On Feature Importance and Interpretability of Speaker Representations

Unsupervised speech disentanglement aims at separating fast varying from slowly varying components of a speech signal. In this contribution, we take a closer look at the embedding vector representing the slowly varying signal components, commonly named the speaker embedding vector. We ask, which properties of a speaker's voice are captured and investigate to which extent do individual embedding vector components sign responsible for them, using the concept of Shapley values. Our findings show that certain speaker-specific acoustic-phonetic properties can be fairly well predicted from the speaker embedding, while the investigated more abstract voice quality features cannot.Comment: Presented at the ITG conference on Speech Communication 202

Robust, reproducible and quantitative analysis of thousands of proteomes by micro-flow LC-MS/MS

Nano-flow liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (nano-flow LC-MS/MS) is the mainstay in proteome research because of its excellent sensitivity but often comes at the expense of robustness. Here we show that micro-flow LC-MS/MS using a 1x150 mm column shows excellent reproducibility of chromatographic retention time (2000 samples of human cell lines, tissues and body fluids. Deep proteome analysis identifies >9000 proteins and >120,000 peptides in 16 h and sample multiplexing using tandem mass tags increases throughput to 11 proteomes in 16 h. The system identifies >30,000 phosphopeptides in 12 h and protein-protein or protein-drug interaction experiments can be analyzed in 20 min per sample. We show that the same column can be used to analyze >7500 samples without apparent loss of performance. This study demonstrates that micro-flow LC-MS/MS is suitable for a broad range of proteomic applications

Explaining voice characteristics to novice voice practitioners - How successful is it?

Wiechmann J, Rautenberg F, Wagner P, Häb-Umbach R. Explaining voice characteristics to novice voice practitioners - How successful is it? Presented at the 20th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) , Prague, Czech Republic.Human voices are notoriously difficult to characterize. A suitable and consistent description of voice characteristics is crucial in many applied disciplines such as speech therapy or forensics. The present study examines the ability of novice voice practitioners (students of clinical linguistics) to characterize voices before and after an expert explanation of laryngeal, supralaryngeal and prosodic voice features. Results show that even short expert explanations lead to a higher agreement between expert and novices. Especially voice characteristics related to laryngeal and supralaryngeal settings remain a major challenge to identify. We suggest that voice conversion technology may be employed in the future to assist the explanation of voice characteristics

Technically enabled explaining of voice characteristics

Wiechmann J, Glarner T, Rautenberg F, Wagner P, Häb-Umbach R. Technically enabled explaining of voice characteristics. In: Bruggemann A, Ludusan B, eds. P & P 18. Bielefeld: Universitätsbibliothek Bielefeld; 2022

Acoustic modeling of hoarseness

Wiechmann J, Rautenberg F, Wagner P, Häb-Umbach R. Acoustic modeling of hoarseness. In: Pistor TR, Steiner C, Tomascheck F, Leemann A, eds. Book of Abstracts der 19. Tagung Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum. Bern: Bern Open Publishing; 2023

Speech Disentanglement for Analysis and Modification of Acoustic and Perceptual Speaker Characteristics

Rautenberg F, Kuhlmann M, Ebbers J, et al. Speech Disentanglement for Analysis and Modification of Acoustic and Perceptual Speaker Characteristics. In: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik e.V. (DEGA), ed. Fortschritte der Akustik - DAGA 2023. Tagungsband. Berlin; 2023: 1409-1412.Popular speech disentanglement systems decompose a speech signal into a content and a speaker embedding, where a decoder reconstructs the input signal from these embeddings. Often, it is unknown, which information is encoded in the speaker embeddings. In this work, such a system is investigated on German speech data. We show that directions in the speaker embeddings space correlate with different acoustic signal properties that are known to be characteristics of a speaker, and manipulating these embeddings in that direction, the decoder synthesises a speech signal with modified acoustic properties

Robust, reproducible and quantitative analysis of thousands of proteomes by micro-flow LC-MS/MS

Nano-flow liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (nano-flow LC-MS/MS) is the mainstay in proteome research because of its excellent sensitivity but often comes at the expense of robustness. Here we show that micro-flow LC-MS/MS using a 1 × 150 mm column shows excellent reproducibility of chromatographic retention time (2000 samples of human cell lines, tissues and body fluids. Deep proteome analysis identifies >9000 proteins and >120,000 peptides in 16 h and sample multiplexing using tandem mass tags increases throughput to 11 proteomes in 16 h. The system identifies >30,000 phosphopeptides in 12 h and protein-protein or protein-drug interaction experiments can be analyzed in 20 min per sample. We show that the same column can be used to analyze >7500 samples without apparent loss of performance. This study demonstrates that micro-flow LC-MS/MS is suitable for a broad range of proteomic applications

Imbricaric Acid and Perlatolic Acid: Multi-Targeting Anti- Inflammatory Depsides from Cetrelia monachorum

In vitro screening of 17 Alpine lichen species for their inhibitory activity against 5-lipoxygenase, microsomal prostaglandin E 2 synthase-1 and nuclear factor kappa B revealed Cetrelia monachorum (Zahlbr.) W.L. Culb. & C.F. Culb. As conceivable source for novel anti-inflammatory compounds. Phytochemical investigation of the ethanolic crude extract resulted in the isolation and identification of 11 constituents, belonging to depsides and derivatives of orsellinic acid, olivetolic acid and olivetol. The two depsides imbricaric acid (4) and perlatolic acid (5) approved dual inhibitory activities on microsomal prostaglandin E 2 synthase-1 (IC 50 = 1.9 and 0.4 µM, resp.) and on 5-lipoxygenase tested in a cell-based assay (IC 50 = 5.3 and 1.8 µM, resp.) and on purified enzyme (IC 50 = 3.5 and 0.4 µM, resp.). Additionally, these two main constituents quantified in the extract with 15.22 % (4) and 9.10 % (5) showed significant inhibition of tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced nuclear factor kappa B activation in luciferase reporter cells with IC 50 values of 2.0 and 7.0 µM, respectively. In a murine in vivo model of inflammation, 5 impaired the inflammatory, thioglycollate-induced recruitment of leukocytes to the peritoneum