Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cochlear Administration of Adenosine Triphosphate Facilitates Recovery from Acoustic Trauma (Temporary Threshold Shift)

Background: Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) has often been used in the treatment of acoustic trauma although evidence supporting its clinical use was lacking. The aim of this study was to evaluate the chronic effects of ATP on acoustic trauma in guinea pigs. Methods: We infused ATP into the perilymph of the guinea pig cochlea concurrently with intense noise exposure to investigate the effect of ATP on the process of recovery after acoustic trauma. We assessed auditory brainstem response (ABR) thresholds to evaluate cochlear function. Results: After noise exposure (120 dB SPL, 5 h), ABR thresholds showed an increase of approximately 50 dB SPL that returned to normal after 14 days. Cochlear function in ATP-treated ears recovered more quickly than in control ears. The effect of ATP was inhibited by the administration of the ATP receptor antagonist: pyridoxal- phosphate-6-azophenyl-2′,4′-disulfonic acid. Conclusion: These results suggest that ATP mitigates the effects of noise trauma through the ATP receptor.
Uncorrelated Weighted Median Filtering for Noise Removal in SuperDARN

Super DARN operating frequencies from 10MHz-15MHz are susceptible to clutter originating from unwanted altitude backscatter, man-made noise exhibiting a Gaussian distribution and correlated speckle noise from pulses emitted from other similar Super DARN radars operating at the same frequency. The paper focuses on removing man-made clutter and uncorrelated speckle noise noise by prior measurement of received noise signal. Based on noise information, an uncorrelated weighted median filter is proposed and used to remove unwanted clutter.
Faster Algorithms for Semi-Matching Problems

We consider the problem of finding <i>semi-matching</i> in bipartite graphs, which is also extensively studied under various names in the scheduling literature. We give faster algorithms for both weighted and unweighted cases. For the weighted case, we give an <i>O</i>(<i>nm</i>log <i>n</i>)-time algorithm, where <i>n</i> is the number of vertices and <i>m</i> is the number of edges, by exploiting the geometric structure of the problem. This improves the classical <i>O</i>(<i>n</i><sup>3</sup>)-time algorithms by Horn [1973] and Bruno et al. [1974b]. For the unweighted case, the bound can be improved even further. We give a simple divide-and-conquer algorithm that runs in <i>O</i>(√<i>nm</i>log <i>n</i>) time, improving two previous <i>O</i>(<i>nm</i>)-time algorithms by Abraham [2003] and Harvey et al. [2003, 2006]. We also extend this algorithm to solve the <i>Balanced Edge Cover</i> problem in <i>O</i>(√<i>nm</i>log <i>n</i>) time, improving the previous <i>O</i>(<i>nm</i>)-time algorithm by Harada et al. [2008].
Multi-feature subspace analysis for audio-vidoe based multi-modal person recognition

Biometric person recognition has received a lot of attention in recent years due to the growing security demands in commercial and law enforcement applications. However, using a single biometric has several problems. In order to alleviate these problems, multi-modal biometric systems are proposed by combining various biometric modalities to improve the robustness of person authentication. A typical application is to combine both audio and face for multimodal person recognition, since either face or voice is among the most natural biometrics that people use to identify each other. In this paper, a novel approach called multi-feature subspace analysis (MFSA) is proposed for audio-video based biometric person recognition. In the MFSA framework, each face sequence or utterance is represented with a fix-length feature vector, and then subspace analysis method is performed on a collection of random subspaces to construct an ensemble of classifiers for robust recognition. Experiments on the XM2VTSDB corpus sufficiently validate the feasibility and effectiveness of our new approach.
High-Performance Memory-Based Web Servers: Kernel and User-Space Performance

Web server performance has steadily improved since the inception of the World Wide Web. We observe performance gains of two orders of magnitude between the original process-based Web servers and today’s threaded Web servers. Commercial and academic Web servers achieved much of these gains using new or improved event-notification mechanisms and techniques to eliminate reading and copying data, both of which required new operating system primitives. More recently, experimental and production Web servers began integrating HTTP processing in the TCP/IP stack and providing zero copy access to a kernel-managed cache. These kernelmode Web servers improved upon newer user-mode Web servers by a factor of two to six. This paper analyzes the significant performance gap between the newer user-mode and kernel-mode Web servers on Linux and Windows 2000. Several user-mode and kernel-mode Web servers are compared in three areas: data movement, event notification, and communication code path. To establish a user-mode baseline, the paper measures the performance of highly optimized Web servers. The paper positions these user-mode implementations with those from related research projects. In particular, the “Adaptive Fast Path Architecture” (AFPA) is described and then used to implement kernel-mode Web servers on Linux and Windows 2000. AFPA is a platform for implementing kernel-mode network servers on production operating systems without kernel modifications. AFPA runs on Linux, Windows 2000, AIX, and S/390. The results show that kernel-mode performance greatly Philippe Joubert and Rich Neves’ current affiliation is ReefEdge Inc. email: philippe,rich@reefedge.com email: rbking2@us.ibm. com Mark Russinovich’s current affiliation is Winternals Software, 3101 Bee Caves Rd, Austin TX 78746. email: mark@sysinternals.com xemail: traceyj@us.ibm. com exceeds the performance of user-mode servers implementing a variety of performance optimizations. The paper concludes that significant opportunities remain to bridge the gap between user-mode and kernel-mode Web server performance.
PROCESSUS DECISIONNEL EN MATIERE DE REMUNERATION DES DIRIGEANTS: LE CAS VINCI

Face aux nombreuses questions soulevees par les recherches sur le lien entre remuneration des dirigeants et performance, ainsi que sur l'impact de certains mecanismes de gouvernance sur les montants et la forme des remunerations, la presente recherche fait une contribution a une meilleure comprehension du processus decisionnel qui faconne la politique de remuneration des patrons des grandes entreprises cotees. Par rapport aux approches traditionnelles en la matiere, notre analyse s'inscrit dans un cadre conceptuel elargi de la gouvernance, qui represente cette derniere comme un systeme complexe ou differents acteurs actionnent divers mecanismes de gouvernance soit comme levier disciplinaire, soit comme levier comportemental pour peser sur la determination des remunerations. Ce prisme resolument systemique et processuel impose l'etude de cas longitudinale comme methode empirique de choix. Grâce au jugement en appel concernant l'affaire des remunerations de l'ancien dirigeant du groupe Vinci, nous avons pu beneficier d'un materiau empirique particulierement pertinent concernant un sujet sensible, afin d'illustrer la plausibilite du cadre conceptuel.
Synthesizing emotions in speech: is it time to get excited?

Modern speech synthesis systems with very high intelligibility are readily available in a number of languages. However, the output from all present systems is still readily identifiable as being machine generated-the output does not sound "natural". One aspect of naturalness is the variability introduced by the emotional state of the speaker, and related pragmatic effects; no current commercial systems include such variation. Comparatively little work has been done to investigate how a speaker's emotional state creates variation in the speech signal, and this work has traditionally been performed by psychologists and has remained distinct from mainstream speech science. Current research suggests that there will be considerable effort involved in producing any accurate description of pragmatic variations in speech, but there has recently been increasing interest in this area due to potential applications in many branches of speech technology. The paper describes a prototype system which has been constructed to simulate emotion in speech synthesized by rule. The system is based on emotion information from the literature, and it simulates a range of emotions using a commercial synthesiser. The use of emotion models and their applicability in the area of speech technology is discussed. The limitations of our current knowledge in the area of vocal emotion are discussed, and suggestions are presented for future research in this area.
Four-dimensional live imaging of apical biosynthetic trafficking reveals a post-Golgi sorting role of apical endosomal intermediates

Significance The establishment and maintenance of epithelial polarity relies on the tight regulation of vesicular trafficking, which ensures that apical and basolateral membrane proteins reach their designated plasma membrane domains. Here, we report the direct visualization of biosynthetic trans-endosomal trafficking of apically targeted rhodopsin in polarized epithelial cells. Our work provides novel insights into the crosstalk between biosynthetic and endocytic pathways. We demonstrate that the small GTPase Rab11a regulates sorting at apical recycling endosomes (AREs) and is also implicated in carrier vesicle docking at the apical plasma membrane. We further unveil a surprising role for dynamin-2 in the release of apical carriers from AREs. Our data indicate that trans-endosomal trafficking is indispensable for accurate and high-fidelity apical delivery. Emerging data suggest that in polarized epithelial cells newly synthesized apical and basolateral plasma membrane proteins traffic through different endosomal compartments en route to the respective cell surface. However, direct evidence for trans-endosomal pathways of plasma membrane proteins is still missing and the mechanisms involved are poorly understood. Here, we imaged the entire biosynthetic route of rhodopsin-GFP, an apical marker in epithelial cells, synchronized through recombinant conditional aggregation domains, in live Madin-Darby canine kidney cells using spinning disk confocal microscopy. Our experiments directly demonstrate that rhodopsin-GFP traffics through apical recycling endosomes (AREs) that bear the small GTPase Rab11a before arriving at the apical membrane. Expression of dominant-negative Rab11a drastically reduced apical delivery of rhodopsin-GFP and caused its missorting to the basolateral membrane. Surprisingly, functional inhibition of dynamin-2 trapped rhodopsin-GFP at AREs and caused aberrant accumulation of coated vesicles on AREs, suggesting a previously unrecognized role for dynamin-2 in the scission of apical carrier vesicles from AREs. A second set of experiments, using a unique method to carry out total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) from the apical side, allowed us to visualize the fusion of rhodopsin-GFP carrier vesicles, which occurred randomly all over the apical plasma membrane. Furthermore, two-color TIRFM showed that Rab11a-mCherry was present in rhodopsin-GFP carrier vesicles and was rapidly released upon fusion onset. Our results provide direct evidence for a role of AREs as a post-Golgi sorting hub in the biosynthetic route of polarized epithelia, with Rab11a regulating cargo sorting at AREs and carrier vesicle docking at the apical membrane.
Abstract Research in software engineering: an analysis of the literature

In this paper, we examine the state of software engineering (SE) research from the point of view of the following research questions: 1. What topics do SE researchers address? 2. What research approaches do SE researchers use? 3. What research methods do SE researchers use? 4. On what reference disciplines does SE research depend? 5. At what levels of analysis do SE researchers conduct research? To answer those questions, we examined 369 papers in six leading research journals in the SE ®eld, answering those research questions for each paper. From that examination, we conclude that SE research is diverse regarding topic, narrow regarding research approach and method, inwardly-focused regarding reference discipline, and technically focused (as opposed to behaviorally focused) regarding level of analysis. We pass no judgment on the SE ®eld as a result of these ®ndings. Instead, we present them as groundwork for future SE research efforts. q 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Anthropometry, breast cancer and menopausal status: Use of repeated measurements over 10 years of follow‐up—results of the French E3N women's cohort study

The association between weight, BMI and breast cancer was analyzed on 94,805 women of the E3N cohort according to their menopausal status. Seven hundred eighty‐six incident invasive premenopausal breast cancers and 1,522 incident invasive postmenopausal breast cancers occurred during a mean follow‐up of 9.7 years. Weight and BMI were updated every 24 months and considered as time‐dependent variables. Data were analyzed using multivariate Cox proportional hazards models. Trend RRs of premenopausal breast cancer were 0.97 (0.92–1.01) for a 5 kg increase in weight and 0.96 (0.91–1.01) for a 2 kg/m2 increase in BMI, adjusted for other known risk factors. Opposite trend RRs were found after menopause: 1.05 (1.02–1.08) for weight and 1.06 (1.02–1.09) for BMI, respectively, for similar increases. Women with a BMI of over 30 kg/m2 had a RR of premenopausal breast cancer of 0.66 (0.40–1.10) compared to those with a BMI of between 18.5 and 25 kg/m2. Postmenopausal women with a BMI of over 30 kg/m2 had a RR of breast cancer of 1.23 (1.00–1.59). The increase in risk of postmenopausal breast cancer with increased weight or BMI was similar whatever the HRT used, although the point estimates were higher in HRT users. We strongly recommend to use anthropometric measurements updated during follow‐up to assess the effect of weight, BMI on breast cancer risk. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A microcell/macrocell cellular architecture for low- and high-mobility wireless users

The use of a wireless network having a two-tier architecture to serve both conventional mobile subscribers and quasi-stationary (e.g. PCN) subscribers is explored. The latter are served by microcells which are embedded within macrocells that serve the mobile users. Four approaches to sharing the spectrum between the two tiers, using per-cell capacity as a measure, are evaluated. The best approach in terms of maximizing network capacity is apportioning a different part of the spectrum to each tier. It also has the merit of facilitating the incorporation of new systems with existing ones. <<ETX>>
The integrin VLA-4 supports tethering and rolling in flow on VCAM-1

Selectins have previously been shown to tether a flowing leukocyte to a vessel wall and mediate rolling. Here, we report that an intergrin, VLA- 4, can also support tethering and rolling. Blood T lymphocytes and alpha 4 integrin-transfected cells can tether in shear flow, and then roll, through binding of the intergrin VLA-4 to purified VCAM-1 on the wall of a flow chamber. VLA-4 transfectants showed similar tethering and rolling on TNF-stimulated endothelium. Tethering efficiency, rolling velocity, and resistance to detachment are related to VCAM-1 density. Tethering and rolling did not occur on ICAM-1, fibronectin, or fibronectin fragments, and tethering did not require integrin activation or the presence of an alpha 4 cytoplasmic domain. Arrest of rolling cells on VCAM-1 occurred spontaneously, and/or was triggered by integrin activating agents Mn2+, phorbol ester, and mAb TS2/16. These agents, and the alpha 4 cytoplasmic domain, promoted increased resistance to detachment. Together the results show that VLA-4 is a versatile integrin that can mediate tethering, rolling, and firm arrest on VCAM-1.
An E-learning Ecosystem Based on Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Recently the research community has believed that an e-learning ecosystem is the next generation e-learning. However, the current models of e-learning ecosystems lack the support of underlying infrastructures, which can dynamically allocate the required computation and storage resources for e-learning ecosystems. Cloud computing is a promising infrastructure which provides computation and storage resources as services. Hence, this paper introduces Cloud computing into an e-learning ecosystem as its infrastructure. In this paper, an e-learning ecosystem based on Cloud computing infrastructure is presented. Cloud computing infrastructure and related mechanisms allow for the stability, equilibrium, efficient resource use, and sustainability of an e-learning ecosystem.
Novel substrate integrated waveguide layer-to-layer transitions

In this paper, the authors presented two SIW layer-to-layer transitions: transitions between adjacent layers and transitions between unadjacent layers. A taper transition between the microstrip line and the SIW is used in these SIW transitions, which can provide broadband characteristics. These SIW transitions between layers take the advantages of low cost, low loss, broadband, low profile, etc., and can easily be integrated into microwave/RF multilayered PCB or LTCC circuits.
Neutrophil count and the inflammation-based glasgow prognostic score predict survival in patients with advanced gastric cancer receiving first-line chemotherapy.

PURPOSE To explore the value of systemic inflammatory markers as independent prognostic factors and the extent these markers improve prognostic classification for patients with inoperable advanced or metastatic gastric cancer (GC) receiving palliative chemotherapy. METHODS We studied the prognostic value of systemic inflammatory factors such as circulating white blood cell count and its components as well as that combined to form inflammation-based prognostic scores (Glasgow Prognostic Score (GPS), Neutrophil-Lymphocyte Ratio (NLR), Platelet Lymphocyte Ratio (PLR), Prognostic Index (PI) and Prognostic Nutritional Index (PNI)) in 384 patients with inoperable advanced or metastatic gastric cancer (GC) receiving first-line chemotherapy. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to examine the impact of inflammatory markers on overall survival (OS). RESULTS Univariate analysis revealed that an elevated white blood cell, neutrophil and/or platelet count, a decreased lymphocyte count, a low serum albumin concentration, and high CRP concentration, as well as elevated NLR/PLR , GPS, PI, PNI were significant predictors of shorter OS. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that only elevated neutrophil count (HR 3.696, p=0.003) and higher GPS (HR 1.621, p=0.01) were independent predictors of poor OS. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated elevated pretreatment neutrophil count and high GPS to be independent predictors of shorter OS in inoperable advanced or metastatic GC patients treated with first-line chemotherapy. Upon validation of these data in independent studies, stratification of patients using these markers in future clinical trials is recommended.
Asymptotic solution with higher-order terms for scattered fields by an impedance discontinuity of a planar impedance surface

In this study, we have derived a novel asymptotic solution with higher-order terms for the scattered field by an impedance discontinuity of a planar surface. In the derivation of the asymptotic solution, we have applied the aperture field method to obtain an integral representation for the scattered field. Then we have used the saddle point technique applicable uniformly as the saddle point approaches the endpoint of the integral. It is shown that when both the source and observation points are placed sufficiently far away from the impedance surface, the asymptotic solution for the scattered field is represented by the geometrically reflected ray on a planar surface and the diffracted ray at the impedance discontinuity. We have confirmed the validity and utility of the asymptotic solution with the higher-order terms by comparing with the reference solution calculated from the numerical integration of the integral representation. We have also shown the physical interpretation of the asymptotic solution.
Adaptive training using discriminative mapping transforms

Speaker adaptive training (SAT) is a useful technique for building speech recognition systems on non-homogeneous data. When combining SAT with discriminative training criteria, maximum likelihood (ML) transforms are often used for unsupervised adaptation tasks. This is because discriminatively estimated transforms are highly sensitive to errors in the supervision hypothesis. In this paper, speaker adaptive training based on discriminative mapping transforms (DMTs) is proposed. DMTs are speaker-independent discriminative transforms that are applied to ML-estimated speaker-specific transforms. As DMTs are estimated during training, they are not affected by errors in the supervision hypothesis. The proposed method was evaluated on an English conversational telephone speech task. It was found to significantly outperform the standard discriminative SAT schemes. Copyright © 2008 ISCA.
Multi-objective optimization based on the integration of Linear Physical Programming within Analytical Target Cascading

The large-scale complex system of the practical engineering design always contains multiply optimization objectives and multiply disciplines. Aiming at the large-scale system Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) design problem with the serious conflicts between the different design objectives, we describe the integration of Linear Physical Programming within Analytical Target Cascading framework in this paper. The proposed framework would enable designers to formulate multiple system-level objectives in terms of physically meaningful parameters, and would hierarchically decompose the multilevel system into several small and more manageable subsystems for saving computational cost. A mathematical example using MDO method demonstrated the proposed framework. Keywords-multi-objective optimization; MDO; linear physical programming;Analytical Target Cascading