Unsupervised Spoken Term Detection with Spoken Queries by Multi-level Acoustic Patterns with Varying Model Granularity

This paper presents a new approach for unsupervised Spoken Term Detection with spoken queries using multiple sets of acoustic patterns automatically discovered from the target corpus. The different pattern HMM configurations(number of states per model, number of distinct models, number of Gaussians per state)form a three-dimensional model granularity space. Different sets of acoustic patterns automatically discovered on different points properly distributed over this three-dimensional space are complementary to one another, thus can jointly capture the characteristics of the spoken terms. By representing the spoken content and spoken query as sequences of acoustic patterns, a series of approaches for matching the pattern index sequences while considering the signal variations are developed. In this way, not only the on-line computation load can be reduced, but the signal distributions caused by different speakers and acoustic conditions can be reasonably taken care of. The results indicate that this approach significantly outperformed the unsupervised feature-based DTW baseline by 16.16\% in mean average precision on the TIMIT corpus.Comment: Accepted by ICASSP 201

From curing patients to healing society : the honourable Dr. Edward Che-hung Leong

Dr. Edward Che-hung Leong, GBM, GBS, OBE, JP, a private medical practitioner specialised in urology, was born into a medical family. Leong is well-known to most Hong Kong people for his surgery skills. He has been praised as the Golden Surgeon Leong (金刀梁). He is also named the Master of Public Office (公職王). Since 1988, he has been a Legislative Councilor representing the Medical Functional Constituency, as well as many other public service roles of the Government and quangos, including Chairmanship of the Elderly Commission, in which his works were highly appraised. For years Doctor Leung has enthusiastically engaged in serving the society. Recognising his contributions to the society, the government has awarded him the honours of Justice of Peace, Order of the British Empire, Gold Bauhinia Star, and Grand Bauhinia Medal. Dr. Leong is now serving as the Chairman of the University of Hong Kong Council, Chairman of the Committee on Elder Academy Development Foundation, Elderly Commission and other public service roles. There is an old saying that doctors can be classified into three classes, the best one cures the society; the middle the person; the lowest the sickness. How did Dr. Leong go through the process from curing patients to healing society

The regulation of the residential property market in Hong Kong : a study of government strategies and tools

published_or_final_versionPolitics and Public AdministrationMasterMaster of Public Administratio

Addressing quality, access and equity in the school direct subsidy scheme in Hong Kong : a study of government strategies and tools

published_or_final_versionPolitics and Public AdministrationMasterMaster of Public Administratio

從「醫人」到「醫國」: 濟世為懷的梁智鴻醫生

梁智鴻醫生 (GBM，GBS，OBE，太平紳士) 出身醫學世家，是醫術高超的私人執業泌尿科醫生。他手術技巧高超，素有「金刀梁」的綽號，是香港家喻戶曉的一位名醫。他同時是一名「公職王」，自1988年起擔任過立法會醫學界功能界別議員以及安老事務委員會主席等多項政府及不同半官方機構的公職，一直深受各界人士好評。梁醫生多年來熱心公益；為肯定其對社會的貢獻，政府先後向他頒授多個勳銜，包括太平紳士、金紫荊星章以及大紫荊勳賢。現時梁醫生的主要公職包括香港大學校務委員會主席以及安老事務委員會長者學院發展基金主席等。有説「醫有三品: 上醫 醫國，中醫醫人，下醫醫病」，梁醫生是如何從「醫人」到「醫國」呢

An efficient synthesis of 1,2,4-oxathiazoles from N-acylthiourea derivatives

216-21

Tuning the Photocycle Kinetics of Bacteriorhodopsin in Lipid Nanodiscs

AbstractMonodisperse lipid nanodiscs are particularly suitable for characterizing membrane protein in near-native environment. To study the lipid-composition dependence of photocycle kinetics of bacteriorhodopsin (bR), transient absorption spectroscopy was utilized to monitor the evolution of the photocycle intermediates of bR reconstituted in nanodiscs composed of different ratios of the zwitterionic lipid (DMPC, dimyristoyl phosphatidylcholine; DOPC, dioleoyl phosphatidylcholine) to the negatively charged lipid (DOPG, dioleoyl phosphatidylglycerol; DMPG, dimyristoyl phosphatidylglycerol). The characterization of ion-exchange chromatography showed that the negative surface charge of nanodiscs increased as the content of DOPG or DMPG was increased. The steady-state absorption contours of the light-adapted monomeric bR in nanodiscs composed of different lipid ratios exhibited highly similar absorption features of the retinal moiety at 560 nm, referring to the conservation of the tertiary structure of bR in nanodiscs of different lipid compositions. In addition, transient absorption contours showed that the photocycle kinetics of bR was significantly retarded and the transient populations of intermediates N and O were decreased as the content of DMPG or DOPG was reduced. This observation could be attributed to the negatively charged lipid heads of DMPG and DOPG, exhibiting similar proton relay capability as the native phosphatidylglycerol (PG) analog lipids in the purple membrane. In this work, we not only demonstrated the usefulness of nanodiscs as a membrane-mimicking system, but also showed that the surrounding lipids play a crucial role in altering the biological functions, e.g., the ion translocation kinetics of the transmembrane proteins