nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Self perceived and Acoustic Voice Characteristics of Russian English Bilinguals.
Venue: Journal of voice official journal of the Voice Foundation

The aim of this study was to investigate the vocal characteristics of bilingual individuals speaking in their native language as compared with the English language.  The participants consisted of 30 vocally healthy adults, 14 adult male and 16 adult female bilingual subjects, with ages ranging from 23 to 70 years old. The procedures included a demographic questionnaire, a self perceptual questionnaire, and descriptions of two video clips. The self assessment included 21 questions that investigated how participants perceived their communication characteristics in each language. For the description of the videos, participants randomly watched two video clips with no audio support. One of the videos was described in English and the other in their native language. Voice samples were recorded to allow for acoustic analysis of selected vocal parameters: pitch, intensity, intonation, and rate of speech.  The results indicate that overall, there is no difference in how the individuals perceive their communication characteristics in both languages (all P values 0.05) The only significant difference was found in speech rate and sentence duration. Individuals had faster speech rate and longer sentences when speaking in English than in Russian. The correlation analysis showed that the younger the participants were when they immigrated to the USA, the more interjections they reported having in their native language.  This study showed that language is a contributing factor to varying speech characteristics of Russian English bilingual individuals. These findings have important implications for clinicians to be aware of cultural linguistic influence in vocal and speech features.
Gender specific speech feature variation in Hindi and English language
Venue: 2016 3rd International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development (INDIACom)

Speech is a medium through which we can convey our message, thoughts and express emotions by producing articulatory sounds. There are various properties of speech that may vary from person to person or from language to language. The power of human language is found to be effected by variations in language. However, not much work has been done to analyze similarities and dissimilarities of speech features between male and female speaking English and Hindi language. The prosodic statistics for instance like stress and rhythm which are basically coded into intensity, pitch and formants. We have further examined the utilization of pitch and formants to study the linguistic difference of speech properties of English and Hindi Language in males and females. We clustered the speech samples into two categories and concentrated basically on pitch and formant values of speech signals. In this paper we have studied the variation of speech features in male and female speaking in two different language, they are English and Hindi. From our study we observed a significant change in the values of pitch and formants in male and female speaking English and Hindi language.
Clofazimine Contributes Sustained Antimicrobial Activity after Treatment Cessation in a Mouse Model of Tuberculosis Chemotherapy
Venue: Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy

Experimental and clinical studies have indicated that the antileprosy drug clofazimine may contribute treatment shortening activity when included in tuberculosis treatment regimens. Clofazimine accumulates to high levels in tissues, has a long half life, and remains in the body for months after administration is stopped. We hypothesized that in tuberculosis treatment, accumulated clofazimine may contribute sustained antimicrobial activity after treatment cessation, and we used the BALB/c mouse model of chronic tuberculosis chemotherapy to address this hypothesis. Mycobacterium tuberculosis infected mice were treated for 4 weeks or 8 weeks with either isoniazid alone, clofazimine alone, the first line regimen rifampin isoniazid pyrazinamide ethambutol, or a first line regimen where clofazimine was administered in place of ethambutol. To evaluate posttreatment antimicrobial activity, bacterial regrowth in the lungs and spleens was assessed at the day of treatment cessation and 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks after treatment was stopped. Bacterial regrowth was delayed in all mice receiving clofazimine, either alone or in combination, compared to the mice that did not receive clofazimine. This effect was especially evident in mice receiving multidrug therapy. In mice not receiving clofazimine, bacterial regrowth began almost immediately after treatment was stopped, while in mice receiving clofazimine, bacterial regrowth was delayed for up to 6 weeks, with the duration of sustained antimicrobial activity being positively associated with the time that serum clofazimine levels remained at or above the 0.25 mg/ml MIC for M. tuberculosis. Thus, sustained activity of clofazimine may be important in the treatment shortening effect associated with this drug.
Optimal control of a mathematical model for cancer chemotherapy under tumor heterogeneity.
Venue: Mathematical biosciences and engineering MBE

We consider cancer chemotherapy as an optimal control problem with the aim to minimize a combination of the tumor volume and side effects over an a priori specified therapy horizon when the tumor consists of a heterogeneous agglomeration of many subpopulations. The mathematical model, which accounts for different growth and apoptosis rates in the presence of cell densities, is a finite dimensional approximation of a model originally formulated by Lorz et al.  and Greene et al. [10,11] with a continuum of possible traits. In spite of an arbitrarily high dimension, for this problem singular controls (which correspond to time varying administration schedules at less than maximum doses) can be computed explicitly in feedback form. Interestingly, these controls have the property to keep the entire tumor population constant. Numerical computations and simulations that explore the optimality of bang bang and singular controls are given. These point to the optimality of protocols that combine a full dose therapy segment with a period of lower dose drug administration.
Trees in Towns and Cities. A History of British Urban Arboriculture

For a volume such as this, it would be hard to find a more appropriate author than Mark Johnston. He has a wealth of experience and a proven record of publications in the field. Indeed, Mark is an internationally renowned arboriculturist and combines a passion for trees with sound understanding of British social and cultural history. Furthermore, with the appetite whetted, the book does not disappoint. Most studies of garden and landscape history have been concerned with those belonging to the rich and powerful in cities and in towns. However, this book takes a wider sweep as it focuses especially on working people and their treescapes. The information provided with the book states that this is the first book on the history of trees in Britain's towns and cities and the people who have planted and cared for them. Furthermore, it is a highly readable account of the trees in our urban landscapes from the Romans to the present day, including public parks, private gardens, streets, cemeteries and many other open spaces. It is explained that the various threats to these trees over the centuries are described and these include as pollution damage during the Industrial Revolution, and for example, the impacts of diseases such as the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease. Current pests and diseases are not covered but that would need a completely different book! The various governmental initiatives over the years are examined along with the contributions of civic and amenity societies. Mark's historical account is much more than a catalogue of significant events in the history of urban trees, but provides a deeper, more thorough analysis. He does this by exploring fundamental issues such as the ownership of urban treed landscapes, and investigating why they were created, and who had access to them. Finally, the book concludes with the fascinating stories of how trees have contributed to efforts to improve urban conditions through various "visions of the urban green" such as the model villages, garden cities, garden suburbs and the new towns. The book is an essential and enjoyable read for all those interested in urban trees, and especially those within the arboricultural industry. Indeed the introductory chapter that provides an overview of the development of professional arboriculture should be a "must read" for all entering the profession. I hope that this much needed addition to the literature will also find an audience beyond the immediate profession for a wider public perhaps but especially for planners, architects and landscape architects.
Arboriculture a female perspective

The Arboricultural Association's 50th anniversary prompted a look at female involvement in arboriculture, both in the context of the Association and in a wider, mainly British, context. Starting with a brief historical introduction, the piece highlights several of the different ways that women have worked with trees. Much of the information below is based on discussions and correspondence during 2014 with a number of people, to explore the range of roles and some of the motivation of the "Treeladies" The research attempts to include a range of contributors, many of whom are key members of the profession some were at the Arboricultural Association Conference and others chosen to broaden the strands. Accordingly, this piece reflects views and information at that time (some roles/organisations have changed subsequently) However, whilst individual post holders may have altered, there can be no doubt that there are substantially more females involved in arboriculture 50 years on than at the outset of the Association.
Endoscopic totally extraperitoneal (TEP) hernia repair for inguinal disruption (Sportsman's hernia) rationale and design of a prospective observational cohort study (TEP ID study)
Venue: BMJ Open

Chronic inguinal pain is a frequently occurring problem in athletes. A diagnosis of inguinal disruption is performed by exclusion of other conditions causing groin pain. Up to now, conservative medical management is considered to be the primary treatment for this condition. Relevant large and prospective clinical studies regarding the treatment of inguinal disruption are limited; however, recent studies have shown the benefits of the totally extraperitoneal patch (TEP) technique. This study provides a complete assessment of the inguinal area in athletes with chronic inguinal pain before and after treatment with the TEP hernia repair technique.  We describe the rationale and design of an observational cohort study for surgical treatment with the endoscopic TEP hernia repair technique in athletes with a painful groin (inguinal disruption) The study is being conducted in a high volume, single centre hospital with specialty in TEP hernia repair. Patients over 18 years, suffering from inguinal pain for at least 3 months during or after playing sports, and whom have not undergone previous inguinal surgery and have received no benefit from physiotherapy are eligible for inclusion. Patients with any another cause of inguinal pain, proven by physical examination, inguinal ultrasound, X pelvis/hip or MRI are excluded. Primary outcome is reduction in pain after 3 months. Secondary outcomes are pain reduction, physical functioning, and resumption of sport (in frequency and intensity) Ethics and dissemination An unrestricted research grant for general study purposes was assigned to the Hernia Centre. This study itself is not directly subject to the above mentioned research grant or any other financial sponsorship. We intend to publish the outcome of the study, regardless of the findings. All authors will give final approval of the manuscript version to be published.
Deep Distant Supervision: Learning Statistical Relational Models for Weak Supervision in Natural Language Extraction
Venue: Solving Large Scale Learning Tasks

One of the challenges to information extraction is the requirement of human annotated examples, commonly called gold standard examples. Many successful approaches alleviate this problem by employing some form of distant supervision i.e. look into knowledge bases such as Freebase as a source of supervision to create more examples. While this is perfectly reasonable, most distant supervision methods rely on a given set of propositions as a source of supervision. We propose a different approach: we infer weakly supervised examples for relations from statistical relational models learned by using knowledge outside the natural language task. We argue that this deep distant supervision creates more robust examples that are particularly useful when learning the entire model (the structure and parameters) We demonstrate on several domains that this form of weak supervision yields superior results when learning structure compared to using distant supervision labels or a smaller set of labels.
De correlation of tropospheric error and height component on GNSS using combined zenith dependent parameter

For high precision GNSS positioning, the troposphere is one of the most problematic error sources. Typically, the effect is minimal due to the spatio temporal correlation when the baseline length is short enough in the relative positioning scenario. When a strong tropospheric anomaly effect is present, the problem can be much more complicated and the resultant positioning solution is typically no longer precise even for a baseline of a few kilometres in length. As the troposphere delay and height estimates are almost linearly correlated above a 20* elevation angle, the problem exists of how to de correlate these two parameters to avoid such ill conditioned cases. To obtain reliable height estimates, and avoid ill conditioned cases, a new method is proposed in this dissertation: these two common zenith dependent parameters are combined into a single parameter plus weighting parameters. Once the parameters are combined and corresponding weighting parameters are determined, the vertical component can be retrieved. The feasibility of the methodology is investigated in a kinematic situation. To determine the weighting coefficient in this case, the residuals in a least square estimator are analyzed. As the residuals can be decomposed into two different realms, either troposphere or ionosphere, the magnitude of the residual contribution of the
Free to Choose? Reform, Choice, and Consideration Sets in the English National Health Service.
Venue: The American economic review

Choice in public services is controversial. We exploit a reform in the English National Health Service to assess the effect of removing constraints on patient choice. We estimate a demand model that explicitly captures the removal of the choice constraints imposed on patients. We find that, post removal, patients became more responsive to clinical quality. This led to a modest reduction in mortality and a substantial increase in patient welfare. The elasticity of demand faced by hospitals increased substantially post reform and we find evidence that hospitals responded to the enhanced incentives by improving quality. This suggests greater choice can raise quality.
Shading Effect to Energy Withdrawn from the Photovoltaic Panel and Implementation of DMPPT Using C Language

At first, this paper aims to study the effects of partial shading of photovoltaic (PV) panel without bypass diode, in order to present the hot spot problem which can cause permanent damage to the panel, and with bypass diode that actually protects the panel against the hot spot phenomenon. A PSIM simulation model that represents a PV panel under shading has been used to do this and the results are presented in this paper. And then, we benefit from the component provided by PSIM (C block) in order to code the maximum power point tracking algorithm (MPPT) using embedded C language so as to operate the PV panel at maximum power point (MPP) One of most precious advantages of this method is that once the MPPT is implemented using C block it can be applied in digital devices, because C language is portable and independent of the machine. The algorithm used is based in Perturb and observe method and it represents a good performance in terms of response time (0.005s) and efficiency (98.99% However, we demonstrate that this method can fail to follow the real MPP since multiple maxima can exist on the PV power curve under partial shading (global MPP and local MPP) Finally, to solve this problem, the distributed maximum power point tracking (DMPPT) method is used.
Bayesian 3D velocity field reconstruction with virbius

I describe a new Bayesian based algorithm to infer the full three dimensional velocity field from observed distances and spectroscopic galaxy catalogues. In addition to the velocity field itself, the algorithm reconstructs true distances, some cosmological parameters and specific non linearities in the velocity field. The algorithm takes care of selection effects, miscalibration issues and can be easily extended to handle direct fitting of e.g. the inverse Tully Fisher relation. I first describe the algorithm in details alongside its performances. This algorithm is implemented in the virbius (VelocIty Reconstruction using Bayesian Inference Software) software package. I then test it on different mock distance catalogues with a varying complexity of observational issues. The model proved to give robust measurement of velocities for mock catalogues of 3000 galaxies. I expect the core of the algorithm to scale to tens of thousands galaxies. It holds the promises of giving a better handle on future large and deep distance surveys for which individual errors on distance would impede velocity field inference.
Assessing concentrations and health impacts of air quality management strategies: Framework for Rapid Emissions Scenario and Health impact ESTimation (FRESH EST)
Venue: Environment international

In air quality management, reducing emissions from pollutant sources often forms the primary response to attaining air quality standards and guidelines. Despite the broad success of air quality management in the US, challenges remain. As examples: allocating emissions reductions among multiple sources is complex and can require many rounds of negotiation; health impacts associated with emissions, the ultimate driver for the standards, are not explicitly assessed; and long dispersion model run times, which result from the increasing size and complexity of model inputs, limit the number of scenarios that can be evaluated, thus increasing the likelihood of missing an optimal strategy. A new modeling framework, called the "Framework for Rapid Emissions Scenario and Health impact ESTimation" (FRESH EST) is presented to respond to these challenges. FRESH EST estimates concentrations and health impacts of alternative emissions scenarios at the urban scale, providing efficient computations from emissions to health impacts at the Census block or other desired spatial scale. In addition, FRESH EST can optimize emission reductions to meet specified environmental and health constraints, and a convenient user interface and graphical displays are provided to facilitate scenario evaluation. The new framework is demonstrated in an SO2 non attainment area in southeast Michigan with two optimization strategies: the first minimizes emission reductions needed to achieve a target concentration; the second minimizes concentrations while holding constant the cumulative emissions across local sources (e.g. an emissions floor) The optimized strategies match outcomes in the proposed SO2 State Implementation Plan without the proposed stack parameter modifications or shutdowns. In addition, the lower health impacts estimated for these strategies suggest that FRESH EST could be used to identify potentially more desirable pollution control alternatives in air quality management planning.
The effects of Internet usage and economic growth on CO2 emissions in OECD countries: A panel investigation

This paper estimates the short and long run effects of Internet usage and economic growth on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions using OECD panel data for the period 1991 2012. The Pedroni panel cointegration test confirms that the variables are cointegrated. Although Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimates indicate a positive significant long run relationship between Internet usage and CO2 emissions, the coefficient is very small and no causality exists between them, which both imply that the rapid growth in Internet usage is still not an environmental threat for the region. The study further indicates that economic growth has no significant short run and long run effects on CO2 emissions. Internet use stimulates both financial development and trade openness. The findings offer support in favor of the argument that OECD countries can promote their Internet usage without being significantly concerned about its environmental consequences. But the future emissions effect of Internet usage cannot be ruled out, as is evident from the variance decomposition analysis. Therefore, this study recommends that in addition to boosting the existing measures for combating CO2 emissions, OECD countries need to use ICT equipment not to simply reduce its own carbon footprint but also to exploit ICT enabled emissions abatement potential to reduce emissions in other sectors, such as the power, energy, agricultural, transport and service sectors.
The effects of Internet usage, financial development and trade openness on economic growth in South Africa: A time series analysis
Venue: Telematics Informatics

Investigate the relationship among Internet use, economic growth and financial development.Internet use has grown rapidly in the last few years in South Africa.The ARDL bounds testing is applied.Internet use and financial development stimulate economic growth.Further investment in Internet infrastructure is recommended. This study estimates the effects of Internet usage, financial development and trade openness on economic growth using annual time series data for South Africa for the period 1991 2013. Structural unit root test and Johansen and ARDL cointegration tests are performed to examine the long run relationship amongst Internet usage, financial development, trade openness and economic growth. Findings from ARDL cointegration tests indicate a long run relationship between the variables. Results from the ARDL estimates indicate a positive and significant long run relationship between Internet usage and economic growth in South Africa. Also, there is significant positive relationship between financial development and economic growth. However, the short run relationship among the variables was found to be insignificant. The robustness of the long run relationship between the variables was checked by the application of dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) estimation. The Granger causality test reveals that both Internet usage and financial development Granger cause economic growth in South Africa. This causal link is found to be robust from the application of impulse response and variance decomposition analysis. Based on these findings, this study recommends that the South African government continue with policies that aim to invest more resources into its Internet infrastructure to further expand its network and usage.