A modulation property of time-frequency derivatives of filtered phase and its application to aperiodicity and fo estimation

We introduce a simple and linear SNR (strictly speaking, periodic to random power ratio) estimator (0dB to 80dB without additional calibration/linearization) for providing reliable descriptions of aperiodicity in speech corpus. The main idea of this method is to estimate the background random noise level without directly extracting the background noise. The proposed method is applicable to a wide variety of time windowing functions with very low sidelobe levels. The estimate combines the frequency derivative and the time-frequency derivative of the mapping from filter center frequency to the output instantaneous frequency. This procedure can replace the periodicity detection and aperiodicity estimation subsystems of recently introduced open source vocoder, YANG vocoder. Source code of MATLAB implementation of this method will also be open sourced.Comment: 8 pages 9 figures, Submitted and accepted in Interspeech201

Air connectivity and foreign direct investments: economic effects of the introduction of new routes

Purpose The key research question for this study was whether the spatial network structure offered by the global airline system contributes to the development of Italian inward Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). We argue that the introduction of a new route, by reducing firm's transport costs and facilitating tacit and complex knowledge flow, should increase the likelihood of FDI exchange between newly connected regions. Methods We employed a comparison group design considering both small and medium enterprises and large companies at the municipality level. Results The results showed that FDIs increased overall by 33.7% in the two years after opening of the new routes while FDIs in the control group decreased by 16.6%. Similar results were obtained using different measures of FDI (i.e. the number of generated employees) and by weighting the routes by their frequencies. Conclusions Given the substantial benefits that urban areas can obtain from attracting multinational firms, our results provide new evidence of the contribution of transport infrastructures to local development. From a policymaker perspective, regional policies aimed at attracting FDIs must contextually promote the development of transport infrastructure and in particular international airports. Investments to improve air transport capacity, strategies to attract both traditional and low-cost airlines, providing legal authorization or financing ground transport are all critical aspects for the success of such policies

Life and Treatment Goals of Patients with Advanced Cancer

poster abstractTo improve the care of patients with advanced cancer who may be near the end of life, there is a pressing need to better understand their life and treatment goals, and how these relate to psychological adjustment. Patients (N=63) with incurable advanced lung or gastrointestinal cancers completed self-report measures of hope, optimism, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Patients also participated in a semi-structured interview and were asked to list their current life and treatment goals. Then, they selected five “priority goals” from among both lists and ranked them in order of importance. Subsequently, priority goals were coded into categories such as: Life-Fulfillment (“To go to the beach”), and Life Prolongation, (“To live another 20 years”). The three most common categories were: 1) Life Fulfillment (49% of patients); 2) Social Connection (43%); and 3) Life-Prolongation (29%). Interestingly, a sizable portion of patients (22%) listed cure as a priority goal, with several (13%) indicating it was their most important goal. Counterintuitively, patients who had cure as a priority goal were neither more hopeful nor optimistic than those who did not have cure as a priority goal. Patients who listed cure as their most important goal reported significantly greater depressive symptoms, t(62) = 2.79, p = .007. In order to examine the robustness of this association a regression analysis was conducted predicting depressive symptoms. After controlling for patient age, gender, ECOG performance status, physician-rated prognosis, and patient-rated prognosis, having cure as the most important goal remained a significant predictor of greater depressive symptoms (β = .367, p = .017). These results suggest that patient life and treatment goals may have important implications for patients’ psychological adjustment. Specifically, holding on to cure as an important goal in the face of advanced disease may place patients at risk for greater psychological distress

Endothelial Stem and Progenitor Cells for Regenerative Medicine

Purpose of Review Vascular endothelial stem cell (VESC) and progenitor cell are emerging as local resident regulators of vascular endothelial repair and replacement in mammalian subjects. However, widely recognized and accepted standard measures of stem cell function have yet to be published and, thus, we summarize some recent evidence that VESCs demonstrate stem cell properties in the process of endothelial cell (EC) lineage emergence, repair, and regeneration. Recent Findings Some rare resident ECs have been identified that are quiescent and reside within blood vessels but are activated and proliferate in response to injury. Transcriptome analyses of these ECs at a single cell level are providing new insights into VESC identity, including tissue specific EC heterogeneity. Summary Blood vessels and circulating blood contain rare immature ECs that display stem cell potential. Continuous efforts to define their precise location, origin, surface marker, and molecular signatures would enhance current approaches for purification of cells that would enable us to build new vessels for regenerative medicine

Attainments of the Bayesian information bounds for the escort distribution (Bayesian approaches and statistical inference)

We show some necessary and sufficient conditions for the attainment of the Borovkov-Sakhanenko and van Trees Bayesian information bounds when the underlying distribution is the escort distribution of an exponential family and the conjugate or the Jeffreys prior. In this paper we consider the case where the order of the escort distribution is a constant and the parameter of exponential family is a random variable. Some examples attaining the bounds are also given