Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VocaliD: Personal voices for augmented communicators

The goal of the VocaliD project (for vocal identity) is to develop personalized synthetic voices for children and adults who rely on speech generating devices (SGDs) for verbal communication. Our approach extracts acoustic properties related to source, vocal tract, or both from a target talker’s disordered speech (whatever sounds they can still produce) and applies these features to a synthetic voice that was created from a surrogate voice donor who (ideally) is similar in age, size, gender, etc. The result is a synthetic voice that contains as much of the vocal identity of the target talker as possible yet the speech clarity of the surrogate talker’s synthetic voice. To date, we have deployed several synthetic voices using this technology. Three case studies will be presented to illustrate the methods used in voice generation and the results from three pediatric SGD users. We will also describe plans to greatly extend our database of surrogate voice donor speech, allowing us to better match regional/dial.
Temporary threshold shift in pinnipeds induced by octave‐band noise in water

Low‐frequency noise from manmade sources represents an increasing portion of the total noise in the ocean. Such noise may adversely impact diving pinnipeds, which hear relatively well at low frequencies. The effects of octave bands of moderately intense noise (under 4 kHz, 60–76 dB SL, 20–22 min duration) were examined in three species of pinniped, the California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), harbor seal (Phoca vitulina), and northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris). Auditory sensitivity data were obtained behaviorally, using a go/no‐go psychophysical procedure. Thresholds were determined before noise exposure, immediately after noise exposure, and again after 24 h. Mean threshold shifts ranged from 2.9–4.9 dB at the center frequency of the noise band. Recovery was complete after 24 h. These results show that noise levels as low as 60 dB SL can induce TTS. However, between 60 and 76 dB SL, there was no relationship between noise level and degree of TTS. Additionally, maximum hearing loss occu.
Lower bounds for sums of eigenvalues of elliptic operators and systems

Two-term lower bounds of Berzin-Li-Yau type are obtained for the sums of eigenvalues of elliptic operators and systems with constant coefficients and Dirichlet boundary conditions. The polyharmonic operator, the Stokes system and its generalizations, the two-dimensional buckling problem, and also the Klein-Gordon operator are considered. Bibliography: 32 titles.
Implementation of Periodicity Ratio in Analyzing Nonlinear Dynamic Systems : A Comparison With Lyapunov Exponent

The present research intends to investigate the characteristics of the periodicity ratio and its implementation in analyzing the nonlinear behavior of dynamic systems governed by second-order differential equations. Numerical analyses on the nonlinear dynamic systems with employment of the periodicity ratio for diagnosing chaotic, regular, and irregular behaviors of dynamic systems are performed. To characterize the approach with periodicity ratio in distinguishing different behaviors of the nonlinear dynamic systems, a comparison of periodicity ratio with the widely used Lyapunov exponent in numerically assessing the responses of nonlinear dynamic systems is presented.
A STUDY OF THE APPLICATION OF STATE‐DEPENDENT MODELS IN NON‐LINEAR TIME SERIES ANALYSIS

Abstract. The theory of state-dependent models was developed by Priestley (1980), and a few simple applications were given in Priestley (1981). In this paper, an extensive study of the application of state-dependent models to a wide variety of non-linear time series data is carried out. Both real and simulated data are used in the study, and the problems encountered are highlighted. The method is demonstrated to be successful in practice in many cases, and suggestions for the further development of the algorithm are also given.
A Climatology of the Warm Season Great Plains Low-Level Jet Using Wind Profiler Observations

Abstract Hourly observations from the Wind Profiler Demonstration Network during the warm season months of 1991 and 1992 were used to develop a climatology of the low-level jet (LLJ) over the Great Plains of the central United States. The maximum overall frequency of LLJ occurrence was in the southern part of the Great Plains, while the maximum frequency of the stronger LLJs extended farther north and east (Kansas through Nebraska). The frequency of occurrence for the weakest LLJs exhibited little diurnal variation. In contrast, the strongest jets were about six times more likely to occur within a few hours of local midnight than during the day. Southerly wind events that did not satisfy the criteria for low-level jets (i.e., those that did not include the low-level local maximum of the wind speed profile) showed comparatively little diurnal variability regardless of speed. Analysis of the synoptic patterns associated with LLJ occurrence showed that the LLJ was promoted by the warm sector of an extratropi.
A new omni-directional multi-camera system for high resolution surveillance

Omni-directional high resolution surveillance has a wide application range in defense and security fields. Early systems used for this purpose are based on parabolic mirror or fisheye lens where distortion due to the nature of the optical elements cannot be avoided. Moreover, in such systems, the image resolution is limited to a single image sensor’s image resolution. Recently, the Panoptic camera approach that mimics the eyes of flying insects using multiple imagers has been presented. This approach features a novel solution for constructing a spherically arranged wide FOV plenoptic imaging system where the omni-directional image quality is limited by low-end sensors. In this paper, an overview of current Panoptic camera designs is provided. New results for a very-high resolution visible spectrum imaging and recording system inspired from the Panoptic approach are presented. The GigaEye-1 system, with 44 single cameras and 22 FPGAs, is capable of recording omni-directional video in a 360°×100° FOV at 9.5 fps with a resolution over (17,700×4,650) pixels (82.3MP). Real-time video capturing capability is also verified at 30 fps for a resolution over (9,000×2,400) pixels (21.6MP). The next generation system with significantly higher resolution and real-time processing capacity, called GigaEye-2, is currently under development. The important capacity of GigaEye-1 opens the door to various post-processing techniques in surveillance domain such as large perimeter object tracking, very-high resolution depth map estimation and high dynamicrange imaging which are beyond standard stitching and panorama generation methods.
An analytic inversion for anisotropic spherical galaxies

A generalization of the Osipkov-Merritt inversion of the fundamental integral equation for anisotropic spherical galaxies is obtained. For any density profile this inversion yields a two-parameter distribution function with arbitrary degrees of both radial and tangential velocity anisotropies. Therefore, for the first time, exact analytical models can be found which generate given density profiles and possess tangential velocity anisotropies. This property disposes of the well-known radial orbit instability encountered by many models of anisotropic spherical galaxies
Novel Method of Intrinsic Characteristic Extraction in Lightly Doped Drain Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors for Accurate Device Modeling

A lightly doped drain (LDD) region, particularly a gate-overlapped LDD (GOLD) region, is subjected to a gate electric field and its gate-controlled resistance affects the device characteristics. We developed a new extraction method for determining the intrinsic characteristics of LDD MOSFETs using a simple series resistance model, in which the GOLD region is assumed to be a depletion MOSFET with a negative threshold voltage derived from C–V measurement. Polycrystalline-silicon (poly-Si) TFTs with a channel length of 4–100 µm were used for the test LDD samples, particularly GOLD MOSFETs. It was demonstrated that the new proposed method precisely extracts the intrinsic characteristics of poly-Si GOLD TFTs by comparing them with the intrinsic characteristics of poly-Si Self-Aligned (SA) TFTs extracted by the conventional method.
Determination of Unknown Coefficients in Parabolic Equations

In this paper, we consider solving for a coefficient inverse problem in the parabolic equation. A new numerical method for the identification of the space-dependent coefficient is developed in a reproducing kernel space. The coefficients can be solved by a lower triangle linear system. Some numerical experiments are presented to show the efficiency of the proposed method.
Surface acoustic waves in two-dimensional phononic crystals: Dispersion relation and the eigenfield distribution of surface modes

In this paper, we have demonstrated the existence of surface acoustic waves in two-dimensional phononic crystals with fluid matrix, which is composed of a square array of steel cylinders put in air background. By using the supercell method, we investigate the dispersion relation and the eigenfield distribution of surface modes. Surface waves can be easily excited at the surface of a finite size phononic crystal by line source or Gaussian beam placed in or launched from the background medium, and they propagate along the surface with the form of 'beat. ' Taking advantage of these surface modes, we can obtain a highly directional emission wave beam by introducing an appropriate corrugation layer on the surface of a waveguide exit.
The bar in NGC 936

Detailed photometry of NGC 936, is used to extract the bulge, bar, and disk components of the SB0 galaxy. Analytic approximations to the luminosity profiles of each component are given to provide a reference for constructing bar models. The galaxy dynamics are examined, assuming a constant mass/light ratio. The major families of periodic orbits are identified, and constraints are placed on the allowable pattern speed. Predictions are made for the bar streaming velocities that would be observed at various position angles. These predictions are compared with existing kinematic data for the galaxy. 19 refs.
Estimation of the mean normal measure from flat sections

We discuss the determination of the mean normal measure of a stationary random set Z ⊂ ℝ d by taking measurements at the intersections of Z with k-dimensional planes. We show that mean normal measures of sections with vertical planes determine the mean normal measure of Z if k ≥ 3 or if k = 2 and an additional mild assumption holds. The mean normal measures of finitely many flat sections are not sufficient for this purpose. On the other hand, a discrete mean normal measure can be verified (i.e. an a priori guess can be confirmed or discarded) using mean normal measures of intersections with m suitably chosen planes when m ≥ ⌊d / k⌋ + 1. This even holds for almost all m-tuples of k-dimensional planes are viable for verification. A consistent estimator for the mean normal measure of Z, based on stereological measurements in vertical sections, is also presented.
The Effect of Tear Film on Ocular Surface Temperature: A Thermodynamic Study

The thermodynamic effect of tear film on ocular surface remains ambiguous in literature, though in general it is considered to warm the surface in blinking phase, and cool it at later stage. In this investigation we modelled the temporal variation in ocular surface temperature (OST) on the basis of Newton’s law of cooling to look into the tear film’s thermodynamic effect. We assumed, the OST varied periodically and the OST just before a blink was equal to the OST observed when the surface was in equilibrium. Then this model was incorporated into a thermodynamic equation, describing the heat exchange at the ocular surface. Simulations were subsequently performed to determine the moment when the tear film evaporated the exactly amount of energy it had just brought to the surface by blinking in an inter-blink period. It was found that, for tear film to possibly warm the ocular surface both in the blinking phase and the entire inter-blink period, its thickness had be above 32 micrometre, assuming the rate of spontaneous blinking was once per six seconds. However, according to literature, tear film thickness is likely to be 3 micrometre, which in this case the tear film would evaporate the tear-transferred heat just within a second, and the warming effect by tear film would be minimal; cooling should be the dominating effect.
Estudo das condições iniciais na perda de energia de quarks pesados em colisões ultra-relativísticas

Central Au+Au collisions at  exhibit strong particle suppression when compared to p+p collisions. This phenomenon can be understood in the framework of jet quenching or energy loss of partons inside the quark-gluon plasma (). It is expected that heavier partons suffer less suppression than lighter ones. In this scenario, heavy quarks are less suppressed than light quarks. However, experiments show that heavy quarks are just as suppressed as light quarks. One possible explanation for that can be obtained when considering fluctuations in the medium that lead to high-density regions which can cause considerable quark energy loss at the early stages of the collision evolution. The  dynamics is also important as these high-density regions might expand differently from the rest of the plasma. This work aims to analyse the overall effect of these fluctuations in heavy quark suppression in the . This can be done through computer simulations of charm and bottom propagating through the region considering different models of energy loss, which will then return an estimate of the nuclear modification factor (RAA). The final results for the RAA spectrum were found not to be affected by the included fluctuations in the initial conditions, meaning that these, in the way implemented here, are not sufficient to observe relevant modifications of the parton energy loss. There is, however, some open issues raised by this work that should be investigated in order to verify this conclusion.
A user authentication protocol based on the intractability of the 3-coloring problem

Abstract In this note, we consider the problem of verifying the identity of an individual involved in a two party communication activity using a well-known Zero Knowledge protocol for a computationally intractable problem. This problem is the problem of coloring the vertices of a graph using three colors so that no pair of adjacent vertices receives the same color also known as 3-coloring problem. This problem is NP-complete, i.e. ít shares with a multitude of other natural combinatorial problems the property that most likely no fast (polynomial) algorithm exists for their solution. In this note, we use randomly generated 3-colorable graphs and use the knowledge of a 3-coloring of them to authenticate individuals. We exploìt the fact that one may easily generate a random 3-colorable graph with a specific 3-coloring that only he/she knows although it is a computationally intractable problem for someone who wants to impersonate the individual to discover a 3-coloring. Therefore, knowledge of a 3-coloring of a graph provides authentication of the individual possessing this knowledge. To prove this knowledge, the individual may use an adaptation of a Zero Knowledge Interactive proof protocol for 3-coloring.
Observation of the Superheavy Nuclide (271)Ds

With the recent commissioning of a gas-filled recoil separator at Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) in Lanzhou, the decay properties of (271)Ds (Z = 110) were studied via the Pb-208(Ni-64, n) reaction at a beam energy of 313.3MeV. Based on the separator coupled with a position sensitive silicon strip detector, we carried out the energy-position-time correlation measurements for the implanted nucleus and its subsequent decay alpha's. One alpha-decay chain for (271)Ds was established. The. energy and decay time of the (271)Ds nucleus were measured to be 10.644 MeV and 96.8 ms, which are consistent with the values reported in the literature.
A discrete geometric view on shear-deformable shell models

This thesis presents the construction of a geometrically nonlinear shear-deformable (Cosserat type) shell model by methods from discrete differential geometry (DDG). The model aims at applications in real-time simulations of large deformations of plates and shells. While the more classical finite element approach has shown to yield quantitatively accurate models for a high number of degrees of freedom, the framework of DDG, originally used in computer graphic applications to construct simple yet physically plausible simulations, allows to obtain a concise geometric model that behaves qualitatively correct already on very coarse meshes. The described Discrete Cosserat Shell model is built in several steps. The smooth deformation energy of a shearable shell, usually expressed in an index-prone coordinate notation adapted to a finite element discretization, is reformulated in terms of few, frame-invariant, differential geometric entities. To obtain a discrete deformation energy, we then use insights from the solution theory for the linear Reissner-Mindlin plate equations to construct discrete pendants of these entities which preserve the core properties of the smooth ones. The resulting deformation energy is proven to be consistent with the smooth energy. Numerical validations on linear and nonlinear benchmarks further illustrate the good qualitative behavior of the model as well as its satisfying convergence behavior.
Features of Motion of Soliton Transported Bio-energy in Aperiodic α-Helix Protein Molecules with Three Channels

The structure aperiodicities can influence seriously the features of motion of soliton excited in the alpha-helix protein molecules with three channels. We study the influence of structure aperiodicities on the features of the soliton in the improved model by numerical simulation and Runge-Kulta method. The results obtained show that the new soliton is very robust against the structure aperiodicities including large disorder in the sequence of mass of the amino acids and fluctuations of spring constant, coupling constant, dipole-dipole interactional constant, ground state energy and chain-chain interaction. However, very strong structure aperiodicities can also destroy the stability of the soliton in the alpha-helix protein molecules.
Long-term energetic-particle databases from geosynchronous and GPS orbits

The Los Alamos National Laboratory has flown thirteen energetic-particle instruments on geosynchronous satellites since 1976 and on seven GPS satellites since 1983. These instruments measure electrons and protons over a wide range of energies. The various instruments and the particles and energies that they measure are described. The measured fluxes are stored at Los Alamos in several databases that are available to outside users.
Martingale representation in uniformly convex spaces

In this paper we define the concept of a martingale in a uniformly convex Banach space and show that each bounded martingale is convergent and can be represented as a sequence of nearest point projections onto closed convex sets of one element of the Banach space. This result contains classical representation theorems for usual martingales and yields applications in the theory of nearest point projections in Lpspaces. 1. Notations. Let B be a Banach space with norm li If x E B, C c B, let d(x, C) = inf{llx -yll:y E C). The Banach space B is uniformly convex iff for each ? > 0 there exists 6(e) > 0 such that 11x111 1 8(e) implies IIXI X211 0 be fixed. Then for each e > 0 there exists 8 (e) > 0 such that for all convex sets C c B with 0 E C we have: IlxII < r, y1, Y2 E C and llx -Y l, lix -Y211 < d(x, C) + 8 (e) imply IIYI Y211 < e. In a uniformly convex space B for each x E B and each closed convex set C c B there exists a unique projection 7T(xjC) E C of x onto C, i.e. a unique element (xjI C) E C such that lx '7T(xI C)II = d (x, C). DEFINITION. We call xn E B, n E N, a martingale with respect to the closed convex sets Cn c B, n E N, iff (i) 0 E Cm c Cn for m < n, (ii) xm = (xn ICm) for m < n. If B is a Hilbert space this is the definition of Brunk [3]. If B is an 4(0, d, P), where (S2, (i, P) is a probability space, then important examples for projections onto closed convex sets are the classical conditional expectations, the conditional expectations given a a-lattice (see [2], [3]), the p-predictors in the sense of Ando-Amemiya (see [1]) or the conditional p-means in the sense of Brunk (see [4]). 2. The result. Now we give a representation theorem for martingales, which generalizes Brunk's representation theorem (see [3]) from Hilbert spaces to Received by the editors December 27, 1977 and, in revised form, July 17, 1978. AMS (MOS) subject classifications (1970). Primary 60G45; Secondary 41A50.
Bayesian Quantile Structural Equation Models

Structural equation modeling is a common multivariate technique for the assessment of the interrelationships among latent variables. Structural equation models have been extensively applied to behavioral, medical, and social sciences. Basic structural equation models consist of a measurement equation for characterizing latent variables through multiple observed variables and a mean regression-type structural equation for investigating how explanatory latent variables influence outcomes of interest. However, the conventional structural equation does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between latent variables. In this article, we introduce the quantile regression method into structural equation models to assess the conditional quantile of the outcome latent variable given the explanatory latent variables and covariates. The estimation is conducted in a Bayesian framework with Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. The posterior inference is performed with the help of asymmetric Laplace distribution. A simulation shows that the proposed method performs satisfactorily. An application to a study of chronic kidney disease is presented.
One- and two-photon-excited time-resolved photoluminescence investigations of bulk and surface recombination dynamics in ZnSe

Measurements of femtosecond time-resolved one- and two-photon-excited photoluminescence of bulk ZnSe enable us to distinguish the surface and bulk contributions to recombination dynamics. A photoluminescence lifetime of several nanoseconds or longer is measured for the bulk. A fast relaxation component with a decay time constant τT of a few tens of picoseconds observed in one-photon-pumped time-resolved spectra is identified as the result of diffusion and rapid surface recombination. A one-dimensional model taking into account surface nonradiative recombination and carrier diffusion is able to describe the observed behavior. The temperature dependence of τT shows good agreement with the theory. At room temperature, a surface recombination velocity S=5.8×105 cm s−1 and a diffusion constant D=10 cm2 s−1 are found using this model.
Congruences for Contextual Graph-Rewriting

We introduce a comprehensive operational semantic theory of graph rewriting. The central idea is recasting rewriting frameworks as Leifer and Milner's reactive systems. Consequently, graph rewriting systems are associated with canonical labelled transition systems, on which bisimulation equivalence is a congruence with respect to arbitrary graph contexts (cospans of graphs). This construction is derived from a more general theorem of much wider applicability. Expressed in abstract categorical terms, the central technical contribution of the paper is the construction of groupoidal relative pushouts, introduced and developed by the authors in recent work, in suitable cospan categories over arbitrary adhesive categories. As a consequence, we both generalise and shed light on rewriting via borrowed contexts due to Ehrig and Konig.