Blending or juicing fruit makes it much easier for your body to access their carbs and calories, which is the opposite of what most people want from a smoothie.

The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is nearing record-breaking size again, scientists say.

A black hole's epic "burp" may help solve one of the deep mysteries of the galactic core.

Event Horizon Telescope will harness the power of 9 telescopes around the globe.

There's a supermassive black hole behind the 'baby boom' in the Phoenix galaxy cluster.

Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a monster black hole larger than thought possible.

The unusually close trifecta of black holes will likely merge into one giant entity over the next several hundred million years.

Scientists say there may be a second black hole lurking at the heart of our galaxy.

Researchers studying the mysterious objects say the look like blobs of gas but behave like stars.

To find life on Mars, we may have to send probes and people into this hole.

Onward Bag is landfill-skirting design at its most ingenious.

A new study from a team of ornithologists shows how urban living affects the health of American crows.

Buddy the dog has discovered he can play fetch all by himself.

Black holes generally power some of the brightest objects in the universe, so why is Sagittarius A* so calm?

When we throw away banana peels, we throw away a lot of health benefits.

Enormous holes in sea ice called polynyas are explained with help of robot floats, satellites and tech-equipped seals.

This map helps you find the antipodes (the other side of the world) of any place on Earth.

Chinese firms are producing and exporting popular electronics such as MP3 players that are high in quality and affordable.

Baby acne is commonly the mother's hormones passed to the baby in the placenta during pregnancy, but won't appear until 3 to 4 weeks afterwards. The hormones trigger the baby's oil producing glands, leading to the development of acne. It could also be the result of taking certain medications.

Cholesterol is one of the most familiar medical words today. Everyone knows “something” about it , but mostly cholesterol is associated in our mind with something “bad” and “unwanted” that happens to old and overweight people.The facts show that about 20 percent of the U.S. population has high blood cholesterol levels.

Accepting patients of all ages starting January 1, 2018

Moore, the author of The Passion Conversation: Understanding, Sparking, and Sustaining Word of Mouth Marketing, will speak during the first day of the conference, February 25.

The UK based drainage company London Drainage Facilities (LDF) sheds some light on the recent increase in sinkholes affecting the UK.

National Retailer Chooses Two Award-Winning Wines from the De La Rosa 613 Portfolio to be Sold at Select Florida Locations

National Retailer Chooses Two Award-Winning Wines from the De La Rosa 613 Portfolio to be Sold at Select Florida Locations

Global Cannabinoids has successfully isolated cannabinol from a full spectrum hemp extract through a proprietary process and is now distributing bulk and wholesale CBN oil that is completely THC free.

SMARTe aims to fill in gaps and provide seamless data delivery to Salesforce CRM with the ability to provide fresh, accurate and global contact data in real-time

A French PhD student designed a special disposable coffee cup lid named Flies Trap Lid, which can catch flies after using. His purpose is saving lives by cutting the spread of vector-borne diseases carried by flies.

This new GMP certified facility enables the company to manufacture and distribute the highest quality CBD products in a new, state of the art facility.

4 Eco Services, a local plumbing, heating and air conditioning service company, advises homeowners to take proactive steps to maintain their whole-house humidifier.

Founder Tamala Austin believes that "Health is Wealth" and has created a product that's now changing lives.

California's most whimsical and enchanting festival of wanderlust and fantasy attracts thousands to the historic downtown with its awe inspiring fire-shooting Wonderland recreations that turns the city into a fantasy world for children and adults.

California's most whimsical and enchanting festival of wanderlust and fantasy attracts thousands to the historic downtown with its awe inspiring fire-shooting Wonderland recreations that turns the city into a fantasy world for children and adults.

Chino Valley Ranchers organic, pasture raised eggs were recently featured in an Instagram post by Social Media Influencer @everything_but_the_bagel.

Customers can now purchase CBD wholesale THC Free broad spectrum oil and private label CBD products with the exact profile of rare cannabinoids of their choice such as CBG, CBN, CBC, and CBDV.

Stylepick has built a revolutionary system based on B2B wholesale clothing in the USA both for the wholesale clothing vendors and wholesale buyers

Make her a hand made DIY mask, stitched with love!

John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and coauthor of "Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business."

I don't play golf, and didn't realize there's apparently an occasional need to change the locations of the holes on the greens. But there is, and this is how they do it:

I'm going to say that guy rates his job satisfaction a 10 out of 10.

Apotex Corp., a generic pharmaceutical company headquartered in Florida, was charged with fixing the price of the generic drug pravastatin, the Department of Justice announced today.  According to the one-count felony charge filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Apotex and other generic drug companies agreed to increase and maintain the price of pravastatin, a commonly prescribed cholesterol medication that lowers the risk of heart disease and stroke.  The conspiracy began in May 2013 and continued through December 2015.

Statement Highlights: High cholesterol, at any age, can increase a person’s lifetime risk for heart disease and stroke. A healthy lifestyle is the first step in prevention and treatment to lower that risk. The 2018 guidelines recommend more detailed risk assessments to help health care providers better determine a person’s individualized risk and treatment options. In some cases, a coronary artery calcium score can help determine a person’s need for cholesterol-lowering treatment, if their risk status is uncertain or if the treatment decision isn't clear.

The Ethiopian Mekane Yesus Church owns and runs Aira Hospital - a small but by Ethiopian standards well equipped health facility - situtated in the far western part of rural Ethiopia. Despite financial hardship and lack of the most basic resources the dedicated surgeon Dr. Erik Erichsen and his team of local colleagues try as hard as they possibly can to serve some of the poorest people in the world

In a previous blogpost we talked about the Opus codec, which offers very low bitrates. Another codec seeking to achieve even lower bitrates is Codec 2.

Codec 2 is designed for use with speech only, and although the bitrates are impressive the results aren’t as clear as Opus, as you can hear in the following audio examples. However, there is some interesting work being done with Codec 2 in combination with neural network (WaveNets) that is yielding great results.

Layers of a WaveNet neural network.

Background

Codec 2 is an open source codec designed for speech, and aims for compression rates between 700bps and 3200bps (bits per seconds).

The man behind it, David Rowe, is an electronic engineer currently living in South Australia. He started the project in September 2009, with the main aim of improving low-cost radio communication for people living in remote areas of the world. With this in mind, he set out to develop a codec that would significantly reduce file sizes and the bandwidth required when streaming.

Another motivation according to David, was to be free from patented technologies used by closed source codes which he believes “require expensive and awkward licenses and are stifling innovation”. His belief is that this work can be done without requiring the use of patent protected codecs, so all his work is open source.

Potential Applications

Rowe’s perceived applications include VOIP trunking, voice over low bandwidth HF/VHF digital radio, (especially for amateur radio, so as to avoid issues with the use of proprietary codecs), and developing world and remote area communications, including military, police and emergency services.

Why we’re interested here at Auphonic is for its potential for longer podcasts, presentations and audiobooks, allowing for low storage and minimizing the effect of bad network connections.

How it Works

To achieve the lower rates sought, speech has to be reduced into the smallest possible information/data, and this means that the amount of redundant information that is transmitted has to be minimized.

To do this, Codec 2 uses harmonic sinusoidal speech coding. This splits the speech into 10 - 30ms segments, called frames. Each frame is then analysed for the fundamental frequency (or pitch), and the number of harmonics that fit into a 4Khz bandwidth. Further, for each of the harmonics within the 4khz range, the amplitude and phase are recorded.

This information is then coded, and the decoder reconstructs the audio based on this data.

Codec 2 Block diagrams - Encoder (left) And decoder (right)
Figure from Rowtel.

Audio Examples and Comparison with other Codecs

Whilst it all sounds great in theory, how does the reality match up? Let’s have a listen.

Here is a short wav audio file:

Applying Codec 2 (without the WaveNet decoder) at the different rates available, 3200bps, 2400bps,1600bps,1200bps and 700bps, we get:

These examples show significantly reduced file sizes.
Putting that information more meaningfully in terms of how much storage you would need for an hour of audio:

• At 3200bps, 1 hour of audio requires only 1.37MB (this would fit on one old 3½-inch floppy disk!)
• A rate of 2400bps equates to 1.03MB/h
• A rate of 1600bps equates to 0.68MB/h (Or approximately 2 hours of audio on one floppy disk!)
• A rate of 1200bps equates to 0.51MB/h
• A rate of 700bps equates to 0.3MB/h

So great compression, but the result is clearly not natural sounding.

As a comparison here is the same audio as a 8kb/s MP3:

The file size is significantly larger than Codec 2 and the quality is arguably still not useable. You can clearly hear what is sometimes called sizzle - the weird metallic sounds you hear on low quality MP3s.

There is a final codec which is worth comparing, one that that seems to capture the two ideals of usable quality at low bitrates that we want: Opus.
Because of it's convincing low-bitrate performance, Auphonic already offers Opus encoding all the way down to 6 kbps, the lowest bitrate that Opus supports.

Comparing Opus at this 6 kbps rate to the 8kbps MP3 shows a significant improvement - although slightly muffled, it still sounds natural:

Returning to Codec 2, and purely as s a bit of fun, here are some samples of Codec 2 on music! (Note that Codec 2 is not designed for music, it was only ever conceived for use on speech).

I personally couldn’t listen to the MP3 at this rate, so let’s listen to what Codec 2 does!

Codec 2 at different bitrates:

As you can hear, it is not suitable for this application at all!

Codec 2 and WaveNet

As we have heard, despite the impressive bitrates achieved, the end result is not very natural sounding.
However, where it starts to get more interesting is the work done by W. Bastiaan Kleijn from Cornell University Library. He has been using with Codec 2 running at 2400bps on the coding side, but replaced the Codec 2 decoder with a WaveNet deep learning generative model (for more informationsee the paper Wavenet based low rate speech coding).

Here are some samples from the authors:

Comparing to Codec 2 you can hear a significant increase in quality, and if you compare to the original, there is not a significant decrease in quality.

Conclusion

Whilst the (original) Codec 2 project represents very interesting work, it is limited, and the end result is not suited for podcasting. Also as we heard in the audio examples, it can only be used for voice recordings, and not music.

However, Codec 2 in combination with a WaveNet decoder improves the quality a lot and the low bitrate (2400bps) would be extremely interesting for podcasts and audiobooks distribution as well: one hour of audio would require only 1.03MB of storage!

Auphonic will add support for Codec 2 output files when the WaveNet decoder is in a usable form. For now we have just added support for Codec 2 input files.

Want to create a wholesale order form in WordPress? If you’re a wholesaler looking to get online, but don’t want to manage a full-fledged eCommerce store, then you might want to consider adding a simple wholesale order form to your WordPress site. In this article, we’ll show you how to properly create a simple wholesale […]

The post How to Properly Create a Wholesale Order Form in WordPress appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.

Histopathology is a reflection of the molecular changes and provides prognostic phenotypes representing the disease progression. In this study, we introduced feature scores generated from hematoxylin and eosin histology images based on deep learning (DL) models developed for prostate pathology. We demonstrated that these feature scores were significantly prognostic for time to event endpoints (biochemical recurrence and cancer-specific survival) and had simultaneously molecular biologic associations to relevant genomic alterations and molecular subtypes using already trained DL models that were not previously exposed to the datasets of the current study. Further, we discussed the potential of such feature scores to improve the current tumor grading system and the challenges that are associated with tumor heterogeneity and the development of prognostic models from histology images. Our findings uncover the potential of feature scores from histology images as digital biomarkers in precision medicine and as an expanding utility for digital pathology.

The invention refers to a centrifuge for separating whole blood into its blood components and a method for extracting a highly enriched thrombocyte concentrate out of whole blood. For this purpose, the centrifuge comprises a closed loop and/or open-loop control unit as well as a drive unit coupled to the closed loop and/or open-loop control unit, a rotor (12) having at least two container receptacles (14a, 14b; 16a, 16) for removably holding containers (18, 20, 22, 24) being in fluid communication with each other, at least one sensor arranged between the container receptacles (14a, 14b; 16a, 16b) and coupled with the closed loop and/or open-loop control unit for detecting a separation layer. Herein, a motor/gear unit (30a, 30b, 32a, 32b) coupled to the closed loop and/or open-loop control unit is associated with each of the container receptacles (14a, 14b; 16a, 16b). Each of the motor/gear units is in operational contact through means (34) with each of the containers (18, 20, 22, 24) supported in the respective container receptacle (14a, 14b; 16a, 16b) such that a transfer and back-transfer of blood components between the containers (18, 20, 22, 24) is initiated.

The burr hole plug comprises a plug base configured for being mounted around a burr hole, and having an aperture through which an elongated medical device exiting the burr hole may pass. The burr hole plug further comprises a retainer configured for being mounted within the plug base aperture. The retainer includes a retainer support, a slot formed in the retainer support for receiving the medical device, and a clamping mechanism having a clamping bar and a flange slidably engaged with the retainer support to laterally slide the clamping bar to secure the medical device. A method comprises introducing the medical device through the burr hole, mounting the plug base around the burr hole, mounting the retainer within the plug base aperture, receiving the medical device into the slot, and sliding the slidable flange relative to the retainer support to laterally slide to secure the medical device.

The invention is directed to novel substituted benzylamino quinolines, compounds comprising substituted benzylamino quinolines, methods of making substituted benzylamino quinolines, the use of substituted benzylamino quinolines for treating or preventing a variety of conditions or diseases associated with lipoprotein metabolism, and the use of substituted benzylamino quinolines as cholesterol ester-transfer protein inhibitors.

In FIG. 2, a diameter Dd of drilling edges of a drill is selected smaller than a valley diameter d1 of a male thread of a tap portion, and an inner diameter D1 of a female thread is defined by the valley diameter d1 of the male thread. Therefore, a predetermined radial gap is formed between the male thread 30 formed by the tap portion and the drill. When a tap with the drill is reversely rotated to be pulled out from the female thread after cutting the female thread, the tap released from the restriction may deflectively displace in the diameter direction upon pulling out the male thread of the tap portion from the female thread. However, the drill hardly contacts with the female thread, so that the occurrence of the defective product due to the contact is suppressed.

A slotted inverse tap, compressible for insertion past damaged entry threads in blind holes. (FIG. 1 thru FIG. 5) The tool can be made to smaller sizes than that of prior art. An elongate slot (23) proceeds through a first threaded end (21), then well into a reduced diameter cylindrical body (25). After insertion to the hole bottom, a tabbed shim (28) is inserted to the slot from its side, then pressed down until stopped. The shim (28) enforces mating engagement with undamaged internal threads. A second end of hex and/or squared or other configuration facilitates use of a tap wrench or other tool for rotational extraction. Damaged threads are reformed/re-cut upon rotational withdrawal.