Streaming Speech-to-Confusion Network Speech Recognition

In interactive automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, low-latency requirements limit the amount of search space that can be explored during decoding, particularly in end-to-end neural ASR. In this paper, we present a novel streaming ASR architecture that outputs a confusion network while maintaining limited latency, as needed for interactive applications. We show that 1-best results of our model are on par with a comparable RNN-T system, while the richer hypothesis set allows second-pass rescoring to achieve 10-20\% lower word error rate on the LibriSpeech task. We also show that our model outperforms a strong RNN-T baseline on a far-field voice assistant task.Comment: Submitted to Interspeech 202

Role of DIBER DRDO Technologies in Improving Livelihood Opportunities and Curtailing Migration in Uttarakhand

Migration of local population of Uttarakhand (UK) border areas is presently serious issues for national security since; this State is sharing international border (~650 km) with China/Tibet and Nepal. Among the various factors reported for migration, few notables are search for better livelihood, unemployment, difficult remote terrain and poor land connectivity, less productivity from agriculture due to abiotic and biotic stresses etc. Hence, measures to increase the livelihood opportunities in these border areas to curb the problem of migration through intervention of modern agro-animal technologies are essentially required. In this attempt, Defence Institute of Bio Energy Research (DIBER) has already developed various agro-animal mature technologies, in terms of high yielding and genuine quality seed/seedlings, protected cultivation technology, soil-less cultivation technology, angora farming, mushroom cultivation, medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) cultivation technology, hydro-fodder, etc that shown great promise and impact in increasing the farm income and livelihood opportunities for civil inhabitants of these marginal regions. This article highlights the DIBER outreach extension efforts for ensuring better livelihood opportunities to farmers of border area and also to curtail migration that will in turn increase strategic support to Army and paramilitary defence forces deployed in three border Distts (Uttarkashi, Chamoli and Pithoragarh) of UK

Incidence of HIV infection in eastern Uttar Pradesh: HIV counseling and testing services record based retrospective study

Background: India has approximately 2.4 million of people living with HIV and out of these two thirds live in rural areas. This study may yield significant data to understand epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in this region that would help in designing techniques for effective implementation to prevent this infection.Methods: The present study was a comprehensive retrospective hospital-based investigation of the HIV infection in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India based on a large number of clinical samples at HCTS centre, representing different geographic regions and has been functional since 2002, conducting HIV tests, counselling of patients as well as maintains proper records.Results: A total of 444 HIV positive clients were registered in this retrospective study. The male and female ratio among all positive clients was 1.67:1 and the most common age group for both the genders was 35-49 years. Among 444 HIV positive clients, HIV-TB co-infection found in 72 (16.21%) cases. Out of 444 clients, 177 (40%) and 167 (38%) found extremely immunocompromised with low CD4 cells count in range between of 0-100 cells/mm3 and >100-350 cells/mm3 respectively. Mortality was seen in 72 (16%) out of 444 HIV positive clients.Conclusions: There is an urgent need of information, education about this disease and by providing suitable occupation or to make them aware, which will markedly help in preventing the spread of HIV pandemic in this geographical region

Energy Audit-A Case Study

Abstract -Energy audit is a process of checking the way energy is used and identify areas where wastage can be minimize if not totally eradicate. Energy audit consists of several tasks which can be carried out depending on the type of audit and the function of audited facility. It started with review the historical data of energy consumption which can be compiled from the electricity bills. These data is important in order to understand the patterns of energy used and their trend. After obtaining the information on energyconsumption, the next step is to set up an energy audit program. This program shou ld start with site survey in order to obtain information on present energy used.The energy utilization such as running hours of air-conditioning, lighting levels, locations of unnecessary air-conditioning and lighting due to unoccupied areas, temperature and humidity, chillers/pump scheduling and setting, efficiencies of equipment's and machine and the areas of high energy consumption and the possibility to reduce consumption should be record for further analysis.The energy audit discussed in this paper will only focused in the RGPV library building and university of teaching department. It is carried out in aim of analysing and identifying possible energy saving measures in the library, which can later be implem ented for energy efficiency program in RGPV

Bacteriological profile of acute bacterial meningitis at a tertiary care hospital of North India

Background: Acute bacterial meningitis (ABM) is one of the most severe and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases. It is defined as an inflammation of the meanings, globally distributed as either sporadic or epidemic forms. ABM remains a major cause of mortality and long-term neurological sequel worldwide. Objective of the present study was undertaken to evaluate the bacteriological analysis in term of pathogens frequency and their sensitivity pattern in the cerebrospinal fluid of acute meningitis patients at a tertiary care hospital in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India.Methods: The study was carried out at a tertiary care hospital from June 2014 to November 2015 irrespective of age group. A total of 3803 samples of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from clinically suspected cases of meningitis were subjected for bacteriological analysis.Results: During the study period, a total of 3803 CSF samples were studied. Out of these, 343 were confirmed as bacterial meningitis based on Gram staining and or culture showing 9.01% incidence. ABM was more common in paediatric patients than adults. The most common organisms were Gram positive (66.18%) bacteria.Conclusions: Acute bacterial meningitis is a medical emergency and making an early diagnosis and providing early and accurate treatment, are lifesaving and to reduce morbidity. This study may play an important role in the diagnosis and more accurate treatment for the ABM patients

Pre-treatment Technologies to Enhance Anaerobic Digestion

Sustainable energy production is the major priority in the world due to global warming, climate change, and fossil fuels depletion. Anaerobic digestion (AD) of sludge is the sustainable process producing the energy and minimizing the fossil fuel usage. However, conventional AD of sludge is not sustainable since it takes longer time for digestion which increases the energy input and greenhouse emissions. Therefore, pretreatment technologies have emerged to enhance methane production and thus the energy output from the AD process. In this chapter, pre-treatment technologies adopted mainly physical, chemical, thermal, and other advanced processes to enhance methane production in the last decade are elaborated. In addition, energy balance of the process and the feasibility of the pre-treatment technologies and their current status are discussed

PROCTER: PROnunciation-aware ConTextual adaptER for personalized speech recognition in neural transducers

End-to-End (E2E) automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems used in voice assistants often have difficulties recognizing infrequent words personalized to the user, such as names and places. Rare words often have non-trivial pronunciations, and in such cases, human knowledge in the form of a pronunciation lexicon can be useful. We propose a PROnunCiation-aware conTextual adaptER (PROCTER) that dynamically injects lexicon knowledge into an RNN-T model by adding a phonemic embedding along with a textual embedding. The experimental results show that the proposed PROCTER architecture outperforms the baseline RNN-T model by improving the word error rate (WER) by 44% and 57% when measured on personalized entities and personalized rare entities, respectively, while increasing the model size (number of trainable parameters) by only 1%. Furthermore, when evaluated in a zero-shot setting to recognize personalized device names, we observe 7% WER improvement with PROCTER, as compared to only 1% WER improvement with text-only contextual attentionComment: To appear in Proc. IEEE ICASS

PCM-assisted energy storage systems for solar-thermal applications: Review of the associated problems and their mitigation strategies

Latent heat energy storage (LHES) system is identified as one of the major research areas in recent years to be used in various solar-thermal applications. However, there are various challenges associated i.e., low thermal conductivity, leakage issues, stabilization concerns, etc. In this work, a comprehensive review of studies dealing with these problems and their mitigation strategies. Various design parameters influencing the performance of PCM-assisted systems are also discussed. This article further presents a detailed review of several mathematical models, based on system enthalpy and heat capacity-based modeling schemes along with the techno-economic analysis. The review results reflect the application of porous foams increasing thermal conductivity values of PCM composites relative to pure PCM working mediums. Moreover, the use of extended surfaces with appropriate geometries reduces the phase transition durations for the working medium significantly which enhances the thermal performance. Additionally, PCM encapsulations are identified as one of the widely accepted procedures intensifying the thermal performance of energy storage systems. However, the selection of appropriate encapsulation shell material and shell geometries are some of the important factors to be considered to ensure optimum system performance. This review focuses on the significant aspects of PCM encapsulation design parameters for several solar-thermal systems