Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multimodal Speaker Verification Based on Electroglottograph Signal and Glottal Activity Detection

To achieve robust speaker verification, we propose a multimodal method which includes additional nonaudio features and glottal activity detector. As a nonaudio sensor an electroglottograph (EGG) is applied. Parameters of EGG signal are used to augment conventional audio feature vector. Algorithm for EGG parameterization is based on the shape of the idealized waveform and glottal activity detector. We compare our algorithm with conventional one in the term of verification accuracy in high noise environment. All experiments are performed using Gaussian Mixture Model recognition system. Obtained results show a significant improvement of the text-independent speaker verification in high noise environment and opportunity for further improvements in this area.
Advanced UAV Trajectory Generation: Planning and Guidance

As technology and legislation move forward (JAA & Eurocontrol, 2004) remotely controlled, semi-autonomous or autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) will play a significant role in providing services and enhancing safety and security of the military and civilian community at large (e.g. surveillance and monitoring) (Coifman et al., 2004). The potential market for UAVs is, however, much bigger than just surveillance. UAVs are ideal for risk assessment and neutralization in dangerous areas such as war zones and regions stricken by disaster, including volcanic eruptions, wildfires, floods, and even terrorist acts. As they become more autonomous, UAVs will take on additional roles, such as air-to-air combat and even planetary science exploration (Held et al., 2005). As the operational capabilities of UAVs are developed there is a perceived need for a significant increase in their level of autonomy, performance, reliability and integration with a controlled airspace full of manned vehicles (military and civilian). As a consequence researchers working with advanced UAVs have moved their focus from system modeling and low-level control to mission planning, supervision and collision avoidance, going from vehicle constraints to mission constraints (Barrientos et al., 2006). This mission-based approach is most useful for commercial applications where the vehicle must accomplish tasks with a high level of performance and maneuverability. These tasks require flexible and powerful trajectory-generation and guidance capabilities, features lacking in many of the current commercial UAS. For this reason, the purpose of this work is to extend the capabilities of commercially available autopilots for UAVs. Civil systems typically use basic trajectory-generation algorithms, capable only of linear waypoint navigation (Rysdyk, 2003), with a minimum or non-existent control over the trajectory. These systems are highly constrained when maneuverability is a mission requirement. On the other hand, military researchers have developed algorithms for high-performance 3D path planning and obstacle avoidance (Price, 2006), but these are highly proprietary technologies that operate with different mission constraints (target acquisition, threat avoidance and situational awareness) so they cannot be used in civil scenarios. This chapter presents a robust Trajectory Generation and Guidance Module (TG2M), a software tool capable of generating complex six-degrees-of-freedom trajectories in 3D space with velocity, acceleration, orientation and time constraints. The TG2M is an extension module to the Aerial Vehicle Control Language (AVCL), a software architecture and
Improved routing metrics for energy constrained interconnected devices in low-power and lossy networks

The routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL) is an internet protocol based routing protocol developed and standardized by IETF in 2012 to support a wide range of applications for low-power and lossy-networks (LLNs). In LLNs consisting of resource-constrained devices, the energy consumption of battery powered sensing devices during network operations can greatly impact network lifetime. In the case of inefficient route selection, the energy depletion from even a few nodes in the network can damage network integrity and reliability by creating holes in the network. In this paper, a composite energy-aware node metric (RERBDI ) is proposed for RPL; thismetric uses both the residual energy ratio (RER) of the nodes and their battery discharge index. This composite metric helps avoid overburdening power depleted network nodes during packet routing from the source towards the destination oriented directed acyclic graph root node. Additionally, an objective function is defined for RPL, which combines the node metric RERBDI and the expected transmission count (ETX) link quality metric; this helps to improve the overall network packet delivery ratio. The COOJA simulator is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. The simulations show encouraging results for the proposed scheme in terms of network lifetime, packet delivery ratio and energy consumption, when compared to the most popular schemes for RPL like ETX, hop-count and RER.
Antioxidant properties of repaglinide and its protections against cyclosporine A-induced renal tubular injury

Objective(s): Repaglinide (RG) is an antihyperglycemic agent used for the treatment of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. It has a good safety and efficacy profile in diabetic patients with complications in renal impairment and is an appropriate treatment choice, even for individuals with more severe degrees of renal malfunctions. The aim of the present study was to examine the protective effect of RG on cyclosporine A (CsA)-induced rat renal impairment and to evaluate the antioxidant mechanisms by which RG exerts its protective actions. Materials and Methods: Fifty male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 250–300 g were randomly divided into five groups: administrations of olive oil (control, PO), RG (0.4 mg/kg, PO), CsA (30 mg/kg in olive oil, SC), RG (0.2 or 0.4 mg/kg, PO) plus CsA (30 mg/kg in olive oil SC) every day for 15 days. Results: SC administration of CsA (30 mg/kg) to rats produced marked elevations in the levels of renal impairment parameters such as urinary protein, N-acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase (NAG), serum creatinine (SCr), and blood urea nitrogen (BUN). It also caused histologic injury to the kidneys. Oral administration of RG (0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg) markedly decreased all the aforementioned changes. In addition, CsA caused increases in the levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) and decreases in superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), glutathione reductase (GSR), glutathione-S-transferase (GST), and glutathione in kidney homogenate, which were reversed significantly by both doses of RG. Conclusion: The findings of our study indicate that RG may play an important role in protecting the kidney from oxidative insult.
Speech interface: an enhancer to the acceptance of m-commerce applications

Speech interfaces have become increasingly popular to support mobile commerce. While interface frameworks and dialogue management have been well studied, there is a lack of analytical research on the acceptance of speech-enabled m-commerce services. In this paper, we propose a framework to explain the acceptance of m-commerce from the consumers' perspective. The framework incorporates value propositions of m-service into a service acceptance model derived from a meta-analysis. The significance of a speech interface to m-commerce is evaluated and confirmed in line with the proposed framework. Strategies for developing speech-enabled applications are also suggested.
Numerical approximation of corotational dumbbell models for dilute polymers

We construct a general family of Galerkin methods for the numerical approximation of weak solutions to a coupled microscopic-macroscopic bead-spring model that arises from the kinetic theory of dilute solutions of polymeric liquids with noninteracting polymer chains. The model consists of the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in a bounded domain Ω in R d, d=2 or 3, for the velocity and the pressure of the fluid, with an elastic extra-stress tensor as right-hand side in the momentum equation. The extra-stress tensor stems from the random movement of the polymer chains and is defined through the associated probability density function which satisfies a Fokker-Planck type parabolic equation, a crucial feature of which is the presence of a centre-of-mass diffusion term. We focus on finitely-extensible nonlinear elastic, FENE-type, dumbbell models. In the case of a corotational drag term we perform a rigorous passage to the limit as the spatial and temporal discretization parameters tend to zero, and show that a (sub)sequence of numerical solutions converges to a weak solution of this coupled Navier-Stokes-Fokker-Planck system.
A note on quantum chaology and gamma approximations to eigenvalue spacingsfor infinite random matrices

Quantum counterparts of certain simple classical systems can exhibit chaotic behaviour through the statistics of their energy levels and the irregular spectra of chaotic systems are modelled by eigenvalues of infinite random matrices. We use known bounds on the distribution function for eigenvalue spacings for the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) of infinite random real symmetric matrices and show that gamma distributions, which have an important uniqueness property, can yield an approximation to the GOE distribution. That has the advantage that then both chaotic and non chaotic cases fit in the information geometric framework of the manifold of gamma distributions, which has been the subject of recent work on neighbourhoods of randomness for general stochastic systems. Additionally, gamma distributions give approximations, to eigenvalue spacings for the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) of infinite random hermitian matrices and for the Gaussian symplectic ensemble (GSE) of infinite random hermitian matrices with real quaternionic elements, except near the origin. Gamma distributions do not precisely model the various analytic systems discussed here, but some features may be useful in studies of qualitative generic properties in applications to data from real systems which manifestly seem to exhibit behaviour reminiscent of near-random processes.
What's invisible technology? No, really

The assumption that the goal of ubicomp is to make technology disappear stems from a Modernist ideal of purely utilitarian design that creates social invisibility. In fact, everyday design is anything from invisible, as can be seen in how furniture and cars are designed and from the hotrod and casemod cultures that modify everyday technological objects. Ubicomp design can learn to understand the design of situated technology from industrial design and from he study of technology modification cultures.
Applications of Elliptic Curve Cryptography

The point of this paper is to create a basis for apply efficient encryption schemes in wireless communications and in devices with low computing power and resources. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) fits well for an efficient and secure encryption scheme. It is more efficient than the traditional integer based RSA schemes because ECC utilizes smaller key sizes for equivalent security. A comparative study of ECC with RSA is made in terms of key size, computational power, size of data files and encrypted files. Also, another aim is to design an API to implement ECC encryption /decryption algorithm.
The Need for a Stronger Definition: Recognizing Abandonment as a form of Elder Abuse Across the United States

Elder abuse is a growing public health problem in the United States and statistics show that each year, hundreds of thousands of elders are abused in some manner. This Note discusses elder abuse while focusing specifically on the occurrence of elder abandonment and how the majority of states do not recognize elder abandonment as a form of elder abuse in their statutes. Moreover, this Note proposes a model statute to be adopted by every state in an effort for elder abandonment to become more widely reported. Elder abandonment is an unfortunate phenomenon and those who contribute to elder abandonment should face criminal liability similar to those abusers who engage in elder neglect or other types of elder abuse. Furthermore, this Note emphasizes that there should be a greater focus on how caregivers can seek assistance in order to prevent elder abuse in the United States.
ON NON-SELF-ADJOINT OPERATORS FOR OBSERVABLES IN QUANTUM MECHANICS AND QUANTUM FIELD THEORY ∗

The aim of this paper is to show the possible significance, and usefulness, of various non-self-adjoint operators for suitable Observables in nonrelativistic and relativistic quantum mechanics, and in quantum electrodynamics. More specifically, this work deals with: (i) the maximal Hermitian (but not self-adjoint) time operator in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and in quantum electrodynamics; (ii) the problem of the four-position and four-momentum operators, each one with its Hermitian and anti-Hermitian parts, for relativistic spin-zero particles. Afterwards, other physically important applications of non-self-adjoint (and even non-Hermitian) operators are discussed: in particular, (iii) we reanalyze in detail the interesting possibility of associating quasi-Hermitian Hamiltonians with (decaying) unstable states in nuclear physics. Finally, we briefly mention the cases of quantum dissipation, as well as of the nuclear optical potential.
Oil Shocks and Aggregate Macroeconomic Behavior: The Role of Monetary Policy: A Comment

A recent paper by Bernanke, Gertler, and Watson (1997) suggests that monetary policy could be used to eliminate any recessionary consequences of an oil price shock. This paper challenges this conclusion on two grounds. First, we question whether the Federal Reserve actually has the power to implement such a policy; for example, we consider it unlikely that additional money creation would have succeeded in reducing the Fed funds rate by 900 basis points relative to the values seen in 1974. Second, we point out that the size of the effect that Bernanke, Gertler, and Watson attribute to oil shocks is substantially smaller than that reported by other researchers, primarily due to their choice of a shorter lag length than that used by other researchers. We offer evidence in favor of the longer lag length employed by previous research and show that under this specification, even the aggressive Federal Reserve policies proposed would not have succeeded in averting a downturn.
Automated harvesting of test oracles for reliability testing

Reliability testing is of even greater importance in component-based development than it is in traditional development methods, since it is the only practical way of measuring how well assembled components match each others' expectations. However, support for reliability testing has improved little over the last few years and it remains one of the most costly elements of software engineering. In this paper we present an approach that tackles the most fundamental obstacle to more efficient reliability testing - namely, the problem of automating the generation of "correct" reference results against which to evaluate component outputs. The approach employs the same basic technologies that can be used to discover components for reuse, but instead of building them into the final system it uses them, in combination with others, as an automated pseudo-oracle for measuring the reliability of self-built components. This significantly enhances the utility of component discovery technology, since it allows value to be derived from components which do not pass the threshold needed for full reuse but are sufficiently reliable to form a functioning component of a test oracle.
Effect of Hydration Status on Thermoregulatory Responses in Non-Obese and Obese Males

During heat stress the human body thermoregulates via cutaneous vasodilation and sweating. Hypohydration can impair thermoregulatory responses that stem from the central nervous system (CNS), but it is unknown if impairments also occur post-synaptically in the microcirculation. Moreover, obese individuals may have impaired thermoregulation, possibly due to microvascular dysfunction. Purpose: The purpose of these studies was two-fold: 1) to determine if obese (OB) individuals exhibit impairments in thermoregulatory responses during exercise heat-stress (centrally-mediated) and intradermal infusion of vasoactive substances (peripherally-mediated) versus non-obese (N-OB), and 2) to determine if hypohydration subsequently affects these thermoregulatory responses differently between groups. Methods: Twenty-one healthy, college-age males were classified as either N-OB (n = 11, body fat [BF] <20%) or OB (n = 10, BF >26%) and completed a comprehensive 2-day protocol. In a randomized, counter-balanced order, subjects performed 60 min of cycling in a hot environment while either euhydrated (EU) or hypohydrated (HY) (Study 1). Changes in rectal temperature (∆Trec), cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC), and local sweat rate (LSR) were recorded. Following exercise, subjects maintained a EU or HY condition and returned 24-h later to undergo cutaneous microdialysis (MDS) of the forearm (Study 2). Dose-response curves comparing CVC and LSR responses were compared while sub-cutaneously perfusing the endothelium-dependent vasodilator methacholine chloride (MCh) and the endotheliumindependent vasodilator sodium nitroprusside (SNP). Results: In Study 1, compared to EU, HY increased end-exercise ∆Trec in N-OB (0.47 ± 0.37°C, p < 0.01) but did not in OB (-0.06 ± 0.29°C, p > 0.05). LSR and CVC were not different between groups or hydration condition (p > 0.05). In study 2, OB subjects had a higher Log EC50 versus N-OB for endothelium-independent CVC (-1.69 ± 0.17 vs. -2.13 ± 0.06 Log [SNP] M, p = 0.014) when EU. There were no differences between groups in endothelium-dependent CVC or LSR responses in either hydration condition (all p > 0.05). Conclusions: These data suggest that hydration status affects the core body temperature response differently in N-OB and OB males during exercise heat-stress. In addition, OB individuals appear to have impaired post-synaptic endothelium-independent CVC, but similar endothelium-dependent CVC and LSR versus N-OB.
INTEGRATION VERSUS OUTSOURCING IN INDUSTRY EQUILIBRIUM

We develop an equilibrium model of industrial structure in which the organization of rms is endogenous. Differentiated consumer products can be produced either by vertically integrated rms or by pairs of specialized companies. Production of each variety of consumer good requires a specialized component. Vertically integrated rms can manufacture the components they need, but they face a relatively high cost of governance. Specialized rms can produce at lower cost, but search for partners is costly, and input suppliers face a potential holdup problem. We study the determinants of the equilibrium mode of organization when inputs are fully or partially specialized.
Non parametric Estimation of the Determinants of the Unemployment Duration Distribution Application to the higher schooled qualified

An issue in the analysis of unemployment duration concerns distinguishing genuine duration dependence of the exit rate out of unemployment from unobserved heterogeneity. We present a method for the non parametric estimation of both phenomena, designed to be applicable to time-series data on outflows from different duration classes. The method is applied to French data. We find diverging duration effects among university, commerce/ engineers school and IUT / STS school degree qualified. However except for the men outgoing crowd for commerce/ engineers school , duration dependence is dominated by unobserved heterogeneity.
Combining Wavelet Domain Markov Random Field and Fuzzy Clustering for Robust Multiresolution Image Segmentation

In this paper an unsupervised image segmentation method is presented, which combines wavelet domain Markov random field (WD-MRF) with the modified fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm. At the label establishment stage, a WD-MRF tree is employed to model the statistical properties of multiresolution wavelet coefficients. Each wavelet coefficient is characterized by a feature field and a label field model, the feature field being regarded as an observation of its label field, and the label indicating that the wavelet coefficient belongs to a region. After the model parameters are estimated by expectation maximization algorithm, all regions of image are labeled by maximum a posterior principle. At the original image segmentation stage, the contents of the image are formulated as a fuzzy objective function, where the persistence of interscale wavelet coefficients is considered, and by minimizing the objective function, the novel fuzzy segmentation algorithm is derived. The experiments with synthetic images are carried out, and the results show that the proposed method outperforms conventional FCM and fixed resolution Bayesian segmentation algorithm, such as accurately locating image edges, correctly identifying different regions.
Potential for organ donation in the United Kingdom: audit of intensive care records

Abstract Objectives To determine the true potential for solid organ donation from deceased heartbeating donors and the reasons for non-donation from potential donors. Design An audit of all deaths in intensive care units, 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2005. The study was hierarchic, in that information was sought on whether or not brain stem testing was carried out; if so, whether or not organ donation was considered; if so whether or not the next of kin were approached; if so, whether or not consent was given; if so, whether or not organ donation took place. Setting 341 intensive care units in 284 hospitals in the United Kingdom. Participants 46 801 dead patients, leading to 2740 potential heartbeating solid organ donors and 1244 actual donors. Main outcome measures Proportion of potential deceased heartbeating donors considered for organ donation, proportion of families who denied consent, and proportion of potential donors who became organ donors. Results Over the two years of the study, 41% of the families of potential donors denied consent. The refusal rate for families of potential donors from ethnic minorities was twice that for white potential donors, but the age and sex of the potential donor did not affect the refusal rate. In 15% of families of potential donors there was no record of the next of kin being approached for permission for organ donation. Conclusions Intensive care units are extremely good in considering possible organ donation from suitable patients. The biggest obstacle to improving the organ donation rate is the high proportion of relatives who deny consent.
An Entropy Based Algorithm to Find Critical Traffic Matrices

The entropy is a measure of diversity and homogeneity of one microstate in thermodynamic, which reflects the probably distribution of one microstate of the system. A traffic matrix has tremendous potential utility for many IP network engineering applications. In practical networking applications, dealing with thousands of measured traffic matrices is often inconvenient. This seriously limits the applicability of traffic matrices. So it is highly desirable to be able to extract a small number of "critical" traffic matrices. We study the problem of Critical Traffic Matrices Selection (CTMS) in this paper. We developed an approximation algorithm called MinMat which preselects a group of matrices as critical matrix candidates based on entropy analysis. We evaluated MinMat by a large collection of real traffic matrices collected in campus network and Abilene network. Our results demonstrated that MinMat algorithm are effective than K-means, Hierarchical Agglomeration and by simulating on totem we concluded that a small number of critical traffic matrices suffice to yield satisfactory performance.