Vid2speech: Speech Reconstruction from Silent Video

Speechreading is a notoriously difficult task for humans to perform. In this paper we present an end-to-end model based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) for generating an intelligible acoustic speech signal from silent video frames of a speaking person. The proposed CNN generates sound features for each frame based on its neighboring frames. Waveforms are then synthesized from the learned speech features to produce intelligible speech. We show that by leveraging the automatic feature learning capabilities of a CNN, we can obtain state-of-the-art word intelligibility on the GRID dataset, and show promising results for learning out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words.Comment: Accepted for publication at ICASSP 201

From wayfaring elites to local associations: Sufis in Medieval Palestine

This article is part of a comprehensive study of the Sufis of medieval Palestine. At its heart resides the birth of locally embedded Sufi-inspired associations in this historical framework in the course of the Earlier Middle Period (late tenth to mid-­­­­thirteenth centuries). Drawing on the profiles of renowned Sufi traditionalists and legalists living in the Palestine of the time, the article highlights the assimilation of Sufis into the scholarly circles of the religiously learned, the ‘ulama’, and the social order. It outlines how they perceived their role and place in society and disseminated the truth of Islam, and how, parallel with their integration into the world of the ‘ulama’ of the established legal schools (the madhhabs), they developed their own inner life and organizational forms and devised their own ways of integrating into the fabric of social and communal life. The early development of a coherent local Sufi congregation around the Sufi guide out of the loosely knit and dispersed circle of disciples is closely tied to the change in the concept of guidance for advancement along the Path and the change in the relationship between master and disciple.Este artículo es parte de un estudio de conjunto sobre los sufíes de la Palestina medieval. Se centra en el surgimiento de asociaciones de inspiración sufí en contextos locales de ese ámbito geográfico durante el primer periodo medieval (desde finales del s. X hasta la mitad del s. XIII). A partir de las biografías de tradicionistas y juristas sufíes famosos que vivieron en la Palestina de la época, se pone de relieve la integración de los sufíes en los círculos de los especialistas del saber religioso (los ulemas), así como en el orden social. Se analiza también cómo percibían su lugar en la sociedad y el papel que en ella debían jugar, cómo difundían la verdad del Islam y cómo, paralelamente a su integración en el mundo de los ulemas de las escuelas legales establecidas (los madhabs), desarrollaron formas de vida interna y organizativas específicas, y perfilaron modos de integrarse en la vida social y comunal. El temprano desarrollo de una congregación sufí local coherente en torno a un guía sufí –más allá del círculo disperso y fragmentado de sus discípulos– está estrechamente vinculado al concepto de guía para avanzar a lo largo del Camino y a cambios en la relación entre maestro y discípulo

Seeing Through Noise: Visually Driven Speaker Separation and Enhancement

Isolating the voice of a specific person while filtering out other voices or background noises is challenging when video is shot in noisy environments. We propose audio-visual methods to isolate the voice of a single speaker and eliminate unrelated sounds. First, face motions captured in the video are used to estimate the speaker's voice, by passing the silent video frames through a video-to-speech neural network-based model. Then the speech predictions are applied as a filter on the noisy input audio. This approach avoids using mixtures of sounds in the learning process, as the number of such possible mixtures is huge, and would inevitably bias the trained model. We evaluate our method on two audio-visual datasets, GRID and TCD-TIMIT, and show that our method attains significant SDR and PESQ improvements over the raw video-to-speech predictions, and a well-known audio-only method.Comment: Supplementary video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmsyj7vAzo

The relationship between figure and background: Towards a new theory of a social prism for analyzing the mechanisms of art in therapy

‘Art helps take down barriers, in that the use of the imagination is the ability to put oneself in another’s place...in this sense, art is moral, because empathy is the ultimate morality’ (Dewey, 1934. p.10).Social theories are different from the psychological dynamic and humanistic theories much used in art therapy: Compared to psychological theories that assume that the problem is within the individual psyche, social theories assume that the problem is situated within the social systems that surround the individual, such as the ecological circles of family, community and state, or global systems of power. On a broader social level, then marginalized roles or positions create a lack of physical, symbolic, social, or other types of resources for solving problems (Minuchen, 1975; Gladding, 2002). The solution is to shift the roles within the system and to re-distribute resources. Marginalization stems from social and economic policies that create systematic discrimination and deprivation based on race, ethnicity, religion, or gender; and exacerbated by processes of immigration, war, and political instability, as well as general social disorganization and conflicting values within the social system (Foucault, 2000). The theory of empowerment assumes that all relationships are power infused, and that the ecological layers that comprise the socio-cultural context of the client’s reality can include different types of disempowerment and marginalization such as a racial, gendered, or ethnic lack of power (Patterson et al, 2009; Piercy et al, 1996)

The biomechanics of knees at high flexion angles before and after Total Knee Arthroplasty

Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-234).Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) was initially developed to alleviate pain in the case of severe arthritis of the knee. Restoration of knee motion has been an on going issue for the last decade. Contemporary TKAs appear to provide good knee function in the range of zero to 120⁰ of flexion for most patients. However, many patients rarely can flex tier knees beyond 120⁰ after TKA. Limited information is available regarding the biomechanics of the knee beyond 120⁰ of flexion. Little is known about the biomechanical function of the posterior cruciate ligament in cruciate retaining TKA designs and the interaction of the cam-spine mechanism in posterior-stabilized TKA designs at flexion angles greater than 120⁰. The role of soft tissue constraint at high flexion angles has not yet been explored. The objective of this work was to investigate the biomechanics of the knee at high flexion angles before and after TKA. An in vitro experimental robotic set-up was used to measure six degrees-of-freedom kinematics and soft tissue kinetics of the intact knee. Contemporary TKA designs were then tested on the same specimen using this system to examine the limitations of currently available components to achieve high knee flexion. Both passive and muscle load kinematics were examined. Femoral translation and tibial rotation of the reconstructed knees were compared with that of the intact knees from full extension to 150⁰ of flexion. The study showed that in the intact knee, the amount of posterior femoral translation increased with increasing flexion angles on the passive path and under simulated muscle loads. Similar trend was noted for all TKAs. Yet, after any TKA, the knee exhibited a reduction in posterior femoral translation relative to the intact knee. The(cont.) posterior cruciate ligament in all knees carried lower load at high flexion as compared to the peak load it carried at mid knee flexion. The engagement of the femoral cam with the polyethylene spine in a posterior-stabilized TKA was correlated with an increasing posterior femoral translation. The function of the menisci was not simulated by any of the TKAs. In all knees, the compression of the posterior soft tissue at high knee flexion was correlated with an increase of posterior femoral translation. It is proposed that posterior femoral translation and internal tibial rotation ate high knee flexion are necessary but not sufficient features in achieving high knee flexion. Factors such as posterior soft tissue compression and contact mechanics should be considered.by Ephrat Most.Sc.D

Perceived exploitative employee-organisation relationships: a multi-study investigation of a new construct

The employee-organisation relationship (EOR) has received considerable attention in the organisational behaviour literature. This line of research has heavily emphasised positive relationships, or has examined negative events within an overall positive or neutral relationship. Influenced by the tenets of social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), this strand of research assumes that positive and negative relationships are mirror opposites, rather than discrete forms of interaction. In an attempt to expand negative EOR research, this thesis focuses on exploitation, which has been under-researched in the organisational behaviour literature. This thesis presents a multi-study investigation of a new construct termed perceived exploitative employee-organisation relationships (PERs), employing five independent samples. First, a new measure was developed and evaluated using four samples. PERs were found to be distinct from related constructs, explaining additional variance in negative emotions above and beyond other established constructs. The new scale was then used to examine a hypothesised model of the antecedents and outcomes of such exploitative relationships in a longitudinal study of medical doctors in training. Findings indicate that an effort-reward imbalance which favours the organisation is a pre-condition for the development of PERs, supporting the distributive nature of this phenomenon. Contrary to expectations, however, abusive supervision was not found to predict exploitation perceptions among employees. PERs predicted several attitudinal and behavioural outcomes, and this relationship was partially mediated by the emotions of anger, hostility, shame and guilt. The findings appear to support a thesis of negative asymmetric relationships viewing negative and positive relationships as discrete phenomena that develop differently and have divergent impact on outcomes. The contributions and implications of this thesis as well as suggestions for future research are discussed