Ensembling Multilingual Pre-Trained Models for Predicting Multi-Label Regression Emotion Share from Speech

Speech emotion recognition has evolved from research to practical applications. Previous studies of emotion recognition from speech have focused on developing models on certain datasets like IEMOCAP. The lack of data in the domain of emotion modeling emerges as a challenge to evaluate models in the other dataset, as well as to evaluate speech emotion recognition models that work in a multilingual setting. This paper proposes an ensemble learning to fuse results of pre-trained models for emotion share recognition from speech. The models were chosen to accommodate multilingual data from English and Spanish. The results show that ensemble learning can improve the performance of the baseline model with a single model and the previous best model from the late fusion. The performance is measured using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient since the task is a regression problem with ranking values. A Spearman rank correlation coefficient of 0.537 is reported for the test set, while for the development set, the score is 0.524. These scores are higher than the previous study of a fusion method from monolingual data, which achieved scores of 0.476 for the test and 0.470 for the development.Comment: 4 pages, 6 tables, accepted in APSIPA-ASC 202

Scanning Electron Microscopic Features of Spleen in the Rat and Human: A Comparative Study

The marginal zone, white pulp and red pulp of rat and human spleen were studied by scanning electron microscopy and were compared. The marginal zone was observed in both species. The arterial termination in the marginal zone was quite different between both species. The follicular arteries terminated at the boundary of the white pulp and formed a vascular net regarded as the marginal sinus in rat. On the other hand, numerous arterial termini of the follicular and sheathed arteries were scatteringly found in the marginal zone in man. The central artery was surrounded with flat reticular cells in rat and human spleen. In the red pulp of rat, the arterial termini were funnel-shaped or tubular. The sheath of the sheathed arteries of man revealed a circumferential lamellar structure consisting of flat reticular cells, and most free cells of the sheath were washed away by perfusion

Immobilization of single strand DNA on solid substrate

Thin films based on Layer-by-Layer (LbL) self assembled technique are useful for immobilization of DNA onto solid support. This communication reports the immobilization of DNA onto a solid support by electrostatic interaction with a polycation Poly (allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH). UV-Vis absorption and steady state fluorescence spectroscopic studies exhibit the characteristics of DNA organized in LbL films. The most significant observation is that single strand DNA are immobilized on the PAH backbone of LbL films when the films are fabricated above the melting temperature of DNA. DNA immobilized in this way on LbL films remains as such when the temperature is restored at room temperature and the organization remains unaffected even after several days. UV-Vis absorption spectroscopic studies confirm this finding.Comment: Eight pages, five figure

Enzymatic Digestion of Single DNA Molecules Anchored on Nanogold-Modified Surfaces

To study enzyme–DNA interactions at single molecular level, both the attachment points and the immediate surroundings of surfaces must be carefully considered such that they do not compromise the structural information and biological properties of the sample under investigation. The present work demonstrates the feasibility of enzymatic digestion of single DNA molecules attached to nanoparticle-modified surfaces. With Nanogold linking DNA to the mica surface by electrostatic interactions, advantageous conditions with fewer effects on the length and topography of DNA are obtained, and an appropriate environment for the activities of DNA is created. We demonstrate that by using Dip-Pen Nanolithography, individual DNA molecules attached to modified mica surfaces can be efficiently digested by DNase I

Identifying the latent failures underpinning medication administration errors: an exploratory study

Objectives The primary aim of this article was to identify the latent failures that are perceived to underpin medication errors. Study Setting The study was conducted within three medical wards in a hospital in the United Kingdom. Study Design The study employed a cross-sectional qualitative design. Data Collection Methods Interviews were conducted with 12 nurses and eight managers. Interviews were transcribed and subject to thematic content analysis. A two-step inter-rater comparison tested the reliability of the themes. Principal Findings Ten latent failures were identified based on the analysis of the interviews. These were ward climate, local working environment, workload, human resources, team communication, routine procedures, bed management, written policies and procedures, supervision and leadership, and training. The discussion focuses on ward climate, the most prevalent theme, which is conceptualized here as interacting with failures in the nine other organizational structures and processes. Conclusions This study is the first of its kind to identify the latent failures perceived to underpin medication errors in a systematic way. The findings can be used as a platform for researchers to test the impact of organization-level patient safety interventions and to design proactive error management tools and incident reporting systems in hospitals

Noise Robust Speech Recognition Applied to Voice-Driven Wheelchair

Conventional voice-driven wheelchairs usually employ headset microphones that are capable of achieving sufficient recognition accuracy, even in the presence of surrounding noise. However, such interfaces require users to wear sensors such as a headset microphone, which can be an impediment, especially for the hand disabled. Conversely, it is also well known that the speech recognition accuracy drastically degrades when the microphone is placed far from the user. In this paper, we develop a noise robust speech recognition system for a voice-driven wheelchair. This system can achieve almost the same recognition accuracy as the headset microphone without wearing sensors. We verified the effectiveness of our system in experiments in different environments, and confirmed that our system can achieve almost the same recognition accuracy as the headset microphone without wearing sensors