Multi-Speaker Expressive Speech Synthesis via Semi-supervised Contrastive Learning

This paper aims to build an expressive TTS system for multi-speakers, synthesizing a target speaker's speech with multiple styles and emotions. To this end, we propose a novel contrastive learning-based TTS approach to transfer style and emotion across speakers. Specifically, we construct positive-negative sample pairs at both utterance and category (such as emotion-happy or style-poet or speaker A) levels and leverage contrastive learning to better extract disentangled style, emotion, and speaker representations from speech. Furthermore, we introduce a semi-supervised training strategy to the proposed approach to effectively leverage multi-domain data, including style-labeled data, emotion-labeled data, and unlabeled data. We integrate the learned representations into an improved VITS model, enabling it to synthesize expressive speech with diverse styles and emotions for a target speaker. Experiments on multi-domain data demonstrate the good design of our model.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Improved resolution optical time stretch imaging based on high efficiency in-fiber diffraction

Most overlooked challenges in ultrafast optical time stretch imaging (OTSI) are sacrificed spatial resolution and higher optical loss. These challenges are originated from optical diffraction devices used in OTSI, which encode image into spectra of ultrashort optical pulses. Conventional free-space diffraction gratings, as widely used in existing OTSI systems, suffer from several inherent drawbacks: limited diffraction efficiency in a non-Littrow configuration due to inherent zeroth-order reflection, high coupling loss between free-space gratings and optical fibers, bulky footprint, and more importantly, sacrificed imaging resolution due to non-full-aperture illumination for individual wavelengths. Here we report resolution-improved and diffraction-efficient OTSI using in-fiber diffraction for the first time to our knowledge. The key to overcome the existing challenges is a 45° tilted fiber grating (TFG), which serves as a compact in-fiber diffraction device offering improved diffraction efficiency (up to 97%), inherent compatibility with optical fibers, and improved imaging resolution owning to almost full-aperture illumination for all illumination wavelengths. 50 million frames per second imaging of fast moving object at 46 m/s with improved imaging resolution has been demonstrated. This conceptually new in-fiber diffraction design opens the way towards cost-effective, compact and high-resolution OTSI systems for image-based high-throughput detection and measurement

Recent Advances in Multi-modal 3D Scene Understanding: A Comprehensive Survey and Evaluation

Multi-modal 3D scene understanding has gained considerable attention due to its wide applications in many areas, such as autonomous driving and human-computer interaction. Compared to conventional single-modal 3D understanding, introducing an additional modality not only elevates the richness and precision of scene interpretation but also ensures a more robust and resilient understanding. This becomes especially crucial in varied and challenging environments where solely relying on 3D data might be inadequate. While there has been a surge in the development of multi-modal 3D methods over past three years, especially those integrating multi-camera images (3D+2D) and textual descriptions (3D+language), a comprehensive and in-depth review is notably absent. In this article, we present a systematic survey of recent progress to bridge this gap. We begin by briefly introducing a background that formally defines various 3D multi-modal tasks and summarizes their inherent challenges. After that, we present a novel taxonomy that delivers a thorough categorization of existing methods according to modalities and tasks, exploring their respective strengths and limitations. Furthermore, comparative results of recent approaches on several benchmark datasets, together with insightful analysis, are offered. Finally, we discuss the unresolved issues and provide several potential avenues for future research

Treatment responses in adult depressive patients treated with dexamethasone/corticotrophin-releasing hormone

Purpose: To study the dexamethasone/corticotrophin releasing hormones (DEX/CRH) in depressed and healthy patients and to analyse the occurrence of relapse connected to hormonal dysregulation.Methods: A total of 117 depressive patients between 20 and 70 years of age were included in the study group and 40 healthy patients between 25 and 60 years of age in the control group. Group I consisted of 59 patients who received sertraline 50 - 100 mg/day for 5 weeks along with a low dose of 30 mg T3. Group II included 58 patients who received dexamethasone 1 mg orally for 5 weeks. DEX/CRH levels were analyzed. Adrenocorticotrophic hormone and cortisol levels in the blood were analysed by immuno-radiometric assay. Cortisol levels were also analysed by kinetic assay method.Results: In group I, among the 59 patients that received sertraline 50-100 mg/day for 5 weeks with a low dose of 30 mg T3, relapse was observed in 12 (20.3 %) of them. The area under the curve (AUC) was 13.9 ± 6.4 ng.min.1000/mL, which was higher than that for healthy individuals (3.8 ± 3.6 ng.min.1000/mL). Group I patients with relapse showed an adrenocorticotrophic hormone AUC of 16.9 ± 2.4 ng.min.1000/mL, while group II patients exhibited AUC of 13.9 ± 6.4 ng.min.1000/mL.Conclusion: The results emphasizes the need to test hormonal responses to different types of antidepressants.Keywords: stress, depressive patients, hormonal response, hormonal dysregulation, sertraline, dexamethasone, corticotrophin releasing hormon

Identification of HSP90 gene from the Chinese oak silkworm, Antheraea pernyi

The heat shock proteins (Hsp) play an important role in protein folding and protection of cells from stress. To investigate the role of Hsp90 in silk-producing insect Antheraea pernyi (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae), a full-length cDNA encoding Hsp90 from A. pernyi was cloned, sequenced and characterized. The complete cDNA (2,482 bp) contained a 2,154 bp open reading frame encoding 717 amino acid residues and had 94.5% identity with Antheraea yamamai Hsp90. The relative expression levels of Hsp90 in five different tissues at normal and high temperatures were evaluated with real-time fluorescence quantitative RT-PCR. The expression of Hsp90 was obviously changed in the examined tissues except for fat bodies after induced by high temperature. SDS-PAGE of purified protein demonstrated that an 86 KD recombinant protein was successfully expressed in transformed Escherichia coli cells. These results shed light on studying the mechanism of tolerance in A. pernyi.Key words: Antheraea pernyi, HSP90, sequence analysis, expression

On Board Georeferencing Using FPGA-Based Optimized Second Order Polynomial Equation

For real-time monitoring of natural disasters, such as fire, volcano, flood, landslide, and coastal inundation, highly-accurate georeferenced remotely sensed imagery is needed. Georeferenced imagery can be fused with geographic spatial data sets to provide geographic coordinates and positing for regions of interest. This paper proposes an on-board georeferencing method for remotely sensed imagery, which contains five modules: input data, coordinate transformation, bilinear interpolation, and output data. The experimental results demonstrate multiple benefits of the proposed method: (1) the computation speed using the proposed algorithm is 8 times faster than that using PC computer; (2) the resources of the field programmable gate array (FPGA) can meet the requirements of design. In the coordinate transformation scheme, 250,656 LUTs, 499,268 registers, and 388 DSP48s are used. Furthermore, 27,218 LUTs, 45,823 registers, 456 RAM/FIFO, and 267 DSP48s are used in the bilinear interpolation module; (3) the values of root mean square errors (RMSEs) are less than one pixel, and the other statistics, such as maximum error, minimum error, and mean error are less than one pixel; (4) the gray values of the georeferenced image when implemented using FPGA have the same accuracy as those implemented using MATLAB and Visual studio (C++), and have a very close accuracy implemented using ENVI software; and (5) the on-chip power consumption is 0.659W. Therefore, it can be concluded that the proposed georeferencing method implemented using FPGA with second-order polynomial model and bilinear interpolation algorithm can achieve real-time geographic referencing for remotely sensed imagery

A novel method to estimate the absorption rate constant for two-compartment model fitted drugs without intravenous pharmacokinetic data

The in vivo performances of most drugs after extravascular administration are fitted well with the two-compartment pharmacokinetic (PK) model, but the estimation of absorption rate constant (ka) for these drugs becomes difficult during unavailability of intravenous PK data. Herein, we developed a novel method, called the direct method, for estimating the ka values of drugs without using intravenous PK data, by proposing a new PK parameter, namely, maximum apparent rate constant of disposition (kmax). The accuracy of the direct method in ka estimation was determined using the setting parameters (k12, k21, and k10 values at high, medium, and low levels, respectively) and clinical data. The results showed that the absolute relative error of ka estimated using the direct method was significantly lower than that obtained using both the Loo-Riegelman method and the statistical moment method for the setting parameters. Human PK studies of telmisartan, candesartan cilexetil, and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate indicated that the ka values of these drugs were accurately estimated using the direct method based on good correlations between the ka values and other PK parameters that reflected the absorption properties of drugs in vivo (Tmax, Cmax, and Cmax/AUC0-t). This novel method can be applied in situations where intravenous PK data cannot be obtained and is expected to provide valuable support for PK evaluation and in vitro-in vivo correlation establishment