Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ROBUST AUTOMATIC PHONEME RECOGNITION FEATURES USING COMPLEX WAVELET PACKET TRANSFORM COEFFICIENTS

To improve the performance of phoneme based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) in noisy environment; we developed a new technique that could add robustness to clean phonemes features. These robust features are obtained from Complex Wavelet Packet Transform (CWPT) coefficients. Since the CWPT coefficients represent all different frequency bands of the input signal, decomposing the input signal into complete CWPT tree would also cover all frequencies involved in recognition process. For time overlapping signals with different frequency contents, e. g. phoneme signal with noises, its CWPT coefficients are the combination of CWPT coefficients of phoneme signal and CWPT coefficients of noises. The CWPT coefficients of phonemes signal would be changed according to frequency components contained in noises. Since the numbers of phonemes in every language are relatively small (limited) and already well known, one could easily derive principal component vectors from clean training dataset using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). These principal component vectors could be used then to add robustness and minimize noises effects in testing phase. Simulation results, using Alpha Numeric 4 (AN4) from Carnegie Mellon University and NOISEX-92 examples from Rice University, showed that this new technique could be used as features extractor that improves the robustness of phoneme based ASR systems in various adverse noisy conditions and still preserves the performance in clean environments.
Stoppable Paxos

A stoppable state machine is one whose execution can be terminated by a special stopping command. Stoppable state machines can be used to implement reconfiguration in a replicated state machine; a reconfigurable state machine is implemented by a sequence of stoppable state machines, each running in a fixed configuration. Stoppable Paxos, a variant of the ordinary Paxos algorithm, implements a replicated stoppable state machine.
Introduction to simulation

Simulation is a powerful tool if understood and used properly. This introduction to simulation tutorial is designed to teach the basics of simulation, including structure, function, data generated, and its proper use. The introduction starts with a definition of simulation, goes through a talk about what makes up a simulation, how the simulation actually works, and how to handle data generated by the simulation. Throughout the paper, there is discussion on issues concerning the use of simulation in industry.
Worse Breast Cancer Prognosis of BRCA1/BRCA2 Mutation Carriers: What's the Evidence? A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis

Objective Conflicting conclusions have been published regarding breast cancer survival of BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. Here we provide an evidence-based systematic literature review. Methods Eligible publications were observational studies assessing the survival of breast cancer patients carrying a BRCA1/2 mutation compared to non-carriers or the general breast cancer population. We performed meta-analyses and best-evidence syntheses for survival outcomes taking into account study quality assessed by selection bias, misclassification bias and confounding. Results Sixty-six relevant studies were identified. Moderate evidence for a worse unadjusted recurrence-free survival for BRCA1 mutation carriers was found. For BRCA1 and BRCA2 there was a tendency towards a worse breast cancer-specific and overall survival, however, results were heterogeneous and the evidence was judged to be indecisive. Surprisingly, only 8 studies considered adjuvant treatment as a confounder or effect modifier while only two studies took prophylactic surgery into account. Adjustment for tumour characteristics tended to shift the observed risk estimates towards a relatively more favourable survival. Conclusions In contrast to currently held beliefs of some oncologists, current evidence does not support worse breast cancer survival of BRCA1/2 mutation carriers in the adjuvant setting; differences if any are likely to be small. More well-designed studies are awaited.
Ecophysiological traits and their responses to drought in species from the Balearic Islands with different growth forms

Amb lobjectiu danalitzar com la biodiversitat i ladaptacio al clima mediterrani es tradueixen en una diversitat de trets ecofisiologics i la seva resposta a la sequera, i destudiar si aquesta diversitat esta relacionada amb formes de creixement i amb la historia evolutiva de les especies, es van seleccionar 24 especies mediterranies de les Illes Balears. Es va analitzar la capacitat germinativa, els efectes de la sequera en el creixement de plantules, respostes ecofisiologiques a la sequera a nivell foliar i ladaptacio de lespecificitat de la Rubisco. Es va observar una elevada variabilitat entre especies, la meitat de la qual associada a les diferents formes de creixement. No sobserva cap diferenciacio entre les especies endemiques i les no endemiques. Aquesta elevada diversitat en els trets ecofisiologics i la seva resposta a la sequera suposa un recurs potencial per identificar caracters adaptatius i un banc genetic per millorar la productivitat de cultius. Con el objetivo de analizar como la biodiversidad y la adaptacion al clima mediterraneo se traducen en una diversidad de caracteres ecofisiologicos y su respuesta a la sequia, y de estudiar si esta diversidad esta relacionada con formas de crecimiento y con la historia evolutiva de las especies, se seleccionaron 24 especies mediterraneas de las Islas Baleares. Se analizaron la capacidad germinativa, los efectos de la sequia sobre el crecimiento de las plantulas, las respuestas ecofisiologicas a la sequia a nivel foliar y la adaptacion de la especificidad de la Rubisco. Se observo una elevada variabilidad entre especies, la mitad de la cual asociada a las diferentes formas de crecimiento. No se encontraron diferencias entre las especies endemicas y las no endemicas. Esta elevada biodiversidad en respuesta a la sequia supone un recurso potencial para identificar caracteres adaptativos y un banco genetico para la mejora de la productividad de cultivos.
Exchange of organic matter and nutrients between mangroves and estuaries: myths, methodological issues and missing links

Paradigms in mangrove nutrient and organic matter dynamics are strongly influenced by earlier studies on temperate salt marsh ecosystems. The advance of modern techniques, such as stable isotopes and other tracer approaches, for quantifying material exchange between mangroves and tropical estuaries challenges many of the paradigms in mangrove-estuary material exchange. This overview in mangrove estuary exchange focuses on (1) identifying paradigms that are poorly supported by empirical evidence, (2) discussing methodological issues that influence the study of the material exchange pattern, and (3) key questions and areas that require more research effort.
DRAFT For Review Only Public Health Goal for Chlorite in Drinking Water

This Public Health Goal (PHG) technical support document provides information on health effects from contaminants in drinking water. PHGs are developed for chemical contaminants based on the best available toxicological data in the scientific literature. These documents and the analyses contained in them provide estimates of the levels of contaminants in drinking water that would pose no significant health risk to individuals consuming the water on a daily basis over a lifetime. to perform risk assessments and adopt PHGs for contaminants in drinking water based exclusively on public health considerations. The Act requires that PHGs be set in accordance with the following criteria: 1. PHGs for acutely toxic substances shall be set at levels at which no known or anticipated adverse effects on health will occur, with an adequate margin of safety. 2. PHGs for carcinogens or other substances that may cause chronic disease shall be based solely on health effects and shall be set at levels that OEHHA has determined do not pose any significant risk to health. 3. To the extent the information is available, OEHHA shall consider possible synergistic effects resulting from exposure to two or more contaminants. 4. OEHHA shall consider potential adverse effects on members of subgroups that comprise a meaningful proportion of the population, including but not limited to infants, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and individuals with a history of serious illness. 5. OEHHA shall consider the contaminant exposure and body burden levels that alter physiological function or structure in a manner that may significantly increase the risk of illness. 6. OEHHA shall consider additive effects of exposure to contaminants in media other than drinking water, including food and air, and the resulting body burden. 7. In risk assessments that involve infants and children, OEHHA shall specifically assess exposure patterns, special susceptibility, multiple contaminants with toxic mechanisms in common, and the interactions of such contaminants. 8. In cases of insufficient data for OEHHA to determine a level that creates no significant risk, OEHHA shall set the PHG at a level that is protective of public health with an adequate margin of safety. 9. In cases where scientific evidence demonstrates that a safe dose response threshold for a contaminant exists, then the PHG should be set at that threshold. 10. The PHG may be set at zero if necessary to satisfy the requirements listed above in items seven and eight. 11. PHGs adopted by …
Testing high-dimensional normality based on classical skewness and Kurtosis with a possible small sample size

Abstract By using the idea of principal component analysis, we propose an approach to applying the classical skewness and kurtosis statistics for detecting univariate normality to testing high-dimensional normality. High-dimensional sample data are projected to the principal component directions on which the classical skewness and kurtosis statistics can be constructed. The theory of spherical distributions is employed to derive the null distributions of the combined statistics constructed from the principal component directions. A Monte Carlo study is carried out to demonstrate the performance of the statistics on controlling type I error rates and a simple power comparison with some existing statistics. The effectiveness of the proposed statistics is illustrated by two real-data examples.
Determining Lake Sedimentation Rates Using Radionuclide Tracers

ii Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. Jimi Hendrix iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Thanos Papanicolaou and Dr. Christopher Wilson for their unwavering support and guidance throughout the many stages of this project. Their patience and example have been essential in my development as a graduate student, researcher, and engineer over the past year. Thank you, also to Dr. A. Jacob Odgaard for graciously agreeing to sit on my defense committee, and for traveling back to Iowa City to do so. I would also like to thank my parents and brother; the former for their steady love, constant encouragement, and harsh motivation when it was especially needed; the latter for keeping me on my toes. Finally, I would like to thank my grandparents, all of whom have been incredibly influential to me at every phase of my life. Through each of their example I have learned the immeasurable value a good work ethic, humility, patience, integrity, and reverence to name very few. They never cease to inspire and support me, and for that I could not be more grateful. iv ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to determine the origin of sediment currently collected in Black Lake, an extremely productive salmon fishing environment located along a remote section of the Alaska Peninsula, AK. To meet the goals of this project, soil cores were collected at the site during an extensive field study. The field investigation was based on a prior numerical study, which revealed the most erodible areas and the hydrologic patterns in Black Lake and its tributaries, namely the Alec River. From this study, select locations of the catchment were chosen for coring. These included the Alec River Delta, Black Lake, and four tributaries in the catchment. These samples were analyzed for the radionuclides 137 Cs and 210 Pb to determine soil deposition rates using Gamma Spectroscopy. To determine the sedimentation rate of each coring location, spikes in the 137 Cs activity were connected to the known cesium deposition peak in 1964 and the depth of soil above the peak was divided by the number of years that have passed. This gave a spatially averaged deposition rate within the lake of roughly 0.25 cm/y. This result closely compared to the numerical study of Elhakeem and Papanicolaou (2008) and to a study done in close proximity to Black Lake in the early 1990s (Stihler et al. 1992). …
Likelihood Estimation of Jump-Diffusions. Extensions from Diffusions to Jump-Diffusions, Implementation with Automatic Differentiation, and Applications

This thesis considers the problem of likelihood-based parameter estimation for time-homogeneous jump-diffusion processes. The problem is that there often is no analytic solution to the stochastic differential equations driving the process. Thus, the transition density of the process is unknown. In this thesis we build on the solution presented in Preston and Wood (2012), where the transition density of a time-homogeneous diffusion process is approximated by a saddlepoint approximation based on the approximated solution following from discretization schemes, which in turn stems from an Itô-Taylor expansion of the stochastic differential equation. The mathematical tools for understanding the method in Preston and Wood (2012) and the extended methods to jump-diffusions are developed. We reproduce the results found here, and extend the analysis with maximum likelihood estimation for benchmark processes such as the geometric Brownian motion, the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross process, and the Merton model. We also investigate the use of the renormalized saddlepoint approximation in the context of maximum likelihood estimation. The implementation of the methods is carried out with the newly released parallel programming package, Template Model Builder, which uses automatic differentiation among other things. We therefore give an introduction to the basics of automatic differentiation in the context of our computational problems, and also extend the Template Model Builder package to e.g. allow for complex numbers. Thereafter we apply the methods developed in previous chapters to the analysis of stock prices modelled as nonlinear stochastic differential equations, with and without jumps. Finally we briefly analyse some models for stochastic volatility.
Isotope geochemistry of boron in mantle rocks, tektites and meteorites

Les etudes recentes par sonde ionique des verres de basaltes oceaniques et des chondres des meteorites primitives donnent une vue generale des variations de composition isotopique du bore dans le manteau terrestre et les roches extra-terrestres. Une fois que les variations secondaires introduites par l'interaction entre la croute oceanique et les magmas provenant du manteau sont identifiees, une valeur assez constante de -10 ± 2 ‰ est trouvee pour le manteau primitif qui aurait ainsi le meme δ 11 B que la croute continentale. Au contraire, de tres grandes variations isotopiques sont presentes a l'echelle du micron dans les chondres des meteorites qui sont parmi les objets les plus primitifs du systeme solaire. Ces variations isotopiques impliquent qu'une partie importante du bore du systeme solaire a ete synthetisee dans le nuage presolaire, probablement par des reactions de spallation entre des rayons cosmiques de basse energie et l'hydrogene de la nebuleuse. Les heterogeneites isotopiques ont ete preservees en partie dans les chondres, qui se sont formes tot dans l'histoire du systeme solaire, mais ne sont pas observes pour la Terre silicatee, ce qui suppose un melange efficace juste avant ou pendant l'accretion de la Terre.
An Equilibrium Asset Pricing Model with Labor Market Search

Frictions in the labor market are important for understanding the equity premium in the financial market. We embed the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides search framework into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with recursive preferences. The model produces realistic equity premium and stock market volatility, as well as a low and stable interest rate. The equity premium is countercyclical, and forecastable with labor market tightness, a pattern we confirm in the data. Intriguingly, three key ingredients (small profits, large job flows, and matching frictions) in the model combine to give rise endogenously to rare disastersà la Rietz (1988) and Barro (2006). All remaining errors are our own.
AQUILA : Adaptive Resource Control for QoS Using an IP-Based Layered Architecture

Support for quality of service is an essential component of the next-generation Internet. The European research project AQUILA is committed to defining a DiffServ-based architecture for delivering on-demand QoS to requesting applications. Focal characteristics of the proposed solution are backward compatibility to the existing Internet and scalability to very large networks. To achieve such goals, AQUILA implements an overlaid distributed control layer, the Resource Control Layer, implementing a novel mechanism for dynamic control of intradomain resources, the Dynamic Resource Pool. On the interdomain aspects, the AQUILA architecture extends the BGRP framework for the aggregation of interdomain reservations to overcome scalability issues. This article describes the general AQUILA architecture, with a special focus on the DRP and BGRP mechanisms. AQUILA: Adaptive Resource Control for QoS Using an IP-Based Layered Architecture
AQUILA: adaptive resource control for QoS using an IP-based layered architecture

Support for quality of service is an essential component of the next-generation Internet. The European research project AQUILA is committed to defining a DiffServ-based architecture for delivering on-demand QoS to requesting applications. Focal characteristics of the proposed solution are backward compatibility to the existing Internet and scalability to very large networks. To achieve such goals, AQUILA implements an overlaid distributed control layer, the resource control layer, implementing a novel mechanism for dynamic control of intradomain resources, the dynamic resource pool. On the interdomain aspects, the AQUILA architecture extends the BGRP framework for the aggregation of interdomain reservations to overcome scalability issues. This article describes the general AQUILA architecture, with a special focus on the DRP and BGRP mechanisms.
Central Appalachian basin natural gas database: distribution, composition, and origin of natural gases

1 Natural Gas Database . 1 Data Fields . 1 Identification Number . 3 Location of Gas Samples . 3 Geologic Information . 3 Potential Uses of the Database . 3 Acknowledgments . 10 References Cited . 10 Appendix 1. Natural_Gas_Geochemical_Database_2013 . 13
Simulating nonequilibrium movement of water, solutes and particles using hydrus – a review of recent applications

17 Water and contaminants moving through the vadose zone are often subject to a large number 18 of simultaneous physical and chemical nonequilibrium processes. Traditional modeling tools 19 for describing flow and transport in soils either do not consider nonequilibrium processes at 20 all, or consider them only separately. By contrast, a wide range of nonequilibrium flow and 21 transport modeling approaches are currently available in the latest versions of the HYDRUS 22 software packages. The formulations range from classical models simulating uniform flow 23 and transport, to relatively traditional mobile-immobile water physical and two-site chemical 24 nonequilibrium models, to more complex dual-permeability models that consider both 25
The Cultural Origin of CEOs’ Attitudes Towards Uncertainty: Evidence from Corporate Acquisitions

We examine the role of cultural heritage in shaping U.S. CEOs’ attitudes toward uncertainty, in the context of their corporate acquisition decisions. We find that CEOs with a more uncertainty-avoiding cultural heritage are less likely to engage in acquisitions. Conditional on making an acquisition, uncertainty-averse CEOs prefer targets in familiar industries and targets that can be more easily integrated. The emphasis on cultural identity by CEOs’ parents and the ethnic composition of CEOs’ early life environment significantly influence the cultural transmission process. Cultural differences about uncertainty attitudes persist over multiple generations, but become less pronounced over time. (JEL G34, G4, G40, G41)
Comparison of simulated water balance for willow, spruce, grass ley and barley

Evaporation from four cropping systems, i.e . willow, spruce, grass ley and barley, was compared in this simulation study. The physically based soil model had previously been used to simulate a wide variety of soil-plant systems. Climatic data obtained over six years from two stations in southern Sweden were used as model input. The stand parameters were mostly taken from the literature. The mean seasonal “crop coefficient” for the period from April through October, defined as the relation between the potential transpiration calculated by the Penman-Monteith (1965) formula and the Penman (1948) estimate, E to , was about the same for willow and spruce (0.9), but was lower for grass ley (0.7) and barley (0. 4). Seasonal evaporation was highest for spruce (516 mm), slightly lower for willow (497 mm), and much lower for grass ley (419 mm) and barley (347 mm). Total evaporation and transpiration decreased linearly with the precipitation deficit, P E to , indicating reduced transpiration for all six years at the east coast and two years at the west coast. The difference in total evaporation between the trees (willow, spruce) and grasses (grass ley, barley) was most pronounced during growing seasons with a precipitation excess, P > E to , and decreased linearly with the precipitation deficit to near zero at a deficit of 350 mm. Runoff increased with the precipitation excess, but for willow and spruce it was generally equal to or less than the excess. For the grass ley and barley, runoff exceeded the precipitation excess, P - E to , by about 150 mm on a yearly basis.