Forward Attention in Sequence-to-sequence Acoustic Modelling for Speech Synthesis

This paper proposes a forward attention method for the sequenceto- sequence acoustic modeling of speech synthesis. This method is motivated by the nature of the monotonic alignment from phone sequences to acoustic sequences. Only the alignment paths that satisfy the monotonic condition are taken into consideration at each decoder timestep. The modified attention probabilities at each timestep are computed recursively using a forward algorithm. A transition agent for forward attention is further proposed, which helps the attention mechanism to make decisions whether to move forward or stay at each decoder timestep. Experimental results show that the proposed forward attention method achieves faster convergence speed and higher stability than the baseline attention method. Besides, the method of forward attention with transition agent can also help improve the naturalness of synthetic speech and control the speed of synthetic speech effectively.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Published in IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing 2018 (ICASSP2018

O(\alpha_s) QCD Corrections to Spin Correlations in e−e+→ttˉe^- e^+ \to t \bar t process at the NLC

Using a Generic spin basis, we present a general formalism of one-loop radiative corrections to the spin correlations in the top quark pair production at the Next Linear Collider, and calculate the O(\alpha_s) QCD corrections under the soft gluon approximation. We find that: (a) in Off-diagonal basis, the $O(\alpha_s)$ QCD corrections to $e_L^- e^+$ ($e_R^- e^+$) scattering process increase the differential cross sections of the dominant spin component $t_{\uparrow}\bar{t}_{\downarrow}$ ($t_{\downarrow}\bar{t}_{\uparrow}$) by $\sim 30$ and $\sim (0.1$ depending on the scattering angle for $\sqrt{s}=400 GeV$ and 1 TeV, respectively; (b) in {Off-diagonal basis} (Helicity basis), the dominant spin component makes up 99.8% ($\sim 53$) of the total cross section at both tree and one-loop level for $\sqrt{s}=400 GeV$, and the Off-diagonal basis therefore remains to be the optimal spin basis after the inclusion of $O(\alpha_s)$ QCD corrections.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, revised version (a few print mistakes are corrected, some numerical results are modified, and Fig.4 is added

Summary of Carbon Emission Statistics and Measurement of Transportation Industry

Transportation is a critical area for China to achieve its goal of carbon neutrality. A successful national climate plan and the overall development of a strong transportation nation are tied to achieving the carbon peak and carbon neutrality in transportation. This study first sorts out the statistical boundaries and methods of carbon emissions. Secondly, it introduces the measurement methods of carbon emissions in the transportation industry, including the emission factor method and the full life cycle method. Thirdly, the research on influencing factors of carbon emissions in the transportation industry is reviewed from four aspects: economy, transportation industry itself, technology, and others, and relevant research on carbon emission prediction methods in the transportation industry is summarized. Finally, the limitations of existing research are analyzed, and future research on carbon emissions statistics and measurement in the transportation industry is prospected

Improving Sequence-to-Sequence Acoustic Modeling by Adding Text-Supervision

This paper presents methods of making using of text supervision to improve the performance of sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) voice conversion. Compared with conventional frame-to-frame voice conversion approaches, the seq2seq acoustic modeling method proposed in our previous work achieved higher naturalness and similarity. In this paper, we further improve its performance by utilizing the text transcriptions of parallel training data. First, a multi-task learning structure is designed which adds auxiliary classifiers to the middle layers of the seq2seq model and predicts linguistic labels as a secondary task. Second, a data-augmentation method is proposed which utilizes text alignment to produce extra parallel sequences for model training. Experiments are conducted to evaluate our proposed method with training sets at different sizes. Experimental results show that the multi-task learning with linguistic labels is effective at reducing the errors of seq2seq voice conversion. The data-augmentation method can further improve the performance of seq2seq voice conversion when only 50 or 100 training utterances are available.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to IEEE ICASSP 201

Clinical effects of sirolimus treatment in patients with increased serum creatinine levels after renal transplant

Purpose: To observe the clinical effects of sirolimus (SRL) immunosuppressive therapy in patients with progressively increasing levels of serum creatinine (Scr) after renal transplant.Methods: In total, 180 patients whose Scr levels had been rising after renal transplant were given an oral calcineurin inhibitor (CNI): either cyclosporine A (CsA) or tacrolimus (FK506). All patients were treated at People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou, China, between January 2011 and December 2013, and were given SRL-based conversion treatment. Scr level and glomerular filtration rate (GFR) were observed before and 1, 3, and 6 months after treatment initiation. In addition, liver function, blood glucose, blood lipid levels, rejection reaction incidence, and mortality were recorded to evaluate the effects of SRL.Results: Scr levels were 116.60 ± 30.60 μmol/L and 119.00 ± 24.60 μmol/L, and GFR was 70.00 ± 19.70 mL/min and 75.90 ± 15.60 mL/min, at 3 and 6 months after treatment, respectively. The 3- and 6- month Scr and GFR values were statistically different (p < 0.05) compared to pre-treatment levels (Scr: 144.10 ± 61.70 μmol/L vs and GFR: 59.10 ± 16.20 mL/min. Acute rejection (AR) occurred in 20 patients (13.30 %) within 6 months of treatment initiation, but rejection was reversed with conventional methylprednisolone therapy. Twenty-one patients (11.70 %) developed lung infections, but all were cured. There were no significant differences in liver function before and after treatment.Conclusion: SRL-based immunosuppressive therapy is effective in treating patients with increased Scr levels after renal transplant.Keywords: Renal transplant, Serum creatinine, Calcineurin inhibitors, Sirolimus, Acute rejection, Glomerular filtration rat

Analysis of the spatiotemporally varying effects of urban spatial patterns on land surface temperatures

Urban heat islands (UHIs) are a worldwide phenomenon that have many ecological and social consequences. It has become increasingly important to examine the relationships between land surface temperatures (LSTs) and all related factors. This study analyses Landsat data, spatial metrics, and a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model for a case study of Hangzhou, China, to explore the correlation between LST and urban spatial patterns. The LST data were retrieved from Landsat images. Spatial metrics were used to quantify the urban spatial patterns. The effects of the urban spatial patterns on LSTs were further investigated using Pearson correlation analysis and a GWR model, both at three spatial scales. The results show that the LST patterns have changed significantly, which can be explained by the concurrent changes in urban spatial patterns. The correlation coefficients between the spatial metrics and LSTs decrease as the spatial scale increases. The GWR model performs better than an ordinary least squares analysis in exploring the relationship of LSTs and urban spatial patterns, which is indicated by the higher adjusted R2 values, lower corrected Akaike information criterion and reduced spatial autocorrelations. The GWR model results indicate that the effects of urban spatial patterns on LSTs are spatiotemporally variable. Moreover, their effects vary spatially with the use of different spatial scales. The findings of this study can aid in sustainable urban planning and the mitigation the UHI effect

Alternative splicing and trans-splicing events revealed by analysis of the Bombyx mori transcriptome

Alternative splicing and trans-splicing events have not been systematically studied in the silkworm Bombyx mori. Here, the silkworm transcriptome was analyzed by RNA-seq. We identified 320 novel genes, modified 1140 gene models, and found thousands of alternative splicing and 58 trans-splicing events. Studies of three SR proteins show that both their alternative splicing patterns and mRNA products are conserved from insect to human, and one isoform of Srsf6 with a retained intron is expressed sex-specifically in silkworm gonads. Trans-splicing of mod(mdg4) in silkworm was experimentally confirmed. We identified integrations from a common 5′-gene with 46 newly identified alternative 3′-exons that are located on both DNA strands over a 500-kb region. Other trans-splicing events in B. mori were predicted by bioinformatic analysis, in which 12 events were confirmed by RT-PCR, six events were further validated by chimeric SNPs, and two events were confirmed by allele-specific RT-PCR in F 1 hybrids from distinct silkworm lines of JS and L10, indicating that trans-splicing is more widespread in insects than previously thought. Analysis of the B. mori transcriptome by RNA-seq provides valuable information of regulatory alternative splicing events. The conservation of splicing events across species and newly identified trans-splicing events suggest that B. mori is a good model for future studies. Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. Copyrigh