Speaker Diarization Based on Intensity Channel Contribution

The time delay of arrival (TDOA) between multiple microphones has been used since 2006 as a source of information (localization) to complement the spectral features for speaker diarization. In this paper, we propose a new localization feature, the intensity channel contribution (ICC) based on the relative energy of the signal arriving at each channel compared to the sum of the energy of all the channels. We have demonstrated that by joining the ICC features and the TDOA features, the robustness of the localization features is improved and that the diarization error rate (DER) of the complete system (using localization and spectral features) has been reduced. By using this new localization feature, we have been able to achieve a 5.2% DER relative improvement in our development data, a 3.6% DER relative improvement in the RT07 evaluation data and a 7.9% DER relative improvement in the last year's RT09 evaluation data

Estrategias de marketing que permitan el incremento de la venta de los servicios que ofrece el Laboratorio de materiales de la PUCE al Sector de la construcción de Quito

La presente investigación proporciona estrategias de marketing que permitan incrementar la venta de los servicios que ofrece el Laboratorio de Materiales de la PUCE, al sector de la Construcción de Quito. El contenido del tema está distribuido en cinco capítulos: Capítulo I, Contiene antecedentes, justificación del tema, Misión, Visión, Objetivos Generales y Objetivos Específicos. Capitulo II, Describe el marco teórico del Análisis de la Industria y del sector, análisis de las necesidades del consumidor, Mercado de consumidores y comportamiento de compra del consumidor, Modelo de conducta del consumidor, Características que afectan el comportamiento del consumidor final, El proceso de decisión del comprador, Análisis de los competidores, Identificación de las estrategias de los competidores y análisis de la empresa frente al sector productivo. Capítulo III, Está enfocado al análisis de las oportunidades de mercado, investigación de mercados, mercados actuales, mercados potenciales, determinación del tamaño de la muestra para clientes actuales y clientes potenciales y el procesamiento de la información, tabulación y análisis de los resultados obtenidos en los sondeos de investigación realizados tanto a clientes actuales de las cuatro áreas del laboratorio como a los clientes potenciales en el Área de Mecánica de Suelos. Capítulo IV, Corresponde al desarrollo de las estrategias de marketing tanto para clientes actuales como para clientes potenciales; dentro del Mix de marketing se ha desarrollado una descripción total sobre lo que se realiza en cada una de las cuatro áreas del laboratorio. En relación a la promoción del Mix de marketing para los clientes potenciales se ha considerado como medios publicitarios: revistas especiales, páginas amarillas, marketing directo, relaciones públicas y visita personalizada, con el correspondiente presupuesto y cronograma de publicidad. Capítulo V, Se presentan las conclusiones y recomendaciones

A mathematical model of thyroid disease response to radiotherapy

We present a mechanistic biomathematical model of molecular radiotherapy of thyroid disease. The general model consists of a set of differential equations describing the dynamics of different populations of thyroid cells with varying degrees of damage caused by radiotherapy (undamaged cells, sub-lethally damaged cells, doomed cells, and dead cells), as well as the dynamics of thyroglobulin and antithyroglobulin autoantibodies, which are important surrogates of treatment response. The model is presented in two flavours: on the one hand, as a deterministic continuous model, which is useful to fit populational data, and on the other hand, as a stochastic Markov model, which is particularly useful to investigate tumor control probabilities and treatment individualization. The model was used to fit the response dynamics (tumor/thyroid volumes, thyroglobulin and antithyroglobulin autoantibodies) observed in experimental studies of thyroid cancer and Graves’ disease treated with 131I-radiotherapy. A qualitative adequate fitting of the model to the experimental data was achieved. We also used the model to investigate treatment individualization strategies for differentiated thyroid cancer, aiming to improve the tumor control probability. We found that simple individualization strategies based on the absorbed dose in the tumor and tumor radiosensitivity (which are both magnitudes that can potentially be individually determined for every patient) can lead to an important raise of tumor control probabilities.This project has received funding from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI17/01428 grant, FEDER co-funding). This project has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No 839135. This project has received funding from FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades;Agencia Estatal de Investigación, under grant MTM2017-84446-C2-2-R

Variation of the relative biological effectiveness with fractionation in proton therapy: analysis of prostate cancer response

Purpose: To present a methodology to analyze the variation of RBE with fractionation from clinical data of tumor control probability (TCP) and to apply it to study the response of prostate cancer to proton therapy. M&M: We analyzed the dependence of the RBE on the dose per fraction by using the LQ model and the Poisson TCP formalism. Clinical TCPs for prostate cancer treated with photon and proton therapy for conventional fractionation (2 Gy(RBE)x37 fractions), moderate hypofractionation (3 Gy(RBE)x20 fractions) and hypofractionation (7.25 Gy(RBE)x5 fractions) were obtained from the literature and analyzed. Results: The theoretical analysis showed three distinct regions with RBE monotonically decreasing, increasing or staying constant with the dose per fraction, depending on the change of ({\alpha}, \{beta}) values between photon and proton irradiation (the equilibrium point being at({\alpha}_p/\{beta}_p)=({\alpha}_X/\{beta}_X)({\alpha}_X/{\alpha}_p)). An analysis of the clinical data showed RBE values that decline with increasing dose per fraction: for low risk RBE=1.124, 1.119, and 1.102 for 1.82 Gy, 2.73 Gy and 6.59 Gy per fraction (physical proton doses), respectively; for intermediate risk RBE=1.119, and 1.102 for 1.82 Gy, and 6.59 Gy per fraction (physical proton doses), respectively. These values are nonetheless very close to the nominal 1.1 value. Conclusions: We presented a methodology to analyze the RBE for different fractionations, and we used it to study clinical data for prostate cancer. The analysis shows a monotonically decreasing RBE with increasing dose per fraction, which is expected from the LQ formalism and the changes in ({\alpha}, \{beta}) between photon and proton irradiation. However, the calculations in this study have to be considered with care as they may be biased by limitations in the modeling and/or by the clinical data set used for the analysis.Comment: Minor changes to match accepted manuscript; in press Medical Physic

APLICACIÓN DE MORFOMETRÌA GEOMÉTRICA PARA LA COMPARACIÓN DE DISTINTAS POBLACIONES DE GUANCHICHE (HOPLIAS SPP) EN ECOSITEMAS LÉNTICOS Y LÓTICOS DEL ECUADOR

Se ha demostrado ampliamente que las condiciones ambientales y los impactos antropogénicos son factores determinantes en la biología de las especies; estas interacciones influyen en las poblaciones modificando su genotipo, ó, generando cambios más sutiles evidenciando plasticidad al medio. Se empleó la morfometría geométrica para determinar si existen diferencias morfológicas entre poblaciones de Hoplias spp. (Characiformes: Erythrinidae), describir, cuantificar y examinar su variación con la distribución geográfica del género, el hábitat, la dieta alimenticia y el sexo. Se analizaron un total de 365 peces, colectados en cuatro zonas costeras (Esmeraldas, Manabí, Guayas, El Oro) y una zona Amazónica (Puyo). Se evidenció que existen diferencias morfológicas significativas entre especies, en poblaciones de Hoplias geográficamente aisladas (diferentes ríos) y entre poblaciones en diferentes tipos de hábitats (ríos vs. represas). La morfometría geométrica resultó una técnica eficiente para cuantificar y describir la morfología del guanchiche. Aunque fue estadísticamente significativo, diferencias morfológicas entre machos y hembras fueron muy pequeñas y no es posible en general distinguir entre sexos a base de la forma del cuerpo utilizando morfometría geométrica. La dieta no representa una causa que genere cambios en la morfología del guanchiche de distintas poblaciones, sus preferencias alimenticias no varían sustancialmente entre los hábitats muestreados

Influence of transition cost in the segmentation stage of speaker diarization

In any speaker diarization system there is a segmentation phase and a clustering phase. Our system uses them in a single step in which segmentation and clustering are used iteratively until certain condition is met. In this paper we propose an improvement of the segmentation method that cancels a penalization that had been applied in previous works to any transition between speakers. We also study the performance when transitions between speakers are favoured instead of penalized. This last option achieves better results both for the development set (21.65 % relative speaker error improvementSER) and for the test set (4.60% relative speaker error improvement

New experiments on speaker diarization for unsupervised speaking style voice building for speech synthesis

El uso universal de síntesis de voz en diferentes aplicaciones requeriría un desarrollo sencillo de las nuevas voces con poca intervención manual. Teniendo en cuenta la cantidad de datos multimedia disponibles en Internet y los medios de comunicación, un objetivo interesante es el desarrollo de herramientas y métodos para construir automáticamente las voces de estilo de varios de ellos. En un trabajo anterior se esbozó una metodología para la construcción de este tipo de herramientas, y se presentaron experimentos preliminares con una base de datos multiestilo. En este artículo investigamos más a fondo esta tarea y proponemos varias mejoras basadas en la selección del número apropiado de hablantes iniciales, el uso o no de filtros de reducción de ruido, el uso de la F0 y el uso de un algoritmo de detección de música. Hemos demostrado que el mejor sistema usando un algoritmo de detección de música disminuye el error de precisión 22,36% relativo para el conjunto de desarrollo y 39,64% relativo para el montaje de ensayo en comparación con el sistema base, sin degradar el factor de mérito. La precisión media para el conjunto de prueba es 90.62% desde 76.18% para los reportajes de 99,93% para los informes meteorológicos

Classification of tolerable/intolerable mucosal toxicity of head-and-neck radiotherapy schedules with a biomathematical model of cell dynamics

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to present a biomathematical model based on the dynamics of cell populations to predict the tolerability/intolerability of mucosal toxicity in head-and-neck radiotherapy. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Our model is based on the dynamics of proliferative and functional cell populations in irradiated mucosa, and incorporates the three As: Accelerated proliferation, loss of Asymmetric proliferation, and Abortive divisions. The model consists of a set of delay differential equations, and tolerability is based on the depletion of functional cells during treatment. We calculate the sensitivity (sen) and specificity (spe) of the model in a dataset of 108 radiotherapy schedules, and compare the results with those obtained with three phenomenological classification models, two based on a biologically effective dose (BED) function describing the tolerability boundary (Fowler and Fenwick) and one based on an equivalent dose in 2 Gy fractions (EQD2 ) boundary (Strigari). We also perform a machine learning-like cross-validation of all the models, splitting the database in two, one for training and one for validation. RESULTS: When fitting our model to the whole dataset, we obtain predictive values (sen + spe) up to 1.824. The predictive value of our model is very similar to that of the phenomenological models of Fowler (1.785), Fenwick (1.806), and Strigari (1.774). When performing a k = 2 cross-validation, the specificity and sensitivity in the validation dataset decrease for all models, from 1.82 to 1.55-1.63. For Fowler, the worsening is higher, down to 1.49. CONCLUSIONS: Our model has proved useful to predict the tolerability/intolerability of a dataset of 108 schedules. As the model is more mechanistic than other available models, it could prove helpful when designing unconventional dose fractionations, schedules not covered by datasets to which phenomenological models of toxicity have been fitted

A mathematical model of dynamics of cell populations in squamous epithelium after irradiation

Purpose To develop multi-compartment mechanistic models of dynamics of stem and functional cell populations in epithelium after irradiation. Methods and materials: We present two models, with three (3C) and four (4C) compartments respectively. We use delay differential equations, and include accelerated proliferation, loss of division asymmetry, progressive death of abortive stem cells, and turnover of functional cells. The models are used to fit experimental data on the variations of the number of cells in mice mucosa after irradiation with 13 Gy and 20 Gy. Akaike information criteria (AIC) was used to evaluate the performance of each model. Results Both 3C and 4C models provide good fits to experimental data for 13 Gy. Fits for 20 Gy are slightly poorer and may be affected by larger uncertainties and fluctuations of experimental data. Best fits are obtained by imposing constraints on the fitting parameters, so to have values that are within experimental ranges. There is some degeneration in the fits, as different sets of parameters provide similarly good fits. Conclusions The models provide good fits to experimental data. Mechanistic approaches like this can facilitate the development of mucositis response models to nonstandard schedules/treatment combinations not covered by datasets to which phenomenological models have been fitted. Studying the dynamics of cell populations in multifraction treatments, and finding links with induced toxicity, is the next step of this work