The Effect of Explicit Structure Encoding of Deep Neural Networks for Symbolic Music Generation

With recent breakthroughs in artificial neural networks, deep generative models have become one of the leading techniques for computational creativity. Despite very promising progress on image and short sequence generation, symbolic music generation remains a challenging problem since the structure of compositions are usually complicated. In this study, we attempt to solve the melody generation problem constrained by the given chord progression. This music meta-creation problem can also be incorporated into a plan recognition system with user inputs and predictive structural outputs. In particular, we explore the effect of explicit architectural encoding of musical structure via comparing two sequential generative models: LSTM (a type of RNN) and WaveNet (dilated temporal-CNN). As far as we know, this is the first study of applying WaveNet to symbolic music generation, as well as the first systematic comparison between temporal-CNN and RNN for music generation. We conduct a survey for evaluation in our generations and implemented Variable Markov Oracle in music pattern discovery. Experimental results show that to encode structure more explicitly using a stack of dilated convolution layers improved the performance significantly, and a global encoding of underlying chord progression into the generation procedure gains even more.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure

Cross-cultural pragmatic analysis of evasion strategy at Chinese and American regular press conferences - with special reference to the North Korean nuclear issue

Press conferences of different countries can be perceived from a cross-cultural pragmatic perspective. This study investigated evasion strategies employed by Chinese and American spokespersons in the routine press conferences held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China and the US Department of State to sidestep challenging questions from aggressive journalists on the issue of North Korean Nuclear during the period of 4 months in 2006. Evasion can be categorized into two types: overt evasion and covert evasion. Findings demonstrated that: 1) Evasion strategy was the frequently adopted strategy by both Chinese and American spokespersons; 2) comparatively speaking, the American spokesperson turns to overt evasion strategy more often while the Chinese spokesperson adopts covert evasion strategy more frequently. 3) the differences of evasion strategies used by Chinese and American spokespersons largely lie in their different verbal styles typical of their respective national characteristics in protecting different national interests

Forgedit: Text Guided Image Editing via Learning and Forgetting

Text guided image editing on real images given only the image and the target text prompt as inputs, is a very general and challenging problem, which requires the editing model to reason by itself which part of the image should be edited, to preserve the characteristics of original image, and also to perform complicated non-rigid editing. Previous fine-tuning based solutions are time-consuming and vulnerable to overfitting, limiting their editing capabilities. To tackle these issues, we design a novel text guided image editing method, Forgedit. First, we propose a novel fine-tuning framework which learns to reconstruct the given image in less than one minute by vision language joint learning. Then we introduce vector subtraction and vector projection to explore the proper text embedding for editing. We also find a general property of UNet structures in Diffusion Models and inspired by such a finding, we design forgetting strategies to diminish the fatal overfitting issues and significantly boost the editing abilities of Diffusion Models. Our method, Forgedit, implemented with Stable Diffusion, achieves new state-of-the-art results on the challenging text guided image editing benchmark TEdBench, surpassing the previous SOTA method Imagic with Imagen, in terms of both CLIP score and LPIPS score. Codes are available at https://github.com/witcherofresearch/Forgedit.Comment: Codes are available at https://github.com/witcherofresearch/Forgedi

Energetics of a solar flare and a coronal mass ejection generated by a hot channel eruption

Hot channels (HCs) are prevalent in the solar corona and play a critical role in driving flares and CMEs. In this paper, we estimate the energy contents of an X1.4 eruptive flare with a fast CME generated by a HC eruption on 2011 September 22. Originating from NOAA AR11302, the HC is the most dramatic feature in 131 and 94 {\AA} images observed by SDO/AIA. The flare is simultaneously observed by SDO/AIA, RHESSI, and STEREO-B/EUVI. The CME is simultaneously detected by the white-light coronagraphs of SOHO/LASCO and STEREO-B/COR1. Using multiwavelength and multiview observations of the eruption, various energy components of the HC, flare, and CME are calculated. The thermal and kinetic energies of the HC are (1.77$\pm$0.61)$\times10^{30}$ erg and (2.90$\pm$0.79)$\times10^{30}$ erg, respectively. The peak thermal energy of the flare and total radiative loss of SXR-emitting plasma are (1.63$\pm$0.04)$\times10^{31}$ erg and (1.03$-$1.31)$\times10^{31}$ erg, respectively. The ratio between the thermal energies of HC and flare is 0.11$\pm$0.03, suggesting that thermal energy of the HC is not negligible. The kinetic and potential energies of the CME are (3.43$\pm$0.94)$\times10^{31}$ erg and (2.66$\pm$0.49)$\times10^{30}$ erg, yielding a total energy of (3.69$\pm$0.98)$\times10^{31}$ erg for the CME. Continuous heating of the HC is required to balance the rapid cooling by heat conduction, which probably originate from intermittent magnetic reconnection at the flare current sheet. Our investigation may provide insight into the buildup, release, and conversion of energies in large-scale solar eruptions.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication by Ap

The Effect of Cost of Capital and Corporate Governance on the Performance of UK Quoted Companies

This study investigates the effect of cost of capital (represented by interest expenses, dividends, interest tax shields, gearing, and Z-score for probability of bankruptcy) and corporate governance characteristics (board size, board composition, role duality, top five largest shareholdings, and management ownership) on corporate performance of 35 UK listed companies during and after the current economic crisis from 2007 to 2009. Management ownership is found to be significantly related to corporate performance based on both market and accounting measures. Additionally, score for probability of bankruptcy and board composition are significantly related to market performance based on Tobin’s Q-Ratio, while interest expenses, dividends, interest tax shields, and board size have significant relationship with accounting performance based on ROA. Control variables as firm size and industry type are taken into account in this study as well

Anorectal malformation associated with a mutation in the P63 gene in a family with split hand–foot malformation

PURPOSE: The aims of this study were to identify the mutation gene of a Chinese family with anorectal malformation (ARM) associated with split hand–foot malformation and to determine the spatiotemporal expression of the mutated gene during hindgut and anorectum development in human embryos. METHOD: A Chinese family with intrafamilial clinically variable manifestation was analyzed and primers were designed for exons 3–14 of P63, DLX5, DLX6, DAC, and HOXD13 as candidate genes and direct sequence analysis of the exons was performed. Immunohistochemical study of mutated gene in the hindgut and anorectum of human embryos of 4th–10th weeks was performed. RESULT: Affected individuals were found to have an Arg227Gln P63 gene mutation. From the 4th–10th weeks of gestation of the human embryo, the P63-positive cells were mainly located on the epithelium of the apical urorectal septum, hindgut, and cloacal membrane. After the anorectum ruptured during the 8th week, the P63 remained strongly immunoreactive on the epithelium of the anal canal and urethra, but the mucous membrane of the rectum exhibited no reaction. CONCLUSIONS: The mutation identified strongly suggests a causal relationship between the ARM phenotype and P63. The expression of P63 was persistently active during the dynamic and incessant septation of the cloaca and hindgut, suggesting that P63 may play a pivotal role in the morphogenesis of the hindgut and anorectum

Link between magnetic susceptibility and environmental changes in Late Pliocene-Quaternary lacustrine sediments of the Qaidam Basin (NE Tibetan Plateau)

Abstract HKT-ISTP 2013 B