Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study on different neural network architectures applied to text-to-phoneme mapping

In this paper, the problem of text-to-phoneme mapping of isolated words for the English language is studied. Multilayer perceptron, recurrent and bidirectional recurrent neural network architectures are compared in the text-to-phoneme mapping task. Multilayer perceptron neural networks utilize contextual information due to the orthography of a word. In our study, recurrent and bidirectional recurrent neural networks, on the other hand, do not take the letter context into account. Instead, these networks utilize the contextual information due to the previously transcribed phonemes as introduced by the feedback loop in the networks.
Real-time scheduling in distributed multi agent systems

The thesis of this dissertation is that execution of the actions required to accomplish a task specified by an agent program is similar to an operating system executing a sequence of user requests. In the same fashion that an operating system provides an environment for the execution of a user request, an agent framework provides the needed environment for the execution of agent actions. The agent environment includes the ability to communicate with other agents, maintaining the current state of an executing agent, and selecting an execution path from a set of possible execution paths. The specific contributions of this work are: a framework for the execution of intelligent software agents; a characterization of agent performance; development of a real-time agent scheduling algorithm; development of an environment for testing and comparing the performance of agent activities, and a library of benchmarks for testing and comparing scheduling algorithms and architectures. The agent architecture is called DECAF (Distributed Environment Centered Agent Framework). DECAF is a software toolkit for the rapid design, development, and execution of “intelligent” agents to achieve solutions in complex software systems. Unlike a traditional operating system, an agent architecture has the ability to reason about action execution if a characterization of action performance is available. A major component of the described work is a characterization of agent execution that will lead to optimal or near optimal scheduling of agent execution. This document will describe the key portions of the DECAF toolkit, the internal details of the agent execution framework, and a formal model of the parameters used for scheduling considerations. The scheduling algorithm is called DRU (Dynamic Real-time Updates). DRU features the ability to examine schedules and execute several task structures in parallel that will accomplish a goal. Additionally, DRU monitors the progress of actions within tasks and assures that deadlines are met even in the event of specific failures. Additionally, automatic generation of a suite of test procedures is described along with actual multi agent systems developed using DECAF and DRU.
CMOS output stages for low-voltage power supplies

Compact and power-efficient CMOS output stages are presented and compared by designing two low-voltage operational amplifiers with similar gain and gain-bandwidth performance. The amplifiers were realized in a standard 1.2-/spl mu/m CMOS process with threshold voltages around 0.8 V and using a 1.5-V power supply. They achieve an open-loop gain and a gain-bandwidth product close to 65 dB and 1 MHz, respectively. By connecting them in unity-gain configuration and delivering a 1-V peak-to-peak output voltage into a 500 /spl Omega/ and 50 pF load, total harmonic distortions of -77 and -67 dB can be achieved, while using quiescent currents as low as 50 /spl mu/A in the output branches.
Potential biomarkers for myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury and pinacidil post-conditioning identified with mitochondrial proteomics in rats

Pinacidil post-conditioning (PPC) has been shown to be effective in alleviating myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms are not fully elucidated. Langendorff-perfused isolated rat hearts were subjected to global I/R and received PPC. Myocardial mitochondria was extracted and mitochondrial protein expression was detected in normal, I/R, and PPC rat hearts using comparative proteomics, i.e. two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) and MALDI-TOF MS. Four differentially-expressed proteins were identified between normal and I/R hearts, as well as 7 between PPC hearts and I/R hearts. These proteins were identified as ATP synthase subunit alpha (ATPA), isoform 2 of cytochrome c1, electron transfer flavoprotein subunit alpha (ETFA), NADH dehydrogenase [ubiquinone], iron-sulfur protein 2 (NDUFS2), elta(3,5)-delta(2,4)-dienoyl-CoA isomerase (ECH1), ATP synthase subunit d (ATPD), NADH dehydrogenase [ubiquinone] 1 alpha subcomplex subunit 10 (NDUFA10), isocitrate dehydrogenase [NAD] subunit alpha (IDHA), and NADH dehydrogenase [ubiquinone] flavoprotein 2 (NDUFV2). Interestingly, two interested protein spots in the 2-DE gels were identified as ATPD between the PPC group and I/R group. These differential proteins could be potential biomarkers for hearts undergoing I/R injury and receiving PPC.
Reconhecimento de Fonemas usando Predição Linear para movimento labial de modelos faciais humanóides virtuais

Linear predictive analysis is a technique widely used in the recognition of phonemes. In this article, we discuss the different aspects of their applications in vowel recognition of the Portuguese language and lip movements of a virtual humanoid facial model. LP analysis is used to extract features of the shape of the vocal tract, which is correlated with the phoneme being spoken. The vectors of extracted features are classified into a set of seven vowels using artificial neural networks. The computational effort and performance classification of this technique are analyzed. The information extracted from the vowel can be applied to the lip movement in entertainment applications and avatar animation in virtual environments. Author
EXPENDITURE-BASED SEGMENTATION : TRAVEL EXPENDITURES OF BABY BOOMER SENIOR HOUSEHOLDS IN TAIWAN

Because of the substantial size of senior population, the demand of senior population draws much attention and becomes the silver economy or senior market. Baby boomers, a specific focus of our research interest, refer to people who were born after World War II. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the socio-demographic and economic determinants of travel expenditures in baby boomer senior households in Taiwan. In this study, the traditional ordinary least square approach (OLS) together with the quantile regression analysis are adopted to capture both the mean and quantile behaviors of the baby boomer households’ travel expenditures, using the 2008 Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (SFIE) in Taiwan. The OLS model can be used to obtain the average (mean) expenditure behavior, while quantile regression analysis is able to capture the extreme behaviors of the two tails of baby boomer households’ travel expenditures. The estimation outcomes have important policy implications for travel marketers and operators in the tourism industry to understand the baby boomer senior consumers. Keyword: Baby boomer, Travel expenditure, Quantile regression
Fault Tolerant Scheduling of Non-uniform Tasks under Resource Augmentation

Dealing with computationally intensive jobs is becoming a necessity rather than an additional advantage of new computational systems. Some of the multiple challenges that appear with the complexity of such systems include the dynamicity of job (or task) arrivals, the diversity of their computational demands (e.g. different processing times), the unpredictable machine failures, as well as the preservation of power consumption. In this work we focus on the simple model of one single machine prone to unpredictable crashes and restarts, and tasks of sizes c ∈ [cmin, cmax] arriving dynamically in the system. Values cmin and cmax represent the smallest and largest processing times a task may need respectively, when executed by the machine running without additional resource augmentation. We consider a parameter s representing speedup; the amount of resource augmentation added to the machine, such that the processing time of a task of size c becomes c/s. We apply resource augmentation to overcome the machine failures, as an alternative to using more processing entities (e.g. multiprocessor systems). Due to the unpredictable nature of the machine and the dynamicity of task arrivals, we consider crash, restart and injection patterns to be controlled by an adversarial entity A, and perform worst-case competitive analysis for the performance of online scheduling algorithms. We focus on two efficiency measures: the completed time, which is the aggregate size of all tasks that have been completely executed, and latency, which is the longest time a task spends in the system. In some sense, the former corresponds to the utilization of the machine, while the latter on the fairness of the scheduling algorithm. In a previous work, Fernandez Anta et al. [2] looked at the pending time competitiveness of a similar system of multiple machines and showed that in order to achieve competitiveness, it is necessary to use speedup. They proved the NP-hardness of the offline version of the problem and gave lower bounds on speedup, under which no competitiveness can be achieved. These were given by conditions C1: s 0 a parameter that represents the number of cmin tasks that a machine with speedup s can complete in addition to a cmax task, in an interval of length (γ + 1)cmin. In a different line of work and environment, Fernandez Anta et al. [1] have shown that even with no speedup, an algorithm that gives priority to the shortest tasks can achieve
Design of High Speed Pipelined Merged MAC Using Radix-4 MBA and Carry Select Adder

In this paper, we have presented a parallel Multiplier accumulator unit for high speed arithmetic. Accumulation process in a MAC has the largest delay and hence multiplication and accumulation are merged inside the Carry Save Adder (CSA) tree to improve the performance. This CSA tree is based on radix-4 modified booth algorithm which uses 1’s complement form and its array is modified for the sign bits. The number of inputs to the final adder is decreased by processing the least significant bits in advance. For the final adder, three adder architectures a regular SQRT CSLA, modified SQRT CSLA and SQRT CSLA with Common Boolean Logic are compared. On the basis of the synthesized results, the adder with minimum delay and gate count (SQRT CSLA with Common Boolean Logic) is chosen. Also, the MAC is pipelined in an optimized way by carrying out the accumulation process of the intermediate sum and carry instead of the final output. The synthesis of the design is performed using Cadence RTL compiler TSMC 45nm standard cell library. The delay for 16-bit MAC based on radix-4 MBA is found to be 5.4ns and hence a 17.84% reduction in delay is achieved due to the reduction of partial products rows and carry select adder at the final stage. Keywords—Radix-4 MBA, Merged MAC, SQRT Carry select adder
First-principles calculation of the infrared spectrum of lizardite

The theoretical infrared spectrum of lizardite [Mg3Si2O5(OH)4] was computed using first-principles quantum mechanical calculations. Density functional perturbation theory allowed us to derive the low-frequency dielectric tensor of lizardite as a function of the light frequency. The infrared spectrum was then calculated using a model that takes into account the platy shape of particles. A very good agreement was obtained between theory and experiment. This agreement allows us to make an unambiguous assignment of the major absorption bands observed in the IR spectrum of lizardite, including the stretching bands of OH groups.
Big Data, Mining, and Analytics: Components of Strategic Decision Making

Introduction to the Big Data Era Stephan Kudyba and Matthew Kwatinetz Information Creation through Analytics Stephan Kudyba Big Data Analytics-Architectures, Implementation Methodology, and Tools Wullianallur Raghupathi and Viju Raghupathi Data Mining Methods and the Rise of Big Data Wayne Thompson Data Management and Model Creation Process of Structured Data for Mining and Analytics Stephan Kudyba The Internet: A Source of New Data for Mining in Marketing Robert Young Mining and Analytics in E-Commerce Stephan Kudyba Streaming Data in the Age of Big Data Billie Anderson and J. Michael Hardin Using CEP for Real-Time Data Mining Steven Barber Transforming Unstructured Data into Useful Information Meta S. Brown Mining Big Textual Data Ioannis Korkontzelos The New Medical Frontier: Real-Time Wireless Medical Data Acquisition for 21st-Century Healthcare and Data Mining Challenges David Lubliner and Stephan Kudyba
Developing reusable multimedia tutorials

This paper addresses the development of a reusable multimedia tutorial. Like all large organizations, the United States Army is constantly developing new software. One such project, the Warfighter's Simulation 2000 (WARSIM 2000) project is being developed to replace existing legacy constructive simulation packages with a single integrated command and control constructive simulation package. This will fundamentally change how the Army conducts constructive simulation training and as such, the National Simulation Center and Simulation and Instrumentation Command developed a multimedia tutorial to highlight the differences between existing constructive military simulations and the emerging WARSIM 2000 software package. Similar packages such as the Standard Army Training System Training Exercise Development System Multimedia Tutorial and Combined Arms Tactical Trainer Multimedia Trainer had been previously developed. But instead of developing another multimedia tutorial for a single application, a multimedia tutorial was developed that could be easily adapted for other multimedia tutorials and provided for user adaptation, knowledge assessment and information presentation using commonly available software tools. This ability to reuse software components and easily substitute source materials provides an attractive and cost-effective alternative to the typical, time-extensive development cycle of multimedia software development.
2 . 2 Topological and Dynamic Models in Linguistics : From “ Autopoiesis ” to the Notion of “ Instruction ” 2 . 2 . 1 Short Review of Some Models : Autopoietic , Gestaltist , Morphogenetic

Linguistic tradition has produced descriptions that can be assimilated (at least for the most part) to discrete models: discrete models of categories, discrete grammar rules and discrete lists of word senses, among others. This view is now widely discussed and more and more linguists agree that this model is partial and, more importantly, cannot account for the whole complexity of human languages. For example, Manning (2003) clearly shows that a discrete model of categories is both too poor and too restrictive:
THE KINEMATICS OF MANIPULATORS UNDER COMPUTER CONTROL

Abstract : The kinematics of manipulators is studied. A model is presented which allows for the systematic description of new and existing manipulators. Six degree-of-freedom manipulators are studied. Several solutions to the problem of finding the manipulator configuration leading to a specified position and orientation are presented. Numerical as well as explicit solutions are given. The problem of positioning a multilink digital arm is also discussed. Given the solution to the position problem, a set of heuristics is developed for moving a six degree-of-freedom manipulator from an initial position to a final position through a space containing obstacles. This results in a computer program shown to be able to direct a manipulator around obstacles. (Author)
Exonum: Byzantine fault tolerant protocol for blockchains

The need for consensus in distributed systems is an active area of research. There are many mathematical models with known theoretical limitations, as well as many correct and fast protocols. This research paper posits that the competitive blockchain industry requires foremost that consensus algorithms be fast regarding processed transactions per second. The new blockchain-speciﬁc consensus algorithm named Exonum is proposed in the paper. Its theoretical properties are proved and performance tests are provided.
Evaluation of Nutrient Composition and Antibacterial Potential of Leaf and Stem of Mukia Maderaspatana l

Mukia maderaspatana L. (called as “musumusukkai” in Tamil) is an impor tant medicinal plant used as a herbal drug in cough and cold and well integrated i nto South Indian food. The present study was carrie d out to evaluate the phytochemical constitution, nutrien composition and antibacterial potential of leaf a nd stem parts of Mukia maderaspatana. Phytochemical screening showed the presence of glyc oside, flavonoids, phenols, alkaloids, saponin, carbohydrate and stero id in them. Most of the phytochemicals were extract ed in ethanol. The moisture control was found to be hi gher in leaf than in stem (38% Vs 29%). Proximate analysis revealed higher protein content than lipid an carbohydrate in the plant extract. The leaf an d stem parts were also analyzed for vitamin (retinol, asco rbic acid, tocopherol, thiamine, riboflavin) and mi neral (iron, phosphorus, copper) content. The results obt ained suggest that considerable amount of ascorbic acid and phosphorus are present in the plant parts. The antibacterial activity of various extracts of M.maderasapatana shows that the acetone fraction of both leaf and s tem has pronounced activity at 1000μg/ disc where as the stem hexane extract shows negligible activity. Hence, the findings of the present study suggests that the rich nutrient content and a tib cterial activity of M.maderaspatana may be responsible for its wide traditional use as food an medicine.
Effect of non-dairy creamer ( NDC ) supplementation in a corn-soybean meal based diet on growth performance , nutrient digestibility , and meat quality in broilers

A total of 576 seven-day-old male Ross 308 broilers with an average initial BW of 180 ± 1 g were used in a 4 week feeding experiment which included a starter phase (7 to 21 d) and a grower phase (22 to 35 d). Birds were randomly allocated into 1 of 3 treatments with 12 replicates per treatment and 16 birds per pen. The treatments consisted of the following: T1, Control; T2, T1 + 0.1% Creamer (Dongsuh Foods Corporation, Incheon, Korea), and T3, T1 + 0.5% Creamer. The broilers were weighed by pen and feed intake (FI) and the number of living broiler chickens were recorded on d 7, 21, and 35. These information were used to calculate the body weight gain (BWG) and feed conversion ratio (FCR). As results of this experiment, there were no significant differences in the BWG, FCR and nutrient digestibility among the treatments. With regards to meat quality, no adverse effects were observed among the treatments. However, a higher score in redness was observed in T3 than in T1. In addition, the relative weight of breast muscle was reduced in T3 compared with T1. Regardless of the nondairy creamer (NDC) inclusion levels, no negative effects on growth performance and nutrient digestibility were observed. In conclusion, non-dairy creamer could be a kind of fat sources additive in broiler diets, further studies are needed to test the optimum levels of the NDC to be supplemented in broilers diet.
LITERATURE REVIEW OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Due to the rapid growth of new technologies, the Business Intelligence (BI) market is growing as well that forces the corporations to adopt their offerings to the needs of the customer. Adoption of Business Intelligence system has become one of the most important technological and organizational innovations in modern organization that promote knowledge diffusion, and cornerstone of business decision making processes. Since the way of BI integrated and implemented is quite different among organizations, it is important to approach BI literature by adaption of BI application and its implementation, BI architects, and enabling factors in BI projects. Furthermore, we are also going to discuss how technological capabilities such as user access, data quality and the integration of BI with other systems in the firm, as well as organizational capabilities such as flexibility and risk management support, are essential for BI success, regardless of the decision environment. Last but not least, this paper will also discuss how the idea of BI has been built on the school of thought. We expect that results could create the value and input for enterprises that plan to implement a BI application in their organization.
Primary Outcomes of Patients with Chronic Angle-Closure Glaucoma Treated with Combined Phacoemulsification, Viscogoniosynechialysis, and Endocyclophotocoagulation

Purpose/Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of combined phacoemulsification, viscogoniosynechialysis (VGSL), and endocyclophotocoagulation (ECP) in patients with moderate chronic angle-closure glaucoma (CACG) with peripheral anterior synechia (PAS) ≥90 not controlled with glaucoma medications and previous iridotomy yag laser. Materials and Methods We retrospectively reviewed records from patients with cataract and uncontrolled chronic angle-closure glaucoma despite maximal tolerated medical therapy and iridotomy yag laser who received combined treatment with phacoemulsification with posterior capsular lens implantation, VGSL, and ECP 360°. We evaluated intraocular pressure (IOP), glaucoma medications, and best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) preoperatively and during follow-up. Results A total of 29 eyes from 22 patients received surgical intervention. Mean follow-up was 6 months. Mean preoperative IOP was 18.2 mmHg, and postoperatively, IOP was 13.5, 12.2, and 12.8 mmHg at 1, 3, and 6 months, respectively. Complete success was 37.9%, and relative success was 72.4%. Mean BCVA was 0.4 logMAR preoperative and 0.3 logMAR 6 months after surgery. Glaucoma medication fell significantly from 2.34 ± 1.66 preoperatively to 1.31 ± 2.6 postoperatively (p < 0.001). Overall, 44.8% of the patients did not require glaucoma medications at 6 months. There were no visual significant complications. Conclusion Combined treatment with phacoemulsification with posterior capsular lens implantation, VGSL, and ECP is effective and safe in reducing IOP and number of glaucoma medications with stable BCVA at 6 months.
Role of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology in Children With Significant Cervical Lymphadenopathy-A Retrospective Study Evaluating Its Diagnostic Role & Efficacy .

Aim: The present study is evaluate and establish the technique of F.N. A.C as a rapid diagnostic tool for cervical lymphadenopathy in paediatric age group and to study the aspiration cytology smear pattern in cervical lymphadenopathy in children, correlating with histopathological examination where ever necessary. [ where surgical resection was done ]. Material And Methods: This is a hospital based retrospective study conducted over a period of 2 years from January 2015 to December 2016. Total 231 patients attending to O P D of the departments of paediatrics , surgery, medicine, pulmonology and ENT, who were advised F.N. A.C for mass lesions in cervical region are included in the study. Results: Significant cervical lymphadenopathy is found to be common in 7-9 years (29%), followed by 4-6 years (28%) and 19-12 years (28%) respectively. Conclusions: F.N. A.C is more rapid, inexpensive,safe procedure. It can be recommended as a first line of investigation for the diagnosis of cervical lymphadenopathy in children, and to differentiate between inflammatory and neoplastic lesion.