Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Precision of phoneme boundaries derived using hidden Markov models

Some phoneme boundaries correspond to abrupt changes in the acoustic signal. Others are less clear-cut because the transition from one phoneme to the next is gradual. This paper compares the phoneme boundaries identified by a large number of different alignment systems, using different signal representations and Hidden Markov Model structures. The variability of the different boundaries is analysed statistically, with the boundaries grouped in terms of the broad phonetic classes of the respective phonemes. The mutual consistency between the boundaries from the various systems is analysed to identify which classes of phoneme boundary can be identified reliably by an automatic labelling system, and which are ill-defined and ambiguous. The results presented here provide a starting point for future development of techniques for objective comparisons between systems without giving undue weight to variations in those phoneme boundaries which are inherently ambiguous. Such techniques should improve the efficiency with which new alignment and HMM training algorithms can be developed.
Bounds for spherical codes

A set $C$ of unit vectors in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is called an $L$-spherical code if $x \cdot y \in L$ for any distinct $x,y$ in $C$. Spherical codes have been extensively studied since their introduction in the 1970's by Delsarte, Goethals and Seidel. In this note we prove a conjecture of Bukh on the maximum size of spherical codes. In particular, we show that for any set of $k$ fixed angles, one can choose at most $O(d^k)$ lines in $\mathbb{R}^d$ such that any pair of them forms one of these angles.
Stability of T-cell lineages in autoimmune diseases

Life is about change and instability – so should we be surprised that our favorite T-cell lineages are not as stable as we desperately hoped they would be? Probably not, and as much as this complicates our scientific lives, we need to understand this and learn to interpret our data accordingly, no matter how little we like it. But let’s start at the beginning.
Angiotensin II‐induced fluid phase endocytosis in human cerebromicrovascular endothelial cells is regulated by the inositol‐phosphate signaling pathway

The involvement of the early signaling messengers, inositol tris‐phosphate (IP3), intracellular calcium, [Ca2+]i, and protein kinase C (PKC), in angiotensin II (AII)‐induced fluid phase endocytosis was investigated in human brain capillary and microvascular endothelial cells (HCEC). AII (0.01–10 μM) stimulated the uptake of Lucifer yellow CH, an inert dye used as a marker for fluid phase endocytosis, in HCEC by 50–230%. AII also triggered a fast accumulation of IP3 and a rapid increase in [Ca2+]i in cells loaded with the Ca2+‐responsive fluorescent dye fura‐2. The prompt AII‐induced [Ca2+]i spike was not affected by incubating HCEC in Ca2+‐free medium containing 2 mM EGTA or by pretreating the cultures with the Ca2+ channel blockers, methoxyverapamil (D600; 50 μM), nickel (1 mM), or lanthanum (1 mM), suggesting that the activation of AII receptors on HCEC triggers the release of Ca2+ from intracellular stores. The AII‐triggered increases in IP3, [Ca2+]i, and Lucifer yellow uptake were inhibited by the nonselective AII receptor antagonist, Sar1, Val5, Ala8‐AII (SVA‐AII), and by the phospholipase C (PLC) inhibitors, neomycin and U‐73122. By contrast, the protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitors, staurosporine and calphostin C, failed to affect any of these AII‐induced events. This study demonstrates that increased fluid phase endocytotosis induced by AII in human brain capillary endothelium, an event thought to be linked to the observed increases in blood‐brain barrier permeability in acute hypertension, is likely dependent on PLC‐mediated changes in [Ca2+]i and independent of PKC. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Titin Diversity—Alternative Splicing Gone Wild

Titin is an extremely large protein found in highest concentrations in heart and skeletal muscle. The single mammalian gene is expressed in multiple isoforms as a result of alternative splicing. Although titin isoform expression is controlled developmentally and in a tissue specific manner, the vast number of potential splicing pathways far exceeds those described in any other alternatively spliced gene. Over 1 million human splice pathways for a single individual can be potentially derived from the PEVK region alone. A new splicing pattern for the human cardiac N2BA isoform type has been found in which the PEVK region includes only the N2B type exons. The alterations in splicing and titin isoform expression in human heart disease provide impetus for future detailed study of the splicing mechanisms for this giant protein.
Role of Ceramide in Cellular Senescence (*)

Recently the sphingomyelin cycle, involving the hydrolysis of membrane sphingomyelin by an activated sphingomyelinase to generate ceramide, has emerged as a key pathway in cell differentiation and apoptosis in leukemic and other cell types. Here we investigate a role for this pathway in the senescence of WI-38 human diploid fibroblasts (HDF). We found that endogenous levels of ceramide increased considerably (4-fold) and specifically (compared with other lipids) as cells entered the senescent phase. Investigation of the mechanism of increased ceramide led to the discovery that neutral sphingomyelinase activity is elevated 8-10 fold in senescent cells. There were no changes in sphingomyelinase activity or ceramide levels as HDF entered quiescence following serum withdrawal or contact inhibition. Thus, the activation of the sphingomyelinase/ceramide pathway in HDF is due to senescence and supports the hypotheses that senescence represents a distinct program of cell development that can be differentiated from quiescence. Additional studies disclosed the ability of ceramide to induce a senescent phenotype. Thus, when exogenous ceramide (15 μM) was administered to young WI-38 HDF, it produced endogenous levels comparable to those observed in senescent cells (as determined by metabolic labeling studies). Ceramide concentrations of 10-15 μM inhibited the growth of young HDF and induced a senescent phenotype by its ability to inhibit DNA synthesis and mitogenesis. These concentrations of ceramide also induced retinoblastoma dephosphorylation and inhibited serum-induced AP-1 activation in young HDF, thus recapitulating basic biochemical and molecular changes of senescence. Sphingomyelinase and ceramide may thus be implicated as mediators of cellular senescence.
Proposal for a common research project INRIA-LRI as part of UR Futurs TAO-Thèmes Apprentissage et Optimisation Machine Learning , Data Mining and Evolutionary Optimization

Data Mining (DM) has been identified as one of the ten main challenges of the 21st century (MIT Technological Review, fev. 2001). The goal is to exploit the massive amounts of data produced in scientific labs, industrial plants, banks, hospitals or supermarkets, in order to extract valid, new and useful regularities. In other words, DM resumes the Machine Learning (ML) goal, finding (partial) models for the complex system underlying the data. DM and ML problems can be set as optimization problems, thus leading to two possible approaches1. The first approach is to simplify the learning problem to make it tractable by standard statistical or optimization methods. The alternative approach is to preserve as much as possible the genuine complexity of the goals (yielding “interesting” models, accounting for prior knowledge): more flexible optimization approaches are therefore required, such as those offered by Evolutionary Computation.
Schema-less XML in Columns

C-store environment uses a relational database for storing table tuples on the disk by columns. Can it be effectively used as XML database? This paper considers XML data without a schema. A two-level model of C-store based on XML-enabled relational databases is proposed. A measure of the model suitability is the possibility of evaluating effectively XPath queries. The XPath fragment considered allows the node-test not referring to attribute values and text values. Child, descendant, parent, ancestor, siblings, and following (preceding) are just the XPath axes used here. Low level memory system enabling the estimation of the number of two abstract operations providing an interface to an external memory is characteristic for algorithms for each axis. We will show that our algorithms are mostly of logarithmic complexity in n, where n is the number of nodes of XML tree associated with a XML document.
Re-locating Fear on the Streets: Homelessness, Victimisation and Fear of Crime

Fear of crime has been explored from an academic perspective for some decades now within the sphere of criminology. Within this exploration, the focus has consistently been on clearly identifiable and opposing ‘actors’ cast in the roles of ‘feared’ and ‘fearing’. In this think piece, I argue that the binary format upon which fear of crime discourse has developed is inherently flawed, in that those groups who are cast in the role of ‘feared’, in this case homeless people, are denied the status of ‘fearing’, which has a significant and detrimental impact on both homeless people from a policy perspective and the academic study and understanding of fear of crime. The paper starts with an overview of traditional approaches to conceptualising fear of crime, then moves on to explore constructions of homeless people as always feared and never fearing. Drawing on victimological discourse, the paper then makes the case that a re-framing of street homeless people as fearing subjects is required. The piece closes with a call for the academic study of fear of crime to move away from its traditional binaries and embrace a new approach to locating street homeless people within fear of crime discourse.
Factors influencing prescription of CNS medications in different elderly populations

Factors influencing the use of neuroleptic and other CNS‐acting medications (‘antidepressants’ and ‘hypnotics/anxiolytics’) were examined in different elderly populations (>65 years): long‐stay care hospital subjects (n = 381), nursing home subjects (n = 1247), private residential home subjects (n = 321), statutory residential home subjects (n = 525), old age psychiatry facility subjects (n = 48), community dwellers (n = 97), in different geographical areas (urban n = 1223 and rural n = 1396). Neuroleptics were prescribed in 28% of the individuals, hypnotics/anxiolytics in 33% and antidepressants in 12%. Prescription of neuroleptics was significantly predicted by institutional placement (other than long‐stay care hospital facility), lower cognitive function and rural geographical area. Age greater than 75 years and lower functional score (lower dependency) significantly decreased the likelihood of receipt of neuroleptics. Antidepressant use was significantly less likely in male subjects, patients with cognitive impairment and patients greater than 85 years. Institutional placement (other than long‐stay care hospital facility and old age psychiatry facility) and rural locality predicted increased likelihood of antidepressant prescription. Institutional placement (other than long‐stay care hospital facility) and geographical (rural) location were significant independent predictors of hypnotic/anxiolytic use. Prescription of hypnotic/anxiolytic drug class was significantly less likely in those individuals with lower cognitive status. In this representative elderly cohort, patient characteristics: age, sex, cognitive score, functional score, place of residence and geographical location markedly influenced drug utilisation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
RLC Circuit Model for the Scattering of Light by Small Negative Refractive Index Spheres

We study the scattering properties of very small spheres made of a negative refractive index (NRI) using circuit network principles. The Lorenz-Mie theory is used to represent the transverse magnetic and transverse electric scattering coefficients based on resistor, inductor, and capacitor (RLC) ladder circuit models derived from continued fractions. The lumped elements are then analyzed and a comparison is made between these new elements and those expected for conventional positive refractive index spheres. This provides an alternative interpretation for the fact that the scattering efficiency Qsca for NRI spheres with size parameters x <;<; 1 does not always obey Rayleigh's formula Qsca ~ x4. The RLC circuits obtained here, besides being very simple, provide accurate physical insights into the problem of the scattering of light by NRI spheres, therefore serving as a new theoretical background for studying the scattering properties of negative refractive index metamaterials.
ISO Quick Fix, Free Lunch, and Share of Pie

The “managed care backlash” is as inevitable as the forces that encouraged the rapid development of managed care in the 1990s. What is less certain is how the forces unleashed by the backlash will unfold and what they will mean for the future way the health care system in the United States functions. In this commentary, I argue that the managed care backlash reflects a prototypical American response that could have been anticipated with the demise of Clinton health reform in the early 1990s. Absent legislated reform, a competitive solution based on managed care was uniquely fitting for the United States’s pluralistic, mixed public-private system of finance and delivery. Purchasers turned increasingly to the market and managed care as a vehicle for cost control. In the absence of national policy, payers sought to achieve their own ends, with little formal infrastructure in which to address collective and public goods (such as the cost of care for the uninsured and those less able to strike a hard bargain). The movement toward managed care reinforced already existing changes in provider practice and set in motion a series of interrelated “shocks” that generated many of the preconditions for a managed care backlash. Further fueling the backlash were the systematic reactions from the shift to managed care using a competitive model. Responding to the business opportunities the shift created, “health industry” broadly speaking, engaged in a series of mergers and reshuffling of ownership and affiliations that reduced public goodwill and loyalty. “Mass media,” aided by the growing ease of nationwide communication, highlighted
A new approach to 3-D ray tracing for propagation prediction in cities

A vertical-plane-launch (VPL) technique for approximating a full three dimensional (3-D) site-specific ray trace to predict propagation effects in cities for frequencies in the 300 MHz-3-GHz band is described and its predictions are compared with measurements for Rosslyn, VA. The VPL technique employs the standard shoot and bounce method in the horizontal plane while using a deterministic approach to find the vertical displacement of the unfolded ray paths. This approximation is valid since building walls are almost always vertical. The VPL method shows significant improvement compared with the slant-plane/vertical-plane (SP/VP) method for rooftop antennas. For a base station located at street level, the VPL method gives better predictions than the two-dimensional (2-D) method in locations where propagation over buildings is significant.
TRPC1 binds to caveolin-3 and is regulated by Src kinase – role in Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Transient receptor potential canonical 1 (TRPC1), a widely expressed calcium (Ca2+)-permeable channel, is potentially involved in the pathogenesis of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Ca2+ influx through stretch-activated channels, possibly formed by TRPC1, induces muscle-cell damage in the mdx mouse, an animal model of DMD. In this study, we showed that TRPC1, caveolin-3 and Src-kinase protein levels are increased in mdx muscle compared with wild type. TRPC1 and caveolin-3 colocalised and co-immunoprecipitated. Direct binding of TRPC1-CFP to caveolin-3–YFP was confirmed in C2 myoblasts by fluorescence energy resonance transfer (FRET). Caveolin-3–YFP targeted TRPC1-CFP to the plasma membrane. Hydrogen peroxide, a reactive oxygen species (ROS), increased Src activity and enhanced Ca2+ influx, but only in C2 myoblasts co-expressing TRPC1 and caveolin-3. In mdx muscle, Tiron, a ROS scavenger, and PP2, a Src inhibitor, reduced stretch-induced Ca2+ entry and increased force recovery. Because ROS production is increased in mdx/DMD, these results suggest that a ROS-Src-TRPC1/caveolin-3 pathway contributes to the pathogenesis of mdx/DMD.
Low phase noise gm-boosted differential Colpitts VCO with suppressed AM-to-FM conversion

A gm-boosted differential Colpitts VCO is proposed, which allows lower oscillation start-up current and suppressed AM-to-FM conversion by the switching transistors. The proposed architecture allows wider range of saturation mode operation for the switching transistors which helps to suppress the AM-to-FM conversion. The proposed VCO is implemented in 0.18-μm CMOS for 1.75∼1.93 GHz operation. Measurement shows, at 1.84 GHz, the phase noise of −105 and −128 dBc/Hz (FOM = 191.2) at 100-KHz and 1-MHz offset, respectively, while dissipating 1.8 mA from 0.9-V supply.
Comparing different types of source memory attributes in dementia of Alzheimer's type

ABSTRACT Background: Source monitoring (SM) refers to our ability to discriminate between memories from different sources. Methods: Twenty healthy high-cognitive functioning older adults, 20 healthy low-cognitive functioning older adults, and 20 older adults with dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT) were asked to perform a series of SM tasks that varied in terms of the to-be-remembered source attribute (perceptual, spatial, temporal, semantic, social, and affective details). Results: Results indicated that older DAT adults had greater difficulty in SM compared to the healthy control groups, especially with spatial and semantic details. Conclusions: Data are discussed in terms of the SM framework and suggest that poor memory for some types of source information may be considered as an important indicator of clinical memory function when assessing for the presence and severity of dementia.
Laconic schema mappings: computing core universal solutions by means of SQL queries

We present a new method for computing core universal solutions in data exchange settings specified by source-to-target dependencies, by means of SQL queries. Unlike previously known algorithms, which are recursive in nature, our method can be implemented directly on top of any DBMS. Our method is based on the new notion of a laconic schema mapping. A laconic schema mapping is a schema mapping for which the canonical universal solution is the core universal solution. We give a procedure by which every schema mapping specified by FO s-t tgds can be turned into a laconic schema mapping specified by FO s-t tgds that may refer to a linear order on the domain of the source instance. We show that our results are optimal, in the sense that the linear order is necessary and the method cannot be extended to schema mapping involving target constraints.
An Optimized LMMSE Based Method for 3D MRI Denoising

Post-acquisition denoising of magnetic resonance (MR) images is an important step to improve any quantitative measurement of the acquired data. In this paper, assuming a Rician noise model, a new filtering method based on the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimation is introduced, which employs the self-similarity property of the MR data to restore the noise-less signal. This method takes into account the structural characteristics of images and the Bayesian mean square error (Bmse) of the estimator to address the denoising problem. In general, a twofold data processing approach is developed; first, the noisy MR data is processed using a patch-based L2-norm similarity measure to provide the primary set of samples required for the estimation process. Afterwards, the Bmse of the estimator is derived as the optimization function to analyze the pre-selected samples and minimize the error between the estimated and the underlying signal. Compared to the LMMSE method and also its recently proposed SNR-adapted realization (SNLMMSE), the optimized way of choosing the samples together with the automatic adjustment of the filtering parameters lead to a more robust estimation performance with our approach. Experimental results show the competitive performance of the proposed method in comparison with related state-of-the-art methods.
Neural correlates of access to short-term memory

Behavioral research has led to the view that items in short-term memory can be parsed into two categories: a single item in the focus of attention that is available for immediate cognitive processing and a small set of other items that are in a heightened state of activation but require retrieval for further use. We examined this distinction by using an item-recognition task. The results show that the item in the focus of attention is represented by increased activation in inferior temporal representational cortices relative to other information in short-term memory. Functional connectivity analyses suggest that activation of these inferior temporal regions is maintained via frontal- and posterior-parietal contributions. By contrast, other items in short-term memory demand retrieval mechanisms that are represented by increased activation in the medial temporal lobe and left mid-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. These results show that there are two distinctly different sorts of access to information in short-term memory, and that access by retrieval operations makes use of neural machinery similar to that used in long-term memory retrieval.
Circulating immune mediators are closely linked in adult-onset type 1 diabetes as well as in non-diabetic subjects

Abstract Relationships between circulating immune mediators (cytokines, chemokines and growth factors) and a beta cell destructive autoimmune process in adult-onset type 1 diabetes are poorly elucidated. We measured serum levels of immune mediators in type 1 diabetic patients in the context of ongoing deterioration of endogenous insulin secretion. Levels of 27 immune mediators were measured in 34 GADA (glutamic acid decarboxylase antibodies) positive type 1 diabetic patients, aged 27.4 ± 1.2 years at a mean of 7 weeks after diagnosis (designated 0 month) and 6 months later. Endogenous insulin secretion was assessed by C-peptide glucagon stimulation tests during 12 months. Additional data (for baseline analysis) was obtained in 9 GADA positive type 1 diabetic subjects and in 43 non-diabetic age- and sex-matched subjects. In general, the levels of immune mediators displayed large inter- but small intra-individual differences with only minor changes observed between measurements at 0 month and at 6 months. Levels of the majority of immune mediators were strongly and positively correlated to each other not only in the diabetic, but also in the non-diabetic subjects. Body weight (BMI) was positively associated with levels of IL-1 ra, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-17, Basic FGF, GCSF, IFN gamma and MIP-1 alpha. Adjustment for BMI removed most associations to C-peptide. When adjusted for BMI, levels at 0 month for Basic FGF and MIP-1 alpha were inversely associated with the percentage decline in stimulated C-peptide from 0 to 12 months (nominally p < 0.05). We conclude that associations between different immune mediators are strikingly but not exclusively tied in autoimmune diabetes. BMI is a major confounder in the analysis of associations to autoimmunity. Associations of beta cell decline to individual immune mediators need confirmation in further studies. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00131755.