Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Zero-crossing-based ratio masking for sound segregation

This paper presents a new method of zero-crossing based binaural mask estimation for sound segregation under the condition that multiple sound sources are present simultaneously. The masking is determined by the estimated sound source directions using the spatial cues such as inter-aural time differences (ITDs) and inter-aural intensity differences (IIDs). In the suggested method, the estimation of ITDs is utilizing the statistical properties of zero-crossings detected from binaural filter-bank outputs. We also consider the estimation of ITDs with the aid of IID samples to cope with the phase ambiguities of ITD samples in high frequencies. For the masking method, we consider to use the target-to-total power ratio in each segment of the timefrequency domain. We show that this power ratio is optimal from the view point of reconstructing the target speech signal. As a result, the proposed method is able to provide an accurate estimate of sound source directions and also a good masking scheme for speech segregation while offering significantly less computational complexity compared to cross-correlation-based methods.
PREDICTING EFFECTS OF ECOSYSTEM ENGINEERS ON PATCH‐SCALE SPECIES RICHNESS FROM PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY

Ecosystem engineering—the physical modification of habitats by organisms—can create patches with altered species richness relative to adjacent, unmodified patches. The effect of ecosystem engineering on patch-scale species richness is likely to be difficult to predict from the identity of the engineer, the resources altered as a result of engineering, or the identities of the affected species. Here we develop a simple conceptual model that predicts the effects of ecosystem engineers on species richness based on how the habitat modifications caused by engineers affect primary productivity, assuming a hump-shaped relationship between productivity and species richness. We review data from 35 studies that contained 60 comparisons of species richness on patches that had been modified by ecosystem engineers vs. unmodified patches. We found no general patterns in whether species richness at the patch scale was increased or decreased by ecosystem engineering. However, 14 of these studies also contained data on pr.
Minimizers for a double-well problem with affine boundary conditions

This paper is concerned with the existence of minimizers for functionals having a double-well integrand with affine boundary conditions. Such functionals are related to the so-called Kohn–Strang functional, which arises in optimal shape design problems in electrostatics or elasticity. They are known to be not quasiconvex, and therefore existence of minimizers is, in general, guaranteed only for their quasiconvex envelopes. We generalize the previous results of Allaire and Francfort, and give necessary and sufficient conditions on the affine boundary conditions for existence of minimizers. Our method relies on the computation of the quasiconvexification of these functionals by using homogenization theory. We also prove by a general argument that their rank-one convexifications coincide with their quasiconvexifications.
SL: a "quick and dirty" but working intermediate language for SVP systems

The CSA group at the University of Amsterdam has developed SVP, a framework to manage and program many-core and hardware multithreaded processors. In this article, we introduce the intermediate language SL, a common vehicle to program SVP platforms. SL is designed as an extension to the standard C language (ISO C99/C11). It includes primitive constructs to bulk create threads, bulk synchronize on termination of threads, and communicate using word-sized dataflow channels between threads. It is intended for use as target language for higher-level parallelizing compilers. SL is a research vehicle; as of this writing, it is the only interface language to program a main SVP platform, the new Microgrid chip architecture. This article provides an overview of the language, to complement a detailed specification available separately.
Characterising peritumoural progression of glioblastoma using multimodal MRI

Title: Characterising Peritumoural Progression of Glioblastoma using Multimodal MRI Jiun-Lin Yan Glioblastoma is a highly malignant tumor which mostly recurs locally around the resected contrast enhancement. However, it is difficult to identify tumor invasiveness pre-surgically, especially in non-enhancing areas. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to utilize multimodal MR technique to identify and characterize the peritumoral progression zone that eventually leads to tumor progression. Patients with newly diagnosed cerebral glioblastoma were included consecutively from our cohort between 2010 and2014. The presurgical MRI sequences included volumetric T1-weighted with contrast, FLAIR, T2-weighted, diffusion-weighted imaging, diffusion tensor and perfusion MR imaging. Postsurgical and follow-up MRI included structural and ADC images. Image deformation, caused by disease nature and surgical procedure, renders routine coregistration methods inadequate for MRIs comparison between different time points. Therefore, a two-staged non-linear semi-automatic coregistration method was developed from the modification of the linear FLIRT and non-linear FNIRT functions in FMRIB’s Software Library (FSL). Utilising the above mentioned coregistration method, a volumetric study was conducted to analyse the extent of resection based on different MR techniques, including T1 weighted with contrast, FLAIR and DTI measures of isotropy (DTI-p) and anisotropy (DTI-q). The results showed that patients can have a better clinical outcome with a larger resection of the abnormal DTI q areas. Further study of the imaging characteristics of abnormal peritumoural DTI-q areas, using MRS and DCS-MRI, showed a higher Choline/NAA ratio (p = 0.035), especially higher Choline (p = 0.022), in these areas when compared to normal DTI-q areas. This was indicative of tumour activity in the peritumoural abnormal DTI-q areas. The peritumoural progression areas were found to have distinct imaging characteristics. In these progression areas, compared to non-progression areas within a 10 mm border around the contrast enhancing lesion, there was higher signal intensity in FLAIR (p = 0.02), and T1C (p < 0.001), and there were lower intensity in ADC (p = 0.029) and DTI-p (p < 0.001). Further applying radiomics features showed that 35 first order features and 77 second order features were significantly different between progression and non-progression areas. By using supervised convolutional neural network, there was an overall accuracy of 92.4% in the training set (n = 37) and 78.5% in the validation set (n=14). In summary, multimodal MR imaging, particularly diffusion tensor imaging, can demonstrate distinct characteristics in areas of potential progression on preoperative MRI, which can be considered potential targets for treatment. Further application of radiomics and machine learning can be potentially useful when identifying the tumor invasive margin before the surgery. CONTENTS Abstract Acknowledgements i Abbreviations ii Chapter
Reliability of Chute-Feeders in Automatic Machines of High Production Capacity

Modern highly automated production systems faces problems of reliability. Machine function reliability results in changes of productivity rate and efficiency use of expensive industrial facilities. Predicting of reliability has become an important research and involves complex mathematical methods and calculation. The reliability of high productivity technological automatic machines that consists of complex mechanical, electrical and electronic components is important. The failure of these units results in major economic losses of production systems. The reliability of transport and feeding systems for automatic technological machines is also important, because failure of transport leads to stops of technological machines. This paper presents reliability engineering on the feeding system and its components for transporting a complex shape parts to automatic machines. It also discusses about the calculation of the reliability parameters of the feeding unit by applying the probability theory. Equations produced for calculating the limits of the geometrical sizes of feeders and the probability of sticking the transported parts into the chute represents the reliability of feeders as a function of its geometrical parameters. Keywords—Chute-feeder, parts, reliability.
Augmented media for traditional magazines

Reading traditional newspapers or magazines is a common way to get latest information about events or new products. However these printed materials only provide readers with static information. Readers may want to know more detail information about some product in an article or to watch video clips related to an event mentioned in a news right at the moment when they read that article or news. The authors propose a system with mobile devices that can provide extra information and multimedia for readers by applying augmented reality to traditional magazines. A user can enjoy extra rich multimedia information on a product or news on his/her mobile device just by looking at an article in a traditional magazine through his/her mobile device. The system detects which article in which page of a magazine that is being displayed in a mobile device and provides a reader with related information and multimedia objects. The important feature of our proposed system is using lightweight filter to efficiently filter out candidate covers or articles that do not visually match an image captured by a mobile device. The experiment shows that our proposed system achieves the average accuracy of more than 90% and can process in the real-time manner.
Surface roughness in ultrasonic-assisted and conventional milling of soda-lime glass

Glass has an increasing demand in many industrial fields such as micro-channels and micro reactors in fluidic applications, lab-on-a-chip in medical applications, and micro lens arrays and optical devices. Machining of glass as one of hard-to-machine materials is challengeable due to its distinctive properties of high strength, hardness, and brittleness. Facing these challenges, ultrasonic-assisted milling (UAM); an advanced machining process; was provided for its effectiveness in machining such hard-to-machine materials. In this paper, the effects of feed rate, depth of cut, ultrasonic-vibration assistance, and cutting fluid on surface roughness in UAM of soda-lime glass compared with conventional milling (CM) were investigated. Results showed that, by introducing ultrasonic-vibration, higher surface roughness was obtained. The optimal cutting conditions were attained using response surface methodology. At the optimised parametric setting, the minimum surface roughness was found to be at wet conventional milling.
Starke Kopplung - Interaktion als Schlüssel für das Semantic Web

In diesem Beitrag stellen wir den Ansatz der starken Kopplung vor. Sowohl bei der Erstellung von, als auch beim Zugriff auf Informationen im Semantic Web informieren sich dabei Mensch und Computer ständig gegenseitig darüber, in welcher Weise übermittelte Informationen interpretiert wurden. Dadurch können Fehler bei der Übersetzung zwischen Informationen mit impliziter und expliziter Bedeutung schneller erkannt, korrigiert und dadurch möglicherweise daraus resultierende Probleme vermieden werden. Basierend darauf stellen wir Kriterien auf, anhand derer bestehende und neue interaktive Ansätze im Semantic Web evaluiert und verbessert werden können.
Control of the Balb/c‐3T3 cell cycle by nutrients and serum factors: Analysis using platelet‐derived growth factor and platelet‐poor plasma

Much controversy regarding the relationship between nutrients and serum in regulation of cell growth can be reconciled by recognizing that serum contains multiple factors which regulate different events in the cell cycle. Serum was fractioned into a platelet‐derived growth factor (PDGF), which induces cells to become competent to synthesize DNA, and plasma which allows competent cells to traverse G0/G1 and enter the S phase. Nutrients are not required for the cellular response to PDGF; however amino acids are required for plasma to promote the entry of PDGF‐treated, competent cells into S phase. The nutrient independent, PDGF‐modulated, growth regulatory event (competence) is located 12 hours prior to the G1/S phase boundary in quiescent, density‐arrested Balb/c‐3T3 cells. The nutrient dependent, plasma‐modulated event is located six hours prior to the G1/S phase boundary and corresponds in time to a plasma dependent growth arrest point. Moreover, plasma controls the concentration of amino acids required for DNA synthesis. Infection of density‐arrested Balb/c‐3T3 cells with SV40 overrides both the nutrient independent and the nutrient dependent growth regulatory events.
The search for compounds that stimulate thermogenesis in obesity management: from pharmaceuticals to functional food ingredients

The concept of managing obesity through the stimulation of thermogenesis is currently a focus of considerable attention by the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and functional food industries. This paper first reviews the landmark discoveries that have fuelled the search for thermogenic anti‐obesity products that range from single‐target drugs to multi‐target functional foods. It subsequently analyses the thermogenic and fat‐oxidizing potentials of a wide array of bioactive food ingredients which are categorized under methylxanthines, polyphenols, capsaicinoids/capsinoids, minerals, proteins/amino acids, carbohydrates/sugars and fats/fatty acids. The main outcome of this analysis is that the compounds or combination of compounds with thermogenic and fat‐oxidizing potentials are those that possess both sympathomimetic stimulatory activity and acetyl‐coA carboxylase inhibitory property, and are capable of targeting both skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue. The thermogenic potentials of products so far tested in humans range from marginal to modest, i.e. 2–5% above daily energy expenditure. With an increasing number of bioactive food ingredients awaiting screening in humans, there is hope that this thermogenic potential could be safely increased to 10–15% above daily energy expenditure – which would have clinically significant impact on weight management, particularly in the prevention of obesity and in improving the long‐term prognosis of post‐slimming weight maintenance.
Model-based validation approaches and matching techniques for automotive vision based pedestrian detection

Pedestrian detection is a challenging vision task, especially applied to the automotive field where the background changes as the vehicle moves. This paper presents an extensive study upon human body models and the techniques suitable for being used in a pedestrian detection system. Several different approaches for building model sets, such as synthetic, real, and dynamic sets are presented and discussed. Comparative results are reported with reference to a case study of a real system. Preliminary results of current research status are shown together with further developments.
Challenges in Software Ecosystems Research

The paper is a meta-analysis of the research field of software ecosystems, by method of surveying 26 authors in the field. It presents a relevant list of literature and six themes in which challenges for software ecosystems can be grouped: Architecture and Design, Governance, Dynamics and Evolution, Data Analytics, Domain-Specific Ecosystems Solutions, and Ecosystems Analysis. As such, it provides a roadmap for future research in the field.
Quantitative Studies on PDMS-PDMS Interface Bonding with Piranha Solution and its Swelling Effect

In this paper, a low-cost yet effective method of irreversible bonding between two elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) interfaces using Piranha solution is investigated. Piranha solutions at a weight ratio of 3:1 using different acids and hydrogen peroxide were attempted. The average tensile strengths of the device bonded with concentrated sulfuric acid-based piranha solution and nitric acid-based piranha solution were found to be 200 ± 20 kPa and 100 ± 15 kPa respectively. A PDMS surface treated with Piranha Solution demonstrated an increase in hydrophilicity. In addition, relatively straightforward swelling studies of PDMS using a weight loss method with common organic solvents were also investigated. Experimental results show that hexane, toluene, ethyl acetate, n-propyl alcohol and acetone swell PDMS significantly over a duration of up to 1 h and above; PDMS samples reached a steady state of swelling only after 5 min of immersion in other solvents. This will enable researchers to develop devices for the future according to the interaction between the material and the solvents in contact.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences Cardiovascular Disease and Glycemic Control in Type 2 Diabetes: Now That the Dust Is Settling from Large Clinical Trials

The relationship between glucose control and cardiovascular outcomes in type 2 diabetes has been a matter of controversy over the years. Although epidemiological evidence exists in favor of an adverse role of poor glucose control on cardiovascular events, intervention trials have been less conclusive. The Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) study, the Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease (ADVANCE) study, and the Veterans Affairs Diabetes Trial (VADT) have shown no beneficial effect of intensive glucose control on primary cardiovascular endpoints in type 2 diabetes. However, subgroup analysis has provided evidence suggesting that the potential beneficial effect largely depends on patients' characteristics, including age, diabetes duration, previous glucose control, presence of cardiovascular disease, and risk of hypoglycemia. The benefit of strict glucose control on cardiovascular outcomes and mortality may be indeed hampered by the extent and frequency of hypoglycemic events and could be enhanced if glucose-lowering medications, capable of exerting favorable effects on the cardiovascular system, were used. This review examines the relationship between intensive glucose control and cardiovascular outcomes in type 2 diabetes, addressing the need for individualization of glucose targets and careful consideration of the benefit/risk profile of antidiabetes medications.
Restricted delaunay triangulations and normal cycle

We address the problem of curvature estimation from sampled smooth surfaces. Building upon the theory of normal cycles, we derive a definition of the curvature tensor for polyhedral surfaces. This definition consists in a very simple and new formula. When applied to a polyhedral approximation of a smooth surface, it yields an efficient and reliable curvature estimation algorithm. Moreover, we bound the difference between the estimated curvature and the one of the smooth surface in the case of restricted Delaunay triangulations.
The intrinsic mechanics of B-DNA in solution characterized by NMR

Experimental characterization of the structural couplings in free B-DNA in solution has been elusive, because of subtle effects that are challenging to tackle. Here, the exploitation of the NMR measurements collected on four dodecamers containing a substantial set of dinucleotide sequences provides new, consistent correlations revealing the DNA intrinsic mechanics. The difference between two successive residual dipolar couplings (ΔRDCs) involving C6/8-H6/8, C3′-H3′ and C4′-H4′ vectors are correlated to the 31P chemical shifts (δP), which reflect the populations of the BI and BII backbone states. The δPs are also correlated to the internucleotide distances (Dinter) involving H6/8, H2′ and H2″ protons. Calculations of NMR quantities on high resolution X-ray structures and controlled models of DNA enable to interpret these couplings: the studied ΔRDCs depend mostly on roll, while Dinter are mainly sensitive to twist or slide. Overall, these relations demonstrate how δP measurements inform on key inter base parameters, in addition to probe the BI↔BII backbone equilibrium, and shed new light into coordinated motions of phosphate groups and bases in free B-DNA in solution. Inspection of the 5′ and 3′ ends of the dodecamers also supplies new information on the fraying events, otherwise neglected.
Response to combination therapy of interferon alfa-2b plus ribavirin in Hispanics with chronic hepatitis C.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the response rate of Hispanics with chronic hepatitis C to combination therapy of interferon alfa-2b plus ribavirin and to assess its adverse events. BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus may lead to chronic infection and multiple complications. Response to combination therapy of interferon plus ribavirin has been studied in many populations. African Americans have been found to have a lower response rate than Caucasians. However, little data exist for Hispanics. METHODS Hispanic patients from Puerto Rico with chronic hepatitis C were eligible for the study between November 1997 and February 2000. The Institutional Review Boards of the participating institutions approved the study. Written informed consents were obtained. Combination therapy was given for 48 weeks and patients were followed for 24 weeks after treatment. Analysis of response to therapy was performed in an intention-to-treat basis. RESULTS The most frequent adverse event was anemia (89%), associated to ribavirin. Sustained response was 23% for naive patients, 45% for relapsers, and 8% for non-responders to previous interferon monotherapy (p < 0.001). Data to analyze response was not available in 27% of patients. Hispanic patients had a low response rate to combination therapy. CONCLUSIONS Response rates to combination therapy for Hispanic naive and previously non-responder patients are lower than in other reported populations. This may be due to a high prevalence of genotype 1 in Puerto Rico, which is associated to poor response. The higher response rate of relapsers, similar to those reported previously, was expected since these patients showed a previous response to interferon monotherapy. Ethnic factors may play a role in the response to therapy and should be further studied to determine proper treatment strategies for this population.
Agris on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics

Nowadays, a well functioning ICT infrastructure belongs to the most critical factors of companies across all branches of business. An importance of ensuring the continued operation of information systems, or the rapid recovery of the systems in the case of emergency, has increased. These needs require creating business continuity management plan and disaster recovery planning. This paper describes the creation of emergency and recovery plans and setting recovery objectives significantly affecting their efficiency.