VoiceLDM: Text-to-Speech with Environmental Context

This paper presents VoiceLDM, a model designed to produce audio that accurately follows two distinct natural language text prompts: the description prompt and the content prompt. The former provides information about the overall environmental context of the audio, while the latter conveys the linguistic content. To achieve this, we adopt a text-to-audio (TTA) model based on latent diffusion models and extend its functionality to incorporate an additional content prompt as a conditional input. By utilizing pretrained contrastive language-audio pretraining (CLAP) and Whisper, VoiceLDM is trained on large amounts of real-world audio without manual annotations or transcriptions. Additionally, we employ dual classifier-free guidance to further enhance the controllability of VoiceLDM. Experimental results demonstrate that VoiceLDM is capable of generating plausible audio that aligns well with both input conditions, even surpassing the speech intelligibility of the ground truth audio on the AudioCaps test set. Furthermore, we explore the text-to-speech (TTS) and zero-shot text-to-audio capabilities of VoiceLDM and show that it achieves competitive results. Demos and code are available at https://voiceldm.github.io.Comment: Demos and code are available at https://voiceldm.github.i

Anti-Spoofing Using Transfer Learning with Variational Information Bottleneck

Recent advances in sophisticated synthetic speech generated from text-to-speech (TTS) or voice conversion (VC) systems cause threats to the existing automatic speaker verification (ASV) systems. Since such synthetic speech is generated from diverse algorithms, generalization ability with using limited training data is indispensable for a robust anti-spoofing system. In this work, we propose a transfer learning scheme based on the wav2vec 2.0 pretrained model with variational information bottleneck (VIB) for speech anti-spoofing task. Evaluation on the ASVspoof 2019 logical access (LA) database shows that our method improves the performance of distinguishing unseen spoofed and genuine speech, outperforming current state-of-the-art anti-spoofing systems. Furthermore, we show that the proposed system improves performance in low-resource and cross-dataset settings of anti-spoofing task significantly, demonstrating that our system is also robust in terms of data size and data distribution.Comment: Submitted to Interspeech 202

Excision And Recovery: Visual Defect Obfuscation Based Self-Supervised Anomaly Detection Strategy

Due to scarcity of anomaly situations in the early manufacturing stage, an unsupervised anomaly detection (UAD) approach is widely adopted which only uses normal samples for training. This approach is based on the assumption that the trained UAD model will accurately reconstruct normal patterns but struggles with unseen anomalous patterns. To enhance the UAD performance, reconstruction-by-inpainting based methods have recently been investigated, especially on the masking strategy of suspected defective regions. However, there are still issues to overcome: 1) time-consuming inference due to multiple masking, 2) output inconsistency by random masking strategy, and 3) inaccurate reconstruction of normal patterns when the masked area is large. Motivated by this, we propose a novel reconstruction-by-inpainting method, dubbed Excision And Recovery (EAR), that features single deterministic masking based on the ImageNet pre-trained DINO-ViT and visual obfuscation for hint-providing. Experimental results on the MVTec AD dataset show that deterministic masking by pre-trained attention effectively cuts out suspected defective regions and resolve the aforementioned issues 1 and 2. Also, hint-providing by mosaicing proves to enhance the UAD performance than emptying those regions by binary masking, thereby overcomes issue 3. Our approach achieves a high UAD performance without any change of the neural network structure. Thus, we suggest that EAR be adopted in various manufacturing industries as a practically deployable solution.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 table

Targeting the stress support network regulated by autophagy and senescence for cancer treatment

Autophagy and cellular senescence are two potent tumor suppressive mechanisms activated by various cellular stresses, including the expression of activated oncogenes. However, emerging evidence has also indicated their pro-tumorigenic activities, strengthening the case for the complexity of tumorigenesis. More specifically, tumorigenesis is a systemic process emanating from the combined accumulation of changes in the tumor support pathways, many of which cannot cause cancer on their own but might still provide excellent therapeutic targets for cancer treatment. In this review, we discuss the dual roles of autophagy and senescence during tumorigenesis, with a specific focus on the stress support networks in cancer cells modulated by these processes. A deeper understanding of such context-dependent roles may help to enhance the effectiveness of cancer therapies targeting autophagy and senescence, while limiting their potential side effects. This will steer and accelerate the pace of research and drug development for cancer treatment.N

Corporate disclosure behavior during financial crises: Evidence from Korea

We examine corporate disclosure patterns according to changes in firm states during financial crises in Korea. Using panel data on Korean listed firms from 1995 to 2019, we first confirm that they transparently (opaquely) disclose information when the change in return on assets is positive (negative) during crises. Moreover, we check that these disclosure patterns increase debt financing but are ineffective for equity financing. Finally, for chaebols with internal capital markets, we find that internal capital receivers provide transparent (opaque) disclosure of negative (positive) changes in their states. By contrast, providers show the opposite patterns. (JEL G01, G30, M40)N

All cells are created equal in the sight of autophagy: selective autophagy maintains homeostasis in senescent cells

Macroautophagy/autophagy is a sophisticated quality control program that limits cellular damage and maintains homeostasis, being an essential part of several lifespan-promoting interventions. However, autophagy is also necessary for full establishment of cellular senescence, a causal factor for many age-related diseases and aging. What lies ahead of us to unravel such a paradoxical role of autophagy in senescence is to identify specific targets degraded by autophagy during senescence and determine their importance in the senescence regulatory network. Recently, we developed the "Selective autophagy substrates Identification Platform (SIP)" to advance these goals, providing a rich set of autophagy substrate proteins involved in senescence. Our study demonstrated that selective autophagy coordinates the stress support networks in senescent cells by degrading multiple regulatory components, echoing its homeostatic roles in normal cells. Targeting this type of selective autophagy might provide a unique opportunity to develop non-senescence addiction-based therapeutic strategies for senotherapy by disturbing the homeostatic state of senescent cells.N

Complications of fluid overload during hysteroscopic surgery: cardiomyopathy and epistaxis - A case report -

Background Hysteroscopic surgery has been used in various gynecological fields. However, massive fluid overload can occur as a complication due to persistent infusion of media for uterine cavity distension. We present the case of a woman who developed cardiomyopathy with pulmonary edema and epistaxis during hysteroscopic surgery. Case A 76-year-old female underwent hysteroscopic septectomy. She manifested abrupt, active nasal bleeding and regurgitation in the intravenous line. Heart rate, SpO2, and PETCO2 decreased from 55 beats/min to 29 beats/min, from 100% to 56%, and from 31 mmHg to 9 mmHg, respectively. After the operation, brain CT showed bilateral prominent superior ophthalmic vein dilation. Echocardiography showed left ventricle apical ballooning and global hypokinesia. The patient recovered after two days of conservative management, with no sequelae. Conclusions Although hysteroscopic surgery is a simple procedure, careful monitoring is necessary to prevent complications from absorption of fluid distending media during the procedure

A flow-cytometry-based assessment of global protein synthesis in human senescent cells

© 2021 The Author(s)Senescent cells constantly experience stressful conditions and restrain their protein translation to cope with it. Here, we present a detailed protocol to measure the rate of global protein synthesis using L-azidohomoalanine (L-AHA)-based click chemistry in human senescent fibroblasts. We optimized several aspects of the procedure, including senescence induction, a flow cytometry analysis of senescent cells, and the duration of L-AHA incorporation. This protocol uses senescent human fibroblasts but can be applied to other types of cells or circumstances. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Lee et al. (2021).N

Adult re-expression of IRSp53 rescues NMDA receptor function and social behavior in IRSp53-mutant mice

Re-expression of the insulin receptor substrate p53 (IRSp53) in adult IRSp53-mutant mice rescues behavioral and synaptic deficits, suggesting that adult re-expression may hold future therapeutic potential. IRSp53 (or BAIAP2) is an abundant excitatory postsynaptic scaffolding/adaptor protein that is involved in actin regulation and has been implicated in autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. IRSp53 deletion in mice leads to enhanced NMDA receptor (NMDAR) function and social deficits that are responsive to NMDAR inhibition. However, it remains unclear whether IRSp53 re-expression in the adult IRSp53-mutant mouse brain after the completion of brain development could reverse these synaptic and behavioral dysfunctions. Here we employed a brain-blood barrier (BBB)-penetrant adeno-associated virus (AAV) known as PHP.eB to drive adult IRSp53 re-expression in IRSp53-mutant mice. The adult IRSp53 re-expression normalized social deficits without affecting hyperactivity or anxiety-like behavior. In addition, adult IRSp53 re-expression normalized NMDAR-mediated excitatory synaptic transmission in the medial prefrontal cortex. Our results suggest that adult IRSp53 re-expression can normalize synaptic and behavioral deficits in IRSp53-mutant mice and that BBB-penetrant adult gene re-expression has therapeutic potential.11Nsciescopu