989 research outputs found
Skyline Chili: A Case for Small Business Growth and Management
Skyline Chili produces the secret-recipe chili for its restaurants and several frozen chili products for local grocery stores in Cincinnati, Ohio and other areas. An interview with Mr. Kevin McDonnell, new CEO of Skyline Chili in the case discusses the past, present, and future of the company. Can the company sustain its growth and competitiveness in the 1990s? If so, what can you recommend for the company
A Generative Model For Zero Shot Learning Using Conditional Variational Autoencoders
Zero shot learning in Image Classification refers to the setting where images
from some novel classes are absent in the training data but other information
such as natural language descriptions or attribute vectors of the classes are
available. This setting is important in the real world since one may not be
able to obtain images of all the possible classes at training. While previous
approaches have tried to model the relationship between the class attribute
space and the image space via some kind of a transfer function in order to
model the image space correspondingly to an unseen class, we take a different
approach and try to generate the samples from the given attributes, using a
conditional variational autoencoder, and use the generated samples for
classification of the unseen classes. By extensive testing on four benchmark
datasets, we show that our model outperforms the state of the art, particularly
in the more realistic generalized setting, where the training classes can also
appear at the test time along with the novel classes
Spoof detection using time-delay shallow neural network and feature switching
Detecting spoofed utterances is a fundamental problem in voice-based
biometrics. Spoofing can be performed either by logical accesses like speech
synthesis, voice conversion or by physical accesses such as replaying the
pre-recorded utterance. Inspired by the state-of-the-art \emph{x}-vector based
speaker verification approach, this paper proposes a time-delay shallow neural
network (TD-SNN) for spoof detection for both logical and physical access. The
novelty of the proposed TD-SNN system vis-a-vis conventional DNN systems is
that it can handle variable length utterances during testing. Performance of
the proposed TD-SNN systems and the baseline Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) is
analyzed on the ASV-spoof-2019 dataset. The performance of the systems is
measured in terms of the minimum normalized tandem detection cost function
(min-t-DCF). When studied with individual features, the TD-SNN system
consistently outperforms the GMM system for physical access. For logical
access, GMM surpasses TD-SNN systems for certain individual features. When
combined with the decision-level feature switching (DLFS) paradigm, the best
TD-SNN system outperforms the best baseline GMM system on evaluation data with
a relative improvement of 48.03\% and 49.47\% for both logical and physical
access, respectively
Light scattering from a magnetically tunable dense random medium with weak dissipation : ferrofluid
We present a semi-phenomenological treatment of light transmission through
and its reflection from a ferrofluid, which we regard as a magnetically tunable
system of dense random dielectric scatterers with weak dissipation. Partial
spatial ordering is introduced by the application of a transverse magnetic
field that superimposes a periodic modulation on the dielectric randomess. This
introduces Bragg scattering which effectively enhances the scattering due to
disorder alone, and thus reduces the elastic mean free path towards Anderson
localization. Our theoretical treatment, based on invariant imbedding, gives a
simultaneous decrease of transmission and reflection without change of incident
linear polarisation as the spatial order is tuned magnetically to the Bragg
condition, namely the light wave vector being equal to half the Bragg vector
(Q). Our experimental observations are in qualitative agreement with these
results. We have also given expressions for the transit (sojourn) time of light
and for the light energy stored in the random medium under steady illumination.
The ferrofluid thus provides an interesting physical realization of effectively
a "Lossy Anderson-Bragg" (LAB) cavity with which to study the effect of the
interplay of spatial disorder, partial order and weak dissipation on light
transport. Given the current interest in propagation, optical limiting and
storage of light in ferrofluids, the present work seems topical
Generic Indic Text-to-speech Synthesisers with Rapid Adaptation in an End-to-end Framework
Building text-to-speech (TTS) synthesisers for Indian languages is a
difficult task owing to a large number of active languages. Indian languages
can be classified into a finite set of families, prominent among them,
Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. The proposed work exploits this property to build a
generic TTS system using multiple languages from the same family in an
end-to-end framework. Generic systems are quite robust as they are capable of
capturing a variety of phonotactics across languages. These systems are then
adapted to a new language in the same family using small amounts of adaptation
data. Experiments indicate that good quality TTS systems can be built using
only 7 minutes of adaptation data. An average degradation mean opinion score of
3.98 is obtained for the adapted TTSes.
Extensive analysis of systematic interactions between languages in the
generic TTSes is carried out. x-vectors are included as speaker embedding to
synthesise text in a particular speaker's voice. An interesting observation is
that the prosody of the target speaker's voice is preserved. These results are
quite promising as they indicate the capability of generic TTSes to handle
speaker and language switching seamlessly, along with the ease of adaptation to
a new language
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