categories were further differentiated into pleasant and unpleasant contacts. The results were consistent with a view of burnout in which emotional exhaustion leads to greater depersonalization which subsequently leads to diminished personal accomplishment. Interpersonal contact with personnel in the organization was related to the development of burnout at each stage. Patterns of pleasant and unpleasant contacts with supervisors and coworkers were related to the three aspects of burnout in a distinct manner. High burnout was related to diminished organizational commitment, which was also related to aspects of the interpersonal environment of the organization. The results are discussed in the context of a comprehensive approach to psychological adjustment to a worksetting.
Multiple Imputation in Multivariate Problems When the Imputation and Analysis Models Differ

Bayesian multiple imputation (MI) has become a highly useful paradigm for handling missing values in many settings. In this paper, I compare Bayesian MI with other methods – maximum likelihood, in particular—and point out some of its unique features. One key aspect of MI, the separation of the imputation phase from the analysis phase, can be advantageous in settings where the models underlying the two phases do not agree.
Interpreting Scale Score Differences on the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist

Provided critical values to determine significant differences between scale scores on the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist (RBPC). Although one method of interpreting the RBPC consists of pairwise comparisons among an individual's scale scores, several psychometric issues concerning such a procedure are apparent. An ipsative strategy provides a psychometrically tenable approach for interpreting within-child differences. This strategy compares differences between each scale score and the mean of all scale scores with critical difference values to ascertain statistical significance. An example of the procedure is provided.
MACE: A New Interface for Comparing and Editing of Multiple Alternative Documents for Generative Design

We present a new interface for interactive comparisons of more than two alternative documents in the context of a generative design system that uses generative data-flow networks defined via directed acyclic graphs. To better show differences between such networks, we emphasize added, deleted, (un)changed nodes and edges. We emphasize differences in the output as well as parameters using highlighting and enable post-hoc merging of the state of a parameter across a selected set of alternatives. To minimize visual clutter, we introduce new difference visualizations for selected nodes and alternatives using additive and subtractive encodings, which improve readability and keep visual clutter low. We analyzed similarities in networks from a set of alternative designs produced by architecture students and found that the number of similarities outweighs the differences, which motivates use of subtractive encoding. We ran a user study to evaluate the two main proposed difference visualization encodings and found that they are equally effective.
A Model-Based Prediction of Scholastic Achievement

AbstractTypical approaches to predicting scholastic achievement apply a multiple linear regression (MLR) approach to several predictors, the basis for whose selection is seldom apparently systematic or theoretically rational. In this study, a model of the dynamics of cumulative achievement developed by Atkinson (5) forms the basis for developing an instrument to be used in predicting academic achievement, and a discriminant analysis is used in lieu of the more typical but technically less correct MLR. The instrument was administered to 804 students in four undergraduate classes to provide estimates of reliability and validity. Average subscale reliability was . 70, and hold-out cross-validation showed good nomological validity. It was concluded that the model-based approach to instrument development warrants further work, and that the discriminant analytic technique provided a viable approach to the question of prediction of academic achievement.
The effect of dolichol on the structure and phase behaviour of phospholipid model membranes

The effect of dolichol C95 on the structure and thermotropic phase behaviour of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine, dipalmitoylphosphatidylethanolamine and stearoyloleoylphosphatidylethanolamine has been examined by synchrotron X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry. The presence of dolichol C95 had no detectible effects on the temperature of either the gel to ripple or the ripple to liquid-crystal phase transition of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine. A proportionate increase of a few degrees in the temperature of the gel to lamellar liquid-crystal phase transition is observed in dispersions of dipalmitoylphosphatidylethanolamine and significantly there is a decrease in the temperature of the lamellar to non-lamellar phase transition of stearoyloleoylphosphatidylethanolamine. There was no significant change in the bilayer repeat spacing of all three mixed dispersions in gel phase in the presence of up to 20 mol% dolichol C95. Electron density calculations showed that there was no change of bilayer thickness of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine with incorporation of up to 7.5 mol% dolichol C95. These data suggest that effect of dolichol on the phospholipid model membranes depend on both the head group and the hydrocarbon chains of the phospholipid molecules. The presence of dolichol in phosphatidylcholine bilayers conforms to a model in which the polyisoprene compound is phase separated into a central domain sandwiched between the two monolayers in gel phase. In bilayers of phosphatidylethanolamines dolichol tends to stabilize the bilayers in gel phase at low temperatures and destabilize the bilayers in lamellar disordered structure at high temperatures. Non-lamellar structures coexist with lamellar disordered phase over a wide temperature range suggesting that dolichol is enriched in domains of non-lamellar structure and depleted from lamellar phase. These findings are useful to understand the function of dolichol in cell membranes.
How a Bill Becomes a Law-Predicting Votes from Legislation Text

Thanks to the efforts of organizations like GovTrack (Tauberer, 2012), a tremendous amount of roll-call and bill-text data has become available over the past few years. At the same time, most analyses are based on idealpoint models that use only the votes themselves in modelling voting decisions, and ignore bill text. We analyze a variety of models for predicting the outcomes of roll-call votes given vote text. We arrive at a neural network classifier which takes counts of words in bill texts as input and achieves state-of-theart accuracy in predicting vote outcomes.
Reasoning about safety management policy in everyday terms: a pilot study in citizen engagement for the UK railway industry

This paper reports on a pilot study in citizen engagement which formed part of a broader stakeholder engagement and consultation programme addressing safety decision‐making for UK rail industry activities. In addition to developing tools to support engagement initiatives, the study was concerned specifically with investigating everyday lay notions of what is a ‘reasonable’ basis for establishing safety. In view of the technical complexity of this issue, the exercise therefore presented an important methodological challenge: how to ‘translate’ specialised economic and legal issues in such a way that lay citizens were able to grasp, and reason about, these issues in an informed and considered way. The engagement exercise worked well in terms of its capacity to promote such a process of informed consideration, and in being ‘user friendly’ for participants. Despite the exercise involving a relatively small number of discussion group meetings, the quality and depth of the evidence collected allows some cautious provisional conclusions to be drawn regarding lay sensibilities concerning certain technical aspects of rail safety management.
Formal Concept Analysis Applied to Transcriptomic Data

Identifying functions or pathways shared by genes responsible for cancer is still a challenging task. This paper describes the preparation work for applying Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to biological data. After gene transcription experiments, we integrate various annotations of selected genes in a database along with relevant domain knowledge. The database subsequently allows to build formal contexts in a flexible way. We present here a preliminary experiment using these data on a core context with the addition of domain knowledge by context apposition. The resulting concept lattices are pruned and we discuss some interesting concepts. Our study shows how data integration and FCA can help the domain expert in the exploration of complex data.
Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO): overview

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the x-ray component of NASA's Great Observatories, was launched early in the morning of 1999, July 23 by the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Shuttle launch was only the first step in placing the observatory in orbit. After release from the cargo bay, the Inertial Upper Stage performed two firings, and separated from the observatory as planned. Finally, after five firings of Chandra's own Integral Propulsion System--the last of which took place 15 days after launch--the observatory was placed in its highly elliptical orbit of approximately 140,000 km apogee and approximately 10,000 km perigee. After activation, the first x-rays focused by the telescope were observed on 1999, August 12. Beginning with these initial observations one could see that the telescope had survived the launch environment and was operating as expected. The month following the opening of the sun-shade door was spent adjusting the focus for each set of instrument configurations, determining the optical axis, calibrating the star camera, establishing the relative response functions, determining energy scales, and taking a series of `publicity' images. Each observation proved to be far more revealing than was expected. Finally, and despite an initial surprise and setback due to the discovery that the Chandra x-ray telescope was far more efficient for concentrating low-energy protons that had been anticipated, the observatory is performing well and is returning superb scientific data. Together with other space observations, most notably the recently activated XMM-Newton, it is clear that we are entering a new era of discovery in high-energy astrophysics.
Extraction of Hidden Common Interests between People Using New Social-Graph Representation

It can be essential in the new-generation content services to predict the potential demands of people, which they themselves have not recognized or cannot express precisely. Social graphs representing the relationships between people are used for predicting demand in current Internet-based services. However, these graphs cannot represent the relationships of two users residing in common communities or common places. We propose representing not only a person but also things like communities and social events together as a single node in a social graph. This representation allows us to estimate who shares potential interests with a given person. We evaluated the estimation accuracy of our representation using an actual relational dataset from an academic database. Results show that our representation can estimate if two people share common interests that cannot be found with conventional methods that only use human nodes for estimation, and it can estimate the relations without using human nodes.
Limit theorems for sums of a random number of positive independent random variables

The work of A. Wald [11] and H. Robbins [10] played an important role in stimulating interest in the investigation of sums of a random number of independent random variables. Of late a large number of papers related to this topic have been published and their importance for numerous applied questions as well as theoretical mathematics has been shown. Results of research, conducted over the last three years by myself and my students in connection with problems in the theory of reliability, theory of queuing, physics, and production organization, are presented in this paper. We shall begin the presentation with the consideration of one of these problems. Some of the formulations of problems and theorems which will be included here have been presented before when I delivered lectures at the Universities of London, Sheffield, Rome, Budapest and Warsaw where I was a guest in recent years. Several statements of problems and their solutions originated there. Geiger-Muller counters are used in nuclear physics and also in the study of cosmic radiation. A particle having struck the counter and having been counted by it causes a breakdown in it lasting some time z. Any particle striking the counter in the period of the breakdown is not registered by it. Usually one assumes that r is a constant; however, a more realistic assumption is that T is a random variable with some distribution G(x). Our problem is to determine the distribution of the length of the time interval from the first registration of a particle to the first loss. Here we shall assume that the time intervals between successive entries of particles are independent and identically distributed with distribution function F(x). It is obvious that the counter does not lose a particle until the duration of the breakdown is as large as the interval between successive entries of particles. (See Figure 1.) This permits us to write the following equality:
Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Cancer Locus of Control Scale

Perceptions of control after a cancer diagnosis may have psychological and physical health significance. The control constructs are critical components of the theory of cognitive adaptation. The Cancer Locus of Control scale reflected these theoretical components and was administered to 543 women with a history of breast cancer. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the measurement factor structure of the Cancer Locus of Control. The results supported a three-factor model of the Cancer Locus of Control scale. Mean scores of beliefs in all three dimensions indicated generally high confidence in cancer control. It was concluded that use of this Cancer Locus of Control scale can provide adequate assessment of the three distinct control dimensions.
Hyperspectral Image Compression Based on the Protection of Information of Interest

With much richer information than multispectral image, hyperspectral image has been applied in many aspects such as agriculture, environment, military etc. But higher spectral resolution is accompanied by a huge volume of image data, which will result in excessive computing time and data complexity for transmission and storage, so it is necessary to compress hyperspectral image. Because of limit of spatial resolution, some targets that we are interested in are usually in small size and belong to high frequency. In order to preserve such information as much as possible, a hierarchical compression method with protection strategy for hyperspectral image is proposed in this paper, which can protect information of interest (IOI) to some extent, including spatial and spectral IOI. The experimental results show that under the same compression rate, the proposed method can achieve better performance in target detection application than typical SPIHT method.
Functional Changes in Littoral Macroinvertebrate Communities in Response to Watershed-Level Anthropogenic Stress

Watershed-scale anthropogenic stressors have profound effects on aquatic communities. Although several functional traits of stream macroinvertebrates change predictably in response to land development and urbanization, little is known about macroinvertebrate functional responses in lakes. We assessed functional community structure, functional diversity (Rao’s quadratic entropy) and voltinism in macroinvertebrate communities sampled across the full gradient of anthropogenic stress in Laurentian Great Lakes coastal wetlands. Functional diversity and voltinism significantly decreased with increasing development, whereas agriculture had smaller or non-significant effects. Functional community structure was affected by watershed-scale development, as demonstrated by an ordination analysis followed by regression. Because functional community structure affects energy flow and ecosystem function, and functional diversity is known to have important implications for ecosystem resilience to further environmental change, these results highlight the necessity of finding ways to remediate or at least ameliorate these effects.
A Novel Approach to Maximising the Detection of Volume Crime with DNA and Fingerprints

Decisions concerning which volume crime scenes (such as burglary and autocrime) to examine for forensic material continue to have a significant impact on the detection of these crime types by forensic evidence such as DNA or fingerprints. Previous work has indicated that crime scene attendance by a crime scene examiner (CSE) should be influenced by the likely evidential value of any material recovered from the crime scene rather than focusing attendance on specific crime types. In this paper, we challenge that argument by assessing first the forensic detections obtained from volume crime types over a three-year period in a study police force in England. We then show how a realignment of CSE deployment to crime types that offer the highest potential to detect the crime forensically produced statistically significant increases in the percentage of recorded crime detected. We examine this realignment against the national picture for CSE attendance and forensic crime detection in England and Wales and show how other police forces might benefit from a similar realignment of CSE deployment. Finally, we consider the possible effect on the general public's fear of crime that such a realignment of CSE deployment might have.
CRABP‐II‐ and FABP5‐independent all‐trans retinoic acid resistance in COLO 16 human cutaneous squamous cancer cells

Abstract: The effect of all‐trans retinoic acid (ATRA) on cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas (c‐SCC) has been poorly described. Because the imbalance of CRABP‐II‐mediated anticancer signalling and FABP5‐mediated growth‐promoting signalling was supposed to be related with ATRA sensitivities of cancer cells, COLO16 human c‐SCC cell line was selected to check underlying mechanism leading to ATRA resistance by multiple experimental approaches. The results revealed that COLO 16 cells were resistant to 15 μm ATRA treatment. FABP5 as well as the elements related with CRABP‐II signalling (CYP26A1, CYP26B1, CRABP‐I, RARα/β/γ and RXRα/β/γ) and with FABP5 signalling (PPARβ/δ) were expressed, but CRABP‐II was undetectable in COLO 16 cells. 5‐Aza treatment enhanced CRABP‐II expression but further bisulfite sequencing PCR‐DNA sequencing revealed no methylation in CRABP‐II promoter region. Transfection of CRABP‐II‐expressing plasmids or FABP5 siRNA or both successfully manipulated the level(s) of target gene expression but failed to overcome ATRA resistance in the transfectants. In conclusion, CRABP‐II and FABP5 expression were imbalanced in ATRA‐resistant COLO 16 cells. 5‐Aza‐enhanced CRABP‐II expression and unmethylation in CRABP‐II promoter region suggest the methylation of certain CRABP‐II regulatory gene(s) in COLO 16 cells. As neither restoration of CRABP‐II expression nor the increased CRABP‐II versus FABP5 ratio can overcome ATRA resistance of COLO 16 cells, additional ATRA‐resistant mechanism(s) may present in human c‐SCCs and COLO 16 cells would be of value in addressing this issue.
Turkish Senior Nursing Students' Communication Experience With English-Speaking Patients.

BACKGROUND Simulation has been widely accepted as a valuable learning method in nursing education programs so that nursing students can learn and develop communication skills. The aim of this study was to evaluate nursing students' communication experience with an English-speaking standardized patient in the context of the Rational Administration of Medicines course. METHOD Involving both quantitative and qualitative research designs, this descriptive study was conducted with 104 nursing students in Ankara, Turkey, from September 2012 to July 2013. RESULTS The majority (98.1%) of the participants stated the necessity of improving their English to communicate with English-speaking patients. Three overarching categories, including seven themes, emerged from the description of nursing students' experience: recognition of emotions, experiences during the simulation, and gains. CONCLUSION Standardized patient practice emphasized the significance of cultural differences, of knowing and using a foreign language, of communication, and of patient safety.
Experience of Adult Facilitators in a Virtual-Reality-Based Social Interaction Program for Children With Autism

This phenomenological study explored and described the experiences and perceptions of adult facilitators who facilitated virtual-reality-based social interaction for children with autism. Extensive data were collected from iterative, in-depth interviews; online activities observation; and video analysis. Four salient themes emerged through the process of data generation, analysis, and comparison of participants: heterogeneity in group-based facilitation, coexistence of virtual and physical interaction spaces, sparkle and out-of-track moments, and pretraining for individualized facilitation. The findings should enrich the research area of technology-enhanced special education by delineating the dynamic processes and patterns of facilitating Internet-based social interactions for children with special needs.