La carte postale de l'Affaire Dreyfus à la Shoah

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The Blizzard Challenge 2023

International audienceThe Blizzard Challenge 2023 is the eighteenth edition of the text-to-speech synthesis Blizzard Challenge. This year, two French datasets were provided to participants and two tasks were designed. The Hub task was to build a voice from a 51hour single speaker dataset, restricted to using only publiclyavailable data. The Spoke task consisted of building a voice from a 2-hour single speaker dataset that sounds as close as possible to that speaker. There were no restrictions on the use of data for the spoke task. 18 teams participated in the hub task and 14 in the spoke task. All teams used neural-based systems. Synthesised samples were evaluated in terms of speech quality, speaker similarity and intelligibility

On the Benefit of Independent Control of Head and Eye Movements of a Social Robot for Multiparty Human-Robot Interaction

The human gaze direction is the sum of the head and eye movements. The coordination of these two segments has been studied and models of the contribution of head movement to the gaze of virtual agents or robots have been proposed. However, these coordination models are mostly not trained nor evaluated in an interaction context, and may underestimate the social functions of gaze. Indeed, after analyzing human behavior in a three-party conversation dataset, we show that the contribution of the head to the gaze varies depending on whether the speaker is addressing two interlocutors or one of them: the conversational regime actually impacts the head/eyes coordination. We therefore propose an evaluation of different coordination policies in a social interaction context, using a Furhat robot to replay the human multimodal behavior from our data record. The verbal content and gaze targets are the same, but the robot uses four different head and eye coordination policies. (1) Furhat's default gaze control, whose eyes move faster and start before the head, but finally aligns both segments. (2) the robot head is fixed and only the eyes move. (3) the eyes are fixed and only the head moves. (4) Human-like control where the robot mimics the head movements of the human dataset, which naturally exploits independent eye and head control. Using an online crowdsourced test, we show that the human-like policy, which uses decoupled head and eye movements, is perceived significantly more natural than the others

Coupling underwater autonomous vehicles and automatic video analysis for efficient monitoring of coral reef ecosystems: promises and challenges

International audienceCoral reefs are facing increasing effects of global changes. Yet, diver-based surveys do not allow assessing the subsequent changes of reef fish assemblages over large areas and at high frequency. Development of Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (SAUV) and Deep Learning technologies could help to tackle this challenging task. To this end, we developed a small-size underwater vehicle carrying stereo cameras and environmental sensors, capable of automatically perform standardized trajectories in a complex environment. Our robot can, for example, dynamically verify mission-dependent properties (remaining to a constant depth or altitude, moving below a maximal speed, following a virtual transect line, etc.) and automatically transition among missions. We are actually working toward full autonomous functionalities in order to remove the umbilical cable presently necessary for human operators to visually detect dangerous obstacles. The umbilical cable limits drastically the operational range of the system, increases the logistical burden and induces huge disturbances on the system (it can cling on coral, creates overwhelming drag, limits the action range of the robot, etc.). But, removing the umbilical cable implies to improve autonomous system reaction to specific troubling events (obstacle detection and avoidance, energy management, essential sensors failure, etc.). In parallel, we developed Deep Learning based computer vision algorithms capable of automatically, locating and identifying fishes in videos for post treatment of recordings. Tests of these novel tools revealed that diver and SAUV-operated video recordings showed little differences in describing overall structure of fish assemblages (both set of video were treated manually by the same operator). SAUV even appeared to be more appropriate to survey commercial species, which are probably more scared by the potential "human predators". Similarly, Deep Learning algorithms were as good as humans to identify fish species but at a higher rate. Full autonomy is still a hard point to reach for mobile robotics in harsh environment such as oceans, but combined with automatic video analysis, such tools are now necessary to succeed in ecosystems monitoring. While necessary hardware are now becoming available, greater effort needs to be made in algorithmics

Sensilla on antennae, ovipositor and tarsi of the larval parasitoids, Cotesia sesamiae (Cameron 1906) and Cotesia flavipes Cameron 1891 (Hymenoptera: Braconidae): a comparative scanning electron microscopy study

Two braconid parasitoids of cereal stemborers in eastern Africa, Cotesia sesamiae and Cotesia flavipes, have been shown to display a similar hierarchy of behavioural events during host recognition and acceptance. In order to understand the mechanisms underlying host recognition and acceptance, the morphology of antennal sensilla on the last antennomeres, on the ovipositor, and on the fifth tarsomere and pretarsus of the prothoracic legs tarsi were studied using scanning electron microscopy followed by selective silver nitrate staining. It appeared that female C. sesamiae and C. flavipes shared the same types and distribution of sensory receptors, which enable them to detect volatiles and contact chemical stimuli from their hosts. In both parasitoids, four types of sensilla were identified on the three terminal antennomeres: (i) non-porous sensilla trichodea likely to be involved in mechanoreception, (ii) uniporous sensilla chaetica with porous tips that have gustatory functions, (iii) multiporous sensilla placodea, which are likely to have olfactory function, and (iv) sensilla coeloconica known to have thermo-hygroreceptive function. The tarsi of both parasitoids possessed a few uniporous sensilla chaetica with porous tips, which may have gustatory functions. The distal end of the ovipositor bore numerous dome-shaped sensilla. However, there were no sensilla coeloconica or styloconica, known to have gustatory function in other parasitoid species, on the ovipositors of the two braconid wasps.http://ann.sef.free.fr

On- Versus Off-Hours Presentation and Mortality of ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction Patients Treated With Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

International audienceThe authors sought to assess the association between admission time with patient's care, procedure characteristics, and clinical outcomes within a contemporary ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) network of patients referred for primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)

Contrast-induced acute kidney injury and mortality in ST elevation myocardial infarction treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention

Objectives: Contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) is a common and potentially severe complication in patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI). There is no consensus on the best definition of CI-AKI to identify patients at risk of haemodialysis or death. The objective of this study was to assess the association of CI-AKI, using four definitions, on inhospital mortality, mortality or haemodialysis requirement over 1-year follow-up, in patients with STEMI treated with pPCI.Methods: In this prospective, observational study, all patients with STEMI referred for pPCI were included. We identified independent variables associated with CI-AKI and mortality.Results: We included 1114 consecutive patients with STEMI treated by pPCI. CI-AKI occurred in 18.3%, 12.2%, 15.6% and 10.5% of patients according to the CIN, Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN), Risk, Injury, Failure, Loss of kidney function, and End-stage kidney disease (RIFLE) Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) and RIFLE Chronic Kidney Disease - Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) definitions, respectively. The RIFLE (CKD-EPI) definition was the most discriminant definition to identify patients at higher risk of inhospital mortality (27.1% vs 4.0%; adjusted OR 2.7 (95% CI 1.4 to 5.1), p=0.003), 1-year mortality (27.4% vs 6.6%; adjusted OR 2.8 (95% CI 1.5 to 5.3), p=0.002) and haemodialysis requirement at 1-year follow-up (15.6% vs 2.7%; adjusted OR 6.7 (95% CI 3.3 to 13.6), p=0.001). Haemodynamic instability, cardiac arrest, preexisting renal failure, elderly age and a high contrast media volume were independently associated with 1-year mortality. Of interest, contrast-media volume was not correlated to increase of creatininaemia (r=0.06) or decrease in estimated glomerular filtration rate (r=0.05) after percutaneous coronary intervention in our population.Conclusions: CI-AKI is a frequent and serious complication of STEMI treated by pPCI. The RIFLE definition is the most accurate definition to identify patients with CI-AKI at high risk of mortality or haemodialysis