Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of ten vowel sounds across gender and regional/cultural accent

The paper compares ten vowels sounds across gender and accent. Each formant for each vowel was analysed individually across data sets, but no comparison was drawn directly between the formant relationship within each vowel. The objective was to examine the formants individually across gender and accent to establish a method for transforming vowel quality in a rule-based synthesis system and thus increase its range of voices. Further, it was hoped that it would make the comparison of English formant data across differing accents more simple. Thee sets of American English data were utilised in the analysis, and compared against two British English accents-received pronunciation (RP) and a general northern accent (GN). Initial findings suggest that the relative positions of certain vowel formants are particularly static across gender, least variation being found with the second formant frequency. When accent was considered a greater degree of variation occurred, this being predominantly found with mid-open and mid-closed vowel classes.
Pregnancy Loss and Later Risk of Atherosclerotic Disease

Background— Pregnancy losses and atherosclerotic disease may be etiologically linked through underlying pathology. We examined whether miscarriage and stillbirth increase later risk of myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, and renovascular hypertension. Methods and Results— Among women pregnant at least once between 1977 and 2008, we identified a cohort of women with miscarriages, stillbirths, or live singleton births. These women were followed from the end of pregnancy for incident myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, and renovascular hypertension. Using Poisson regression, we estimated incidence rate ratios for each of the outcomes by history of miscarriage and stillbirth. Among 1 031 279 women followed for >15 928 900 person-years, we identified 27 98 myocardial infarctions, 40 53 cerebral infarctions, and 1269 instances of renovascular hypertension. Women with stillbirths had 2.69 (95% confidence interval, 2.06–3.50), 1.74 (1.32–2.28), and 2.42 (1.59–3.69) times the rates of myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, and renovascular hypertension, respectively, as women with no stillbirths. Compared with women with no miscarriages, women with miscarriages had 1.13 (1.03–1.24), 1.16 (1.07–1.25), and 1.20 (1.05–1.38) times the rates of these same outcomes, respectively; these associations were dose dependent, with each additional miscarriage increasing the rates of myocardial and cerebral infarction and renovascular hypertension by 9% (3% to 16%), 13% (7% to 19%), and 19% (9% to 30%), respectively. Associations were strongest in younger women (<35 years). Conclusions— Pregnancy losses were associated with subsequent risks of myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, and renovascular hypertension, consistent with either shared etiology or the initiation of pathological processes by a pregnancy loss leading to atherosclerosis.
Superstars : Competent or Lucky ? ∗

I show that the social stratification of academic science can arise as a result of academics’ preference for reading work of high epistemic value. This is consistent with a view on which academic superstars are highly competent academics, but also with a view on which superstars arise primarily due to luck. I argue that stratification is beneficial if most superstars are competent, but not if most superstars are lucky. I also argue that it is impossible to tell whether most superstars are in fact competent or lucky, or which group a given superstar belongs to, and hence whether stratification is overall beneficial. ∗This paper has been published by Synthese. The final publication is available under open access at Springer via http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/s11229-016-1146-5. Thanks to Kevin Zollman, Teddy Seidenfeld, Katharine Anderson, Tomas Zwinkels, Liam Bright, Aidan Kestigian, Conor Mayo-Wilson, Dominik Klein, the anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the Congress on Logic and Philosophy of Science in Ghent, Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence in Oxford, the Society for Exact Philosophy in Pasadena, and Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy in Munich for valuable comments and discussion. This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant SES 1254291. †Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, UK. Email: rdh51@cam.ac. uk ‡Department of Philosophy, Baker Hall 161, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890, USA.
Independent Invention as a Defense to Patent Infringement

Under current law, independent invention is no defense to patent infringement. This Article argues that independent invention should be a defense, provided the independent inventor creates the invention before receiving actual or constructive notice that someone else already created it. The defense reduces wasteful duplication of effort and enhances dissemination of inventions without lowering the incentive to invent below the necessary minimum. To be sure, the defense lowers the incentive for inventions that face significant odds of being invented by more than one inventor. By enabling a second inventor to compete with a first inventor, the defense essentially breaks up the first inventor's patent monopoly into a duopoly. Monopoly profits exceed the collective profits of duopoly. Thus, from the perspective of inventors ex ante the defense reduces the expected profit for inventions that could be invented by more than one inventor. This Article argues, however, that the reduction in expected profit is moderate and that the reduced expected profit is generally sufficient. Per Bayes' theorem, the fact that an invention could be invented by more than one inventor is itself evidence that a moderately reduced expected profit will still motivate at least one inventor to create the invention without inefficient delay.
Mechanisms for Dynamic Setting with Restricted Allocations

Dynamic mechanism design is an important area of multiagent systems, and commonly used in resource allocation where the resources are time related or the agents exist dynamically. We focus on a multiagent model within which the agents stay, and the resources arrive and depart. The resources are interpreted as work or jobs and are called tasks. The allocation outcome space has a special restriction that every agent can only work on one resource at a time, because every agent has a finite computational capability in reality. We propose a dynamic mechanism and analyze its incentive properties; we show that the mechanism is incentive compatible. Empirically, our dynamic mechanism performs well and is able to achieve high economic efficiency, even outperforming standard approaches if the agents are concerned about future tasks. We also introduce a static mechanism under the setting of a restricted outcome space; it is proved that the static mechanism is incentive compatible, and its computational complexity is much less than that of the standard VCG mechanism.
Optical coherence tomography image segmentation

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a three-dimensional non-invasive imaging technique that can generate images of the eye at microscopic level to help diagnosis of eye diseases. However, OCT images often suffer from inhomogeneity and are corrupted by speckle noise, posing challenges to automated OCT image segmentation and analysis. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to segment retinal layers in OCT images. The proposed method uses a coarse-to-fine approach to segmentation and includes: (1) A variational retinex model that can enhance the details as well as correct the intensity in-homogeneities; (2) An anisotropic coherent enhancing diffusion that can remove speckle noise and simultaneously connect the interrupted retinal layers; (3) A nonlinear isotropic filter that smooths the processed OCT image and leads to the initial coarse segmentation; (4) A high-pass unsharp masking filter that highlights the remaining layers and gives the fine segmentation. Afterwards, all the retinal layers that can be seen by human eyes are segmented accurately using common edge detection of region based segmentation algorithms. Extensive experiments results validate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method.
Fast generation of 3-D deformable moving surfaces

Dynamic surface modeling is an important subject of geometric modeling due to their extensive applications in engineering design, entertainment and medical visualization. Many deformable objects in the real world are dynamic objects as their shapes change over time. Traditional geometric modeling methods are mainly concerned with static problems, therefore unsuitable for the representation of dynamic objects. Apart from the definition of a dynamic modeling problem, another key issue is how to solve the problem. Because of the complexity of the representations, currently the finite element method or finite difference method is usually used. Their major shortcoming is the excessive computational cost, hence not ideal for applications requiring real-time performance. We propose a representation of dynamic surface modeling with a set of fourth order dynamic partial differential equations (PDEs). To solve these dynamic PDEs accurately and efficiently, we also develop an effective resolution method. This method is further extended to achieve local deformation and produce n-sided patches. It is demonstrated that this new method is almost as fast and accurate as the analytical closed form resolution method and much more efficient and accurate than the numerical methods.
Ocular Hypertension and the Risk of Blindness

Purpose:To estimate the risk of blindness in patients with ocular hypertension (OHT) using an appropriate model and current empirical data. Design:A Markov model with data from a systematic literature review. Methods:A Markov model with 3 health states was built: OHT, primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), and unilateral blindness. Literature was searched for reports on conversion from OHT to POAG and progression from POAG to blindness, to estimate a range of annual conversion and progression probabilities. The model had a cycle length of 1 year. Results:The 15-year risk estimates ranged from 3.1% to 9.4% in untreated, and from 0.9% to 8.6% in treated patients with OHT. The ranges were the result of differences in patient populations, treatments, and outcome definitions in currently available empirical data. Conclusions:The best estimates of the 15-year risk of unilateral blindness in patients with OHT, based on the currently available empirical data and an appropriate model, show that the risk is <10%.
Differential dendritic shrinkage of alpha and beta retinal ganglion cells in cats with chronic glaucoma.

PURPOSE To study changes in the dendritic morphology of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in cats with experimental chronic glaucoma. METHODS Chronic elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP) was produced by injecting endogenous ghost red blood cells into the unilateral anterior chamber of the feline eyes for 1 month. The morphologic features of retrograde-labeled RGCs by bilateral injection of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) into layers A and Aa1 of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) were examined and compared between the normal and glaucomatous eyes. Nissl staining was used for measuring the change in cell density in the retina and the LGN. RESULTS Quantitative analysis of 720 labeled alpha and beta type RGCs showed that the cell density, body size, maximum dendritic field radius, total dendritic length, and number of branch bifurcations of dendrites decreased significantly in glaucomatous eyes compared with normal ones. The cell loss and shrinkage of dendrites in alpha type ganglion cells in the retina was more pronounced than that in beta type cells. The cell density of all kinds of cells in the retina and LGN monotonically declined with time while IOP was elevated, and cell loss was more significant in large cells than in small ones. CONCLUSION Progressive cell loss and dendritic damage by chronic elevation of IOP in RGCs and LGN cells are more pronounced in the Y-channel (large cells) than the X-channel (small cells) in feline glaucomatous eyes. The dendritic structure changes and corresponding physiological deficits of RGCs occur before cell death and thus may provide an opportunity for clinical treatment.
MRI measurement of the canine auditory pathways and relationship with brainstem auditory evoked responses

Summary The objective of this study was to determine direct measurements of auditory pathways by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during the growth period of healthy Beagles, and to discover how canine brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER) latencies vary in relation to these MRI measurements. Eighty healthy Beagles were tested at eight, 16 and 52 weeks of age (stages 1, 2, 3, respectively) with BAER and brain MRI. The BAER interpeak latency (IPL) II-V and brain MRI neural generators of BAER waves II and V were identified. A linear distance was calculated in millimeters in order to determine the approximate length of auditory pathways. Sensory nerve conduction velocity (SNCV) of the auditory pathway between peak II and peak V was calculated for each group. A significant difference was observed between brain MRI distances among the three stages. Mean BAER IPL II-V were not significantly different between the three stages. The progressive growth of the skull and brain witnessed by the progressive increased distance of the MRI auditory pathways between peak II and peak V was not associated with a progressive maturation of the BAER IPL II-V. The SNCV of the auditory pathway between peak II and peak V was 6.14 m/sec for group 1; 6.76 m/sec for group 2; and 7.32 m/sec for group 3.
Association of BTN 2 A 1 rs 6929846 polymorphism with central obesity in community-dwelling Chinese individuals

Objective(s): The aim of this study was to examine the association of polymorphism (rs6929846) of BTN2A1 gene with central obesity in Chinese individuals. Materials and methods: This study genotyped rs6929846 of BTN2A1 in 371 community-dwelling Chinese individuals in a population-based cohort study. All participants underwent anthropometric and biochemical examinations. Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) were evaluated by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Differences in clinical characteristics between individuals with CC and CT genotypes were investigated in all subjects, grouped by sex. Results: CT genotype carriers showed significantly greater waist circumference (WC) and waist circumference/height (WHtR) values than CC genotype in all subjects. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that WC and WHtR were positively associated with the CT genotype for the entire cohort. Significant positive association was found between VAT and CT genotype only in male subjects. This association remained significant after adjusting for BMI. No relationship was observed between SAT and the CT genotype. Conclusion: BTN2A1 gene polymorphism (rs6929846, C→T) was associated with anthropometric central obesity indicators (WC, WHtR) in all individuals, but with VAT only in males. This variation may lead to increased predisposition to central obesity in Chinese individuals.
Men in 21st century for gender equality

Education is a tripolar process which includes teacher, student and society. In today’s era of competition students are prominent for society or country’s development. Our society is filled with gender stereotypes and biases, children often adopt specific roles. As children move on through childhood and later into adolescence many factors influence their ideology and behaviors in the society. Society possess all the stake holders from grass root to local and state bodies . These attitudes and behaviors are learned initially in the home, and later reinforced by many other outside influences such as their school experiences, friends, teachers, and television. Children turn out to internalize many of the gender stereotypes and behaviors of the past. Social barrier which are influencing the gender equality possess cultural, ideology, home environment, parenting style, fanatics whereas psychological barrier which influences are interest, needs, self-esteem, self-concept, attitude, congenial environment , platform for showcase the abilities should be considered. These all would be possible through educated man who can act as father, brother,, community member, teacher, local authorities and state bodies.
Exercise metabolism at different time intervals after a meal.

To determine how long a meal will affect the metabolic response to exercise, nine endurance-trained and nine untrained subjects cycled for 30 min at 70% of peak O2 consumption (VO2 peak) 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12 h after eating 2 g carbohydrate/kg body wt. In addition, each subject completed 30 min of cycling 4 h after the meal at an intensity that elicited a respiratory exchange ratio (RER) of 0.94-0.95. During exercise after 2 and 4 h of fasting, carbohydrate oxidation was elevated 13-15% compared with the response to exercise after an 8- and 12-h fast (P less than 0.01). The increase in blood glycerol concentration during exercise (30 to 0 min) was linearly related to the length of fasting (r = 0.99; P less than 0.01). In all subjects, plasma glucose concentration declined 17-21% during exercise after 2 h of fasting (P less than 0.01). Plasma glucose concentration also declined (15-25%) during exercise in the trained subjects after 4 and 6 h of fasting (P less than 0.05) but did not change in the untrained subjects. However, the decline in plasma glucose concentration was similar (14%) in the two groups when the exercise intensity was increased in the trained subjects (i.e., 78 +/- 1% VO2 peak) and decreased in the untrained subjects (i.e., 65 +/- 3% VO2 peak) to elicit a similar RER. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
DIAS: Automated Online Analysis for Android Applications

Online program analysis aims to analyze a program as it executes. Traditional online program analysis is generally interactive and not automated. An automated online program analysis requires fine-grained yet flexible analyzing infrastructure to support. Android system, although providing many high-level debugging interfaces, lacks such functionality and is not convenient for developing automated analysis tools. In this paper we present DIAS, a flexible and extensible framework for automated online analysis of Android applications. DIAS contains an introspection monitor and many analysis modules. Based on the introspection monitor and the analysis modules, DIAS provides a set of analysis interfaces to help access various types of runtime information and performs automated online analysis. Automated program analysis is then accomplished using these interfaces. DIAS can monitor applications' execution and understand their behavior, which is useful for profiling, debugging and security analysis. Moreover, DIAS's analysis interface eases the task of developing new online analysis functions.
Clean Sensing for Big Data Analytics : Optimal Sensing Strategies and New Lower Bounds on the Mean-Squared Error of Parameter Estimators which can be Tighter than the Cramér-Rao Bound )

Donald Trump was lagging behind in nearly all opinion polls leading up to the 2016 United States presidential election of Tuesday, November 8, 2016, but Donald Trump surprisingly won the presidential election. Due to the significance of the United States presidential elections, this raises the following important questions: 1) why most opinion polls were not accurate in 2016? and 2) how to improve the accuracies of opinion polls? In this paper, we study and explain the inaccuracies of opinion polls in the presidential election of 20016 through the lens of information theory. We first propose a general framework of parameter estimation in information science, called clean sensing (polling), which performs optimal parameter estimation with sensing cost constraints, from heterogeneous and potentially distorted data sources. We then cast the opinion polling as a problem of parameter estimation from potentially distorted heterogeneous data sources, and derive the optimal polling strategy using heterogenous and possibly distorted data under cost constraints. Our results show that a larger number of data samples do not necessarily lead to better polling accuracy, which give a possible explanation of the inaccuracies of most opinion polls for the 2016 presidential election. The optimal sensing (polling) strategy should instead optimally allocate sensing resources over heterogenous data sources according to several factors including data quality, and, moreover, for a particular data source, the optimal sensing strategy should strike an optimal balance between the quality of data samples, and the quantity of data samples. As a byproduct of this research, in a general setting beyond the clean sensing problem, we derive a group of new lower bounds on the mean-squared errors of general unbiased and biased parameter estimators. These new lower bounds can be tighter than the classical Cramér-Rao ∗Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242. Corresponding email: weiyu-xu@uiowa.edu. †Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616. ‡3Red Trading Group, LLC, Chicago, IL. 1 ar X iv :1 81 2. 11 89 1v 1 [ cs . I T ] 3 1 D ec 2 01 8 bound (CRB) and Chapman-Robbins bound. Our derivations are via studying the Lagrange dual problems of certain convex programs. The classical Cramér-Rao bound and ChapmanRobbins bound follow naturally from our results for special cases of these convex programs.
The Dynamics of Stock Price Adjustment to Fundamentals: An Empirical Essay via STAR Models in the Tunisian Stock Market

This paper examines the dynamics of stock prices adjustment to fundamental value proxied by dividend per share and earnings per share in the Tunisian stock market based on the cointegration techniques. First, the linear cointegration between stock prices and fundamental values is examined by using the Johansen's cointegration test. The empirical results indicate a linear cointegrating relationship between stock prices and dividend per share, and not between stock prices and earnings per share, in support of a linear mean reversion of stock prices towards its fundamental value proxied by dividend. To further investigate the cointegration between stock prices and earnings per share in a nonlinear context, we modelled the deviation of stock prices away from EPS by a logistic smooth transition autoregressive (LSTAR) model. Our results indicate that this model cannot capture the nonlinearity of this deviation, failing, then, to give evidence of a nonlinear cointegration between stock prices and EPS. These results suggest that when selecting stocks, Tunisian investors should focus on the underlying performance of stocks only in terms of their dividend per share.