Three New Corpora at the Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals - and a First Step Towards Distributed Web-Based Recording

The Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals has released three new speech corpora for both industrial and academic use: a) Hempels Sofa contains recordings of up to 60 seconds of non-scripted telephone speech, b) ZipTel is a corpus with telephone speech covering postal addresses and telephone numbers from a real world application, and c) RVG-J, an extension of the original Regional Variants of German corpus with juvenile speakers. All three corpora were transcribed orthographically according to the SpeechDat annotation guidelines using the WWWTranscribe annotation software. Recently, BAS has begun to investigate performing large-scale audio recordings via the web, and RVG-J has become the testbed for this type of recording

Multi-Tier Annotations in the Verbmobil Corpus

In very large and diverse scientific projects where as different groups as linguists and engineers with different intentions work on the same signal data or its orthographic transcript and annotate new valuable information, it will not be easy to build a homogeneous corpus. We will describe how this can be achieved, considering the fact that some of these annotations have not been updated properly, or are based on erroneous or deliberately changed versions of the basis transcription. We used an algorithm similar to dynamic programming to detect differences between the transcription on which the annotation depends and the reference transcription for the whole corpus. These differences are automatically mapped on a set of repair operations for the transcriptions such as splitting compound words and merging neighbouring words. On the basis of these operations the correction process in the annotation is carried out. It always depends on the type of the annotation as well as on the position and the nature of the difference, whether a correction can be carried out automatically or has to be fixed manually. Finally we present a investigation in which we exploit the multi-tier annotations of the Verbmobil corpus to find out how breathing is correlated with prosodic-syntactic boundaries and dialog acts. 1

A Cross-Layer Design Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks with Environmental Monitoring Applications

In the past few years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are becoming more and more attractive because they can provide services that are not possible or not feasible before. In this paper, we address the design issues of an important type of WSNs, i.e., WSNs that enable environmental monitoring applications. We first provide an overview and analysis for our ongoing research project about a WSN for coastal-area acoustic monitoring. Based on the analysis, we then propose a cross-layer design framework for future WSNs that provide environmental monitoring services. The focus of the framework is the network layer design and the key idea of the framework is to fully understand and exploit both the physical layer characteristics and the requirements of upper layer applications and services. Particularly, for the physical layer characteristics, our framework 1) can enable advanced communication technologies such as cooperative communication and network coding; 2) can utilize the transmission characteristics for identifying/authenticating a sender; and 3) can exploit the communication pattern as a mean of sensing. For the requirements of applications and services, our framework 1) is service-oriented; 2) can enable distributed applications; 3) can utilize the fact that many applications do not have strict delay constraints. To illustrate the advantages of the framework, we also conduct a case study that may be a typical scenario in the near future. We believe that our study in this work can provide a guideline for future WSN design

Lifestyle domains as determinants of wheeze prevalence in urban and rural schoolchildren in Ecuador: cross sectional analysis.

BACKGROUND: The acquisition of a modern lifestyle may explain variations in asthma prevalence between urban and rural areas in developing countries. However, the effects of lifestyle on asthma have been investigated as individual factors with little consideration given to the effects of lifestyle as a set of attributes. The aim of the present study was to identify modern lifestyle domains and assess how these domains might explain wheeze prevalence in urban and rural areas. METHODS: We analysed data from cross-sectional studies of urban and rural schoolchildren in Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador. Variables were grouped as indicators of socioeconomic factors, sedentarism, agricultural activities and household characteristics to represent the main lifestyle features of the study population. We used multiple correspondence analyses to identify common lifestyle domains and cluster analysis to allocate children to each domain. We evaluated associations between domains and recent wheeze by logistic regression. RESULTS: We identified 2-3 lifestyle domains for each variable group. Although wheeze prevalence was similar in urban (9.4%) and rural (10.3%) schoolchildren, lifestyle domains presented clear associations with wheeze prevalence. Domains relating to home infrastructure (termed transitional, rudimentary, and basic urban) had the strongest overall effect on wheeze prevalence in both urban (rudimentary vs. basic urban, OR = 2.38, 95% CI 1.12-5.05, p = 0.024) and rural areas (transitional vs. basic urban, OR = 2.02, 95% CI 1.1-3.73, p = 0.024; rudimentary vs. basic urban, OR = 1.88, 95% CI 1.02-3.47, p = 0.043). A high level of sedentarism was associated with wheeze in the rural areas only (OR = 1.64, 95% CI 1.23-2.18, p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: We identified lifestyle domains associated with wheeze prevalence, particularly living in substandard housing and a high level of sedentarism. Such factors could be modified through programmes of improved housing and education. The use of lifestyle domains provides an alternative methodology for the evaluation of variations in wheeze prevalence in populations with different levels of development

Effects of bovine spermatozoa preparation on embryonic development in vitro

The aim of our research was to examine the ability of density gradient preparation BoviPure(® )and swim up method on bull sperm separation and in vitro embryo production (IVP) systems. Frozen/thawed semen from six Simmental bulls was pooled and treated using both methods. The sperm motility, concentration, membrane activity, membrane integrity and acrosomal status were evaluated and compared before and after sperm processing using BoviPure(® )and swim up methods. We also evaluated and compared cleavage rates, embryo yield and quality between the methods. There were significant differences (P < 0.05) between the sperm characteristics before and after BoviPure(®), but not after swim up method. However, there were significant differences for sperm results among those two mentioned methods. A total of 641 oocytes were matured and fertilized in vitro and cultured in SOFaaBSA. The percentage of cleavage (Day 2) and the percentage of hatched embryos (Day 9) were similar for both methods. However, embryo production rate (Day 7) was significantly higher using BoviPure(® )method (P < 0.05). Also, total cell number and embryo differential staining (inner cell mass and trophectoderm cells) of Day 7 morulas and blastocysts showed that BoviPure(® )treated sperm displayed higher quality embryos compared to swim up method (P < 0.05). Our results indicate that BoviPure(® )method has an enhanced capacity in sperm selection for in vitro embryo production when compared with swim up method. So, we concluded that BoviPure(® )could be considered as a better alternative to swim up method for separating bull spermatozoa from frozen/thawed semen for IVP of bovine embryos

Compulsive buying behavior: Re‐evaluating its dimensions and screening

Despite the significant research in the consumer behavior literature on compulsive buying behavior (CBB), there is still no general agreement about the dimensionality or diagnostic screening of the disorder. Previous studies have identified two principal dimensions: compulsivity and impulsivity, although more recent strands of theory characterize CBB with reference to loss of self‐control and behavioral addiction. This study challenges the impulsive–compulsive paradigm by validating a new model with compulsive and self‐control impaired spending dimensions. The model more closely reflects the disorder's ego‐dystonic character, routed in an anxiety‐based reactive mechanism with uncontrollable buying and an inability to rationalize the behavior and its consequences. The study also develops and cross‐validates a new seven‐item CBB screening tool, using a comparative analysis with three existing screeners and an independent sample. The findings indicate that compulsive buying results from both compulsive and self‐control impaired impulsive elements, which are characteristic of behavioural addiction

Free abdominal fluid without obvious solid organ injury upon CT imaging: an actual problem or simply over-diagnosing?

Whereas a non-operative approach for hemodynamically stable patients with free intraabdominal fluid in the presence of solid organ injury is generally accepted, the presence of free fluid in the abdomen without evidence of solid organ injury not only presents a challenge for the treating emergency physician but also for the surgeon in charge. Despite recent advances in imaging modalities, with multi-detector computed tomography (CT) (with or without contrast agent) usually the imaging method of choice, diagnosis and interpretation of the results remains difficult. While some studies conclude that CT is highly accurate and relatively specific at diagnosing mesenteric and hollow viscus injury, others studies deem CT to be unreliable. These differences may in part be due to the experience and the interpretation of the radiologist and/or the treating physician or surgeon

25th annual computational neuroscience meeting: CNS-2016

The same neuron may play different functional roles in the neural circuits to which it belongs. For example, neurons in the Tritonia pedal ganglia may participate in variable phases of the swim motor rhythms [1]. While such neuronal functional variability is likely to play a major role the delivery of the functionality of neural systems, it is difficult to study it in most nervous systems. We work on the pyloric rhythm network of the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) [2]. Typically network models of the STG treat neurons of the same functional type as a single model neuron (e.g. PD neurons), assuming the same conductance parameters for these neurons and implying their synchronous firing [3, 4]. However, simultaneous recording of PD neurons shows differences between the timings of spikes of these neurons. This may indicate functional variability of these neurons. Here we modelled separately the two PD neurons of the STG in a multi-neuron model of the pyloric network. Our neuron models comply with known correlations between conductance parameters of ionic currents. Our results reproduce the experimental finding of increasing spike time distance between spikes originating from the two model PD neurons during their synchronised burst phase. The PD neuron with the larger calcium conductance generates its spikes before the other PD neuron. Larger potassium conductance values in the follower neuron imply longer delays between spikes, see Fig. 17.Neuromodulators change the conductance parameters of neurons and maintain the ratios of these parameters [5]. Our results show that such changes may shift the individual contribution of two PD neurons to the PD-phase of the pyloric rhythm altering their functionality within this rhythm. Our work paves the way towards an accessible experimental and computational framework for the analysis of the mechanisms and impact of functional variability of neurons within the neural circuits to which they belong