Structured Dropout for Weak Label and Multi-Instance Learning and Its Application to Score-Informed Source Separation

Many success stories involving deep neural networks are instances of supervised learning, where available labels power gradient-based learning methods. Creating such labels, however, can be expensive and thus there is increasing interest in weak labels which only provide coarse information, with uncertainty regarding time, location or value. Using such labels often leads to considerable challenges for the learning process. Current methods for weak-label training often employ standard supervised approaches that additionally reassign or prune labels during the learning process. The information gain, however, is often limited as only the importance of labels where the network already yields reasonable results is boosted. We propose treating weak-label training as an unsupervised problem and use the labels to guide the representation learning to induce structure. To this end, we propose two autoencoder extensions: class activity penalties and structured dropout. We demonstrate the capabilities of our approach in the context of score-informed source separation of music

Score-Informed Source Separation for Musical Audio Recordings [An overview]

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Shift-Invariant Kernel Additive Modelling for Audio Source Separation

A major goal in blind source separation to identify and separate sources is to model their inherent characteristics. While most state-of-the-art approaches are supervised methods trained on large datasets, interest in non-data-driven approaches such as Kernel Additive Modelling (KAM) remains high due to their interpretability and adaptability. KAM performs the separation of a given source applying robust statistics on the time-frequency bins selected by a source-specific kernel function, commonly the K-NN function. This choice assumes that the source of interest repeats in both time and frequency. In practice, this assumption does not always hold. Therefore, we introduce a shift-invariant kernel function capable of identifying similar spectral content even under frequency shifts. This way, we can considerably increase the amount of suitable sound material available to the robust statistics. While this leads to an increase in separation performance, a basic formulation, however, is computationally expensive. Therefore, we additionally present acceleration techniques that lower the overall computational complexity.Comment: Feedback is welcom

Fear in Outdoor Education: The Influence of Gender and Program

Using the Situational Fear Inventory, outdoor course participants identified the degree to which they experienced social-based and physical-based anxieties at the beginning, middle, and end of their course. Levels of social-based fears were higher and more resistant to modification. Females expressed higher levels of fears. Most fears were reduced significantly through program participation

Exploring Musical Expression on the Web: Deforming, Exaggerating, and Blending Decomposed Recordings

We introduce a prototype of an educational web application for comparative performance analysis based on source separation and object-based audio techniques. The underlying system decomposes recordings of classical music performances into note events using score-informed source separation and represents the decomposed material using semantic web technologies. In a visual and interactive way, users can explore individual performances by highlighting specific musical aspects directly within the audio and by altering the temporal characteristics to obtain versions in which the micro-timing is exaggerated or suppressed. Multiple performances of the same work can be compared by juxtaposing and blending between the corresponding recordings. Finally, by adjusting the timing of events, users can generate intermediates of multiple performances to investigate their commonalities and differences

Sensation Seeking and Perceived Need for Structure Moderate Soldiers’ Well-Being Before and After Operational Deployment

This study examined associations between sensation seeking and perceived need for structure, and changes in reported well-being among deployed soldiers. Participants (n = 167) were assessed before and after a six-month deployment to south Afghanistan. Results indicated that although well-being declined in the soldier sample as a whole following deployment, the degree of decrease was significantly different among soldiers with different personality profiles. Differences were moderated by soldiers’ level of sensation seeking and perceived need for structure. Results are discussed in terms of a person-environment fit theory in the context of preparation and rehabilitation of deployed military personnel

Towards democratic intelligence oversight: Limits, practices, struggles

Despite its common usage, The meaning of 'democratic' in democratic intelligence oversight has rarely been spelled out. In this paper, we situate questions regarding intelligence oversight within broader debates about the meanings and practices of democracy. We argue that the literature on intelligence oversight has tended to implicitly or explicitly follow liberal and technocratic ideas of democracy, which have limited the understanding of oversight both in academia and in practice. Thus, oversight is mostly understood as an expert, institutional and partially exclusive arrangement that is supposed to strike a balance between individual freedom and collective security with the goal of establishing the legitimacy of, and trust in intelligence work in a national setting. ‘Healthy’ or ‘efficient’ democratic oversight then becomes a matter of technical expertise, non-partisanship, and the ability to guard secrets. By analysing three moments of struggle around what counts as intelligence oversight across Germany, the UK, and the USA, this paper elucidates their democratic stakes. Through a practice-based approach, we argue that oversight takes much more agonistic, contentious, transnational, and public forms. However, these democratic practices reconfiguring oversight remain contested or contained by dominant views on what constitutes legitimate and effective intelligence oversight

Las órdenes militares en la cruzada granadina de Alfonso el Benigno (1329-1334)

A la memoria de la Dra. Regina Sainz de la MazaEn este estudio se recupera la investigación las Órdenes militares catalanoaragonesas durante el siglo XIV. El interés del trabajo radica en el hecho de que en él se considera, de manera conjunta, la actuación en la cruzada de las cuatro Órdenes militares enclavadas en territorio catalanoaragonés, lo cual permite observar tanto su distinto grado de participación como la diferente actitud del monarca hacia cada una de ellas.Peer reviewe