Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring Critical Articulator Identification from 50Hz RT-MRI Data of the Vocal Tract

The study of the static and dynamic aspects of speech production can profit from technologies such as electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMA) and real-time magnetic resonance (RTMRI). These can improve our knowledge on which articulators and gestures are involved in producing specific sounds and foster improved speech production models, paramount to advance, e.g., articulatory speech synthesis. Previous work, by the authors, has shown that critical articulator identification could be performed from RTMRI data of the vocal tract, with encouraging results, by extending the applicability of an unsupervised statistical identification method previously proposed for EMA data. Nevertheless, the slower time resolution of the considered RT-MRI corpus (14 Hz), when compared to EMA, potentially influencing the ability to select the most suitable representative configuration for each phone — paramount for strongly dynamic phones, e.g., nasal vowels —, and the lack of a richer set of contexts – relevant for observing coarticulation effects –, were identified as limitations. This article addresses these limitations by exploring critical articulator identification from a faster RTMRI corpus (50 Hz), for European Portuguese, providing a richer set of contexts, and testing how fusing the articulatory data of two speakers might influence critical articulator determination.
SwarmTella : P 2 P-based Content Distribution Architecture for Community Networks Scenarios

This paper presents SwarmTella, a novel architecture for content distribution in Community Scenarios. SwarmTella is a general framework allowing the distribution of contents of different type (file-sharing, VoD Distribution and Live Streaming). For this purpose, it uses delivery techniques based on swarming. On the other hand, the searching of contents is based on multi attribute semantic queries. Both, multi attribute semantic searches and swarming delivery are exploited by a novel algorithm, the Ranking Algorithm, which is used to create the structure of Communities. Furthermore, SwarmTella introduces the Secure Permanent Peer-ID that allows to establish a long term structure of Communities reducing drastically the effects produced by churn. Finally, we have evaluated SwarmTella through simulation and compared it with Gnutella (the most used fully distributed and unstructured P2P system). Our results show that SwarmTella clearly outperforms Gnutella. It increases the probability of success in the search procedure by 10% while reducing the bandwidth utilization in the search procedure up to 60%. Furthermore the simulations also demonstrate that the Ranking Algorithm and the Secure Permanent Peer-ID are suitable tools in order to form Communities with an stable structure along the time.
Research on Network Public Opinion Text Representation Strategy for Subject Classification——Taking Sina Weibo as an Example

In this paper, we propose a text representation strategy, which solves the problem that term weights of Sina Weibo topic classification research are not suitable and the model explanatory is not strong. In the proposed document representation strategy, term weighting vector is constructed by taking pre-selection prediction. On training set, the effectiveness of term weighting vector is evaluated by cross-validation, and term weighting vector corresponding to the best evaluation result is selected as term weighting vector of test set. Compared with traditional W-Max, D-Max and D-TMax methods, the proposed method increases 4.25%, 5.03% and 7.10% respectively in MicroF1. In classification of public opinion topics, the proposed method can construct a more explicit term weighting vector for data set. It can enhance the interpretability of the model, and improve the classification performance.
motionEAP : An Overview of 4 Years of Combining Industrial Assembly with Augmented Reality for Industry 4 . 0

With our society moving towards Industry 4.0, an increasing number of tasks and procedures in manual workplaces are augmented with a digital component. While the research area of Internet-of-Things focuses on combining physical objects with their digital counterpart, the question arises how the interface to human workers should be designed in such Industry 4.0 environments. The project motionEAP focuses on using Augmented Reality for creating an interface between workers and digital products in interactive workplace scenarios. In this paper, we summarize the work that has been done in the motionEAP project over the run-time of 4 years. Further, we provide guidelines for creating interactive workplaces using Augmented Reality, based on the experience we gained. ACM Classification
Facial Expression Transfer with Machine Learning

This project aims to study the usage of deep learning and Facial Action Coding System (FACS) [1] in facial expression transfer. In this project, facial expression transfer will be achieved using the technology of facial expression extraction and facial expression generation under a FACS conditioned scheme which improves the complexity and anatomical accuracy of the output. A software will be developed using a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model [2] based on Action Units (AUs) annotations to achieve photorealistic facial expression synthesis. The software will be built on top of the GANimation model proposed by Pumarola et al. [3] and the software will be further combined with the OpenFace 2.0 toolkit [4] to achieve facial expression transfer. Acknowledgment We would like to express our deep gratitude to our supervisor, Dr. Dirk Schnieders. We had changed our project and supervisor once in the middle of September. We would like to thank Dr. Dirk Schnieders for his patient and guidance for this project in such a hurry situation.
Enhanced blood-brain-barrier penetrability and tumor-targeting efficiency by peptide-functionalized poly(amidoamine) dendrimer for the therapy of gliomas

Glioblastoma is one of the most common primary tumor types of central nervous system (CNS) with high malignance and lethality. Although many treatment options are currently available, the therapy of brain cancers remains challenging because of blood-brain-barrier (BBB) which prevents most of the chemotherapeutics into the CNS. In this work, a poly(amidoamine) dendrimer-based carrier was fabricated and modified with angiopep-2 (Ang2) peptide that has been demonstrated to bind to low density lipoprotein receptor-relative protein-1 (LRP1) on the endothelial cells of BBB and could therefore induce BBB penetration of the carrier. To improve tumor-targeting effect towards the glioma sites, the dendrimer was simultaneously functionalized with an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeting peptide (EP-1) which was screened from a “one-bead one-compound” (OBOC) combinatorial library. EP-1 peptide was demonstrated to have high affinity and specificity to EGFR at both the molecular and cellular levels. The dual-targeting dendrimer exhibited outstanding BBB penetrability and glioma targeting efficiency both in vitro and in vivo, which strikingly enhanced the anti-gliomas effect of the drugs and prolonged the survival of gliomas-bearing mice. These results show the potential of the dual-targeting dendrimer-based carrier in the therapy of gliomas through enhancing BBB penetrability and tumor targeting.
Automatic Lyric Transcription from Karaoke Vocal Tracks: Resources and a Baseline System

Automatic sung speech recognition is a relatively understudied topic that has been held back by a lack of large and freely available datasets. This has recently changed thanks to the release of the DAMP Sing! dataset, a 1100 hour karaoke dataset originating from the social music-making company, Smule. This paper presents work undertaken to define an easily replicable, automatic speech recognition benchmark for this data. In particular, we describe how transcripts and alignments have been recovered from Karaoke prompts and timings; how suitable training, development and test sets have been defined with varying degrees of accent variability; and how language models have been developed using lyric data from the LyricWikia website. Initial recognition experiments have been performed using factored-layer TDNN acoustic models with lattice-free MMI training using Kaldi. The best WER is 19.60% – a new state-of-the-art for this type of data. The paper concludes with a discussion of the many challenging problems that remain to be solved. Dataset definitions and Kaldi scripts have been made available so that the benchmark is easily replicable.
LARYNGEALIZED VOWELS IN TWO ZAPOTEC LANGUAGES

Zapotec languages contrast three types of laryngealized vowels: (1) ‘checked’, a vowel followed by a glottal stop, (2) creaky (3) ‘rearticulated’, a sequence of vowels with an intervening glottal stop [VɁV]. The current study examines these vowel types in Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec and Santiago Matatlán Zapotec. Given that creaky, checked, and rearticulated vowels are all characterized by creak, how are these vowel types distinguished? Acoustic and electroglottographic measures were made for each vowel type. Results were similar across languages. There was variation in the production of the rearticulated and checked vowels. Both vowel types were sometimes produced as [V̰], a creaky vowel without either the echo vowel or glottal stop. Phonemically creaky vowels had earlier onsets of creak than checked or rearticulated vowels, suggesting that listeners may be attuned to the timing differences in phonation in order to perceive the differences between these vowel types.
Data for: Conveyance and the moderating effect of envy on homeowners' choice of appliances

Conveyance, i.e., the fact that an appliance purchased will be left in the dwelling when moving out, may lead homeowners to purchase appliances of lower quality or performance, because the extra costs are not entirely capitalized into the house sales price. Employing a discrete choice experiment with homeowners in the United States, this paper explores the effects of conveyance on homeowners’ willingness-to-pay for various attributes of refrigerators. To account for the social nature of purchases when conveyance is likely to occur, it also tests the moderating role of envy (elicited through an incentivized game). The findings suggest that conveyors are more likely to purchase a smaller refrigerator, from a less well-known brand, and with lower customer ratings. In contrast, conveyance was not found to affect homeowners' choices when it comes to energy cost. In addition, envy was found to generally reinforce the negative effects of conveyance on homeowners' willingness-to-pay for quality and performance attributes. While conveyance and its interaction with envy help explain homeowners' choice of quality/performance attributes of appliances, these factors do not appear to explain the energy efficiency paradox.
Remote and local monitoring of dissolved and suspended fluorescent organic matter off the Svalbard

Distribution maps of CDOM and algal pigments, both in superficial and deep waters, have been obtained operating a portable dual laser spectrofluorometer and a lidar fluorosensor equipments for the first time during two polish AREX oceanographic campaigns in 2006 and 2007 summertime in the Svalbard area. The different hydrological regimes strongly affected the biological factors in the waters around the Svalbard Islands as monitored during the campaigns with strong regional differentiations between the two years. The occurrence of large phytoplanktonic blooms and patches have been observed in the western area of the Spitsbergen Island coastline due to the nutrient release from pack ice and/or iceberg melting with values of more than 10 μg/l in both campaigns. Different CDOM fractions have been monitored with the remote and local instruments and inverse proportionality with salinity is confirmed along the water column. Phycobilin pigments, as phycoerythrin and phycocyanin accessory algal pigments, have been monitored in the northern area as well as tyrosine and tryptophan protein-like fluorescence distribution. The double filtration, performed with the dual laser spectrofluorometer, allows to retrieve the small fluorescence contribution due to NADPH and carotenoids pigments in the blue fluorescence emission. Successively, the large spectroscopic data base has been critically analyzed with a robust statistic instrument, thus identifying different marine provinces and retrieve distinctive CDOM fractions.
Version On the economics of electrical storage for variable renewable energy sources European Economic

The use of renewable energy sources is a major strategy to mitigate climate change. Yet Sinn (2017) argues that excessive electrical storage requirements limit the further expansion of variable wind and solar energy. We question, and alter, strong implicit assumptions of Sinn’s approach and find that storage needs are considerably lower, up to two orders of magnitude. First, we move away from corner solutions by allowing for combinations of storage and renewable curtailment. Second, we specify a parsimonious optimization model that explicitly considers an economic efficiency perspective. We conclude that electrical storage is unlikely to limit the transition to renewable energy. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Personality Prediction Based on Social Media Using Decision Tree Algorithm

Personality represents the mixture of features and qualities that built an individual’s distinctive characters including thinking, feeling and behaving. Traditionally, self-assessment method via questionnaire is the most common means to identify personality. Since recommender systems and advertisement campaigns have evolved rapidly, personality computing has become a popular research field to provide personalisation to users. Currently, researchers have utilised social media data for automatically predicting personality. However, it is complex to mine the social media data as they are noisy, free-format, and of varying length and multimedia. This paper proposes a decision tree C4.5 algorithm to automatically predict personality based on Big Five model. The Big Five Inventory and ZeroR algorithm were included to be served as the baseline for performance evaluation. Experimental evaluation demonstrated that C4.5 performs better than ZeroR in terms of accuracy.
THE EFFECT OF SELF-EFFICACY AND STUDENT MOTIVATION TOWARD THE STUDENT ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN HUMANITIES CLASS AT CIPUTRA JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL SURABAYA

This research is conducted to looking for the effect of of self-efficacy and motivational study toward the student academic achievement in Humanities class at Ciputra Junior High School Surabaya. This is a quantitative research that use path analysis method in their statistical calculation. The population of student that used in this research are 84 students which are the grade 8th student in Ciputra Junior High School in Surabaya. The number of sample used in this research are 68 students which randomly picked up by proportional stratified random sampling method. This research is using the Motivated Learning Strategies Questionnaire to test student self-efficacy and their motivation. Reliability of the instrument is calculated using the Alpha Cronbach’s formula. All the data in this research is analysed by the SPSS 23 Software using double linear regression. The result of this research shows that self-efficacy and motivation affect positively and significantly towards the student academic achievement in Humanities class at Ciputra Junior High School Surabaya. All of the hypotheses are accepted with the conclusion that self-efficacy affects positively and significantly towards the student academic achievement, self-efficacy affects positively and significantly towards the student study motivation, and the student motivation affects positively and significantly towards the student academic achievement.
A questionnaire survey on the influence of job satisfaction on organizational citizenship behavior : a study of city and town municipality in Thailand

This study sought the influence of job satisfaction on organizational citizenship behavior. A sample was taken from city and town municipality in Thailand. The number of questionnaires returned to the author was 836 questionnaires; the final response rate is 71.2%. The findings indicate that there was a significant relationship between job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior.
ECHOCARDIOGRAPHIC PARAMETERS IN AFRICAN WHITE-BELLIED PANGOLINS (PHATAGINUS TRICUSPIS) WITHOUT CARDIAC DISEASE

Abstract: Relatively little is known about pangolin care and physiology, and it has become increasingly important to have a better understanding of normal health parameters for evaluation of free-ranging, rehabilitating, and managed populations. Echocardiograms were performed on six African white-bellied pangolins (Phataginus tricuspis) under professional care at a single institution. Because of the propensity of pangolins to roll up with only thick keratinized scales exposed, the pangolins were anesthetized with either isoflurane or sevoflurane. All echocardiograms were performed and evaluated by a board-certified cardiologist. None of the pangolins had any evidence of prior cardiac disease. All standard measurements were obtained. Four pangolins (66.7%) had trace to mild mitral regurgitation, six (100%) had trace to mild tricuspid regurgitation, and two (33.3%) had trace to mild pulmonic regurgitation. All examinations were determined to be normal, with no evidence of valvular structural abnormalities, cardiac dysfunction, chamber enlargement, or cardiac hypertrophy. This report broadens understanding of normal echocardiogram parameters in pangolin species and contributes techniques and baseline data for veterinarians caring for these vulnerable populations.
Preventing explosions of hydrogen gas inhalers

Production and excretion of hydrogen (H2) gas in human was reported in 1969, since then it has been regarded as non-toxic molecule. For preventive and therapeutic medical uses, a possible treatment for cancer was reported and another article was published on how H2 acts as a therapeutic antioxidant by selectively reducing cytotoxic oxygen radicals. A variety of H2 gas inhalers have been available in the market for hospital and home uses. However, H2 is odorless and flammable or explosive ignited by static electricity. We have examined the safety of a variety of H2 gas concentrations from the viewpoint of flammability and explosion. We have also measured concentrations of H2 gas inhalers in the market respectively. This paper also details how to control H2 gas concentration for preventing explosions.
VCP/p97 Is a Proviral Host Factor for Replication of Chikungunya Virus and Other Alphaviruses

The evolutionarily conserved AAA+ ATPase valosin-containing protein (VCP) was previously shown to be a proviral host factor for several viruses from different viral families such as Flaviviridae, Picornaviridae, and Herpesviridae. VCP was shown to affect trafficking of Sindbis virus receptor and functions as a component of Semliki Forest virus (SFV) replicase compartment. However, the role of this cellular protein was not evaluated during replication of alphaviruses including chikungunya virus (CHIKV). Using siRNA, chemical inhibitors, and trans-replication assays, we show here that VCP is a proviral factor involved in the replication of CHIKV. Immunofluorescence assays confirmed that VCP co-localized with non-structural replicase proteins but not with dsRNA foci possibly due to VCP epitope unavailability. VCP pro-viral role is also observed with other alphaviruses such as o’nyong’nyong virus (ONNV) and SFV in different human cell lines. VCP proviral roles on several viral families now extend to replication of alphaviruses CHIKV and ONNV, emphasizing the pivotal role of VCP in virus–host interaction biology.
Impact and Beneficial Critical Points of Clinical Outcome in Corticosteroid Management of Adult Patients With Sepsis: Meta-Analysis and GRADE Assessment

Background: With new randomised pieces of evidence and the latest clinical practice guideline from the BMJ emerging in 2018, an updated analysis of best available evidence on the controversial effects of corticosteroids in sepsis is warranted. Objectives: To comprehensively evaluate whether corticosteroids are beneficial in reducing mortality and what cumulative dosage, daily dosage, and duration of corticosteroid treatment would enable adult patients with sepsis to reach the critical point of benefits. Methods: Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMbase, Cochrane Library, and LILACS database were searched until March 22, 2019. Results: Thirty RCTs with 8,836 participants were identified. Long course low-dose corticosteroid therapy could improve 28-day mortality (RR = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.84–0.97; high quality), intensive care unit mortality (RR = 0.87; 95% CI = 0.79–0.95; moderate quality), and in-hospital mortality (RR = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.79–0.997; high quality). However, we found no benefits for 90-day, 180-day, and 1-year mortality. Subgroup results of long course corticosteroid treatment in a population with septic shock and vasopressor-dependent septic shock, corticosteroid regimen with hydrocortisone plus fludrocortisone, corticosteroid dosing strategies including bolus dosing and infusion dosing, the strategies of abrupt discontinuation, timing of randomisation ≤24 h, impact factor of ≥10, and sample size ≥500 were associated with a marginally reduction in 28-day mortality. Conclusions: This meta-analysis found that the long course low-dose and not short course high-dose corticosteroid treatment could marginally improve short-term 28-day mortality with high quality, especially septic shock and vasopressor-dependent septic shock, and it is recommended that long course (about 7 days) low-dose (about 200–300mg per day) hydrocortisone (or equivalent) with cumulative dose (at least about 1,000mg) may be a viable management option for overall patients with sepsis, and it can be also adapted to patient with septic shock alone. Early hydrocortisone plus fludrocortisone administration, via continuous infusion or bolus dosing, is also particularly important for the prognosis. Abrupt discontinuation of corticosteroids, as opposed to the conventional tapered discontinuation, may be considered as a desirable option in 28-day mortality. The safety profile of long course low-dose corticosteroid treatment, including adverse hyperglycaemia and hypernatraemia events, remains a concern, although these events could be easily treated. Clinical Trial Registration: PROSPERO, identifier CRD 42018092849.