The relationship of word error rate to document ranking

This paper describes two experiments that examine the relationship of Word Error Rate (WER) of retrieved spoken documents returned by a spoken document retrieval system. Previous work has demonstrated that recognition errors do not significantly affect retrieval effectiveness but whether they will adversely affect relevance judgement remains unclear. A user-based experiment measuring ability to judge relevance from the recognised text presented in a retrieved result list was conducted. The results indicated that users were capable of judging relevance accurately despite transcription errors. This lead an examination of the relationship of WER in retrieved audio documents to their rank position when retrieved for a particular query. Here it was shown that WER was somewhat lower for top ranked documents than it was for documents retrieved further down the ranking, thereby indicating a possible explanation for the success of the user experiment

Materials, Mechanics, and Patterning Techniques for Elastomer-Based Stretchable Conductors

Stretchable electronics represent a new generation of electronics that utilize soft, deformable elastomers as the substrate or matrix instead of the traditional rigid printed circuit boards. As the most essential component of stretchable electronics, the conductors should meet the requirements for both high conductivity and the capability to maintain conductive under large deformations such as bending, twisting, stretching, and compressing. This review summarizes recent progresses in various aspects of this fascinating and challenging area, including materials for supporting elastomers and electrical conductors, unique designs and stretching mechanics, and the subtractive and additive patterning techniques. The applications are discussed along with functional devices based on these conductors. Finally, the review is concluded with the current limitations, challenges, and future directions of stretchable conductors

Effect of allicin on THP-1, MT-2 and WISH cell apoptosis induced by vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) and the molecular mechanism involved

Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) has been reported to induce apoptosis and the onset of apoptosis may play an important role in virus-associated diseases. This study was conducted in order to investigate the protective effect of the herbal constituent allicin on VSV-induced apoptosis in the human monocyte line THP-1, human T lymphocytic leukemia cell line MT-2 and human amniotic cell line WISH and to determine the possible molecular mechanism involved. The THP-1, MT-2 and WISH cells were incubated with VSV in the absence or presence of different doses of allicin (10, 25 and 50 μg/ml). To study apoptosis, the cells were assessed by MTT and annexin V-propidium iodide double-staining flow cytometry. To investigate the molecular mechanism by which allicin regulates VSV-induced THP-1, MT-2 and WISH cell apoptosis, the expression of active cleavage products of caspases 3, 6, 7 and 9 and NF-κB was analyzed by western blotting. Our results indicated that allicin did not affect the adhesion and entry of VSV into THP-1, MT-2 or WISH cells. Using different concentrations of allicin, a dose-dependent protective effect on  cell apoptosis was observed. In addition, the VSV-induced expression of active cleavage products of caspases 3, 6, 7 and 9 and NF-κB in THP-1, MT-2 and WISH cells was also significantly reduced by allicin at the protein level. We concluded that allicin protects THP-1, MT-2 and WISH cells from VSV-induced apoptosis by inhibiting the activation of caspases 3, 6, 7 and 9 and NF-κB, thereby suggesting a potential protective effect for allicin against virus-associated diseases.Key words: Allicin, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), apoptosis, caspases, NF-κB

Towards the demonstration of photon-photon collision with compact lasers

We report a proposal to observe the two-photon Breit-Wheeler process in plasma driven by compact lasers. A high charge electron bunch can be generated from laser plasma wakefield acceleration when a tightly focused laser pulse transports in a sub-critical density plasma. The electron bunch scatters with the laser pulse coming from the opposite direction and results the emitting of high brilliance X-ray pulses. In a three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation with a laser pulse of $\sim$10 J, one could produce a X-ray pulse with photon number higher than $3\times10^{11}$ and brilliance above $1.6\times 10^{23}$ photons/s/mm$^2$/mrad$^2$/0.1$\%$BW at 1 MeV. The X-ray pulses collide in the plasma and create more than $1.1\times 10^5$ electron-positron pairs per shot. It is also found that the positrons can be accelerated transversely by a transverse electric field generated in the plasma, which enables the safe detection in the direction away from the laser pulses. This proposal which has solved key challenges in laser driven photon-photon collision could demonstrate the two-photon Breit-Wheeler process on a much more compact device in a single shot

Hall Effect in the coma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Magnetohydrodynamics simulations have been carried out in studying the solar wind and cometary plasma interactions for decades. Various plasma boundaries have been simulated and compared well with observations for comet 1P/Halley. The Rosetta mission, which studies comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, challenges our understanding of the solar wind and comet interactions. The Rosetta Plasma Consortium observed regions of very weak magnetic field outside the predicted diamagnetic cavity. In this paper, we simulate the inner coma with the Hall magnetohydrodynamics equations and show that the Hall effect is important in the inner coma environment. The magnetic field topology becomes complex and magnetic reconnection occurs on the dayside when the Hall effect is taken into account. The magnetic reconnection on the dayside can generate weak magnetic filed regions outside the global diamagnetic cavity, which may explain the Rosetta Plasma Consortium observations. We conclude that the substantial change in the inner coma environment is due to the fact that the ion inertial length (or gyro radius) is not much smaller than the size of the diamagnetic cavity.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figur

A coordinated approach for supply-chain tracking in the liquefied natural gas industry

With the increased size and complexity of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, supplychain management has become a challenging process due to involvements of the remote location of the project site and the multiple stakeholders. The transparency and traceability of the supply-chain are critical as any surpluses or shortages of materials will put the project at risk. Currently, limited research has been conducted on LNG projects considering the total supply-chain perspective, which refers to all stages of materials tracking in off-site manufacturing, transportation, and site logistics. The purpose of this research is to propose a framework of a coordinated approach for supply-chain tracking in the LNG industry. Two focus group studies were organized to develop the proposed framework: One for LNG construction supply chain process development, and another for alternative tracking technologies selection. In addition, two experiments, namely off-site fabrication tracking and site logistics tracking, were conducted in a field to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed framework. Technology limitations were also discussed in terms of field implementation