Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Precision of Sung Notes in Carnatic Music

Carnatic music is replete with continuous pitch movement called gamakas and can be viewed as consisting of constant-pitch notes (CPNs) and transients. The stationary points (STAs) of transients – points where the pitch curve changes direction – also carry melody information. In this paper, the precision of sung notes in Carnatic music is studied in detail by treating CPNs and STAs separately. There is variation among the nineteen musicians considered, but on average, the precision of CPNs increases exponentially with duration and settles at about 10 cents for CPNs longer than 0.5 seconds. For analyzing STAs, in contrast to Western music, rāga (melody) information is found to be necessary, and errors in STAs show a significantly larger standard deviation of about 60 cents. To corroborate these observations, the music was automatically transcribed and re-synthesized using CPN and STA information using two interpolation techniques. The results of perceptual tests clearly indicate that the grammar is highly flexible. We also show that the precision errors are not due to poor pitch tracking, singer deficiencies or delay in auditory feedback.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N6) in Domestic Cats, South Korea

In December 2016, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) infection with systemic pathologic lesions was found in cats in South Korea. Genetic analyses indicated that the feline isolates were similar to HPAI H5N6 viruses isolated in chicken farms nearby. This finding highlights the need for monitoring of domestic mammals during HPAI outbreaks.
Antinociceptive properties of 25‐methoxy hispidol A, a triterpinoid isolated from Poncirus trifoliata (Rutaceae) through inhibition of NF‐κB signalling in mice

The 25‐methoxy hispidol A (25‐MHA) is a triterpenoid, isolated from the immature fruit of Poncirus trifoliata (Rutaceae). The pretreatment with 25‐MHA markedly (p < 0.001) attenuated the formalin‐induced biphasic responses as well as acetic acid‐induced writhing responses. The intraperitoneal administration of 25‐MHA significantly attenuated the mechanical hyperalgesia (p < 0.001) and allodynia (p < 0.05). Similarly, 25‐MHA also significantly attenuated (p < 0.001) complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA)‐induced paw edema in mice. The 25‐MHA treatment significantly attenuated the production of nuclear kappa B (NF‐κB) (p65 nuclear subunit). The cytokines are the important mediators of inflammation and pain; however, treatment with 25‐MHA exhibited significant inhibition (p < 0.001) on the mRNA expression levels of various inflammatory mediators. The 25‐MHA administration also significantly enhanced antioxidant enzymes (p < 0.001) and inhibited the oxidative stress markers. The current study indicates that 25‐MHA significantly (p < 0.001) inhibited the nitric oxide (NO) in mice plasma. Similarly, the haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining shows that 25‐MHA administration significantly inhibited the inflammatory process in the mice paw tissue compared with the CFA‐treated group. The 25‐MHA treatment did not exhibited any toxicity on the liver, kidney, muscles strength, and motor co‐ordination in mice. The 25‐MHA was coadministered with the various drugs such as tramadol, piroxicam, and gabapentin to observe the synergistic effect.
Dual-Continuum Design Approach for Intuitive and Low-Cost Upper Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

<italic>Objective:</italic> This paper introduces a methodology to design intuitive, low-cost, and portable devices for visual inspection of the upper gastrointestinal tract. <italic>Methods:</italic> The proposed approach mechanically couples a multi-backbone continuum structure, as the user interface, and a parallel bellows actuator, as the endoscopic tip. Analytical modeling techniques derived from continuum robotics were adopted to describe the endoscopic tip motion from user input, accounting for variations in component size and pneumatic compressibility. The modeling framework was used to improve intuitiveness of user-to-task mapping. This was assessed against a 1:1 target, while ease-of-use was validated using landmark identification tasks performed in a stomach simulator by one expert and ten non-expert users; benchmarked against conventional flexible endoscopy. Pre-clinical validation consisted of comparative trials in <italic>in-vivo</italic> porcine and human cadaver models. <italic>Results:</italic> Target mapping was achieved with an average error of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5^\circ$</tex-math></inline-formula> in bending angle. Simulated endoscopies were performed by an expert user successfully, within a time comparable to conventional endoscopy (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$< $</tex-math></inline-formula>1 min difference). Non-experts using the proposed device achieved visualization of the stomach in a shorter time (9 s faster on average) than with a conventional endoscope. The estimated cost is <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$< $</tex-math></inline-formula>10 USD and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$< $</tex-math></inline-formula>30 USD for disposable and reusable parts, respectively. Significance and <italic>Conclusions:</italic> Flexible endoscopes are complex and expensive devices, actuated via non-intuitive cable-driven mechanisms. They frequently break, requiring costly repair, and necessitate a dedicated reprocessing facility to prevent cross contamination. The proposed solution is portable, inexpensive, and easy to use, thus lending itself to disposable use by personnel without formal training in flexible endoscopy.
Maternal B vitamin intake during pregnancy and childhood behavioral problems in Japan: The Kyushu Okinawa Maternal and Child Health Study

Objectives: The current prebirth cohort study investigated the relationship between maternal B vitamin intake during pregnancy and behavioral problems in Japanese children aged 5 years. Methods: Subjects were 1199 mother–child pairs. Dietary intake was assessed using a diet history questionnaire. Emotional problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity problems, peer problems, and low prosocial behavior were examined using the Japanese parent-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Adjustment was made for maternal age, gestation at baseline, region of residence, number of children, maternal and paternal education, household income, maternal depressive symptoms, alcohol intake, vitamin B complex supplement use, smoking during pregnancy, child’s birth weight, child’s sex, breastfeeding duration, and smoking in the household during the first year of life. Results: Maternal folate intake during pregnancy was independently inversely associated with childhood low prosocial behavior: the adjusted odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval [CI], P for trend) between extreme quartiles was 0.55 (0.37–0.80, 0.0002). Maternal vitamin B6 intake during pregnancy was independently inversely related to childhood hyperactivity problems and low prosocial behavior: the adjusted ORs (95% CIs, P for trend) between extreme quartiles were 0.57 (0.34–0.94, 0.01) and 0.58 (0.40–0.85, 0.0009), respectively. Maternal vitamin B2 intake during pregnancy was independently inversely associated with childhood emotional problems: the adjusted OR (95% CI, P for trend) between extreme quartiles was 0.58 (0.33–0.99, 0.11). Conclusions: Maternal intake of folate, vitamin B6, and vitamin B2 during pregnancy may be protective against childhood low prosocial behavior, hyperactivity problems and low prosocial behavior, and emotional problems, respectively.
Lymphopenia and risk of infection and infection-related death in 98,344 individuals from a prospective Danish population-based study

Background Neutropenia increases the risk of infection, but it is unknown if this also applies to lymphopenia. We therefore tested the hypotheses that lymphopenia is associated with increased risk of infection and infection-related death in the general population. Methods and findings Of the invited 220,424 individuals, 99,191 attended examination. We analyzed 98,344 individuals from the Copenhagen General Population Study (Denmark), examined from November 25, 2003, to July 9, 2013, and with available blood lymphocyte count at date of examination. During a median of 6 years of follow-up, they developed 8,401 infections and experienced 1,045 infection-related deaths. Due to the completeness of the Danish civil and health registries, none of the 98,344 individuals were lost to follow-up, and those emigrating (n = 385) or dying (n = 5,636) had their follow-up truncated at the day of emigration or death. At date of examination, mean age was 58 years, and 44,181 (44.9%) were men. Individuals with lymphopenia (lymphocyte count < 1.1 × 109/l, n = 2,352) compared to those with lymphocytes in the reference range (1.1–3.7 × 109/l, n = 93,538) had multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios of 1.41 (95% CI 1.28–1.56) for any infection, 1.31 (1.14–1.52) for pneumonia, 1.44 (1.15–1.79) for skin infection, 1.26 (1.02–1.56) for urinary tract infection, 1.51 (1.21–1.89) for sepsis, 1.38 (1.01–1.88) for diarrheal disease, 2.15 (1.16–3.98) for endocarditis, and 2.26 (1.21–4.24) for other infections. The corresponding hazard ratio for infection-related death was 1.70 (95% CI 1.37–2.10). Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, smoking status, cumulative smoking, alcohol intake, body mass index, plasma C-reactive protein, blood neutrophil count, recent infection, Charlson comorbidity index, autoimmune diseases, medication use, and immunodeficiency/hematologic disease. The findings were robust in all stratified analyses and also when including only events later than 2 years after first examination. However, due to the observational design, the study cannot address questions of causality, and our analyses might theoretically have been affected by residual confounding and reverse causation. In principle, fluctuating lymphocyte counts over time might also have influenced analyses, but lymphocyte counts in 5,181 individuals measured 10 years after first examination showed a regression dilution ratio of 0.68. Conclusions Lymphopenia was associated with increased risk of hospitalization with infection and increased risk of infection-related death in the general population. Notably, causality cannot be deduced from our data.
In Vivo Gentamicin Susceptibility Test for Prevention of Bacterial Biofilms in Bone Tissue and on Implants

The objective of this study was to set up an in vivo gentamicin susceptibility test for biofilm prevention in bone tissue and on implants. Twenty-five pigs were allocated to six groups. ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to set up an in vivo gentamicin susceptibility test for biofilm prevention in bone tissue and on implants. Twenty-five pigs were allocated to six groups. Pigs in group A (n = 6) were inoculated with saline. Pigs in groups B (n = 6), C (n = 3), D (n = 3), E (n = 3), and F (n = 4) were inoculated with 10 μl saline containing 104 CFU of Staphylococcus aureus. Different concentrations based on the MIC of gentamicin for the specific strain were added to the 10-μl inoculum for groups C (160× MIC), D (1,600× MIC), E (16,000× MIC), and F (160,000× MIC). The inocula were injected into a predrilled tibial implant cavity, followed by insertion of a steel implant (2 by 15 mm). The pigs were euthanized after 5 days. In vitro, all the doses used were found to be bactericidal after up to 6 h. All implant cavities of pigs inoculated with bacteria and bacteria plus 160× MIC or 1,600× MIC of gentamicin were positive for S. aureus. In animals in each of groups E (16,000× MIC) and F (160,000× MIC), 2/3 and 1/4 of the implant cavities were S. aureus positive, respectively. By grouping groups C and D (<10,000× MIC) and groups E and F (>10,000× MIC), a significant decrease in the number of implant-attached bacteria was seen only between the high-MIC-value group and group B. Histologically, it was demonstrated that 1,600×, 16,000×, and 160,000× MIC resulted in a peri-implant tissue reaction comparable to that in saline-inoculated animals. In vivo, the antimicrobial tolerance of the inoculated planktonic bacteria was increased by in vivo-specific factors of acute inflammation. This resulted in bacterial aggregation and biofilm formation, which further increased the gentamicin tolerance. Thus, susceptibility patterns in vitro might not reflect the actual in vivo susceptibility locally within a developing infectious area.
Driftin' Down the Scale: Dynamic Time Warping in the Presence of Pitch Drift and Transpositions

Recordings of a cappella music often exhibit signiﬁcant pitch drift. This drift may accumulate over time to a total transposition of several semitones, which renders the canonical 2-dimensional Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) useless. We propose Transposition-Aware Dynamic Time Warping (TA-DTW), an approach that introduces a 3rd dimension to DTW. Steps in this dimension represent changes in transposition. Paired with suitable input features, TA-DTW computes an optimal alignment path be-tween a symbolic score and a corresponding audio recording in the presence of pitch drift or arbitrary transpositions
Tolerance to seed predation mediated by seed size increases at lower latitudes in a Mediterranean oak

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The ability of plants to allocate energy to resistance against herbivores changes with abiotic conditions and thus may vary along geographical clines, with important consequences for plant communities. Seed size is a plant trait potentially influencing plant tolerance to endoparasites, and seed size often varies across latitude. Consequently, plant tolerance to endoparasites may change across geographical clines. METHODS The interaction between Quercus ilex (holm oak) and seed-predating Curculio spp. (weevils) was explored along most of the latitudinal range of Q. ilex. This included quantification of variation in seed size, survival likelihood of infested seeds, multi-infestation of acorns and community composition of Curculio weevils in acorns. KEY RESULTS Larger seeds had a higher probability of surviving weevil attack (i.e. embryo not predated). Southern populations of oak produced on average four times larger seeds than those of northern populations. Consequently, the probability of survival of infested acorns decreased with latitude. The community composition of Curculio varied, with large weevils (C. elephas) dominating in southern populations and small weevils (C. glandium) dominating in northern populations. However, damage tolerance was robust against this turnover in predator functional traits. Furthermore, we did not detect any change in multi-infestation of acorns along the geographical gradient. CONCLUSIONS Quercus ilex tolerance to seed predation by Curculio weevils increases toward the southern end of its distribution. Generally, studies on geographical variation in plant defence against enemies largely ignore seed attributes or they focus on seed physical barriers. Thus, this research suggests another dimension in which geographical trends in plant defences should be considered, i.e. geographical variation in tolerance to seed predators mediated by seed size.
Bridging Audio Analysis, Perception and Synthesis with Perceptually-regularized Variational Timbre Spaces

Generative models aim to understand the properties of data, through the construction of latent spaces that allow classiﬁcation and generation. However, as the learning is unsupervised, the latent dimensions are not related to perceptual properties. In parallel, music perception research has aimed to understand timbre based on human dissimilarity ratings. These lead to timbre spaces which exhibit perceptual similarities between sounds. However, they do not generalize to novel examples and do not provide an invertible mapping, preventing audio synthesis. Here, we show that Variational Auto-Encoders (VAE) can bridge these lines of research and alleviate their weaknesses by regularizing the latent spaces to match perceptual distances collected from timbre studies. Hence, we propose three types of regularization and show that they lead to spaces that are simultaneously coherent with signal properties and perceptual similarities. We show that these spaces can be used for efﬁcient audio classiﬁcation. We study how audio descriptors are organized along the latent dimensions and show that even though descriptors behave in a non-linear way across the space, they still exhibit a locally smooth evolution. We also show that, as this space generalizes to novel samples, it can be used to predict perceptual similarities of novel instruments. Finally, we exhibit the generative capabilities of our spaces, that can directly synthesize sounds with continuous evolution of timbre perception.
Instrudive: A Music Visualization System Based on Automatically Recognized Instrumentation

A music visualization system called Instrudive is presented that enables users to interactively browse and listen to musical pieces by focusing on instrumentation. Instrumentation is a key factor in determining musical sound characteristics. For example, a musical piece performed with vo-cals, electric guitar, electric bass, and drums can generally be associated with pop/rock music but not with classical or electronic . Therefore, visualizing instrumentation can help listeners browse music more efﬁciently. Instrudive visualizes musical pieces by illustrating instrumentation with multi-colored pie charts and displays them on a map in accordance with the similarity in instrumentation. Users can utilize three functions. First, they can browse musical pieces on a map by referring to the visualized instrumentation. Second, they can interactively edit a playlist that showing the items to be played later. Finally, they can discern the temporal changes in instrumentation and skip to a preferable part of a piece with a multi-colored graph. The instruments are identiﬁed using a deep convolutional neural network that has four convolutional layers with different ﬁlter shapes. Evaluation of the proposed model against conventional and state-of-the-art methods showed that it has the best performance.
Transferring the Style of Homophonic Music Using Recurrent Neural Networks and Autoregressive Model

Utilizing deep learning techniques to generate musical contents has caught wide attention in recent years. Within this context, this paper investigates a speciﬁc problem re-lated to music generation, music style transfer. This practical problem aims to alter the style of a given music piece from one to another while preserving the essence of that piece, such as melody and chord progression. In particular, we discuss the style transfer of homophonic music, composed of a predominant melody part and an accom-paniment part, where the latter is modiﬁed through Gibbs sampling on a generative model combining recurrent neural networks and autoregressive models. Both objective and subjective test experiment are performed to assess the performance of transferring the style of an arbitrary music piece having a homophonic texture into two different distinct styles, Bachs chorales and Jazz.
Hookah-Related Posts to Twitter From 2017 to 2018: Thematic Analysis

Background Hookah (or tobacco waterpipe) use has recently become prevalent in the United States. The contexts and experiences associated with hookah use are unclear, yet such information is abundant via publicly available hookah users’ social media postings. Objective In this study, we utilized Twitter data to characterize Twitter users’ recent experiences with hookah. Methods Twitter posts containing the term “hookah” were obtained from April 1, 2017 to 29 March, 2018. Text classifiers were used to identify clusters of topics that tended to co-occur in posts (n=176,706). Results The most prevalent topic cluster was Person Tagging (use of @username to tag another Twitter account in a post) at 21.58% (38,137/176,706) followed by Promotional or Social Events (eg, mentions of ladies’ nights, parties, etc) at 20.20% (35,701/176,706) and Appeal or Abuse Liability (eg, craving, enjoying hookah) at 18.12% (32,013/176,706). Additional topics included Hookah Use Behavior (eg, mentions of taking a “hit” of hookah) at 11.67% (20,603/176,706), Polysubstance Use (eg, hookah use along with other substances) at 10.95% (19,353/176,706), Buying or Selling (eg, buy, order, purchase, sell) at 9.37% (16,552/176,706), and Flavors (eg, mint, cinnamon, watermelon) at 1.66% (2927/176,706). The topic Dislike of Hookah (eg, hate, quit, dislike) was rare at 0.59% (1043/176,706). Conclusions Social events, appeal or abuse liability, flavors, and polysubstance use were the common contexts and experiences associated with Twitter discussions about hookah in 2017-2018. Considered in concert with traditional data sources about hookah, these results suggest that social events, appeal or abuse liability, flavors, and polysubstance use warrant consideration as targets in future surveillance, policy making, and interventions addressing hookah.
Testosterone-Associated Dietary Pattern Predicts Low Testosterone Levels and Hypogonadism

Obesity and low serum testosterone (T) levels are interrelated and strongly influenced by dietary factors, and their alteration entails a great risk of hypogonadism. Substantial evidence suggests a bidirectional relationship between nutrient metabolism (e.g., glucose, lipids, and iron) and T levels in men; however, T-related dietary patterns remain unclear. This study investigated the dietary patterns associated with serum total T levels and its predictive effect on hypogonadism and the body composition. Anthropometry, blood biochemistry, and food frequency questionnaires were collected for 125 adult men. Dietary patterns were derived using a reduced rank regression from 32 food groups. Overall prevalence rates of central obesity and hypogonadism were 48.0% and 15.7%, respectively. An adjusted linear regression showed that age, insulin, red blood cell (RBC) aggregation, and transferrin saturation independently predicted serum total T levels (all p < 0.01). The total T-related dietary pattern (a high consumption of bread and pastries, dairy products, and desserts, eating out, and a low intake of homemade foods, noodles, and dark green vegetables) independently predicted hypogonadism (odds ratio: 5.72; 95% confidence interval: 1.11‒29.51, p < 0.05) for those with the highest dietary pattern scores (Q4) compared to those with the lowest (Q1). Scores were also negatively correlated with the skeletal muscle mass (p for trend = 0.002) but positively correlated with the total body fat mass (p for trend = 0.002), visceral fat mass (p for trend = 0.001), and to a lesser extent, subcutaneous fat mass (p for trend = 0.035) after adjusting for age. Randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm that improvement in dietary pattern can improve T levels and reduce hypogonadism.
Complete polypectomy and early detection and management of residual disease to reduce the risk of interval colorectal cancers

Abstract Advances in colorectal polyp detection and resection methods aim to reduce interval cancer rates. Complete polypectomy is essential to reduce the risk of early recurrence and the development of interval cancers. To achieve this, polyps must first be correctly identified and then completely excised. This article reviews current adenoma detection methods in use and the management of residual disease.