154 research outputs found
A Fast Learning Method for Multilayer Perceptrons in Automatic Speech Recognition Systems
We propose a fast learning method for multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) on large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) tasks. A preadjusting strategy based on separation of training data and dynamic learning-rate with a cosine function is used to increase the accuracy of a stochastic initial MLP. Weight matrices of the preadjusted MLP are restructured by a method based on singular value decomposition (SVD), reducing the dimensionality of the MLP. A back propagation (BP) algorithm that fits the unfolded weight matrices is used to train the restructured MLP, reducing the time complexity of the learning process. Experimental results indicate that on LVCSR tasks, in comparison with the conventional learning method, this fast learning method can achieve a speedup of around 2.0 times with improvement on both the cross entropy loss and the frame accuracy. Moreover, it can achieve a speedup of approximately 3.5 times with only a little loss of the cross entropy loss and the frame accuracy. Since this method consumes less time and space than the conventional method, it is more suitable for robots which have limitations on hardware
Dual Identity and Multiple Tasks: Contemporary Chinese Party Mediaās Involvement in Political Communication
Alongside the reform and opening-up policies in China since 1978, there has been a transformation of Chinaās governmental functions and of its media system.Ā While adapting to the complex political process towards democratization, theĀ Chinese Communist Party media have further expanded their dual identity asĀ both organizational communicator and mass communicator, and are involvedĀ in Chinese political communication in a variety of ways. To improve the roleĀ of internal organizational communication, the Party media have extended theirĀ sphere of activity from traditional Internal Reference (xinwen neican ę°é»å
å) toĀ Online Public Opinion Monitoring (yuqing jiance čę
ēęµ) and Media ThinkĀ Tank Consultation (meiti zhiku åŖä½ęŗåŗ). As leaders in Chinaās market-orientedĀ media reform and tech-driven media integration, the Chinese Party media haveĀ remained dominant and privileged agents in Chinaās mass media system, andĀ active participants in social political communication in a number of ways, fromĀ traditional policy publicity, to media supervision and timely external opinionĀ guiding
Dynamically Mitigating Data Discrepancy with Balanced Focal Loss for Replay Attack Detection
It becomes urgent to design effective anti-spoofing algorithms for vulnerable
automatic speaker verification systems due to the advancement of high-quality
playback devices. Current studies mainly treat anti-spoofing as a binary
classification problem between bonafide and spoofed utterances, while lack of
indistinguishable samples makes it difficult to train a robust spoofing
detector. In this paper, we argue that for anti-spoofing, it needs more
attention for indistinguishable samples over easily-classified ones in the
modeling process, to make correct discrimination a top priority. Therefore, to
mitigate the data discrepancy between training and inference, we propose to
leverage a balanced focal loss function as the training objective to
dynamically scale the loss based on the traits of the sample itself. Besides,
in the experiments, we select three kinds of features that contain both
magnitude-based and phase-based information to form complementary and
informative features. Experimental results on the ASVspoof2019 dataset
demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods by comparison between our
systems and top-performing ones. Systems trained with the balanced focal loss
perform significantly better than conventional cross-entropy loss. With
complementary features, our fusion system with only three kinds of features
outperforms other systems containing five or more complex single models by
22.5% for min-tDCF and 7% for EER, achieving a min-tDCF and an EER of 0.0124
and 0.55% respectively. Furthermore, we present and discuss the evaluation
results on real replay data apart from the simulated ASVspoof2019 data,
indicating that research for anti-spoofing still has a long way to go.Comment: This work has been accepted by the 25th International Conference on
Pattern Recognition (ICPR2020
Long Short-Term Memory Projection Recurrent Neural Network Architectures for Pianoās Continuous Note Recognition
Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is a kind of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) relating to time series, which has achieved good performance in speech recogniton and image recognition. Long Short-Term Memory Projection (LSTMP) is a variant of LSTM to further optimize speed and performance of LSTM by adding a projection layer. As LSTM and LSTMP have performed well in pattern recognition, in this paper, we combine them with Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) to study pianoās continuous note recognition for robotics. Based on the Beijing Forestry University music library, we conduct experiments to show recognition rates and numbers of iterations of LSTM with a single layer, LSTMP with a single layer, and Deep LSTM (DLSTM, LSTM with multilayers). As a result, the single layer LSTMP proves performing much better than the single layer LSTM in both time and the recognition rate; that is, LSTMP has fewer parameters and therefore reduces the training time, and, moreover, benefiting from the projection layer, LSTMP has better performance, too. The best recognition rate of LSTMP is 99.8%. As for DLSTM, the recognition rate can reach 100% because of the effectiveness of the deep structure, but compared with the single layer LSTMP, DLSTM needs more training time
Assessing How the Aluminum-Resistance Traits in Wheat and Rye Transfer to Hexaploid and Octoploid Triticale
The mechanisms of aluminum (Al) resistance in wheat and rye involve the release of citrate and malate anions from the root apices. Many of the genes controlling these processes have been identified and their responses to Al treatment described in detail. This study investigated how the major Al resistance traits of wheat and rye are transferred to triticale (x Tritosecale Wittmack) which is a hybrid between wheat and rye. We generated octoploid and hexaploid triticale lines and compared them with the parental lines for their relative resistance to Al, organic anion efflux and expression of some of the genes encoding the transporters involved. We report that the strong Al resistance of rye was incompletely transferred to octoploid and hexaploid triticale. The wheat and rye parents contributed to the Al-resistance of octoploid triticale but the phenotypes were not additive. The Al resistance genes of hexaploid wheat, TaALMT1, and TaMATE1B, were more successfully expressed in octoploid triticale than the Al resistance genes in rye tested, ScALMT1 and ScFRDL2. This study demonstrates that an important stress-tolerance trait derived from hexaploid wheat was expressed in octoploid triticale. Since most commercial triticale lines are largely hexaploid types it would be beneficial to develop techniques to generate genetically-stable octoploid triticale material. This would enable other useful traits that are present in hexaploid but not tetraploid wheat, to be transferred to triticale
The prebiotic effects of oats on blood lipids, gut microbiota, and short-chain fatty acids in mildly hypercholesterolemic subjects compared with rice: a randomized, controlled trial
20openInternationalInternational coauthor/editorPhytochemicals derived from oats are reported to possess a beneficial effect on modulating dyslipidemia, specifically on lowering total and LDL cholesterol. However, deeper insights into its mechanism remain unclear. In this randomized controlled study, we assigned 210 mildly hypercholesterolemic subjects from three study centers across China (Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai) to consume 80 g of oats or rice daily for 45 days. Plasma lipid profiles, short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), and fecal microbiota were measured. The results showed that total cholesterol (TC) and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) decreased significantly with both oats and rice intake after 30 and 45 days. The reduction in TC and non-HDL-C was greater in the participants consuming oats compared with rice at day 45 (p = 0.011 and 0.049, respectively). Oat consumption significantly increased the abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila and Roseburia, and the relative abundance of Dialister, Butyrivibrio, and Paraprevotella, and decreased unclassified f-Sutterellaceae. In the oat group, Bifidobacterium abundance was negatively correlated with LDL-C (p = 0.01, r = ā0.31) and, TC and LDL-C were negatively correlated to Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (p = 0.02, r = ā0.29; p = 0.03, r = ā0.27, respectively). Enterobacteriaceae, Roseburia, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii were positively correlated with plasma butyric acid and valeric acid concentrations and negatively correlated to isobutyric acid. HDL-C was negatively correlated with valeric acid (p = 0.02, r = ā0.25) and total triglyceride (TG) was positively correlated to isovaleric acid (p = 0.03, r = 0.23). Taken together, oats consumption significantly reduced TC and LDL-C, and also mediated a prebiotic effect on gut microbiome. Akkermansia muciniphila, Roseburia, Bifidobacterium, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and plasma SCFA correlated with oat-induced changes in plasma lipids, suggesting prebiotic activity of oats to modulate gut microbiome could contribute towards its cholesterol-lowering effect.openXu, Dengfeng; Feng, Meiyuan; Chu, YiFang; Wang, Shaokang; Shete, Varsha; Tuohy, Kieran M; Liu, Feng; Zhou, Xirui; Kamil, Alison; Pan, Da; Liu, Hechun; Yang, Xian; Yang, Chao; Zhu, Baoli; Lv, Na; Xiong, Qian; Wang, Xin; Sun, Jianqin; Sun, Guiju; Yang, YuexinXu, D.; Feng, M.; Chu, Y.; Wang, S.; Shete, V.; Tuohy, K.M.; Liu, F.; Zhou, X.; Kamil, A.; Pan, D.; Liu, H.; Yang, X.; Yang, C.; Zhu, B.; Lv, N.; Xiong, Q.; Wang, X.; Sun, J.; Sun, G.; Yang, Y
Empagliflozin alleviates atherosclerotic calcification by inhibiting osteogenic differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells
SGLT-2 inhibitors, such as empagliflozin, have been shown to reduce the occurrence of cardiovascular events and delay the progression of atherosclerosis. However, its role in atherosclerotic calcification remains unclear. In this research, ApoEā/ā mice were fed with western diet and empagliflozin was added to the drinking water for 24Ā weeks. Empagliflozin treatment significantly alleviated arterial calcification assessed by alizarin red and von kossa staining in aortic roots and reduced the lipid levels, while had little effect on body weight and blood glucose levels in ApoEā/ā mice. In vitro studies, empagliflozin significantly inhibits calcification of primary vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and aortic rings induced by osteogenic media (OM) or inorganic phosphorus (Pi). RNA sequencing of VSMCs cultured in OM with or without empagliflozin showed that empagliflozin negatively regulated the osteogenic differentiation of VSMCs. And further studies confirmed that empagliflozin significantly inhibited osteogenic differentiation of VSMCs via qRT-PCR. Our study demonstrates that empagliflozin alleviates atherosclerotic calcification by inhibiting osteogenic differentiation of VSMCs, which addressed a critical need for the discovery of a drug-based therapeutic approach in the treatment of atherosclerotic calcification
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