Furnishing Sound Event Detection with Language Model Abilities

Recently, the ability of language models (LMs) has attracted increasing attention in visual cross-modality. In this paper, we further explore the generation capacity of LMs for sound event detection (SED), beyond the visual domain. Specifically, we propose an elegant method that aligns audio features and text features to accomplish sound event classification and temporal location. The framework consists of an acoustic encoder, a contrastive module that align the corresponding representations of the text and audio, and a decoupled language decoder that generates temporal and event sequences from the audio characteristic. Compared with conventional works that require complicated processing and barely utilize limited audio features, our model is more concise and comprehensive since language model directly leverage its semantic capabilities to generate the sequences. We investigate different decoupling modules to demonstrate the effectiveness for timestamps capture and event classification. Evaluation results show that the proposed method achieves accurate sequences of sound event detection.Comment: 8 pages,2 figures,published to AAA

Audio Generation with Multiple Conditional Diffusion Model

Text-based audio generation models have limitations as they cannot encompass all the information in audio, leading to restricted controllability when relying solely on text. To address this issue, we propose a novel model that enhances the controllability of existing pre-trained text-to-audio models by incorporating additional conditions including content (timestamp) and style (pitch contour and energy contour) as supplements to the text. This approach achieves fine-grained control over the temporal order, pitch, and energy of generated audio. To preserve the diversity of generation, we employ a trainable control condition encoder that is enhanced by a large language model and a trainable Fusion-Net to encode and fuse the additional conditions while keeping the weights of the pre-trained text-to-audio model frozen. Due to the lack of suitable datasets and evaluation metrics, we consolidate existing datasets into a new dataset comprising the audio and corresponding conditions and use a series of evaluation metrics to evaluate the controllability performance. Experimental results demonstrate that our model successfully achieves fine-grained control to accomplish controllable audio generation. Audio samples and our dataset are publicly available at https://conditionaudiogen.github.io/conditionaudiogen/Comment: Submitted to AAAI 202

Theoretical Solution for Tunneling‐Induced Stress Field of Subdeep Buried Tunnel

In the traditional Kirsch solution of stress field induced by tunneling in rock mass, the body force was not taken into consideration, and therefore the Kirsch solution is limited to demonstrate stress redistribution of deep‐buried tunnel. In order to consider the effect of body force on the stress redistribution induced by tunneling, a new secondary stress field solution for tunnel between shallow and deep tunnel (called subdeep tunnel) is developed with elastic mechanics and complex function employed. The stress field from theoretical solution is verified by numerical models, and the results showed good agreements with each other. This solution can be the basic theory in the analysis of the stress and field of subdeep tunnel, which have not been valuated through theoretical study yet

Impacts of climate change on Tibetan lakes: patterns and processes

High-altitude inland-drainage lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (TP), the earth’s third pole, are very sensitive to climate change. Tibetan lakes are important natural resources with important religious, historical, and cultural significance. However, the spatial patterns and processes controlling the impacts of climate and associated changes on Tibetan lakes are largely unknown. This study used long time series and multi-temporal Landsat imagery to map the patterns of Tibetan lakes and glaciers in 1977, 1990, 2000, and 2014, and further to assess the spatiotemporal changes of lakes and glaciers in 17 TP watersheds between 1977 and 2014. Spatially variable changes in lake and glacier area as well as climatic factors were analyzed. We identified four modes of lake change in response to climate and associated changes. Lake expansion was predominantly attributed to increased precipitation and glacier melting, whereas lake shrinkage was a main consequence of a drier climate or permafrost degradation. These findings shed new light on the impacts of recent environmental changes on Tibetan lakes. They suggest that protecting these high-altitude lakes in the face of further environmental change will require spatially variable policies and management measures

Mental health status and its associated factors among female nurses in the normalization of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control in China

ObjectiveTo investigate mental health status and its associated factors among female nurses in the normalization of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control in China.MethodsRandom cluster sampling was applied to recruit 740 female nurses in China. The respondents completed the survey with mobile devices. Demographic questionnaire, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Insomnia Severity Index, and The Impact of Event Scale-Revised were used to assess demographic Information, anxiety, depression, insomnia and PTSD symptoms, respectively. The associated factors of mental health status were identified by binary logistic regression analysis.ResultsThe prevalence of anxiety and depression was 7.9 and 17.8%, respectively. Insomnia was an associated factor of anxiety (OR = 6.237, 95%CI = 6.055–23.761, P < 0.001) and depression (OR = 9.651, 95%CI = 5.699–22.370, P < 0.001), while PTSD was an associated factor of anxiety (OR = 11.995, 95%CI = 2.946–13.205, P < 0.001) and depression (OR = 11.291, 95%CI = 6.056–15.380, P < 0.001), Being married was a protective factor of depression (OR = 0.811, 95%CI = 1.309–6.039, P < 0.01).ConclusionFemale nurses showed problems in mental health. Insomnia, PTSD and marital status were associated with mental health. The hospital management should pay more attention to the unmarried groups, and strive to improve the sleep quality of female nurses and reduce their stress caused by traumatic events

Nonlinear effects of group size on collective action and resource outcomes.

For decades, scholars have been trying to determine whether small or large groups are more likely to cooperate for collective action and successfully manage common-pool resources. Using data gathered from the Wolong Nature Reserve since 1995, we examined the effects of group size (i.e., number of households monitoring a single forest parcel) on both collective action (forest monitoring) and resource outcomes (changes in forest cover) while controlling for potential confounding factors. Our results demonstrate that group size has nonlinear effects on both collective action and resource outcomes, with intermediate group size contributing the most monitoring effort and leading to the biggest forest cover gain. We also show how opposing effects of group size directly and indirectly affect collective action and resource outcomes, leading to the overall nonlinear relationship. Our findings suggest why previous studies have observed differing and even contradictory group-size effects, and thus help guide further research and governance of the commons. The findings also suggest that it should be possible to improve collective action and resource outcomes by altering factors that lead to the nonlinear group-size effect, including punishing free riding, enhancing overall and within-group enforcement, improving social capital across groups and among group members, and allowing self-selection during the group formation process so members with good social relationships can form groups autonomously. casual inference | commons governance | ecosystem services | biodiversity conservation | sustainability G roups are basic units for collective action and may achieve outcomes that individual efforts cannot (1). However, the threat of free riding implies that the optimal amount of collective action does not always occur, and has led to a substantial literature trying to understand what factors facilitate or block the emergence of collective action. Because collective action is needed to manage many common-pool resources, understanding the mechanisms that shape collective action and resource outcomes is a critical challenge for sustainability (2, 3). From Pareto in 1906 (4) and especially since the influential work by Olson in 1965 (5), group size has been hypothesized as a crucial factor affecting collective action and resource outcomes. (We note that Olson used an unusual definition of "group size": the potential number of group members. Here we follow conventional practice and consider the actual number of participants.) However, the debate on group-size effect continues with some researchers arguing that it is linear and negative (5-7), others arguing for linear and positive (8-11), and still others insisting it is curvilinear (12-14), ambiguous (1, 15-17), or nonsignificant (18-20). Even in the most recent work (8, 15, 19,(21)(22) Previous literature indicates that there are two hypothetical opposing forces through which group size affects collective action and resource outcomes A few previous studies qualitatively described the curvilinear or nonlinear effects of group size (12, 26, 29), and some claimed a nonlinear relationship by simply plotting collective action against group size without controlling other factors (13, 14). However, none has provided a quantitative analysis of field evidence while controlling potential confounding factors, as suggested by Ostrom (7). Furthermore, there is little empirical examination of the mechanisms of nonlinear group-size effects, which is essential to guide commons governance. To fill these knowledge gaps, we used empirical data from our long-term studies (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44) in Wolong Nature Reserve, Sichuan Province, China (N 30°45′ -31°25′, E 102°52′ -103°24′) To understand the group-size effects and the underpinning mechanisms, we combined data on characteristics of households, household groups, and monitored parcels (SI Appendix, Section 1). We acknowledge that conflicts with regard to monitoring might occur within a household, but because the policy is designed to treat households-not individuals-as monitoring units, the common practice of treating households as the unit of analysis is appropriate here. We measured household monitoring efforts by the total amount of labor input (one unit of labor input is defined as one laborer working for 1 d) (SI Appendix, Section 2.1) through surveys. We measured resource outcomes as changes in forest cover derived from previously published forest-cover maps (SI Appendix, Section 1.1.1). We also measured factors that might explain the mechanisms, including free riders (i.e., households that did not participate in monitoring), the level of within-group enforcement (i.e., strong enforcement if there are punishment measures for free-riding members within the group; otherwise, weak enforcement), and within-group division (i.e., whether groups divide into subgroups to conduct monitoring in turns) (SI Appendix, Section 2). Some other contextual factors shown in previous studies to affect group size, collective action, or resource outcomes were used as control variables (SI Appendix, Section 2.3). Results Our results show that group size has a nonlinear effect on the monitoring efforts per household, with an intermediate group size contributing the most Our results demonstrate that group size also has a nonlinear effect on changes in forest cover, with an intermediate group size leading to the biggest gain ( We accounted for as many as possible alternative explanations of the observed nonlinear group-size effects based on systematic quantitative and qualitative analyses. No factor other than group size seems to account for the observed nonlinear effects. First, correlation tests (SI Appendix, Table S2) show that except for the two criteria used for household group assignment (see details in SI Appendix, Section 1.2) by the administrative bureau (i.e., distance between each household and its assigned parcel and received NFCP payment), no other factors were significantly associated with group size and thus are implausible as possible alternative explanations for the group-size effects. We used two additional approaches to ensure that the observed nonlinear effects were not caused by the two criteria used for household group assignments (SI Appendix, Section 2.4.3). We examined the associations between the two criteria used for household group assignment and household monitoring efforts, and we A B Yang et al. PNAS Early Edition | 3 of 6 SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE estimated two-step Tobit models of monitoring effort. Using either approach, all hypothesized alternatives to group size were linearly associated with household monitoring efforts, and thus could not lead to the observed nonlinear effects. Our path analysis Discussion The coexistence of two opposing forces may also explain why previous studies found different group-size effects. If, as we argue, the net effect of group size is determined by the dynamics (e.g., strength and variation with group size) of the two opposing forces, the optimum point of the net effect (or the necessary range of group size to observe a nonlinear effect) would be dependent on the context (14). The range of group size in our study area may appear to be small. However, the nonlinear pattern we observed means that such a range is large enough to exhibit the nonlinear effect in our context. One of the reasons we find such effects with only moderate variation in group size may be because our study area is a flagship nature reserve for giant pandas. As a result, the local administrative bureau has relatively abundant resources to allocate payments for household groups to monitor parcels and evaluate their performance biannually Unit of analysis is the forest parcel. Dependent variable is the percent of forest-cover change from 2001 to 2007. Additional controls include parcel size, parcel size per household, elevation, distance between each parcel and the nearest household, and distance between each parcel and the main road (SI Appendix, Randomized experiments are sometimes seen as the "gold standard" for research on causal mechanisms. However, there have been no randomized experiments at our site, nor are there likely to be because of its status as a showcase for conservation efforts. In addition, in the real world, there is no randomized or even quasirandomized field experiment in this field of study. The best that can be done in many real-world resource management situations is to be careful with regard to inference. Our analyses show that significant advances in understanding can be made through careful analyses of nonexperimental data by drawing on historical data. Such efforts of ongoing programs provide a useful complement to field experiments in building a cumulative literature and forwarding the important work on collective action and resource management. Our findings also suggest that by regulating factors interacting with group size, it should be possible to improve collective action and resource outcomes. For example, all groups of various sizes can stimulate group members to contribute and protect common-pool resources by punishing free riding and enhancing overall and within-group enforcement. Overall enforcement can be enhanced not only through intensifying costly monitoring efforts but also via improving social capital across groups. The within-group enforcement and outcomes may also be enhanced by improving social capital among group members or allowing self-selection during the group formation process so members with good social relationships can form groups autonomously. Unprecedented deterioration of global commons requires better understandings of the mechanisms shaping collective action and resource outcomes. Because of the complexity of coupled human and natural systems (46), improving such understandings is challenging and requires efforts to integrate data and methods from multiple disciplines. The struggle to understand the groupsize effects is one example showing the importance of such efforts. Our findings help disentangle the puzzle of group-size effects and guide solutions to pressing problems of coupled human and natural systems (47), as well as the design of commons governance policies. Materials and Methods We acquired the map of household monitoring parcels and associated documentation (e.g., the number of households that monitor each forest parcel) from the administrative bureau of Wolong Nature Reserve. To estimate forest-cover change, we used previously published forest-cover maps derived from Landsat imagery in 2001 and 2007 (48, 49). These maps included two main land-cover classes (i.e., forest and nonforest) with overall accuracies between 80% and 88% using independent ground-truth data. Topographic data, such as elevation, slope, and the Compound Topographic Index, a relative measure of wetness (50), were obtained from a digital elevation model at a spatial resolution of 90 m/pixel (51). We measured all household locations (∼2,200 households) inside and surrounding the Reserve using Global Positioning System receivers. We calculated geographic metrics of forest parcels and households using the software of ArcGIS 10.1 (ESRI). These metrics include parcel size, parcel size per household, average elevation, average slope, average wetness, distance between each parcel and the nearest household, distance between each parcel and the main road, distance between each household and its monitored parcel, distance between each household and the main road, initial forest cover in 2001, and the percent of forest-cover change from 2001 to 2007. To understand the NFCP planning, implementation, evaluation, and decision-making processes, and to prepare for the household interview, we invited eight Reserve administrative staff for focus group interviews and five officials who were or are in charge of the NFCP for personal interviews. We used best available household survey data containing NFCP implementation information in 2007 and 2009 from our long-term study in the Reserve, which has been tracking ∼220 randomly sampled households across the years since 1998 (52). The panel survey elicited basic information, such as demographic status, socioeconomic conditions, and energy use (53). In the 2007 and 2009 surveys, besides basic information from panel surveys, we also asked questions regarding NFCP implementation [e.g., NFCP payments, monitoring frequency, time spent for each monitoring, monitoring strategy (e.g., within-group division), and within-group enforcement]. A total of 156 randomly sampled NFCP participating households in 2007, covering the full range of group size (i.e., 1 to 16), were used to examine how group size affects collective action (i.e., household forest monitoring). The 113 households who monitored NFCP parcels with group size larger than one (i.e., 2 to 16) in 2009 were used to examine the mechanisms of nonlinear groupsize effects. We first used a Tobit model to examine the effect of group size on monitoring efforts at the household level. We then used a spatial autoregressive model to examine the effect of group size on forest-cover change at the parcel level. Finally, we conducted the path analysis to test the two hypothetical, opposing forces on the mechanisms of nonlinear group-size effects. Detailed descriptions of data collection, processing, and model specification and construction are provided in SI Appendix. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Increased Frequency of Circulating Follicular Helper T Cells in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Follicular helper T (Tfh) cells are recognized as a distinct CD4+ helper T-cell subset, which provides for B-cell activation and production of specific antibody responses, and play a critical role in the development of autoimmune disease. So far, only one study investigated the circulating Tfh cells increased in a subset of SLE patients. Since relatively little is known about the Tfh cells in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, in this study, Tfh-cell frequency, related cytokine IL-21, and transcription factor Bcl-6 were investigated in 53 patients with RA and 31 health controls. Firstly, we found that the frequency of CD4+CXCR5+ICOShigh Tfh cells was increased significantly in the peripheral blood of RA patients, compared with that in healthy controls. It is known that Tfh cells are critical for directing the development of an antibody response by germinal centers B cells; secondly, we observed that the Tfh-cell frequency is accompanied by the level of anti-CCP antibody in RA patients. Furthermore, expression of Bcl-6 mRNA and plasma IL-21 concentrations in RA patients was increased. Taken together, these findings have shown that the increased frequency of circulating Tfh cells is correlated with elevated levels of anti-CCP antibody, indicating the possible involvement of Tfh cells in the disease progression of RA