Clumpy Dust Tori in Active Galactic Nuclei

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are amongst the most luminous objects in the universe. The source of their activity is accretion onto a supermassive black hole in the center of the galactic nucleus. The various phenomena observed in AGN are explained in a common unification scheme. The cornerstone of this unification scheme of AGN is the presence of an optically and geometrically thick dust torus which surrounds the central accretion disk and broad-line region (BLR). This parsec-scaled torus is responsible for the apparent difference between type 1 and type 2 AGN. If the line-of-sight intersects with the torus, the accretion disk and BLR are not visible and the AGN is classified as a type 2 object. On the other hand, if the torus is seen nearly face-on, the accretion disk and BLR are directly exposed to the observer, so that the galaxy appears as a type 1 AGN. Near- (NIR) and mid-infrared (MIR) interferometry has resolved, for the first time, the dust torus around the nearby prototypical Seyfert 2 AGN NGC 1068. These observations provided an insight into the structure of the torus: Apparently, the dust is not smoothly distributed in the torus but arranged in clumps -- contrary to what has been commonly used in models. We developed a new radiative transfer model of clumpy dust tori which is a key tool to interpret NIR and MIR observations of AGN. The model accounts for the 3-dimensional arrangement of dust clouds. Model SEDs and images can be obtained for a number of different physical parameters (e.g., radial and vertical dust density distribution, cloud radii, optical depths, etc.). It was shown that the model SEDs are in agreement with observed spectral properties. Moreover, we applied our new model to the data of NGC 1068. It was possible, for the first time, to simultaneously reproduce NIR and MIR interferometry and photometry of the nucleus of NGC 1068. In particular, the model follows the trend of the deeper 9.7 micron silicate absorption features in the correlated fluxes than in the total fluxes, as observed with VLTI/MIDI in the 8-13 micron band. Comparison with the NGC 1068 multi-wavelength SED from Radio to the infrared shows that most of the unresolved MIR flux comes from thermal dust emission inside the torus, while in the NIR a possible synchrotron source or the accretion disk might be seen through "holes" in the clumpy torus. To get a better idea how much the accretion disk contributes to the NIR emission of AGN, we studied NIR colors of a sample of type 1 AGN which were observed in J-, H-, and K-band with HST/NICMOS. By comparing the observed colors with those expected from torus models, we found out that the accretion disk contributes typically We studied the feedback of AGN radiation on the dust torus. It was found out that dust which is smoothly distributed cannot withstand the radiation pressure from the AGN. On the other hand, self-gravitating clouds in clumpy tori can efficiently compensate the AGN radiation pressure. A physically-motivated clumpy torus model was used to study the impact of the AGN radiation on obscuration properties of the torus. We showed that below an AGN luminosity of ~10^42 erg/s, the associated low accretion rates can no longer support an obscuring torus. In the high-luminosity regime, large clouds become unbound so that the torus is dominated by smaller clouds. As a result, the covering factor and apparent scale height decrease with luminosity, so that the fraction of type 1 AGN should become larger at higher luminosities (and high radiative efficiencies). This picture offers a physical explanation for the long-standing "receding torus" phenomenon. One of the major astronomical discoveries within the last year was the identification of type 2 counterparts of QSOs. These objects were the "missing link" in the unification scheme. We studied restframe optical-to-MIR SEDs of a sample of 21 obscured QSOs with our clumpy torus model. It was found out that the observed SEDs favor models with compact geometries and, apparently, no flaring. In some objects, the combination of blue NIR color and very deep silicate absorption is in contradiction to expectations from torus models. We propose that in such cases, the torus is actually seen face-on, and a detached cold absorber in the host galaxy (e.g., a dust lane or cloud) is responsible for the deep silicate absorption feature. According to this picture, some of the obscured QSOs are mimicking type 2 AGN although their torus orientation might be similar to a type 1 AGN

A Stutter Seldom Comes Alone -- Cross-Corpus Stuttering Detection as a Multi-label Problem

Most stuttering detection and classification research has viewed stuttering as a multi-class classification problem or a binary detection task for each dysfluency type; however, this does not match the nature of stuttering, in which one dysfluency seldom comes alone but rather co-occurs with others. This paper explores multi-language and cross-corpus end-to-end stuttering detection as a multi-label problem using a modified wav2vec 2.0 system with an attention-based classification head and multi-task learning. We evaluate the method using combinations of three datasets containing English and German stuttered speech, one containing speech modified by fluency shaping. The experimental results and an error analysis show that multi-label stuttering detection systems trained on cross-corpus and multi-language data achieve competitive results but performance on samples with multiple labels stays below over-all detection results.Comment: Accepted for presentation at Interspeech 2023. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2210.1598

Classifying Dementia in the Presence of Depression: A Cross-Corpus Study

Automated dementia screening enables early detection and intervention, reducing costs to healthcare systems and increasing quality of life for those affected. Depression has shared symptoms with dementia, adding complexity to diagnoses. The research focus so far has been on binary classification of dementia (DEM) and healthy controls (HC) using speech from picture description tests from a single dataset. In this work, we apply established baseline systems to discriminate cognitive impairment in speech from the semantic Verbal Fluency Test and the Boston Naming Test using text, audio and emotion embeddings in a 3-class classification problem (HC vs. MCI vs. DEM). We perform cross-corpus and mixed-corpus experiments on two independently recorded German datasets to investigate generalization to larger populations and different recording conditions. In a detailed error analysis, we look at depression as a secondary diagnosis to understand what our classifiers actually learn.Comment: Accepted at INTERSPEECH 202

Treatment of Early Breast Cancer Patients: Evidence, Controversies, Consensus: Focusing on Systemic Therapy - German Experts' Opinions for the 16th International St. Gallen Consensus Conference (Vienna 2019)

A German working group of leading breast cancer experts have discussed the votes at the International St. Gallen Consensus Conference in Vienna for the treatment of primary breast cancer with regard to the German AGO (Ar-beitsgemeinschaft Gynakologische Onkologie) recommendations for clinical practice in Germany. Three of the German breast cancer experts were also members of this year's St. Gallen panel. Comparing the St. Gallen recommendations with the annually updated treatment recommendations of the Gynecological Oncology Working Group (AGO Mamma 2019) and the German S3 Guideline is useful, because the recommendations of the St. Gallen panel are based on expert opinions of different countries and disciplines. The focus of this article is on systemic therapy. The motto of this year's 16th St. Gallen Consensus Conference was Estimating the magnitude of clinical benefit. The rationale behind this motto is that, for every treatment decision, a benefit-risk assessment must be taken into consideration for each patient