Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unsupervised Feature Learning for Speech Emotion Recognition Based on Autoencoder

Speech signals contain abundant information on personal emotions, which plays an important part in the representation of human potential characteristics and expressions. However, the deficiency of emotion speech data affects the development of speech emotion recognition (SER), which also limits the promotion of recognition accuracy. Currently, the most effective approach is to make use of unsupervised feature learning techniques to extract speech features from available speech data and generate emotion classifiers with these features. In this paper, we proposed to implement autoencoders such as a denoising autoencoder (DAE) and an adversarial autoencoder (AAE) to extract the features from LibriSpeech for model pre-training, and then conducted experiments on the Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture (IEMOCAP) datasets for classification. Considering the imbalance of data distribution in IEMOCAP, we developed a novel data augmentation approach to optimize the overlap shift between consecutive segments and redesigned the data division. The best classification accuracy reached 78.67% (weighted accuracy, WA) and 76.89% (unweighted accuracy, UA) with AAE. Compared with state-of-the-art results to our knowledge (76.18% of WA and 76.36% of UA with the supervised learning method), we achieved a slight advantage. This suggests that using unsupervised learning benefits the development of SER and provides a new approach to eliminate the problem of data scarcity.
A Comparative Analysis of Power Consumption in Conventional and Differential – Less Drive for Electric Vehicle

The general design of the methodology of the transmission system is usually used to give efficient power to the driven wheel, such as usually used differential to differentiate speed and motion of the wheel. In this paper; we analyze methods of motion control and power transmission variation for an electric vehicle (EV) with two independently driven in-wheel motors and conventional differential used EV. Compares the power transmission ratio of two different configurations drives energy conversion differential and epicyclic gears train analysis. This investigation gives an orderly examination of compendium an electrical vehicle is driven by transmissions system journals published and about different losses through mechanical differential system transmission and how they affect on torque. These studies present a comprehensive convergent study report of power Variation and torque transmission with simulation result distinction in differential and differential-less EV’s by compendium studies and show some comparative results. After a compendium study author finds few losses in differentials such as Pocketing power losses, WPL, drag mishap, friction, and different slip in gears. We have mention different factors also affect drive trains and illustrate the main reason to generate losses during transmission. In addition, we have explained this through simulation.
Knowledge transfer received, entrepreneurial opportunity type, environmental dynamism, and innovative performance by overseas subsidiaries in China

ABSTRACT Under the background of the resource-based view, it is of great significance to assess the mechanism through which knowledge transfer received dimensions (tacit and explicit) affect enterprise innovation performance. Explicitly, the study proposes a moderated moderation model of entrepreneurial opportunity types (innovative and imitative) and environmental dynamism to address this mechanism. In a sample of 314 foreign subsidiaries located in China, we find that: (1) Knowledge transfer received types have a positive influence on enterprise innovation performance, (2) The positive influence is contingent on innovative opportunities, whereas no significant association exists among imitative opportunities, explicit knowledge transfer received, and enterprise innovation performance, (3) The positive effect of innovative opportunities on the knowledge transfer received dimensions-innovation performance links increases when the environmental dynamism is in high tempo. Our paper highlights the importance of incorporating entrepreneurial opportunities and environmental dynamism in probing successful knowledge transfer received dimensions-innovation performance links.
Institutional Issues around Agricultural Land-Use Control for Groundwater Conservation—A Long-Term Perspective

Key aspects of policy development and implementation for the control of agricultural land use to conserve groundwater are overviewed. This is one of today’s greatest environmental challenges and one on which only limited progress has been made internationally. For this purpose, the objectives of agricultural land-use control in defined areas are either to reduce diffuse pollution of groundwater and/or to regulate excessive abstraction for crop irrigation to sustain groundwater resources. Progress on both of these fronts has been assessed from the published work, and the lessons learnt are summarised for global application.
Chemometric Differentiation of Pistachios (Pistacia vera, Greek ‘Aegina’ Variety) from Two Different Harvest Years Using FTIR Spectroscopy and DRIFTS and Disk Techniques

Food quality is a topic of utmost importance as more and more emphasis is placed on quality rather than quantity of products. Previous studies have pointed out the interaction of quality with the harvest year. In this study, 22 Pistacia vera (Greek ‘Aegina’ variety) samples (11 from 2017 and 11 from 2018) were differentiated using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and (a) diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) and (b) KBr/sample disk techniques. In both years, the pistachios trees’ growing followed standard cultivation methods and similar agronomic conditions. Two chemometric models were developed using partial least squares-discrimination analysis (PLS-DA). DRIFTS proved unable to statistically differentiate the samples (R2 = 0.96266, Q2 = 0.63152). On the contrary, the disk technique completely differentiated the pistachio samples (R2 = 0.99705, Q2 = 0.97719). The 1720–1800 cm−1 region mostly contributed to the discrimination. The disk-FTIR chemometric model is fast, robust, economical, and environmentally friendly for determining pistachio matrix quality.
Capacitor-less Low-Dropout Regulator for Analog Sensing using 90nm Technology

The capacitor-less-output-low-dropout (CLO-LDO) regulator proposed in this study can manage a wide variety of load currents. To offer temperature independent controlled LDO output, the LDO's 0.844V reference voltage is obtained using BGR, the optimized design is presented that provide full range stability, fast transient response. These benefits allow the proposed LDO regulator to operate over a wide range of operating circumstances, with very high current efficiency 99.99% and low voltage drop 100mV, operating using very low quiescent current of 0. 02µA, at the output of regulator. The proposed regulator design is constructed in 90nm CMOS technology, the structure of the regulator is implemented using a Two-stage operational amplifier to obtain large DC gain 50dB to improve supply noise rejection, and a feedback loop, and exhibits better performance in terms of large phase margin 64.516 degrees with no load and 70.63degree full load.
Incidence and outcomes of sepsis in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous residents of New South Wales: population-based cohort study

Objective: To estimate the incidence and outcomes of sepsis hospitalisations in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous residents of New South Wales. Design and participants: Prospective cohort study of residents aged 45 years and older, recruited between 2006 and 2009, and followed for hospitalisation for sepsis. Main outcome measures: Incidence and hazard ratio (HR) of sepsis hospitalisation and intensive care unit (ICU) admission identified using International Classification of Diseases (10th revision) coding on discharge data. Length of stay, readmission and mortality in those admitted for sepsis. Results: Of 264 678 participants, 1928 (0.7%) identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. Sepsis hospitalisation was higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants (8.67 v 6.12 per 1000 person-years; age- and sex-adjusted HR, 2.35; 95% CI, 1.98–2.80) but was attenuated after adjusting for sociodemographic factors, health behaviour and comorbidities (adjusted HR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.31–1.86). Among those hospitalised for sepsis, after adjusting for age and sex, there were no differences between the proportions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous participants admitted to an ICU (18.0% v 16.1%; P = 0.42) or deceased at 1 year (36.1% v 36.8%; P = 0.92). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants had shorter lengths of hospital stay (9.98 v 11.72 days; P < 0.001) and ICU stay (4.38 v 6.35 days; P < 0.001) than non-Indigenous participants. Overall, more than 70% of participants were readmitted to hospital within 1 year. Conclusion: We found that the rate of sepsis hospitalisation in NSW was higher for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults. Culturally appropriate, community-led strategies targeting chronic disease prevention and the social determinants of health may reduce this gap. Preventing readmission following sepsis is a priority for all Australians.
Neurocognitive feedback: a prospective approach to sustain idea generation during design brainstorming

ABSTRACT Ideation is a key phase in engineering design and brainstorming is an established method for ideation. A limitation of the brainstorming process is idea production tends to peak at the beginning and quickly decreases with time. In this exploratory study, we tested an innovative technique to sustain ideation by providing designers feedback about their neurocognition. We used a neuroimaging technique (fNIRS) to monitor students’ neurocognitive activations during a brainstorming task. Half received real-time feedback about their neurocognitive activation in their prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with working memory and cognitive flexibility. Students who received the neurocognitive feedback maintained higher cortical activation and longer sustained peak activation. Students receiving the neurocognitive feedback demonstrated a higher percentage of right-hemispheric dominance, a region associated to creative processing, compared to the students without neurocognitive feedback. The increase in right-hemispheric dominance positively correlated with an increase in the number of solutions during concept generation and a higher design idea fluency. These results demonstrate the prospective use of neurocognitive feedback to sustain the cognitive activations necessary for idea generation during brainstorming. Future research should explore the effect of neurocognitive feedback with a more robust sample of designers and compare neurocognitive feedback with other types of interventions to sustain ideation.
Overlapped Speech Detection Based on Spectral and Spatial Feature Fusion

Overlapped speech is widely present in conversations and can cause signiﬁcant performance degradation on speech processing such as diarization, enhancement, and recognition. Detection of overlapped speech, in particular when the speakers are in the far-ﬁeld, is a challenging task as the overlapped part is usually short, and heavy reverberation and noise may present in the conversation scenario. Existing solutions overwhelm-ingly rely on spectral features extracted from single microphone signal to perform the detection. In this paper, we propose a novel detection approach which is able to use a microphone array and fuse the spatial and spectral features extracted from multi-channel array signal. Two categories of spatial features, directional statistics which are projected to spherical location grids and generalized cross-correlation function based on phase transform (GCC-PHAT), are considered to model the speaker’s spatial characteristic. Such spatial features are then fused with the spectral features to detect the overlapped speech by using a Gated Multimodal Unit (GMU). The performance of the proposed approach is studied under AMI and CHiME-6 corpora. Experimental results show that the proposed feature fusion approach achieves better performance than methods using spectral features only.
Dissection The Practical Soybean Breeding Pipeline By Developing High Throughput Functional Array ZDX1

Microarray technology facilitates rapid, accurate, and economical genotyping. Here, using resequencing data from 2,214 representative soybean accessions, we developed the ZDX1 high-throughput functional soybean array, containing 158,959 SNPs, covering 90.92% of soybean genes and sites related to agronomically important traits. We genotyped 817 soybean accessions using ZDX1, including parental lines, non-parental lines, and progeny from a practical breeding pipeline. It was clarified that non-parental lines had highest genetic diversity, and 235 SNPs were identified to be fixed in the progeny. The unknown soybean cyst nematode-resistant and early maturity accessions were identified by using allele combinations. Notably, we found that breeding index was a good indicator for progeny selection, in which the superior progeny were derived from the crossing more distantly related parents with at least one parent having a higher breeding index. Based on this rule, two varieties were directionally developed. Meanwhile, redundant parents were screened out and potential combinations were formulated. GBLUP analysis displayed that the markers in genic regions had priority to be higher accuracy on predicting four agronomic traits compared with either whole genome or intergenic markers. Then we used progeny to expand the training population to increase the prediction accuracy of breeding selection by 32.1%. Collectively, our work provided a versatile array for high accuracy selecting and predicting both parents and progeny that can greatly accelerate soybean breeding.
Assessment of post-earthquake resilience of highway–bridge networks by considering downtime due to interaction of parallel restoration actions

Abstract Restoration of damaged highway-bridge networks is critical to the recovery of the networks’ functionality in support of post-disaster recovery actions. Restoration-scheduling problems have traditionally assumed that parallel restoration actions to different bridges on a highway segment can be undertaken simultaneously. However, such assumption may have unfavorable consequences insofar as, in real-world scenarios, downtime may result from impassability of a segment due to blockage arising from the preceding restoration actions to their subsequent ones on the same segment. Consequently, downtime due to interactions of parallel restoration actions may hinder effective recovery of networks’ functionality. Accordingly, this paper proposes an integer program to investigate the restoration interactions in post-earthquake highway–bridge networks and such interactions’ impacts on optimal restoration scheduling and networks’ resilience recovery processes. A hybrid genetic algorithm that combines a genetic algorithm with a specifically designed heuristic approach is developed to improve the proposed integer program’s computational efficiency. The results of a case study using the proposed method and data from the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake show that the downtime due to restoration interactions can delay the recovery of the networks’ functionality, and thus that neglecting such interactions can lead to the overestimation of the networks’ resilience.
Nanofiber Electrospinning Combined with Rotary Bioprinting for Fabricating Small-Diameter Vessels with Endothelium and Smooth Muscle

Background: Cardiovascular disease is responsible for a large number of deaths each year. Autologous vascular transplantation is still the best surgical intervention option, but the success rate is affected by many factors. Tissue engineering is a growing research area of great interest because it can produce bionic grafts to replace autologous tissue. Although many molding strategies have been tried, precellularization of small-diameter vascular grafts remains a research challenge. Here, a novel approach for fabricating bionic small-diameter vascular vessels with endothelial and smooth muscle cells is developed through combining nanofiber electrospinning and a specially-designed rotary bioprinter.Results: Combining and utilizing the advantages of nanofiber electrospinning and rotary printing, a tissue-engineered vascular tissue more suitable for biological transplantation is fabricated. Electrospun poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) provides good elasticity, and the electrospinning modification is beneficial for adhesion and functionalization of endothelial cells. A flat monolayer on the surface of PCL is formed after 7 days cultivation. Modification of the traditional three-dimensional (3D) bioprinter to increase rotation of the central axis used dual motors rotating clockwise and anticlockwise at the same speed increase stability during the printing process. This allowed a uniform dense methacrylated gelatin (GelMA) structure containing smooth muscle cells to be bioprinted with the cells are arranged linearly along the horizontal axis of rotation. Perfused with umbilical vein endothelial cells, a monolayer endothelial structure is formed. The two type cells maintain viability and proliferation in the structure during the process of cultivation. In addition, the bionic structureis superior to the natural blood vessel in anti-burst pressure and suture retention strength.Conclusion: By combining nanofiber electrospinning and modified rotary bioprinter, we successfully formed a small-diameter bionic vascular vessel with smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells. This method takes advantages of two advanced technologies and provides a new strategy for the development of bionic blood vascular tissue.
Study of grasp-energy based optimal distribution of contact forces on a humanoid robotic hand during object grasp

Abstract A novel grasp optimization algorithm for minimizing the net energy utilized by a five-fingered humanoid robotic hand with twenty degrees of freedom for securing a precise grasp is presented in this study. The algorithm utilizes a compliant contact model with a nonlinear spring and damper system to compute the performance measure, called ‘Grasp Energy’. The measure, subject to constraints, has been minimized to obtain locally optimal cartesian trajectories for securing a grasp. A case study is taken to compare the analytical (applying the optimization algorithm) and the simulated data in MSC.Adams $^{^{\circledR}}$ , to prove the efficacy of the proposed formulation.
Nutraceutical Treatment of Patients with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a common cause of infertility, requiring antioestrogen and, possibly, gonadotropin treatment for the induction of ovulation. However, patients suffering from this disease need long-term treatment since PCOS is associated with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, hyperinsulinemia, oxidative stress, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Allopathic treatment includes the continuous use of oral contraceptives, preferentially with complementary anti-androgen activity, and metformin. However, these treatments only partially correct all aspects of the disease, while carrying potential adverse effects per se. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) offers opportunities for treatment through the use of nutraceuticals containing plant extracts, minerals, and vitamins with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and adaptogen capacity, as well as for correcting insulin resistance. Here we justify the formulation of the nutraceutical QALY® (Jona Pharma, Elversele, Belgium) that is composed of Ubiquinone Q10, the vitamins B9 and B12, the salts of zinc and selenium, the biomass of Haematococcus pluvialis, and the extracts of Mediterranean pine bark and of Rhodiola rosea. This can be complemented by phytotherapy with the extract of Momordica charantia plus alfa lipoic acid (Momordica plus®).
Analisis Kinerja Pompa Sentrifugal pada Variasi Trim Diameter Menggunakan Simulasi Numerik

Diameter trimming is one of the most common modification on centrifugal pump impeller aimed to keep conformity between pump performance and required head and flow rate. In its application, centrifugal pump performance with trimmed diameter could be predicted by using affinity equations which based on geometrical similarity between pre- and post-trimming impeller. However, diameter trimming also alter the dimension ratio in blade passage which prompt further investigation on performance prediction of pump with trimmed impeller diameter. This research is carried out by using numerical simulation to analyze performance of pump with trimmed impeller diameter. The simulation is conducted on radial-type centrifugal pump with impeller diameter 105 mm, inlet blade angle 200, outlet blade angle 280, and operating on mass flow rate 1.5 kg/s at rotational speed 2800 rpm. RNG k-e model is used to model turbulence while trimmed diameter values are 100 mm and 95 mm. Results indicate that there is significant differences on head and consumed power between predicted value by simulation and predicted value obtained by employing affinity equations.
Environmental Impact Variability of Copper Tailing Dumps in Fushe Arrez (Northern Albania): The Role of Pyrite Separation during Flotation

Acid mine drainage and potentially toxic elements release are a major source of pollution in sulfide-rich mining sites. Pyrite is the most impacting mineral due to its high acidification potential when it reacts with water under oxidizing conditions. At the Fushe Arrez dressing plant in Northern Albania, a volcanic massive sulfide copper mining district, pyrite was in past separated, with a double flotation process, to produce a pyrite concentrate and relatively-pyrite-poor tailings. In the last twenty years single flotation has replaced the double flotation process and pyrite has been deposited in pyrite-rich tailings stacked separately from the old ones. The study of the solid tailing materials and natural waters flowing through the dumping area, together with leaching tests show that waters interacting with single flotation tailings are slightly more acidic and much higher in total metal contents than those interacting with double flotation tailings. Also, the metal distribution is different, with the former being higher in sulfide-hosted metals and the latter higher in gangue-hosted metals. It is thus suggested that separation of pyrite can play an important role in the sustainable mining of pyrite-rich ores, either for dumping high hazardous pyrite concentrate separately or for marketing it as a by-product. An implementation of studies for the industrial uses of pyrite is pivotal in this last case.