Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Rectangle Loss for Speaker Verification

From the perspective of pair similarity optimization, speaker veriﬁcation is expected to satisfy the criterion that each intra-class similarity is higher than the maximal inter-class similarity. However, we ﬁnd that most softmax-based losses are suboptimal which encourages each sample to have a higher target similarity score only than its corresponding non-target similarity scores but not all the non-target ones. To this end, we propose a batch-wise maximum softmax loss, in which the non-target log-its are replaced by the ones derived from the whole batch. To further emphasize the minority hard non-target pairs, an adaptive margin mechanism is introduced at the same time. The proposed loss is named Adaptive Rectangle loss due to its rect-angle decision boundary. In addition, an annealing strategy is introduced to improve the stability of the training process and boost the convergence. Experimentally, we demonstrate the superiority of adaptive rectangle loss on speaker veriﬁcation tasks. Results on VoxCeleb show that our proposed loss outperforms state-of-the-art by 10.11% in EER.
The Free Radical Scavenging Property of the Leaves, Branches, and Roots of Mansoa hirsuta DC: In Vitro Assessment, 3D Pharmacophore, and Molecular Docking Study

In this work, a metabolic profile of Mansoa hirsuta was investigated, and in vitro assays and theoretical approaches were carried out to evaluate its antioxidant potential. The phytochemical screening detected saponins, organic acids, phenols, tannins, flavonoids, and alkaloids in extracts of leaves, branches, and roots. Through LC-MS analysis, the triterpenes oleanolic acid (m/z 455 [M-H]−) and ursolic acid (m/z 455 [M-H]−) were identified as the main bioactive components. The extracts of the leaves, branches, and roots revealed moderate antioxidant potential in the DPPH test and all extracts were more active in the ABTS test. The leaf extracts showed better antioxidant capacity, displaying IC50 values of 43.5 ± 0.14, 63.6 ± 0.54, and 56.1 ± 0.05 µg mL−1 for DPPH, ABTS, and kinetics assays, respectively. The leaf extract showed higher total flavonoid content (TFC) (5.12 ± 1.02 mg QR/g), followed by branches (3.16 ± 0.88 QR/g) and roots (2.04 ± 0.52 QR/g/g). The extract of the branches exhibited higher total phenolic content (TPC) (1.07 ± 0.77 GAE/g), followed by leaves (0.58 ± 0.30 GAE/g) and roots (0.19 ± 0.47 GAE/g). Pharmacophore and molecular docking analysis were performed in order to better understand the potential mechanism of the antioxidant activity of its major metabolites.
High‐Resolution Post‐Process Corrected Satellite AOD

Poor air quality poses a great threat to human health. Accurate high‐resolution satellite remote sensing of atmospheric aerosols would highly benefit satellite‐based air quality estimates. We have developed and validated a post‐process correction and downscaling approach for satellite remote sensing of aerosols. We use NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the Washington D.C.—Baltimore area during the Distributed Regional Aerosol Gridded Observation Networks campaign in 2011 to evaluate our approach. We derive and evaluate the AOD fields at high 250 m resolution. The results show that the post‐process correction approach is suitable for deriving downscaled, high‐resolution AOD estimates and significantly improves the accuracy of the AOD retrievals.
Polarization and Persuasion: Engaging Sociology in the Moral Universe of a Divided Democracy

Our divided democracy—characterized by partisan polarization and moralized opposition—presents significant challenges to sociologists who would use our discipline to create a more just society. I focus here on the strategic role of, and need for, deeper engagement across the political divide. I review current research on polarization—increasingly focused on attitudinal consolidation and partisan identity—to emphasize challenges to and opportunities for persuasion. I call for increased engagement in three strategic subfields of sociology: (1) social movements, to integrate persuasion more centrally into theories and research on collective social action; (2) social psychology, to engage the interdisciplinary field of moral cognition to develop effective strategies for persuasion; and (3) rural sociology, to understand more deeply the perspectives and moral frameworks essential to engagement across the divide.
Understanding Drivers’ Visual and Comprehension Loads in Traffic Violation Hotspots Leveraging Crowd-Based Driving Simulation

Traffic violations have become one of the major threats to urban transportation systems, undermining road safety and causing economic losses. Although various methods have been proposed by road authorities and researchers to find out the possible causes of traffic violations, existing methods often fail to diagnose traffic violations from drivers’ perspectives and contexts or consider their visual and comprehension loads while driving. In this work, we propose a driver-centered simulation platform to inspect drivers’ loads in traffic violation hotspots. Specifically, we first build a driving simulator based on the 3D point clouds of real-world traffic violation hotspots. We then recruit drivers to simulate driving in designated traffic scenes. Indicators for drivers’ visual and comprehension loads are derived based on drivers’ feedback. Upon this basis, we build an explainable model to automatically indicate drivers’ visual and comprehension loads under various crowd-sensed traffic scenes. Experiments using real-world data from a Chinese City (Xiamen) and case studies show that our approach successfully derives a set of prominent indicators to effectively diagnose drivers’ visual and comprehension loads in real-world traffic violation hotspots.
RNN Transducers for Named Entity Recognition with constraints on alignment for understanding medical conversations

Understanding medical conversations requires detecting entities such as Medications, Symptoms, Treatment, Conditions and Diagnosis, which leads to large ontologies with overlapping spans. Moreover, for ease of adoption by the clinicians, the inference also needs to locate the position of the entities in the conversations. Popular solutions to Named Entity Recognition (NER) such as conditional random ﬁelds, sequence-to-sequence models, or the question-answering framework are not suitable for this task. We address this problem by proposing a new model for NER task – an RNN transducer (RNN-T), which has hitherto been used only in speech recognition. These models are trained using paired input and output sequences without explicitly specifying the alignment between them, similar to other seq-to-seq models. RNN-T models learn the alignment using a loss function that sums over all alignments. In NER tasks, however, the alignment between words and target labels are available from the human annotations. We propose a ﬁxed alignment RNN-T model that utilizes the given alignment, while preserving the beneﬁts of RNN-Ts such as modeling output dependencies. As a more general case, we also propose a constrained alignment model where users can specify a relaxation of the given input alignment and the model will learn an alignment within the given constraints. In other words, we propose a family of seq-to-seq models which can leverage alignments between input and target sequences when available. Through empirical experiments on a challenging real-world medical NER task with multiple nested ontologies, we demonstrate that our ﬁxed alignment model out-performs the standard RNN-T model, improving F1-score from 0 . 70 to 0 . 74 .
Calculation of the time averaged optical transfer function by the fast Fourier transform

The fast Fourier transform is used in two-dimensions to calculate the apodizing effect of a center opening pupil shutter. Two shutter models are investigated and compared, a circular shutter with diameter a function of time, and a five-bladed leaf-type shutter. The influence of shutter shape, defocus, and third and fifth order spherical aberration on the time-averaged optical transfer function is investigated. The results indicate that there is only a small effect on resolution and depth of focus due to shutter motion in a well corrected optical system.
The donor star of the X-ray pulsar X1908+075

High-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) consist of a massive donor star and a compact object. While several of those systems have been well studied in X-rays, little is known for most of the donor stars as they are often heavily obscured in the optical and ultraviolet regime. There is an opportunity to observe them at infrared wavelengths, however. The goal of this study is to obtain the stellar and wind parameters of the donor star in the X1908+075 high-mass X-ray binary system with a stellar atmosphere model to check whether previous studies from X-ray observations and spectral morphology lead to a sufficient description of the donor star. We obtained H- and K-Band spectra of X1908+075 and analysed them with the Potsdam Wolf-Rayet (PoWR) model atmosphere code. For the first time, we calculated a stellar atmosphere model for the donor star, whose main parameters are: $M_{\mathrm{spec}}$ = $15 \pm 6$$M_{\odot}$, $T_{\ast} = 23_{-3}^{+6},$kK, $\log g_\mathrm{eff} = 3.0 \pm 0.2$ and $\log L/L_{\odot}$ = $4.81 \pm 0.25$. The obtained parameters point towards an early B-type (B0--B3) star, probably in a supergiant phase. Moreover we determined a more accurate distance to the system of 4.85 $\pm$ 0.50 kpc than the previously reported value.
The Structure of Stable Cellulolytic Consortia Isolated from Natural Lignocellulosic Substrates

Recycling plant matter is one of the challenges facing humanity today and depends on efficient lignocellulose degradation. Although many bacterial strains from natural substrates demonstrate cellulolytic activities, the CAZymes (Carbohydrate-Active enZYmes) responsible for these activities are very diverse and usually distributed among different bacteria in one habitat. Thus, using microbial consortia can be a solution to rapid and effective decomposition of plant biomass. Four cellulolytic consortia were isolated from enrichment cultures from composting natural lignocellulosic substrates—oat straw, pine sawdust, and birch leaf litter. Enrichment cultures facilitated growth of similar, but not identical cellulose-decomposing bacteria from different substrates. Major components in all consortia were from Proteobacteria, Actinobacteriota and Bacteroidota, but some were specific for different substrates—Verrucomicrobiota and Myxococcota from straw, Planctomycetota from sawdust and Firmicutes from leaf litter. While most members of the consortia were involved in the lignocellulose degradation, some demonstrated additional metabolic activities. Consortia did not differ in the composition of CAZymes genes, but rather in axillary functions, such as ABC-transporters and two-component systems, usually taxon-specific and associated with CAZymes. Our findings show that enrichment cultures can provide reproducible cellulolytic consortia from various lignocellulosic substrates, the stability of which is ensured by tight microbial relations between its components.
A remark of Ruzsa's construction of an infinite Sidon set

A Sidon set is a set of the positive integers such that the sums of two pairs is not repeated. I. Ruzsa gave a probabilistic construction of an infinite Sidon set. In this work we present the details of a simplified proof of this construction as suggested in a paper of I. Ruzsa and J. Cilleruelo (Real and -padic Sidon sequences, Acta Sci. Math (Szeged) 70 (2004), 505-510).
The Disparity in the Management of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome between Obstetrician-Gynecologists in Different-Level Hospitals under the Hierarchical Medical System

Background PCOS is a prevalent endocrine and metabolic disorder in women characterized by abnormal blood glucose, dyslipidemia, and abnormal mental health. To improve patient care, the goal of our study is to find out if there are differences in how PCOS patients are treated at different hospital levels within the hierarchical medical system. Methods Obstetricians and gynecologists from primary, secondary, and tertiary hospitals were the participants in the survey. The responses provided and collected were analyzed using various statistical techniques like the chi-square test, Fisher exact test, and logistic regression with multiple variables. Results The investigation examined 2298 survey replies (13.1% primary hospitals, 52.4% secondary hospitals, and 34.5% tertiary hospitals). As hospital grade increases, more participants inquire about a patient's history of unfavorable pregnancies concerning hormone evaluation; the better the hospital's grade, the greater the number of participants who would undergo AMH and androgen-related tests. The higher the hospital level, the more participants would pick the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to determine insulin resistance, the BMI Asian criteria for defining obesity, and blood lipids. Participants in primary (odds ratio (OR) = 0.383, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.282-0.520) and secondary (OR = 0.607, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.481-0.765) hospitals were significantly less likely to select OGTT than those in tertiary hospitals. Comparatively, fewer primary hospitals chose to do lipid profiling than tertiary hospitals (OR 0.689, 95% CI 0.523-0.909). With the increase in hospital level, participants were more knowledgeable about the multiple efficacies and dose alternatives of metformin and selected letrozole and assisted reproduction more frequently. Conclusion Our study uncovered differences in the endocrine evaluation, metabolic screening, and management of PCOS patients across obstetrics and gynecology at various hospital levels. Simultaneously, it underlines the need to improve the hierarchical medical system and close the knowledge gap across hospitals.
Establishment of an efficient transformation method of garden stock (Matthiola incana) using a callus formation chemical inducer.

Matthiola incana is an important floricultural plant that blooms from winter to spring, and had been desired to be established a transformation system. This study successfully obtained stable transgenic plants from M. incana. We used Agrobacterium tumefaciens harboring a binary vector containing the β-glucuronidase gene (GUS) under the control of cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter to evaluate the transformation frequency of M. incana. We observed that cocultivation with the A. tumefaciens strain GV3101 for 5 days effectively enhanced the infection frequency, assessed through a transient GUS expression area in the seedling. Furthermore, the addition of 100 µM acetosyringone was necessary for Agrobacterium infection. However, we could not obtain transgenic plants on a shoot formation medium supplemented with 1 mg l-1 6-benzyladenine (BA). For callus formation from the leaf sections, a medium supplemented with 1-50 µM fipexide (FPX), a novel callus induction chemical, was employed. Then, the callus formation was observed after 2 weeks, and an earlier response was detected than that in the BA medium (4-6 weeks). Results also showed that cultivation in a selection medium supplemented with 12.5 µM FPX obtained hygromycin-resistant calli. Thus, this protocol achieved a 0.7% transformation frequency. Similarly, progenies from one transgenic line were observed on the basis of GUS stains on their leaves, revealing that the transgenes were also inherited stably. Hence, FPX is considered a breakthrough for establishing the transformation protocol of M. incana, and its use is proposed in recalcitrant plants.
Fractional-Order Ebola-Malaria Coinfection Model with a Focus on Detection and Treatment Rate

Coinfection of Ebola virus and malaria is widespread, particularly in impoverished areas where malaria is already ubiquitous. Epidemics of Ebola virus disease arise on a sporadic basis in African nations with a high malaria burden. An observational study discovered that patients in Sierra Leone's Ebola treatment centers were routinely infected with malaria parasites, increasing the risk of death. In this paper, we study Ebola-malaria coinfections under the generalized Mittag-Leffler kernel fractional derivative. The Banach fixed point theorem and the Krasnoselskii type are used to analyse the model's existence and uniqueness. We discuss the model stability using the Hyers-Ulam functional analysis. The numerical scheme for the Ebola-malaria coinfections using Lagrange interpolation is presented. The numerical trajectories show that the prevalence of Ebola-malaria coinfections ranged from low to moderate depending on memory. This means that controlling the disease requires adequate knowledge of the past history of the dynamics of both malaria and Ebola. The graphical dynamics of the detection rate indicate that a variation in the detection rate only affects the following compartments: individuals that are latently infected with the Ebola, Ebola virus afflicted people who went unnoticed, individuals who have been infected with the Ebola virus and have been diagnosed with the disease, and persons undergoing Ebola virus therapy.
Statistics with vague data

1 Introduction. - 2 Vague Data. - 3 Fuzzy Sets of the Real Line. - 4 Operations on Fuzzy Sets. - 4.1 Set Theoretical Operations. - 4.2 On Zadeh's Extension Principle. - 4.3 Arithmetic Operations. - 5 Representation of Vague Data in a Digital Computer. - 6 Topological Properties of Fuzzy Set Spaces. - 7 Random Sets and Fuzzy Random Variables. - 8 Descriptive Statistics with Vague Data. - 8.1 Expected Value. - 8.2 Variance. - 8.3 Empirical Distribution Function. - 9 Distribution Functions and i.i. d. -Sequences of Random Variables. - 10 Limit Theorems. - 10.1 Strong Law of Large Numbers. - 10.2 Consistent Estimators in the Finite Case. - 10.3 Gliwenko-Cantelli Theorem. - 10.4 Related Results. - 11 Some Aspects of Statistical Inference. - 11.1 Parametric Point Estimation. - 11.2 Confidence Estimation. - 11.3 The Testing of Hypotheses. - 12 On a Software Tool for Statistics with Vague Data. - 12.1 Linguistic Modelling. - 12.2 Linguistic Approximation. - 12.3 Examples. - References. - List of Symbols.
Enhancing Speech Privacy with Slicing

Privacy preservation calls for anonymization methods which hide the speaker’s identity in speech signals while min-imizing the impact on downstream tasks such as automatic speech recognition (ASR) training or decoding. In the VoicePrivacy 2020 Challenge, voice anonymization methods have been proposed to transform speech utterances in a way that preserves their verbal and prosodic contents while reducing the accuracy of a speaker veriﬁcation system. In this paper, we propose to further increase the privacy achieved by such methods by seg-menting the utterances into shorter slices. We show that our approach has two major impacts on privacy. First, it reduces the accuracy of speaker veriﬁcation with respect to unsegmented utterances. Second, it also reduces the amount of personal information that can be extracted from the verbal content, in a way that cannot easily be reversed by an attacker. We also show that it is possible to train an ASR system from anonymized speech slices with negligible impact on the word error rate.
Entornos virtuales inmersivos como herramienta de evaluación de la percepción espacial. Propuesta metodológica

Resumen Este escrito plantea una propuesta metodológica con el objetivo de evaluar la percepción espacial en entornos virtuales inmersivos (EVIs). Propone un caso de estudio a realizar en las aulas de la escuela politécnica de edificación en Barcelona, y se enmarca en un proyecto más ambicioso que pretende ahondar en la Modelización y Simulación física de espacios reales evaluando la experiencia de usuario a partir del análisis de datos educativos y fisiológicos. A partir de la construcción del gemelo digital del espacio propuesto se detallan los parámetros de la percepción espacial que deberían evaluarse, a la vez que el procedimiento a seguir. Los resultados de las tres pruebas planteadas deberán servir de base para evaluar la percepción de un usuario en un entorno inmersivo simulado digitalmente de forma realista, por comparación con un espacio real. Una alta correlación entre los resultados de las pruebas debería indicar que estos interfaces virtuales son herramientas precisas de representación de entornos reales, concluyendo que podrían utilizarse como herramientas de simulación arquitectónica.
Problems in classical potential theory with applications to mathematical physics

In this thesis we are interested in some problems regarding harmonic functions. The topics are divided into three chapters. Chapter 2 concerns singularities developed by solutions of the Cauchy problem for a holomorphic elliptic equation, especially Laplace's equation. The principal motivation is to locate the singularities of the Schwarz potential. The results have direct applications to Laplacian growth (or the Hele-Shaw problem). Chapter 3 concerns the Dirichlet problem when the boundary is an algebraic set and the data is a polynomial or a real-analytic function. We pursue some questions related to the Khavinson-Shapiro conjecture. A main topic of interest is analytic continuability of the solution outside its natural domain. Chapter 4 concerns certain complex-valued harmonic functions and their zeros. The special cases we consider apply directly in astrophysics to the study of multiple-image gravitational lenses.
An Internal-Electrostatic-Field-Boosted Self-Powered Ultraviolet Photodetector

Self-powered photodetectors are of significance for the development of low-energy-consumption and environment-friendly Internet of Things. The performance of semiconductor-based self-powered photodetectors is limited by the low quality of junctions. Here, a novel strategy was proposed for developing high-performance self-powered photodetectors with boosted electrostatic potential. The proposed self-powered ultraviolet (UV) photodetector consisted of an indium tin oxide and titanium dioxide (ITO/TiO2) heterojunction and an electret film (poly tetra fluoroethylene, PTFE). The PTFE layer introduces a built-in electrostatic field to highly enhance the photovoltaic effect, and its high internal resistance greatly reduces the dark current, and thus remarkable performances were achieved. The self-powered UV photodetector with PTFE demonstrated an extremely high on–off ratio of 2.49 × 105, a responsivity of 76.87 mA/W, a response rise time of 7.44 ms, and a decay time of 3.75 ms. Furthermore, the device exhibited exceptional stability from room temperature to 70 °C. Compared with the conventional ITO/TiO2 heterojunction without the PTFE layer, the photoresponse of the detector improved by 442-fold, and the light–dark ratio was increased by 8.40 × 105 times. In addition, the detector is simple, easy to fabricate, and low cost. Therefore, it can be used on a large scale. The electrostatic modulation effect is universal for various types of semiconductor junctions and is expected to inspire more innovative applications in optoelectronic and microelectronic devices.