Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A multilingual approach towards improving the linguistic module of a TTS system : Case

The Navarro-Lapurdian dialect is a Basque dialect spoken in the French side of the Basque country. This dialect differs from the standard Basque in terms of its phonology, as well as at the grammatical and lexical levels. Additionally, passages in this dialect are codeswitched texts with French. TTS systems for this dialect need to handle both NavarroLapurdian and French phonemes repertoire. Inaccurate processing of the French words can result in using the Basque phonology to transcribe them or even in a wrong verbalisation. Previous TTS system has shown that failing to identify and correctly preprocess the French words cause a drop in the quality of the system. In this work, we propose a multilingual approach for the linguistic module of the system to improve the phonetic transcription of French words. We included a language identification (LID) task at the first stage of the process and a multilingual Grapheme-to-Phoneme (G2P) model at the last stage. A Max-Entropy classifier and a Conditional Random Field (CRF) classifier are used to identify the language at the word-level. Besides, the Transformer architecture, a deep neural network, is used to train the multilingual G2P model. CRF outperforms the Max-Entropy classifier achieving a 0.828 F1-measure for the French words in the LID task, showing an improvement of 0.126 over the Max-Entropy classifier. The best G2P model trained on monolingual and code-switched sentences and tested on the code-switched corpus achieves a PER of 6.96% and a WER of 14.13%.
The effectiveness of a browser fingerprint as a tool for tracking

II FIGURES . IV TABLES . V GLOSSARY . VI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . VII CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM OR ISSUE . 1 1.2 JUSTIFICATION FOR THE RESEARCH . 2 1.3 AIM AND OBJECTIVES . 3 1.4 DEFINITIONS . 3 1.5 SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH . 3 1.6 OUTLINE OF THE DISSERTATION . 3 CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH DEFINITION . 4 2.1 THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM . 4 2.2 EXISTING RELEVANT KNOWLEDGE . 4 2.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 13 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY . 15 3.1 METHODS AND TECHNIQUES SELECTED . 15 3.2 JUSTIFICATION . 15 3.3 RESEARCH PROCEDURES . 16 3.4 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS . 19 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION . 20 4.1 SUMMARY OF DATA COLLECTED . 20 4.2 DATA ANALYSIS . 23 4.3 INTERPRETATION IN RELATION TO THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 28 4.4 INTERPRETATION IN RELATION TO THE RESEARCH AIM . 30 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS . 31 5.1 CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 31 5.2 CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE RESEARCH AIM . 32 5.3 FURTHER WORK . 32 5.4 IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH . 33 5.5 REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPERIENCE OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS . 33 REFERENCES . 34 APPENDICES . 38
Long Term Protection after Immunization with P . berghei Sporozoites Correlates with Sustained IFN c Responses of Hepatic CD 8 + Memory T Cells

Protection against P. berghei malaria can successfully be induced in mice by immunization with both radiation attenuated sporozoites (RAS) arresting early during liver stage development, or sporozoites combined with chloroquine chemoprophylaxis (CPS), resulting in complete intra-hepatic parasite development before killing of blood-stages by chloroquine takes place. We assessed the longevity of protective cellular immune responses by RAS and CPS P. berghei immunization of C57BL/6j mice. Strong effector and memory (TEM) CD8+ T cell responses were induced predominantly in the liver of both RAS and CPS immunized mice while CD4+ T cells with memory phenotype remained at base line levels. Compared to unprotected naı̈ve mice, we found high sporozoite-specific IFNc ex vivo responses that associated with induced levels of in vivo CD8+ TEM cells in the liver but not spleen. Long term evaluation over a period of 9 months showed a decline of malaria-specific IFNc responses in RAS and CPS mice that significantly correlated with loss of protection (r = 0.60, p,0.0001). The reducing IFNc response by hepatic memory CD8+ T cells could be boosted by re-exposure to wildtype sporozoites. Our data show that sustainable protection against malaria associates with distinct intra-hepatic immune responses characterized by strong IFNc producing CD8+ memory T cells. Citation: Nganou-Makamdop K, van Gemert G-J, Arens T, Hermsen CC, Sauerwein RW (2012) Long Term Protection after Immunization with P. berghei Sporozoites Correlates with Sustained IFNc Responses of Hepatic CD8+ Memory T Cells. PLoS ONE 7(5): e36508. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0036508 Editor: Stefan Kappe, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, University of Washington, United States of America Received February 10, 2012; Accepted April 2, 2012; Published May 1, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Nganou-Makamdop et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Financial support for this study was provided by NWO-Mozaı̈ek (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) grant No. 017.005. 011 (K. Nganou-Makamdop recipient). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: r.sauerwein@mmb.umcn. nl
Bank Competition and Credit Booms : Can Finance be Too Much , Too Cheap ?

A model of imperfectly competitive banks is examined under asymmetric information about borrowers. Greater bank competition and lower risk-free rate raise the screening costs, eventually leading to a pooling equilibrium involving larger credits at cheaper prices. These features as well as deterioration in average loan quality replicate those of credit booms. Multiplicity could result, opening room for nonlinear switches between normal and excess-credit equilibria. The model sheds light on the drivers of credit cycles, and how finance-neutral monetary policy could be defined. Theoretical predictions are consistent with recent international experiences and find some micro-level empirical support. JEL Classification: G21, D82, D86, E51, E52
Comparative biochemical analysis of skin mucous secretions from certain freshwater teleosts

The present study revealed significant differences in the biochemical composition of the skin mucus of Cirrhinus mrigala, Labeo rohita, Catla catla, Rita rita and Channa punctata, inhabiting different ecological niches. Protein contents in aqueous phases of the mucus were higher in L. rohita (54.77%) and R. rita (50.21%), than in C. catla (39.33%), C. punctata (20.64%) and C. mrigala (19.99%). Proteins in detergent soluble phases of skin mucus of these fish species, in general, were less than 3%. Mucus also contained small amounts of carbohydrates (1.28 4.53%) and lipids (2.51 8.60%). Electrophoretic profiling of aqueous phase proteins revealed a series of high molecular weight protein bands ranging from 50 kDa to 205 kDa in C. mrigala, L. rohita and C. catla. Such bands were relatively less in C. punctata. Protein bands in R. rita were mainly between 17 kDa and 50 kDa. Nature of mucus proteins on the basis of their molecular weight have been correlated with their biological significance in relation to ecological niches inhabited by the fishes.
Improvement of DNA Extraction and Electrophoresis Conditions for the PCR-DGGE Analysis of Bacterial Communities Associated to Two Aquaculture Fish Species

Improvement of a denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) method for analyzing bacterial microbiota 16S rDNA in fish is presented. Tilapia and sea bass were collected from different locations in Thailand and France, respectively. The DGGE electrophoresis conditions were optimized which indicated that a decrease in electrophoresis applied voltage and an increase in the running time (80 V for 12 h) provided optimal band resolution. DNA extraction procedure was also optimized. PCR-DGGE analysis patterns of bacterial DNA from tilapia and sea bass showed that there was a unique band pattern for each type of fish and dissimilarity was observed even within the same species. The differences in bacterial community in fish were probably due to different locations of collections. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
STATE OF THE ART IN THE PRODUCTION OF TRANSGENIC AND CLONED GOATS

This review summarizes the advances in the field of transgenic goats for the objective of producing recombinant proteins in their milk. Special attention is done to the results obtained by our group in the last year. Before these technologies are implemented in goat specific programmes, efficiencies must be improved, costs reduced, and regulatory approval obtained for the marketing of products derived from such animals.
ASPECT-BASED OPINION SUMMARIZATION : A SURVEY

With the growing popularity of Web 2.0, social media is becoming the largest source of information. Because of the huge number of unstructured reviews, it is impossible to summarize all this information manually. Therefore, efficient computational methods are needed for mining and summarizing the reviews to produce a representative summarization. We presents a detailed and systematic overview of the last update in the aspect-based opinion summarization, including state-of-the-arts and methods that widely used in aspect-based opinion summarization. This paper also describes a comparison of several methods in summary generation, including text-based and visual-based opinion summarization. Finally, this paper presents some research opportunities and challenges in aspect-based opinion summarization.
Evaluating an Integrated Time-Series Data Mining Environment-A Case Study on a Chronic Hepatitis Data Mining -

In this paper, we present the implementation of an integrated time-series data mining environment. Time-series data mining is one of key issues to get useful knowledge from databases. However, users often face difficulties during such time-series data mining process for data pre-processing method selection/construction, mining algorithm selection, and post-processing to refine the data mining process as shown in other data mining processes. It is needed to develop a time-series data mining environment based on systematic analysis of the process. To get more valuable rules for domain experts from a time-series data mining process, we have designed an environment which integrates time-series pattern extraction methods, rule induction methods and rule evaluation methods with active human-system interaction. After implementing this environment, we have done a case study to mine time-series rules from blood/urine biochemical test database on chronic hepatitis patients. Then a physician has evaluated and refined his hypothesis on this environment. We discuss the availability of how much support to mine interesting knowledge for an expert.
EFFECT OF SURFACE FINISH ON HEAT TRANSFER PERFORMANCE OF PLATE HEAT EXCHANGER

In the paper an experimental analysis of passive heat transfer intensification technique employed in the case of plate heat exchanger is presented. The passive intensification was obtained by a modification of the heat transfer surface. The roughness of surface was increased by a usage of glass microbeads. Single-phase convective heat transfer in the water-water system was studied. The experiment was accomplished in two stages. In the first stage the commercial plate heat exchanger was investigated, while in the second one – the identical heat exchanger but with the modified heat transfer surface. The direct comparison of thermal and flow characteristics between both devices was possible due to the assurance of equivalent conditions during the experiment. Equivalent conditions mean the same volumetric flow rates and the same media’s temperatures at the inlet of heat exchangers in the corresponding measurements’ series. Due to this the systematic experimental data show that larger roughness of heat transfer surface leads to an increase of heat transfer coefficient on the side of cooling water (increase by about 30 ÷ 35%) and simultaneously to an increase of flow resistance (up to 30% when the volumetric flow rate is equal to 500 l/h). On the side of heating water it was found that the heat transfer coefficient increased by about 25%, while the flow resistance by about 22% (the volumetric flow rate of 500 l/h).
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHYSIOLOGICAL INDICATORS OF OAT AND METEOROLOGICAL FACTORS IN TIBET ’ S ALPINE PASTORAL AREAS

According to large daily temperature difference, strong solar radiation and significant change of air humidity in the alpine area of Tibet, a field experiment was conducted to analyze the oat’s diurnal variation of the leaf water potential (ψL), transpiration rate (Tr) and net photosynthetic rate (Pn). Meanwhile, the relationship between oat’s physiological indicators and typical meteorological factors (atmospheric temperature (T), solar radiation (Rs), relative air humidity (RH)) were investigated with regression models. Results showed that the oat’s daily change curve of ψL showed ‘V-type’ in the seeding and heading stages and ‘W-type’ in the jointing and tillering stages. As shown in the results, oat’s Pn presented a decreasing tendency in a day and the peak appearing between 9:00 and 10:00 at one day in each growing stage. The Tr presented double-peak curves and midday depression in the seeding and heading stages. The variation tendency about oat’s Tr in the tillering stage and jointing stage was “Multipeak” type without distinct midday depression and parabolic tendency. By multiple regression analysis between the data of oat’s physiological indexes and comprehensive factors, the ψL, Tr and Pn of oat in alpine region can be predicted under condition of adequate water supply.
Gene diagnosis of seven patients with hereditary protein S deficiencies

Background: Hereditary protein S (PS) and protein C (PC) deficiencies are caused by gene mutations. The present research aimed to determine gene mutation sites in patients with thrombosis due to protein S deficiencies combined or not combined with protein C deficiencies. Methods: Patients with protein S deficiencies were enrolled. DNA was extracted from peripheral blood samples from these patients. All exons and their flanks of protein S genes (PROS) were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). After purification, the PCR products were sequenced directly and blastered to normal sequences, seeking out gene mutation sites. Polymorphism analysis was conducted by detecting the certain mutation in 50 normal people. Results: Seven patients were enrolled with thrombosis. They were diagnosed of protein S deficiencies combined or not combined with deficiencies of protein C. Polymorphism site G68395T on exon4 was identified in all seven patients. Non-sense mutation C68430T on exon4 was identified in patients No. 2 and No. 5. Missense mutation C86066T on exon10 was identified in patient No. 2. Missense mutation G82512C on exon9 was identified in patient No. 3. Searching PubMed, C86066T had been reported previously in a Hong Kong study, while C68430T and G82512C on PROS were the first ones reported worldwide. Conclusion: Polymorphism site G68395T and missense mutation C68430T, C86066T, and G82512C on PROS were identified and may be related to deficiencies of protein S. C68430T and G82512C were reported worldwide.
A Literature Survey on Reverse Logistics of End of Life Vehicles

Today, recycling of used products and materials has become an increasingly important sector. Mankind, who uses the natural resources unconsciously, has found ways to improve recycling techniques when they realized that resources are becoming increasingly depleted. In the automotive sector, which is one of the largest sectors in the world, natural resources are being used to a great extent. According to the statistics, in 2009, approximately 9 million end-of-life vehicles (ELV) in Europe were withdrawn from traffic. Undoubtedly, this figure shows the necessity and importance of designing reverse logistics network optimized for ELVs. This research aims to determine the gaps in the literature by examining the studies made from the past to the present day in the field of reverse logistic network design for vehicles that have completed their life cycle. In this article, the studies in the fieldare analyzed based on objective functions, decision variables, constraint handling metod, optimization methods used. Considered studies in this work are clustered using a special artificial neural network tool, Self-Organizing Maps (SOM), and the frequencies of the characteristics are shown in the study. This study, which includes a review of the literature and a clustering of studies, aims to guidethe researchers working on the design of rreverse logistics networks for ELVs.
Minimally invasive pancreatoduodenectomy is as safe and efficacious as open surgery for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma : a meta-analysis

Minimally invasive pancreaticoduodenectomy (MIPD) remains to be established as a safe and effective alternative to open pancreaticoduodenectomy (OPD) for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). The aim of this meta-analysis was to compare MIPD with OPD for PDAC with regards to perioperative and oncologic outcomes. A literature search, up to April 2018, was performed to identify comparative studies reporting outcomes for both MIPD and OPD for PDAC. Postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF), morbidity, mortality, operation time, blood loss, transfusion, hospital stay, retrieved lymph nodes, and survival outcomes were compared. Of the seven identified studies, 1,055 underwent LPD and 8,116 underwent OPD. Pooled data showed that MIPD was associated with less morbidity (OR=0.61, 95% CI: 0.37~1.01, P=0.05), less blood loss (WMD=-372.96 mL, 95% CI: -507.83~-238.09, P<0.01), and shorter hospital stay (WMD=-1.69 days, 95% CI: -3.27~-0.12, P=0.04), with comparable POPF (OR=0.90, 95% CI: 0.52~1.56, P=0.70) and overall survival (HR=1.04, 95% CI: 0.90~1.20, P=0.61), compared to OPD. Operative times were longer in MIPD (WMD=66.95 min, 95% CI: -81.22~215.12, P=0.38) and retrieved lymph nodes tended to be more in MIPD (WMD=1.93, 95% CI: -0.35~4.22, P=0.10). These differences, however, failed to reach statistical significance. MIPD can be performed as safely and effectively as OPD for PDAC, comparing surgical and oncological outcomes. MIRH is associated with less intraoperative blood loss and postoperative morbidity, serving as a promising alternative to OPD in selected individuals.
EasyChair Preprint No 319 A System Architecture for Live Immersive 3 D-Media Transcoding over 5 G Networks

The upcoming 5G networks, among other technological advances, bring Network Function Virtualization (NFV) capabilities enabling deployment of application service intelligence on their Next Generation Core (NGC). Application specific logic is packaged into Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) so that their instantiation and deployment can be done at any node of the NGC, with their management and orchestration being maintained by the 5G infrastructure. While the number of instances of each VNF and their placement inside the NGC network are managed by the 5G infrastructure, such management cannot be optimal without application context. In this paper, we propose a 5G oriented system architecture for a next generation augmented virtuality tele-immersive two-player video game application. In the presented video game, the players compete in a capture the flag race in an innovative game movement control setting which uses motion capture technology to allow the players to interact with the game via their body posture and hand gestures. On the top of this, real-time 3D-Reconstruction technology is utilized to create 3D avatars of the players and embed them inside the game environment. Apart from the players, the application also supports real-time spectating of the game action by a considerable amount of spectators that join the live game via client software designed for desktop PCs, smartphones and tablets, connected through mobile or fixed access networks. To distribute the 3D traffic to such a number of consumers that have different device capabilities and are located at varying geographical locations while offering the highest possible Quality of Experience (QoE), is a challenging task. One of the contemporary ways to address this problem is via adaptive streaming. To realize this concept, realtime 3D-Media Transcoders need to be employed. The proposed system architecture considers packaging the aforementioned 3DMedia Transcoders as VNFs that can be deployed on 5G infrastructure. In the paper, it is shown that such an architecture can decrease costs for a given level of offered QoE, with evident benefits for the game service’s shareholders. While the application type presented in this paper is fixed, the proposed system architecture can be adopted by other applications of similar context with similar benefits gained from the flexible deployment of virtualised applications in 5G networks.
Towards Model-based Performance Predictions of SAP Enterprise

High-performing Enterprise Applications are the basis for efficient running business processes. In order to evaluate software performance, traditional methods refer to complex test scenarios following the development phase and neglect that problems are easier fixable when discovered early. This paper tackles the problem of late performance evaluations and presents a conceptual approach that enables response time predictions for SAP Enterprise Applications during the development phase. We introduce a performance model generator that transforms ABAP source code into Palladio Component Model instances by using Abstract Syntax Trees which allows to conduct early performance simulations. Our approach supports conditional and probabilistic control flows to improve prediction accuracy. Based on subsequent performance simulations, we predict response time of applications and their underlying processing systems.
A Scalable Machine Learning Algorithm Utilizing Cloud Computing for Demand Forecasting in Smart Grids

A large-scale utilization of electric vehicles results in numerous challenges for the Smart Grid. The increased load due to Electric Vehicles (EVs) in certain areas can have a negative impact on the electricity infrastructure. Demand Forecasting of EV load for various locations on a city wide level could provide utility companies with information about where to update their infrastructure. The existing work on EV demand forecasting is mostly limited to a certain location due to specifically created test data from a real world simulation or statistical models. Furthermore, most models developed for EV demand forecasting utilize Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA). However, recent research on direct comparison of ARIMA and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) suggests that LSTM models perform better on time series prediction. Therefore, this thesis utilizes a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based approach to forecast the EV demand. Also, publicly available datasets are used for the input of the model which leads to significant cost and time reductions. The results show that LSTM is able to make a reasonable forecast. However, it is found that the model is still underfitted and more training data is needed to create an optimal model. Different feature sets showed that a simple model with less features performs best. Tests on different hyperparameter settings revealed that, while parameters like the number of epochs, batch size and the number of neurons showed no significant improvement, an increase in the number of time steps leads to lower error rates.