High Quality Audio Coding with MDCTNet

We propose a neural audio generative model, MDCTNet, operating in the perceptually weighted domain of an adaptive modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT). The architecture of the model captures correlations in both time and frequency directions with recurrent layers (RNNs). An audio coding system is obtained by training MDCTNet on a diverse set of fullband monophonic audio signals at 48 kHz sampling, conditioned by a perceptual audio encoder. In a subjective listening test with ten excerpts chosen to be balanced across content types, yet stressful for both codecs, the mean performance of the proposed system for 24 kb/s variable bitrate (VBR) is similar to that of Opus at twice the bitrate.Comment: Five pages, five figure

Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes.

BACKGROUND: Heterogeneous taxonomy of groin injuries in athletes adds confusion to this complicated area. AIM: The 'Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes' was convened to attempt to resolve this problem. Our aim was to agree on a standard terminology, along with accompanying definitions. METHODS: A one-day agreement meeting was held on 4 November 2014. Twenty-four international experts from 14 different countries participated. Systematic reviews were performed to give an up-to-date synthesis of the current evidence on major topics concerning groin pain in athletes. All members participated in a Delphi questionnaire prior to the meeting. RESULTS: Unanimous agreement was reached on the following terminology. The classification system has three major subheadings of groin pain in athletes: 1. Defined clinical entities for groin pain: Adductor-related, iliopsoas-related, inguinal-related and pubic-related groin pain. 2. Hip-related groin pain. 3. Other causes of groin pain in athletes. The definitions are included in this paper. CONCLUSIONS: The Doha agreement meeting on terminology and definitions in groin pain in athletes reached a consensus on a clinically based taxonomy using three major categories. These definitions and terminology are based on history and physical examination to categorise athletes, making it simple and suitable for both clinical practice and research

Glucosylceramide synthase deficiency in the heart compromises β1-adrenergic receptor trafficking

Aims: Cardiac injury and remodelling are associated with the rearrangement of cardiac lipids. Glycosphingolipids are membrane lipids that are important for cellular structure and function, and cardiac dysfunction is a characteristic of rare monogenic diseases with defects in glycosphingolipid synthesis and turnover. However, it is not known how cardiac glycosphingolipids regulate cellular processes in the heart. The aim of this study is to determine the role of cardiac glycosphingolipids in heart function.Methods and results: Using human myocardial biopsies, we showed that the glycosphingolipids glucosylceramide and lactosylceramide are present at very low levels in non-ischaemic human heart with normal function and are elevated during remodelling. Similar results were observed in mouse models of cardiac remodelling. We also generated mice with cardiomyocyte-specific deficiency in Ugcg, the gene encoding glucosylceramide synthase (hUgcg-/- mice). In 9- to 10-week-old hUgcg-/- mice, contractile capacity in response to dobutamine stress was reduced. Older hUgcg-/- mice developed severe heart failure and left ventricular dilatation even under baseline conditions and died prematurely. Using RNA-seq and cell culture models, we showed defective endolysosomal retrograde trafficking and autophagy in Ugcg-deficient cardiomyocytes. We also showed that responsiveness to β-adrenergic stimulation was reduced in cardiomyocytes from hUgcg-/- mice and that Ugcg knockdown suppressed the internalization and trafficking of β1-adrenergic receptors.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that cardiac glycosphingolipids are required to maintain β-adrenergic signalling and contractile capacity in cardiomyocytes and to preserve normal heart function.</p

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Alla andra får mycket mer-Fem elevers erfarenheter av skolan i förhållande till Skolinspektionens tillsynsrapport från 2011

Syftet med den här undersökningen har varit att utgå från Skolinspektionens tillsynsrapport över Malmö kommun från 2011 och bredda den bilden genom att intervjua de som direkt berörs av skolan, nämligen eleverna. Skolinspektionens rapport har visat att resultat och måluppfyllelse sjunker i vissa delar av kommunen samtidigt som skillnader mellan skolor och olika områden inom kommunen ökar. Jag har intervjuat fem elever för den här undersökningen som alla går i samma klass i ett område som beskrivs som socio-ekonomiskt svagt och där skolresultaten försämrats. Syftet har vidare varit att öka förståelsen kring hur ett mindre antal elever upplever att det är gå på en mångkulturell skola och hur de upplever bemötandet från lärare. Min undersökning har visat att lärarnas bemötande gentemot elever ibland bygger på förutbestämda förväntningar som grundar sig på elevers tidigare resultat. Skolinspektionens tillsynsrapport redogör för att elevinflytande är ett område som ska prioriteras. Undersökningen har dock visat att de tillfrågade eleverna inte upplever det som att de har ett nämnvärt inflytande i skolan och att de upplever undervisningen som förhållandevis enformig. Trots detta efterfrågar eleverna inte nödvändigtvis mer inflytande

"Bara det svänger så"- Fem jazzmusikers relation till jazzen i 1960-talets Malmö

Syftet med den här uppsatsen har varit att undersöka hur förhållandena för jazzmusiker i 1960-talets Malmö såg ut samt hur musikerna själva identifierade sig med jazzen. Genom att intervjua fem personer som var aktiva musiker under den undersöka tidsperioden har jag kunnat ta del av dessas tankar och erfarenheter om ämnet. Jag har vidare studerat om det går att utläsa en klassidentitet inom jazzen i Malmö samt om det går att se en gemensam identitet som jazzmusiker, bland informanterna. Resultaten av min undersökning visar att jazzen inte bestod av en tydlig klassidentitet utan det har snarare visat sig att informanterna minns jazzen som en musik där social bakgrund inte spelade någon roll och klass var inte heller något som musikerna diskuterade med varandra om. Musikerna vittnar snarare om jazzen som en demokratisk och omfamnade folkrörelse där musiker möttes över generationer

Exposure to benzylpenicillin after different dosage regimens in growing pigs

BackgroundPenicillin is important for treatment of pigs, but data on its absorption and disposition in pigs are sparse. This is reflected by the variation in recommended dosages in the literature. Inadequate dosage may lead to treatment failure and selection of resistant bacteria. To optimize treatment regimens, plasma exposure to benzylpenicillin for two sustained release formulations of procaine benzylpenicillin for intramuscular administration was studied in growing pigs by means of tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). One formulation was an aqueous suspension, Ethacilin (R) vet (ETH), and the other an oily suspension, Ultrapen vet (UPA). Benzylpenicillin exposure after intravenous administration of potassium benzylpenicillin was also explored. Exposure profiles were first studied after single administrations of the approved dosages in healthy pigs and then after repeated administration of different dosages in pigs inoculated intranasally with an Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae serotype 2 strain.ResultsAfter intravenous administration of benzylpenicillin (n=6), maximum plasma concentration (C-max), 1860-9318 mu g/L, was observed after 15 min. At four h, plasma concentrations decreased to 15-76 mu g/L. After intramuscular administration of ETH (n=6) C-max, 1000-4270 mu g/L, was observed within one h (t(max)) in 5 pigs but at four h in one pig. C-max for UPA (n=6), 910-3220 mu g/L, was observed within one h in three pigs, but at four or 24 h in three pigs. For both ETH and UPA, the terminal phase was characterized by slow decline compared with intravenous administration. Repeated administration of different dosages of ETH and UPA in pigs inoculated with A. pleuropneumoniae (n=54) showed that the approved dose for UPA (30 mg/kg, qd) but not for ETH (20 mg/kg, qd) gave adequate plasma exposure for bacteria with a penicillin MIC of 500 mu g/L. However, more frequent dosing of ETH (bid) or increased dosage gave an adequate exposure.ConclusionsThe approved dosage of ETH provided insufficient plasma exposure for adequate therapy of infections caused by A. pleuropneumoniae or other bacteria with a penicillin MIC of 500 mu g/L. More frequent ETH dosing (bid) or an increased dosage would improve exposure. The approved dosage of UPA however provided adequate exposure