30 research outputs found
Phonological Features for 0-shot Multilingual Speech Synthesis
Code-switching---the intra-utterance use of multiple languages---is prevalent
across the world. Within text-to-speech (TTS), multilingual models have been
found to enable code-switching. By modifying the linguistic input to
sequence-to-sequence TTS, we show that code-switching is possible for languages
unseen during training, even within monolingual models. We use a small set of
phonological features derived from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),
such as vowel height and frontness, consonant place and manner. This allows the
model topology to stay unchanged for different languages, and enables new,
previously unseen feature combinations to be interpreted by the model. We show
that this allows us to generate intelligible, code-switched speech in a new
language at test time, including the approximation of sounds never seen in
training.Comment: 5 pages, to be presented at INTERSPEECH 202
ADEPT:A dataset for evaluating prosody transfer
Text-to-speech is now able to achieve near-human naturalness and research
focus has shifted to increasing expressivity. One popular method is to transfer
the prosody from a reference speech sample. There have been considerable
advances in using prosody transfer to generate more expressive speech, but the
field lacks a clear definition of what successful prosody transfer means and a
method for measuring it.
We introduce a dataset of prosodically-varied reference natural speech
samples for evaluating prosody transfer. The samples include global variations
reflecting emotion and interpersonal attitude, and local variations reflecting
topical emphasis, propositional attitude, syntactic phrasing and marked
tonicity. The corpus only includes prosodic variations that listeners are able
to distinguish with reasonable accuracy, and we report these figures as a
benchmark against which text-to-speech prosody transfer can be compared.
We conclude the paper with a demonstration of our proposed evaluation
methodology, using the corpus to evaluate two text-to-speech models that
perform prosody transfer.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, accepted to Interspeech 202
Ctrl-P:Temporal control of prosodic variation for speech synthesis
Text does not fully specify the spoken form, so text-to-speech models must be
able to learn from speech data that vary in ways not explained by the
corresponding text. One way to reduce the amount of unexplained variation in
training data is to provide acoustic information as an additional learning
signal. When generating speech, modifying this acoustic information enables
multiple distinct renditions of a text to be produced.
Since much of the unexplained variation is in the prosody, we propose a model
that generates speech explicitly conditioned on the three primary acoustic
correlates of prosody: , energy and duration. The model is flexible
about how the values of these features are specified: they can be externally
provided, or predicted from text, or predicted then subsequently modified.
Compared to a model that employs a variational auto-encoder to learn
unsupervised latent features, our model provides more interpretable,
temporally-precise, and disentangled control. When automatically predicting the
acoustic features from text, it generates speech that is more natural than that
from a Tacotron 2 model with reference encoder. Subsequent human-in-the-loop
modification of the predicted acoustic features can significantly further
increase naturalness.Comment: To be published in Interspeech 2021. 5 pages, 4 figure
Lomerizine attenuates LPS-induced acute lung injury by inhibiting the macrophage activation through reducing Ca2+ influx
Acute lung injury (ALI) and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are life-threatening lung diseases with high mortality rates, predominantly attributable to acute and severe pulmonary inflammation. Lomerizine (LMZ) is a calcium channel blocker previously used in preventing and treating migraine. Here, we found that LMZ inhibited inflammatory responses and lung pathological injury by reducing pulmonary edema, neutrophil infiltration and pro-inflammatory cytokine production in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ALI mice. In vitro experiments, upon treating with LMZ, the expression of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α was attenuated in macrophages. The phosphorylation of p38 MAPK, ERK1/2, JNK, and NF-κB p65 was inhibited after LMZ treatment. Furthermore, LPS-induced Ca2+ influx was reduced by treating with LMZ, which correlated with inhibition of pro-inflammatory cytokine production. And L-type Ca2+ channel agonist Bay K8644 (BK) could restore cytokine generation. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that LMZ alleviates LPS-induced ALI and is a potential agent for treating ALI/ARDS
Proceedings of the 29th EG-ICE International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering
This publication is the Proceedings of the 29th EG-ICE International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering from July 6-8, 2022. The EG-ICE International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering brings together international experts working on the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolution of challenges such as supporting multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways.
 
Proceedings of the 29th EG-ICE International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering
This publication is the Proceedings of the 29th EG-ICE International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering from July 6-8, 2022. The EG-ICE International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering brings together international experts working on the interface between advanced computing and modern engineering challenges. Many engineering tasks require open-world resolution of challenges such as supporting multi-actor collaboration, coping with approximate models, providing effective engineer-computer interaction, search in multi-dimensional solution spaces, accommodating uncertainty, including specialist domain knowledge, performing sensor-data interpretation and dealing with incomplete knowledge. While results from computer science provide much initial support for resolution, adaptation is unavoidable and most importantly, feedback from addressing engineering challenges drives fundamental computer-science research. Competence and knowledge transfer goes both ways.
 
Biodegradation of Crystalline and Nonaqueous Phase Liquid-Dissolved ATRAZINE by <i>Arthrobacter</i> sp. ST11 with Cd<sup>2+</sup> Resistance
A newly isolated cadmium (Cd)-resistant bacterial strain from herbicides-polluted soil in China could use atrazine as the sole carbon, nitrogen, and energy source for growth in a mineral salt medium (MSM). Based on 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis and physiochemical tests, the bacterium was identified as Arthrobacter sp. and named ST11. The biodegradation of atrazine by ST11 was investigated in experiments, with the compound present either as crystals or dissolved in di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) as a non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL). After 48 h, ST11 consumed 68% of the crystalline atrazine in MSM. After being dissolved in DEHP, the degradation ratio of atrazine was reduced to 55% under the same conditions. Obviously, the NAPL-dissolved atrazine has lower bioavailability than the crystalline atrazine. Cd2+ at concentrations of 0.05–1.5 mmol/L either had no effect (2+ promoted ST11 to degrade atrazine, whether crystalline or dissolved in DEHP. Refusal to adsorb Cd2+ may be the main mechanism of high Cd resistance in ST11 cells. These results may provide valuable insights for the microbial treatment of arable soil co-polluted by atrazine and Cd