The temporal dimension of copresence in medical practice: the case of telestroke

This paper examines how co-presence is enacted in technology-mediated medical practices, particularly under time pressure. Extant literature highlights time (e.g. immediacy and duration of interactions) as a critical condition for copresence, but there has been little attention to the variation of copresence over time. In this paper, we investigate this variation through an ethnographic study in three emergency departments that are linked via a telemedicine system called Telestroke, which is used to diagnose and treat stroke patients at a distance. We draw on the sensemaking literature to uncover how copresence is enacted across different phases of technology-mediated medical practice. Our findings reveal four mechanisms that shape the variation of copresence across time, namely extracting cues, retrospection, perspective-taking, and selective attention.

Streaming Voice Conversion Via Intermediate Bottleneck Features And Non-streaming Teacher Guidance

Streaming voice conversion (VC) is the task of converting the voice of one person to another in real-time. Previous streaming VC methods use phonetic posteriorgrams (PPGs) extracted from automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems to represent speaker-independent information. However, PPGs lack the prosody and vocalization information of the source speaker, and streaming PPGs contain undesired leaked timbre of the source speaker. In this paper, we propose to use intermediate bottleneck features (IBFs) to replace PPGs. VC systems trained with IBFs retain more prosody and vocalization information of the source speaker. Furthermore, we propose a non-streaming teacher guidance (TG) framework that addresses the timbre leakage problem. Experiments show that our proposed IBFs and the TG framework achieve a state-of-the-art streaming VC naturalness of 3.85, a content consistency of 3.77, and a timbre similarity of 3.77 under a future receptive field of 160 ms which significantly outperform previous streaming VC systems.Comment: The paper has been submitted to ICASSP202

Radiality of definable sets

In this article we use techniques developed by Hrushovski-Loeser to study certain metric properties of the Berkovich analytification of a finite morphism of smooth connected projective curves. In recent work, M. Temkin proved a radiality statement for the topological ramification locus associated to such finite morphisms. We generalize this result in two directions. We prove a radiality statement for a more general class of sets which we call definable sets. In another direction, we show that the result of Temkin can be obtained in families

Naturally Acquired Human Plasmodium knowlesi Infection, Singapore

Naturally Acquired Human Plasmodium knowlesi Infection, Singapor

The LAMOST Survey of Background Quasars in the Vicinity of the Andromeda and Triangulum Galaxies -- II. Results from the Commissioning Observations and the Pilot Surveys

We present new quasars discovered in the vicinity of the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies with the LAMOST during the 2010 and 2011 observational seasons. Quasar candidates are selected based on the available SDSS, KPNO 4 m telescope, XSTPS optical, and WISE near infrared photometric data. We present 509 new quasars discovered in a stripe of ~135 sq. deg from M31 to M33 along the Giant Stellar Stream in the 2011 pilot survey datasets, and also 17 new quasars discovered in an area of ~100 sq. deg that covers the central region and the southeastern halo of M31 in the 2010 commissioning datasets. These 526 new quasars have i magnitudes ranging from 15.5 to 20.0, redshifts from 0.1 to 3.2. They represent a significant increase of the number of identified quasars in the vicinity of M31 and M33. There are now 26, 62 and 139 known quasars in this region of the sky with i magnitudes brighter than 17.0, 17.5 and 18.0 respectively, of which 5, 20 and 75 are newly-discovered. These bright quasars provide an invaluable collection with which to probe the kinematics and chemistry of the ISM/IGM in the Local Group of galaxies. A total of 93 quasars are now known with locations within 2.5 deg of M31, of which 73 are newly discovered. Tens of quasars are now known to be located behind the Giant Stellar Stream, and hundreds behind the extended halo and its associated substructures of M31. The much enlarged sample of known quasars in the vicinity of M31 and M33 can potentially be utilized to construct a perfect astrometric reference frame to measure the minute PMs of M31 and M33, along with the PMs of substructures associated with the Local Group of galaxies. Those PMs are some of the most fundamental properties of the Local Group.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, AJ accepte

High-resolution spatial and genomic characterization of coral-associated microbial aggregates in the coral Stylophora pistillata

Bacteria commonly form aggregates in a range of coral species [termed coral-associated microbial aggregates (CAMAs)], although these structures remain poorly characterized despite extensive efforts studying the coral microbiome. Here, we comprehensively characterize CAMAs associated with Stylophora pistillata and quantify their cell abundance. Our analysis reveals that multiple Endozoicomonas phylotypes coexist inside a single CAMA. Nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry imaging revealed that the Endozoicomonas cells were enriched with phosphorus, with the elemental compositions of CAMAs different from coral tissues and endosymbiotic Symbiodiniaceae, highlighting a role in sequestering and cycling phosphate between coral holobiont partners. Consensus metagenome--assembled genomes of the two dominant Endozoicomonas phylotypes confirmed their metabolic potential for polyphosphate accumulation along with genomic signatures including type VI secretion systems allowing host association. Our findings provide unprecedented insights into Endozoicomonas-dominated CAMAs and the first direct physiological and genomic linked evidence of their biological role in the coral holobiont

Whole-genome sequencing of native sheep provides insights into rapid adaptations to extreme environments

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