This paper proposes a fully automated atlas-based pancreas segmentation method from CT volumes utilizing atlas localization by regression forest and atlas generation using blood vessel information. Previous probabilistic atlas-based pancreas segmentation methods cannot deal with spatial variations that are commonly found in the pancreas well. Also, shape variations are not represented by an averaged atlas. We propose a fully automated pancreas segmentation method that deals with two types of variations mentioned above. The position and size of the pancreas is estimated using a regression forest technique. After localization, a patient-specific probabilistic atlas is generated based on a new image similarity that reflects the blood vessel position and direction information around the pancreas. We segment it using the EM algorithm with the atlas as prior followed by the graph-cut. In evaluation results using 147 CT volumes, the Jaccard index and the Dice overlap of the proposed method were 62.1% and 75.1%, respectively. Although we automated all of the segmentation processes, segmentation results were superior to the other state-of-the-art methods in the Dice overlap.

In a temporal network causal paths are characterized by the fact that links from a source to a target must respect the chronological order. In this article we study the causal paths structure in temporal networks of human face to face interactions in different social contexts. In a static network paths are transitive i.e. the existence of a link from $a$ to $b$ and from $b$ to $c$ implies the existence of a path from $a$ to $c$ via $b$. In a temporal network the chronological constraint introduces time correlations that affects transitivity. A probabilistic model based on higher order Markov chains shows that correlations that can invalidate transitivity are present only when the time gap between consecutive events is larger than the average value and are negligible below such a value. The comparison between the densities of the temporal and static accessibility matrices shows that the static representation can be used with good approximation. Moreover, we quantify the extent of the causally connected region of the networks over time.

Most studies on speaker verification systems focus on long-duration utterances, which are composed of sufficient phonetic information. However, the performances of these systems are known to degrade when short-duration utterances are inputted due to the lack of phonetic information as compared to the long utterances. In this paper, we propose a method that compensates for the performance degradation of speaker verification for short utterances, referred to as "crop aggregating". The proposed method adopts an ensemble-based design to improve the stability and accuracy of speaker verification systems. The proposed method segments an input utterance into several short utterances and then aggregates the segment embeddings extracted from the segmented inputs to compose a speaker embedding. Then, this method simultaneously trains the segment embeddings and the aggregated speaker embedding. In addition, we also modified the teacher-student learning method for the proposed method. Experimental results on different input duration using the VoxCeleb1 test set demonstrate that the proposed technique improves speaker verification performance by about 45.37% relatively compared to the baseline system with 1-second test utterance condition.

In this paper, some useful necessary and sufficient conditions for the unique solution of the generalized absolute value equation (GAVE) $Ax-B|x|=b$ with $A, Bin mathbb{R}^{n imes n}$ from the optimization field are first presented, which cover the fundamental theorem for the unique solution of the linear system $Ax=b$ with $Ain mathbb{R}^{n imes n}$. Not only that, some new sufficient conditions for the unique solution of the GAVE are obtained, which are weaker than the previous published works.

In recent years, all-neural end-to-end approaches have obtained state-of-the-art results on several challenging automatic speech recognition (ASR) tasks. However, most existing works focus on building ASR models where train and test data are drawn from the same domain. This results in poor generalization characteristics on mismatched-domains: e.g., end-to-end models trained on short segments perform poorly when evaluated on longer utterances. In this work, we analyze the generalization properties of streaming and non-streaming recurrent neural network transducer (RNN-T) based end-to-end models in order to identify model components that negatively affect generalization performance. We propose two solutions: combining multiple regularization techniques during training, and using dynamic overlapping inference. On a long-form YouTube test set, when the non-streaming RNN-T model is trained with shorter segments of data, the proposed combination improves word error rate (WER) from 22.3% to 14.8%; when the streaming RNN-T model trained on short Search queries, the proposed techniques improve WER on the YouTube set from 67.0% to 25.3%. Finally, when trained on Librispeech, we find that dynamic overlapping inference improves WER on YouTube from 99.8% to 33.0%.

High-order entropy-stable discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods for nonlinear conservation laws reproduce a discrete entropy inequality by combining entropy conservative finite volume fluxes with summation-by-parts (SBP) discretization matrices. In the DG context, on tensor product (quadrilateral and hexahedral) elements, SBP matrices are typically constructed by collocating at Lobatto quadrature points. Recent work has extended the construction of entropy-stable DG schemes to collocation at more accurate Gauss quadrature points.

In this work, we extend entropy-stable Gauss collocation schemes to non-conforming meshes. Entropy-stable DG schemes require computing entropy conservative numerical fluxes between volume and surface quadrature nodes. On conforming tensor product meshes where volume and surface nodes are aligned, flux evaluations are required only between "lines" of nodes. However, on non-conforming meshes, volume and surface nodes are no longer aligned, resulting in a larger number of flux evaluations. We reduce this expense by introducing an entropy-stable mortar-based treatment of non-conforming interfaces via a face-local correction term, and provide necessary conditions for high-order accuracy. Numerical experiments in both two and three dimensions confirm the stability and accuracy of this approach.

Bayesian predictive coding is a putative neuromorphic method for acquiring higher-level neural representations to account for sensory input. Although originating in the neuroscience community, there are also efforts in the machine learning community to study these models. This paper reviews some of the more well known models. Our review analyzes module connectivity and patterns of information transfer, seeking to find general principles used across the models. We also survey some recent attempts to cast these models within a deep learning framework. A defining feature of Bayesian predictive coding is that it uses top-down, reconstructive mechanisms to predict incoming sensory inputs or their lower-level representations. Discrepancies between the predicted and the actual inputs, known as prediction errors, then give rise to future learning that refines and improves the predictive accuracy of learned higher-level representations. Predictive coding models intended to describe computations in the neocortex emerged prior to the development of deep learning and used a communication structure between modules that we name the Rao-Ballard protocol. This protocol was derived from a Bayesian generative model with some rather strong statistical assumptions. The RB protocol provides a rubric to assess the fidelity of deep learning models that claim to implement predictive coding.

The temporal segmentation of events is an essential task and a precursor for the automatic recognition of human actions in the video. Several attempts have been made to capture frame-level salient aspects through attention but they lack the capacity to effectively map the temporal relationships in between the frames as they only capture a limited span of temporal dependencies. To this end we propose a complete end-to-end supervised learning approach that can better learn relationships between actions over time, thus improving the overall segmentation performance. The proposed hierarchical recurrent attention framework analyses the input video at multiple temporal scales, to form embeddings at frame level and segment level, and perform fine-grained action segmentation. This generates a simple, lightweight, yet extremely effective architecture for segmenting continuous video streams and has multiple application domains. We evaluate our system on multiple challenging public benchmark datasets, including MERL Shopping, 50 salads, and Georgia Tech Egocentric datasets, and achieves state-of-the-art performance. The evaluated datasets encompass numerous video capture settings which are inclusive of static overhead camera views and dynamic, ego-centric head-mounted camera views, demonstrating the direct applicability of the proposed framework in a variety of settings.

Over the years, performance evaluation has become essential in computer vision, enabling tangible progress in many sub-fields. While talking-head video generation has become an emerging research topic, existing evaluations on this topic present many limitations. For example, most approaches use human subjects (e.g., via Amazon MTurk) to evaluate their research claims directly. This subjective evaluation is cumbersome, unreproducible, and may impend the evolution of new research. In this work, we present a carefully-designed benchmark for evaluating talking-head video generation with standardized dataset pre-processing strategies. As for evaluation, we either propose new metrics or select the most appropriate ones to evaluate results in what we consider as desired properties for a good talking-head video, namely, identity preserving, lip synchronization, high video quality, and natural-spontaneous motion. By conducting a thoughtful analysis across several state-of-the-art talking-head generation approaches, we aim to uncover the merits and drawbacks of current methods and point out promising directions for future work. All the evaluation code is available at: https://github.com/lelechen63/talking-head-generation-survey.

Fact-based dialogue generation is a task of generating a human-like response based on both dialogue context and factual texts. Various methods were proposed to focus on generating informative words that contain facts effectively. However, previous works implicitly assume a topic to be kept on a dialogue and usually converse passively, therefore the systems have a difficulty to generate diverse responses that provide meaningful information proactively. This paper proposes an end-to-end Fact-based dialogue system augmented with the ability of convergent and divergent thinking over both context and facts, which can converse about the current topic or introduce a new topic. Specifically, our model incorporates a novel convergent and divergent decoding that can generate informative and diverse responses considering not only given inputs (context and facts) but also inputs-related topics. Both automatic and human evaluation results on DSTC7 dataset show that our model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, indicating that our model can generate more appropriate, informative, and diverse responses.

The de Bruijn graph, its sequences, and their various generalizations, have found many applications in information theory, including many new ones in the last decade. In this paper, motivated by a coding problem for emerging memory technologies, a set of sequences which generalize sequences in the de Bruijn graph are defined. These sequences can be also defined and viewed as constrained sequences. Hence, they will be called constrained de Bruijn sequences and a set of such sequences will be called a constrained de Bruijn code. Several properties and alternative definitions for such codes are examined and they are analyzed as generalized sequences in the de Bruijn graph (and its generalization) and as constrained sequences. Various enumeration techniques are used to compute the total number of sequences for any given set of parameters. A construction method of such codes from the theory of shift-register sequences is proposed. Finally, we show how these constrained de Bruijn sequences and codes can be applied in constructions of codes for correcting synchronization errors in the $ell$-symbol read channel and in the racetrack memory channel. For this purpose, these codes are superior in their size on previously known codes.

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UPDATE: The Department of Veterans Affairs announced after this article was first published that Spokane Veterans Home residents with COVID-19 would be moved to the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center.…

March is obviously going to be the busiest month for any purveyor of traditional Irish music, and with St. Patrick's Day right around the corner, Spokane's Floating Crowbar has multiple gigs crowding the week's calendar.…

You don't have to wander around the internet long before bumping into a rave review of Fiona Apple's new record Fetch the Bolt Cutters: It has inspired breathless acclaim, has already been labeled a masterwork and is notably the first new album in nearly a decade that Pitchfork has assigned a perfect 10/10 rating.…

Two more residents who were staying at the Spokane Veterans Home have died of complications related to COVID-19, according to the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs. There have now been five residents of the home who have died following their diagnosis of COVID-19.…

When I first moved to Spokane just over five years ago, I had no idea what kind of literary hotbed I was making my new home.…

Yesterday, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward and other local leaders urged Gov. Jay Inslee to allow Spokane County to open on a different schedule than the rest of the state.  Inslee, however, wouldn't budge.…

A process has been developed for preparing 2-methoxymethyl-1,4-benzenediamine (IV-a), other compounds of formula (IV), and the salts thereof, all of which may be used as primary intermediates in compositions for dyeing keratin fibers.

The invention relates to protein binding interacting/binding compounds and methods of identifying and using them. The invention further relates to pharmaceutical compositions and methods for treating 5-HT2C and/or RSK disorders, including diseases and disorders mediated by GPCRs and/or RSKs.

Methods and arrangements for analyzing and responding to communications data. Telecom data are input, as are social network data. The telecom data and social network data are analyzed, and action tuples representing opportunistic leads are generated based on the analyzed telecom data and social network data.

A modeling framework for evaluating the impact of weather conditions on farming and harvest operations applies real-time, field-level weather data and forecasts of meteorological and climatological conditions together with user-provided and/or observed feedback of a present state of a harvest-related condition to agronomic models and to generate a plurality of harvest advisory outputs for precision agriculture. A harvest advisory model simulates and predicts the impacts of this weather information and user-provided and/or observed feedback in one or more physical, empirical, or artificial intelligence models of precision agriculture to analyze crops, plants, soils, and resulting agricultural commodities, and provides harvest advisory outputs to a diagnostic support tool for users to enhance farming and harvest decision-making, whether by providing pre-, post-, or in situ-harvest operations and crop analyzes.

A method for performing relational analysis of parsed input is employed to create a visual map of knowledge information. A title, header or subject line for an input item of information is parsed into syntactical components of at least a subject component and any predicate component(s) relationally linked as topic and subtopics. A search of topics and subtopics is carried out for each parsed component. If a match is found, then the parsed component is taken as a chosen topic/subtopic label. If no match is found, then the parsed component is formatted as a new entry in the knowledge map. A translation function for translating topics and subtopics from an original language into one or more target languages is enabled by user request or indicated user preference for display on a generated visual map of knowledge information.

In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for a computer program product embodied in a computer readable medium that, when executing on one or more computers, helps determine an unknown user's preferences through the use of internet based social interactive graphical representations on a computer facility by performing the steps of (1) ascertaining preferences of a plurality of users who are part of an internet based social interactive construct, wherein the plurality of users become a plurality of known users; (2) determining the internet based social interactive graphical representation for the plurality of known users; and (3) inferring the preferences of an unknown user present in the internet based social interactive graphical representation of the plurality of known users based on the interrelationships between the unknown user and the plurality of known users within the graphical representation.

Various embodiments provide lossless compression of an enumeration space for genetic founder lines. In one embodiment, an input comprising a set of genetic founder lines and a maximum number of generations G is obtained. A set of genetic crossing templates of a height h is generated. A determination is made if at least a first genetic crossing template in the set of genetic crossing templates is redundant with respect to a second genetic crossing template in the set of genetic crossing templates. Based on the at least first genetic crossing template being redundant is redundant with respect to the second genetic crossing template, the at least first genetic crossing template is removed from the set of genetic crossing templates. This process of removing the at least first genetic crossing template from the set of genetic crossing templates the redundant creates an updated set of genetic crossing templates.

Systems and methods are disclosed that may be implemented for network management system (NMS) configuration management support for network devices using a learning and natural language processing application to capture the usage and behavior of the Command Line Interface (CLI) of a network device with the aid of a CLI knowledge model, which in one example may be ontology-based.

In one embodiment, a system includes a data collection system configured to collect a data from a control system by using an offline mode of operations. The system further includes a configuration management system configured to manage a hardware configuration and a software configuration for the control system based on the data. The system additionally includes a rule engine configured to use the data as input and to output a health assessment by using a rule database, and a report generator configured to provide a health assessment for the control system.

Embodiments are described for a system and method of providing a data miner that decouples the analytic flow solution components from the data source. An analytic-flow solution then couples with the target data source through a simple set of data source connector, table and transformation objects, to perform the requisite analytic flow function. As a result, the analytic-flow solution needs to be designed only once and can be re-used across multiple target data sources. The analytic flow can be modified and updated at one place and then deployed for use on various different target data sources.

Dental compositions are provided comprising a compound of Formula (I) or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof: wherein n is an integer from about 2 to about 5.

The invention relates to ceramide dimers which are constructed from two ceramide molecules which are crosslinked to each other via their lipophilic end. The ceramide molecules thereby have at least one hydrophilic group at their hydrophilic end for increasing the hydration shell of the dimer. The ceramide dimers according to the invention can be used as pharmaceutical preparation or as cosmetic preparation.

The present invention provides a method for performing regeneration of a decolorization capacity of waste clay that has been used for purification of fats and oils, and production of a thermally recyclable compound as a biofuel from oily ingredients in the waste clay at the same time in a convenient manner. That is, a method for producing purified fats and oils of the invention includes: a method for producing regenerated clay including the steps of mixing waste clay that has been used for purification of fats and oils, lower alcohol, and an acidic catalyst; and performing extraction of oily ingredients from the waste clay, and an esterification reaction between the fats and oils and/or a free fatty acid in the oily ingredients and the lower alcohol at the same time so as to regenerate a decolorization capacity of the waste clay; regenerated clay that is produced by the method for producing the regenerated clay; and a process of decolorizing the fats and oils using the regenerated clay.

The invention relates to the use of a composition of A) at least one quaternary ammonia compound comprising at least one organic radical bonded to the ammonia nitrogen atom and optionally comprising heteroatoms and having 1 to 36 carbon atoms, and B) at least one amine alkoxylate ester of formula (1) or a salt thereof, where A, B are, independently of each other, a C2- through C5-alkylene radical R1, a C8- through C24-alkyl radical or alkenyl radical R2, R3, R4 independent of each other, H, or a C8- through C24-acyl radical, with the stipulation that at least one of the radicals R2, R3 or R4 stands for a C8- through C24-acyl radical, and x, y, z, independently of each other, stand for a whole number from 0 through 50, with the stipulation that x+y+z is a whole number from 1 through 100, in quantities of 10 through 5000 g/tonne of ore as a collector in silicate floation.

The present invention pertains generally to the field of therapeutic compounds. More specifically the present invention pertains to certain pyridyl-amino-pyrazine carbonitrile compounds that, inter alia, inhibit Checkpoint Kinase 1 (CHK1) kinase function. The present invention also pertains to pharmaceutical compositions comprising such compounds, and the use of such compounds and compositions, both in vitro and in vivo, to inhibit CHK1 kinase function, and in the treatment of diseases and conditions that are mediated by CHK1, that are ameliorated by the inhibition of CHK1 kinase function, etc., including proliferative conditions such as cancer, etc., optionally in combination with another agent, for example, (a) a DNA topoisomerase I or II inhibitor; (b) a DNA damaging agent; (c) an antimetabolite or thymidylate synthase (TS) inhibitor; (d) a microtubule targeted agent; and (e) ionizing radiation.

The present invention relates to a solid composition containing calcium silicate hydrate and at least one water-swellable polymer which can form a hydrogel, and also to a process for preparing the composition, to the use thereof as a setting accelerator, and as a grinding aid in cement production. It also relates to building material mixtures which comprise the compositions.

The invention aims at an aqueous ink for high-temperature electrochemical cell electrodes and/or electrolyte containing particles of at least one mineral filler, at least one binder, and at least one dispersant. It also concerns the electrode and the electrolyte using such an ink.

There are provided a dielectric ceramic having a high Qf value in a relative permittivity ∈r range of 35 to 45, and a small absolute value of a temperature coefficient τf which indicates change of the resonant frequency in a wide temperature range from a low temperature range to a high temperature range, and a dielectric filter having the dielectric ceramic. A dielectric ceramic includes: a main component, molar ratios α, β, and γ satisfying expressions of 0.240≦α≦0.470, 0.040≦β≦0.200, 0.400≦γ≦0.650, and α+β+γ=1 when a composition formula of the main component is represented as αZrO2.βSnO2.γTiO2; and Mn, a content of Mn in terms of MnO2 being greater than or equal to 0.01% by mass and less than 0.1% by mass with respect to 100% by mass of the main component.

A glass ceramic as cooktop for induction heating having improved colored display capability and heat shielding is provided. The cooktop includes a transparent, dyed glass ceramic plate having high-quartz mixed crystals as a predominant crystal phase. The glass ceramic contains none of the chemical refining agents arsenic oxide and/or antimony oxide and has a transmittance values greater than 0.4% at at least one wavelength in the blue spectrum between 380 and 500 nm, a transmittance >2% at 630 nm, a transmittance of less than 45% at 1600 nm, and a light transmittance of less than 2.5% in the visible spectrum.

Shape memory and pseudoelastic martensitic behavior is enabled by a structure in which there is provided a crystalline ceramic material that is capable of undergoing a reversible martensitic transformation and forming martensitic domains, during such martensitic transformation, that have an elongated domain length. The ceramic material is configured as a ceramic material structure including a structural feature that is smaller than the elongated domain length of the ceramic material.

A dielectric ceramic material comprises a primary component of barium titanate (BaTiO3) and at least one additive component. The additive component has a mole percentage from 1% to 50% and is selected from the group consisting of lithium tantalite (LiTaO3), barium cerate (BaCeO3), sodium metaniobate (NaNbO3) and the combinations thereof.

To provide a glass ceramic body wherein the deterioration of the reflectance due to black coloration is suppressed, and the unevenness of the firing shrinkage is suppressed. A glass ceramic body comprising a glass matrix and alumina particles dispersed therein, wherein the glass matrix is not crystallized, a ceramic part composed of the dispersed alumina particles has an α-alumina crystal structure and a crystal structure other than the α-alumina crystal structure.

According to one embodiment, a glass container may include a body formed from a Type I, Class B glass composition according to ASTM Standard E438-92. The body may have an inner surface, an outer surface and a wall thickness extending between the outer surface and the inner surface. The body may also include a compressively stressed layer extending into the wall thickness from at least one of the outer surface and the inner surface. A lubricous coating may be positioned on at least a portion of the outer surface of the body, wherein the outer surface of the body with the lubricous coating has a coefficient of friction less than or equal to 0.7.

There is provided a dielectric composition including: a base powder including BaTiO3; a first accessory component including a content (x1) of 0.1 to 1.0 at % of an oxide or a carbonate including transition metals, based on 100 moles of the base powder; a second accessory component including a content (y) of 0.01 to 3.0 at % of oxide or carbonate including a fixed valence acceptor element, based on 100 moles of the base powder; a third accessory component including an oxide or a carbonate including a Ce element (content of z at %) and at least one rare earth element (content of w at %); and a fourth accessory component including a sintering aid, wherein 0.01≦z≦x1+4y and 0.01≦z+w≦x1+4y based on 100 moles of the base powder.

An apparatus for reforming a hydrocarbon stream is presented. The apparatus involves changing the design of reformers and associated equipment to allow for increasing the processing temperatures in the reformers and heaters. The reformers are operated under different conditions to utilize advantages in the equilibriums, but require modifications to prevent increasing thermal cracking and to prevent increases in coking.

A process for the production of aromatics through the reforming of a hydrocarbon stream is presented. The process utilizes the differences in properties of components within the hydrocarbon stream to increase the energy efficiency. The differences in the reactions of different hydrocarbon components in the conversion to aromatics allows for different treatments of the different components to reduce the energy used in reforming process.

A process is presented for the increasing the yields of aromatics from reforming a hydrocarbon feedstream. The process includes splitting a naphtha feedstream into a light hydrocarbon stream, and a heavier stream having a relatively rich concentration of naphthenes. The heavy stream is reformed to convert the naphthenes to aromatics and the resulting product stream is further reformed with the light hydrocarbon stream to increase the aromatics yields. The catalyst is passed through the reactors in a sequential manner.

Temperatures in microelectronic integrated circuit packages and components may be measured in situ using carbon nanotube networks. An array of carbon nanotubes strung between upstanding structures may be used to measure local temperature. Because of the carbon nanotubes, a highly accurate temperature measurement may be achieved. In some cases, the carbon nanotubes and the upstanding structures may be secured to a substrate that is subsequently attached to a microelectronic package.

An approach for introspection of a software component and generation of a conditional memory dump, a computing device executing an introspection program with respect to the software component is provided. An introspection system comprises one or more conditions for generating the conditional memory dump based on operations of the software component. In one aspect, a computing device detects, through an introspection program, whether the one or more conditions are satisfied by the software component based on information in an introspection analyzer of the introspection program. In addition, the computing device indicates, through the introspection program, if the one or more conditions are satisfied by the software component. In another aspect, responsive to the indication, the computing device generates the conditional memory dump through the introspection program.

A logical operations functional block for an execution unit of a processor includes a first input data link for a first operand and a second input data link for a second operand. The execution unit includes a register connected to an error correction code detection unit. The logical operations functional block includes a look-up table configured to receive an error correction code syndrome from the error correction code detection unit. The logical operations functional block also includes a multiplexer configured to receive an output signal from the look-up table at a first input and the first operand at a second input, wherein an output of the multiplexer is coupled to the first input data link of a logical functional unit.

A method of operating a memory controller to control a memory device includes reading a read vector from the memory device and correcting one or more errors in the read vector, where a power consumed at the correcting is varied according to the number of errors in the read vector.