Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spectral excitation coding of speech at 2.4 kb/s

We present spectral excitation coding (SEC), a speech codec based on a sinusoidal model applied to the excitation signal. A phase dispersion algorithm allows the same model to be used for voiced as well as unvoiced and transitional sounds. The phase dispersion algorithm significantly improves the perceived quality resulting in more natural reconstructed speech. A new technique for variable dimension vector quantization called nonsquare transform vector quantization (NSTVQ) is used for quantization of the harmonic magnitudes. The SEC system at 2.45 kb/s achieved an MOS score 0.8 points higher than the 2.4 kb/s ZPC-10 standard. A preliminary 1.85 kb/s SEC system which uses zero-bit magnitude quantization is also presented. Informal listening tests indicate that the quality of the 1.85 kb/s system exceeds that of the LPC-10 standard.
Validation of self-reported smoking status by simultaneous measurement of carbon monoxide and salivary thiocyanate.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to determine the validity of tobacco questionnaires when using as gold standard either a single biomarker or a combination of two biomarkers. METHODS The methods were self-reported smoking compared with salivary thiocyanate and expired carbon monoxide in a 1996, population-based, Swiss survey of 552 men and 565 women. RESULTS Sensitivity of self-reported smoking relative to salivary thiocynate or carbon monoxide alone was low (38.2% for salivary thiocyanate > or = 100 mg/L, 56.4% for salivary thiocyanate > or = 150 mg/L and 62.6% for carbon monoxide > or = 9 ppm). When defining true positive smokers as people with high concentration of both salivary thiocyanate and carbon monoxide, overall, sensitivity was 88.6% and specificity was 87.2%. In women, sensitivity increased from 85 to 89% when removing subjects exposed to passive smoking. When excluding heavy smokers, sensitivity decreased to 63% in men and to 71% in women. Older women had tendency to misreport smoking. CONCLUSIONS This comparison of questionnaire data with the simultaneous measurement of salivary thiocyanate and expired carbon monoxide indicates that valid responses can be obtained for self-reported, current smoking in population-based surveys. However, the validity of questionnaires can be underestimated if the gold standard (of exposure to tobacco smoke) is either high levels of carbon monoxide or high levels of salivary thiocyanate.
Chronic impairment of ERK signaling in glutamatergic neurons of the forebrain does not affect spatial memory retention and LTP in the same manner as acute blockade of the ERK pathway

The ERK/MAPK signaling pathway has been extensively studied in the context of learning and memory. Defects in this pathway underlie genetic diseases associated with intellectual disability, including impaired learning and memory. Numerous studies have investigated the impact of acute ERK/MAPK inhibition on long‐term potentiation and spatial memory. However, genetic knockouts of the ERKs have not been utilized to determine whether developmental perturbations of ERK/MAPK signaling affect LTP and memory formation in postnatal life. In this study, two different ERK2 conditional knockout mice were generated that restrict loss of ERK2 to excitatory neurons in the forebrain, but at different time‐points (embryonically and post‐natally). We found that embryonic loss of ERK2 had minimal effect on spatial memory retention and novel object recognition, while loss of ERK2 post‐natally had more pronounced effects in these behaviors. Loss of ERK2 in both models showed intact LTP compared to control animals, while loss of both ERK1 and ERK2 impaired late phase LTP. These findings indicate that ERK2 is not necessary for LTP and spatial memory retention and provide new insights into the functional deficits associated with the chronic impairment of ERK signaling.
ENaC at the Cutting Edge: Regulation of Epithelial Sodium Channels by Proteases*

Epithelial Na+ channels facilitate the transport of Na+ across high resistance epithelia. Proteolytic cleavage has an important role in regulating the activity of these channels by increasing their open probability. Specific proteases have been shown to activate epithelial Na+ channels by cleaving channel subunits at defined sites within their extracellular domains. This minireview addresses the mechanisms by which proteases activate this channel and the question of why proteolysis has evolved as a mechanism of channel activation.
Cutaneous manifestations of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis.

BACKGROUND Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis is a rare, rapidly progressive, and potentially fatal disorder of activated histiocytes. The initial clinical presentation commonly includes fever, hepatosplenomegaly, and pancytopenia. Skin eruptions are described in up to 65% of patients. Information regarding the morphological features, configuration, and distribution of these eruptions is lacking and is typically reported as nonspecific and "maculopapular. " The aim of this report is to better delineate the cutaneous manifestations of the disorder to assist in differentiating the process from other systemic diseases. OBSERVATION A case report of a neonate with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis with generalized purpuric macules is described. The clinical features of 5 other patients with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, are summarized. Clinical images of 1 additional neonatal patient with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis are presented as well. These observations demonstrate the varied cutaneous manifestations of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis: erythroderma, generalized purpuric macules and papules, and morbilliform eruptions. CONCLUSION Awareness of cutaneous involvement can assist in the initial diagnosis of hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and potentially signify recurrences.
Two-rectangular-printed-spiral antenna with U-strip

The two-rectangular-printed-spiral antenna with U-strip is proposed. The increasing electrical length and impedance matching is performed by using two spiral arms and adding U-strip. There is no ground plane for this antenna structure. The size is relatively small. The measured return loss is -12.435 dB at 433 MHz with 5.455 % bandwidth (428-452 MHz). The measured absolute gain is about -5 dBi. The performance of this small antenna is efficient for many wireless applications especially wireless sensor networks of ITS.
Cascaded Control System of the Modular Multilevel Converter for Feeding Variable-Speed Drives

The modular multilevel converter (MMC) is an upcoming topology for high-power drive applications especially in the medium voltage range. This paper presents the design process of a holistic control system for a MMC to feed variable-speed drives. First, the design of the current control for the independent adjustment of several current components is derived from the analysis of the equivalent circuits. Second, the current and voltage components for balancing the energies in the arms of the MMC are identified systematically by the investigation of the transformed arm power components. These fundamentals lead to the design of the cascaded control structure, which allows the balancing task in the whole operating range of a three-phase machine. The control system ensures a dynamic balancing of the energies in the cells of the MMC at minimum necessary internal currents over the complete frequency range. Simultaneously, all other circulating current components are avoided to minimize current stress and additional voltage pulsations. The performance of the control system is finally validated by measurements on a low-voltage MMC prototype, which feeds a field-oriented controlled induction machine.
Pituitary‐Gonadal Function During Sleep in Men with Erectile Impotence and Normal Controls

&NA; Studies of pituitary‐gonadal function in men with erectile disorders have provided conflicting findings. This study compares blood LH and testosterone during sleep in 17 physically healthy men with erectile impotence and 12 matched normal controls, and relates hormonal variations to stages of sleep and penile tumescence. Subjects, aged 23‐36 were studied in a sleep laboratory for 3‐6 nights with the last two nights devoted to sequential blood sampling every 20 minutes. Five men had never been able to achieve intercourse (primary impotent group) and 12 suffered from a life‐long history of intermittent erectile failures (secondary‐impotent group). There were no significant differences in sleep duration and REM time among the impotent groups and normal controls. Primary‐impotent men showed half as many full tumescent episodes as secondary‐impotent men and controls, and spent significantly less time above 80% of full tumescence. The secondary‐impotent group did not differ in nocturnal penile tumescent measures from controls. There was a pattern of irregularly occurring fluctuations in plasma LH and testosterone with no differences among groups in frequency and amount of peak hormonal increases. Normal subjects had significantly higher mean testosterone concentrations during REM sleep than during other sleep stages, and during full tumescence than during partial and nontumescent periods. A direct causal relation between REM‐related activity and circulating testosterone was not supported by the observation that the hormonal levels during REM sleep and during full tumescence did not differ statistically from the levels measured during adjacent time periods. As with normal subjects, the secondary‐impotent group exhibited higher testosterone levels during REM sleep and full tumescence; by contrast, the primary‐impotent group did not show significant hormonal differences across stages of sleep and tumescent/ nontumescent periods. These data are discussed with respect to the possible existence of subgroups of impotent men without known organic pathology than may be characterized by psychophysiologic and endocrine differences during sleep.
Evaluation of the uncertainty of electrical impedance measurements: the GUM and its Supplement 2

Electrical impedance is not a scalar but a complex quantity. Thus, evaluation of the uncertainty of its value involves a model whose output is a complex. In this paper the comparison of the evaluation of the uncertainty of the measurement of the electrical impedance of a simple electric circuit using the GUM and using a Monte Carlo method according to the Supplement 2 of the GUM is presented.
Anticipatory Event Detection via Sentence Classification

The idea of event detection is to identify interesting patterns from a constant stream of incoming news documents. Previous research in event detection has largely focused on identifying the first event or tracking subsequent events belonging to a set of pre-assigned topics such as earthquakes, airline disasters, etc. In this paper, we propose a new problem, called Anticipatory Event Detection (AED), which aims to detect if a user-specified event has transpired. AED can be viewed as a personalized combination of event tracking and new event detection. We propose using a sentence classification approach to solve the AED problem for a restricted domain; detecting articles that describe final game results from NBA basketball news. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed AED solution.
Self-selection and the power of incentive schemes: an experimental study

We examine how self-selection of workers depends on the power of incentive schemes and how it affects team performance if the power of the incentive schemes is increased. In a laboratory experiment, we let subjects choose between (low-powered) team incentives and (high-powered) individual incentives. We observe that subjects exhibiting high trust or reciprocity in the trust game are more likely to choose team incentives. When exposed to individual incentives, subjects who chose team incentives perform worse if both the unobservable interdependency between their efforts and their incentive to cooperate under team incentives are high.
Action of Gibberellic Acid on Lettuce Seed Germination.

Several workers have shown that gibberellic acid (GA3) promotes the germination of seeds which ordinarily require light (6, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 23, 28, 30). This phenomenon raises several fundamental questions as to the mechanism of light-controlled germination: A: Does light simply act by releasing a gibberellin in the seed, B: Does the GA3 substitute for light by bringing about chemically a reaction which is normally photochemical, or C: Does the GA3 bring about some quite other type of growth process which independently leads to germination? The following experiments are an attempt to provide answers to these questions.
Recent advances in methods of lexical semantic relatedness – a survey

Abstract Measuring lexical semantic relatedness is an important task in Natural Language Processing (NLP). It is often a prerequisite to many complex NLP tasks. Despite an extensive amount of work dedicated to this area of research, there is a lack of an up-to-date survey in the field. This paper aims to address this issue with a study that is focused on four perspectives: (i) a comparative analysis of background information resources that are essential for measuring lexical semantic relatedness; (ii) a review of the literature with a focus on recent methods that are not covered in previous surveys; (iii) discussion of the studies in the biomedical domain where novel methods have been introduced but inadequately communicated across the domain boundaries; and (iv) an evaluation of lexical semantic relatedness methods and a discussion of useful lessons for the development and application of such methods. In addition, we discuss a number of issues in this field and suggest future research directions. It is believed that this work will be a valuable reference to researchers of lexical semantic relatedness and substantially support the research activities in this field.
Microwave imaging: From soft towards hard tissue monitoring

Microwave imaging (MI) has grown in recent years as a promising technique for breast cancer detection. Its physical principle exploits the different characteristics of normal and tumoral breast tissues. The first prototypes of MI for breast cancer detection are being developed, but little effort has been spent to employ MI in other districts of the body. In this work we propose new applications for the MI, exploring its potentialities in the analysis of soft and hard tissues, proposing two examples: the thyroid and the bone. A numerical model of the thyroid is built and examined; a two dimensional map of the numerical model of the Thyroid with the inclusion of a spherical 0.6 cm radius tumor has been constructed. The analysis of the bone was focused on the detectability of the presence of osteoporosis in the bone. This analysis has been performed expiremenntally, due to the lack of literature on ostoporotic bone dielectric behaviour.
Application of phosphonates and phosphinates in medical chemistry

Phosphonates and phosphinates are compounds of practical importance in industry, agriculture, and medicine as well as in everyday life. Except for being pesticides, detergents, or anticorrosive agents, they can be employed as potent inhibitors of human and bacterial enzymes, combating pathological conditions or infections. This group of proteins includes angiotensin I converting enzyme (ACE), proteases and farnesyl diphosphate synthase. Organophosphorus compounds can influence several bacterial enzymes, in particular glutamine synthetase, urease or hexokinase. Bisphosphonates are hydrotically stable mimetics of pyrophosphate and they act as substrate analogues for several enzymes. The other mechanism of action is based on the similarity of the discussed compounds to the transition state of reactions catalysed by particular enzymes. Regardless of several limitations of utilising phosphonates or phosphinates as drugs (poor bioavailability or high polarity of inhibitors), they are given a lot of attention by many research groups and are promising candidates for drugs and antibacterial agents.
A via-based methodology for frequency selective surface minimization

The paper proposes a new methodology for frequency selective surface (FSS) minimization. Vertical vias are introduced to the FSS design in the methodology. To demonstrate the methodology, a via-based Y-shaped FSS is considered. By the proposed methodology, designers can easily shift the resonant frequency of the considered FSS to lower frequency, adding only some extra vias and without having to modify the original element pattern. An equivalent circuit model analysis is also presented to provide the physical mechanism of the Y-shaped FSS as the methodology applied. The via-based Y-shaped FSS prototype was fabricated and examined in a fully anechoic chamber. Good agreement among the circuit model, full wave simulation, and measurement was achieved.
[Flicker perimetry (CFF) in glaucoma diagnosis].

PURPOSE Evaluation of CFF perimetry results in patients with suspected glaucoma. MATERIAL AND METHODS Visual field was measured on Octopus 301 perimeter with option "flicker perimetry". 49 patients (98 eyes) with suspected glaucoma were tested. Standard W/W perimetry revealed glaucomatous visual field defect in one eye, but not in the second eye. Patients with cataract and diabetes were not taken into consideration. RESULTS Defects in CFF perimetry tests were found in 71.4% of cases, but in W/W perimetry test in 50.0% of cases. CONCLUSIONS Perimetry CFF is useful for early detection and follow up of glaucoma. Indices MD and LV may be used for those purposes.
Neem oil as a vaginal contraceptive.

Indigenously available neem oil in its natural form was tested for its spermicidal activity (in vitro and in vivo). Undiluted neem oil was found to possess strong spermicidal action (within 30 seconds) against rhesus monkey and human spermatozoa in vitro. When used intravaginally in a dose of 20 mcl in rats and 1.0 ml in rhesus monkeys and human subjects before sexual intercourse the oil was found to be 100% effective in preventing pregnancy in the test subjects. The oil did not reveal any side effects as confirmed by histopathological studies. (authors)
Analysis of Costs Attributable to an Outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome at a French Hospital

Other potential reservoirs (eg, shaving cream, povidoneiodine solution, water supplies, and an alcohol-based mouthwash) were culture negative for B. cepacia. Samples were obtained from unopened bottles of mouthwash distributed around the hospital that belonged to different batches, and the samples were cultured. Batches distributed from August 2004 through September 2004 were not contaminated. Batches distributed from April-2005 through July 2005 were highly contaminated. No other samples were available for analysis. The distribution of contaminated batches matched the substantial increase in the incidence of B. cepacia infection or colonization. Strains from 5 patients and 6 mouthwash samples were submitted for identification to our reference center (National Center of Microbiology, Health Institute Carlos III, Majadahonda, Madrid, Spain). Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of Xbal-digested genomic DNA was performed with a Chief DRIII system (Bio-Rad) according to conditions described elsewhere, with several modifications. Briefly, electrophoresis was carried out in a 1.2% agarose gel for 22 hours at 6 V/cm with pulse times ranging from 5 to 35 seconds. Molecular mass markers were concatameters of phage X New England (Biolabs, UK). Electrophoretic patterns showed that all the strains were identical (Figure). On July 18, the use of the mouthwash product in our hospital was discontinued, and the last isolate of B. cepacia was obtained on July 22, 2005. The methods of production and distribution and the extent of use of this mouthwash in other hospitals are now being investigated by the Spanish Department of Health. At the moment, no information is available on the rate of B. cepacia infection or colonization at other hospitals that used the same product distributed by the same company as at our hospital. Our findings strongly suggest that intrinsically contaminated alcohol-free mouthwash solution was the source of this large outbreak involving predisposed adults in ICU. To date, 2 similar outbreaks in which B. cepacia was isolated from culture of respiratory tract specimens from patients without cystic fibrosis have been traced to intrinsically contaminated alcohol-free mouthwash in North America. ' More-thorough surveillance of microbiological contamination of alcohol-free products used in adults predisposed to infection should be mandatory. These findings highlight the importance of hospital surveillance and investigation of unusual clusters of infection and colonization to promptly identify unexpected sources of pathogens and to protect patients at risk.
Voiced / Unvoiced and Silent Classification Using HMM Classifier based on Wavelet Packets BTE features

Wavelet Packets Best Tree Encoded (BTE) features is used here as base features for HMM classifier. The research aimed to introduce the newly designed features that are discussed in [1]. The considered problem is Voiced, Unvoiced and Silent classification. Comparison to the 19 filter banks features is provided. Although it is simple and straight forward, BTE makes comparable results to the 19 elements features vector based on filters bank. A very accurate hand labeled database called SCRIBE is used. Voiced sounds are recognized in 81% success rate. Silent periods are detected in 84.5% success rate. The unvoiced sounds are not recognized using the proposed features. It gives a 5.5% success rate. This low rate of unvoiced detection affects the overall performance. The overall performance of 64.5% is achieved. This overall performance is expected to be dramatically changed in case of adding some unvoiced attributes to BTE.
Nanoformulated natural therapeutics for management of streptozotocin-induced diabetes: potential use of curcumin nanoformulation.

AIM The goal of this study was to improve curcumin (CUR) aqueous solubility and bioavailability via nanoformulation, and then study its activity and mechanism of action as an antidiabetic agent. METHODS CUR-loaded pluronic nanomicelles (CURnp) were prepared and characterized. Biochemical assessments were performed as well as histological, confocal and RTPCR studies on pancreatic target tissues. RESULTS CURnp with a diameter of 333 ± 6 nm and ζ potential of -26.1 mv were obtained. Antidiabetic action of CURnp was attributed to significant upregulation of Pdx-1 and NKx6.1 gene expression and achievement of optimum redox balance, which led to alleviation of streptozotocin-induced β-cell damage via a significant upregulation in insulin gene expression proved by RTPCR studies and by the presence of 40% insulin positive cells through confocal microscope studies on pancreatic tissue.
Iterative Semi Supervised Data Denoising with Procrustes Analysis

A wireless sensor network localization with only few location aware nodes is difficult due to noisy medium and other environmental effects. This situation is similar to semi supervised learning where in the given data set, a small portion is labeled while majority remains unlabeled and the aim is to find unknown labels based on available information. This is achieved by exploiting the underlying intrinsic geometrical manifold structure between data including unlabeled data. In this paper we propose iterative graph Laplacian least square regression with Procrustes analysis which ensures error minimization in localization through iterative manifold structure learning. The results indicate that high localization accuracy is achieved as compared to other similar technique.