Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EarHear: Enabling the Deaf to Hear the World via Smartphone Speakers and Microphones

Sign language plays a vital role in communication and learning for individuals with hearing and speech disabilities, serving as a common language for the deaf. Current state-of-the-art sign language recognition methods primarily rely on computer vision techniques, but they have certain limitations, including susceptibility to light interference and privacy concerns. Ubiquitous acoustic sensing provides new possibilities for sign language recognition, leveraging its high resistance to interference and cost effectiveness. However, existing methods face challenges in achieving satisfactory results due to environmental interference and the complexity of sign language recognition contexts. In this work, we propose EarHear, a robust contactless Chinese Sign Language Recognition and translation system. EarHear adopts a differential-Doppler data preprocessing method to cleverly mitigate the interference caused by the environment. To further identify differences in the morphology, speed, and direction of sign language actions and distinguish similar gestures, we propose the vision transformer for sign language recognition, which is able to model the context dependence of long-range features and output indeterminate long sign language sequences using an attention mechanism. As a result, computational speed and recognition accuracy are improved. Moreover, we explore a large-scale language-model-based sign language translation, which enables sign language recognition results to follow natural language standards, thus realizing a true sense of sign language recognition. The evaluation results based on 15 Chinese sentences show that our system achieves an average recognition rate of 93.38% and a BLEU-1 score of 80.73% for sign language translation, reaching the most advanced level in terms of accuracy and robustness.
POLYPLACOPHORA FROM THE MIOCENE OF NORTH ITALY. PART 1: LEPTOCHITONIDAE, HANLEYIDAE, ISCHNOCHITONIDAE AND CALLISTOPLACIDAE

This study describes the chiton fauna (Mollusca, Polyplacophora) from deposits of the Miocene marine sequence of North Italy, located in Piedmont and Emilia Romagna regions. This first part of the work describes the chitons pertaining to four families: Leptochitonidae, Hanleyidae, Ischnochitonidae and Callistoplacidae. The studied fossils consist of 377 valves from 13 sites (Sciolze, Valle Ceppi, Rocco di Passerano, Albugnano, Monchio di Sarzano Casina, Villa Monti, Rio di Bocca d’Asino, Sant’Agata Fossili, Vargo, Vigoleno, Montegibbio, Borelli, and Moncucco Torinese) ranging from the Early Miocene (Burdigalian) to the Late Miocene (Messinian). We identified 16 species, 12 of which were already known, two are identified only at generic level ( Stenosemus sp. A & sp. B), and two are described as new: Parachiton statianus sp. n. , and Callistochiton borellianus sp. n. Some species found are particularly noteworthy; Lepidopleurus benoisti is the new name attributed to the species previously known as Middendorffia subcajetana or Gymnoplax orbignyi , based on the study of the type material; Leptochiton salicensis , previously known only from the Early Pleistocene of Salice (Messina, Sicily); Hanleya mediterranea is reported for the first time from the Miocene of Italy; Ischnochiton ligusticus , previously known only from the Early Pliocene of Western Liguria; the distribution of Stenoplax paviai , recently described from the Late Miocene (Rio di Bocca d’Asino), is extended to the Early Miocene (Langhian). A complete discussion on the chiton fauna from the North Italian Miocene, consisting of all the species treated in both parts, will be given in the second part of this work.
An improved neural network technique for data dimensionality reduction in remotely sensed imagery

An approach for non-linear projection of multidimensional data is discussed with application to remotely sensed imagery. The approach uses a multi-layer neural network in auto-associative mode with an improved updating rule, based on a conjugate gradient. To evaluate the usefulness of the proposed approach, we used the maximum likelihood classifier applied to a Landsat TM image of Kénitra region (Morocco).
Intrauterine food restriction impairs the lipogenesis process in the mesenteric adipocytes from low-birth-weight rats into adulthood

Background Intrauterine food restriction (IFR) during pregnancy is associated with low birth weight (LBW) and obesity in adulthood. It is known that white adipose tissue (WAT) plays critical metabolic and endocrine functions; however, this tissue’s behavior before weight gain and obesity into adulthood is poorly studied. Thus, we evaluated the repercussions of IFR on the lipogenesis and lipolysis processes in the offspring and described the effects on WAT inflammatory cytokine production and secretion. Methods We induced IFR by providing gestating rats with 50% of the necessary chow daily amount during all gestational periods. After birth, we monitored the offspring for 12 weeks. The capacity of isolated fat cells from mesenteric white adipose tissue (meWAT) to perform lipogenesis (14C-labeled glucose incorporation into lipids) and lipolysis (with or without isoproterenol) was assessed. The expression levels of genes linked to these processes were measured by real-time PCR. In parallel, Multiplex assays were conducted to analyze pro-inflammatory markers, such as IL-1, IL-6, and TNF-α, in the meWAT. Results Twelve-week-old LBW rats presented elevated serum triacylglycerol (TAG) content and attenuated lipogenesis and lipolysis compared to control animals. Inflammatory cytokine levels were increased in the meWAT of LBW rats, evidenced by augmented secretion by adipocytes and upregulated gene and protein expression by the tissue. However, there were no significant alterations in the serum cytokines content from the LBW group. Additionally, liver weight, TAG content in the hepatocytes and serum glucocorticoid levels were increased in the LBW group. Conclusion The results demonstrate that IFR throughout pregnancy yields LBW offspring characterized by inhibited lipogenesis and lipolysis and reduced meWAT lipid storage at 12 weeks. The increased serum TAG content may contribute to the augmented synthesis and secretion of pro-inflammatory markers detected in the LBW group.
Simulación de la eficiencia de la utilización de nitrógeno en novillos finalizados a pastoreo en el sur de Chile Simulation of the nitrogen use efficiency in pasture-finished steers in southern Chile

SUMMARY The high content of crude protein (CP) of pastures in southern Chile creates a nutritional imbalance that results in large amount of nitrogen (N) being excreted into the environment. Two regression equations and a dynamic model, available from the literature, were utilized to simulate the N use efficiency (NUE) in pasture-finished steers. A medium frame animal (Angus breed) with an initial and final body weight (BW) of 350 and 500 kg, respectively, was used to estimate nutrient requirements and excretions. Average DMI was fixed at 2.2% of animal BW with 150 days on feed (October to February). Energy and protein requirements, as well as the retained protein, were estimated by using Beef NRC software (tabular system level 1), while the nutritional characteristics of the pasture were obtained from studies based in Chile. The quality of the pastures was good enough to allow daily weight gain (GDP) of 1.0 kg/d. However, metabolizable protein balance was positive across the whole finishing period (average of 149 g/d). Total production of microbial protein increases with time because of the greater DMI, even when the PC content in forage decreases with time. This also explains the lower contribution of UIP during the last months of the finishing period. The estimated N intake was 123 g/d, whereas N excretion was 106 g/d. In summary, the combination of high levels of CP of Chilean southern pastures and the low NUE of the finishing cattle (13.4 - 16.3%), represent a strong challenge in terms of contamination and production.
K–Ar mineral ages and thermal history of magmatic and metamorphic Palaeoproterozoic units from the northern part of Kedougou Kenieba Inlier, West African Craton (Eastern Senegal)

The northern part of the Kedougou Kenieba Inlier (Eastern Senegal) is composed of Palaeoproterozoic volcano‐plutonic and volcano‐sediment areas cross‐cut by differentiated plutonic bodies of gabbroic to granitic composition. They are emplaced in an arc‐type environment and accreted during the Eburnean Orogeny. We present here new K–Ar ages obtained on several plutons from different mineralogical phases, each characterized by a different closure temperature for the K–Ar system. Ages from hornblende, between 2013 ± 29 and 2141 ± 30 Ma, constrain the cooling history of the magma bodies through the 550 °C isotherm. They are slightly younger than U–Pb ages previously obtained from the same units, attesting of a rapid cooling, tectonically controlled, of about 7 °C/Myr. Ages obtained on biotite minerals range from 1955 ± 28 to 1893 ± 27 Ma, suggesting that from 550 to 325 °C, cooling rate decreased to about 3 °C/Myr. Significantly younger ages ranging from 1704 ± 24 to 1615 ± 23 Ma have been obtained on plagioclase and microcline. They can be interpreted in terms of either a slow cooling with a rate of only 1 °C/Myr, from about 1.9 to 1.6 Ga, or either reflecting the occurrence of a rather limited thermal event younger than 1.7 Ga. Since no age younger than 2.0 Ga has previously been obtained for plutonic rocks from the early Birimian in the West African Craton, ages of 1.7–1.6 Ga obtained here from feldspars might be the first evidence for a regional re‐heating event having occurred in the East–North Kedougou Kenieba inlier. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Developing SWAT‐S to strengthen the soil erosion forecasting performance of the SWAT model

Soil erosion is an important cause of global land degradation, and accurate monitoring of it is essential. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a distributed hydrological model, is an advanced technique for predicting soil erosion at watershed scale. However, as the erosion framework was established in gently sloping land, SWAT is limited in predicting soil erosion in some highland and mountainous regions. Therefore, this study suggested a method to integrate the sediment transport theoretical formula that can reflect the morphology of gully regions into SWAT to obtain SWAT‐S to enhance the calculation performance of sediment load, and the SWAT‐S was evaluated according to the coefficient of determination (R2), Nash‐Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE), Percent‐Bias (P‐BIAS) and root mean square errors (RMSE)‐observations SD ratio (RSR) in the Yanhe basin on the Chinese Loess Plateau. The results showed that SWAT‐S is more successful in reproducing the monthly sediment load, with R2, NSE, |P‐BIAS| and RSR were changed by 5.08%, 17.65%, −2.92% and −10.00% in the calibration, as well as by 1.18%, 10.39%, 45.45% and −18.75% in the validation of the SWAT‐S compared to SWAT. Meanwhile, SWAT‐S estimates 2.66 × 106 t more sediment than SWAT during the June–September flood season and better matches observed data. In total, the revised SWAT can improve the performance of sediment estimation, which is beneficial for the wider application of the model in more regions of the world.
Phanerozoic atmospheric oxygen: New results using the GEOCARBSULF model

Modifications of the GEOCARBSULF model for Phanerozoic atmospheric oxygen have been made to account for new carbon isotopic data, reconsideration of the fractionation of carbon isotopes between carbonate and organic matter deposited in sediments, and different rates of weathering of volcanic rocks versus granitic rocks. Results indicate distinctly higher O2 values than GEOCARBSULF for the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, lack of an appreciable drop in O2 below 15 percent at any time, and a small late Cenozoic decline of O2 to the present.
Peering into the Crystal Ball: The Information Content of Legislative Trading

This study introduces a new measure of political risk to the corporate finance literature. Using aggregated trading by U. S. Senators, we find that it is an important predictor of future returns and risk. Our measure possesses industry-relevant information beyond what is contained in existing measures of political risk. Further, such trading is more information about future industry performance than individual equities. Our findings are robust to various model specifications and are economically significant. Additionally, our results are not explained by previous measures of political risk.
Retention of Key Characteristics of Unprocessed Chorion Tissue Resulting in a Robust Scaffold to Support Wound Healing

Placental membranes have been widely studied and used clinically for wound care applications, but there is limited published information on the benefits of using the chorion membrane. The chorion membrane represents a promising source of placental-derived tissue to support wound healing, with its native composition of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins and key regulatory proteins. This study examined the impact of hypothermic storage on the structure of chorion membrane, ECM content, and response to degradation in vitro. Hypothermically stored chorion membrane (HSCM) was further characterized for its proteomic content, and for its functionality as a scaffold for cell attachment and proliferation in vitro. HSCM retained the native ECM structure, composition, and integrity of native unprocessed chorion membrane and showed no differences in response to degradation in an in vitro wound model. HSCM retained key regulatory proteins previously shown to be present in placental membranes and promoted the attachment and proliferation of fibroblasts in vitro. These data support the fact that hypothermic storage does not significantly impact the structure and characteristics of the chorion membrane compared to unprocessed tissue or its functionality as a scaffold to support tissue growth.
Atmospheric elemental carbon pollution and its regional health disparities in China

Previous studies have reported that atmospheric elemental carbon (EC) may pose potentially elevated toxicity when compared to total ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5). However, most research on EC has been conducted in the US and Europe, whereas China experiences significantly higher EC pollution levels. Investigating the health impact of EC exposure in China presents considerable challenges due to the absence of a monitoring network to document long-term EC levels. Despite extensive studies on total PM2.5 in China over the past decade and a significant decrease in its concentration, changes in EC levels and the associated mortality burden remain largely unknown. In our study, we employed a combination of satellite remote sensing, available ground observations, machine learning techniques, and atmospheric big data to predict ground EC concentrations across China for the period 2005–2018, achieving a spatial resolution of 10 km. Our findings reveal that the national average annual mean EC concentration has remained relatively stable since 2005, even as total PM2.5 levels have substantially decreased. Furthermore, we calculated the all-cause non-accidental deaths attributed to long-term EC exposure in China using baseline mortality data and pooled mortality risk from a cohort study. This analysis unveiled significant regional disparities in the mortality burden resulting from long-term EC exposure in China. These variations can be attributed to varying levels of effectiveness in EC regulations across different regions. Specifically, our study highlights that these regulations have been effective in mitigating EC-related health risks in first-tier cities. However, in regions characterized by a highconcentration of coal-power plants and industrial facilities, additional efforts are necessary to control emissions. This observation underscores the importance of tailoring environmental policies and interventions to address the specific challenges posed by varying emission sources and regional contexts.
Hepatorenal Protective Effects of Walnut Oil against Anticancer Drug Methotrexate in Experimentally Induced Liver and Kidney Toxicity in Rats

The aim of this study was to investigate the hepatorenal protective effects of walnut oil (WO) against anticancer drug methotrexate (MTX)-induced kidney and liver toxicity. In our study, 40 male Sprague Dawley rats weighing between 200–250 g were used. The rats were randomly divided into four groups; Group 1, control group (corn oil by gavage for 14 days and intraperitoneal (i.p.) physiological saline on the third day, $$n=10$$), Group 2, WO group (2 ml/kg WO by gavage for 14 days and i.p. physiological saline on the third day, $$n=10$$), Group 3, MTX group (corn oil by gavage for 14 days and 20 mg/kg MTX single dose i.p. on the third day, $$n=10$$), Group 4, MTX+WO group (2 ml/kg WO by gavage for 14 days and 20 mg/kg MTX single dose i.p. on the third day, $$n=10$$). At the end of the experiment, the rats were decapitated. Kidney and liver were preserved at –86 °C and biochemical measurements were performed. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) levels increased and superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT) activities decreased in kidney and liver tissues in the methotrexate alone group compared to the control group. In the MTX+WO treated group, TBARS level decreased and GSH, CAT, SOD and GPx activities increased significantly compared to the MTX alone treated group. It was found that MTX caused oxidative damage in kidney and liver tissues and WO prevented this damage. Walnut oil is protective against MTX-induced kidney and liver toxicity.
SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE OF COMPANIES LISTED ON THE BSE FROM THE FARMA INDUSTRY

Performance encompasses skills that allow for openness to resources, destinations, and optimal use of those resources, to justify the benefits of negotiating sustainable development. Therefore, the adoption of sustainability programs can be an opportunity for companies to improve their relationships with stakeholders by increasing trust, gaining easier access to resources, with beneficial consequences for the overall performance of the company. For companies listed on the stock market, the index that presents the level of sustainability is a representative one, the measurement of sustainability effort being the order of the day, especially when we refer to the evolution of shares listed on the stock exchange. Through this paper, the authors conducted a study on companies in the pharma industry, listed on the Romanian capital market, in terms of their sustainable performance, choosing from the 7 companies on BSE, only 3, which have as main field of pharmaceutical production. From the analysis, relevant information on the stock market performance of pharma companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange could be presented, as well as the essential aspects that lead to ensuring the sustainable performance of these companies, through the sustainable development objectives found in the Sustainability Reports. Sustainability in general is an essential opportunity to condition performance in a broader sense, in the medium term, performance can be treated both as an objective and as a condition of economic survival.
Edinburgh Research Explorer West

Background: In Scotland, older adults are a key target group for physical activity intervention due to the large proportion who are inactive. The health benefits of an active lifestyle are well established but more research is required on the most effective interventions to increase activity in older adults. The ‘ West End Walkers 65+ ’ randomised controlled trial aims to examine the feasibility of delivering a pedometer-based walking intervention to adults aged ≥ 65 years through a primary care setting and to determine the efficacy of this pilot. The study rationale, protocol and recruitment process are discussed in this paper. Methods/Design: The intervention consisted of a 12-week pedometer-based graduated walking programme and physical activity consultations. Participants were randomised into an immediate intervention group (immediate group) or a 12-week waiting list control group (delayed group) who then received the intervention. For the pilot element of this study, the primary outcome measure was pedometer step counts. Secondary outcome measures of sedentary time and physical activity (time spent lying/sitting, standing or walking; activ PAL ™ monitor), mood (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), functional ability (Perceived Motor-Efficacy Scale for Older Adults), quality of life (Short-Form (36) Health Survey version 2) and loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale) were assessed. Focus groups with participants and semi-structured interviews with the research team captured their experiences of the intervention. The feasibility component of this trial examined recruitment via primary care and retention of participants, appropriateness of the intervention for older adults and the delivery of the intervention by a practice nurse. Discussion: West End Walkers 65+ will determine the feasibility and pilot the efficacy of delivering a pedometer-based walking intervention through primary care to Scottish adults aged ≥ 65 years. The study will also examine the effect of the intervention on the well-being of participants and gain an insight into both participant and
Your Social Circle Aﬀects Your Interests: Social Inﬂuence Enhanced Session-Based Recommendation

Session-based recommendation aims at predicting the next item given a series of historical items a user interacts with in a session. Many works try to make use of social network to achieve a better recommendation performance. However, existing works treat the weights of user edges as the same and thus neglect the diﬀerences of social inﬂu-ences among users in a social network, for each user’s social circle diﬀers widely. In this work, we try to utilize an explicit way to describe the impact of social inﬂuence in recommender system. Specially, we build a heterogeneous graph, which is composed of users and items nodes. We argue that the fewer neighbors users have, the more likely users may be inﬂuenced by neighbors, and diﬀerent neighbors may have various inﬂuences on users. Hence weights of user edges are computed to characterize diﬀerent inﬂuences of social circles on users in a recommendation simulation. Moreover, based on the number of followers and PageRank score of each user, we introduce various computing methods for weights of user edges from a comprehensive perspective. Extensive experiments performed on three public datasets demonstrate the eﬀectiveness of our proposed approach.
VGSAlign: Bilingual Speech Alignment of Unpaired and Untranscribed Languages using Self-Supervised Visually Grounded Speech Models

Direct neural speech-to-speech translation (S2ST) systems enable translating speech from source to target languages without the need for text transcription. However, these systems are mostly trained using supervised learning that relies on a massive amount of parallel source-target speech data, which is often unavailable. This paper proposes a bilingual speech alignment approach called VGSAlign, as the initial solution for obtaining paired data from unknown, untranscribed, and un-paired speech data. Here, we assume the speech has auxiliary input from the visual modality that describes the semantic information. The approach then leverages the ability (1) to discover spoken words in multiple languages from the correspondences between speech segments and part of images based on self-supervised visually grounded speech models and (2) to find the visually grounded semantically equivalent between the spoken discovery of speech segments of source and target languages. By learning the representations of speech and images, VGSAlign shows the potential to achieve bilingual speech alignment based on visual representation. Furthermore, experimental results show that the proposed approach could work effectively with unknown, untranscribed, and unpaired speech without being trained on any supervised tasks.