1,518 research outputs found
Rhythm-Flexible Voice Conversion without Parallel Data Using Cycle-GAN over Phoneme Posteriorgram Sequences
Speaking rate refers to the average number of phonemes within some unit time,
while the rhythmic patterns refer to duration distributions for realizations of
different phonemes within different phonetic structures. Both are key
components of prosody in speech, which is different for different speakers.
Models like cycle-consistent adversarial network (Cycle-GAN) and variational
auto-encoder (VAE) have been successfully applied to voice conversion tasks
without parallel data. However, due to the neural network architectures and
feature vectors chosen for these approaches, the length of the predicted
utterance has to be fixed to that of the input utterance, which limits the
flexibility in mimicking the speaking rates and rhythmic patterns for the
target speaker. On the other hand, sequence-to-sequence learning model was used
to remove the above length constraint, but parallel training data are needed.
In this paper, we propose an approach utilizing sequence-to-sequence model
trained with unsupervised Cycle-GAN to perform the transformation between the
phoneme posteriorgram sequences for different speakers. In this way, the length
constraint mentioned above is removed to offer rhythm-flexible voice conversion
without requiring parallel data. Preliminary evaluation on two datasets showed
very encouraging results.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, Submitted to SLT 201
All Good, Father
All Good, Father is a 50-minute documentary film about how my love-bound, intimate relationship with my father is entangled with his social values surrounding my sexual identity and his expectations for me in his old age
Bandwidth allocation and pricing problem for a duopoly market
This research discusses the Internet service provider (ISP) bandwidth allocation and pricing problems for a duopoly bandwidth market with two competitive ISPs. According to the contracts between Internet subscribers and ISPs, Internet subscribers can enjoy their services up to their contracted bandwidth limits. However, in reality, many subscribers may experience the facts that their on-line requests are denied or their connection speeds are far below their contracted speed limits. One of the reasons is that ISPs accept too many subscribers as their subscribers. To avoid this problem, ISPs can set limits for their subscribers to enhance their service qualities. This paper develops constrained nonlinear programming to deal with this problem for two competitive ISPs. The condition for reaching the equilibrium between the two competitive firms is derived. The market equilibrium price and bandwidth resource allocations are derived as closed form solutions
Phylo-mLogo: an interactive and hierarchical multiple-logo visualization tool for alignment of many sequences
BACKGROUND: When aligning several hundreds or thousands of sequences, such as epidemic virus sequences or homologous/orthologous sequences of some big gene families, to reconstruct the epidemiological history or their phylogenies, how to analyze and visualize the alignment results of many sequences has become a new challenge for computational biologists. Although there are several tools available for visualization of very long sequence alignments, few of them are applicable to the alignments of many sequences. RESULTS: A multiple-logo alignment visualization tool, called Phylo-mLogo, is presented in this paper. Phylo-mLogo calculates the variabilities and homogeneities of alignment sequences by base frequencies or entropies. Different from the traditional representations of sequence logos, Phylo-mLogo not only displays the global logo patterns of the whole alignment of multiple sequences, but also demonstrates their local homologous logos for each clade hierarchically. In addition, Phylo-mLogo also allows the user to focus only on the analysis of some important, structurally or functionally constrained sites in the alignment selected by the user or by built-in automatic calculation. CONCLUSION: With Phylo-mLogo, the user can symbolically and hierarchically visualize hundreds of aligned sequences simultaneously and easily check the changes of their amino acid sites when analyzing many homologous/orthologous or influenza virus sequences. More information of Phylo-mLogo can be found at URL
Modeling and Simulation of Spark Streaming
As more and more devices connect to Internet of Things, unbounded streams of
data will be generated, which have to be processed "on the fly" in order to
trigger automated actions and deliver real-time services. Spark Streaming is a
popular realtime stream processing framework. To make efficient use of Spark
Streaming and achieve stable stream processing, it requires a careful interplay
between different parameter configurations. Mistakes may lead to significant
resource overprovisioning and bad performance. To alleviate such issues, this
paper develops an executable and configurable model named SSP (stands for Spark
Streaming Processing) to model and simulate Spark Streaming. SSP is written in
ABS, which is a formal, executable, and object-oriented language for modeling
distributed systems by means of concurrent object groups. SSP allows users to
rapidly evaluate and compare different parameter configurations without
deploying their applications on a cluster/cloud. The simulation results show
that SSP is able to mimic Spark Streaming in different scenarios.Comment: 7 pages and 13 figures. This paper is published in IEEE 32nd
International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications
(AINA 2018
Analyzing Post-Disaster Reconstruction Stakeholder Networks: Malaysian rural housing
This article uses the social network analysis to identify resource coordination and information exchange of stakeholders in the inter-organizational network by studying the project-related interactions of rural housing reconstruction in Temerloh, Pahang that were funded by the Malaysian government, His Majesty the King and NGO. The data was collected through content analysis and interviews with 23 government agencies, NGOs, and community stakeholders. Findings from the analysis established that government agencies had the highest actor centralities, with the Rural Development Ministry and the local government level being the most central among the government agencies, whereas the homeowners had the lowest centralities.
Keywords: post-disaster housing reconstruction, social network analysis, rural Malaysia
eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2023. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v8i23.4511
Happiness or hopelessness in late life: A cluster RCT of the 3L-Mind-Training programme among the institutionalized older people.
AIM(#br)To explore the effectiveness of a new mental health promotion activities program by including the criterion variables of happiness and depressive mood.(#br)DESIGN(#br)A double-blinded, clustered, randomized and controlled trial.(#br)METHOD(#br)A list of older residents was provided by the senior social worker at a geriatric institution. The participant inclusion criteria were living on one of four different floors that had separate and noninterfering spaces and having comparable disabilities. The researchers randomly selected residents on two floors as members of the intervention group; the other residents were considered the control group. The intervention groups attended 6 weeks of the 3L-Mind-Training program, whereas the control group only engaged in regular health promotion activities. The mini version of the Chinese Happiness Inventory was adapted to measure happiness. The Geriatric Depression Scale short-form was used to measure depression in older people. The generalized estimating equation was used to analyze the short-term and durative effects.(#br)FINDINGS(#br)The 126 residents ranged in age from 65-97 years old and 90% of the residents relied on wheelchairs. The intervention activities provided significant immediate and durative effects both on subjective well-being enhancement and depressive mood relief. When evaluating the overall intervention activity, 93.8% of the aged residents indicated that this program was helpful and allowed them to view life events positively.(#br)CONCLUSION AND IMPACT(#br)A well-planned mind-training program could help older people reform their viewpoint and create a more fun and happy experience of ageing.(#br)TRIAL REGISTRATION(#br)Data came from the project, initiated in 2014, which was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan and was approved by the Institutional Review Board in Chung Shan Medical University (No. CS15009). The trial registration number of the study was No. ChiCTR1900021811. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Atomically-thin metallic Si and Ge allotropes with high Fermi velocities
Silicon and germanium are the well-known materials used to manufacture
electronic devices for the integrated circuits but they themselves are not
considered as promising options for interconnecting the devices due to their
semiconducting nature. We have discovered that both Si and Ge atoms can form
unexpected metallic monolayer structures which are more stable than the
extensively studied semimetallic silicene and germanene, respectively. More
importantly, the newly discovered two-dimensional allotropes of Si and Ge have
Fermi velocities superior to the Dirac fermions in graphene, indicating that
the metal wires needed in the silicon-based integrated circuits can be made of
Si atom itself without incompatibility, allowing for all-silicon-based
integrated circuits.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl
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