Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fusion Strategy for Prosodic and Lexical Representations of Word Importance

We investigate whether, and if so when, prosodic features in spoken dialogue aid in modeling the importance of words to the overall meaning of a dialogue turn. Starting from the assump-tion that acoustic-prosodic cues help identify important speech content, we investigate representation architectures that com-bine lexical and prosodic features and evaluate them for predicting word importance. We propose an attention-based feature fusion strategy and additionally show how the addition of strategic supervision of the attention weights results in especially com-petitive models. We evaluate our fusion strategy on spoken dialogues and demonstrate performance increases over state-of-the-art models. Speciﬁcally, our approach both achieves the lowest root mean square error on test data and generalizes better over out-of-vocabulary words.
Title MamO Is a Repurposed Serine Protease that Promotes Magnetite Biomineralization through Direct Transition Metal Binding in Magnetotactic Bacteria Permalink

Many living organisms transform inorganic atoms into highly ordered crystalline materials. An elegant example of such biomineralization processes is the production of nano-scale magnetic crystals in magnetotactic bacteria. Previous studies implicated the involvement of two putative serine proteases, MamE and MamO, during the early stages of magnetite formation inMagnetospirillum magneticum AMB-1. Here, using genetic analysis and X-ray crystallography, we show that MamO has a degenerate active site, rendering it incapable of protease activity. Instead, MamO promotes magnetosome formation through two genetically distinct, noncatalytic activities: activation of MamE-dependent proteolysis of biomineralization factors and direct binding to transition metal ions. By solving the structure of the protease domain bound to a metal ion, we identify a surface-exposed di-histidine motif in MamO that contributes to metal binding and show that it is required to initiate biomineralization in vivo. Finally, we find that pseudoproteases are widespread in magnetotactic bacteria and that they have evolved independently in three separate taxa. Our results highlight the versatility of protein scaffolds in accommodating new biochemical activities and provide unprecedented insight into the earliest stages of biomineralization.
FinMARS: A Mobile App Rating Scale for Finance Apps

Mobile apps increasingly replace face-to-face interactions between financial service providers and their customers. Therefore, it is critical for developers of finance apps to understand users' perception thereof, and to be able to assess the quality of their own app and their competitors' apps. Star ratings as provided by mobile app stores suffer from multiple shortcomings and are not detailed enough to fulfil this purpose. In this work, we thus developed a reliable, objective, multidimensional measure of the quality of mobile finance apps, which includes both generic and domain-specific aspects. We used an iterative approach and expanded on related work in the Health domain, and validated the scale empirically. The resulting app rating scale for finance apps is a reliable, objective measure of app quality, comprised of six subscales and a total of 34 items. It exhibits excellent internal consistency (alpha=.93) and very good interrater reliability (ICC=.74).
Fast 2 Vec : an Efficient Random-walk Based Network Embedding Framework

Information network is a common abstraction for many a dataset that emerges nowadays including social network, protein-to-protein network, scholar network, etc[2]. To analyze and leverage such a huge volume of data, there has been a comprehensive collection of algorithms such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Deep Neural Network, K-Means and so on. However, there is a representation gap between the format of information network and input of most of machine learning algorithms. Based on classic graph theory, we usually use adjacent list, adjacent matrix or edge list to represent an information network and to compromise with the heterogeneousness of some networks, which are call Heterogeneous Information network[3], auxiliary data structures may also be applied. On the other hand, algorithms mentioned earlier use real-valued vectors or matrices as their inputs. Therefore, the research community has defined the problem of converting an information network to a real-valued matrix as Network Embedding, or Network Representation Learning. There are several classes of network embedding algorithms according to Palash and Emilio’s survey[4] including factorization based, random-walks based and deep learning based. Thanks to its scalability and trivially parallelizable nature, random-walks based algorithms have formed a trend since the earliest [9] paper which cleverly borrowed idea from word2vec[8], a natural language processing techniques. And most recent research is focusing on effectiveness, that is how to embed an information network to a matrix while preserving its structural information. Nevertheless, there is lack of efficiency studies and an efficient yet unified framework for developers and researchers to leverage and investigate network embedding algorithms. To tackle these two problems, we propose Fast2Vec, an efficient network embedding framework optimized for cache access. The remaining of the paper will first describe random-walk based network embedding algorithms, especially the relation between word2vec and random-walk, as well as the extended unified framework based on Palash and Emilio’s work. The second half of the paper will be dedicated to how do we re-organize the embedding algorithms so that we can make it more cache friendly and therefore improve efficiency.
THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF PERCEIVED USE AND PERCEIVED RISK IN ONLINE SHOPPING * Ebru GOZUKARA

The purpose of this study is to empirically test the simultaneous effect of both hedonic and utilitarian motivation on search and purchase intentions along with the roles of the perceived ease of use and perceived risk as moderators. The analysis of the data (N=352) through structural equations modeling (SEM) in AMOS reveals that; i-) utilitarian and hedonic motivations have positive impact on purchase intention, ii -) although hedonic motivation has a positive influence on search intention, utilitarian moti vation is not found to have any positive associations with search intention, iii -) perceived ease of use moderates the relationship between hedonic motivation and search intention but does not have any moderation role in the link between utilitarian motivation and search intention, and iv-) perceived risk has only a moderator role in the relationship between hedonic motivation and purchase intention. Finally, the theoretical and managerial implications of the study are discussed.
Serapan hidrogen pada komposit magnesium oksida nano-gentian karbon

Carbon nanofibres have high specific surface area to adsorb hydrogen on their surface and are widely investigated for hydrogen storage. Although carbon nanofibres can store a considerable amount of hydrogen, the adsorption of the latter must be conducted at cryogenic conditions. Here, MgO is proposed as a catalyst to improve the hydrogen storage performance of carbon nanofibres at room temperature because of the light weight MgO and its ability to dissociate hydrogen molecules. The magnesium oxide– carbon nanofibre (MgO–CNF) composite was prepared with polivinylpyrrolidone polymer and MgO via an electrospinner. The samples were characterised with field emission scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry and microgravimetric analysis. The MgO particles were formed on the surface and embedded inside the MgO–CNFs, thereby increasing the specific surface area. The assynthesised MgO–CNFs with a specific surface area of 547 m/g can store 2.54 wt. % of hydrogen at room temperature, showing more than 30% improvement as compared with that of CNFs.
SPECTRAL COARTICULATION IN HAWAIIAN /aV/ AND /aCV/ SEQUENCES

This study provides an acoustic analysis of the Hawaiian stressed low short vowel /a/ in /aV/ and /aCV/ positions, testing whether the height and backness of /a/ differ systematically based on the following vowel. F1 and F2 trajectories were measured in 1,550 /a(C)V/ tokens in over 41 minutes of spontaneous speech from one speaker, Larry Kimura. In /aV/ clusters, the F1 of /a/ was reduced preceding a high vowel (p<.001) and F2 was reduced preceding a back vowel (p=.001). Compared to /aCa/ sequences, /aCi/ exhibited significantly reduced F1 (p=.004) and larger F2 (p<.001) values. Overall, there were no significant differences in coarticulatory effects between clusters and /aCV/ contexts. The results are discussed in relation to debates on the representation of Hawaiian vowel clusters as being comprised of two distinct phonemes or one. This study represents one of the first acoustic studies of spontaneous speech in the under-documented Hawaiian language.
Path Planning for Multi-Robot Inspection Task Considering Acceleration Limits

This paper deals with an inspection task of a known environment for a multi-robot team considering limited visibility range and acceleration limits of the robots. The problem is to find routes such that a group of robots surveys the whole working space while moving along the routes. Having a working environment represented as a polygon with holes, the problem can be decomposed into three sub-problems: generation of sensing locations (Art Gallery Problem AGP), connecting the found locations by a set of paths (Multiple Travelling Salesmen Problem MTSP), and final optimization of the found paths with respect to dynamic and kinematic capabilities of the robots. First two problems are NP-hard, therefore algorithms finding approximate solutions are used. The AGP solver is based on randomized sampling of the environment, while a self-organizing neural network solves the MTSP. Moreover, the problem of limited visibility range as in real applications is addressed. Routes obtained from the MTSP part consists of points e.g. cities that robots should visit. Among those points a well-planned path considering robot capabilities should be found. The limitation is a grip of tires that results in the acceleration limits. The generated paths are represented as spline curves with maximal allowable velocity profiles that mobile robots could still afford due to acceleration limits.
/a-a/ AND /i-i/ AT THREE JUNCTURES IN CANTONESE

The absence of overt markings of prosodic units between Syllable and Intonational Phrase in Cantonese that are comparable to Tone Sandhi Group in Wu Chinese or Accentual Phrase in Korean presents a challenge for proposals on universal prosodic hierarchy. This study is part of a larger effort to address this issue. Here we report acoustic data on /a-a/ and /i-i/ sequences in V#CV, VC#V, and VC#CV at three levels of morpho-syntactically defined junctures: within-word (corresponds to Syllable boundary), across-words, and across-phrases (corresponds to Intonational Phrase boundary). Both /a/ and /i/ were more peripheral at postboundary than at preboundary positions. Both vowels were also more peripheral at higher boundaries than at lower boundaries, in a way that is consistent with contrast enhancement. F2 of /a/ differed significantly across boundary conditions, thus offering evidence in favour of prosodic constituents between Syllable and Intonational Phrase in Cantonese.
In vitro propagation of Phaleria macrocarpa, God’s Crown

Phaleria macrocarpa (Scheff.) Boerl, also known as God’s Crown, belongs to Thymelaeaceae family posses several medicinal properties such as anti-proliferative, anti-inflammatory and anti-angiogenic. In this paper, an attempt was made to develop a protocol for in vitro propagation of Phaleria macrocarpa. Seeds were used as explants for culture initiation and germinated in vitro after surface sterilization. Shoots multiplication in MS basal media supplemented with different concentrations of cytokinins were studied. BAP at 0.25 mg/l showed the most effective concentration for shoot multiplication with the highest number of shoots produced (4.27) and shoot elongation. For in vitro rooting, shoots were transferred to 1⁄2 MS basal media supplemented with auxins at different concentrations. The highest rooting frequency (83.33%) was observed in 1⁄2 MS basal medium. Regenerated plantlets were transferred to the nursery, 50% survivability was achieved and successfully acclimatized in mixed soil. The acclimatized plantlets were normal without any phenotypic aberration.
Study of Antioxidant Properties and the Significance of Testa in Irvingia Spp (Wombolu and Gabonensis)

Physical properties and antioxidant activity of oil extracts from kernels of Irvingia gabonensis, (Ig) and Irvingia wombolu (Iw) were studied. In addition, the effect of testa on antioxidant was analyzed. Total Phenolics (TP), Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP), Total Antioxidant Activity (TAA) by thiocyanate (-SCN) method and 2, 2diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) techniques were used to assay antioxidant activity. Results showed that both oil extracts exhibited high antioxidant activity of between 61 – 93% irrespective of time of investigation. Mean inhibitory concentration, IC50 of Irvingia spp was 15. 4μg/ml compared with those of reference Quercetin and Vitamin C recorded as 4.38 and 1.85 μg/ml respectively. The contribution of testa to inhibit autoxidation was statistically significant (p<0.05). IC50 of Irvingia wombolu with testa, Iwt (4.86μg/ml) particularly, was comparable with that of Quercetin. TAA by –SCN method discriminated best both between samples with and without testa. The study, therefore, showed that oil extract of Irvingia kernels contain high level of phenolic substances capable of inhibiting lipid autoxidation, and good enough to serve as quality oils in diet of animals and man. The use of intact kernels of Irvingia with testa is highly recommended.
Chemical composition and digestibility of corn silage inoculated with Lactobacillus buchneri CNCM I-4323

Introduction After opening silos, there is intense bacteria, moulds and yeasts activity that cause spoilage of the silages and reduce the feed quality. In this sense, the heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria, as Lactobacillus buchneri, are applied because reduce spoilage during aerobic exposure, and some strains of this microorganism may produce the ferulic acid esterase enzyme (Nsereko et al., 2008) that act on the fiber content (reduce or alter the structure) and improve the silage quality. Thus, our aim was to evaluate the influence of L. buchneri application on chemical composition and digestibility of corn silages.
Challenges for the Swiss Federal Office of Topography swisstopo for the Production of Digital Images and Altimetrical Models using the ADS 80 Sensor for the Glacier Monitoring in the Swiss Alps

The Swiss Federal Office of Topography swisstopo produces since 2010 digital data on Swiss glaciers for the Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) and the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zürich. The data comprise digital ADS80 (Airborne Digital Scanner) oriented aerial pictures with a Ground Sample Distance (GSD) of 25 cm, derived Digital Surface Models (DSM) with a 50 – 100 cm grid as well as orthophotos with a 25 cm GSD. These geodata are part of the national glaciers monitoring program GLAMOS (GLacier MOnitoring in Switzerland). This paper describes specific aspects of the data acquisition (flight planning over glacier areas), the geometrical referencing with the help of Ground Control Points, as well as the DSM production using image matching. Glacier areas are characterized by an important topographical heterogeneity: a big reflectance over glacier areas and lots of shadows due to the mountains. These aspects are a specific challenge for image correlation and the production of accurate and complete DSM. Details concerning the softwares used and tested by swisstopo are provided here, as well as which bands of the ADS80 scanner and which parameters are used for the production. This paper provides an overview of swisstopo’s tests and criteria (‚Benchmarking‘) prior to the acquisition of new softwares for image matching using ‚Semi Global Matching‘ algorithms. The comparison of the performances shows neat differences in data quality, data volume and time performances during the production of derivate products. Those are the criteria which are set for deciding which software offers the best quality and is the most cost-efficient for a future use for the production of DSMs with a higher resolution at a larger scale, for example for the whole swiss territory.
Audiovisual Zooming: What You See Is What You Hear

When capturing videos on a mobile platform, often the target of interest is contaminated by the surrounding environment. To alleviate the visual irrelevance, camera panning and zooming provide the means to isolate a desired field of view (FOV). However, the captured audio is still contaminated by signals outside the FOV. This effect is unnatural---for human perception, visual and auditory cues must go hand-in-hand. We present the concept ofAudiovisual Zooming, whereby an auditory FOV is formed to match the visual. Our framework is built around the classic idea of beamforming, a computational approach to enhancing sound from a single direction using a microphone array. Yet, beamforming on its own can not incorporate the auditory FOV, as the FOV may include an arbitrary number of directional sources. We formulate our audiovisual zooming as a generalized eigenvalue problem and propose an algorithm for efficient computation on mobile platforms. To inform the algorithmic and physical implementation, we offer a theoretical analysis of our algorithmic components as well as numerical studies for understanding various design choices of microphone arrays. Finally, we demonstrate audiovisual zooming on two different mobile platforms: a mobile smartphone and a 360$^\circ $ spherical imaging system for video conference settings.
Immobilization of Saccharomyces Cerevisae cells on water hyacinth stem pieces and application to repeated batch fermentation for ethanol production

Water hyacinth (Eichhorniacrassipe) stem pieces were used as supports for Saccharomyces cerevisiae immobilization. The response surface methodology was implemented to maximize the cell immobilization yield. This methodology optimized the amount of water hyancinth pieces added to yeast suspension and the initial cell concentration in yeast suspension prior to the immobilization. The immobilized yeast on water hyacinth stem pieces was then applied to ethanol fermentation with 12 repeated batches. The ethanol production rate of the immobilized yeast was significantly higher than that of the free yeast. In addition, gradual increase in the metabolic activity of the immobilized cell system was also observed during the 12 fermentation batches. The ethanol production rate of the immobilized yeast in the twelfth batch culture was increased by 29.8% compared to that in the first batch culture.
Supplementary material for the paper : Local stationarity and time-inhomogeneous Markov chains

We remind the reader that for a Markov kernel R on (E,B(E)) and μ, ν ∈ P(E), ‖μR− νR‖TV ≤ c(R) · ‖μ − ν‖TV , where c(R) = sup(x,y)∈E ‖δxR − δyR‖TV ∈ [0, 1]. Then, under our assumptions, the application T : P(E) → P(E) defined by T (μ) = μQu is contracting and the existence and uniqueness of an invariant probability πu easily follows from the fixed point theorem in a complete metric space. We next check the first condition of Definition 1. The result is shown by induction. For j = 1, we have from assumption A1,
Coupling of dynamical micromagnetism and a stationary spin drift-diffusion equation : A step towards a fully implicit spintronics framework

We consider the coupling of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation with a quasilinear diffusion equation to describe the interplay of magnetization and spin accumulation in magnetic-nonmagnetic multilayer structures. For this problem, we propose and analyze a convergent finite element integrator, where, in contrast to prior work, we consider the stationary limit for the spin diffusion. Numerical experiments underline that the new approach is more effective, since it leads to the same experimental results as for the model with time-dependent spin diffusion, but allows for larger time-steps of the numerical integrator.
A Survey on Secure Data DeDuplication in Cloud Storage 1

The basic notion of de-duplication is storage of duplicate data only for a single time. Thus, a user willing to upload a stored file will have to be first added by the cloud provider in the owner list for that particular file. This is the reason why de-duplication has been rapidly adopted by various providers of cloud storage. Today, it has become a popular approach for minimizing storage space and for uploading bandwidth and assists largely in increasing the scalability of data. De-duplication also eliminates the fear of surplus data by maintaining a single physical copy and refers any surplus data to this copy and is the best alternative of multiple data copies having the same data. This survey of literatures has critically evaluated multiple algorithms and techniques on secure deduplication approaches through efficient and reliable methodologies. The finding show that a blend of secured deduplications approaches with enhanced security features would offer extraordinary security options for a successful and reliable de-duplication.
1.2: Research Methods in Social Psychology

Social psychologists are interested in the ways that other people affect thought, emotion, and behavior. To explore these concepts requires special research methods. Following a brief overview of traditional research designs, this module introduces how complex experimental designs, field experiments, naturalistic observation, experience sampling techniques, survey research, subtle and nonconscious techniques such as priming, and archival research and the use of big data may each be adapted to address social psychological questions. This module also discusses the importance of obtaining a representative sample along with some ethical considerations that social psychologists face.
Experimental generation of a flat-top beam profile in a stable ring cavity

We create a spatially homogeneous field inside of a ring cavity by combining two transverse modes generated by a single laser through modulation. The interference term between the two modes averages out because of the frequency difference between them, eliminating the need for interferometric control of their relative phase. The use of a ring cavity allows for a large waist for the flat-top profile, big enough to cover the atoms in an atomic trap. The cavity is mechanically and thermally isolated, and the laser light is locked to the cavity using the Pound-Drever-Hall technique. The flat-top profile technique reported here fulfill the vanishing curvature criterion at the center of the profile. ©