Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pitch Accuracy of Vocal Singing in Deaf Children With Bimodal Hearing and Bilateral Cochlear Implants

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the pitch accuracy of vocal singing in children with severe to profound hearing loss who use bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) or bimodal devices [CI at one ear and hearing aid (HA) at the other] in comparison to similarly-aged children with normal-hearing (NH). Design: The participants included four groups: (1) 26 children with NH, (2) 13 children with bimodal devices, (3) 31 children with bilateral CIs that were implanted sequentially, and (4) 10 children with bilateral CIs that were implanted simultaneously. All participants were aged between 7 and 11 years old. Each participant was recorded singing a self-chosen song that was familiar to him or her. The fundamental frequencies (F0) of individual sung notes were extracted and normalized to facilitate cross-subject comparisons. Pitch accuracy was quantified using four pitch-based metrics calculated with reference to the target music notes: mean note deviation, contour direction, mean interval deviation, and F0 variance ratio. A one-way ANOVA was used to compare listener-group difference on each pitch metric. A principal component analysis showed that the mean note deviation best accounted for pitch accuracy in vocal singing. A regression analysis examined potential predictors of CI children’s singing proficiency using mean note deviation as the dependent variable and demographic and audiological factors as independent variables. Results: The results revealed significantly poorer performance on all four pitch-based metrics in the three groups of children with CIs in comparison to children with NH. No significant differences were found among the three CI groups. Among the children with CIs, variability in the vocal singing proficiency was large. Within the group of 13 bimodal users, the mean note deviation was significantly correlated with their unaided pure-tone average thresholds (r = 0.582, p = 0.037). The regression analysis for all children with CIs, however, revealed no significant demographic or audiological predictor for their vocal singing performance. Conclusion: Vocal singing performance in children with bilateral CIs or bimodal devices is not significantly different from each other on a group level. Compared to children with NH, the pediatric bimodal and bilateral CI users, in general, demonstrated significant deficits in vocal singing ability. Demographic and audiological factors, known from previous studies to be associated with good speech and language development in prelingually-deafened children with CIs, were not associated with singing accuracy for these children.
Influence of Massage and Skin Hydration on Dermal Penetration Efficacy of Nile Red from Petroleum Jelly—An Unexpected Outcome

The study aimed at comparing the influence of direct and indirect skin hydration as well as massage on the dermal penetration efficacy of active compounds. Nile red was used as a lipophilic drug surrogate and was incorporated into Vaseline (petroleum jelly). The formulation was applied with and without massage onto either dry skin or pre-hydrated, moist skin. It was expected that the occlusive properties of Vaseline in combination with massage and enhanced skin hydration would cause a superposition of penetration-enhancing effects, which should lead to a tremendous increase in the dermal penetration efficacy of the lipophilic drug surrogate. Results obtained were diametral to the expectations, and various reasons were identified for causing the effect observed. Firstly, it was found that Vaseline undergoes syneresis after topical application. The expulsed mineral oil forms a film on top of the skin, and parts of it penetrate into the skin. The lipophilic drug surrogate, which is dissolved in the mineral oil, enters the skin with the mineral oil, i.e., via a solvent drag mechanism. Secondly, it was found that massage squeezes the skin and causes the expulsion of water from deeper layers of the SC. The expulsed water can act as a water barrier that prevents the penetration of lipophilic compounds and promotes the penetration of hydrophilic compounds. Based on the data, it is concluded that dermal penetration is a complex process that cannot only be explained by Fick’s law. It is composed of at least three different mechanisms. The first mechanism is the penetration of active ingredients with their solvents into the skin (convection, solvent drag), the second mechanism is the penetration of the active ingredient via passive diffusion, and the third mechanism can involve local penetration phenomena, e.g., the formation of liquid menisci and particle-associated penetration enhancement, which occur upon the evaporation of water and/or other ingredients from the formulation on top of the skin.
International legal regulation of the rights of persons with disabilities: problems of formation and development

At the level of international legal regulation disability policy is currently one of the priority areas. However, such attention to the international legal protection of the rights of persons with disabilities has not always been the case, as the problems of persons with disabilities have long remained unnoticed by the international community. Rare attempts to improve the situation with persons with disabilities were usually limited to medical protection and integration into the labor market, while the task of their full and actual involvement in public life was not even set. The article analyzes the preconditions, reasons and features of the evolution of the system of international legal protection of the rights of persons with disabilities, as well as examines the transformation of approaches to defining the concept of "disability" at the level of international law. The article defines the main stages of the formation of international cooperation in the field of protection of the rights of persons with disabilities. The article presents the results of the analysis of international legal documents on disability policy for the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to 2020.
ON-LINE MONITORING SYSTEM OF WATER LEAKAGE DETECTION IN PIPE NETWORKS WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This research aims to detect the leakage of pipeline by computerized on-line system using pressure analysis, as a determinant of the leakage in a pipe. At the first stage, the data is obtained from pressure changed at each location of the leakage and taken from the EPANET, a hydraulic modelling system, as simulated data. The simulation data consist of input data, in the form of pressure at each junction, and the output data, in the form of magnitude and location of leakage. Furthermore, the data is processed using one of the Artificial Intelligence methods, The Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBF-NN), which has two phases: the learning and testing phases. The test results of the method of Radial Basis Function Neural Network are proven to be able to detect the magnitude and the location of leakage with the 98 % accurate prediction result of the whole pipeline system. The next step is creating pressure monitoring equipment on-line to replace the pressure data from the EPANET to the real data, thus the pressure at each junction can be monitored in real time. And by applying the method of RBF-NN, magnitude and location of leakage can be known.
Assessment Model of Accident Emergency Management System Performance for Chemical Industrial Park Based on Immune Mechanism

Chemical accidents happen in workplaces all around the world. To improve the accident emergency management system is an important methodology to reduce the casualty and loss caused by accidents. In the light of the principles of immune system, the paper tried to analyze the accident emergency management system of chemical industrial park. It elaborated the similarities between immune system and accident emergency management system in the aspects of their existing environment, action object, function and adjustment mechanism. Immune mechanisms were used to formulate the assessment indexes of accident emergency management system performance. Inspired by immune system that keeps the living body healthy in “no antigen condition” and “touching antigen condition”, the assessment index system was formulated from the perspectives of “non-emergency condition” and “emergency condition”. Through the improved analytic hierarchy process, the weights of assessment indexes were calculated. Furthermore, the linear weighted model was applied in the building of the assessment model, which was then used to analyze the accident emergency management system of a chemical industrial park in Guangdong province, China. Through the data from expert investigation questionnaires, the scores of nine assessment indexes reflected accident emergency management system performance were obtained. The result showed that the model is helpful in analyzing the accident emergency management system performance and in improving the accident emergency management system in chemical industrial parks.
On-board identification of tyre cornering stiffness using dual Kalman filter and GPS

Cornering stiffness is one of the important vehicle parameters for steering control of a vehicle. Accurate vehicle parameters are essential for a high performance of vehicle control because vehicle control is significantly affected by variations in vehicle parameters. In this study, a novel identification method is proposed using a dual Kalman filter algorithm and a GPS (global positioning system) measurement system to estimate the cornering stiffness for on-board identification. Performance of the identification method is examined with experiments, and the estimation results show that this identification method is effective on both a flat road and a banked curve road.
How Does FinTech Affect Consumer Non-cash Payment Satisfaction? The Moderating Role of Financial Knowledge

As the merger of innovations from developing financial services for the twenty-first century, FinTech has brought payment methods into a new and electronic era, and non-cash payment is gradually becoming the mainstream for transaction activities. This study empirically investigates the effects of FinTech on consumer non-cash payment satisfaction, and the moderating role of financial knowledge is examined as well. Utilizing the data from the China Household Finance Survey in 2017, the results indicate that the use of FinTech can significantly promote consumer satisfaction towards non-cash payment. The mechanism analysis specific to the moderating role also shows that financial knowledge positively contributes to the impacts of FinTech on consumer non-cash payment satisfaction. The findings of this study imply that financial service providers are recommended to promote their facilities to meet consumers’ increasing demand for financial services. Besides, consumers should also take the initiative to improve their financial knowledge to better integrate non-cash payment into life and enjoy the satisfaction brought by FinTech.
Spectra of delta-sigma modulated inverters: an analytical treatment

Analytic expressions for the output voltage spectrum of an asynchronous delta (or delta-sigma) modulated inverter are reported and supported by experimental data. The analysis yields three functions that give the frequency, phase, and amplitude of each component of the spectrum. These functions are in terms of the sinusoidal reference waveform and the properties of the modulator. The method provides greater accuracy and computational efficiency than the numerical methods reported to date. The spectral components form pairs of sidebands around multiples of the average switching frequency. The functions detail the relationship between the number of significant sideband components and the depth of modulation and illustrate the spread-spectrum nature of delta modulation. Extensions to nonsinusoidal reference waveforms and to hysteresis current controllers are considered. >
Accuracy Analysis of Stewart Parallel Manipulator Based on Uniform Experiment Design

Accuracy of the Stewart parallel manipulator is utmost important in assembly quality control procedures, and it's also difficult to demonstrate the inner relations quantitatively between errors of pose and of actuators. A novel methodology is proposed in this paper. Firstly the experiment area planning approach is proposed according to the pose and strut symmetries of the manipulator, and the uniform experiment design is conducted to investigate indexes of accuracy sensitivity. The regression equations are established to analyze the significance of various factors according to experiment results.
MPC-Based Multi-Inverter Power Control in Low-Inertia Power Systems

In a bid to make the electric grid more sustainable, there is a need to increase the integration of renewable energy resources at various locations in the grid. This move will reduce the total amount of physical inertia available from synchronous machines in the grid, resulting in the need for these resources to increasingly take on frequency response functions. In this paper, we propose a distributed model predictive based control method to coordinate multiple inverter-based resources in the grid. Under this control structure, the controller determines the optimal active power set-point for each inverter in the event of a disturbance in the system. In contrast to other control strategies, this controller does not constrain the inverters to behave like a traditional synchronous machine in responding to a disturbances. It instead leverages on the fast actuation of the inverters by virtue of the speed of its power electronic circuits. We demonstrate, by testing on the IEEE New England 39-bus system with integration of multiple inverter-based resources at different buses, that our proposed controller can coordinate these resources to provide an efficient frequency response under varying scenarios.
Salamanca Pulsed Laser Center: the Spanish petawatt

A few Petawatt lasers are operative now in the world and a few more are under construction in several places. One of them is under construction at Salamanca, Spain, in the framework of a Consortium between the Central Government of Spain, the regional Government of Castilla y Leon and the University of Salamanca. The Spanish PW will reach that extreme power with 30 Joule / 30 femtosecond pulses, using Ti:Sapphire CPA technology and delivering one shot per second. The Salamanca laser will allow synchronized pump/probe experiments with a unique 200 TW probe sharing the same front end. The laser is now under construction and full operation is expected in less than two years. That laser will be a user facility opened to the national and the international scientific community. To understand the meaning of such a system, a review of the technology and its extreme applications in the foreseen range of powers and intensities is presented.
Hybrid Neural Approach for Face and Associated Emotion Recognition Using Swarm Intelligence-Based Ensemble Network

In this work, a hybrid approach which carries the Radial Basis Function Neural Network and Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network have been applied in a cascaded manner to recognize the face and associated emotions. The variability of individual classifier performances has been reduced by providing the ensemble approach. The formation of ensemble has been developed using the intelligent manner with the help of particle swarm optimization. The applied ensemble approach provided the weighted importance of individual entities according to their performances. The proposed ensemble approach has been proven to be useful over the development of ensemble classifier for XOR classification problem. Each face has been carried with a different form of emotion which has been tested and performance was compared against the individual classifier module.
The Influencing Mechanism of Social Effort-Reward Imbalance on Life Satisfaction among Aging Workforces in the United States: A Longitudinal Study

Improving life satisfaction is consistent with the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals. Although there are many studies examining life satisfaction, research on the influencing mechanisms remains a hot topic and scholars hope to explore more aspects that improve life satisfaction. The purpose was to explore how the relationship between social effort-reward imbalance and life satisfaction are mediated by positive and negative affect. We collected longitudinal data from 909 respondents participating in the 2008 and 2012 wave of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We used the first-order difference method and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis to evaluate the validity of the proposed hypotheses. Our results demonstrated that social effort-reward imbalance was positively related to negative affect, and negatively related to positive affect. Positive affect was positively related to life satisfaction, while negative affect was negatively related to life satisfaction. The findings also indicated that positive and negative affect completely mediated the relationship between social effort-reward imbalance and life satisfaction. This study has made a contribution to the research on the influencing mechanism of life satisfaction from the aspects of theory and practice. Longitudinal data ensured that the conclusions were more reliable so that the study could provide useful suggestions for improving life satisfaction.
Determining a Reasonable Speed for Xinjiang’s
Tourism Development in the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’
under the Green Concept: Analysis from
the Perspective of Water Environment Regulation

Taking Xinjiang Autonomous Region as the research area and water environment regulation as the analysis perspective, this paper proposes a method to analyze the reasonable speed of regional tourism development under the green concept. This study analyzes the basic elements of the subsystem of tourism development and water environment regulation, and constructs an evaluation index system. The index is normalized, and the weight of the index is determined through the combination weighting method. The coupling degree of tourism development and water environment regulation in different years is divided into four grades: excellent, good, meduim and poor. This paper also predicts the relevant development indicators of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in 2025, at the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period. The average coupling degree corresponding to the excellent and good years during the sample years is taken as the threshold value, in order to estimate the reasonable development speed of Xinjiang Autonomous Region’s tourism in 2025. The results show that, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, in order to ensure a good degree of coupling between the development of tourism and the regulation of the water environment in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the total scale of tourists in Xinjiang Autonomous Region should be controlled within the range of from 257 million to 284 million person-times, and the development speed should be controlled to between 11.56% and 12.93% per year.
Cobaltabis(dicarbollide) ([o-COSAN]−) as Multifunctional Chemotherapeutics: A Prospective Application in Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) for Glioblastoma

Simple Summary Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most common malignant brain tumors. Although a variety of GBMs is initially susceptible to chemotherapy, the development of multi-drug resistance and recurrence is frequent. Therefore, there is an urgent need for more efficient treatment modalities for GBM. Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a cancer therapy based on the potential of 10B atoms to produce α particles that cross tissues in which the 10B accumulates without damaging the surrounding healthy tissues after irradiation with low energy thermal neutrons. The aim of our study was to assess that the sodium salt of cobaltabis(dicarbollide) and its di-iodinated derivative could be good candidates for dual anti-cancer treatment (chemotherapy + BNCT). Our results strongly suggest that these small molecules, in particular [8,8′-I2-o-COSAN]−, are serious candidates to be taken into account for BNCT now that the accelerator-based neutron source facilities are more accessible, providing an alternative treatment for resistant glioblastoma. Abstract Purpose: The aim of our study was to assess if the sodium salt of cobaltabis(dicarbollide) and its di-iodinated derivative (Na[o-COSAN] and Na[8,8′-I2-o-COSAN]) could be promising agents for dual anti-cancer treatment (chemotherapy + BNCT) for GBM. Methods: The biological activities of the small molecules were evaluated in vitro with glioblastoma cells lines U87 and T98G in 2D and 3D cell models and in vivo in the small model animal Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) at the L4-stage and using the eggs. Results: Our studies indicated that only spheroids from the U87 cell line have impaired growth after treatment with both compounds, suggesting an increased resistance from T98G spheroids, contrary to what was observed in the monolayer culture, which highlights the need to employ 3D models for future GBM studies. In vitro tests in U87 and T98G cells conclude that the amount of 10B inside the cells is enough for BNCT irradiation. BNCT becomes more effective on T98G after their incubation with Na[8,8′-I2-o-COSAN], whereas no apparent cell-killing effect was observed for untreated cells. Conclusions: These small molecules, particularly [8,8′-I2-o-COSAN]−, are serious candidates for BNCT now that the facilities of accelerator-based neutron sources are more accessible, providing an alternative treatment for resistant glioblastoma.
Adaptive gravity compensation of decoupled parallel and serial manipulators using a passive hydraulic transmission

Abstract This article addresses the gravity compensation of decoupled or partially decoupled parallel and serial manipulators. The proposed technique applies to manipulators in which the vertical motion is decoupled from other Cartesian degrees of freedom (DOFs). In the latter situation, only one DOF needs to be gravity compensated in order to eliminate actuator torques due to the weight of the moving parts. First, a passive hydraulic transmission consisting of two cylinders connected by hoses is introduced in order to perform gravity compensation using a remote counterweight (CW) affecting only the inertia of the equilibrated DOF. A complete system is then shown using a set of CWs, cylinders, and valves allowing to adapt rapidly and effectively to a variety of payloads. Finally, two experimental implementations using, respectively, hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders filled with water are presented and the practical limitations of the approach are discussed.