Djurić-Milovanović\u27s Double Minorities in Serbia: Distinctive Aspects of the Religion and Ethnicity of the Romanians in Vojvodina - Book Review

Dr. Aleksandra Djurić -Milovanović\u27s new book, Double Minorities in Serbia, refers to that population which is both Romanian and belonging to a religious minority within the borders of Serbia’s province of Vojvodina

Does Non-linearity Matter in Retail Credit Risk Modeling?

In this research we propose a new method for retail credit risk modeling. In order to capture possible non-linear relationships between credit risk and explanatory variables, we use a learning vector quantization (LVQ) neural network. The model was estimated on a dataset from Slovenian banking sector. The proposed model outperformed the benchmarking (LOGIT) models, which represent the standard approach in banks. The results also demonstrate that the LVQ model is better able to handle the properties of categorical variables.retail banking, credit risk, logistic regression, learning vector quantization

Client-side masking for voice queries

Many voice-based assistive technologies transmit the voice input received from users to a server for processing. The transmitted audio includes the speaker’s voice which can identify the person. Users of such technologies therefore face a tradeoff between convenient voice interfaces with reduced privacy or less convenient non-voice input with higher privacy. Techniques described herein mask a user’s voice by locally processing the voice input received by a device. The masked voice cannot personally identify the user while still enabling server-side processing that allows recognition of spoken phrases. Application of the proposed techniques provides the user with greater privacy without diminishing the user experience for voice input in terms of recognition, latency, and other operational characteristics

Health Diagnostics Using User Utterances

Respiratory illnesses can be hard to track and diagnose. Obtaining useful clinical data on these illnesses is difficult because it requires physical interaction, e.g., via nasal or sinus swab. It is known that respiratory illness can impact speech pathways. To this end, this disclosure describes techniques to use readily accessible software to obtain and classify potentially useful data. With user permission, utterances of the user, e.g., activation of a speech-activated device via a hotword, are analyzed to form speaker-ID models. These models are evaluated against additional utterances of the user in a sequential manner. The evaluation scores, along with the timestamps and details of the models, are aggregated to determine if the user has an interval of time where their speaker-ID models are unstable, inconsistent, or lacking self-similarity. This signal can be used as a proxy for detection or as a motivating factor for clinical investigation

Molecular and functional characterisation of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor chimaeras.

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are ligand-gated ion channels which exhibit considerable subunit diversity. They have been implicated in processes including synaptic transmission and modulation of neurotransmitter release. They also have a significant role in several pathological disorders as well as nicotine addiction, which makes nAChRs important targets for therapeutic drug discovery. One of the aims of this study was to investigate the influence of the intracellular domain of nAChR subunits upon receptor assembly, targeting and functional properties. A series of subunit chimaeras was constructed, each containing the intracellular loop region, located between transmembrane (TM) domains M3 and M4, from nAChR subunits al-alO or pl-p4 and from the 5-hydroxytryptamine type 3 receptor (5-HT3R) subunits 3 A and 3B. Evidence has been obtained which demonstrates that the large intracellular loop exerts a significant influence upon the levels of both cell-surface and intracellular assembled receptors. Comparisons of functional ion-channel properties revealed a significant influence upon both single-channel conductance and receptor desensitisation. Experiments conducted in polarised epithelial cells demonstrate that the nAChR loop can also influence receptor targeting. In a further study, the influence of the recently identified nAChR molecular chaperone, RIC-3 (resistance to mhibitors of cholinesterase), on receptor maturation was investigated. The influence of subunit domains upon the RIC-3's chaperone activity was investigated by co-expression with subunit chimaeras. Finally, a9/5-HT3A and alO/5-HT3A subunit chimeras were used to investigate the pharmacological properties of a9al0 nAChRs, a receptor subtype expressed in hair cells of the auditory system. Physiologically relevant concentrations of the anti-malarial compounds, quinine, quinidine and chloroquine were shown to act as competitive inhibitors, whereas the NMDA receptor antagonist, neramexane, blocked a9al0 nAChR mediated responses via a non-competitive mechanism

High-throughput screening of carbohydrate-degrading enzymes using novel insoluble chromogenic substrate assay kits

Carbohydrates active enzymes (CAZymes) have multiple roles in vivo and are widely used for industrial processing in the biofuel, textile, detergent, paper and food industries. A deeper understanding of CAZymes is important from both fundamental biology and industrial standpoints. Vast numbers of CAZymes exist in nature (especially in microorganisms) and hundreds of thousands have been cataloged and described in the carbohydrate active enzyme database (CAZy). However, the rate of discovery of putative enzymes has outstripped our ability to biochemically characterize their activities. One reason for this is that advances in genome and transcriptome sequencing, together with associated bioinformatics tools allow for rapid identification of candidate CAZymes, but technology for determining an enzyme's biochemical characteristics has advanced more slowly. To address this technology gap, a novel high-throughput assay kit based on insoluble chromogenic substrates is described here. Two distinct substrate types were produced: Chromogenic Polymer Hydrogel (CPH) substrates (made from purified polysaccharides and proteins) and Insoluble Chromogenic Biomass (ICB) substrates (made from complex biomass materials). Both CPH and ICB substrates are provided in a 96-well high-throughput assay system. The CPH substrates can be made in four different colors, enabling them to be mixed together and thus increasing assay throughput. The protocol describes a 96-well plate assay and illustrates how this assay can be used for screening the activities of enzymes, enzyme cocktails, and broths

Secure audio processing

Automatic speech recognizers (ASR) are now nearly ubiquitous, finding application in smart assistants, smartphones, smart speakers, and other devices. An attack on an ASR that triggers such a device into carrying out false instructions can lead to severe consequences. Typically, speech recognition is performed using machine learning models, e.g., neural networks, whose intermediate outputs are not always fully concealed. Exposing such intermediate outputs makes the crafting of malicious input audio easier. This disclosure describes techniques that thwart attacks on speech recognition systems by moving model inference processing to a secure computing enclave. The memory of the secure enclave and signals are inaccessible to the user and untrusted processes, and therefore, resistant to attacks

Imaging calcium microdomains within entire astrocyte territories and endfeet with GCaMPs expressed using adeno-associated viruses.

Intracellular Ca(2+) transients are considered a primary signal by which astrocytes interact with neurons and blood vessels. With existing commonly used methods, Ca(2+) has been studied only within astrocyte somata and thick branches, leaving the distal fine branchlets and endfeet that are most proximate to neuronal synapses and blood vessels largely unexplored. Here, using cytosolic and membrane-tethered forms of genetically encoded Ca(2+) indicators (GECIs; cyto-GCaMP3 and Lck-GCaMP3), we report well-characterized approaches that overcome these limitations. We used in vivo microinjections of adeno-associated viruses to express GECIs in astrocytes and studied Ca(2+) signals in acute hippocampal slices in vitro from adult mice (aged ∼P80) two weeks after infection. Our data reveal a sparkling panorama of unexpectedly numerous, frequent, equivalently scaled, and highly localized Ca(2+) microdomains within entire astrocyte territories in situ within acute hippocampal slices, consistent with the distribution of perisynaptic branchlets described using electron microscopy. Signals from endfeet were revealed with particular clarity. The tools and experimental approaches we describe in detail allow for the systematic study of Ca(2+) signals within entire astrocytes, including within fine perisynaptic branchlets and vessel-associated endfeet, permitting rigorous evaluation of how astrocytes contribute to brain function