Verbatim vs. adapted subtitling and beyond. An empirical study with deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing children

This study tests two different existing approaches to Subtitling for the Deaf and the Hard-of-Hearing (SDHH) on deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing primary-school children in Italy: verbatim subtitles aimed at accuracy (SKY style); and adapted subtitles aimed at usability (RAI style). To this aim, three short, self-contained cartoons were intralingually subtitled (Italian into Italian). The videos were then shown to 35 hearing children and 5 DHH children. The subjects were administered three questionnaires: one collected background data, one measured perception and one measured reception. The data showed that verbatim subtitles not only were the preferred approach by each group of children, but they also facilitated understanding more than adapted subtitles. We also found that SDHH for children did not interfere with comprehension of images in the video, and that adapted subtitles seemed to favour understanding of images more than verbatim ones. Furthermore, analysis of the data collected provided food for thought regarding speaker identification, legibility, readability, text comprehension, and ways to express diegetic sounds, along with a new theoretical framework for the production of SDHH

Performance evaluation of a piezoelectric energy harvester based on flag-flutter

In the last few decades, piezoelectric (PZT) materials have played a vital role in the aerospace industry because of their energy harvesting capability. PZT energy harvesters (PEH) absorb the energy from an operational environment and can transform it into useful energy to drive nano/micro-electronic components. In this research work, a PEH based on the flag-flutter mechanism is presented. This mechanism is based on fluid-structure interaction (FSI). The flag is subjected to the axial airflow in the subsonic wind tunnel. The performance evaluation of the harvester and aeroelastic analysis is investigated numerically and experimentally. A novel solution is presented to extract energy from Limit Cycle Oscillations (LCOs) phenomenon by means of PZT transduction. The PZT patch absorbs the flow-induced structural vibrations and transforms it into electrical energy. Furthermore, the optimal resistance and length of the flag is predicted to maximize the energy harvesting. Different configurations of flag i.e., with Aluminium (Al) patch and PZT patch for flutter mode vibration mode are studied numerically and experimentally. The bifurcation diagram is constructed for the experimental campaign for the flutter instability of a cantilevered flag in subsonic wind-tunnel. Moreover, the flutter boundary conditions are analysed for reduced critical velocity and frequency. The designed PZT energy harvester via flag-flutter mechanism is suitable for energy harvesting in aerospace engineering applications to drive wireless sensors. The maximum output power that can be generated from the designed harvester is 6.72 mW and the optimal resistance is predicted to be 0.33 MΩ

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Toughening of Nb2O5 doped zirconia biomaterial fabricated by microwave sintering technology

Pòster presentat a Euromat 2017, Thessaloniki (Greece), 17-22 september 2017The aim of this research is to investigate the characteristics and mechanical properties of Nb2O5 doped zirconia. Samples of partially stabilized-zirconia (3Y-TZP) with Nb2O5 in amounts of 0.15-1.5 mol.% were prepared by sol–gel technique and sintered by non-conventional microwave process

A predictive decision support system for coronavirus disease 2019 response management and medical logistic planning

Objective: Coronavirus disease 2019 demonstrated the inconsistencies in adequately responding to biological threats on a global scale due to a lack of powerful tools for assessing various factors in the formation of the epidemic situation and its forecasting. Decision support systems have a role in overcoming the challenges in health monitoring systems in light of current or future epidemic outbreaks. This paper focuses on some applied examples of logistic planning, a key service of the Earth Cognitive System for Coronavirus Disease 2019 project, here presented, evidencing the added value of artificial intelligence algorithms towards predictive hypotheses in tackling health emergencies. Methods: Earth Cognitive System for Coronavirus Disease 2019 is a decision support system designed to support healthcare institutions in monitoring, management and forecasting activities through artificial intelligence, social media analytics, geo- spatial analysis and satellite imaging. The monitoring, management and prediction of medical equipment logistic needs rely on machine learning to predict the regional risk classification colour codes, the emergency rooms attendances, and the fore- cast of regional medical supplies, synergically enhancing geospatial and temporal dimensions. Results: The overall performance of the regional risk colour code classifier yielded a high value of the macro-average F1-score (0.82) and an accuracy of 85%. The prediction of the emergency rooms attendances for the Lazio region yielded a very low root mean square error (<11 patients) and a high positive correlation with the actual values for the major hos- pitals of the Lazio region which admit about 90% of the region’s patients. The prediction of the medicinal purchases for the regions of Lazio and Piemonte has yielded a low root mean squared percentage error of 16%. Conclusions: Accurate forecasting of the evolution of new cases and drug utilisation enables the resulting excess demand throughout the supply chain to be managed more effectively. Forecasting during a pandemic becomes essential for effective government decision-making, managing supply chain resources, and for informing tough policy decisions

Measurement off f(s)/f(u) Variation with Proton-Proton Collision Energy and B-Meson Kinematics

The ratio of the B0s and B+ fragmentation fractions fs and fu is studied with B0s→J/ψϕ and B+→J/ψK+ decays using data collected by the LHCb experiment in proton-proton collisions at 7, 8, and 13 TeV center-of-mass energies. The analysis is performed in bins of B-meson momentum, longitudinal momentum, transverse momentum, pseudorapidity, and rapidity. The fragmentation-fraction ratio fs/fu is observed to depend on the B-meson transverse momentum with a significance of 6.0σ. This dependency is driven by the 13 TeV sample (8.7σ), while the results for the other collision energies are not significant when considered separately. Furthermore, the results show a 4.8σ evidence for an increase of fs/fu as a function of collision energy

Microbial Diversity in the Midguts of Field and Lab-Reared Populations of the European Corn Borer Ostrinia nubilalis

Background: Insects are associated with microorganisms that contribute to the digestion and processing of nutrients. The European Corn Borer (ECB) is a moth present world-wide, causing severe economical damage as a pest on corn and other crops. In the present work, we give a detailed view of the complexity of the microorganisms forming the ECB midgut microbiota with the objective of comparing the biodiversity of the midgut-associated microbiota and explore their potential as a source of genes and enzymes with biotechnological applications. Methodological/Principal Findings: A high-throughput sequencing approach has been used to identify bacterial species, genes and metabolic pathways, particularly those involved in plant-matter degradation, in two different ECB populations (field-collected vs. lab-reared population with artificial diet). Analysis of the resulting sequences revealed the massive presence of Staphylococcus warneri and Weissella paramesenteroides in the lab-reared sample. This enabled us to reconstruct both genomes almost completely. Despite the apparently low diversity, 208 different genera were detected in the sample, although most of them at very low frequency. By contrast, the natural population exhibited an even higher taxonomic diversity along with a wider array of cellulolytic enzyme families. However, in spite of the differences in relative abundance of major taxonomic groups, not only did both metagenomes share a similar functional profile but also a similar distribution of non-redundant genes in different functional categories. Conclusions/Significance: Our results reveal a highly diverse pool of bacterial species in both O. nubilalis populations, with major differences: The lab-reared sample is rich in gram-positive species (two of which have almost fully sequenced genomes) while the field sample harbors mainly gram-negative species and has a larger set of cellulolytic enzymes. We have found a clear relationship between the diet and the midgut microbiota, which reveals the selection pressure of food on the community of intestinal bacteria. © 2011 Belda et al.The research was funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, under grant agreement CIT-010000-2008-5 and by a MICINN (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion) TIN2009-12359 ArtBioCom project. Arnau Montagud acknowledges Generalitat Valenciana grant BFPI/2007/283. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Belda Cuesta, EA.; Pedrola, L.; Peretó Magraner, J.; Martinez Blanch, JF.; Montagud Aquino, A.; Navarro-Peris, E.; Urchueguía Schölzel, JF.... (2011). Microbial Diversity in the Midguts of Field and Lab-Reared Populations of the European Corn Borer Ostrinia nubilalis. PLoS ONE. 6(6):21751-21751. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021751S21751217516

Dynamical Left-Right Symmetry Breaking

We study a left--right symmetric model which contains only elementary gauge boson and fermion fields and no scalars. The phenomenologically required symmetry breaking emerges dynamically leading to a composite Higgs sector with a renormalizable effective Lagrangian. We discuss the pattern of symmetry breaking and phenomenological consequences of this scenario. It is shown that a viable top quark mass can be achieved for the ratio of the VEVs of the bi--doublet $\tan\beta\equiv\kappa/\kappa'$ =~ 1.3--4. For a theoretically plausible choice of the parameters the right--handed scale can be as low as $\sim 20 TeV$; in this case one expects several intermediate and low--scale scalars in addition to the \SM Higgs boson. These may lead to observable lepton flavour violation effects including $\mu\to e\gamma$ decay with the rate close to its present experimental upper bound.Comment: 51 pages, LaTeX and uuencoded, packed Postscript figures. The complete paper, including figures, is also available via WWW at http://www.cip.physik.tu-muenchen.de/tumphy/d/T30d/PAPERS/ TUM-HEP-222-95.ps.g

The CanOE Strategy: Integrating Genomic and Metabolic Contexts across Multiple Prokaryote Genomes to Find Candidate Genes for Orphan Enzymes

Of all biochemically characterized metabolic reactions formalized by the IUBMB, over one out of four have yet to be associated with a nucleic or protein sequence, i.e. are sequence-orphan enzymatic activities. Few bioinformatics annotation tools are able to propose candidate genes for such activities by exploiting context-dependent rather than sequence-dependent data, and none are readily accessible and propose result integration across multiple genomes. Here, we present CanOE (Candidate genes for Orphan Enzymes), a four-step bioinformatics strategy that proposes ranked candidate genes for sequence-orphan enzymatic activities (or orphan enzymes for short). The first step locates “genomic metabolons”, i.e. groups of co-localized genes coding proteins catalyzing reactions linked by shared metabolites, in one genome at a time. These metabolons can be particularly helpful for aiding bioanalysts to visualize relevant metabolic data. In the second step, they are used to generate candidate associations between un-annotated genes and gene-less reactions. The third step integrates these gene-reaction associations over several genomes using gene families, and summarizes the strength of family-reaction associations by several scores. In the final step, these scores are used to rank members of gene families which are proposed for metabolic reactions. These associations are of particular interest when the metabolic reaction is a sequence-orphan enzymatic activity. Our strategy found over 60,000 genomic metabolons in more than 1,000 prokaryote organisms from the MicroScope platform, generating candidate genes for many metabolic reactions, of which more than 70 distinct orphan reactions. A computational validation of the approach is discussed. Finally, we present a case study on the anaerobic allantoin degradation pathway in Escherichia coli K-12