Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of ocean thermal expansion in Last Interglacial sea level rise

A compilation of paleoceanographic data and a coupled atmosphere‐ocean climate model were used to examine global ocean surface temperatures of the Last Interglacial (LIG) period, and to produce the first quantitative estimate of the role that ocean thermal expansion likely played in driving sea level rise above present day during the LIG. Our analysis of the paleoclimatic data suggests a peak LIG global sea surface temperature (SST) warming of 0.7 ± 0.6°C compared to the late Holocene. Our LIG climate model simulation suggests a slight cooling of global average SST relative to preindustrial conditions (ΔSST = −0.4°C), with a reduction in atmospheric water vapor in the Southern Hemisphere driven by a northward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and substantially reduced seasonality in the Southern Hemisphere. Taken together, the model and paleoceanographic data imply a minimal contribution of ocean thermal expansion to LIG sea level rise above present day. Uncertainty remains, but it seems unlikely that thermosteric sea level rise exceeded 0.4 ± 0.3 m during the LIG. This constraint, along with estimates of the sea level contributions from the Greenland Ice Sheet, glaciers and ice caps, implies that 4.1 to 5.8 m of sea level rise during the Last Interglacial period was derived from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. These results reemphasize the concern that both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets may be more sensitive to temperature than widely thought.
The pH of Inflammatory Exudates 1

Summary Inflammatory exudates were collected at various times in small chambers adhered over skin wounds of normal rabbits. The exudate pH was compared with the blood pH. At termination of each experiment the lesions were excised for histologic study. The blood pH remained unchanged. The pH of the exudate decreased with time showing a definite fall at 24 hr and reaching the lowest value at 72 hr without appreciable further change at 96 hr. The inflammatory cell response in the lesions was slight. Exudation of cells had subsided at 24 hr and thereafter only reparative processes were present. An increase of the H-ion concentration apparently confined to the lesion occurred within the first 24 hr of inflammation and persisted during wound healing. A correlation between the histology of the inflammatory reaction and the pH of the exudate was not apparent.
A review of research on speech intelligibility and correlations with acoustic features

This review article provides an overview of differences between conversational (or cnv) and clear (or clr) speech, for a variety of speakers, in terms of speech intelligibility, and in terms of acoustic characteristics. Researchers have studied the relationship between acoustic features and speech intelligibility by, for example, studying correlations. However, the question “which acoustic features of clr speech cause it to be more intelligible” is still unanswered. To approach this question, it is valuable to summarize past findings related to speech intelligibility and their relationship with acoustic features, while not being limited to a review of only clr speech materials. The outcome of this review can then be applied to restrict the search space in the process of finding acoustic features that contribute to increased speech intelligibility. Finally, we review computer-processing techniques to improve speech intelligibility, summarize these findings, and propose future modifications. Keyword: speech intelligibility, clear speech, speech modification, elderly listeners
Influence of a voice on the quality of synthesized speech

In this study we focus on the influence of the voice of a speech corpus on the quality of text-to-speech (TTS) systems. Therefore, we selected a set of attribute scales which consists of items related to the 5 perceptual quality dimensions of TTS systems and of items which are used in studies concerning the likeability of voices. We selected 5 different voices of the TTS systems IVONA and ACAPELA and evaluated them in a listening test. A subsequent factor analysis revealed 4 factors. The first two factors consist of items related to the 5 perceptual quality dimensions whereas factor 3 and 4 are related to items which are used for likeability assessment. In a statistical analysis we could prove a significant effect of the voice of a speech corpus on the overall impression as well as on the factors 1, 2, and 4.
Optimum modelling of an air heating system

In this study, a model for air heating system was designed. While this simulation model was calculated, the data obtained as a result of respond of the system to PRSB input signal, which was created by the help of unit step response of system, were collected and tested by defining the system with the best result obtained by using of linear black box modeling (such as Arx, Armax, OE).
A DWT-DCT Based Passive Forensics Method for Copy-Move Attacks

A passive forensics method for detecting copy-move attacks was proposed. In the proposed method, tested image was segmented into non-overlapping blocks, DCT and DWT are applied to each image block to extract features, and then compare the statistics of each image block to detection replication regions. Our method was robust to compression up to JPEG quality level 20 and against additive noise. The time complexity of our approach for sorting is O(k 1g k).
Incremental Evaluation of Visible Nearest Neighbor Queries

In many applications involving spatial objects, we are only interested in objects that are directly visible from query points. In this paper, we formulate the visible k nearest neighbor (VkNN) query and present incremental algorithms as a solution, with two variants differing in how to prune objects during the search process. One variant applies visibility pruning to only objects, whereas the other variant applies visibility pruning to index nodes as well. Our experimental results show that the latter outperforms the former. We further propose the aggregate VkNN query that finds the visible k nearest objects to a set of query points based on an aggregate distance function. We also propose two approaches to processing the aggregate VkNN query. One accesses the database via multiple VkNN queries, whereas the other issues an aggregate k nearest neighbor query to retrieve objects from the database and then re-rank the results based on the aggregate visible distance metric. With extensive experiments, we show that the latter approach consistently outperforms the former one.
Reizdarmsyndrom – eine Krankheit wird zerlegt. Eine Polemik in 13 Schritten.

Zusammenfassung Die vergangenen 35 Jahre (seit etwa 1980) haben eine Vielzahl von wissenschaftlichen Publikationen zum Thema Reizdarmsyndrom (RDS) erbracht, aber keinen wirklichen Fortschritt: Nach wie vor ist dessen Ätiologie und Pathogenese ungeklärt, und Diagnostik und Therapie sind weitgehend dem individuellen Verständnis der behandelnden Ärztinnen und Ärzte aus Allgemeinmedizin, Gastroenterologie und Psychosomatik/Psychiatrie überlassen. In dieser Glosse rechnen drei prominente Vertreter der Neurogastroenterologie in Deutschland mit ihren eigenen und den Beiträgen ihrer Fachkollegen ab und kontrastieren deren Anspruch mit der klinisch-wissenschaftlichen Realität des RDS.
Optimal point placement for mesh smoothing

We study the problem of moving a vertex in an unstructured mesh of triangular, quadrilateral, or tetrahedral elements to optimize the shapes of adjacent elements. We show that many such problems can be solved in linear time using generalized linear programming. We also give efficient algorithms for some mesh smoothing problems that do not fit into the generalized linear programming paradigm.
A semantic approach to recommending text advertisements for images

In recent years, more and more images have been uploaded and published on the Web. Along with text Web pages, images have been becoming important media to place relevant advertisements. Visual contextual advertising, a young research area, refers to finding relevant text advertisements for a target image without any textual information (e.g., tags). There are two existing approaches, advertisement search based on image annotation, and more recently, advertisement matching based on feature translation between images and texts. However, the state of the art fails to achieve satisfactory results due to the fact that recommended advertisements are syntactically matched but semantically mismatched. In this paper, we propose a semantic approach to improving the performance of visual contextual advertising. More specifically, we exploit a large high-quality image knowledge base (ImageNet) and a widely-used text knowledge base (Wikipedia) to build a bridge between target images and advertisements. The image-advertisement match is built by mapping images and advertisements into the respective knowledge bases and then finding semantic matches between the two knowledge bases. The experimental results show that semantic match outperforms syntactic match significantly using test images from Flickr. We also show that our approach gives a large improvement of 16.4% on the precision of the top 10 matches over previous work, with more semantically relevant advertisements recommended.
The Impact of Outsourcing on IT Business Alignment and IT Flexibility: A Survey in the German Banking Industry

The ability to outsource IT has been suggested as a major driver of IT productivity. At the same time, the literature on the business value of IT suggests that IT business alignment and IT flexibility are important drivers for the performance of IT. But what is, then, the impact of outsourcing on these key value drivers? In this paper, we empirically show that firms with internal IT exhibit significantly better IT business alignment and IT flexibility.
HOMED: a homologous sequence editor

The alignment of homologous sequences with each other and their display has proved a difficult task, despite a frequent requirement for this process. HOMED enables related sequences to be edited and listed in parallel with each other. The editor function uses a full screen editor which emulates the text editors KED and EDT (on PDP-11 and VAX-11 respectively) and which can be adapted to emulate other text editors. This emulation has been adopted to simplify user learning of editing functions. HOMED provides functions for listing the sequences in a variety of formats and for generating a consensus sequence as well as providing a series of tools for maintenance of the sequence database. HOMED has been implemented in Pascal in a modular fashion to enhance portability.
PERIPHERAL APPEARANCES: THE EXPERIENCE OF COLORED LIGHT IN THE URBAN OUTDOORS

A review of contemporary architectural publications reveals that the use of color in architectural design and the urban environment has increased over the past two decades. With the advent of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the methods for incorporating color into the built environment are currently undergoing a vast transition. Due to the ease of application and programming, colored and color-changing lighting is frequently used in the illumination of building facades and urban spaces. We conducted a small pilot field observation during a public urban light art festival to gain insights in the use of colored light in urban environments. The experiences of four visitors within the same urban spaces during the festival and after the festival were documented using video and sound recordings. After the walks, interviews were conducted to learn about the subjective experiences of each participants. Light and color measurements were taken by the experimenter along the way. The results documented the impact of color and colored light to transform urban space and the experience of the surrounding environment on several sensory levels. They also gave insight how use of color and colored light could be improved and be used in future urban designs, both in temporary and permanent installations.
Combination of dopamine transporter and D2 receptor SPECT in the diagnostic evaluation of PD, MSA, and PSP

It is often difficult to differentiate clinically between Parkinson's disease (PD), multiple system atrophy (MSA), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). The objective of this work was to investigate whether combined pre‐ and postsynaptic dopaminergic single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanning can reliably demonstrate changes in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system and help differentiate between normal controls, PD, MSA, and PSP patients. We performed SPECT evaluation of the dopamine transporter (DAT) and dopamine D2 receptors (D2). SPECT scans using [123I]β‐CIT (for DAT) and [123I]IBF (for D2) were performed in 18 patients with PD (12 dopa‐naïve and 6 on levodopa and/or dopamine agonists), 7 with MSA of the striatonigral degeneration type, 6 with PSP, and 29 normal controls. Antiparkinsonian drugs were withheld for at least 12 hours before the scans. DAT and D2 binding potentials (Rv = V3/V2) were measured for caudate, anterior, and posterior putamen on the sides ipsilateral and contralateral to the worst motor symptoms. DAT binding in the posterior putamen was markedly reduced in all patients. However, D2 binding in posterior putamen was significantly increased in dopa‐untreated PD, being greater than the normal range in 4 of 12 (33%), and it was significantly reduced in MSA, being below the normal range in 5 of 7 (71%). None of the patients with PD showed reduced D2 binding below the normal range in posterior putamen. The degree of DAT binding could not discriminate between the patient groups. The ratio of posterior putamen to caudate percentage D2 Rv compared with the controls showed an opposite pattern between PD or PSP and MSA; the caudate was greater in 16 of 18 with PD and 6 of 6 with PSP, whereas caudate was less in 5 of 7 with MSA. These findings suggest that DAT SPECT may be useful in differentiating parkinsonism from controls and D2 SPECT in further differentiating MSA from Parkinson's disease and possibly PSP. © 2002 Movement Disorder Society.
Using a stochastic context-free grammar as a language model for speech recognition

This paper describes a number of experiments in adding new grammatical knowledge to the Berkeley Restaurant Project (BeRP), our medium-vocabulary (1300 word), speaker-independent, spontaneous continuous-speech understanding system. We describe an algorithm for using a probabilistic Earley parser and a stochastic context-free grammar (SCFG) to generate word transition probabilities at each frame for a Viterbi decoder. We show that using an SCFG as a language model improves the word error rate from 34.6% (bigram) to 29.6% (SCFG), and the semantic sentence recognition error from from 39.0% (bigram) to 34.1% (SCFG). In addition, we get a further reduction to 28.8% word error by mixing the bigram and SCFG LMs. We also report on our preliminary results from using discourse-context information in the LM.
A Comprehensive Review of Health Benefits of Qigong and Tai Chi

Objective. Research examining psychological and physiological benefits of Qigong and Tai Chi is growing rapidly. The many practices described as Qigong or Tai Chi have similar theoretical roots, proposed mechanisms of action, and expected benefits. Research trials and reviews, however, treat them as separate targets of examination. This review examines the evidence for achieving outcomes from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of both. Data Sources. The key words Tai Chi, Taiji, Tai Chi Chuan, and Qigong were entered into electronic search engines for the Cumulative Index for Allied Health and Nursing (CINAHL), psychological literature (PsycINFO), PubMed, Cochrane database, and Google Scholar. Study Inclusion Criteria. RCTs reporting on the results of Qigong or Tai Chi interventions and published in peer-reviewed journals from 1993 to 2007. Data Extraction. Country, type and duration of activity, number/type of subjects, control conditions, and reported outcomes were recorded for each study. Synthesis. Outcomes related to Qigong and Tai Chi practice were identified and evaluated. Results. Seventy-seven articles met the inclusion criteria. The nine outcome category groupings that emerged were bone density (n = 4), cardiopulmonary effects (n = 19), physical function (n = 16), falls and related risk factors (n = 23), quality of life (n = 17), self-efficacy (n = 8), patient-reported outcomes (n = 13), psychological symptoms (n = 27), and immune function (n = 6). Conclusions. Research has demonstrated consistent, significant results for a number of health benefits in RCTs, evidencing progress toward recognizing the similarity and equivalence of Qigong and Tai Chi.
Vagal afferent fibers and peripheral 5-HT3 receptors mediate cisplatin-induced emesis in dogs.

The involvement of visceral afferent fibers and 5-HT3 receptors in the emesis induced by cisplatin was studied in beagle dogs. The emesis induced by cisplatin (3 mg/kg, i.v.) was inhibited by the intravenous administration of ICS205930 (2 x 0.01 or 2 x 0.1 mg/kg) and MDL72222 (2 x 0.5 mg/kg), 5-HT3 receptor antagonists, but not by the intravenous administration of metoclopramide (2 x 0.5 mg/kg), a dopamine D2 receptor antagonist. The cisplatin-induced emesis was also suppressed by the intravenous administration of para-chlorophenylalanine (300 mg/kg/day for 3 days), an inhibitor of 5-HT synthesis. On the other hand, the administration of ICS205930 into the IVth ventricle (2 x 0.01 mg/animal) had no effects on the cisplatin-induced emesis. The cisplatin-induced emesis was completely inhibited by abdominal vagotomy and splanchnicectomy, but not by splanchnicectomy alone. On the contrary, the emesis induced by apomorphine was suppressed by the intravenous (0.1 mg/kg) or intracerebroventricular (0.05 mg/animal) administration of metoclopramide, but not by visceral nerve section. These results strongly suggest that cisplatin evokes emesis mainly by acting on the vagal afferent terminals through the release of 5-HT and that peripheral 5-HT3 receptors are involved in this action.
MAJOR CORPORATIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCACY: EFFORTS IN REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT IN OIL EXPLORATION

This comprehensive study embarked on a critical journey to scrutinize and evaluate the effectiveness of corporate environmental initiatives implemented in recent years, particularly focusing on the oil sector. Utilizing a meticulous literature review strategy, the research analyzed various case studies and scholarly contributions to delineate the current state of environmental advocacy in the corporate sector and identify potential avenues for future research. The methodology encompassed a systematic data extraction and analysis approach, ensuring relevant and reliable data assimilation. The findings underscored a significant shift in the corporate sector towards fostering environmental sustainability through various initiatives spanning different industries. Environmental advocacy has emerged as a potent force urging the industry to adopt more sustainable and ethical practices, particularly in the oil sector. The study revealed a growing awareness and commitment to fostering a sustainable and environmentally responsible corporate sector, characterized by green innovation, sustainable practices, and corporate social responsibility. Based on the analysis, the study recommends developing and implementing robust regulatory frameworks to mandate adherence to sustainable practices, promoting green innovation, and fostering collaborative efforts among various stakeholders. These strategies are envisaged to propel the corporate sector as a significant player in global environmental conservation efforts. Looking ahead, the study identifies a promising trajectory for environmental advocacy, characterized by collaborative efforts, regulatory frameworks, and green innovation, setting a pathway towards a sustainable and environmentally responsible corporate sector.
Overcoming barriers to sustainable implementation of the ISO 9001 system

Purpose – This study aims to explore the barriers to implementation of ISO 9000 in China, and to identify how these barriers can be overcome.Design/methodology/approach – Using a structural questionnaire survey, this paper examines the main barriers for enterprises in effective implementation of the ISO 9001 standard.Findings – This paper highlights the problems in implementing the standard, which determines the sustainable implementation, including: short‐sighted goal for “getting certified”; over‐expectation on the ISO 9001 standard; mandatory requirement (not wholehearted commitment) in some industries; and following others (the trend) in certification. With regard to the effective audit of the ISO 9001 standard, the main problems were explored, including: lack of commitment from some certifying bodies; excessive competition between certifying bodies; and offering of a total packaged service from consultancy to certification by certifying bodies.Practical implications – The ISO 9000 series have permeat.
Severe Restriction of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus Replication and Spread in Cultured Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

ABSTRACT Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) is a gammaretrovirus recently isolated from human prostate cancer and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). We and others have shown that host restriction factors APOBEC3G (A3G) and APOBEC3F (A3F), which are expressed in human PBMCs, inhibit XMRV in transient-transfection assays involving a single cycle of viral replication. However, the recovery of infectious XMRV from human PBMCs suggested that XMRV can replicate in these cells despite the expression of APOBEC3 proteins. To determine whether XMRV can replicate and spread in cultured PBMCs even though it can be inhibited by A3G/A3F, we infected phytohemagglutinin-activated human PBMCs and A3G/A3F-positive and -negative cell lines (CEM and CEM-SS, respectively) with different amounts of XMRV and monitored virus production by using quantitative real-time PCR. We found that XMRV efficiently replicated in CEM-SS cells and viral production increased by >4,000-fold, but there was only a modest increase in viral production from CEM cells (<14-fold) and a decrease in activated PBMCs, indicating little or no replication and spread of XMRV. However, infectious XMRV could be recovered from the infected PBMCs by cocultivation with a canine indicator cell line, and we observed hypermutation of XMRV genomes in PBMCs. Thus, PBMCs can potentially act as a source of infectious XMRV for spread to cells that express low levels of host restriction factors. Overall, these results suggest that hypermutation of XMRV in human PBMCs constitutes one of the blocks to replication and spread of XMRV. Furthermore, hypermutation of XMRV proviruses at GG dinucleotides may be a useful and reliable indicator of human PBMC infection.
Towards DAE methodology for the control of cable-driven parallel robots

Models obtained from the laws of Physics are naturally written as differential-algebraic equations (DAE) also known as descriptor models. However, the usual methodology in control consists in reducing the model to a set of ordinary equations. Remaining in the DAE word has several advantages: the reduction step is not necessary any more and the parameter dependance might be simplified. This paper is a step forward towards a control methodology that would be entirely based on DAE models. Its goal is twofold. First, the tools and methods available for DAE models are reviewed. Second, a case taken form robotics is considered. The simulation being done with Maple, a linear model is derived and transferred to Matlab for synthesis. A H∞ controller is then synthesized and evaluated. The controlled system is then simulated with Maple.