End to End Deep Neural Network Frequency Demodulation of Speech Signals

Frequency modulation (FM) is a form of radio broadcasting which is widely used nowadays and has been for almost a century. We suggest a software-defined-radio (SDR) receiver for FM demodulation that adopts an end-to-end learning based approach and utilizes the prior information of transmitted speech message in the demodulation process. The receiver detects and enhances speech from the in-phase and quadrature components of its base band version. The new system yields high performance detection for both acoustical disturbances, and communication channel noise and is foreseen to out-perform the established methods for low signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions in both mean square error and in perceptual evaluation of speech quality score

Label-Dependencies Aware Recurrent Neural Networks

In the last few years, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have proved effective on several NLP tasks. Despite such great success, their ability to model \emph{sequence labeling} is still limited. This lead research toward solutions where RNNs are combined with models which already proved effective in this domain, such as CRFs. In this work we propose a solution far simpler but very effective: an evolution of the simple Jordan RNN, where labels are re-injected as input into the network, and converted into embeddings, in the same way as words. We compare this RNN variant to all the other RNN models, Elman and Jordan RNN, LSTM and GRU, on two well-known tasks of Spoken Language Understanding (SLU). Thanks to label embeddings and their combination at the hidden layer, the proposed variant, which uses more parameters than Elman and Jordan RNNs, but far fewer than LSTM and GRU, is more effective than other RNNs, but also outperforms sophisticated CRF models.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures. Accepted at CICling 2017 conference. Best Verifiability, Reproducibility, and Working Description awar

On the metallicity of the Milky Way thin disc and photometric abundance scales

The mean metallicity of the Milky Way thin disc in the solar neighbourhood is still a matter of debate, and has recently been subject to upward revision (Haywood, 2001). Our star sample was drawn from a set of solar neighbourhood dwarfs with photometric metallicities. In a recent study, Reid (2002) suggests that our metallicity calibration, based on Geneva photometry, is biased. We show here that the effect detected by Reid is not a consequence of our adopted metallicity scale, and we confirm that our findings are robust. On the contrary, the application to Stromgren photometry of the Schuster & Nissen metallicity scale is problematic. Systematic discrepancies of about 0.1 to 0.3 dex affect the photometric metallicity determination of metal rich stars, on the colour interval 0.22< b-y <0.59, i.e including F and G stars. For F stars, it is shown that this is a consequence of a mismatch between the standard sequence m_1(b-y) of the Hyades used by Schuster & Nissen to calibrate their metallicity scale, and the system of Olsen (1993, 1994ab). It means that although Schuster & Nissen calibration and Olsen photometry are intrinsically correct, there are mutually incompatible for metal rich, F-type stars. For G stars, the discrepancy is most probably the continuation of the same problem, albeit worthen by the lack of spectroscopic calibrating stars. A corrected calibration is proposed which renders the calibration of Schuster & Nissen applicable to the catalogues of Olsen. We also give a simpler calibration referenced to the Hyades sequence, valid over the same color and metallicity ranges.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, accepted in MNRA

Measurements of total alkalinity and inorganic dissolved carbon in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent Southern Ocean between 2008 and 2010

Water column dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity were measured during five hydrographic sections in the Atlantic Ocean and Drake Passage. The work was funded through the Strategic Funding Initiative of the UK's Oceans2025 programme, which ran from 2007 to 2012. The aims of this programme were to establish the regional budgets of natural and anthropogenic carbon in the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, and the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, as well as the rates of change of these budgets. This paper describes in detail the dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity data collected along east–west sections at 47° N to 60° N, 24.5° N, and 24° S in the Atlantic and across two Drake Passage sections. Other hydrographic and biogeochemical parameters were measured during these sections, and relevant standard operating procedures are mentioned here. Over 95% of dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity samples taken during the 24.5° N, 24° S, and the Drake Passage sections were analysed onboard and subjected to a first-level quality control addressing technical and analytical issues. Samples taken along 47° N to 60° N were analysed and subjected to quality control back in the laboratory. Complete post-cruise second-level quality control was performed using cross-over analysis with historical data in the vicinity of measurements, and data were submitted to the CLIVAR and Carbon Hydrographic Data Office (CCHDO), the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) and and will be included in the Global Ocean Data Analyses Project, version 2 (GLODAP 2), the upcoming update of Key et al. (2004)

Marcadores moleculares e suas aplicações no melhoramento genético.

O melhoramento genético tem sido um dos grandes responsáveis pelos avanços na agricultura, com o desenvolvimento de cultivares superiores, quer pela maior produtividade, quer pela melhor adaptação aos ambientes adversos. O sucesso de um programa de melhoramento genético depende, fundamentalmente, de algumas etapas como a escolha de genitores e a seleção de genótipos superiores. Desde o surgimento dos marcadores RFLP, na década de 1980, as metodologias para a exploração dos polimorfismos de DNA têm sido alvo de grandes avanços na automação e na geração de dados em larga escala, fornecendo uma amostragem do genoma, cada vez mais ampla, a um custo menor. Assim, com a tendência do aumento crescente no volume de dados, associada à redução nos custos, os marcadores moleculares firmam-se como estratégias sólidas para auxiliar o melhoramento genético, assim como estudos sobre clonagem e função de genes, filogenia diversidade e estrutura genética em espécies cultivadas e silvestres. Serão apresentados marcos importantes na evolução das tecnologias de marcadores de DNA e algumas das suas aplicações, com ênfase nas análises de diversidade, mapeamento genético e seleção assistida em plantas

Replica Symmetry Breaking in the Random Replicant Model

We study the statistical mechanics of a model describing the coevolution of species interacting in a random way. We find that at high competition replica symmetry is broken. We solve the model in the approximation of one step replica symmetry breaking and we compare our findings with accurate numerical simulations.Comment: 12 pages, TeX, 5 postscript figures are avalaible upon request, submitted to Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Genera

Low-Frequency Modal Extrapolation and Regularization for Full-Bandwidth Macromodeling of Electromagnetic Structures

This paper provides a novel strategy for the extrapolation and regularization of low frequency data of low-loss or lossless structures, based on asymptotic modal trajectories. The proposed data-driven strategy is intended as a fundamental pre-processing step to obtain a full-bandwidth reliable macromodel to be used in transient simulations, providing full control of the low-frequency and DC behavior of the system

Kinematics of Metal-Poor Stars in the Galaxy. III. Formation of the Stellar Halo and Thick Disk as Revealed from a Large Sample of Non-Kinematically Selected Stars

(Abbreviated) We present a detailed analysis of the space motions of 1203 solar-neighborhood stars with metal abundances [Fe/H] <= -0.6, on the basis of a recently revised and supplemented catalog of metal-poor stars selected without kinematic bias (Beers et al. 2000). This sample, having available proper motions, radial velocities, and distance estimates for stars with a wide range of metal abundances, is by far the largest such catalog to be assembled to date. Unlike essentially all previous kinematically selected catalogs, the metal-poor stars in our sample exhibit a diverse distribution of orbital eccentricities, e, with no apparent correlation between [Fe/H] and e. This demonstrates, clearly and convincingly, that the evidence offered by Eggen, Lynden-Bell, and Sandage (1962) for a rapid collapse of the Galaxy, an apparent correlation between the orbital eccentricity of halo stars with metallicity, is basically the result of their proper-motion selection bias. However, even in our non-kinematically selected sample, we have identified a small concentration of high-e stars at [Fe/H] = -1.7, which may originate, in part, from infalling gas during the early formation of the Galaxy. The implications of our results for the formation of the Galaxy are also discussed, in particular in the context of the currently favored CDM theory of hierarchical galaxy formation.Comment: 51 pages, including 17 figures, to appear in AJ (June 2000), full paper with all figures embedded available at http://pluto.mtk.nao.ac.jp/people/chiba/preprint/halo5

A Practical Guide for X-Ray Diffraction Characterization of Ga(Al, In)N Alloys

Ga(In, Al)N alloys are used as an active layer or cladding layer in light emitting diodes and laser diodes. x-ray diffraction is extensively used to evaluate the crystalline quality, the chemical composition and the residual strain in Ga(Al,In)N thin films, which directly determine the emission wavelength and the device performance. Due to the minor mismatch in lattice parameters between Ga(Al, In)N alloy and a GaN virtual substrate, x-ray diffraction comes to a problem to separate the signal from Ga(Al,In)N alloy and GaN. We give a detailed comparison on different diffraction planes. In order to balance the intensity and peak separation between Ga(Al,In)N alloy and GaN, (0004) and (1015) planes make the best choice for symmetric scan and asymmetric scan, respectively.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Spin-flip Effects in the Mesoscopic Spin-Interferometer

We investigate the properties of the electron spin-transmission through an Aharonov-Bohm interferometer with an embedded multilevel quantum dot containing magnetic impurities. A suitable formalism is developed. The amplitude and the phase of the flip- and nonflip-transmittance are calculated numerically as function of the magnetic field and the gate potential applied on the dot. The effects induced by the exchange interaction to spin-dependent magnetoconductance fluctuations and transmittance phase are shown.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure