12,958 research outputs found
Visually Indicated Sounds
Objects make distinctive sounds when they are hit or scratched. These sounds
reveal aspects of an object's material properties, as well as the actions that
produced them. In this paper, we propose the task of predicting what sound an
object makes when struck as a way of studying physical interactions within a
visual scene. We present an algorithm that synthesizes sound from silent videos
of people hitting and scratching objects with a drumstick. This algorithm uses
a recurrent neural network to predict sound features from videos and then
produces a waveform from these features with an example-based synthesis
procedure. We show that the sounds predicted by our model are realistic enough
to fool participants in a "real or fake" psychophysical experiment, and that
they convey significant information about material properties and physical
interactions
Spitzer/IRAC Observations of AGB stars
We present here the first observation of galactic AGB stars with the InfraRed
Array Camera (IRAC) onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. Our sample consists of
48 AGB stars of different chemical signature, mass loss rate and variability
class. For each star we have measured IRAC photometry and colors. Preliminary
results shows that IRAC colors are sensitive to spectroscopic features
associated to molecules and dust in the AGB wind. Period is only loosely
correlated to the brightness of the stars in the IRAC bands. We do find,
however, a tight period-color relation for sources classified as semiregular
variables. This may be interpreted as the lack of warm dust in the wind of the
sources in this class, as opposed to Mira variables that show higher infrared
excess in all IRAC bands.Comment: 8 pages, to be published in proceedings "IX Torino Workshop on
Evolution and Nucleosynthesis in AGB Stars", 22-26 October 2007, Perugia,
Ital
Reducing Audible Spectral Discontinuities
In this paper, a common problem in diphone synthesis is discussed, viz., the occurrence of audible discontinuities at diphone boundaries. Informal observations show that spectral mismatch is most likely the cause of this phenomenon.We first set out to find an objective spectral measure for discontinuity. To this end, several spectral distance measures are related to the results of a listening experiment. Then, we studied the feasibility of extending the diphone database with context-sensitive diphones to reduce the occurrence of audible discontinuities. The number of additional diphones is limited by clustering consonant contexts that have a similar effect on the surrounding vowels on the basis of the best performing distance measure. A listening experiment has shown that the addition of these context-sensitive diphones significantly reduces the amount of audible discontinuities
A Mid-Infrared Imaging Survey of Embedded Young Stellar Objects in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Core
Results of a comprehensive, new, ground-based mid-infrared imaging survey of
the young stellar population of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud are presented. Data were
acquired at the Palomar 5-m and at the Keck 10-m telescopes with the MIRLIN and
LWS instruments, at 0.25 arcsec and 0.25 arcsec resolutions, respectively. Of
172 survey objects, 85 were detected. Among the 22 multiple systems observed,
15 were resolved and their individual component fluxes determined. A plot of
the frequency distribution of the detected objects with SED spectral slope
shows that YSOs spend ~400,000 yr in the Flat Spectrum phase, clearing out
their remnant infall envelopes. Mid-infrared variability is found among a
significant fraction of the surveyed objects, and is found to occur for all SED
classes with optically thick disks. Large-amplitude near-infrared variability,
also found for all SED classes with optically thick disks, seems to occur with
somewhat higher frequency at the earlier evolutionary stages. Although a
general trend of mid-infrared excess and NIR veiling exists proceeding through
SED classes, with Class I objects generally exhibiting K-veilings > 1, Flat
Spectrum objects with K-veilings > 0.58, and Class III objects with K-veilings
=0, Class II objects exhibit the widest range of K-band veiling values, 0-4.5.
However, the highly variable value of veiling that a single source can exhibit
in any of the SED classes in which active disk accretion can take place is
striking, and is direct observational evidence for highly time-variable
accretion activity in disks. Finally, by comparing mid-infrared vs.
near-infrared excesses in a subsample with well-determined effective
temperatures and extinction values, disk clearing mechanisms are explored. The
results are consistent with disk clearing proceeding from the inside-out.Comment: 18 pages + 5 tables + 7 figure
Constrained structure of ancient Chinese poetry facilitates speech content grouping
Ancient Chinese poetry is constituted by structured language that deviates from ordinary language usage [1, 2]; its poetic genres impose unique combinatory constraints on linguistic elements [3]. How does the constrained poetic structure facilitate speech segmentation when common linguistic [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and statistical cues [5, 9] are unreliable to listeners in poems? We generated artificial Jueju, which arguably has the most constrained structure in ancient Chinese poetry, and presented each poem twice as an isochronous sequence of syllables to native Mandarin speakers while conducting magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording. We found that listeners deployed their prior knowledge of Jueju to build the line structure and to establish the conceptual flow of Jueju. Unprecedentedly, we found a phase precession phenomenon indicating predictive processes of speech segmentation—the neural phase advanced faster after listeners acquired knowledge of incoming speech. The statistical co-occurrence of monosyllabic words in Jueju negatively correlated with speech segmentation, which provides an alternative perspective on how statistical cues facilitate speech segmentation. Our findings suggest that constrained poetic structures serve as a temporal map for listeners to group speech contents and to predict incoming speech signals. Listeners can parse speech streams by using not only grammatical and statistical cues but also their prior knowledge of the form of language
The Ensemble Photometric Variability of ~25000 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Using a sample of over 25000 spectroscopically confirmed quasars from the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we show how quasar variability in the rest frame
optical/UV regime depends upon rest frame time lag, luminosity, rest
wavelength, redshift, the presence of radio and X-ray emission, and the
presence of broad absorption line systems. The time dependence of variability
(the structure function) is well-fit by a single power law on timescales from
days to years. There is an anti-correlation of variability amplitude with rest
wavelength, and quasars are systematically bluer when brighter at all
redshifts. There is a strong anti-correlation of variability with quasar
luminosity. There is also a significant positive correlation of variability
amplitude with redshift, indicating evolution of the quasar population or the
variability mechanism. We parameterize all of these relationships. Quasars with
RASS X-ray detections are significantly more variable (at optical/UV
wavelengths) than those without, and radio loud quasars are marginally more
variable than their radio weak counterparts. We find no significant difference
in the variability of quasars with and without broad absorption line troughs.
Models involving multiple discrete events or gravitational microlensing are
unlikely by themselves to account for the data. So-called accretion disk
instability models are promising, but more quantitative predictions are needed.Comment: 41 pages, 21 figures, AASTeX, Accepted for publication in Ap
- …