Vision-based Detection of Acoustic Timed Events: a Case Study on Clarinet Note Onsets

Acoustic events often have a visual counterpart. Knowledge of visual information can aid the understanding of complex auditory scenes, even when only a stereo mixdown is available in the audio domain, \eg identifying which musicians are playing in large musical ensembles. In this paper, we consider a vision-based approach to note onset detection. As a case study we focus on challenging, real-world clarinetist videos and carry out preliminary experiments on a 3D convolutional neural network based on multiple streams and purposely avoiding temporal pooling. We release an audiovisual dataset with 4.5 hours of clarinetist videos together with cleaned annotations which include about 36,000 onsets and the coordinates for a number of salient points and regions of interest. By performing several training trials on our dataset, we learned that the problem is challenging. We found that the CNN model is highly sensitive to the optimization algorithm and hyper-parameters, and that treating the problem as binary classification may prevent the joint optimization of precision and recall. To encourage further research, we publicly share our dataset, annotations and all models and detail which issues we came across during our preliminary experiments.Comment: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Deep Learning and Music, Anchorage, US, May, 2017 (arXiv:1706.08675v1 [cs.NE]

The Neecham Confusion Scale and the Delirium Observation Screening Scale: Capacity to discriminate and ease of use in clinical practice

BACKGROUND: Delirium is a frequent form of psychopathology in elderly hospitalized patients; it is a symptom of acute somatic illness. The consequences of delirium include high morbidity and mortality, lengthened hospital stay, and nursing home placement. Early recognition of delirium symptoms enables the underlying cause to be diagnosed and treated and can prevent negative outcomes. The aim of this study was to determine which of the two delirium observation screening scales, the NEECHAM Confusion Scale or the Delirium Observation Screening (DOS) scale, has the best discriminative capacity for diagnosing delirium and which is more practical for daily use by nurses. METHODS: The project was conducted on four wards of a university hospital; 87 patients were included. During 3 shifts, these patients were observed for symptoms of delirium, which were rated on both scales. A DSM-IV diagnosis of delirium was made or rejected by a geriatrician. Nurses were asked to rate the practical value of both scales using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS: The sensitivity (0.89 – 1.00) and specificity (0.86 – 0.88) of the DOS and the NEECHAM were high for both scales. Nurses rated the practical use of the DOS scale as significantly easier than the NEECHAM. CONCLUSION: Successful implementation of standardized observation depends largely on the consent of professionals and their acceptance of a scale. In our hospital, we therefore chose to involve nurses in the choice between two instruments. During the study they were able to experience both scales and give their opinion on ease of use. In the final decision on the instrument we found that both scales were very acceptable in terms of sensitivity and specificity, so the opinion of the nurses was decisive. They were positive about both instruments; however, they rated the DOS scale as significantly easier to use and relevant to their practice. Our findings were obtained from a single site study with a small sample, so a large comparative trial to study the value of both scales further is recommended. On the basis of our experience during this study and findings from the literature with regard to the implementation of delirium guidelines, we will monitor the further implementation of the DOS Scale in our hospital with intensive consultation

Potential advantages in heat and power production when biogas is collected from several digesters using dedicated pipelines - A case study in the "Province of West-Flanders" (Belgium)

In the case study “West-Flanders” costs of electricity and heat production are estimated if a dedicated biogas grid using pipelines would be implemented to centralize energy production in a region. Heat may not be used effectively at digester sites, e.g. because of a change in treatment of digestate. A large scale centralized combined heat and power (CHP) engine can produce additional electrical power at a hub, i.e. central collection point, and has lower specific costs compared to decentralized CHPs at digester sites. A biogas transport model is used to calculate transport costs in a grid. These costs, partly balanced by a scale advantage in CHP costs, are attributed to the additional electrical energy (80%) and heat (20%) produced. If the hub is at a digester site, costs of additional electricity can be as low as 4.0 €ct kWhe−1 and are in many cases below 12 €ct kWhe−1, i.e. in the same order of magnitude or lower than costs of electricity from biogas produced using separate CHPs at the different digester sites; costs of heat at the hub show to be lower than 1 €ct kWhth−1 assuming an effective heat use of 50%. In case a hub is situated at a location with high potential heat demand, i.e. a heat sink, transport of biogas from one digester only to a central located hub can provide 3.4 MWth of heat at 1.95 €ct kWhth−1. For such a centrally located hub additional electrical energy costs show to be slightly higher, but with three or more digesters these costs are lower than 20 €ct kWhe−1 and heat costs are around 0.5 €ct kWhth−1. With a centralized hub more renewable energy is produced, i.e. a more efficient use of biomass feedstock. It is concluded that costs for additional electricity and heat can be at a competing level and scale advantages in a CHP can be a driver to collect biogas at a hub using a biogas grid