Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Context Directed Speech Recognition in Dialogue Systems

For the time being, research and development on spoken dialogue systems (SDSs) become more and more important with the constant increasing demands. However, defects of the recognition strategies adopted for the sake of only laboratory demos are revealed evidently under the real-world circumstances, with the utterances of the casual style instead of the declamatory one. Both the shortage of domain-specific corpus and the existence of other empirical/heuristic knowledge appeal new methods to improve the recognition performance. Here we present a recognition framework where the dialogue contexts (DCs) are incorporated in as a restrictive source. Firstly, the idea of a focus expected (FE) under certain dialogue states is introduced. Secondly, the adaptation of lexicon and grammar rules is proposed. Finally, the recognition automaton generation under a specific FE is put forward. Experiments are carried out in the dialogue system EasyFlight, and the results show the effectiveness of the strategies.
Pat: A P2P Based Publish/Subscribe System for QoS Information Dissemination of Web Services

A fundamental problem that confronts QoS-aware service selection and composition is the efficient and timely QoS information obtainment. Current research on this problem usually involves query-based or monitoring-based methods. However, in a dynamic and volatile service oriented Computing (SOC) environment, these solutions suffer some or all of the limitations, such as cost, timeliness guarantee and salability. This paper presents Pat, a P2P based publish/subscribe system to disseminate new revised QoS information. Pat aims at reliable and efficient QoS information dissemination in large-scale SOC environments. It exploits specialized rendezvous points (RP) and a replicas mechanism to reduce the risk of subscriptions loss and consequently improve reliability. A reverse RP ring is designed to quicken subscription delivery and QoS information publication. In addition, an optimization mechanism for composite services is built into Pat, which helps to reduce notification traffic. Simulation results show that Pat is reliable, efficient and scalable.
The Sound of Tropical Cyclones

AbstractUnderwater ambient sound levels beneath tropical cyclones were measured using hydrophones onboard Lagrangian floats, which were air deployed in the paths of Hurricane Gustav (2008) and Typhoons Megi (2010) and Fanapi (2010). The sound levels at 40 Hz–50 kHz from 1- to 50-m depth were measured at wind speeds up to 45 m s−1. The measurements reveal a complex dependence of the sound level on wind speed due to the competing effects of sound generation by breaking wind waves and sound attenuation by quiescent bubbles. Sound level increases monotonically with increasing wind speed only for low frequencies ( 200 Hz), sound level first increases and then decreases with increasing wind speed. There is a wind speed that produces a maximum sound level for each frequency; the wind speed of the maximum sound level decreases with frequency. Sound level at >20 kHz mostly decreases with wind speed over the wind range 15–45 m s−1. The sound field is nearly uniform with depth in the.
Challenges posed by non‐random missing quality of life data in an advanced‐stage colorectal cancer clinical trial

Effects of variations in agent, dose, and route of treatment administration on patient reported quality of life (QOL) were examined for 279 patients enrolled on a seven‐arm randomized clinical trial (S8905) of 5‐FU and its modulation for advanced colorectal cancer. Patients completed QOL questionnaires at randomization and weeks 6, 11, and 21 post‐randomization with five QOL endpoints considered primary: three treatment‐specific symptoms (stomatitis, diarrhea, and hand/foot sensitivity); physical functioning; and emotional functioning. Patient compliance with the QOL assessment schedule was good, supporting the feasibility of including QOL measures in cooperative group trials. However, death and deteriorating health produced substantial missing data. Cross‐sectional analyses indicated that the seven therapeutic arms did not differ in their impact on QOL. Unfortunately, longitudinal analyses of the QOL data were inappropriate given non‐random missing data. Graphical presentation of non‐random missing data identified the seriousness of this problem and its effect on potential conclusions about QOL during treatment. This problem appears to be particularly challenging in the context of advanced‐stage disease. Failure to recognize the presence of non‐random missing data can lead to serious overestimates of patient QOL over time. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
StopWatch: A Cloud Architecture for Timing Channel Mitigation

This article presents StopWatch, a system that defends against timing-based side-channel attacks that arise from coresidency of victims and attackers in infrastructure-as-a-service clouds. StopWatch triplicates each cloud-resident guest virtual machine (VM) and places replicas so that the three replicas of a guest VM are coresident with nonoverlapping sets of (replicas of) other VMs. StopWatch uses the timing of I/O events at a VM’s replicas collectively to determine the timings observed by each one or by an external observer, so that observable timing behaviors are similarly likely in the absence of any other individual, coresident VMs. We detail the design and implementation of StopWatch in Xen, evaluate the factors that influence its performance, demonstrate its advantages relative to alternative defenses against timing side channels with commodity hardware, and address the problem of placing VM replicas in a cloud under the constraints of StopWatch so as to still enable adequate cloud utilization.
A Validation of Metrics for Community Resilience to Natural Hazards and Disasters Using the Recovery from Hurricane Katrina as a Case Study

How communities respond to and recover from damaging hazard events could be contextualized in terms of their disaster resilience. Although numerous efforts have sought to explain the determinants of disaster resilience, the ability to measure the concept is increasingly being seen as a key step toward disaster risk reduction. The development of standards that are meaningful for measuring resilience remains a challenge, however. This is partially because there are few explicit sets of procedures within the literature that outline how to measure and compare communities in terms of their resilience. The primary purpose of this article is to advance the understanding of the multidimensional nature of disaster resilience and to provide an externally validated set of metrics for measuring resilience at subcounty levels of geography. A set of metrics covering social, economic, institutional, infrastructural, community-based, and environmental dimensions of resilience was identified, and the validity of the metrics is addressed via real-world application using Hurricane Katrina and the recovery of the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the United States as a case study.
Interactions between circadian clocks and photosynthesis for the temporal and spatial coordination of metabolism

All plant productivity, including the food that we eat, arises from the capture of solar energy by plants. At most latitudes sunlight is available for only part of the 24 h day due to the rotation of the planet. This rhythmic and predictable alteration in the environment has driven the evolution of the circadian clock, which has an extremely pervasive influence upon plant molecular biology, physiology and phenology. A number of recent studies have demonstrated that the circadian clock is integrated very closely with photosynthesis and its metabolic products. We consider the coupling of the circadian oscillator with carbohydrate biochemistry and the connections between the nuclear-encoded circadian clock and processes within chloroplasts. We describe how this might provide adaptations to optimize plant performance in an environment that varies both predictably upon a daily and seasonal basis, and unpredictably due to the weather.
The living land : agriculture, food and community regeneration in rural Europe

A Living Land for Rural Europe * Part I: Towards Sustainable Agriculture - The Dying Land: Modern Agriculture's Legacy * Sustainable Agriculture in Europe * Part II: Towards Sustainable Food Systems - The Food System Hunger and Plenty * Adding Value to Food for Farmers and Local Communities * Part III: Towards Sustainable Rural Communities - Dying Rural Communities: The Social Costs of Countryside Modernisation * Participation and Partnerships for Community Regeneration * Part IV: Making Support and New Policies for A Living Land * References * Index
Co‐Evaporated Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells with >6.0% Efficiency

High power conversion efficiencies of over 6.0% are achieved with a squaraine compound from co-deposited photovoltaic cells with a simple device structure, in which the efficiency is insensitive to blending ratios and thicknesses of photoactive layers. It demonstrates the huge potential of low molecular weight materials in photovoltaic cells via vacuum processes.
Crustal structure of northern Juan de Fuca Plate from multichannel reflection data

The northern Juan de Fuca plate forms the basement of a young (<8 Ma) ocean basin off western Canada. Two subparallel multichannel seismic reflection lines, totaling 230 km in length and trending obliquely to the spreading direction, were recorded across the basin and provide high-quality images of crustal structure. The processing sequence applied to the data includes a prestack inside-trace mute of common midpoint (CMP) gathers to reduce noise levels on the deep data, CMP stack, poststack dip filtering, f-k migration, and band-pass filtering. Coherency-filtered stacks are helpful in tracing weaker reflectors. The stacked sections reveal a horizontally layered sedimentary sequence overlying a rugged and prominent basement reflector which dips slightly landward. Topography of the basement was formed at or near the spreading ridge; there is no evidence for subsequent deformation. A strong, fairly continuous reflection from the base of the crust (oceanic Moho) at 2.0–2.2 s two-way travel time below the basement surface generally mimics the basement topography and shows the characteristic multicyclic waveform seen in other surveys. Estimates of reflection coefficients for the Moho at several locations indicate that, in general, the crust-mantle transition is unlikely to occur as a discrete first-order interface. Although much of the crust appears acoustically transparent, a number of discontinuous intracrustal reflectors are observed over 40 km at the eastern end of the northern line; some of these are interpreted to arise from the oceanic layer 2/3 and layer 3A/3B boundaries. The noncontinuous nature of these reflectors is an indication of the complexity of the processes producing intracrustal reflectivity and the lateral variability of crustal formation. However, the interpreted crustal thickness varies by only about 10% away from the distal ends of spreading segments, indicating that while the process of crustal formation may be locally variable, it produces a broadly uniform result.
A review of the main structural and magmatic features of northern Sumatra

Structural and magmatic features of northern Sumatra are reviewed, based on a continuing programme of reconnaissance mapping. Distinction is drawn between Tertiary sedimentation on the W and that in the centre and E, the dividing line being the main outcrop of the Sumatran Fault System (SFS) which traverses the length of the island. Large transcurrent movements on the SFS are indicated by (a) regional slivers of oceanic crust trapped at the leading junction of the western continental plate of Sumatra as it moved NW against the main mass of the island; (b) palaeomagnetic evidence (N. S. Haile) here interpreted as showing eastern Sumatra as part of the Malaya block and occupying its equatorial position since the Cretaceous in contrast to the NW tip of Sumatra, W of the SFS, for which more southerly palaeolatitudes have been determined; (c) juxtaposition of Li-rich and Li-poor geochemical provinces along the SFS. The Sumatran magmatic arc commenced at least in the Mesozoic. The offset of the current volcanic arc to the E at Lake Toba is ascribed to a change in the angle of the Benioff Zone, the dividing line suggested being a split in the descending plate which is coincident with prolongation of the Investigator transform fault. The SFS continues N of Sumatra as a transform of the Andaman spreading complex, and terminates in the S in the Sunda Strait area either at the edge of the continental block or against a major plate junction indicated by the commencement of deep focus earthquakes E of Sumatra.
Analyses of a Multimodal Spontaneous Facial Expression Database

Creating a large and natural facial expression database is a prerequisite for facial expression analysis and classification. It is, however, not only time consuming but also difficult to capture an adequately large number of spontaneous facial expression images and their meanings because no standard, uniform, and exact measurements are available for database collection and annotation. Thus, comprehensive first-hand data analyses of a spontaneous expression database may provide insight for future research on database construction, expression recognition, and emotion inference. This paper presents our analyses of a multimodal spontaneous facial expression database of natural visible and infrared facial expressions (NVIE). First, the effectiveness of emotion-eliciting videos in the database collection is analyzed with the mean and variance of the subjects' self-reported data. Second, an interrater reliability analysis of raters' subjective evaluations for apex expression images and sequences is conducted using Kappa and Kendall's coefficients. Third, we propose a matching rate matrix to explore the agreements between displayed spontaneous expressions and felt affective states. Lastly, the thermal differences between the posed and spontaneous facial expressions are analyzed using a paired-samples t-test. The results of these analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of our emotion-inducing experimental design, the gender difference in emotional responses, and the coexistence of multiple emotions/expressions. Facial image sequences are more informative than apex images for both expression and emotion recognition. Labeling an expression image or sequence with multiple categories together with their intensities could be a better approach than labeling the expression image or sequence with one dominant category. The results also demonstrate both the importance of facial expressions as a means of communication to convey affective states and the diversity of the displayed manifestations of felt emotions. There are indeed some significant differences between the temperature difference data of most posed and spontaneous facial expressions, many of which are found in the forehead and cheek regions.
Evaluation of Diffusion-Tensor Imaging-Based Global Search and Tractography for Tumor Surgery Close to the Language System

Pre-operative planning and intra-operative guidance in neurosurgery require detailed information about the location of functional areas and their anatomo-functional connectivity. In particular, regarding the language system, post-operative deficits such as aphasia can be avoided. By combining functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging, the connectivity between functional areas can be reconstructed by tractography techniques that need to cope with limitations such as limited resolution and low anisotropic diffusion close to functional areas. Tumors pose particular challenges because of edema, displacement effects on brain tissue and infiltration of white matter. Under these conditions, standard fiber tracking methods reconstruct pathways of insufficient quality. Therefore, robust global or probabilistic approaches are required. In this study, two commonly used standard fiber tracking algorithms, streamline propagation and tensor deflection, were compared with a previously published global search, Gibbs tracking and a connection-oriented probabilistic tractography approach. All methods were applied to reconstruct neuronal pathways of the language system of patients undergoing brain tumor surgery, and control subjects. Connections between Broca and Wernicke areas via the arcuate fasciculus (AF) and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) were validated by a clinical expert to ensure anatomical feasibility, and compared using distance- and diffusion-based similarity metrics to evaluate their agreement on pathway locations. For both patients and controls, a strong agreement between all methods was observed regarding the location of the AF. In case of the IFOF however, standard fiber tracking and Gibbs tracking predominantly identified the inferior longitudinal fasciculus that plays a secondary role in semantic language processing. In contrast, global search resolved connections in almost every case via the IFOF which could be confirmed by probabilistic fiber tracking. The results show that regarding the language system, our global search is superior to clinically applied conventional fiber tracking strategies with results similar to time-consuming global or probabilistic approaches.
BCL-2 Translation Is Mediated via Internal Ribosome Entry during Cell Stress*

The cellular response to stress involves a rapid inhibition of cap-dependent translation via multiple mechanisms, yet some translation persists. This residual translation may include proteins critical to the cellular stress response. BCL-2 is a key inhibitor of intrinsic apoptotic signaling. Its primary transcript contains a 1.45-kb 5′-untranslated region (UTR) including 10 upstream AUGs that may restrict translation initiation via cap-dependent ribosome scanning. Thus, we hypothesized that this 5′-UTR may contain an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) that facilitates BCL-2 translation, particularly during cell stress. Here we show that the BCL-2 5′-UTR demonstrated IRES activity both when translated in vitro and also when m7G-capped and polyadenylated mRNA was transiently transfected into 293T cells. The activity of this IRES in unstressed cells was ∼6% the strength of the hepatitis C virus IRES but was induced 3–6-fold in a dose-dependent manner following short term treatment with either etoposide or sodium arsenite. Thus, the IRES-mediated translation of BCL-2 may enable the cell to replenish levels of this critical protein during cell stress, when cap-dependent translation is repressed, thereby maintaining the balance between pro- and anti-apoptotic BCL-2 family members in the cell and preventing unwarranted induction of apoptosis.
Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning and Digital Images for 3 D Modelling of the Erechtheion , Acropolis of Athens

This work is part of the project “Development of Geographic Information Systems at the Acropolis of Athens“. Within this project one of the aims is the generation of a textured, high-resolution, accurate 3D model of the Erechtheion and a realistic computer animation. For most parts, we used a medium-range time-of-flight (TOF) phase-based laser scanner with minimum lateral data spacing of 1 mm and depth uncertainty of 0.2 mm. We also used high-resolution digital images for image-based reconstruction on some parts and for texture mapping. We present data capture, processing, and model generation techniques with emphasis on the encountered problems and solutions when dealing with a large complex structure, huge datasets, and field work under time constraints and challenging conditions. The experience gained, and the tools adapted for some tasks, will be valuable for other large-scale 3D modelling projects.
Peritoneal washing cytology in women: Diagnostic pitfalls and clues for correct diagnosis

The significance of peritoneal washing cytology in the management of patients with gynecologic cancer is well established. Its microscopic evaluation, however, is not always straightforward. Previous studies have identified some of the conditions that may result in misinterpretation of cytologic results. This report reviews the literature and describes other sources of diagnostic difficulties and clues for correct diagnosis. In addition, an outline for distinguishing endosalpingiosis from borderline and welt‐differentiated serous carcinoma is proposed.
Content-based remote sensing image retrieval

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) which provide an effective and advanced means to manage and utilize image database, is one of the most active research topic of image comprehension, image database and computer vision. CBIR system is one of the most important offers of services and applications to Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), and SDI will rely on CBIR more and more. Nevertheless, at present, the main research result of CBIR concentrates on small-sized simple image's retrieval, such as fingerprints' and trademarks' retrieval. Limited by remote sensing images' property, such as various dimension, huge data size and plenty of information, research about remote sensing image CBIR rarely reported and there isn't a mature remote sensing image CBIR system now. This paper analyzes the challenges and difficulties that remote sensing image CBIR system facing, including the technique of remote sensing image's feature extraction and representation, the organizing and management of remote sensing image data in CBIR system, the utilizing of remote sensing image's topological relationship in CBIR system, high-dimensional vector indexing technique and self-learning method. Then a three-layer architecture is constructed for remote sensing image CBIR system. Finally, we predict the tendency and trend of the remote sensing image CBIR, including the feature extraction and representation method will rely more and more on image's semantic information, the research of compressed image's retrieval will be more extractive, and unified model of content-based remote sensing image retrieval system will be constructed.
Foraging strategies in grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) : foraging effort and prey selection

Swimming speeds and prey selection of temporally captive, wild grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) were investigated in relation to prey characteristics in an experimental set-up at the Sea Mammal Research Unit (St Andrews, UK). For breathhold divers, such as seals, the cost of swimming is a key variable in the management of oxygen stores. Thus it is likely that they modulate their swim speeds in order to maximise time spent feeding at a prey patch. We observed a strong relationship between swimming speed and stroke and glide pattern. Seals decreased their swim speeds by increasing their gliding period and as a result they decreased their oxygen consumption. Results indicated that mean swim speed decreased significantly with increasing distance to the patch, consistent with optimality model predictions. In addition, seals modified their swim speeds in response to changes in the speed and density of their prey. Seals decreased their swim speed as the speed of the prey increased. On the other hand, seals increased their swim speed as the density of the prey increased. Concurrently, bottom durations significantly increased suggesting that seals’ foraging strategies allowed them to most efficiently exploit their environment. Prey selection experiments investigated dietary preferences and the factors affecting their choice to select between different types of food. In the present study, seals maximised some aspects of their energy intake but also displayed some individual prey preferences. These findings indicate the importance of fine-scale observations of foraging behaviour and the value of experimental protocols in developing our understanding of marine mammal foraging behaviour.