Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual Speech Recognition: Improving Speech Perception in Noise through Artificial Intelligence

Objectives To compare speech perception (SP) in noise for normal-hearing (NH) individuals and individuals with hearing loss (IWHL) and to demonstrate improvements in SP with use of a visual speech recognition program (VSRP). Study Design Single-institution prospective study. Setting Tertiary referral center. Subjects and Methods Eleven NH and 9 IWHL participants in a sound-isolated booth facing a speaker through a window. In non-VSRP conditions, SP was evaluated on 40 Bamford-Kowal-Bench speech-in-noise test (BKB-SIN) sentences presented by the speaker at 50 A-weighted decibels (dBA) with multiperson babble noise presented from 50 to 75 dBA. SP was defined as the percentage of words correctly identified. In VSRP conditions, an infrared camera was used to track 35 points around the speaker’s lips during speech in real time. Lip movement data were translated into speech-text via an in-house developed neural network–based VSRP. SP was evaluated similarly in the non-VSRP condition on 42 BKB-SIN sentences, with the addition of the VSRP output presented on a screen to the listener. Results In high-noise conditions (70-75 dBA) without VSRP, NH listeners achieved significantly higher speech perception than IWHL listeners (38.7% vs 25.0%, P = .02). NH listeners were significantly more accurate with VSRP than without VSRP (75.5% vs 38.7%, P < .0001), as were IWHL listeners (70.4% vs 25.0% P < .0001). With VSRP, no significant difference in SP was observed between NH and IWHL listeners (75.5% vs 70.4%, P = .15). Conclusions The VSRP significantly increased speech perception in high-noise conditions for NH and IWHL participants and eliminated the difference in SP accuracy between NH and IWHL listeners.
Enzimas exógenas no desempenho e na digestibilidade ileal de nutrientes em frangos de corte

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o efeito da combinacao de fitase e do complexo amilase, protease e xilanase, em dietas de milho e soja, formuladas com reducao e sem reducao dos niveis de energia, calcio e fosforo sobre o desempenho e a digestibilidade ileal de nutrientes, em frangos de corte. Foi utilizado o delineamento inteiramente casualizado, com esquema fatorial 2x2, com duas dietas-controle: com reducao e sem reducao dos nutrientes, e duas suplementacoes das enzimas (sem adicao e com adicao de fitase e complexo enzimatico), com dez repeticoes de 40 aves. A digesta ileal foi coletada aos 43 dias de idade, para determinacao da energia digestivel e dos coeficientes de digestibilidade da proteina bruta, materia seca, calcio e fosforo. O desempenho apresentou interacao em todos os parâmetros analisados. As aves do tratamento com reducao dos nutrientes mostraram pior desempenho em relacao as aves da dieta sem reducao dos nutrientes. Nao houve efeito da materia seca na digestibilidade e na retencao de calcio. A adicao da combinacao enzimatica melhorou a digestibilidade da proteina e a retencao de fosforo. Houve interacao quanto a energia digestivel, com efeito apenas nas dietas sem reducao dos nutrientes, com maiores valores nas dietas suplementadas.
A Study of Using Natural Sorbent to Reduce Iron Cations from Aqueous Solutions

Iron is an essential trace element, but at high doses, this element may pose a health risk. Wastewater from iron ore mining, steel production, and metal processing, among other heavy metals, also contains high concentrations of iron (Fe3+). The use of sorption on natural materials is a potential alternative to conventional methods for removing iron ions, also because of low cost. The methods presented in this article are based on the study of kinetic properties and the acquisition of adsorption isotherms, which are one of the most important characteristics of adsorption mechanisms. The course of sorption is analyzed according to the Freundlich sorption isotherm model. Isotherm parameters are evaluated using experimental results of ferric cation sorption. The results presented relate to the investigation of natural zeolite-clinoptilolite as a ferric cation sorbent, providing a measurement of the sorption kinetics as well as the observed sorption parameters of iron cations from aqueous media. The optimal time for equilibrium in the adsorption system is determined from the kinetic dependencies. The dependence of the achieved equilibrium concentration on the initial concentration of the solution was also expressed, both graphically and analytically. The new prediction model was compared with the traditional Freundlich model. Finally, adsorption isotherms tested under laboratory conditions for a practical application can be recommended for the preliminary examination of the possible technological use of natural zeolite in the wastewater treatment process.
Structural Adaptation and Physiological Mechanisms in the Leaves of Anthyllis vulneraria L. from Metallicolous and Non-Metallicolous Populations

Calamine wastes highly contaminated with trace metals (TMs) are spontaneously inhabited by a legume plant Anthyllis vulneraria L. This study determined an adaptation strategy of metallicolous (M) A. vulneraria and compared it with that of the non-metallicolous (NM) ecotype. We hypothesized that TMs may lead to (i) leaf apoplast modifications and (ii) changes in the antioxidant machinery efficiency that facilitate plant growth under severe contamination. To verify our hypothesis, we implemented immunolabelling, transmission electron microscopy and biochemical measurements. NM leaves were larger and thicker compared to the M ecotype. Microscopic analysis of M leaves showed a lack of dysfunctions in mesophyll cells exposed to TMs. However, changes in apoplast composition and thickening of the mesophyll and epidermal cell walls in these plants were observed. Thick walls were abundant in xyloglucan, pectins, arabinan, arabinogalactan protein and extensin. The tested ecotypes differed also in their physiological responses. The metallicolous ecotype featured greater accumulation of photosynthetic pigments, enhanced activity of superoxide dismutase and increased content of specific phenol groups in comparison with the NM one. Despite this, radical scavenging activity at the level of 20% was similar in M and NM ecotypes, which may implicate effective reduction of oxidative stress in M plants. In summary, our results confirmed hypotheses and suggest that TMs induced cell wall modifications of leaves, which may play a role in metal stress avoidance in Anthyllis species. However, when TMs reach the protoplast, activation of antioxidant machinery may significantly strengthen the status of plants naturally growing in TM-polluted environment.
Questing functions and structures of hypothetical proteins from Campylobacter jejuni: a computer-aided approach

Abstract Campylobacter jejuni (C. jejuni) is considered to be one of the most frequent causes of bacterial gastroenteritis globally, especially in young children. The genome of C. jejuni contains many proteins with unknown functions termed as hypothetical proteins (HPs). These proteins might have essential biological role to show the full spectrum of this bacterium. Hence, our study aimed to determine the functions of HPs, pertaining to the genome of C. jejuni. An in-silico work flow integrating various tools were performed for functional assignment, three-dimensional structure determination, domain architecture predictors, subcellular localization, physicochemical characterization, and protein–protein interactions (PPIs). Sequences of 267 HPs of C. jejuni were analyzed and successfully attributed the function of 49 HPs with higher confidence. Here, we found proteins with enzymatic activity, transporters, binding and regulatory proteins as well as proteins with biotechnological interest. Assessment of the performance of various tools used in this analysis revealed an accuracy of 95% using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Functional and structural predictions and the results from ROC analyses provided the validity of in-silico tools used in the present study. The approach used for this analysis leads us to assign the function of unknown proteins and relate them with the functions that have already been described in previous literature.
Study on the Differentiation Characteristics and Influence of Retail Commercial Space around Urban Rail Transit Stations

Taking 23 stations operated in Changsha Metro Line 2 as the object, divide retail business space types in the rail transit stations, which is based upon four factors’ characteristic index extraction and calculation including station construction, spacial distance, land development and market competition. Then, information entropy, balance degree and the nearest-neighbor distance model are applied to make a quantitative analysis on the structural features and agglomeration degree of different retail business types, and to explore into the mechanism of rail transit influencing retail business structure around. As shown in the results: 1. The business space distributed in Changsha Metro Line 2 stations can be classified into city-centered, regional key, transportation hub and city functional; 2. Different types of station business spaces have significant differences in balanced business development and agglomeration degree; 3. Impact of the construction and development of rail transit on the retail business space is mainly reflected on four aspects: consolidating the dominant position of retail business of urban center station, strengthening business agglomeration and professional degree of regional key station, impeding multiple businesses and compound development of retail business space at transportation hub station, and enhancing the retail business space scale of urban function station; 4. Division of business space type and its internal characteristics, consumer behavior and public policy adjustment are the external factors affecting the retail business space of the station.
Selection of Optimal Operating Conditions for Extraction of Myrtus Communis L. Essential Oil by the Steam Distillation Method

Myrtus communis L. is one of the important aromatic and medicinal species from the Mediterranean area. It is used in various fields such as culinary, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, therapeutic, and industrial applications. Thus, a Box–Wilson experimental plan was used in this study to select the optimal operating conditions in order to obtain high volumes of essential oils. The factorial design method was applied to evaluate at an industrial scale the effect of major process variables on the essential oil extraction from Myrtus communis L. herbs by the steam distillation method. The input variables considered as significant operating conditions were: X1—boiler occupancy rate (boilers were filled to 50%, 75%, and 100%), X2—distillation duration (distillation was continued 60, 75, and 90 min), and X3—particle size (herbs were cut in sizes of 10, 20, and 30 mm via guillotine). The dependent variable selected, coded as Y, was the essential oil volume obtained (mL). The steps of the classical statistical experimental design technique were complemented with the Taguchi method to improve the extraction efficacy of essential oil from Myrtus communis L. , and the optimum parameter conditions were selected: boiler occupancy rate 100%, distillation duration 75 min, and particle size 20 mm. Following the optimum parameters, the GC-MS assay revealed for the Myrtus communis L. essential oil two predominant components, α-pinene—33.14% and eucalyptol—55.09%.
Distributed Streaming Set Similarity Join

With the prevalence of Internet access and user generated content, a large number of documents/records, such as news and web pages, have been continuously generated in an unprecedented manner. In this paper, we study the problem of efficient stream set similarity join over distributed systems, which has broad applications in data cleaning and data integration tasks, such as on-line near-duplicate detection. In contrast to prefix-based distribution strategy which is widely adopted in offline distributed processing, we propose a simple yet efficient length-based distribution framework which dispatches incoming records by their length. A load-aware length partition method is developed to find a balanced partition by effectively estimating local join cost to achieve good load balance. Our length-based scheme is surprisingly superior to its competitors since it has no replication, small communication cost, and high throughput. We further observe that the join results from the current incoming record can be utilized to guide the index construction, which in turn can facilitate the join processing of future records. Inspired by this observation, we propose a novel bundle-based join algorithm by grouping similar records on-the-fly to reduce filtering cost. A by-product of this algorithm is an efficient verification technique, which verifies a batch of records by utilizing their token differences to share verification costs, rather than verifying them individually. Extensive experiments conducted on Storm, a popular distributed stream processing system, suggest that our methods can achieve up to one order of magnitude throughput improvement over baselines.
Electrospun Orodispersible Films of Isoniazid for Pediatric Tuberculosis Treatment

Child-appropriate dosage forms are critical in promoting adherence and effective pharmacotherapy in pediatric patients, especially those undergoing long-term treatment in low-resource settings. The present study aimed to develop orodispersible films (ODFs) for isoniazid administration to children exposed to tuberculosis. The ODFs were produced from the aqueous solutions of natural and semi-synthetic polymer blends using electrospinning. The spinning solutions and the resulting fibers were physicochemically characterized, and the disintegration time and isoniazid release from the ODFs were assessed in simulated salivary fluid. The ODFs comprised of nanofibers with adequate thermal stability and possible drug amorphization. Film disintegration occurred instantly upon contact with simulated salivary fluid within less than 15 s, and isoniazid release from the ODFs in the same medium followed after the disintegration profiles, achieving rapid and total drug release within less than 60 s. The ease of administration and favorable drug loading and release properties of the ODFs may provide a dosage form able to facilitate proper adherence to treatment within the pediatric patient population.
The Real-time Big Data Processing Method Based on LSTM for the Intelligent Workshop Production Process

With the wide application of intelligent sensors and the Internet of things in the intelligent workshop, a large number of real-time production data are collected. Accurate analysis of the collected data can help producers to make effective decisions. Compared with the traditional data processing methods, artificial intelligence, the main method of big data analysis, has been applied in the manufacturing industry increasingly. However, it is different for Artificial Intelligence models to process real-time data from intelligent workshop production. Thus, this paper proposes a real-time big data processing method based on long short term memory (LSTM) for the workshop production process. This method takes the historical production data extracted by the Internet of things workshop as the original data set, preprocesses the data, and uses the LSTM model to train and predict the real-time data of the workshop. Finally, the experimental results are compared with K-NearestNeighbor (KNN), Decision Tree (DT) and traditional neural network model. The results show that the prediction accuracy of the LSTM model is 126.9%, 21.1%, and 14.7% higher than that of the traditional neural network, KNN, and DT respectively.
Construction of Hybrid Dual Radio Frequency RSSI (HDRF-RSSI) Fingerprint Database and Indoor Location Method

Radio frequency communication technology has not only greatly improved public network service, but also developed a new technological route for indoor navigation service. However, there is a gap between the precision and accuracy of indoor navigation services provided by indoor navigation service and the expectation of the public. This study proposed a method for constructing a hybrid dual frequency received signal strength indicator (HDRF-RSSI) fingerprint library, which is different from the traditional RSSI fingerprint library constructing method in indoor space using 2.4G radio frequency (RF) under the same Wi-Fi infrastructure condition. The proposed method combined 2.4G RF and 5G RF on the same access point (AP) device to construct a HDRF-RSSI fingerprint library, thereby doubling the fingerprint dimension of each reference point (RP). Experimental results show that the feature discriminability of HDRF-RSSI fingerprinting is 18.1% higher than 2.4G RF RSSI fingerprinting. Moreover, the hybrid radio frequency fingerprinting model, training loss function, and location evaluation algorithm based on the machine learning method were designed, so as to avoid limitation that transmission point (TP) and AP must be visible in the positioning method. In order to verify the effect of the proposed HDRF-RSSI fingerprint library construction method and the location evaluation algorithm, dual RF RSSI fingerprint data was collected to construct a fingerprint library in the experimental scene, which was trained using the proposed method. Several comparative experiments were designed to compare the positioning performance indicators such as precision and accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that compared with the existing machine learning method based on Wi-Fi 2.4G RF RSSI fingerprint, the machine learning method combining Wi-Fi 5G RF RSSI vector and the original 2.4G RF RSSI vector can effectively improve the precision and accuracy of indoor positioning of the smart phone.
Unstructured Biology of Proteins from Ubiquitin-Proteasome System: Roles in Cancer and Neurodegenerative Diseases

The 26S proteasome is a large (~2.5 MDa) protein complex consisting of at least 33 different subunits and many other components, which form the ubiquitin proteasomal system (UPS), an ATP-dependent protein degradation system in the cell. UPS serves as an essential component of the cellular protein surveillance machinery, and its dysfunction leads to cancer, neurodegenerative and immunological disorders. Importantly, the functions and regulations of proteins are governed by the combination of ordered regions, intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDPRs) and molecular recognition features (MoRFs). The structure–function relationships of UPS components have not been identified completely; therefore, in this study, we have carried out the functional intrinsic disorder and MoRF analysis for potential neurodegenerative disease and anti-cancer targets of this pathway. Our report represents the presence of significant intrinsic disorder and disorder-based binding regions in several UPS proteins, such as extraproteasomal polyubiquitin receptors (UBQLN1 and UBQLN2), proteasome-associated polyubiquitin receptors (ADRM1 and PSMD4), deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) (ATXN3 and USP14), and ubiquitinating enzymes (E2 (UBE2R2) and E3 (STUB1) enzyme). We believe this study will have implications for the conformation-specific roles of different regions of these proteins. This will lead to a better understanding of the molecular basis of UPS-associated diseases.
Common Bile Duct Obstruction Due to Candidiasis

Biliary obstruction with its wide range of potential causes (e.g. neoplastic lesions, gallstones and inflammatory processes) is a common disease in gastroenterology. Although infections with Candida and other fungal species have increasingly been recognized in patients with certain predispositions, fungal involvement of the biliary tract is extremely rare. We report the case of a male patient with a past history of long-time mechanical ventilation and who was referred to our department with cholangitis. Endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography (ERCP) of the septic patient revealed a high-degree stenosis of the distal common bile duct with a prestenotic dilation which was strongly suspicious of an underlying malignancy. Control ERCP revealed a beads-like deformation of the intra- and extrahepatic bile duct system which was compatible with chronic secondary sclerosing cholangitis. Examining the bile duct system with a balloon catheter, a long tubular, filamentous structure with several branches at its sides could be extracted and was assessed histologically to be a Candida conglomerate. Candida colonization of the bile duct was confirmed by microbiological analysis of aspirated bile.
A Hilbert transform and sine curve fitting-based method for estimating gain and phase errors in quadrature mixing structure

To eliminate the influence of gain and phase imbalance between in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals on receiver performance featuring the quadrature mixing, a method of estimating the imbalance parameters of I/Q signals is proposed based on the quadrature relation of I/Q channels in time domain. The method uses the output signal of channel I after Hilbert transform as the ideal reference signal to calculate the gain and phase error parameters of channel Q by sine curve fitting (SCF) and least square method (LSM). Experimental tests show that the proposed algorithm can estimate the I/Q imbalance parameters effectively and accurately.
Phylogeny of the Pacific Trouts and Salmons (Oncorhynchus) and Genera of the Family Salmonidae

Abstract Seven genera—Brachymystax, Acantholingua, Salmothymus, Hucho, Salvelinus, Salmo, and Oncorhynchus—make up the living Salmoninae. Relationships of 33 extant and 4 fossil salmonid species and subspecies were studied on the basis of 119 characters analyzed by parsimony algorithms. Twelve equally parsimonious trees each requiring 253 steps were calculated. Monophyly of recognized genera is consistent with all 12 estimates. The earliest branch of the family Salmonidae is the subfamily Coregoninae. Its sister group is the clade including the Thymallinae and Salmoninae. Within the Salmoninae, Eosalmo, from the Eocene of British Columbia, is the sister group of all living genera, as previously shown by Mark Wilson. The living Asian species Brachymystax lenok is the sister species of all other living Salmoninae, as documented by Carroll Norden. Three species of archaic trouts from the Mediterranean area—Acantholingua ohridana, Salmothymus obtusirostris, and Salmothymus (Platysalmo) platycephalus—branch of.