Enhancing Quantised End-to-End ASR Models via Personalisation

Recent end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) models have become increasingly larger, making them particularly challenging to be deployed on resource-constrained devices. Model quantisation is an effective solution that sometimes causes the word error rate (WER) to increase. In this paper, a novel strategy of personalisation for a quantised model (PQM) is proposed, which combines speaker adaptive training (SAT) with model quantisation to improve the performance of heavily compressed models. Specifically, PQM uses a 4-bit NormalFloat Quantisation (NF4) approach for model quantisation and low-rank adaptation (LoRA) for SAT. Experiments have been performed on the LibriSpeech and the TED-LIUM 3 corpora. Remarkably, with a 7x reduction in model size and 1% additional speaker-specific parameters, 15.1% and 23.3% relative WER reductions were achieved on quantised Whisper and Conformer-based attention-based encoder-decoder ASR models respectively, comparing to the original full precision models.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to ICASSP 202

Sequence analysis for the complete proviral genome of subgroup J Avian Leukosis virus associated with hemangioma: a special 11 bp deletion was observed in U3 region of 3'UTR

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Avian Leukosis virus (ALV) of subgroup J (ALV-J) belong to retroviruses, which could induce tumors in domestic and wild birds. Myelocytomatosis was the most common neoplasma observed in infected flocks; however, few cases of hemangioma caused by ALV-J were reported in recent year.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An ALV-J strain SCDY1 associated with hemangioma was isolated and its proviral genomic sequences were determined. The full proviral sequence of SCDY1 was 7489 nt long. Homology analysis of the env, pol and gag gene between SCDY1 and other strains in GenBank were 90.3-94.2%, 96.6-97.6%, and 94.3-96.5% at nucleotide level, respectively; while 85.1-90.7%, 97.4-98.7%, and 96.2-98.4% at amino acid level, respectively. Alignment analysis of the genomic sequence of ALV-J strains by using HPRS-103 as reference showed that a special 11 bp deletion was observed in U3 region of 3'UTR of SCDY1 and another ALV-J strain NHH isolated from case of hemangioma, and the non-functional TM and E element were absent in the genome of SCDY1, but the transcriptional regulatory elements including C/EBP, E2BP, NFAP-1, CArG box and Y box were highly conserved. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that all analyzed ALV-J strains could be separated into four groups, and SCDY1 as well as another strain NHH were included in the same cluster.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The variation in envelope glycoprotein was higher than other genes. The genome sequence of SCDY1 has a close relationship with that of another ALV-J strain NHH isolated from case of hemangioma. A 11 bp deletion observed in U3 region of 3'UTR of genome of ALV-J isolated from case of hemangioma is interesting, which may be associated with the occurrence of hemangioma.</p

Clinical efficacy of the combined use of levofloxacin and different courses of isoniazid and rifampicin in the treatment of mild spinal tuberculosis

Purpose: To investigate the clinical effectiveness of the combined use of levofloxacin and different courses of isoniazid and rifampicin in the treatment of mild spinal tuberculosis (TB). Methods: The clinic data of 100 patients with light spinal TB were retrospectively reviewed. A double-blind technique was used to divide the patients into 6-month treatment group (M6 group, n = 32), 12-month treatment group (M12 group, n = 34) and 18-month treatment group (M18 group, n = 34). All patients were given isoniazid and rifampicin, in combination with levofloxacin. The effects of the different treatment courses on mild spinal TB were determined. Results: There were significantly higher post-treatment levels of inflammatory factors in M6 group than in M12 and M18 groups (p &lt; 0.001). Moreover, there were significantly higher Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and larger focus size in M6 group than in M12 and M18 groups (p &lt; 0.05). However, after treatment, M18 group had significantly higher total incidence of adverse reactions than M6 and M12 groups (p &lt; 0.05). Conclusion: Compared with the short-course treatment, long-course treatment with isoniazid and rifampicin in combination with levofloxacin is more effective in reducing the levels of inflammatory factors and decreasing focus size in patients with mild spinal TB. However, patients given the 18-month treatment tend to develop more adverse reactions. Therefore, 12-month treatment with the combined therapy is a better therapeutic option

A novel protein-coding ORF72.2 gene was identified from Marek's disease virus strain CVI988

Marek's disease is a highly contagious disease of poultry characterized by rapid-on set of T-cell lymphomas, which is caused by Marek's disease virus (MDV), but its pathogenic mechanism is still not very clear. Recently, some new progress were achieved in molecular character of MDV. Along with the genomic sequencing of MDV serotype 1, some novel open reading frames (ORFs) were predicted, and ORF72.2 was one of them which have no homologues in other MDV serotypes or in other alphaherpesvirus. In the study, ORF72.2 was firstly identified as a protein-coding gene by the method of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), western blotting and indirect immunofluorescence assay. This study paved the way to conduct further studies to determine whether ORF72.2 plays a role in MDV replication and pathogenicity

Droplets as Carriers for Flexible Electronic Devices

Coupling soft bodies and dynamic motions with multifunctional flexible electronics is challenging, but is essential in satisfying the urgent and soaring demands of fully soft and comprehensive robotic systems that can perform tasks in spite of rigorous spatial constraints. Here, the mobility and adaptability of liquid droplets with the functionality of flexible electronics, and techniques to use droplets as carriers for flexible devices are combined. The resulting active droplets (ADs) with volumes ranging from 150 to 600 µL can conduct programmable functions, such as sensing, actuation, and energy harvesting defined by the carried flexible devices and move under the excitation of gravitational force or magnetic force. They work in both dry and wet environments, and adapt to the surrounding environment through reversible shape shifting. These ADs can achieve controllable motions at a maximum velocity of 226 cm min−1 on a dry surface and 32 cm min-1 in a liquid environment. The conceptual system may eventually lead to individually addressable ADs that offer sophisticated functions for high-throughput molecule analysis, drug assessment, chemical synthesis, and information collection

Comparative analysis of oncogenic genes revealed unique evolutionary features of field Marek's disease virus prevalent in recent years in China

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Marek's disease (MD) is an economically important viral disease of chickens caused by Marek's disease virus (MDV), an oncogenic herpesvirus. This disease was well controlled since the widespread use of commercial vaccines, but field MDVs have shown continuous increasing in virulence and acquired the ability to overcome the immune response induced by vaccines. Nowadays, MD continues to be a serious threat to poultry industry, isolation and characterization of MDVs are essential for monitoring changes of viruses and evaluating the effectiveness of existing vaccines.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Between 2008 and 2010, 18 field MDV strains were isolated from vaccinated chicken flocks in Sichuan province, China. Three oncogenic genes including Meq, pp38 and vIL-8 genes of the 18 isolates were amplified and sequenced. Homology analysis showed that the deduced amino acid sequences of these three genes exhibit 95.0-98.8%, 99.3-100% and 97.0-98.5% homology respectively with these of other reference strains published in GenBank. Alignment analysis of the nucleotide and deduced amino acid sequences showed that four amino acid mutations in Meq gene and two amino acid mutations in vIL-8 gene displayed perfect regularity in MDVs circulating in China, which could be considered as features of field MDVs prevalent in recent years in China. In addition, one amino acid mutation in pp38 gene can be considered as a feature of virulent MDVs from USA, and three amino acid mutations in Meq gene were identified and unique in very virulent plus (vv+) MDVs. Phylogenetic analysis based on Meq and vIL-8 protein sequences revealed that field MDVs in China evolved independently. Virulence studies showed that CVI988 could provide efficient protection against the field MDVs epidemic recently in China.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study and other published data in the GenBank have demonstrated the features of Meq, pp38 and vIL-8 genes of MDVs circulating in recent years in Sichuan, China. Mutations, deletions or insertions were observed in these three genes, and some mutations could be considered as the unique marks of the MDVs circulating presently in China. The paper supplies some valuable information concerning the evolution of MDV which is useful for the vaccine development and control of MD in China.</p

Recombinant antigen P29 of Echinococcus granulosus induces Th1, Tc1, and Th17 cell immune responses in sheep

Echinococcosis is a common human and animal parasitic disease that seriously endangers human health and animal husbandry. Although studies have been conducted on vaccines for echinococcosis, to date, there is no human vaccine available for use. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of in-depth research on basic immunization with vaccines. Our previous results confirmed that recombinant antigen P29 (rEg.P29) induced more than 90% immune protection in both mice and sheep, but data on its induction of sheep-associated cellular immune responses are lacking. In this study, we investigated the changes in CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, and antigen-specific cytokines IFN-γ, IL-4, and IL-17A after rEg.P29 immunization using enzyme-linked immunospot assay (ELISPOT), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and flow cytometry to investigate the cellular immune response induced by rEg.P29 in sheep. It was found that rEg.P29 immunization did not affect the percentage of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), and was able to stimulate the proliferation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells after immunization in vitro. Importantly, the results of both ELISPOT and ELISA showed that rEg.P29 can induce the production of the specific cytokines IFN-γ and IL-17A, and flow cytometry verified that rEg.P29 can induce the expression of IFN-γ in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and IL-17A in CD4+ T cells; however, no IL-4 expression was observed. These results indicate that rEg.P29 can induce Th1, Th17, and Tc1 cellular immune responses in sheep against echinococcosis infection, providing theoretical support for the translation of rEg.P29 vaccine applications