A Unified Compression Framework for Efficient Speech-Driven Talking-Face Generation

Virtual humans have gained considerable attention in numerous industries, e.g., entertainment and e-commerce. As a core technology, synthesizing photorealistic face frames from target speech and facial identity has been actively studied with generative adversarial networks. Despite remarkable results of modern talking-face generation models, they often entail high computational burdens, which limit their efficient deployment. This study aims to develop a lightweight model for speech-driven talking-face synthesis. We build a compact generator by removing the residual blocks and reducing the channel width from Wav2Lip, a popular talking-face generator. We also present a knowledge distillation scheme to stably yet effectively train the small-capacity generator without adversarial learning. We reduce the number of parameters and MACs by 28$\times$ while retaining the performance of the original model. Moreover, to alleviate a severe performance drop when converting the whole generator to INT8 precision, we adopt a selective quantization method that uses FP16 for the quantization-sensitive layers and INT8 for the other layers. Using this mixed precision, we achieve up to a 19$\times$ speedup on edge GPUs without noticeably compromising the generation quality.Comment: MLSys Workshop on On-Device Intelligence, 2023; Demo: https://huggingface.co/spaces/nota-ai/compressed_wav2li

The mosaic genome of indigenous African cattle as a unique genetic resource for African pastoralism

© 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc. Cattle pastoralism plays a central role in human livelihood in Africa. However, the genetic history of its success remains unknown. Here, through whole-genome sequence analysis of 172 indigenous African cattle from 16 breeds representative of the main cattle groups, we identify a major taurine × indicine cattle admixture event dated to circa 750–1,050 yr ago, which has shaped the genome of today’s cattle in the Horn of Africa. We identify 16 loci linked to African environmental adaptations across crossbred animals showing an excess of taurine or indicine ancestry. These include immune-, heat-tolerance- and reproduction-related genes. Moreover, we identify one highly divergent locus in African taurine cattle, which is putatively linked to trypanotolerance and present in crossbred cattle living in trypanosomosis-infested areas. Our findings indicate that a combination of past taurine and recent indicine admixture-derived genetic resources is at the root of the present success of African pastoralism

Pengaruh Kualitas Produk, Harga, Dan Saluran Distribusi Terhadap Loyalitas Pelanggan Majalah Swa Melalui Variabel Kepuasan Pelanggan (Studi Kasus Pada Pelanggan Majalah Swa Di DKI Jakarta)

Customer loyalty is a goal that has to be achieved by a company. To be able to get loyal customers, SWA magazine needs to pay attention on the factors that influence customers\u27 loyalty. Moreover, business and economy themed magazines are mushrooming, leading to the opportunity for the readers to move from one magazine to another.This research aimed to ascertain the effect of product quality, price, and distribution channel on customer loyalty of SWA magazine in Jakarta through customer satisfaction variable both simultaneously and partially. The hypothesis was there was an effect of product quality, price, and distribution channel on customer loyalty of SWA magazine in Jakarta through customer satisfaction variable both simultaneously and partially. The type of this research was explanatory research with 97 respondents with multi stage sampling technique through questionnaire and interview. The data was analyzed using linear regression method with the assistance of SPSS 16.0.The result of this research showed that product quality, price and distribution channel variables had significant and positive effect partially on customer satisfaction. Product quality variable did not have partially significant effect on customer loyalty. Price and distribution channel variables had partially significant and positive effect on customer loyalty. Product quality and price variables had simultaneously positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction while distribution channel had simultaneously negative effect on customer satisfaction. Simultaneously, product quality, price, and distribution channel variables had positive effect and not significant effect on customer loyalty. Partially, customer satisfaction had positive and significant effect on customer loyalty.Based on the result of this research, a conclusion was drawn that customers\u27 perception on product quality, price, and distribution channel was good. Customers\u27 satisfaction and loyalty of SWA magazine were also good. The company was suggested to improving the product quality, adjusting the price and boosting the distribution channel of SWA magazine in accordance with customers\u27 needs and expectation, so that, customers can feel the satisfaction and decided to be loyal customers

The genome landscape of indigenous African cattle

Background: The history of African indigenous cattle and their adaptation to environmental and human selection pressure is at the root of their remarkable diversity. Characterization of this diversity is an essential step towards understanding the genomic basis of productivity and adaptation to survival under African farming systems. Results: We analyze patterns of African cattle genetic variation by sequencing 48 genomes from five indigenous populations and comparing them to the genomes of 53 commercial taurine breeds. We find the highest genetic diversity among African zebu and sanga cattle. Our search for genomic regions under selection reveals signatures of selection for environmental adaptive traits. In particular, we identify signatures of selection including genes and/ or pathways controlling anemia and feeding behavior in the trypanotolerant N’Dama, coat color and horn development in Ankole, and heat tolerance and tick resistance across African cattle especially in zebu breeds. Conclusions: Our findings unravel at the genome-wide level, the unique adaptive diversity of African cattle while emphasizing the opportunities for sustainable improvement of livestock productivity on the continent

Multi-ethnic genome-wide association study for atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) affects more than 33 million individuals worldwide and has a complex heritability. We conducted the largest meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for AF to date, consisting of more than half a million individuals, including 65,446 with AF. In total, we identified 97 loci significantly associated with AF, including 67 that were novel in a combined-ancestry analysis, and 3 that were novel in a European-specific analysis. We sought to identify AF-associated genes at the GWAS loci by performing RNA-sequencing and expression quantitative trait locus analyses in 101 left atrial samples, the most relevant tissue for AF. We also performed transcriptome-wide analyses that identified 57 AF-associated genes, 42 of which overlap with GWAS loci. The identified loci implicate genes enriched within cardiac developmental, electrophysiological, contractile and structural pathways. These results extend our understanding of the biological pathways underlying AF and may facilitate the development of therapeutics for AF

Cattle genome-wide analysis reveals genetic signatures in trypanotolerant N'Dama

Abstract Background Indigenous cattle in Africa have adapted to various local environments to acquire superior phenotypes that enhance their survival under harsh conditions. While many studies investigated the adaptation of overall African cattle, genetic characteristics of each breed have been poorly studied. Results We performed the comparative genome-wide analysis to assess evidence for subspeciation within species at the genetic level in trypanotolerant N’Dama cattle. We analysed genetic variation patterns in N’Dama from the genomes of 101 cattle breeds including 48 samples of five indigenous African cattle breeds and 53 samples of various commercial breeds. Analysis of SNP variances between cattle breeds using wMI, XP-CLR, and XP-EHH detected genes containing N’Dama-specific genetic variants and their potential associations. Functional annotation analysis revealed that these genes are associated with ossification, neurological and immune system. Particularly, the genes involved in bone formation indicate that local adaptation of N’Dama may engage in skeletal growth as well as immune systems. Conclusions Our results imply that N’Dama might have acquired distinct genotypes associated with growth and regulation of regional diseases including trypanosomiasis. Moreover, this study offers significant insights into identifying genetic signatures for natural and artificial selection of diverse African cattle breeds

Application of a Deep Neural Network to Phase Retrieval in Inverse Medium Scattering Problems

We address the inverse medium scattering problem with phaseless data motivated by nondestructive testing for optical fibers. As the phase information of the data is unknown, this problem may be regarded as a standard phase retrieval problem that consists of identifying the phase from the amplitude of data and the structure of the related operator. This problem has been studied intensively due to its wide applications in physics and engineering. However, the uniqueness of the inverse problem with phaseless data is still open and the problem itself is severely ill-posed. In this work, we construct a model to approximate the solution operator in finite-dimensional spaces by a deep neural network assuming that the refractive index is radially symmetric. We are then able to recover the refractive index from the phaseless data. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model