A Fine-tuned Wav2vec 2.0/HuBERT Benchmark For Speech Emotion Recognition, Speaker Verification and Spoken Language Understanding

Self-supervised speech representations such as wav2vec 2.0 and HuBERT are making revolutionary progress in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). However, self-supervised models have not been totally proved to produce better performance on tasks other than ASR. In this work, we explore partial fine-tuning and entire fine-tuning on wav2vec 2.0 and HuBERT pre-trained models for three non-ASR speech tasks : Speech Emotion Recognition, Speaker Verification and Spoken Language Understanding. We also compare pre-trained models with/without ASR fine-tuning. With simple down-stream frameworks, the best scores reach 79.58% weighted accuracy for Speech Emotion Recognition on IEMOCAP, 2.36% equal error rate for Speaker Verification on VoxCeleb1, 87.51% accuracy for Intent Classification and 75.32% F1 for Slot Filling on SLURP, thus setting a new state-of-the-art for these three benchmarks, proving that fine-tuned wav2vec 2.0 and HuBERT models can better learn prosodic, voice-print and semantic representations.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Porphyrin‐Based Organophotocatalysts

The planar geometric structure and the rich absorption feature endow porphyrins with interesting optoelectronic properties and also make it promising building blocks for supramolecular assembly. Recent advances in the photocatalytic applications of porphyrins, including homogeneous, heterogeneous photocatalysis, and photoelectrochemical solar cells are highlighted. Porphyrin photocatalysts are involved in the form of molecules, supported molecules, nanostructures, and thin film. Related rational design strategies are provided for each form with an aim to enhance the light conversion efficiency. Finally, the ongoing directions and challenges for the future development of porphyrin semiconductors in high‐quality optoelectronic devices are also proposed

Speech Emotion Diarization: Which Emotion Appears When?

Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) typically relies on utterance-level solutions. However, emotions conveyed through speech should be considered as discrete speech events with definite temporal boundaries, rather than attributes of the entire utterance. To reflect the fine-grained nature of speech emotions, we propose a new task: Speech Emotion Diarization (SED). Just as Speaker Diarization answers the question of "Who speaks when?", Speech Emotion Diarization answers the question of "Which emotion appears when?". To facilitate the evaluation of the performance and establish a common benchmark for researchers, we introduce the Zaion Emotion Dataset (ZED), an openly accessible speech emotion dataset that includes non-acted emotions recorded in real-life conditions, along with manually-annotated boundaries of emotion segments within the utterance. We provide competitive baselines and open-source the code and the pre-trained models

Market Discipline and City Commercial Banks’ Risk Taking

Since the end of 2006, commitment period of China’s joining into the WTO is over, Chinese bank industry fully opened, and market competition has become stronger. But China has an implicit deposit insurance, under this circumstances whether market discipline exists in city commercial banks has become an important question. This paper used data from 60 city commercial banks between 2003 and 2010 to analyze this issue. Study shows that before Chinese bank sector fully opened, the power of market is weak, market is unable to restrict city commercial bank’s risk effectively; in the wake of Chinese bank sector opening at the end of 2006, the power of market discipline gradually appeared, which controlled risk taking efficiently by price mechanism, but quantity discipline is always not obvious.Key words: Market discipline; Banking sector; Risk takin

Expression of TLR4-MyD88 and NF-κB in the Iris during Endotoxin-Induced Uveitis

Purpose. To observe the expression of Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR4), myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88), and nuclear factor kappa B p65 (NF-κB p65) in iris tissue during endotoxin-induced uveitis (EIU) and evaluate the significance of these factors in uveitis. Methods. Wistar rats were randomly divided into 5 groups (0 h, 12 h, 24 h, 48 h, and 72 h, n = 10/group). Animal model of acute anterior uveitis was established by a hind footpad injection of 200 μg Cholera vibrio LPS. Expression of TLR4, MyD88, and NF-κB p65 in iris ciliary body tissue was detected through immunohistochemical staining. Results. Expression of TLR4 was not detected in normal iris-ciliary body complex, TLR4 positive cells with round morphology appeared in the iris stroma 12 hours after injection, significantly increased (P < .001) 48 hours after injection, and decreased gradually 72 hours after injection. Expression of MyD88 and NF-κB p65 is consistent with the change of the TLR4. Conclusions. The increased expression of TLR4 and its downstream signal transduction moleculesMyD88, NF-κB p65 indicate the potential role of pathway in the pathogenesis of acute anterior uveitis (AAU)

Tourist shopping behavior : a case of Shanghai outbound tourists / Yingzhi Guo...[et al.]

Shopping is an important tourist activity and its contribution to the economy is significant. For many visitors no trip is complete without having spent time shopping and tourists often feel they cannot return home without buying “something”. This research explored the basic shopping behaviour model of Shanghai outbound tourists. Data from 65 respondents were collected using the convenient sampling method. The motivations of Shanghai outbound tourists’ shopping behaviour were presented in seven dimensions including function, gift giving, affection, curiosity, scarcity, memory and cultural orientations. Quality, brand, shortage of specific goods in China’s domestic market, the lower price of goods in the outbound market and the convenient payments in the destinations are important attributes that spark their shopping behaviours. This outcome has at least had significant implications for tour operators and marketers to understand the needs of Chinese outbound tourists

Association of serum levels of lipid and its novel constituents with the different stages of esophageal carcinoma

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aim of the study was to evaluate the association of immunoglobulin G type of autoantibodies to oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL-lgG) and oxLDL-lgM with the progression of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESSC).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Residents from Feicheng, China aged 40 to 69 years were screened for esophageal lesions in a screening program conducted during the period of January 2008 to December 2006. There were 33 controls with normal esophageal squamous epithelium cells, 37 patients with basal cell hyperplasia, 47 with esophageal squamous cell dysplasia, and 43 with ESCC. All the participants were diagnosed by biopsy and histopathological examination. Adiponectin, oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL), autoantibodies against oxLDL (oxLDL-ab), OxLDL-lgG, and OxLDL-lgM were determined by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Total cholesterol, High-density lipoprotein (HDL), triglyceride, serum albumin, and blood pressure were co-estimated. Analysis of covariance for lipid levels was used to control the influence of covariates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The level of oxLDL-lgM increased gradually along with esophageal carcinoma progression. The oxLDL-lgM levels in the ESCC group were the highest after possible covariates were controlled. Binary logistic regression showed that oxLDL-lgM had a positive correlation with the development of esophageal carcinoma, while oxLDL and oxLDL-ab had a negative correlation with ESSC. No significant association between the levels of oxLDL-lgG and adiponectin and the different stages of ESSC was observed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present study shows that the decreased oxLDL and oxLDL-ab and the elevated oxLDL-lgM serum levels may relate to the development and progression of ESSC.</p

Long-term high physical activity modulates event-related potential indices of inhibitory control in postmenopausal women

Background Inhibition processing is sensitive to aging, and an age-related decline in inhibition processing has been associated with an accelerated rate of progression to Alzheimer disease. Elderly women are two to three times more likely than age-matched men to have Alzheimer disease. Therefore, this study examined whether long-term high physical activity affects inhibitory processing, specifically among postmenopausal women. Methods In total, 251 candidates were screened using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices to assess their cognitive abilities and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (Chinese version) to assess their physical activity levels. The participants were then grouped into either a long-term high physical activity group (defined as more than 3 days of high intensity activity per week and gross metabolic equivalent minutes (MET-minutes) higher than 1,500 MET-minutes/week or a gross MET higher than 3,000 MET-minutes/week obtained through walking or other moderate or high intensity activity) or a control group and matched for demographic and health characteristics as well as cognitive scores. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as participants performed a Go/No-go task to assess inhibition processing. Results The long-term high physical activity group (n = 30) had faster Go reaction times than the control group (n = 30), whereas no significant difference between the two groups was found in their performance accuracy on the No-go task. For the ERP results, the latency of N2 component was significantly shorter in the long-term high physical activity group than that in the control group. Discussion The results of this study suggested that long-term high physical activity may increase the efficiency of the inhibitory control system by increasing the activity of response monitoring processes