33,123 research outputs found
Time–Frequency Cepstral Features and Heteroscedastic Linear Discriminant Analysis for Language Recognition
The shifted delta cepstrum (SDC) is a widely used feature extraction for language recognition (LRE). With a high context width due to incorporation of multiple frames, SDC outperforms traditional delta and acceleration feature vectors. However, it also introduces correlation into the concatenated feature vector, which increases redundancy and may degrade the performance of backend classifiers. In this paper, we first propose a time-frequency cepstral (TFC) feature vector, which is obtained by performing a temporal discrete cosine transform (DCT) on the cepstrum matrix and selecting the transformed elements in a zigzag scan order. Beyond this, we increase discriminability through a heteroscedastic linear discriminant analysis (HLDA) on the full cepstrum matrix. By utilizing block diagonal matrix constraints, the large HLDA problem is then reduced to several smaller HLDA problems, creating a block diagonal HLDA (BDHLDA) algorithm which has much lower computational complexity. The BDHLDA method is finally extended to the GMM domain, using the simpler TFC features during re-estimation to provide significantly improved computation speed. Experiments on NIST 2003 and 2007 LRE evaluation corpora show that TFC is more effective than SDC, and that the GMM-based BDHLDA results in lower equal error rate (EER) and minimum average cost (Cavg) than either TFC or SDC approaches
Efficient Inexact Proximal Gradient Algorithm for Nonconvex Problems
The proximal gradient algorithm has been popularly used for convex
optimization. Recently, it has also been extended for nonconvex problems, and
the current state-of-the-art is the nonmonotone accelerated proximal gradient
algorithm. However, it typically requires two exact proximal steps in each
iteration, and can be inefficient when the proximal step is expensive. In this
paper, we propose an efficient proximal gradient algorithm that requires only
one inexact (and thus less expensive) proximal step in each iteration.
Convergence to a critical point %of the nonconvex problem is still guaranteed
and has a convergence rate, which is the best rate for nonconvex
problems with first-order methods. Experiments on a number of problems
demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has comparable performance as the
state-of-the-art, but is much faster
Effect of secondary currents on the flow and turbulence in partially filled pipes
Large-eddy simulations of turbulent flow in partially filled pipes are conducted to investigate the effect of secondary currents on the friction factor, first- and second-order statistics and large-scale turbulent motion. The method is validated first and simulated profiles of the mean streamwise velocity, normal stresses and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) are shown to be in good agreement with experimental data. The secondary flow is stronger in half- and three-quarters full pipes compared with quarter full or fully filled pipe flows, respectively. The origin of the secondary flow is examined by both the TKE budget and the steamwise vorticity equation, providing evidence that secondary currents originate from the corner between the free surface and the pipe walls, which is where turbulence production is larger than the sum of the remaining terms of the TKE budget. An extra source of streamwise vorticity production is found at the free surface near the centreline bisector, due to the two-component asymmetric turbulence there. The occurrence of dispersive stresses (due to secondary currents) reduces the contribution of the turbulent shear stress to the friction factor, which results in a reduction of the total friction factor of flows in half and three-quarters full pipes in comparison to a fully filled pipe flow. Furthermore, the presence of significant secondary currents inhibits very-large-scale motion (VLSM), which in turn reduces the strength and scales of near-wall streaks. Subsequently, near-wall coherent structures generated by streak instability and transient growth are significantly suppressed. The absence of VLSM and less coherent near-wall turbulence structures is supposedly responsible for the drag reduction in partially filled pipe flows relative to a fully filled pipe flow at an equivalent Reynolds number
J/psi Elliptic Flow, High pT Suppression and Upsilon Measurements in A+A Collisions by the PHENIX Experiment
Three measurements that broaden the scope of the experimental investigation
of quarkonia modifications in heavy ion collisions are presented. Although the
current statistical precision on the first two measurements does not allow one
to draw significant conclusions, J/ elliptic flow and high pT suppression
results are important proofs of principle measurements, and make the case for
higher luminosities at RHIC. Finally, the first measurement of an upper limit
on the nuclear modification R_AA of dielectrons in the mass region
in Au+Au collisions is presented. The results show a significant suppression
with an upper limit of 0.64 at 90% CL.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures - To appear in the conference proceedings for
Quark Matter 2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, Tennesse
Exploring the quantum critical behaviour in a driven Tavis-Cummings circuit
Quantum phase transitions play an important role in many-body systems and
have been a research focus in conventional condensed matter physics over the
past few decades. Artificial atoms, such as superconducting qubits that can be
individually manipulated, provide a new paradigm of realising and exploring
quantum phase transitions by engineering an on-chip quantum simulator. Here we
demonstrate experimentally the quantum critical behaviour in a
highly-controllable superconducting circuit, consisting of four qubits coupled
to a common resonator mode. By off-resonantly driving the system to renormalise
the critical spin-field coupling strength, we have observed a four-qubit
non-equilibrium quantum phase transition in a dynamical manner, i.e., we sweep
the critical coupling strength over time and monitor the four-qubit scaled
moments for a signature of a structural change of the system's eigenstates. Our
observation of the non-equilibrium quantum phase transition, which is in good
agreement with the driven Tavis-Cummings theory under decoherence, offers new
experimental approaches towards exploring quantum phase transition related
science, such as scaling behaviours, parity breaking and long-range quantum
correlations.Comment: Main text with 3 figure
- …