Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IS RHOTICITY ON THE TIP OF YOUR TONGUE? INVESTIGATING TONGUE SHAPES FOR ENGLISH /r/ IN FRENCH LEARNERS WITH ULTRASOUND

English /r/ takes different tongue shapes from one speaker to another. It is well-established that tip-down and tip-up shapes produce perceptually similar outputs. However, it remains unclear why speakers intuitively acquire one type or another. The present study considers the hypothesis that rhotic and non-rhotic varieties of English may influence the acquisition of different tongue shapes. We provide articulatory data on the pronunciation of English /r/ by 19 French learners of English, 10 with rhotic and 9 with non-rhotic accents. Ultrasound tongue images were recorded for onset and coda /r/ in various vocalic contexts and were classified as either tip-up or tip-down. Although rhoticity as a predictor of tongue shape does not reach statistical significance, we found a tendency for rhotic speakers to use a higher proportion of tip-down shapes. We conclude that while rhoticity may partly influence tongue shape, other factors are also at play, including co-articulatory constraints.
EFFECT OF INDIVIDUAL VOCAL TRACT GEOMETRY ON THE TONGUE SHAPING FOR AMERICAN ENGLISH /ɹ/

Individual differences in the geometry of vocal tract structures have been found to correlate with inter-speaker articulatory variations. However, there has been a lack of agreement in whether the tongue shaping for American English /ɹ/ is influenced by vocal tract geometry. Different ways to quantify /ɹ/ tongue shapes might have contributed to the divergence of previous findings. The current study compares the results of regressing three different tongue shaping measurements on the same set of vocal tract geometry measurements. Three tongue shaping variables show marginally to moderately significant linear relationships with two specific parameters of vocal tract geometry: the degree of mandibular inclination and the horizontal length of the oral cavity. But overall, there is no strong effect of individual vocal tract geometry on the tongue shaping for /ɹ/.
Continual Learning by Conceptor Regularization

Conceptor-aided backpropagation (CAB) can alleviate catastrophic forgetting in a feed-forward network. It uses conceptors to characterize the input space occupied by previous tasks, and projects the gradients to free space for learning new tasks, thus they do not interfere with the old tasks. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between conceptors and weight matrices trained using L 2 regularization, which clariﬁes why and how CAB works. We also show that when the input spaces of different tasks overlap signiﬁcantly, CAB will fail to learn new tasks due to vanished gradients. To overcome this drawback, we propose another regularization method based on conceptors. Empirical results conﬁrm that the proposed approach can learn a classiﬁer incrementally even when the input spaces of different tasks completely coincide.
THE REPRESENTATION OF ONSET SIBILANT VARIANTS IN TAIWAN MANDARIN: AN ERP STUDY

Previous behavioural studies on Mandarin sibilant variants showed visual words are processed slower following their auditory forms of infrequent variants than frequent or canonical forms. This study further examined the processing timeline of variant frequency using the ERP technique. Forty-two native speakers viewed 120 sibilant-initial words following their auditorily presented canonical or variant pronunciations. Results showed larger N400 responses in the infrequent variants than the frequent ones during the auditory prime, suggesting greater effort in lexical access for the former. Responses to the subsequent visual words showed enhanced P2 for both variants relative to the canonical forms, but no such difference was found for N400 responses, indicating elevated attention following variants but similar semantic facilitation from the audio stimuli for all forms after a short delay. Our findings thus suggested the variant frequency effect emerges during lexical access prompted by variant pronunciation, and is quickly annihilated after visual presentation.
NF-k B Mediates FGF Signal Regulation of msx -1 Expression

The nuclear factor-k B (NF-k B) family of transcription factors is involved in proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis in a stage-and cell-dependent manner. Recent evidence has shown that NF-k B activity is necessary for both chicken and mouse limb development. We report here that the NF-k B family member c-rel and the homeodomain gene msx -1 have partially overlapping expression patterns in the developing chick limb. In addition, inhibition of NF-k B activity resulted in a decrease in msx -1 mRNA expression. Sequence analysis of the msx -1 promoter revealed three potential k B-binding sites similar to the interferon-g (IFN-g ) k B-binding site. These sites bound to c-Rel, as shown by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). Furthermore, inhibition of NF-k B activity signiﬁcantly reduced transactivation of the msx -1 promoter in response to FGF-2/-4, known stimulators of msx -1 expression. These results suggest that NF-k B mediates the FGF-2/-4 signal regulation of msx -1 gene expression. © 2001 Academic Press
DiﬀNet: A Diﬀusion Convolutional Neural Network for Classiﬁcation of Epileptic Seizure

It’s important to note that the classiﬁcation of epileptic seizures can be complex, and an individual may experience more than one type of ˆA seizure. Additionally, advancements in understanding epilepsy may lead ˆA to reﬁnements in the classiﬁcation system over time. If someone is ˆA experiencing seizures, it’s crucial for them to consult with a ˆA healthcare professional for a proper diagnosis and appropriate ˆA treatment. ˆA
Peculiarities of treatment of patients with comorbid pathology: chronic pancreatitis and hypothyroidism, taking into account SEPP1 gene polymorphism (RS7579)

Optimization of therapeutic regimens during the treatment of the polymorbid course of chronic pancreatitis combined with hypothyroidism is an important task of modern science. Aim: to treat patients with comorbid pathology: chronic pancreatitis and hypothyroidism, taking into account the polymorphism of the SEPP1 gene (RS7579) Materials and methods. During the research, we examined 128 people. Patients were divided into 3 groups. The first group included 48 patients with chronic pancreatitis, the second - 50 patients with chronic pancreatitis in combination with hypothyroidism, and the third - 30 practically healthy people. Results. Symptoms of maldigestion decreased in 72 % of the examined patients. Signs of nutritional deficiency have significantly decreased, and general well-being has improved. Multicomponent therapy also affected mood, sleep, and reduced irritability and symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders. A multisystemic polysyndromic approach to treatment led to improvements in both pancreatic and thyroid function. The effectiveness of the treatment strategy for patients with chronic pancreatitis was dependent on individual characteristics, such as the severity of chronic pancreatitis, the presence of primary hypothyroidism, the degree of selenium deficiency and concomitant symptoms, taking into account polymorphic variants of the SEPP1 (rs7579) gene. Selenoid deficiency decreased, especially in the group with a combination of chronic pancreatitis and hypothyroidism. The improvement in thyroid hormone activity included a 40.46 % decrease in blood TSH and a 2.5-fold increase in free T4. Conclusions. The program of complex therapy led to the normalization of the condition of patients with the G-allele genotype of the SEPP1 gene (rs7579), as evidenced by significant improvements in most of the analyzed indicators. The concentration of fecal elastase 1 and blood selenoprotein P significantly increased, and the level of serum pancreatic α-amylase significantly decreased in carriers of the AA genotype. Under the influence of therapy, there were also changes in the hormonal activity of the thyroid gland, a decrease in the concentration of total metabolites of NO, and an improvement in the health indicators of the cardiovascular system. However, for patients with the AA genotype of the SEPP1 (rs7579) gene, continuation of therapy remains important to achieve an optimal condition, in particular, to manage cholesterol levels and other cardiovascular risk factors
Tumor-specic migration routes of xenotransplanted human glioblastoma cells in mouse brain

The migration of neural progenitor cells (NPCs) to their �nal destination during development follows well-dened pathways. Cells from the highly malignant tumor glioblastoma (GBM) appear to exploit similar routes to invade brain parenchyma. In this report, we have analyzed the migration of GBM cells using three-dimensional high-resolution confocal microscopy in brain tumors derived from eight different human GBM cell lines xenografted in immunode�cient mice. The main routes of invasion were long-distance migration along white matter tracts and local migration along blood vessels. We found that GBM cells of most tumors (6/8) do not associate with blood vessels, as observed for migrating NPCs. These tumors, derived from low lamin A/C expressing GBM cells, were comparatively highly diffusive and invasive. On the other hand, 2/8 tumors showed perivascular invasion and displacement of astrocyte end-feet, migrated less diffusively, grew as a solid tumor, and were characterized by high expression of lamin A/C. We conclude that the migration pattern of glioblastoma is tumor cell-specic, and that the ability to invade the narrow spaces within white matter tracts may require low expression of lamin A/C leading to increased nuclear plasticity. This study highlights the role of GBM heterogeneity in driving the aggressive growth of glioblastoma.
WORD CLASS AND FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN HAWAIIAN STRESSED VOWEL CLUSTERS

Lexical factors like grammatical class and usage frequency condition phonetic variation. Previous research has found that sounds in more frequent words and function words tend to be shorter and hypo-articulated compared with less frequent words and content words. However, these patterns have been explored in a limited range of languages. This study investigates vowel reduction based on word class and frequency in Hawaiian. Durations and F1/F2 were measured for word-final, primary stressed clusters /ai, au, ei, ou/ (n=1046) in natural speech. /ai/ is centralized in non-content words, with less diphthongal and shorter reflexes in higher-frequency words; /au/ is centralized, less diphthongal, and shorter in non-content words; and /ou/ is shorter in non-content and more frequent words. This finding that vowel clusters in non-content and higher-frequency words tend to be phonetically reduced in Hawaiian is relevant to phonological theories which remain to be tested in a wide typological range of languages.
FUNDAMENTAL FREQUENCY NORMALIZATION AND STATISTICAL POWER: AN ASSESSMENT OF 15 NORMALIZING TECHNIQUES

The effect of 15 normalization procedures on the power of statistical tests is assessed. The difference in the F0 in Hz between the high and low vowels (N=1471), i.e. the intrinsic vowel pitch, produced by 47 native speakers of Dutch was assessed by means of a t-test. The same test was applied to the F0 values normalized by means of 15 conventional procedures. The power of the tests was registered to assess the effect of the normalization procedures. The results show that statistical power is influenced by applying normalization, but the difference in power of the procedures is levelled out as a function of the number of observations. The effects of the normalization procedures are interpreted in terms of how the variability of the data is accounted for.
ĐỊNH GIÁ TRUY VẤN ĐỐI VỚI CHƯƠNG TRÌNH DATALOG MÔ TẢ

Currently, the field of deductive database research and description logic has been extended in many different directions, where the combination of description logic with the deductive database has been of great interest. The Datalog program is an important class of the deductive database. This paper focuses on the syntax and symantics of the description Datalog program ALC a combination of the ALC description logic and the Datalog program, and proposes a query evaluation method for this program class.
Supporting the design and consumption of Locative Media Experiences related to the Cultural Heritage of a Rural Village Community

In this paper, we provide an overview of the SHARC research project. Our approach, based on technology probes, is to design, develop and evaluate (over a longitudinal period) a system that supports the design and consumption of locative media experiences that relate to the cultural heritage of a rural village community named Wray. Our design needs to cater for the different backgrounds and cultural diversity reflected in the range of envisioned users of the system which includes both residents and visitors to the village.
Network analysis, in vivo, and in vitro experiments identified the mechanisms by which Piper longum L. [Piperaceae] alleviates cartilage destruction, joint inflammation, and arthritic pain

Osteoarthritis (OA) is characterized by irreversible joint destruction, pain, and dysfunction. Piper longum L. [Piperaceae] (PL) is an East Asian herbal medicine with reported anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant, anti-stress, and anti-osteoporotic effects. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of PL in inhibiting pain and progressive joint destruction in OA based on its anti-inflammatory activity, and to explore its potential mechanisms using in vivo and in vitro models of OA. We predicted the potential hub targets and signaling pathways of PL through network analysis and molecular docking. Network analysis results showed that the possible hub targets of PL against OA were F2R, F3, MMP1, MMP2, MMP9, and PTGS2. The molecular docking results predicted strong binding affinities for the core compounds in PL: piperlongumine, piperlonguminine, and piperine. In vitro experiments showed that PL inhibited the expression of LPS-induced pro-inflammatory factors, such as F2R, F3, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-17A, MMP-1, MMP-2, MMP-3, MMP-9, MMP-13, NOS2, PTGS2, PGE2, and TNF-β. These mechanisms and effects were dose-dependent in vivo models. Furthermore, PL inhibited cartilage degradation in an OA-induced rat model. Thus, this study demonstrated that multiple components of PL may inhibit the multilayered pathology of OA by acting on multiple targets and pathways. These findings highlight the potential of PL as a disease-modifying OA drug candidate, which warrants further investigation.
Antioxidant and Anti-infective Potential of Ethanolic Extract of Eriobotrya bengalensis (Roxb.) Hook. f.: Phytochemicals Investigation and Molecular Docking Studies

In India, north-east region holds a special position of having diverse range of plants belonging to endemic species with widespread ethnomedicinal properties which remain unexplored till date. In the present study, Eriobotrya bengalensis (Roxb.) Hook. f. extract was evaluated for its radical scavenging activity and ability to combat quorum sensing regulated bacterial virulence in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1. The ethanolic leaf extract of E. bengalensis (Roxb.) Hook. f. exhibited a concentration dependent radical scavenging of highly reactive DPPH and hydroxyl radicals with a scavenging percentage of 76.84 ± 4.72 and 67.37 ± 4.35 % respectively at a concentration of 500 μg/ml. E. bengalensis (Roxb.) Hook. f. also showed significant reducing power and relatively high ascorbic acid equivalent. The plant extract was also evaluated for its ability to down-regulate the production of quorum sensing (QS) regulated pathogenic determinants in P. aeruginosa PAO1. The violacein production in Chromobacterium violaceum and pyocyanin production in P. aeruginosa PAO1 was greatly inhibited on treatment with sub-MIC of E. bengalensis (Roxb.) Hook. f. with an inhibition of 79.58 ± 4.13 and 76.31 ± 4.03 % respectively. The anti-biofilm activity was further confirmed by confocal laser scanning microscopic (CLSM) analysis. The anti QS activity of E. bengalensis (Roxb.) Hook. f. was further corroborated by molecular docking studies which provides an insight into the mechanism of QS inhibition. The present result will provide novel leads to the application of unexplored plant species towards the development of novel anti-infectives in the post-antibiotic era.
EvoGWP: Predicting Long-Term Changes in Cloud Workloads Using Deep Graph-Evolution Learning

Workload prediction plays a crucial role in resource management of large scale cloud datacenters. Although quite a number of methods/algorithms have been proposed, long-term changes have not been explicitly identified and considered. Due to shifty user demands, workload re-locations, or other reasons, the “resource usage pattern” of a workload, which is usually quite stable in a short-term view, may change dynamically in a long-term range. Such long-term dynamic changes may cause significant accuracy degradation for prediction algorithms. How to handle such long-term dynamic changes is an open and challenging issue. In this article, we propose Evolution Graph for Workload Prediction (EvoGWP), a novel method that can predict long-term dynamic changes using a delicately designed graph-based evolution learning algorithm. EvoGWP automatically extracts shapelets to explicitly identify resource usage patterns of workloads in a fine-grained level, and predicts workload changes by considering factors in both temporal and spatial dimensions. We design a two-level importance based shapelet extraction mechanism to mine new usage pattern changes in temporal dimension, and design a novel evolution graph model to fuse the interference among resource usage patterns of different workloads in spatial dimension. By combining temporal extraction of shapelets from each single workload and spatial interference of shapelets among different workloads, we then design a spatio-temporal GNN-based encoder-decoder model to predict the long-term dynamic changes of workloads. Experiments using real trace data from Alibaba, Tencent and Google show that EvoGWP improves the prediction accuracy by up to 58.6% over the state-of-the-art prediction methods. Moreover, EvoGWP can outperform the state-of-the-art prediction methods in terms of model convergence. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that explicitly identifies fine-grained workload resource usage patterns to accurately predict long-term dynamic changes of workloads.
Prokaryotic community structure in ultra-slow spreading Southwest Indian Ridge

The Southwest Indian Ridge segment that extends between 10° and 16° E has the slowest spreading rate of any other oceanic ridge (about 8.4 mm/year). In 2013 during the expedition ANTXXIX/8 seismology, geology, microbiology, heat flow analyses were carried out. Here, no hydrothermal plumes or black smoker systems were found but the results of the survey allowed to identify areas with peculiar characteristics: Area 1 with higher heat flux bsf; Area 2 where in 2002 it was hypothesized the presence of hydrothermal emissions (Bach et al., 2002); Area 3 with anomalies of methane, ammonium, sulphide and dissolved inorganic carbon in pore water sediment profiles, and recovery of fauna vents. All these aspects suggest the presence of a hydrothermal circulation. Using Illumina 16S gene tag, statistical tools and phylogenetic trees, I provided a biological proof of the presence of hydrothermal circulation in this ridge segment. At Area 3, alpha and beta diversity indexes showed similarities with those described for venting microbial communities and about 40-70% of the dominant microbial community was found phylogenetically related to clones isolated hydrothermal-driven environments. Although the majority of chemosynthetic environment related taxa were not classified like autotrophic prokaryotes, some of them are key taxa in support of the presence of hydrothermal circulation, since they are partners of consortia or mediate specific reaction typically described for hydrothermal and seep environments, or are specialized organisms in exploiting labile organic substrates. Concluding, these results are remarkable because support the importance of ultra slow spreading ridge systems in contributing to global geochemical cycles and larval dispersion of vent fauna.
Dispersive Optical Wireless Indoor Channels—From Frequency-Domain Modeling to Bit-Error-Rate Prediction

Methods for calculating the impulse response of dispersive optical wireless channels have been known for a long time. However, a comprehensive procedure for predicting resulting bit error rates, starting from a highly accurate channel emulation method, has not yet been presented. To fill this gap, we propose a methodology for modeling realistic dispersive optical wireless channels that can be used directly for corresponding bit error rate simulations. The importance of proper power normalization of the multipath components is emphasized. Moreover, the optical channel model is embedded in an end-to-end electrical channel model suitable for intensity-modulation/direct detection schemes under linear operation. To significantly reduce the simulation time, a so-called chip-rate model is presented. Finally, based on the proposed modeling approach for dispersive channels, bit error rate simulations are performed for selected intensity modulation schemes with and without equalization at the receiver and are compared within a common and consistent framework.
Eco-tourism and Sustainability

Ecotourism is very burning issue and one of the fastest growing sectors in current worldtourism industry. Especially in many developing countries like Nepal are trying to useecotourism as a tool to achieve sustainable development. The paper mainly considers currentopportunities of ecotourism in Nepal where tourism is one of the fastest expanding industrieswhich has been leaving various negative impacts in different areas. It is aiming to study aboutthe current state of ecotourism in Nepal. The paper also attempt to give critical analysis ofecotourism impacts and challenges in the case of Nepal and point out some recommendationsfor better practice of ecotourism. The paper tries to answer the following question: Isecotourism opportunity or challenge in Nepal? How is ecotourism practised in the country? Can ecotourism be a beneficial tool for sustainable development of the country? How canecotourism be very effective means of development and conservation? Nepal has abundance of opportunities of ecotourism industry. But its effective practice andimplementation is not promising due to lack of commitment of governmental policy andplanning strategy with combination of integrated conservation and development. Thus to runecotourism project properly, principles and theories of ecotourism must be considered a majorbase while make its policy and planning. Policy must be integrative, collaborative andcomprehensive to achieve real outcome of ecotourism by realizing importance ofenvironmental, social and economic imperatives.