Language-Routing Mixture of Experts for Multilingual and Code-Switching Speech Recognition

Multilingual speech recognition for both monolingual and code-switching speech is a challenging task. Recently, based on the Mixture of Experts (MoE), many works have made good progress in multilingual and code-switching ASR, but present huge computational complexity with the increase of supported languages. In this work, we propose a computation-efficient network named Language-Routing Mixture of Experts (LR-MoE) for multilingual and code-switching ASR. LR-MoE extracts language-specific representations through the Mixture of Language Experts (MLE), which is guided to learn by a frame-wise language routing mechanism. The weight-shared frame-level language identification (LID) network is jointly trained as the shared pre-router of each MoE layer. Experiments show that the proposed method significantly improves multilingual and code-switching speech recognition performances over baseline with comparable computational efficiency.Comment: To appear in Proc. INTERSPEECH 2023, August 20-24, 2023, Dublin, Irelan

Analysis of Lake Stratification and Mixing and Its Influencing Factors over High Elevation Large and Small Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau

Lake stratification and mixing processes can influence gas and energy transport in the water column and water–atmosphere interactions, thus impacting limnology and local climate. Featuring the largest high-elevation inland lake zone in the world, comprehensive and comparative studies on the evolution of lake stratification and mixing and their driving forces are still quite limited. Here, using valuable temperature chain measurements in four large lakes (Nam Co, Dagze Co, Bangong Co, and Paiku Co) and a “small lake” adjacent to Nam Co, our objectives are to investigate the seasonal and diurnal variations of epilimnion depth (Ep, the most important layer in stratification and mixing process) and to analyze the driving force differences between “small lake” and Nam Co. Results indicate that Ep estimated by the methods of the absolute density difference (&lt;0.1 kg m−3) from the surface and the Lake-Analyzer were quite similar, with the former being more reliable and widely applicable. The stratification and mixing in the four large lakes showed a dimictic pattern, with obvious spring and autumn turnovers. Additionally, the stratification form during heat storage periods, with Ep quickly locating at depths of approximately 10–15 m, and, after that, increasing gradually to the lake bottom. Additionally, the diurnal variation in Ep can be evidenced both in the large and small lakes when temperature measurements above 3 m depth are included. For Nam Co, the dominant influencing factors for the seasonal variation of Ep were the heat budget components (turbulent heat fluxes and radiation components), while wind speed only had a relatively weak positive correlation (r = 0.23). In the “small lake”, radiation components and wind speed show high negative (r = −0.43 to −0.59) and positive (r = 0.46) correlation, with rare correlations for turbulent heat flux. These reported characteristics have significance for lake process modeling and evaluation in these high-elevation lakes.</p

Association between -238 but not -308 polymorphism of Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha)v and unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion (URSA) in Chinese population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>TNF-alpha is a critical cytokine produced by Th1 cells while altered T helper 1 (Th1)-Th2 balance is found crucial for a successful pregnancy.</p> <p>Study Design</p> <p>A cohort of 132 Southern Chinese Han RSA patients and 152 controls constituted the subjects of this study. Two functional polymorphisms -308 and -238 of TNF-alpha were studied by association analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>lack of association was found in TNF-alpha -308 SNP yet a significant difference was discovered in -238 polymorphism.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study suggested that TNF-alpha may be a risk factor in Chinese RSA patients. However the ethnic differences may also contribute to the results.</p

The GUA-Speech System Description for CNVSRC Challenge 2023

This study describes our system for Task 1 Single-speaker Visual Speech Recognition (VSR) fixed track in the Chinese Continuous Visual Speech Recognition Challenge (CNVSRC) 2023. Specifically, we use intermediate connectionist temporal classification (Inter CTC) residual modules to relax the conditional independence assumption of CTC in our model. Then we use a bi-transformer decoder to enable the model to capture both past and future contextual information. In addition, we use Chinese characters as the modeling units to improve the recognition accuracy of our model. Finally, we use a recurrent neural network language model (RNNLM) for shallow fusion in the inference stage. Experiments show that our system achieves a character error rate (CER) of 38.09% on the Eval set which reaches a relative CER reduction of 21.63% over the official baseline, and obtains a second place in the challenge.Comment: CNVSRC 2023 Challeng

Long-term variations in actual evapotranspiration over the Tibetan Plateau

Actual terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET$_{a}$) is a key parameter controlling land–atmosphere interaction processes and water cycle. However, spatial distribution and temporal changes in ET$_{a}$ over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) remain very uncertain. Here we estimate the multiyear (2001–2018) monthly ET$_{a}$ and its spatial distribution on the TP by a combination of meteorological data and satellite products. Validation against data from six eddy-covariance monitoring sites yielded root-mean-square errors ranging from 9.3 to 14.5 mm per month and correlation coefficients exceeding 0.9. The domain mean of annual ET$_{a}$ on the TP decreased slightly (−1.45 mm yr$^{-1}$, p90° E) but decreased significantly at a rate of −5.52 mm yr$^{-1}$ (p<0.05) in the western sector of the TP (long <90° E). In addition, the decreases in annual ET$_{a}$ were pronounced in the spring and summer seasons, while almost no trends were detected in the autumn and winter seasons. The mean annual ET$_{a}$ during 2001–2018 and over the whole TP was 496±23 mm. Thus, the total evapotranspiration from the terrestrial surface of the TP was 1238.3±57.6 km3 yr$^{-1}$. The estimated ET$_{a}$ product presented in this study is useful for an improved understanding of changes in energy and water cycle on the TP. The dataset is freely available at the Science Data Bank (https://doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.t00000.00010; Han et al., 2020b) and at the National Tibetan Plateau Data Center (https://doi.org/10.11888/Hydro.tpdc.270995, Han et al., 2020a)

Asexual proliferative seedling technology for Sargassum fusiforme constructed using tissue culture method

The traditional method of sexual reproduction in Sargassum fusiforme can lead to difficulties in maintaining the stable inheritance of superior traits. However, technology for asexual proliferation of seedlings in seaweed tissue culture is not well-developed. Therefore, we established a tissue culture method to study, the effects of different parts of S. fusiforme, uniconazole (UIZ) concentrations, and culture methods on the regeneration of tissue-derived juveniles of S. fusiforme. The results showed that the optimal culture conditions were solid medium with modified Provassoli’s enriched seawater containing 3 μM UIZ for at least 17 days followed by transfer to liquid medium to induce rapid cell proliferation. These optimal conditions resulted in a callus-like/adventitious bud induction rate of 100%, callus-like/adventitious bud number per explant of 27.43 ± 4.57, and relative growth rate of 3.05 ± 0.27. The best plant parts for tissue culture were the filamentous holdfasts followed by the stem tip. In addition, UIZ treatment increased photosynthesis, resulting in soluble sugar and soluble protein contents of 30.47 mg·g-1 and 1.39 mg·g-1 of in the regenerated juveniles. Based on our results, S. fusiforme can be cultured using a tissue culture technique in which UIZ is added to a solid medium, followed by culture in liquid medium for proliferation. Sargassum fusiforme juveniles obtained using this technique can be cultured continuously until the next culture season and grow normally, providing a technical reference for indoor preservation and expansion of algal species

Association of TRB3 Q84R polymorphism with polycystic ovary syndrome in Chinese women

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Tribbles 3 (TRB3) affects insulin signalling by inhibiting insulin-stimulated Akt phosphorylation and subsequent activation. A single nucleotide polymorphism located in the second extron of the human TRB3 gene is thought to be associated with insulin resistance. The latter is a core abnormality in PCOS independent of obesity. The present study was designed to clarify the relationships of TRB3 Q84R polymorphism with PCOS in a Chinese women group.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A case-control study with two groups: PCOS group (n = 336) and control group of infertility women for tubal and/or male factor (n = 116) was performed. Genotyping of the TRB3 R84 variant was determined by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The frequency of genotype QQ in PCOS women was significantly lower, while genotype QR and RR were significantly higher than that in control group (p < 0.05). However, the difference disappeared after adjustment for BMI. At glucose1h, glucose2h and insulin2h point, the difference between QQ individuals and R84 allele carriers in PCOS women reached statistical significance during OGTT (p < 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>TRB3 Q84R polymorphism is associated with obesity and especially glucose metabolism and not associated with polycystic ovary syndrome because of compositional characteristics of phenotype in Chinese PCOS women.</p