12 research outputs found
On the words plav and modar: New insights
No full textHaving collected relevant linguistic evidence from various vernaculars, the author points to the hitherto unnoticed fact that in some Serbian dialects the words plav and modar (which in the standard language translate English blue and dark blue, respectively) have no reference to colour but serve only to disclose the lightness (plav)/darkness (modar) of its tint. The existence of such a lexical phenomenon provides crucial evidence supporting the author's hypothesis (advanced in a previous article) that in ancient times the meaning of plav must have been 'having a very light shade of colour. In some Serbian vernaculars people use the colour word for 'dark blue' when referring to the deep, succulent greenness exhibited by plants. Pointing to similar phenomena that occur in other languages (spoken as a rule by small populations with limited technology) the author underlines the pertinence of the role played by the civilization factor in this respect.Ovaj rad iznosi na videlo (u našoj dijalektologiji dosad neregistrovanu) činjenicu da ima srpskih narodnih govora koji izrazima plav i modar ne iskazuju boju kao takvu. već samo to da se ona ostvarila u svojoj svetloj/u svojoj tamnoj nijansi (pa otuda govorni predstavnici sa tih dijalekatskih prostora i prihvataju kao ispravne sintaksičke spojeve tipa žutilo plavo (boja) sinja plava i sl./modro zeleno, modro plavo i sl). Takvo stanje stvari na dijalekatskom terenu uverljivo potvrđuje ispravnost autorkine pretpostavke (iznete u studiji Plava boja kao lingvistički problem - v. Ivić 1995) da se pod plav u pradavnim vremenima podrazumevalo upravo to značenje 'koji je otvorene, svetle boje'. U radu se govori još o jednoj u našoj jezičkoj nauci dosad nesagledanoj činjenici: u nekim srpskim (ekavskim i jekavskim) narodnim govorima izrazima modar i modri se kvalifikuju se biljke (modri se žito i sl) kao intenzivno zelene, a to je kolorit koji sobom svedoči o njihovoj svežini, bujnosti, jednom rečju - o njihovom dobrom napredovanju. Suočavajući taj naš leksički fenomen sa sličnim fenomenima registrovanim na nekim drugim stranama jezičkog sveta, autorka osvetljava ulogu koju ima civilizacijski faktor pri njihovom ustrojavanju
Effects of water on mortar-brick bond
No full textThe quality of bond in masonry is, to a large extent, a function of the (i) the hydration conditions and (ii) the mortar composition of the mortar-brick interface. For insight into the effects of these parameters on bond performance it is essential to dispose of quantitative information about water content changes and flow rates, occurring immediately after brick laying. This quantitative information is preferably to be obtained by means of a non-destructive testing. The paper describes the test set-up, the potentiality and the limitations of two measuring methods, using thermal neutrons, with which the required data can be acquired. Furthermore, an attempt is made to explain differences in bond performance of various brick-modar-brick combinations, using the results from neutron transmission measurements and X-ray diffraction testing.Stevin laboratoryCivil Engineering and Geoscience
CFD Investigation of Enhancing Natural Ventilation in Attached Family House Buildings in Hungary
No full textEnergy consumption of the residential sector in Hungary is 12% higher than the EU average. Most of existing house buildings in Hungary are inefficient in term of their indoor comfort and energy consumption. This is where the refurbishment process takes a vital role bringing these houses back on the track of achieving the UN sustainable development goals. When a responsible refurbishment is conducted, it leaves room for integrating passive methods to enhance the building behaviour. One of the most important passive methods is utilizing natural ventilation in order to reduce the cooling energy and to improve the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). This research is investigating the integration of a passive ventilation solar chimney into an attached family house in Hungary as a part of its refurbishment process. This paper is a part of an extended research by the main author. The investigation utilizes Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. Different operation scenarios are tested, compared, and analysed. The simulation results demonstrate the functionality of the integrated solar chimney and the skylight as a ventilation outlet. In transitional seasons, it can provide accepted indoor comfort as the results of air change rate, indoor airflow velocity and indoor temperature indicate
Correction: Need for ICU and outcome of critically ill patients with COVID-19 and haematological malignancies: results from the EPICOVIDEHA survey (Infection, (2024), 52, 3, (1125-1141), 10.1007/s15010-023-02169-7)
No full textAcknowledgements Members of the EPICOVIDEHA registry: Joseph Meletiadis, Florian Reizine, Jan Novák, Summiya Nizamuddin, Roberta Di Blasi, Alexandra Serris, Pavel Jindra, Sylvain Lamure, François Danion, Maria Chiara Tisi, Mario Virgilio Papa, Nurettin Erben, ľuboš DrgoňA, Nathan C. Bahr, Murtadha Al-Khabori, Ayten Shirinova, Jörg Schubert, Lisset Lorenzo De La Peña, José-Ángel Hernández-Rivas, Elena Busch, Josip Batinić, Giuseppe Sapienza, Mohammad Reza Salehi, Reham Abdelaziz Khedr, Nina Khanna, Baerbel Hoell-Neugebauer, Ana Groh, Eleni Gavriilaki, Rita Fazzi, Rémy Duléry, Roberta Della Pepa, Mario Delia, Nicola Coppola, Maria Calbacho, Darko Antić, Hossein Zarrinfer, Ayel Yahia, Vivien Wai-Man, Ana Torres-TIenza, Alina Daniela Tanasa, Andrés Soto-Silva, Laura Serrano, Enrico Schalk, Ikhwan Rinaldi, Gaëtan Plantefeve, Monica Piedimonte, Maria Enza Mitra, Carolina Miranda-Castillo, Jorge Loureiro-Amigo, Ira Lacej, Martin Kolditz, María-Josefa Jiménez-Lorenzo, Guillemette Fouquet, Omar-Francisco Coronel-Ayala, Mathias Brehon, Panagiotis Tsirigotis, Anastasia Antoniadou, Gina Varricchio, Maria Vehreschild, Agostino Tafuri, José-María Ribera-Santa Susana, Joyce Marques De Almeida, María Fernández-Galán, Avinash Aujayeb, Athanasios Tragiannidis, Malgorzata Mikulska, Sein Win, Elizabeth De Kort, Hans-Beier Ommen, Donald C. Vinh, Hans Martin Orth, Sandra Malak, Przemyslaw Zdziarski, Modar Saleh, Chi Shan Kho, Fabio Guolo, M. Mansour Ceesay, Christopher H. Heath, Sergey Gerasymchuk, Monica Fung, Maximilian Desole, Erik De Cabo, Tania Cushion, Fazle Rabbi Chowdhury, Louis Yi Ann Chai, Fevzi Altuntaş, Charlotte Flasshove. The original article has been updated
Correction: Need for ICU and outcome of critically ill patients with COVID-19 and haematological malignancies: results from the EPICOVIDEHA survey (Infection, (2024), 52, 3, (1125-1141), 10.1007/s15010-023-02169-7)
No full textAcknowledgements Members of the EPICOVIDEHA registry: Joseph Meletiadis, Florian Reizine, Jan Novák, Summiya Nizamuddin, Roberta Di Blasi, Alexandra Serris, Pavel Jindra, Sylvain Lamure, François Danion, Maria Chiara Tisi, Mario Virgilio Papa, Nurettin Erben, ľuboš DrgoňA, Nathan C. Bahr, Murtadha Al-Khabori, Ayten Shirinova, Jörg Schubert, Lisset Lorenzo De La Peña, José-Ángel Hernández-Rivas, Elena Busch, Josip Batinić, Giuseppe Sapienza, Mohammad Reza Salehi, Reham Abdelaziz Khedr, Nina Khanna, Baerbel Hoell-Neugebauer, Ana Groh, Eleni Gavriilaki, Rita Fazzi, Rémy Duléry, Roberta Della Pepa, Mario Delia, Nicola Coppola, Maria Calbacho, Darko Antić, Hossein Zarrinfer, Ayel Yahia, Vivien Wai-Man, Ana Torres-TIenza, Alina Daniela Tanasa, Andrés Soto-Silva, Laura Serrano, Enrico Schalk, Ikhwan Rinaldi, Gaëtan Plantefeve, Monica Piedimonte, Maria Enza Mitra, Carolina Miranda-Castillo, Jorge Loureiro-Amigo, Ira Lacej, Martin Kolditz, María-Josefa Jiménez-Lorenzo, Guillemette Fouquet, Omar-Francisco Coronel-Ayala, Mathias Brehon, Panagiotis Tsirigotis, Anastasia Antoniadou, Gina Varricchio, Maria Vehreschild, Agostino Tafuri, José-María Ribera-Santa Susana, Joyce Marques De Almeida, María Fernández-Galán, Avinash Aujayeb, Athanasios Tragiannidis, Malgorzata Mikulska, Sein Win, Elizabeth De Kort, Hans-Beier Ommen, Donald C. Vinh, Hans Martin Orth, Sandra Malak, Przemyslaw Zdziarski, Modar Saleh, Chi Shan Kho, Fabio Guolo, M. Mansour Ceesay, Christopher H. Heath, Sergey Gerasymchuk, Monica Fung, Maximilian Desole, Erik De Cabo, Tania Cushion, Fazle Rabbi Chowdhury, Louis Yi Ann Chai, Fevzi Altuntaş, Charlotte Flasshove. The original article has been updated.</p
ODAQ: OPEN DATASET OF AUDIO QUALITY
No full text<div>
<div>ODAQ is a dataset addressing the scarcity of openly available collections of audio signals accompanied by corresponding subjective scores of perceived quality.</div>
<br>
<div>ODAQ contains 240 audio samples accompanied by corresponding quality scores obtained via a MUSHRA listening test carried out in parallel at Fraunhofer IIS (Germany) and at Netflix, Inc. (USA).</div>
<br>
<div>The quality-rated audio samples are processed versions of the original audio material (also made available). The original audio material consists of:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Stereo audio with 44.1 or 48 kHz sampling frequency;</li>
<li>14 music excerpts (8 of which are solo recordings);</li>
<li>11 excerpts from movie-like soundtracks with dialogues mixed with music and effects (separate stems and transcripts are also provided).</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<h3>Highlights</h3>
<ul>
<li>Each of the 240 audio samples is rated by 26 expert listeners (after post-screening).</li>
<li>The audio samples are processed by a total of 6 method classes, each operating at 5 different quality levels, plus anchor conditions.</li>
<li>The audio samples are processed by methods designed to generate quality degradations possibly encountered during audio coding and source separation.</li>
<li>The quality levels for each processing method span the entire quality range.</li>
<li>The diversity of the processing conditions, the large span of quality levels, the high sampling frequency of the audio signals, and the pool of international listeners make ODAQ particularly suited for further research into the prediction and analysis of perceived audio quality.</li>
<li>The dataset is released with permissive licenses, please refer to <code>_license_disclaimer.txt</code> for full details.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Package Structure</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>The</strong> <strong>top-level </strong>folder contains:
<ul>
<li><code>_license_disclaimer.txt</code> and <code>_detailed_license.csv</code> detailing the license agreement;</li>
<li><code>DE_systems_info.xls</code> detailing the separation systems used for generating part of the dataset;</li>
<li>The following subfolders.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>ODAQ_unprocessed</strong>
<ul>
<li>This folder contains the original "unprocessed" audio material.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>ODAQ_listening_test</strong>
<ul>
<li>This folder contains the audio samples used in the listening test and the listening test results both as individual result files (<code>.xml</code>) and as aggregated <code>.csv</code> table. </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>ODAQ_training</strong>
<ul>
<li>This folder contains the audio samples used during the training phase preceeding the main phase of the listening test.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>listening_test_instructions</strong>
<ul>
<li>This folder contains the instructions provided to the participants in the listening test.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>ODAQ_DE_raw_outputs</strong>
<ul>
<li>This folder contains the raw dialogue estimates output by the separation systems used for the Dialogue Enhancement (DE) scenario.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>ICASSP 2024</h3>
<p>Please refer to <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00197" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our ICASSP 2024 paper</a> for full details about the listening test and please cite it if you find this dataset useful:</p>
<div>
<pre><code>@inproceedings{Torcoli2024ODAQ,
author = {Torcoli, M. and Wu, C. W. and Dick, S. and Williams, P. A. and Halimeh, M. M. and Wolcott, W. and Habets, E. A. P.},
year = {2024},
month = {April},
title = {{ODAQ}: Open Dataset of Audio Quality},
address = {Seoul, Korea},
booktitle={IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP)}
}</code></pre>
</div>
<h3>Useful Links</h3>
<ul>
<li>Paper: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00197" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.00197</a></li>
<li>GitHub project page: <a href="https://github.com/Fraunhofer-IIS/ODAQ/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://github.com/Fraunhofer-IIS/ODAQ/</a></li>
<li>Listening test app: <a href="https://github.com/Netflix-Skunkworks/listening-test-app" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://github.com/Netflix-Skunkworks/listening-test-app</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Call for Contributions</h3>
<p>We make this data available to the community and we welcome contributions and extensions from the community!</p>
Decoding the historical tale: COVID-19 impact on haematological malignancy patients—EPICOVIDEHA insights from 2020 to 2022
No full textBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic heightened risks for individuals with hematological malignancies due to compromised immune systems, leading to more severe outcomes and increased mortality. While interventions like vaccines, targeted antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies have been effective for the general population, their benefits for these patients may not be as pronounced. Methods: The EPICOVIDEHA registry (National Clinical Trials Identifier, NCT04733729) gathers COVID-19 data from hematological malignancy patients since the pandemic's start worldwide. It spans various global locations, allowing comprehensive analysis over the first three years (2020–2022). Findings: The EPICOVIDEHA registry collected data from January 2020 to December 2022, involving 8767 COVID-19 cases in hematological malignancy patients from 152 centers across 41 countries, with 42% being female. Over this period, there was a significant reduction in critical infections and an overall decrease in mortality from 29% to 4%. However, hospitalization, particularly in the ICU, remained associated with higher mortality rates. Factors contributing to increased mortality included age, multiple comorbidities, active malignancy at COVID-19 onset, pulmonary symptoms, and hospitalization. On the positive side, vaccination with one to two doses or three or more doses, as well as encountering COVID-19 in 2022, were associated with improved survival. Interpretation: Patients with hematological malignancies still face elevated risks, despite reductions in critical infections and overall mortality rates over time. Hospitalization, especially in ICUs, remains a significant concern. The study underscores the importance of vaccination and the timing of COVID-19 exposure in 2022 for enhanced survival in this patient group. Ongoing monitoring and targeted interventions are essential to support this vulnerable population, emphasizing the critical role of timely diagnosis and prompt treatment in preventing severe COVID-19 cases. Funding: Not applicable. © 2024 The Author(s
Decoding the historical tale: COVID-19 impact on haematological malignancy patients—EPICOVIDEHA insights from 2020 to 2022
No full textBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic heightened risks for individuals with hematological malignancies due to compromised immune systems, leading to more severe outcomes and increased mortality. While interventions like vaccines, targeted antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies have been effective for the general population, their benefits for these patients may not be as pronounced. Methods: The EPICOVIDEHA registry (National Clinical Trials Identifier, NCT04733729) gathers COVID-19 data from hematological malignancy patients since the pandemic's start worldwide. It spans various global locations, allowing comprehensive analysis over the first three years (2020–2022). Findings: The EPICOVIDEHA registry collected data from January 2020 to December 2022, involving 8767 COVID-19 cases in hematological malignancy patients from 152 centers across 41 countries, with 42% being female. Over this period, there was a significant reduction in critical infections and an overall decrease in mortality from 29% to 4%. However, hospitalization, particularly in the ICU, remained associated with higher mortality rates. Factors contributing to increased mortality included age, multiple comorbidities, active malignancy at COVID-19 onset, pulmonary symptoms, and hospitalization. On the positive side, vaccination with one to two doses or three or more doses, as well as encountering COVID-19 in 2022, were associated with improved survival. Interpretation: Patients with hematological malignancies still face elevated risks, despite reductions in critical infections and overall mortality rates over time. Hospitalization, especially in ICUs, remains a significant concern. The study underscores the importance of vaccination and the timing of COVID-19 exposure in 2022 for enhanced survival in this patient group. Ongoing monitoring and targeted interventions are essential to support this vulnerable population, emphasizing the critical role of timely diagnosis and prompt treatment in preventing severe COVID-19 cases. Funding: Not applicable
Age, successive waves, immunization, and mortality in elderly COVID-19 hematological patients: EPICOVIDEHA findings
No full textObjectives: Elderly patients with hematologic malignancies face the highest risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes. The infection's impact on different age groups remains unstudied in detail. Methods: We analyzed elderly patients (age groups: 65-70, 71-75, 76-80, and >80 years old) with hematologic malignancies included in the EPICOVIDEHA registry between January 2020 and July 2022. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression models were conducted to identify factors influencing death in COVID-19 patients with hematological malignancy. Results: The study included data from 3,603 elderly patients (aged 65 or older) with hematological malignancy, with a majority being male (58.1%) and a significant proportion having comorbidities. The patients were divided into four age groups, and the analysis assessed COVID-19 outcomes, vaccination status, and other variables in relation to age and pandemic waves. The 90-day survival rate for patients with COVID-19 was 71.2%, with significant differences between groups. The pandemic waves had varying impacts, with the first wave affecting patients over 80 years old, the second being more severe in 65-70, and the third being the least severe in all age groups. Factors contributing to 90-day mortality included age, comorbidities, lymphopenia, active malignancy, acute leukemia, less than three vaccine doses, severe COVID-19, and using only corticosteroids as treatment. Conclusion: These data underscore the heterogeneity of elderly hematological patients, highlight the different impacts of COVID-19 waves and the pivotal importance of vaccination, and may help in planning future healthcare efforts
Need for ICU and outcome of critically ill patients with COVID-19 and haematological malignancies: results from the EPICOVIDEHA survey
No full textInternational audienc
