Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Speech and Voice Science

1597564818, 9781597564816 483 pages 2013 Speech and Voice Science Alison Behrman Plural Publishing, 2013 Intended for the basic course in speech and voice science in communication disorders departments, this book is the most definitive textbook for beginning students with little background in voice and speech sciences and disorders. Instructors will appreciate the appropriate details on the physics, acoustics and physiology of voice and speech as well as the feeling of being in the lab while research takes place. The author has included feature panels throughout the text depicting interesting historical or physiological highlights that add both depth and lighthearted commentary to the reading experience. Major research discoveries and historical events of note are incorporated in a chapter introducing the leading voice and speech laboratories from around the world, showing how the field has grown over the past half century. An exceptional chapter on phonation presents the most in-depth exploration of voice and laryngeal dynamics available in any text that is targeted specifically to undergraduate and introductory graduate students in speech-language pathology. This chapter would also make an excellent supplement to any voice disorders class. file download tek.pdf
A Generic Framework Supporting Self-Organisation and Self-Management in Hierarchical Systems

A novel, generic, framework for supporting self-organisation and self-management in hierarchical systems is presented. The framework allows for the incorporation of local self-organising and self-managing strategies at each level in the hierarchy. These local strategies determine the behaviour of that level and the effects of these strategies can be communicated to, and used by, the strategies in adjacent levels of the hierarchy. Thus, in general, strategies may be viewed as parameterised functions. Information emanating from both the lower and the upper levels in the hierarchy can be used as parameters. Information from below represents the status of the lower levels, whereas information from above can be used to influence the direction and the rate of system evolution. As the component parts of the system evolve to their goal states, the rate of evolution slows. At that point, by definition, a component is maximally contributing to the global goal state of the system as a whole. A novel concept to measure the distance that a component is from this stasis, its Suitability Index is presented and formally defined. Although the proposed framework can be generalised to any hierarchical system, this paper applies it specifically to large scale, hierarchically structured, computer systems. An implementation of this framework and an empirical study of its effectiveness has been conducted as part of the the CloudLightning Project.
EEG spectral power density profiles during NREM sleep for gaboxadol and zolpidem in patients with primary insomnia

There is significant interest in the functional significance and the therapeutic value of slow-wave sleep (SWS)-enhancing drugs. A prerequisite for studies of the functional differences is characterization of the electroencephalography (EEG) spectra following treatment in relevant patients. We evaluate for the first time gaboxadol and zolpidem treatments in insomniac patients using power spectra analysis. We carried out two randomized, double-blind, crossover studies. Study 1, 38 patients received gaboxadol 10 mg and 20 mg and zolpidem 10 mg; study 2, 23 patients received gaboxadol 5 mg and 15 mg. Treatments were administered during two nights and compared with placebo. Gaboxadol 10, 15 and 20 mg enhanced slow-wave activity (SWA) and theta power. In 1 Hz bins gaboxadol 10 and 20 mg enhanced power up to 9 Hz. In study 2, 15 mg gaboxadol showed a similar effect pattern. Zolpidem suppressed theta and alpha power, and increased sigma power, with no effect on SWA. In the 1 Hz bins zolpidem suppressed power between 5–10 Hz. Gaboxadol dose-dependently increased SWA and theta power in insomniac patients. In contrast, zolpidem did not affect SWA, reduced theta and alpha activity and enhanced sigma power. EEG spectral power differences may be consequences of the different mechanisms of action for zolpidem and the SWS-enhancing agent, gaboxadol.
A Technique for Handling the Right Hand Side of Complex RIAs

This paper examines a new technique based on tableau, that allows one to introduce composition of roles from the right hand side of complex role inclusion axioms (RIAs). Our motivation comes from modeling product models in manufacturing systems. The series of papers, so far, have studied the extension of tableau algorithm for Description Logics (DLs) to capture complex RIAs. However, such RIAs permit only the left hand side of the composition of roles. To illustrate the technique, we extend RIQ DL with one RIA of the form RvQ ◦ P .
Sex Crime and the Media: Sex Offending and the Press in a Divided Society

1 Introduction 2 The sociological analysis of news production: theory and context 3 News values, newsworthiness and sex crime narratives 4 Sex crime in the press: an empirical overview 5 Explaning the increase in press attention to sex crime 6 Practitioners' views on the press representation of crime 7 Social responsibility, social reality and news management 8 Conclusions Index
Infection spreading, detection and control in community networks

Community structures widely exist in various complex networks. Extensive studies have been carried out on defining and quantifying community structures as well as developing algorithms for detecting them in extra-large complex systems. Despite all these efforts, however, our understanding of why community structures widely exist in so many real-life systems, or in other words, the benefits/drawbacks for real-life systems to have community structures, remains to be rather limited. In this work, we discuss on the effects of community structures on infection propagation, detection and control in complex networks. Specifically, we investigate (i) the effects of community structures on transmission speed and infection size; (ii) when monitors can be deployed in the network to detect the infection spreading, the effects of community structures on early-stage infection detection; and (iii) in adaptive networks with link rewiring for isolating the infected nodes, the effects of community structures on infection control. Our results show that the existence of community structures generally speaking helps slow down the infection spreading; whether it helps reduce the overall infection size when no control method is adopted however depends on the network topology. When infection detection and controlling methods such as link rewiring are adopted, the existence of community structures steadily helps improve the efficiency of infection detection and control, though having too many communities may not necessarily bring along additional benefits.
Calcium release and ionic changes in the sarcoplasmic reticulum of tetanized muscle: an electron-probe study

Approximately 60-70% of the total fiber calcium was localized in the terminal cisternae (TC) in resting frog muscle as determined by electron-probe analysis of ultrathin cryosections. During a 1.2 s tetanus, 59% (69 mmol/kg dry TC) of the calcium content of the TC was released, enough to raise total cytoplasmic calcium concentration by approximately 1 mM. This is equivalent to the concentration of binding sites on the calcium-binding proteins (troponin and parvalbumin) in frog muscle. Calcium release was associated with a significant uptake of magnesium and potassium into the TC, but the amount of calcium released exceeded the total measured cation accumulation by 62 mEq/kg dry weight. It is suggested that most of the charge deficit is apparent, and charge compensation is achieved by movement of protons into the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) and/or by the movement of organic co- or counterions not measured by energy dispersive electron-probe analysis. There was no significant change in the sodium or chlorine content of the TC during tetanus. The unchanged distribution of a permeant anion, chloride, argues against the existence of a large and sustained transSR potential during tetanus, if the chloride permeability of the in situ SR is as high as suggested by measurements on fractionated SR. The calcium content of the longitudinal SR (LSR) during tetanus did not show the LSR to be a major site of calcium storage and delayed return to the TC. The potassium concentration in the LSR was not significantly different from the adjacent cytoplasmic concentration. Analysis of small areas of I-band and large areas, including several sarcomeres, suggested that chloride is anisotropically distributed, with some of it probably bound to myosin. In contrast, the distribution of potassium in the fiber cytoplasm followed the water distribution. The mitochondrial concentration of calcium was low and did not change significantly during a tetanus. The TC of both tetanized and resting freeze-substituted muscles contained electron-lucent circular areas. The appearance of the TC showed no evidence of major volume changes during tetanus, in agreement with the estimates of unchanged (approximately 72%) water content of the TC obtained with electron-probe analysis.
Minimizing Virtual Machine Migration Probability for Cloud Environments

In recent years, many researchers focus on how to balance the number of average virtual machines (VMs) in cloud data center. However, the VMs suddenly jumped to more than the utilization threshold of the physical machine (PM) and exhausted the computing resource, which will lead to VM migration and extra cost. In this paper, the VM migration problem in cloud computing is formulated based on mixed integer linear programming (MILP). Then we propose an Allocation algorithm to distribute the VMs among the PMs, which is based on the Support Vector Machine (SVM). The ultimate goal that not only minimizes the VM migration probability but also maximizes the PM resources as much as possible. According to the training data in a period time, the classified VMs can be allocated into the PMs with the lowest VM migration probability by the proposed Allocation algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve lower VM migration probability and reduce the cost for the cloud environments.
RhoA-dependent vascular smooth muscle cell-specific transcription: adding diaphanous formins to the puzzle.

Phenotypic modulation of vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) plays an integral role in both vascular development and vasculoproliferative disorders. SMC-specific marker genes include caldesmon, smooth muscle myosin heavy chain, α-smooth muscle actin, calponin, SM22α, and α- and β-tropomyosins. Studies aimed at understanding the role of coactivators and corepressors of phenotypic modulation of SMC have been stimulated by the cloning and characterization of these SMC-specific genes and the discovery that the widely expressed serum response factor (SRF) is central to the expression of SMC-specific genes. SRF directly regulates the coordinated expression of several contractile and cytoskeletal genes through one or more CArG-box elements in the regulatory sequences of SMC-specific genes. This CArG-dependent program of SMC differentiation is modulated during both vascular development and arterial remodeling.1 Myocardin and myocardin-related transcription factors (MRTFs) bind to SRF, potently stimulate SRF-dependent transcription, and are necessary and sufficient for SMC differentiation.2 The RhoA pathway appears to activate myocardins by …
Effects of Assistance to Response Movement on Learning a Choice Reaction Time Task in Rats

Proprioceptive sensory feedback provided by a motion assist device may facilitate neuronal plasticity which is known to play an important role in learning and rehabilitation. We investigated effects of sensory feedback timing on learning a sensory-motor association task. Rats were trained to respond to an air-puff stimulus on a forepaw by releasing the lever pressed with the stimulated forepaw (compatible condition) or with the non-stimulated forepaw (incompatible condition), i.e., a choice reaction time task. When the success rate exceeded 85%, the compatibility condition was changed (i.e., reversal learning). During training, an error trial was followed by a lever-activation trial where the correct lever (on which the forepaw was placed) was elevated automatically (which mimicked a correct lever-release response) at 120, 220, 320, or 420 ms after air-puff stimulation in four groups of rats. Such lever activation did not occur when the rat made a lever-release response before these preset timings. The control group received no lever-activation. Results indicate that learning speed was reduced significantly in the group that received lever-activation at 220 ms after air-puff stimulation. The finding suggests that the timing of movement-signal application is important in learning and thus should be considered in developing more efficient assist or rehabilitation devices.
Leveraging interleaved signal edges for concurrent backscatter

One of the central challenges in backscatter is how to enable concurrent transmissions. Most backscatter protocols operate in a sequential TDMA-like manner due to the fact that most nodes cannot overhear each other's transmissions, which is detrimental for throughout and energy consumption. Recent efforts to separate concurrent signals by inverting a system of linear equations is also problematic due to varying channel coefficients caused by system and environmental dynamics. In this paper, we introduce BST, a novel physical layer for backscatter communication that enables concurrent transmission by leveraging intra-bit multiplexing of OOK signals from multiple tags. The key idea underlying BST is that the reader can sample at considerably higher rates than the tags, hence it can extract time-domain signal edges that result from interleaved transmissions of several tags. Our preliminary experiment results show that BST can achieve 5× the throughput of Buzz and 10× the throughput of TDMA-based solutions, such as EPC Gen 2.
A novel scheme based on dropped-packet information to restrict pulsing denial-of-service attacks

Pulsing denial-of-service (PDoS) attacks pose a serious problem on the Internet. The attacker periodically sends high-rate traffic over a short period. As a result, because packets are dropped from legitimate TCP flows, they are forced to degrade their throughput. A problem with conventional methods is that bursty short-lived TCP flows may be mistaken for PDoS attacks and their throughput will be decreased. This paper proposes a scheme for queue management to restrict PDoS attacks to overcome this problem. In the proposed method, malicious flows are first identified by using dropped-packet information and then the packet-in-buffer count of malicious flows is limited. This leads legitimate TCP flows to secure their throughput, and even mistaken bursty TCP flows can obtain some throughput. In addition, we evaluated what effect two thresholds in the proposed method, such as the dropped-packet and the packet-in-buffer thresholds, had on throughput and established a policy to set these two thresholds.
Sub-typing depression, I. Is psychomotor disturbance necessary and sufficient to the definition of melancholia?

SYNOPSIS Melancholia is most commonly distinguished from non-melancholic depression by the presence of psychomotor disturbance (PMD) and a set of ‘endogeneity’ symptoms. We examine the capacity of an operationalized clinician-rated measure of PMD (the CORE system) to predict diagnostic assignment to ‘melancholic/endogenous’ classes by the DSM-III-R and Newcastle systems. Examining a pre-established CORE cut-off score (≥ 8) against independent diagnostic assignment, PMD was present in 51% of those assigned as melancholic by DSM-III-R, and 85% of those assigned as endogenous by the Newcastle system, quantifying the extent to which it is ‘necessary’ to the two definitions of ‘melancholia’. Additionally, multivariate analyses established that the addition of a refined set of historically suggested endogeneity symptoms added only slightly to overall discrimination of melancholic and non-melancholic depressives. While only few endogeneity symptoms independent of psychomotor disturbance were suggested, their specific relevance varied against system definition of melancholia (appetite/weight loss and terminal insomnia being identified for DSM-III-R; anhedonia for Newcastle; and diurnal variation in mood and energy for both systems). Results allow consideration of the relative importance of two domains (psychomotor disturbance and ‘endogeneity’ symptoms) to clinical definition of melancholia, and have the potential to assist both classification and pursuit of neurobiological determinants. We interpret findings as suggesting a ‘core and mantle’ model for conceptualizing the clinical features of melancholia, with psychomotor disturbance as the core and with independent endogeneity symptoms as only a thin mantle.
The effect of the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist on complication rate and communication.

BACKGROUND In 2009, the World Health Organisation issued a worldwide recommendation for the use of its Surgical Safety Checklist in all operative procedures. In this review, we present the available data on the implementation of this checklist and its effect on perioperative morbidity and mortality and on operating-room safety culture. We also survey the experience with the checklist to date and give some recommendations for its practical implementation. METHODS We reviewed pertinent original publications retrieved by a selective search in the PubMed and Medline databases on the search term "Surgical Safety Checklist". All papers published before February 2012 were analyzed. RESULTS The 20 studies that we analyzed included a single prospective randomized trial concerning the effect of the WHO checklist on safety-related behavior in the operating room. The two surgical outcome studies documented a relative improvement of perioperative mortality by 47% in one study (from 56 in 3733 cases [1.5%] to 32 in 3955 cases [0.8%]) and by 62% in the other (from 31 in 842 cases [3.7%] to 13 in 908 cases [1.4%]), as well as a relative improvement of perioperative morbidity by 36% in one study (from 411 in 3733 cases [11.0%] to 288 in 3,955 cases [7.3%]) and by 37% in the other (from 151 in 842 cases [17.9%] to 102 in 908 cases [11.2%]). Improved interdisciplinary communication was also found. Factors that aided effective use of the checklist included exemplary implementation by team leaders and structured training. CONCLUSION These results support the WHO's recommendation to use the Surgical Safety Checklist in all operative procedures. The checklist should be understood not merely as a list of items to be checked off, but as an instrument for the improvement of communication, teamwork, and safety culture in the operating room, and it should be implemented accordingly.
Modeling Colloid Attachment , Straining , and Exclusion in Saturated Porous Media

A conceptual model for colloid transport is developed that accounts for colloid attachment, straining, and exclusion. Colloid attachment and detachment is modeled using firstorder rate expressions, whereas straining is described using an irreversible first-order straining term that is depth dependent. Exclusion is modeled by adjusting transport parameters for colloid-accessible pore space. Fitting attachment and detachment model parameters to colloid transport data provided a reasonable description of effluent concentration curves, but the spatial distribution of retained colloids at the column inlet was severely underestimated for systems that exhibited significant colloid mass removal. A more physically realistic description of the colloid transport data was obtained by simulating both colloid attachment and straining. Fitted straining coefficients were found to systematically increase with increasing colloid size and decreasing median grain size. A correlation was developed to predict the straining coefficient from colloid and porous medium information. Numerical experiments indicated that increasing the colloid excluded volume of the pore space resulted in earlier breakthrough and higher peak effluent concentrations as a result of higher pore water velocities and lower residence times, respectively. Velocity enhancement due to colloid exclusion was predicted to increase with increasing exclusion volume and increasing soil gradation.
Amplitude modulation features for emotion recognition from speech

The goal of speech emotion recognition (SER) is to identify the emotional or physical state of a human being from his or her voice. One of the most important things in a SER task is to extract and select relevant speech features with which most emotions could be recognized. In this paper, we present a smoothed nonlinear energy operator (SNEO)-based amplitude modulation cepstral coefficients (AMCC) feature for recognizing emotions from speech signals. SNEO estimates the energy required to produce the AM-FM signal, and then the estimated energy is separated into its amplitude and frequency components using an energy separation algorithm (ESA). AMCC features are obtained by first decomposing a speech signal using a C-channel gammatone filterbank, computing the AM power spectrum, and taking a discrete cosine transform (DCT) of the root compressed AM power spectrum. Conventional MFCC (Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients) and Mel-warped DFT (discrete Fourier transform) spectrum based cepstral coefficients (MWDCC) features are used for comparing the recognition performances of the proposed features. Emotion recognition experiments are conducted on the FAU AIBO spontaneous emotion corpus. It is observed from the experimental results that the AMCC features provide a relative improvement of approximately 3.5% over the baseline MFCC.
Development of a pHrodo-Based Assay for the Assessment of In Vitro and In Vivo Erythrophagocytosis during Experimental Trypanosomosis

Extracellular trypanosomes can cause a wide range of diseases and pathological complications in a broad range of mammalian hosts. One common feature of trypanosomosis is the occurrence of anemia, caused by an imbalance between erythropoiesis and red blood cell clearance of aging erythrocytes. In murine models for T. brucei trypanosomosis, anemia is marked by a very sudden non-hemolytic loss of RBCs during the first-peak parasitemia control, followed by a short recovery phase and the subsequent gradual occurrence of an ever-increasing level of anemia. Using a newly developed quantitative pHrodo based in vitro erythrophagocytosis assay, combined with FACS-based ex vivo and in vivo results, we show that activated liver monocytic cells and neutrophils as well as activated splenic macrophages are the main cells involved in the occurrence of the early-stage acute anemia. In addition, we show that trypanosomosis itself leads to a rapid alteration of RBC membrane stability, priming the cells for accelerated phagocytosis.