HMM-Based Speech Enhancement Using Sub-Word Models and Noise Adaptation

This work proposes a method of speech enhancement that uses a network of HMMs to first decode noisy speech and to then synthesise a set of features that enables a clean speech signal to be reconstructed. Different choices of acoustic model (whole-word, monophone and triphone) and grammars (highly constrained to no constraints) are considered and the effects of introducing or relaxing acoustic and grammar constraints investigated. For robust operation in noisy conditions it is necessary for the HMMs to model noisy speech and consequently noise adaptation is investigated along with its effect on the reconstructed speech. Speech quality and intelligibility analysis find triphone models with no grammar, combined with noise adaptation, gives highest performance that outperforms conventional methods of enhancement at low signal-to-noise ratios

Audio-to-Visual Speech Conversion using Deep Neural Networks

We study the problem of mapping from acoustic to visual speech with the goal of generating accurate, perceptually natural speech animation automatically from an audio speech signal. We present a sliding window deep neural network that learns a mapping from a window of acoustic features to a window of visual features from a large audio-visual speech dataset. Overlapping visual predictions are averaged to generate continuous, smoothly varying speech animation. We outperform a baseline HMM inversion approach in both objective and subjective evaluations and perform a thorough analysis of our results

Classification of the conditionally observable spectra exhibiting central symmetry

We show how in PT-symmetric 2J-level quantum systems the assumption of an upside-down symmetry (or duality) of their spectra simplifies their classification based on the non-equivalent pairwise mergers of the energy levels.Comment: 10 pp. 3 figure

Time-Dependent Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians Defining a Unitary Quantum System and Uniqueness of the Metric Operator

The quantum measurement axiom dictates that physical observables and in particular the Hamiltonian must be diagonalizable and have a real spectrum. For a time-independent Hamiltonian (with a discrete spectrum) these conditions ensure the existence of a positive-definite inner product that renders the Hamiltonian self-adjoint. Unlike for a time-independent Hamiltonian, this does not imply the unitarity of the Schroedinger time-evolution for a general time-dependent Hamiltonian. We give an additional necessary and sufficient condition for the unitarity of time-evolution. In particular, we obtain the general form of a two-level Hamiltonian that fulfils this condition. We show that this condition is geometrical in nature and that it implies the reality of the adiabatic geometric phases. We also address the problem of the uniqueness of the metric operator.Comment: 11 pages, published versio

Inoue surfaces and the Chern-Ricci flow

We investigate the Chern-Ricci flow, an evolution equation of Hermitian metrics, on Inoue surfaces. These are non-Kahler compact complex surfaces of type Class VII. We show that, after an initial conformal change, the flow always collapses the Inoue surface to a circle at infinite time, in the sense of Gromov-Hausdorff.Comment: 23 page

NASA Task Load Index (TLX) for IOS: an Essential Workload Measure in the Human Performance Toolbox

no abstract availabl

Aftershocks driven by afterslip and fluid pressure sweeping through a fault‐fracture mesh

A variety of physical mechanisms are thought to be responsible for the triggering and spatiotemporal evolution of aftershocks. Here we analyze a vigorous aftershock sequence and postseismic geodetic strain that occurred in the Yuha Desert following the 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor‐Cucapah earthquake. About 155,000 detected aftershocks occurred in a network of orthogonal faults and exhibit features of two distinct mechanisms for aftershock triggering. The earliest aftershocks were likely driven by afterslip that spread away from the main shock with the logarithm of time. A later pulse of aftershocks swept again across the Yuha Desert with square root time dependence and swarm‐like behavior; together with local geological evidence for hydrothermalism, these features suggest that the events were driven by fluid diffusion. The observations illustrate how multiple driving mechanisms and the underlying fault structure jointly control the evolution of an aftershock sequence

Perron vector optimization applied to search engines

In the last years, Google's PageRank optimization problems have been extensively studied. In that case, the ranking is given by the invariant measure of a stochastic matrix. In this paper, we consider the more general situation in which the ranking is determined by the Perron eigenvector of a nonnegative, but not necessarily stochastic, matrix, in order to cover Kleinberg's HITS algorithm. We also give some results for Tomlin's HOTS algorithm. The problem consists then in finding an optimal outlink strategy subject to design constraints and for a given search engine. We study the relaxed versions of these problems, which means that we should accept weighted hyperlinks. We provide an efficient algorithm for the computation of the matrix of partial derivatives of the criterion, that uses the low rank property of this matrix. We give a scalable algorithm that couples gradient and power iterations and gives a local minimum of the Perron vector optimization problem. We prove convergence by considering it as an approximate gradient method. We then show that optimal linkage stategies of HITS and HOTS optimization problems verify a threshold property. We report numerical results on fragments of the real web graph for these search engine optimization problems.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure

Slow rupture of frictional interfaces

The failure of frictional interfaces and the spatiotemporal structures that accompany it are central to a wide range of geophysical, physical and engineering systems. Recent geophysical and laboratory observations indicated that interfacial failure can be mediated by slow slip rupture phenomena which are distinct from ordinary, earthquake-like, fast rupture. These discoveries have influenced the way we think about frictional motion, yet the nature and properties of slow rupture are not completely understood. We show that slow rupture is an intrinsic and robust property of simple non-monotonic rate-and-state friction laws. It is associated with a new velocity scale $c_{min}$, determined by the friction law, below which steady state rupture cannot propagate. We further show that rupture can occur in a continuum of states, spanning a wide range of velocities from $c_{min}$ to elastic wave-speeds, and predict different properties for slow rupture and ordinary fast rupture. Our results are qualitatively consistent with recent high-resolution laboratory experiments and may provide a theoretical framework for understanding slow rupture phenomena along frictional interfaces.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table (Supplementary material: 5 pages, 2 figures