Reviewerly/exHarmony huggingface dataset:
An Overview of Environmental Features that Impact Deep Reinforcement Learning in Sparse-Reward Domains

Deep reinforcement learning has achieved impressive results in recent years; yet, it is still severely troubled by environments showcasing sparse rewards. On top of that, not all sparse-reward environments are created equal, i.e., they can differ in the presence or absence of various features, with many of them having a great impact on learning. In light of this, the present work puts together a literature compilation of such environmental features, covering particularly those that have been taken advantage of and those that continue to pose a challenge. We expect this effort to provide guidance to researchers for assessing the generality of their new proposals and to call their attention to issues that remain unresolved when dealing with sparse rewards.
Exploring speech characteristics for automatic pathological voice detection

This paper aims to explore speech characteristics for automatic pathological voice detection. First, the assumptions underlying the conducted experiments are presented, along with examples of databases containing pathological speech. Then, a selection process of features of the speech signal and algorithms used to distinguish between undisturbed and pathological speech are discussed. Two deep models are employed to perform binary classification of the speech signal. Their structure is presented along with the feature space chosen. The results of classifying undisturbed and pathological speech are compared with state-of-the-art literature sources. The accuracy values are comparable to those presented in the literature, i.e., they are within the range of 61%–71% for our research and 64%–98% for the literature data, depending on the algorithms and databases used. An application is also built to illustrate the speech recognition process. The experiments are summarized with conclusions, and the direction of possible future development of the research performed is given.
Audio features of steelpans with few notes

Tenor steelpans are unusual, even among percussion instruments, in that all notes share a common surface. This physical coupling between the notes causes complex interactions between notes when activated. In an effort to better understand how these interactions work, we commissioned the building of three custom steelpans with one, two, and four notes instead of the typical 29. The one note pan has a single note in its standard position and the rest of the sunken bowl is empty. The two note steelpan adds a second note one octave higher. The four note steelpan further adds two notes a musical fifth higher. With the reduction in notes, the interactions are minimized and we can see how they affect the timbre of a full steelpan. In this paper, the results of audio feature extraction performed on these custom instruments is presented and compared with the audio features from a full range steelpan. Through this we gain insight into how octaves and fifths affect a note’s timbral characteristics and lead to the attributes of a full steelpan.
Using the Corpus of North American Spoken English to explore regional variation in millions of eɪ diphthongs

Increases in the quality of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems and forced alignment algorithms have opened up new horizons for the study of acoustic properties of naturalistic speech (Coto-Solano et al., 2021). This paper describes the procedures used for the automatic extraction and alignment of audio and ASR transcript excerpts containing eɪ diphthongs from the Corpus of North American Spoken English, a 1.3-billion-word corpus of geolocated ASR transcripts of videos uploaded to YouTube channels of local government entities. In total, more than 2 million eɪ tokens were extracted from naturalistic speech in over 2000 locations in the US and Canada. The pipeline utilizes python code to extract audio segments from the DASH manifest of YouTube videos, then feeds them together with the corresponding transcript excerpt to the Montreal Forced Aligner. Targeted segments are then filtered using functions in Parselmouth, a python port of Praat. Because the underlying corpus is searchable and words are annotated with timing information, the extraction procedure is suitable for retrieving acoustic data from a range of naturalistic speech configurations (for example from discussions of particular topics or in the context of specific utterance types such as questions or replies). The corpus contains a variety of speech genres, making it suitable for studies of geophonetic and sociophonetic variation, and pipelines can be constructed to target specific phenomenona in YouTube videos, depending on the underlying research question.
Chemical firms hit by cyberattacks

When hackers gain access to company networks, major real-world disruptions can ensue, as the recent ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline showed. Chemical companies are not immune. Recent cyberattacks on Siegfried, Brenntag, and Symrise forced temporary halts in manufacturing and other operations while the firms investigated the breaches. The drug ingredient manufacturer Siegfried says it detected a malware attack May 21. In response, the Swiss company shut down production at multiple sites, cut off network connections, and scoured its information technology systems. Among other things, Siegfried packages the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. And just days after the May 7 attack on Colonial by DarkSide, information security experts reported that the chemical distributor Brenntag had also been a DarkSide victim. Lawrence Abrams, a malware specialist, wrote on the news site Bleepingcomputer.com that Brenntag had paid DarkSide a $4.4 million ransom in bitcoins to access company files that the hackers had encrypted and to
Circular breathing—An introspective study across all types of wind-instrument generators

Circular breathing is an extended technique for wind instruments to play a continuous sound. To do so, the performer pushes out air temporarily stored in the cheeks while inhaling. In the second part of the cycle, the player exhales, refilling the air in the cheeks while driving the wind instrument. The two main challenges of this technique are maintaining a constant embouchure and air supply. This talk spans from the author’s Hyperspecialization technique on the soprano saxophone that involves all major types of wind-instrument generators, including brass, flute, double-reed, single-reed, and free-reed generators. The history, difficulty, and outcome for each generator type will be discussed. The free-reed generator is the easiest to perform with circular breathing because the free-reed resonance frequency only depends on fingering and cannot be controlled by embouchure. The embouchure for the flute generator is very different from the other circular breathing techniques, and transferred knowledge and experience can hardly be applied. The type of wind-instrument generator itself is not always a good indicator of the easiness of performing circular breathing. For brass embouchures, for example, the didjeridu adapter was much easier to perform with circular breathing than the cornetto mouthpiece because of the latter’s tight embouchure requirements. For double reeds, the duduk reed was more challenging than the bassoon reed, because it requires much more air to excite the instrument.
Sampling strategies for handling data imbalance problem: An Extensive Review

The imbalanced data classification is a major issue in data mining. Many researchers have proposed various solutions which addressed imbalanced data problem which is broadly categorized into data level and algorithm level. Class distributions are adjusted in data level method. Creating an algorithm or modifying the existing algorithm is an appropriate approach used in algorithm level method. Imbalanced data classification problem can be resolved by means of Sampling, Random over sampling, Random under sampling, Resampling and by SMOTE (Synthetic Minority Oversampling Techniques). Resampling includes k-means clustering, density-based clustering, neural networks and ensemble. However, no algorithm or a method has an ability to remove bias in data classification, thereby integration of kernel methods with sampling methods or integration of sampling and boosting methods or integration Kernel based with Support Vector Machines (SVM) need to be performed a great extent to get the desired accuracy and performance. The main objective of this paper is to focus on various sampling strategies that are based on sampling and resampling methods and improving the concept of learning within class imbalanced data. It also explains the objectives of the models used by several researchers and emphasized the performance along with the outcomes.
Biometric technology for personal identification and authentication: fingerprint

This paper presents an efficient fingerprint verification algorithm that improves matching accuracy. Algorithms for image processing for biometric technologies of identification and authentication of a person using fingerprints are considered. They are essential tools for improving performance across a wide range of industries. The recognition system is designed for storing data, further processing it, identifying and displaying fingerprints. In forensics, modern image processing algorithms are used and provide a significant improvement in work results. Fingerprint images are degraded and damaged due to changes in skin and print conditions. Thus, image enhancement techniques are used before feature points are detected and fine details are extracted. Templates are generated based on feature vector extraction and databases are created for verification and identification of fingerprint images. The method of experimental research is carried out, the process of processing the identification results is considered. To solve this problem, a recognition system was proposed, which is designed to store data, further process it, identify and display fingerprints. They are used in places of high secrecy as a kind of password access key based on scanning and verifying fingerprints with the FVC2002 database. The results obtained show that the proposed algorithm is more efficient and reliable.
The Inauguration of the Yoon Suk-yeol Government and Prospects for South Korea–Japan Relations

Since 2012, South Korea-Japan relations have deteriorated structurally in the long run, and the conflict between South Korea-Japan relations has expanded and deepened since the Moon Jae-in government. The conflict over historical issues, including the comfort women and the wartime forced labor, are the main factors that worsened the bilateral relations, but since 2018, confrontation has also expanded in the economic and security areas. In the background of the spread of conflict in all directions of South Korea-Japan relations, there is a phenomenon of power transition in international politics in Northeast Asia. While China is rapidly emerging as a superpower, South Korea has emerged as a mid-sized country through democratization and economic growth, and Japan is facing a decline in relative national power. The South Korea-Japan relationship is no longer a vertical relationship, but a horizontal relationship. In the meantime, the relations between two countries have become more misunderstood and biased in mutual recognition via medias, and strategically underestimate the importance of the other party. The dialogue and communication between leaders have long been cut off, and mutual trust has declined. However, since the inauguration of the Yoon Suk-yeol government in May 2022, South Korea has been making multidimensional efforts to improve relations with Japan and normalize relations. While gathering wisdom to solve the wartime forced labor issue, it is focusing on cooperation in North Korea policy and restoring the security cooperation system between South Korea, the US, and Japan. Even if the Kishida government has evaluated the Yoon government's efforts to improve bilateral relations, it has not been able to show an active attitude to improve relations on its own.
Students Perception about Learning Strategies in Reading English Text

Reading is an essential skill for learners in order to ensure their success not only in learning English, but also in learning in any content class. This study aimed at identifying types of students’ reading strategies, challenges during the implementation of those strategies and solutions in maximizing the implementation those strategies. This study was a survey research conducted at SMA Katolik Yos Sudarso Dobo. The data were collected by using questionnaire, which was distributed to the respondents consisting of 60 students and were analyzed by using descriptive statistic. The result of the study showed that: 1) 34 students or 56,70% strongly agree that efficiency of silent reading strategies was the most dominant reading strategy used by them; 2) 40 students or 66,7% strongly agree that they find it difficult to understand the sentence in the English text; 3) 34 students or 56,70% strongly agree that they think about the information that is in the text into Indonesian when reading. The results of the study above reveals that reading proficiency plays a great role in understanding a written statement accurately and efficiency. Therefore, teachers should provide students with several of reading strategies that can help them to comprehend the text.
Business Roundup

BUSINESS Business Roundup ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2021, 99 (33), p 15September 13, 2021Cite this:C&EN 99, 33, 15AbstractSolid Power , a developer of batteries made with a solid electrolyte, plans to add a second facility in the Denver area that will make up to 30,000 metric tons per year of sulfide-based electrolyte material for its batteries. The firm says the facility will increase its output by a factor of 25 when it opens in 2022. Libra Specialty Chemicals is building a plant in Irlam, England, to make 1,000 metric tons per week of betaine surfactants. Libra says it has developed low-salt betaines that will be adopted by well-known makers of personal care and cleaning products. Kemira will build a third production line for alkenyl succinic anhydride sizing agents at its site in Nanjing, China, by 2023. The company says that demand for the papermaking ingredients is growing quickly and that supply has been tight. Mitsubishi Chemical will build a 2,000-metric-ton-per-year facility for sugar esters at its siteView: PDF | Full Text HTML
Unilever and Arzeda to use AI to find enzymes

The enzyme development start-up Arzeda has landed a 3-year partnership with the consumer goods giant Unilever to develop enzymes for household cleaning applications. Many dish detergents and hard-surface cleaners already use enzymes, which can break down soils, oils, and grime and boost the performance of other ingredients. Enzymes (such as the hydrolase shown), along with live microbes and advanced surfactants, are central to Unilever’s $1.2 billion plan to shift to 100% biobased ingredients in its cleaning products by 2030. Neil Parry, head of biotechnology development at Unilever, says the firm has the opportunity with Arzeda to look beyond the capacities of natural enzymes and into new kinds of enzyme-catalyzed cleaning chemistry. “Although detergents have been around for a long time with enzymes in them, the enzyme classes are quite limited,” he says, “and we believe there’s so many more enzyme classes that can get performance.” Arzeda combines physics-based protein design
ANALYSIS OF METHODS AND LEGAL BASES USED BY INTERNET INTERMEDIARIES FOR COPYRIGHT PROTECTION

Internet intermediaries have become important players in the protection of copyrighted materials.This article analyzes the methods and legal bases used by these intermediaries for copyright protection.The article begins by discussing the legal framework for copyright protection, including international agreements and national legislation.It then goes on to explore the role of intermediaries in copyright protection and the legal bases for their actions.The article examines various approaches used by intermediaries, such as notice-and-takedown procedures, filtering technologies, and voluntary agreements with copyright holders.It also analyzes the challenges and criticisms of these approaches, including concerns about freedom of expression, privacy, and due process.Ultimately, the article argues that intermediaries play a crucial role in copyright protection and that a balanced approach is necessary to ensure that copyright is respected while also protecting fundamental rights and freedoms.
The Digital Dollar Is Coming and May Be Problematic

Purpose: The aim of the study is to examine the potential problems with the new proposed Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) known as the digital dollar. &#x0D; Methodology: Qualitative research design examining pertinent and timely studies and articles about several aspects of the CBDC. Kuznichenko’s study used the Vector Autoregressive model to examine volatility spillover to the CBDC from equity markets. Most studies researched on the subject were Qualitative as well. &#x0D; Findings: The CBDC, although providing benefits like payment efficiency, cross-border transactions, and less illegal activity than a cryptocurrency, also has potential downsides. During periods of financial panic, people can run from banks to the digital dollar. These bank runs could be even worse because whereas normal bank runs cause deposits to be moved from one bank to another, in this case, deposits would be moved out of the banking system entirely, into the digital dollar. Another theoretical problem with the digital dollar is a potential lack of individual privacy. Because the government would have a permanent blockchain record of all transactions and access to a person’s finances, this could cause potential government overreach. Lastly, although unlikely, if the Federal Reserve does not regulate the CBDC to the extent that it needs to be, volatility spillover from equity and forex markets could problematic to the stability of the digital dollar.&#x0D; Recommendations: Theoretically, policymakers can manage risk using the knowledge that the CBDC can exacerbate financial panics and instability. Increased regulation would be necessary to avoid potential volatility and bank runs during financial panics. &#x0D;
Pelatihan Pembuatan Soal Numerasi Berbasis Asesmen Kompetensi Minimum (AKM) Bagi Guru SD Di Kota Ternate

Minimum Competency Assessment (AKM) is an activity that is routinely carried out every year. The question used in AKM activities is the Numeracy Problem. However, the ability and skills of elementary school teachers in Ternate city in making numeracy questions are still low. The purpose of the service activity is to improve the ability and skills of teachers in Ternate city in making AKM-based numeracy questions. The partners of this activity are UPTD Ternate Selatan, UPTD Ternate Tengah, and UPTD Ternate Utara. The number of participants in this activity is 50 teachers. The method carried out lectures, discussions, assignments, and questions and answers with data retrieval techniques using questionnaires. The result of the service activity is an increase in the ability and skills of teachers in Ternate city in making AKM-based numeracy questions. Making AKM-based numeracy questions is effectively carried out by training methods.
Know how to say no

Turning down a request is hard, especially if it’s for something you would like to do or if it’s made by someone in authority. People often find themselves overworked and resentful because they agree to do things they didn’t actually want to do just because it was easier than saying no. While that may be easier in the moment, learning how to say no gracefully is a much better long-term strategy. Just say it You don’t have to explain why you’re saying no. Be polite, but direct: sometimes we soften “no” so much that the other person thinks we’re still considering—or, even worse, mistakes it for “yes.” It’s OK to want more information or time to decide, especially if the ask is a big one. If you do ask for more time, make sure the person knows when you will decide and if they should look for someone else in
Measured changes in the bridge mobility and radiativity of violins due to material creep following tensioning of strings

Violins have been observed to undergo a small, but measurable, deformation of the corpus after being brought into tune following a prolonged period without string tension. This behavior, which is analagous to the flexing of a bow, can be attributed to the viscoelastic properties of wood. Because of the relatively long time scale of deformation, the process is sometimes referred to as material “creep.” To assess the impact of creep on the sound of a violin, we measured the vibrational and acoustic response of multiple violins during this period of deformation. The measurement process involves tapping the bridge with a small modal impact hammer and recording the velocity response of the top plate using a laser Doppler vibrometer, as well as the far-field acoustic response in an anechoic chamber. Results show modest changes in the amplitude of the main body modes, most notably the CBR and B1- modes, and a consistent shift in the peak frequency of higher modes, over a two-day period after the strings were tuned.
Kalimba tine boundary condition models

The kalimba or African thumb piano is a musical instrument with thin metal tines plucked by the thumbs at their free end. The opposite end is secured to a wood resonator with a three-point clamp that provides downward force in the middle, between points of upward force at the bridge and the back bar. The simplest model is an Euler-Bernoulli thin beam, free at the plucked end and clamped at the mount. Chapman [J. Acoust. Soc. Am 131, 945 (2012)] explored the benefits to modeling the bridge as a simply supported point, with a clamped condition at the load point in the middle. Considerations in the present work are related to the modes of vibration of the resonator box. (i) The bridge is the point where vibration is transmitted to the resonator box, itself designed to better radiate sound, and thus the mechanical impedance at that point provides a complex boundary condition to be implemented in the tine model. (ii) Measurements of the attack of the kalimba tones include harmonic content not predicted by the thin beam model; recent work on this “offset” boundary condition is approached computationally, extending beyond the theoretical thin beam model.
Comparing intelligibility and recognition memory of human and text-to-speech voices

Clear speech can be more intelligible and better remembered than casual speech. Intelligibility and memory are assumed to be related—under the effortfulness hypothesis, the intelligibility-enhancing properties of clear speech (e.g., slower speech rate) facilitate processing, which frees up working memory resources and confers a memory advantage. However, prior work has only investigated naturally produced clear speech. How does clear speech influence memory for computer voices? The current study examines intelligibility and recognition memory of clear and casual speech for a text-to-speech (TTS) voice and a human voice, and compares older and younger adult listeners. In a speech-perception-in-noise task, clear speech was more intelligible than casual speech for both voices, the human was more intelligible than the TTS voice, and the younger adults performed better than the older adults. In an old-new recognition task, memory was better for the human voice relative to the TTS voice, consistent with the intelligibility results and the effortfulness hypothesis. However, inconsistent with the effortfulness hypothesis, there was no clear speech memory benefit, and the older adults performed better than the younger adults. The current findings are relevant for our understanding of human-computer interaction and theories about the relationship between speaking style and memory.