Improved Training of Excitation for HMM-based Parametric Speech Synthesis

INTERSPEECH2010: 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, September 26-30, 2010, Chiba, Japan.This paper presents an improved method of training for the unvoiced filter that comprises an excitation model, within the framework of parametric speech synthesis based on hidden Markov models. The conventional approach calculates the unvoiced filter response from the differential signal of the residual and voiced excitation estimate. The differential signal, however, includes the error generated by the voiced excitation estimates. Contaminated by the error, the unvoiced filter tends to be overestimated, which causes the synthetic speech to be noisy. In order for unvoiced filter training to obtain targets that are free from the contamination, the improved approach first separates the non-periodic component of residual signal from the periodic component. The unvoiced filter is then trained from the non-periodic component signals. Experimental results show that unvoiced filter responses trained with the new approach are clearly noiseless, in contrast to the responses trained with the conventional approach

Acute Onset Collagenous Colitis with Unique Endoscopic Findings

We experienced a rare case of 72-year-old woman with acute onset collagenous colitis (CC) induced by lansoprazole. The patient developed acute abdominal pain, watery diarrhea, and melena that are quite rare in usual CC. We could find the characteristic colonoscopic findings such as active long liner ulcers in the patient. We also observed the healing courses of these unique findings. Our case indicates two important points of view. (1) CC sometimes develops with acute onset symptoms which resemble those of ischemic colitis. (2) Colonoscopy would be useful and necessary to distinguish acute onset CC and ischemic colitis

Two Cases of Diffuse Duodenitis Associated with Ulcerative Colitis

The upper gastrointestinal tract is not generally considered a target organ in ulcerative colitis (UC). However, several cases showing upper gastrointestinal involvement in UC have been reported. In this report, we present 2 rare cases of diffuse duodenitis accompanying pancolonic UC. Case patient 1 was a 44-year-old man who developed diffuse duodenitis shortly after colectomy and was successfully treated with mesalazine. Case patient 2 was a 25-year-old woman who developed diffuse duodenitis under a steroid-free condition and was successfully treated with prednisolone. The 2 patients had Helicobacter pylori-negative duodenitis that resembled colonic lesions of UC in both the endoscopic and histological findings. No evidence of Crohn’s disease was found in these cases. We diagnosed both cases as typical UC-associated diffuse duodenitis. The occurrence of gastrointestinal involvement in UC has been attracting attention because such lesions could potentially open a new window for studying the etiology and pathogenesis of UC. Further studies involving a large number of patients are needed to clarify whether the upper gastrointestinal tract is a target organ in UC