Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bayes risk minimization using metric loss functions

In this work, fundamental properties of Bayes decision rule us- ing general loss functions are derived analytically and are ver- ified experimentally for automatic speech recognition. It is shown that, for maximum posterior probabilities larger than 1/2, Bayes decision rule with a metric loss function always decides on the posterior maximizing class independent of the specific choice of (metric) loss function. Also for maximum posterior probabilities less than 1/2, a condition is derived un- der which the Bayes risk using a general metric loss function is still minimized by the posterior maximizing class. For a speech recognition task with low initial word error rate, it is shown that nearly 2/3 of the test utterances fulfil these conditions and need not be considered for Bayes risk minimization with Lev- enshtein loss, which reduces the computational complexity of Bayes risk minimization. In addition, bounds for the difference between the Bayes risk for the posterior maximizing class and minimum Bayes risk are derived, which can serve as cost esti- mates for Bayes risk minimization approaches.
The competition numbers of Johnson graphs

The competition graph of a digraph D is a graph which has the same vertex set as D and has an edge between two distinct vertices x and y if and only if there exists a vertex v in D such that (x; v) and (y; v) are arcs of D. For any graph G, G together with sucien tly many isolated vertices is the competition graph of some acyclic digraph. The competition number k(G) of a graph G is dened to be the smallest number of such isolated vertices. In general, it is hard to compute the competition number k(G) for a graph G and to characterize all graphs with given competition number k has been one of the important research problems in the study of competition graphs. The Johnson graph J(n; d) has the vertex set fvX j X 2 [n] d g, where [n]
Comments on "Achievable Rates in Cognitive Radio Channels"

In a premier paper on the information-theoretic analysis of a two-user cognitive interference channel(CIC), Devroye et al. presented an achievable rate region for the two-user discrete memoryless CIC. The coding scheme proposed by Devroye et al. is correct but unfortunately some rate-terms in the derived achievable rate region are incorrect (in fact incomplete) because of occurring some mistakes in decoding and analysis of error probability. We correct and complete the wrong rate-terms and thereby show that the corrected achievable rate region includes the rate region presented in.
An improved ZVS-PWM, active clamp/reset forward converter: Analysis, design and dynamic model

The soft switching converters evolved through the resonant load, resonant switch, resonant transition and active clamp converters to eliminate switching losses in power converters. An improved two switch forward converter employing active clamp/reset is proposed for DC/DC conversion applications in this paper. The proposed circuit is capable of operation at elevated switching frequencies of several hundreds of kHz, in a range of line and load variations. Steady state performance, the operating principle and theoretical analysis is outlined for the proposed forward converter and a design procedure is developed. The steady state conversion ratio and the equivalent circuit model valid for steady state and dynamic model is presented. Experimental results are presented which verifies the steady state and dynamic performance of the converter. The experimental waveforms are in agreement with the theoretical.
The interactive emotion pillow for children: the Furling

The aim of this project was to create a way to help children learn about emotions, while promoting physical and social play. The gap between different playing styles was also sought to be bridged. A concept was constructed where pillows with several interactive characteristics could be put together like building blocks. Specifically, the prototype of a pillow that would audibly display six distinctive emotions depending on how the user touched it was created. This pillow can help children explore emotions in a playful manner, thus developing their socioemotional competence. The solution can also be very helpful for children with a diagnosis in the autism spectrum, or with developmental disabilities. The project was developed with the co-designing help of children from the 2nd grade and a three-year old test user.
Challenges in auction theory driven spectrum management

Dynamic spectrum markets of the future will involve complex spectrum transactions among operators and users. The nontrivial dynamics in channel quality and spatiotemporal spectrum availability call for new ways of spectrum allocation. In this article, we advocate that auction theory can play a decisive role in shaping this evolving landscape since auctions are agnostic to user utility functions, and can build versatile and lightweight allocation mechanisms. Starting from auction preliminaries, we discuss how various intrinsic features of spectrum markets can be addressed with a modified version of auctions.
Technology and Young Children: A Review of Literature

1Interest in using personal computer technology as an instructional medium with young children is growing around the world. Many parents, teachers, and even national governments 2 are convinced that early interaction with technology stimulates learning and gives children a head start on success in the technological world of the future. This article reviews current research on developmental issues and the use of technology in learning environments for 4, 5 and 6-year-old preschool children. The reviewers are cognizant of the controversy revolving around whether the developmental needs of children are best met when technology is introduced into the learning environment. However, since that technology is now prevalent in the social contexts of many young children, tracking best practice guidelines for the introduction of technology into early learning environments is a necessity for early childhood development professionals and educators. The goal of this brief review is to inquire how current practices address developmentally appropriate learning, and to review guidance on how best to use computers with young children.
Prevalence and Characterization of Oxacillin Susceptible mecA-Positive Clinical Isolates of Staphylococcus aureus Causing Bovine Mastitis in India

Bovine mastitis caused by multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a huge problem reported worldwide, resulting in prolonged antibiotic treatment and death of livestock. The current study is focused on surveillance of antibiotic susceptibility along with genotypic and phenotypic characterization of the pathogenic S. aureus strains causing mastitis in India. One hundred and sixty seven milk samples were collected from mastitis-affected cows from different farms in India resulting in thirty nine isolated S. aureus strains. Antibiotic sensitivity profiling revealed the majority of the strains (n = 24) to be multidrug resistant and eleven strains showed reduced susceptibility to vancomycin (MICs = 2μg/ml). All strains were oxacillin sensitive, but 19 strains were positive for the mecA gene, which revealed the occurrence of oxacillin susceptible mecA positive strains (OS-MRSA) for the first time from India. Additionally, 32 strains were positive for the pvl gene, a virulence determinant; of these 17 were also OS-MRSA strains. Molecular characterization based on multilocus sequence typing (MLST), spa typing, agr typing and SCCmec classification revealed strains belonging to different groups. Moreover, strains showed spa types (t2526, t9602) and MLST sequence types, ST-72, ST-88 and ST-239 which have been earlier reported in human infections. The prevalence of OS-MRSA strains indicates the importance of including both the genetic and phenotypic tests in characterizing S. aureus strains. Increased genotypic variability with strain related to human infections and pvl positive isolates indicates a worrisome situation with the possibility of bilateral transfer.
Planet formation by concurrent collapse

After reviewing the difficulties faced by the conventional theory of planet formation (based upon the aggregation of microscopic dust particles), we describe an alternative hypothesis. We propose that planets form by gravitational collapse at the same time as the star about which they orbit. This concurrent collapse hypothesis avoids theoretical difficulties associated with the conventional model and suggests satisfying explanations for various poorly understood phenomena. We introduce new explanations for FU Orionis outbursts seen in young stars, the discovery of exoplanets with eccentric orbits and the existence of small rocky objects such as chondrules in the solar system.
Kosteneffectiviteit beweeg- en dieetadvisering bij mensen met (hoog risico op) diabetes mellitus type 2. Literatuuronderzoek en modelsimulaties rondom de Beweegkuur

Leefstijlbegeleiding op maat levert een aanzienlijke gezondheidswinst op bij mensen met diabetes of bij mensen die door verstoorde glucosetolerantie (IGT) en/of overgewicht een hoog risico lopen de ziekte te krijgen. De leefstijlbegeleiding bestaat uit persoonlijke adviezen over bewegen en voeding. Begeleiding tot 400 euro per persoon levert meer gezondheidswinst op dan het huidig basispakket en is kosteneffectief. Dit blijkt uit literatuuronderzoek en modelberekeningen van het RIVM. De resultaten zijn relevant voor de samenstelling van het basispakket van de zorgverzekering. Op dit moment bevat dit maximaal vier consulturen per jaar met een dietist op medische indicatie. In Nederland komen ruim een miljoen mensen tussen de 30 en 70 jaar in aanmerking voor leefstijlbegeleiding. Het gaat om mensen met overgewicht en een hoge bloeddruk, met een verstoorde glucosetolerantie (IGT) of met diabetes type 2. Mensen met overgewicht (en zeker obesitas) en/of met IGT lopen een groter risico om diabetes te ontwikkelen. Naar verwachting is ongeveer een derde van de groep bereid om een 'leefstijlkuur' te gaan volgen. Het RIVM berekende van vier leefstijlpakketten de kosteneffectiviteit in kosten per QALY. Een QALY staat gelijk aan een gewonnen levensjaar in goede gezondheid. De kosten van de pakketten varieerden van 150 tot 1150 euro per patient in het eerste behandeljaar. Voor mensen met overgewicht kost een QALY 900 tot 8.600 euro; voor patienten met diabetes type 2 is dat 3.900 tot 26.100 euro. Deze ramingen hangen af van de kosten van het pakket en de leeftijd van de patient en nemen de medische kosten in gewonnen levensjaren mee. Zonder deze kosten kan de leefstijlbegeleiding kostenbesparend zijn bij mensen met overgewicht of IGT. Als leefstijlbegeleiding daadwerkelijk in de praktijk geimplementeerd gaat worden dan moet de kwaliteit daarvan goed gegarandeerd worden. Er is goede inbedding noodzakelijk in de gebruikelijke zorg.
Multi-band excitation vocoder

a S AW Acknowledgements I wish to thank Jae Lim for his guidance and many technical discussions. I wish to thank the members of the Digital Signal Processing Group at M.I. T. for providing an excellent technical environment. I wish to thank my parents for encouraging and supporting my academic interests. I wish to thank Webster Dove and Doug Mook for many needed mental and physical thesis diversions. I wish to thank my wife Janet for all of her help and encouragement. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of
Strategic control of visual working memory during scene viewing

During scene viewing, visual working memory (VWM) is used to retain information from recently attended and fixated objects. In the present study, I examined whether and how people can strategically control the content of VWM during scene viewing, prioritizing task-relevant objects for retention even as the eyes are directed to subsequent objects. Participants viewed a set of real-world objects presented serially within a 3-D rendered scene. One object in the sequence was cued by a tone as to-beremembered. At the end of the sequence, memory for the visual form of one object was tested. Participants exhibited tight control over the content of VWM, implementing prioritization after the encoding of an object into VWM, protecting that item from subsequent interference. Participants also successfully reallocated protection to subsequent objects, regardless of the duration of prioritization of the original item. Such strategic maintenance of objects in VWM is likely to play an important role in real-world visual behavior, especially when object information must be maintained across shifts of attention and the eyes to other objects (such as when comparing two spatially separated objects). Abstract Approved:________________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ________________________________________________________ Title and Department ________________________________________________________ DateApproved:________________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ________________________________________________________ Title and Department ________________________________________________________ Date STRATEGIC CONTROL OF VISUAL WORKING MEMORY DURING SCENE VIEWING by Ashleigh Monette Richard A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychology in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa
Fine Cuts of Empathy and the Amygdala: Dissociable Deficits in Psychopathy and Autism

In the current paper, the “fine cuts” approach advocated by Uta Frith is applied to our understanding of empathy and amygdala dysfunction in two disorders, psychopathy and autism. A fine cut is made between cognitive (i.e., Theory of Mind) and emotional empathy. The literature with respect to psychopathy and autism and these two functions is then considered. A fine cut is also made between the amygdala's role in stimulus–reinforcement association and specific aspects of social cognition. Again the literature with respect to psychopathy and autism and these two functions of the amygdala is considered. It is concluded that while both conditions can be considered disorders of social cognition, fine cuts can be made dissociating the impairments associated with each.
Evaluating hybridization capture with RAD probes as a tool for museum genomics with historical bird specimens

Laboratory techniques for high-throughput sequencing have enhanced our ability to generate DNA sequence data from millions of natural history specimens collected prior to the molecular era, but remain poorly tested at shallower evolutionary time scales. Hybridization capture using restriction site associated DNA probes (hyRAD) is a recently developed method for population genomics with museum specimens (Suchan et al. 2016). The hyRAD method employs fragments produced in a restriction site associated double digestion as the basis for probes that capture orthologous loci in samples of interest. While promising in that it does not require a reference genome, hyRAD has yet to be applied across study systems in independent laboratories. Here we provide an independent assessment of the effectiveness of hyRAD on both fresh avian tissue and dried tissue from museum specimens up to 140 years old and investigate how variable quantities of input DNA affects sequencing, assembly, and population genetic inference. We present a modified bench protocol and bioinformatics pipeline, including three steps for detection and removal of microbial and mitochondrial DNA contaminants. We confirm that hyRAD is an effective tool for sampling thousands of orthologous SNPs from historic museum specimens to describe phylogeographic patterns. We find that modern DNA performs significantly better than historical DNA better during sequencing, but that assembly performance is largely equivalent. We also find that the quantity of input DNA predicts %GC content of assembled contiguous sequences, suggesting PCR bias. We caution against sampling schemes that include taxonomic or geographic autocorrelation across modern and historic samples.
Atypical Protein Kinase C Is Involved in the Evolutionarily Conserved Par Protein Complex and Plays a Critical Role in Establishing Epithelia-Specific Junctional Structures

We have previously shown that during early Caenorhabditis elegans embryogenesis PKC-3, a C. elegans atypical PKC (aPKC), plays critical roles in the establishment of cell polarity required for subsequent asymmetric cleavage by interacting with PAR-3 [Tabuse, Y. , Y. Izumi, F. Piano, K.J. Kemphues, J. Miwa, and S. Ohno. 1998. Development (Camb.). 125:3607–3614]. Together with the fact that aPKC and a mammalian PAR-3 homologue, aPKC-specific interacting protein (ASIP), colocalize at the tight junctions of polarized epithelial cells (Izumi, Y., H. Hirose, Y. Tamai, S.-I. Hirai, Y. Nagashima, T. Fujimoto, Y. Tabuse, K.J. Kemphues, and S. Ohno. 1998. J. Cell Biol. 143:95–106), this suggests a ubiquitous role for aPKC in establishing cell polarity in multicellular organisms. Here, we show that the overexpression of a dominant-negative mutant of aPKC (aPKCkn) in MDCK II cells causes mislocalization of ASIP/PAR-3. Immunocytochemical analyses, as well as measurements of paracellular diffusion of ions or nonionic solutes, demonstrate that the biogenesis of the tight junction structure itself is severely affected in aPKCkn-expressing cells. Furthermore, these cells show increased interdomain diffusion of fluorescent lipid and disruption of the polarized distribution of Na+,K+-ATPase, suggesting that epithelial cell surface polarity is severely impaired in these cells. On the other hand, we also found that aPKC associates not only with ASIP/PAR-3, but also with a mammalian homologue of C. elegans PAR-6 (mPAR-6), and thereby mediates the formation of an aPKC-ASIP/PAR-3–PAR-6 ternary complex that localizes to the apical junctional region of MDCK cells. These results indicate that aPKC is involved in the evolutionarily conserved PAR protein complex, and plays critical roles in the development of the junctional structures and apico-basal polarization of mammalian epithelial cells.
New methods in structural segmentation of musical audio

We describe a simple model of musical structure and two related methods of extracting a high-level segmentation of a music track from the audio data, including a novel use of hidden semi-Markov models. We introduce a semi-supervised segmentation process which finds musical structure with improved accuracy given some very limited manual input. We give experimental results compared to existing methods and human segmentations.
Ca2+ signaling by cholinergic and alpha1-adrenergic agonists is up-regulated in lacrimal and submandibular glands in a murine model of Sjögren's syndrome.

Innervation of the lacrimal gland of MRL/Mp-Fas-lpr/lpr (MRL/lpr), a murine model for Sjögren's syndrome, is unaltered with the onset or progression of the lymphocytic infiltration. To determine whether lacrimal and submandibular gland cells are able to respond to external stimuli, acini were prepared from MRL/lpr (diseased) and MRL/Mp-+/+ (MRL/+, control) mice at 4, 8, and 12 weeks of age and loaded with the fluorescent dye fura-2 to monitor changes in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) in response to cholinergic and alpha1-adrenergic stimulation, two major stimuli of lacrimal gland protein secretion. Cholinergic-induced [Ca2+]i increase was up-regulated 3- and 4-fold in lacrimal gland acini isolated from 8- and 12-week-old MRL/lpr mice, respectively, compared to 4-week-old animals, but was not up-regulated in age-matched MRL/+ control mice. Similarly, alpha1-adrenergic-induced [Ca2+]i increase was up-regulated 7- and 12-fold in acini isolated from 8- and 12-week-old MRL/lpr mice, respectively, compared to 4-week-old animals, but was not up-regulated in MRL/+ mice. Cholinergic-induced [Ca2+]i increase in submandibular gland acini of MRL/lpr and MRL/+ mice was the same at all ages. In contrast, alpha1-adrenergic-induced [Ca2+]i increase was up-regulated 3-fold in acini from 12-week-old MRL/lpr mice, compared to 4-week-old mice, but was not up-regulated in age-matched MRL/+ mice. We conclude that the Ca2+ signaling portion of cholinergic and alpha1-adrenergic pathway in the lacrimal gland and the Ca2+ signaling portion of alpha1-adrenergic pathway in the submandibular gland is up-regulated with the onset and progression of the lymphocytic infiltration in the MRL/lpr murine model of Sjögren's syndrome.
Patient Adaptive Neurofeedback for ADHD Therapy

An EEG-Based audiovisual stimulation system was tested on a group of 32 ADHD patients. The efficacy was compared in a pre- and post analysis over a treatment period of 3 month with a control group and a group of patients with an EEGbased neurofeedback therapy. The number of impulsivity errors in a stop-signal paradigm at several distinct times during and after the therapy was used as a quality marker. The main feature of this method uses real-time-EEG data derived parameters for a controlled manipulation of EEG patterns with persistently strong audio-visual stimuli. It is based upon a direct feedback of changes in short-term coherences in the context of central nervous stimulus processing to control the stimulating frequency. The real-time EEG processing is done on the basis of time-dependent coherence analysis of the theta and beta band.
Issues in Handwriting Instruction.

My 6-year-old daughter, Leah, just finished her first year of school in a whole language classroom. Because of my personal interest in my daughter's education and my professional preoccupation with children's writing and writing instruction, I kept a log of the practices Leah's teachers used throughout the year to help her and her kindergarten classmates grow as writers. The most prominent practices included:
The effect of dextromethorphan, alone or in combination with ibuprofen, on postoperative pain after minor gynaecological surgery

Background: Experimental studies have demonstrated that peripheral tissue injury may lead to hyperexcitability of nociceptive neurones in the dorsal horn, in part mediated by N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA)‐receptor mechanisms. Sensitisation of dorsal horn neurones may be an important contributor to postoperative pain. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of the NMDA‐receptor antagonist dextromethorphan on pain after minor gynaecological surgery, and to evaluate a potential additive effect with ibuprofen.
Hardware-Assisted Natural Neighbor Interpolation

Natural neighbor interpolation is a weighted average interpolation method that is based on Voronoi tessellation. In this paper, we present and implement an algorithm to perform natural neighbor interpolation using graphics hardware. Unlike traditional software-based approaches that process one query at a time, we develop a scheme that computes the entire scalar field induced by natural neighbour interpolation, at which point a query is a trivial array lookup, and range queries over the field are easy to perform. Our approach is significantly faster than the best known software implementations, and makes use of general purpose stream programming capabilities of current graphics cards. We also present a simple scheme that requires no advanced graphics capabilities and can process natural neighbour queries faster than existing software-based approaches. Department of Computer Science, University of Arizona; quanfu@cs.arizona. edu Department of Computer Science, University of Arizona; alon@cs.arizona. edu Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley; vladlen@cs.berkeley. edu ATT krishnas@research.att. com ATT suresh@research.att. com