FluencyBank Timestamped: An Updated Data Set for Disfluency Detection and Automatic Intended Speech Recognition.

Purpose: This work introduces updated transcripts, disfluency annotations, and word timings for FluencyBank, which we refer to as FluencyBank Timestamped. This data set will enable the thorough analysis of how speech processing models (such as speech recognition and disfluency detection models) perform when evaluated with typical speech versus speech from people who stutter (PWS).

Method: We update the FluencyBank data set, which includes audio recordings from adults who stutter, to explore the robustness of speech processing models.

Improving Cross-Corpus Speech Emotion Recognition with Adversarial Discriminative Domain Generalization (ADDoG).

Automatic speech emotion recognition provides computers with critical context to enable user understanding. While methods trained and tested within the same dataset have been shown successful, they often fail when applied to unseen datasets. To address this, recent work has focused on adversarial methods to find more generalized representations of emotional speech.

COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths Among American Indian or Alaska Native Persons - Alaska, 2020-2021.

American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons across the United States face substantial health disparities, including a disproportionately higher incidence of COVID-19 (1,2). AI/AN persons living in Alaska also face serious health and health care challenges, including access to care because 90% of the state's land area is inaccessible by road (3), and approximately one half of the state's AI/AN population (AI/AN race alone or in combination with another race) live in remote rural areas (4). To examine the extent of COVID-19-associated disparities among AI/AN persons living in Alaska, a retrospective analysis of COVID-19 cases reported to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (AKDHSS) during March 12, 2020-December 31, 2021, was conducted.

Early life exposure to residential green space impacts cognitive functioning in children aged 4 to 6 years.

Introduction: During early childhood, neuronal networks are highly susceptible to environmental factors. Previous research suggests that green space exposure is beneficial for cognitive functioning. Here, we investigate the associations between residential green space exposure and behavioral problems and cognitive development in children aged four to six years.

Automatically Detecting Errors and Disfluencies in Read Speech to Predict Cognitive Impairment in People with Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a central nervous system disorder that causes motor impairment. Recent studies have found that people with PD also often suffer from cognitive impairment (CI). While a large body of work has shown that speech can be used to predict motor symptom severity in people with PD, much less has focused on cognitive symptom severity.

Cost-Effectiveness of Multitarget Stool DNA Testing vs Colonoscopy or Fecal Immunochemical Testing for Colorectal Cancer Screening in Alaska Native People.

Objective: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of multitarget stool DNA testing (MT-sDNA) compared with colonoscopy and fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) for Alaska Native adults.

Patients And Methods: A Markov model was used to evaluate the 3 screening test effects over 40 years. Outcomes included colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality, costs, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs).

Denser Retinal Microvascular Network Is Inversely Associated With Behavioral Outcomes and Sustained Attention in Children.

Changes in geometry of the retinal microvascular network, including vessel width, vessel density, and tortuosity, have been associated with neurological disorders in adults. We investigated metrics of the retinal microvasculature in association with behavior and cognition in 8- to 12-year-old children. Digital fundus images of 190 children (48.

Classification of Manifest Huntington Disease using Vowel Distortion Measures.

Huntington disease (HD) is a fatal autosomal dominant neurocognitive disorder that causes cognitive disturbances, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and impaired motor abilities (e.g., gait, speech, voice).

COVID-19 Among American Indian and Alaska Native Persons - 23 States, January 31-July 3, 2020.

Although non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons account for 0.7% of the U.S.

Understanding speech and swallowing difficulties in individuals with Huntington disease: Validation of the HDQLIFE Speech Difficulties and Swallowing Difficulties Item Banks.

Purpose: As Huntington disease (HD) progresses, speech and swallowing difficulties become more profound. These difficulties have an adverse effect on health-related quality of life (HRQOL), thus psychometrically robust measures of speech and swallowing are needed to better understand the impact of these domains across the course of the disease. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish the clinical utility of two new patient-reported outcome measures (PROs), HDQLIFE Speech Difficulties and HDQLIFE Swallowing Difficulties.

Association of Retinal Microvascular Characteristics With Short-term Memory Performance in Children Aged 4 to 5 Years.

Importance: Neurocognitive functions develop rapidly in early childhood and depend on the intrinsic cooperation between cerebral structures and the circulatory system. The retinal microvasculature can be regarded as a mirror image of the cerebrovascular circulation.

Objective: To investigate the association between retinal vessel characteristics and neurological functioning in children aged 4 to 5 years.

Children's microvascular traits and ambient air pollution exposure during pregnancy and early childhood: prospective evidence to elucidate the developmental origin of particle-induced disease.

Background: Particulate matter exposure during in utero life may entail adverse health outcomes later in life. The microvasculature undergoes extensive, organ-specific prenatal maturation. A growing body of evidence shows that cardiovascular disease in adulthood is rooted in a dysfunctional fetal and perinatal development, in particular that of the microcirculation.

Association Between Maternal Prepregnancy Body Mass Index and Anthropometric Parameters, Blood Pressure, and Retinal Microvasculature in Children Age 4 to 6 Years.

Importance: Maternal prepregnancy body mass index (BMI; calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) has previously been associated with offspring cardiometabolic risk factors, such as fat mass, glucose and insulin levels, and blood pressure, but these associations appear to be largely mediated by offspring BMI. To our knowledge, no studies have assessed alterations in the retinal microvasculature in association with maternal prepregnancy BMI.

Objective: To investigate the association between maternal prepregnancy BMI and anthropometric parameters, blood pressure, and retinal vessel parameters in children age 4 to 6 years.

Establishing reference values for macro- and microvascular measurements in 4-to-5 year-old children of the ENVIRONAGE prospective birth cohort.

Cardiovascular risk factors are usually better tolerated, and can therefore be perceived as less harmful, at a young age. However, over time the effects of these adverse factors may persist or accumulate and lead to excess morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular diseases later in life. Until now, reference values for the basic cardiovascular health characteristics of 4-to-6 year-old children are lacking.

Alaska Native Patient and Provider Perspectives on the Multitarget Stool DNA Test Compared With Colonoscopy for Colorectal Cancer Screening.

Alaska Native (AN) people have among the world's highest rate of colorectal cancer (CRC). We assessed perceptions of AN people and their health care providers of a new take-home multitarget stool DNA test (MT-sDNA; Cologuard) relative to colonoscopy. Cross-sectional surveys of AN people aged 40 to 75 years (mailed) and providers (online).

An Innovative Tribal-State Partnership: The Development of the Healthy Alaskans 2020 Statewide Health Improvement Plan.

This article details the development of Healthy Alaskans 2020, Alaska's statewide health improvement plan. Healthy Alaskans 2020 is a framework that supports collaborative efforts among many agencies and communities working toward the common goals of improving health and ensuring health equity for all Alaskans. The initiative was created through a unique tribal-state partnership between the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.

Invasive breast cancer among Alaska Native women in Alaska.

Female breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed among Alaska Native (AN) women. We examined characteristics of and trends for female breast cancer among AN women. We assessed descriptive statistics, incidence trends (1969-2014), and cause-specific survival for female breast cancers recorded in the Alaska Native Tumor Registry.

Improving the Health of Alaska Native People Through Use of a Policy Change Model and Capacity Building.

Public health training often includes program and education development but not policy, systems, and environmental (PSE) strategies. The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's Good Health and Wellness in Indian Country program works to build tribal PSE change capacity. Trainings included community health assessment, facilitation and leadership engagement, policy and systems, and digital storytelling.

Future climate change is predicted to affect the microbiome and condition of habitat-forming kelp.

Climate change is driving global declines of marine habitat-forming species through physiological effects and through changes to ecological interactions, with projected trajectories for ocean warming and acidification likely to exacerbate such impacts in coming decades. Interactions between habitat-formers and their microbiomes are fundamental for host functioning and resilience, but how such relationships will change in future conditions is largely unknown. We investigated independent and interactive effects of warming and acidification on a large brown seaweed, the kelp Ecklonia radiata, and its associated microbiome in experimental mesocosms.

Child's buccal cell mitochondrial DNA content modifies the association between heart rate variability and recent air pollution exposure at school.

Background: Studies investigating short-term exposure to ambient air pollution and heart rate variability (HRV) suggest that particulate matter (PM) exposure is associated with reductions in measures of HRV. Mitochondria are sensitive to PM exposure and may represent a biologically relevant underlying mechanism. However, evidence in children is lacking.

Climate change does not affect the seafood quality of a commonly targeted fish.

Climate change can affect marine and estuarine fish via alterations to their distributions, abundances, sizes, physiology and ecological interactions, threatening the provision of ecosystem goods and services. While we have an emerging understanding of such ecological impacts to fish, we know little about the potential influence of climate change on the provision of nutritional seafood to sustain human populations. In particular, the quantity, quality and/or taste of seafood may be altered by future environmental changes with implications for the economic viability of fisheries.