Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
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To be able to build acoustic models for children, that can be used in spoken dialogue systems, speech data has to be collected. Commercial recognizers available for Swedish are trained on adult speech, which makes them less suitable for children's computer-directed speech. This paper describes some experiments with on-the-fly voice transformation of children's speech. Two transformation methods were tested, one inspired by the Phase Vocoder algorithm and another by the Time-Domain Pitch-Synchronous Overlap-Add (TD-PSOLA) algorithm. The speech signal is transformed before being sent to the speech recognizer for adult speech. Our results show that this method reduces the error rates in the order of thirty to forty-five percent for children users. Commercially available speech recognizers of today are mostly trained on adult speech, making them less suitable for spoken input from children. Thus, when designing children-directed spoken dialogue applications, it is important to collect data under realistic circumstances in order to construct language models that work well for children. However, simple data collection methods that are used to collect adult speech, like reading prepared sentences from a paper, or having people talk to a simple system-directed dialogue system, do not work that well for children. It is problematic to record children reading aloud [1], and having children talk to a dialogue system fails because of the very problem mentioned in the beginning-the recognition performance is bad for children, making it hard to get a dialogue going. This is a bootstrapping problem-how do you collect spoken dialogue data from children (in order to improve recognition for children) without having a good recognizer available? In previous studies this problem has been solved using Wizard-of-Oz techniques to collect dialogue data from children [2,6]. However, if the dialogue system is to be used in a permanent public exhibition this solution is too expensive and complicated. Ã ÃThis article describes a method that aims at solving this problem for a dialogue system placed in a permanent exhibition. The idea is to transform the children's speech to lower frequencies before down-sampling it to telephone bandwidth. This method has been implemented in a simple system directed dialogue system that was designed to be engaging for children. It is a small speech enabled computer game publicly available in a futuristic apartment that is on display at the Telecommunication museum in Stockholm. The users interact with an animated agent to fix things in the apartment or to get to know …
Modeling illumination for scene recovery through the motion, occlusion and strobing of light-sources

Recent display applications for entertainment and business have made available new types of illumination using LEDs, DMDs and LCDs, which are bright, energy efficient and cheap. Some of these devices are programmable and allow spatio-temporal control of the emitted light rays. With the advent of such digital light-sources, illumination is becoming a flexible, configurable medium. This has impacted computer vision and spurred techniques that control illumination for analysis of indoor areas, industrial environments, stage/studio sets, underwater scenes, underground locations and outdoor scenes at night. In such methods, the light-source's programmability is often exploited to create easily detectable features, such as bright stripes or binary patterns. In this thesis, we extract illumination-based features for three new scenarios by exploiting the motion, occlusion and strobing of light-sources. First, we move a light-source in a smooth and random path. For a static scene, this creates a continuous set of intensities at each pixel. We exploit this continuity to detect brightness maxima and minima at scene points and show how these extrema features relate to geometric cues, such as surface normals and depths. For our second approach, we occlude a light-source using moving opaque masks. Each pixel's brightness minima, due to the mask shadow, corresponds to a set of blocked incident light rays. These shadow features can be used to render the scene from the light-source's point-of-view. The third technique exploits the flickering emitted by a strobing source as a temporal feature that is easily detected, even for scenes with fast moving objects. This enables active vision for dynamic scenes, which we demonstrate using DLP illumination. Our methods work with a variety of indoor and outdoor materials, real-world textures and glossy/metallic objects. We are not restricted to distant point sources and show results with outdoor illumination, sources with intensity fall-off and area/line sources such as indoor fixtures. None of our approaches require a complex or calibrated setup. Some even allow the light-source to be hand-waved in an unstructured manner. In addition, all of our techniques are easy to implement, requiring only a few lines of code. The work in this thesis demonstrates, for the first time, results such as iso-normal clustering of indoor and outdoor scenes, reciprocal views from general, non-programmable sources and very high-speed marker-less motion-capture and photography. Finally, almost all natural and artificial light-sources in our world either undergo motion (or are mobile), get occluded or exhibit strobing (at some frequency). Therefore our algorithms have relevance for real-world illumination and any applications or extensions of these will have significant impact.
Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology Calculating the Statistical Significance of Changes in Pathway Activity From Gene Expression Data

We present a statistical approach to scoring changes in activity of metabolic pathways from gene expression data. The method identifies the biologically relevant pathways with corresponding statistical significance. Based on gene expression data alone, only local structures of genetic networks can be recovered. Instead of inferring such a network, we propose a hypothesis-based approach. We use given knowledge about biological networks to improve sensitivity and interpretability of findings from microarray experiments. Recently introduced methods test if members of predefined gene sets are enriched in a list of top-ranked genes in a microarray study. We improve this approach by defining scores that depend on all members of the gene set and that also take pairwise co-regulation of these genes into account. We calculate the significance of co-regulation of gene sets with a nonparametric permutation test. On two data sets the method is validated and its biological relevance is discussed. It turns out that useful measures for co-regulation of genes in a pathway can be identified adaptively. We refine our method in two aspects specific to pathways. First, to overcome the ambiguity of enzyme-to-gene mappings for a fixed pathway, we introduce algorithms for selecting the best fitting gene for a specific enzyme in a specific condition. In selected cases, functional assignment of genes to pathways is feasible. Second, the sensitivity of detecting relevant pathways is improved by integrating information about pathway topology. The distance of two enzymes is measured by the number of reactions needed to connect them, and enzyme pairs with a smaller distance receive a higher weight in the score calculation.
A Teenager's Pandemic

The paper aimed to discover the relationship between mental health and help-seeking behaviors. Importantly, attachment styles demonstrate the significance of social expectations, and the feelings of stigma that often arise in conversations about mental health. Despite more teenagers experiencing mental health issues, less are showing courage to seek out professional help. Moreover, even when adolescents do reach out for help, it is to their peers rather than professionals. Attachment styles, as classically defined by Ainsworth and Bowlby affect the ways in which people interact in a relationship, thereby influencing the help-seeking behavior. These different styles further affect how people form relationships and how they respond to situations. People with healthier attachment style (secure) are more likely to seek help, while people with less healthier attachment styles (anxious, avoidant, fearful) are less likely to seek help when struggling with mental health issues. Mental health issues, especially with teenagers, are huge factors that influence suicide rates and well-being of the citizens. It is necessary that more research is done regarding help-seeking behaviors and its relation to attachment styles. Further research into such topics would be able to help those in struggle by finding ways to encourage them to seek out professional help.
Alternative immunological markers to document successful multiple smallpox revaccinations.

BACKGROUND Successful smallpox vaccination is traditionally defined by clinical response ("take"). Nevertheless, only 60% of subjects in the 2002 Israeli smallpox revaccination campaign developed clinical take. More sensitive immunological markers are needed to document successful revaccination. We compared the level of vaccinia-specific immune markers among subjects who did or did not develop clinical take following revaccination. METHODS Forty subjects who participated in 2002 smallpox revaccination campaign and developed clinical take were individually matched for age, sex, and smallpox vaccinations with subjects who did not develop clinical take ("no-take"). Vaccinia immunity markers were examined prior to and 14 days and 2 years after revaccination. RESULTS Higher levels of total immunoglobulin (Ig) G, IgG1, and neutralizing antibodies (highest dilution of serum that inhibited the cytopathic effect by at least 50% [PRNT50]) were observed in the no-take group before vaccination (166 vs 94.3 ELISAU/mL [P<.05], 53.2 vs 34.5 ELISAU/mL [ P<.05], and 30% vs 19.7% [P<.05], respectively). The mean time since last smallpox vaccination was longer in the take group than in the no-take group. Total IgG, IgG subclasses, avidity index, and PRNT50 levels were higher among "take" than "no-take" volunteers 14 days after revaccination. The no-take group was not inferior to the take group in all vaccinia immune marker levels measured 24 months after vaccination. Moreover, mean interferon-γ secretion and the percentage of serum samples with PRNT50 levels ≥1:32 were significantly higher in the No-take group than in the take group (677.5 vs 282.7 pg/mL [P < .05] and 95% vs 80% [P<.05], respectively). CONCLUSIONS The overwhelming majority of subjects in the no-take group were successfully revaccinated against smallpox. Under circumstances of emergent smallpox mass immunization, there is no need for revaccination success assessment among individuals who have received multiple previous smallpox vaccinations.
Routability-driven placement algorithm for analog integrated circuits

To obtain good layout quality and reliability, placement is a very important stage during the physical design of analog circuits. Many works have been proposed to consider topological constraints for analog placement, and they devote to generate compact placements to minimize area and wirelength. However, a compact placement may induce unwanted routing issues. In order to reduce parasitics and cross-talk effects during the routing phase, wires are preferred not to pass above the active area of analog devices. Therefore, it is required to preserve enough routing spaces between devices for successful routing. Currently, there exists limited works studying routability for analog placement, but none of these works consider that symmetry property must be maintained during placement expansion. In this paper, we present a two-stage routability-driven analog placer based on ASF-B*-tree and HB*-tree representations. To reduce running time, our placement algorithm first generates a compact placement to minimize wirelength and area without considering congestion problem. Then, routing congestion regions are expanded locally to resolve the routability problem. Most importantly, the symmetry property of analog placement is always satisfied during the expansion process. Experimental results show that our analog placer can effectively minimize routing congestion without violating the symmetry property after placement expansion.
Mental Health in a Multi-Ethnic Society : A Multidisciplinary Handbook

Introduction. Part I: Current Scene. Fernando, Meanings and Realities. Inyama, Race Relations, Mental Health and Human Rights - The Legal Framework. Fernando, Inequalities and the Politics of 'Race' in Mental Health. Kotecha, Black and Minority Ethnic Women. Bennett, Kalathil, Keating, Race Equality Training in the UK: An Historical Overview. Part II: Confronting Issues. Kapasi, Management Approaches to Effecting Change. Ahmed, Jennings, Dhillon, Innovation in the Voluntary Sector. Ferns, The Challenges of Race Equality and Cultural Capability (RECC) Training. Patel, Developing Psychological Services for Refugee Survivors of Torture. Trivedi, Black Service 'User Involvement' - Rhetoric or Reality? Griffiths, A Programme for Changing Attitudes in the Statutory Sector: Dialogue is Critical. Part III: Making It Happen. Alleyne, Working Therapeutically with Hidden Dimensions of Racism. Malik, Fateh, Haque, The Marlborough Cultural Therapy Centre. Au, Tang, Mental Health Services for Chinese People. Choudhry, Bakhsh, Counselling and Day Care for South Asian People. Stanley, African and Caribbean Mental Health Service in Manchester. Burnett, The Sanctuary Practice in Hackney. Jones, A Movement Led by Black Service Users in South London. Part IV: Lessons For The Future. Fernando, Keating, The Way Ahead.
Classifying Speech Acts using Verbal Response Modes

The driving vision for our work is to provide intelligent, automated assistance to users in understanding the status of their email conversations. Our approach is to create tools that enable the detection and connection of speech acts across email messages. We thus require a mechanism for tagging email utterances with some indication of their dialogic function. However, existing dialog act taxonomies as used in computational linguistics tend to be too taskor application-specific for the wide range of acts we find represented in email conversation. The Verbal Response Modes (VRM) taxonomy of speech acts, widely applied for discourse analysis in linguistics and psychology, is distinguished from other speech act taxonomies by its construction from crosscutting principles of classification, which ensure universal applicability across any domain of discourse. The taxonomy categorises on two dimensions, characterised as literal meaning and pragmatic meaning. In this paper, we describe a statistical classifier that automatically identifies the literal meaning category of utterances using the VRM classification. We achieve an accuracy of 60.8% using linguistic features derived from VRM’s human annotation guidelines. Accuracy is improved to 79.8% using additional features.
Optimizing person reference ­ perspectives from usage on Rossel Island

This chapter focuses on person-reference in a Pacific island society. Rossel island, roughly equidistant between Queensland, the New Guinea mainland, and the Solomons, is inhabited by a people who speak a language isolate called Y! eli Dnye (classed ‘Papuan’, which here means simply ‘not Austronesian’). Ethnographic situations are natural experiments, which indicate the possibility of space for solutions to human problems. In this case, part of the interest is that Rossel Island is a closed universe of 4000 souls, linked by (mostly) known genealogical relations – in principle, any adult participant knows all other possible person referents. This closes off one whole parameter of person reference (the ‘non-recognitionals’ of Sacks and Schegloff, this volume) without resorting to experimental control. Another particular source of interest is that, as in many simple societies, the use of names is hedged around with restrictions and taboos. Together these constraints ensure that in many cases participants refer to persons inexplicitly, yet expect recipients to know exactly who they are talking about. The approach I adopt here is to focus in on repair of third-person reference, concentrating especially on cases where recipients have to ask in effect ‘Who? ’. The reasons for this focus will be carefully spelt out, but it will be useful to have the main points in advance. Repair is interesting because it tells us what the participants themselves find problematic. It also tells us, by virtue of the nature of the ‘redo’, what ancillary information might be expected to make an insufficient referring expression now do its work. Finally, the order in which upgrades of information are offered tells us, it will transpire, how speakers resolve competing principles that are always operative in this domain, but normally in a covert way.
Language, the Sexes and Society

Editor's Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Major Influences on Language and Sex Research. 2. The Sociogenesis of Relations between the Sexes. 3. Language and the Representation of Women and Men. 4. Feminine and Masculine Speech. 5. The Measurement of Femininity and Masculinity. 6. Judging Masculine and Feminine Social Identities from Speech: Two Experiments. 7. The Management of Interaction. 8. Language, the Sexes and Social Change. References. Index of Names. Index of Subjects.
Functional network inference of the suprachiasmatic nucleus

Significance In mammals, circadian rhythms are controlled by a network of neurons in the brain. The structure of this network dictates organism-wide behavior and adaptation to the environment. We used a neurotoxin to desynchronize this circadian network and then used tools from information theory to determine which cells communicate to establish synchronization. Our results show that this functional network consists of two densely-connected cores, surrounded by sparsely connected shell regions. These findings represent the first time, to our knowledge, that this network has been examined at single cell resolution and show that the importance of these core network regions is independent of light input. In the mammalian suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), noisy cellular oscillators communicate within a neuronal network to generate precise system-wide circadian rhythms. Although the intracellular genetic oscillator and intercellular biochemical coupling mechanisms have been examined previously, the network topology driving synchronization of the SCN has not been elucidated. This network has been particularly challenging to probe, due to its oscillatory components and slow coupling timescale. In this work, we investigated the SCN network at a single-cell resolution through a chemically induced desynchronization. We then inferred functional connections in the SCN by applying the maximal information coefficient statistic to bioluminescence reporter data from individual neurons while they resynchronized their circadian cycling. Our results demonstrate that the functional network of circadian cells associated with resynchronization has small-world characteristics, with a node degree distribution that is exponential. We show that hubs of this small-world network are preferentially located in the central SCN, with sparsely connected shells surrounding these cores. Finally, we used two computational models of circadian neurons to validate our predictions of network structure.
A Conceptual Approach to Understanding Abused Women's Stay/Leave Decisions

This article critically examines four theoretical approaches identified by Strube (1988) as relevant to abused women's stay/leave decision-making processes. It is argued that these four approaches have overlapping components that may be combined into a single framework for understanding abused women's stay/leave decisions. The essential aspects of abused women's stay/leave decisions appear to revolve around two central questions: “Will I be better off? ” and “Can I do it? ” This model proposes that abused women's stay/leave decisions occur in a stepwise fashion. A woman may wish to leave her relationship but be inhibited from doing so because she does not feel she has control over her circumstances. Conversely, a woman may have the necessary resources for leaving but may wish to remain in the relationship. Empirical work in the fields of marital and dating violence is reviewed and provides preliminary support for the components of this two-step model of abused women's stay/leave decisions.
Reading for Meaning: The Effects of Concurrent Articulation*

Six experiments are reported which examine the assertion that phonological recoding for the purpose of lexical access in visual word recognition is prevented or impaired by concurrent articulation (“articulatory suppression”). The first section of this paper selectively reviews the literature, and reports two experiments which fail to replicate previous work. The third experiment contrasts performance with visually presented words and with non-words. Latency measures show an effect of suppression that is specific to words, whilst error rates show an effect common to both words and non-words. The fourth experiment shows that if the task is changed from a judgement of rhyme (BLAME-FLAME) to one of homophony (AIL-ALE), the suppression effect seen in the latency data is eliminated, whilst error effects remain. It is suggested that, in addition to producing error effects that are not easily interpretable, suppression prevents or impairs a phonological segmentation process operating subsequent to the retrieval of whole word phonology (a process that is needed for rhyme judgement but not for one of homophony). Experiment V shows that while suppression has no effect on the time taken to decide if printed non-words sound like real words (e.g. PALLIS), error rates increase. Experiment VI shows that suppression has no effect on either RT or errors in the same task if subjects suppress at a slower rate than in Experiment V. It is suggested that there are at least two different phonological codes. Buffer storage and/or maintenance of phonologically coded information derived from print is affected by suppression; phonological recoding from print for the purpose of lexical access can be carried out without any interference from suppression.