High quality voice conversion using prosodic and high-resolution spectral features

Voice conversion methods have advanced rapidly over the last decade. Studies have shown that speaker characteristics are captured by spectral feature as well as various prosodic features. Most existing conversion methods focus on the spectral feature as it directly represents the timbre characteristics, while some conversion methods have focused only on the prosodic feature represented by the fundamental frequency. In this paper, a comprehensive framework using deep neural networks to convert both timbre and prosodic features is proposed. The timbre feature is represented by a high-resolution spectral feature. The prosodic features include F0, intensity and duration. It is well known that DNN is useful as a tool to model high-dimensional features. In this work, we show that DNN initialized by our proposed autoencoder pretraining yields good quality DNN conversion models. This pretraining is tailor-made for voice conversion and leverages on autoencoder to capture the generic spectral shape of source speech. Additionally, our framework uses segmental DNN models to capture the evolution of the prosodic features over time. To reconstruct the converted speech, the spectral feature produced by the DNN model is combined with the three prosodic features produced by the DNN segmental models. Our experimental results show that the application of both prosodic and high-resolution spectral features leads to quality converted speech as measured by objective evaluation and subjective listening tests.     

Corpus based part-of-speech tagging

In natural language processing, a crucial subsystem in a wide range of applications is a part-of-speech (POS) tagger, which labels (or classifies) unannotated words of natural language with POS labels corresponding to categories such as noun, verb or adjective. Mainstream approaches are generally corpus-based: a POS tagger learns from a corpus of pre-annotated data how to correctly tag unlabeled data. Presented here is a brief state-of-the-art account on POS tagging. POS tagging approaches make use of labeled corpus to train computational trained models. Several typical models of three kings of tagging are introduced in this article: rule-based tagging, statistical approaches and evolution algorithms. The advantages and the pitfalls of each typical tagging are discussed and analyzed. Some rule-based and stochastic methods have been successfully achieved accuracies of 93–96 %, while that of some evolution algorithms are about 96–97 %.     

Chaotic feature analysis and forecasting of Liujiang River runoff

Because most of runoff time series with limited amount of data reveal inherently nonlinear and stochastic characteristics and tend to show chaotic behavior, strategies based on chaotic analysis are popular methods to analyze them from real systems in nonlinear dynamics. Only one kind of predicted method for yearly rainfall-runoff forecasting cannot achieve perfect performance. Thus, a mixture strategy denoted by WT-PSR-GA-NN, which is composed of wavelet transform (WT), phase space reconstruction (PSR), neural network (NN) and genetic algorithm (GA), is presented in this paper. In the WT-PSR-GA-NN framework, the process to deal with time series gathered from Liujiang River runoff data is given as follows: (1) the runoff time series was first decomposed into low-frequency and high-frequency sub-series by wavelet transformation; (2) the two sub-series were separately and independently reconstructed into phase spaces; (3) the transformed time series in the reconstructed phase spaces were modeled by neural network, which is trained by genetic algorithm to avoid trapping into local minima; (4) the predicted results in low-frequency parts were combined with the ones of high-frequency parts, and reconstructed with wavelet inverse transformation, to form the future behavior of the runoff. Experiments show that WT-PSR-GA-NN is effective and its forecasting results are high in accuracy not only for the short-term yearly hydrological time series but also for the long-term one. The comparison results revealed that the overall forecasting performance of WT-PSR-GA-NN proposed by us is superior to other popularity methods for all the test cases. We can conclude that WT-PSR-GA-NN can not only increase the forecasted accuracy, but also its own competitiveness in efficiency, effectiveness and robustness.     

Globally Stable Adaptive Tracking Control for Uncertain Strict‐Feedback Systems Based on Neural Network Approximation

This paper addresses the problem of globally stable adaptive neural tracking control for a class of strict‐feedback nonlinear systems. Compared with the existing works, the salient properties of the proposed scheme are given as follows. First, a novel switching controller is developed, which consists of a traditional adaptive neural controller and an extra robust controller to pull back the transient outside of the approximation domain. Second, only two adaptive parameters need to be tuned online, and the computational burden is considerably alleviated in practice. Third, to design the desired switching controller via the backstepping technique, a novel switching function, which has continuous derivatives up to the nth order, is constructed. It is shown that the system output converges to a small neighborhood of the reference signal and the closed‐loop system is globally stable. Finally, an example is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method.     

Adaptive Tracking Control for Nonlinear Systems with a Class of Input Nonlinearities

An adaptive tracking control approach is presented for nonlinear systems with a class of input nonlinearities. A generalized model has been developed for a class of non‐smooth nonlinearities that include dead‐zone, backlash and ‘backlash‐like’ hysteresis. By using the developed model and Nussbaum‐gain technique, the problem of input nonlinearity is solved perfectly. The proposed method is available even when the designer is uncertain about the type of input nonlinearities mentioned above, and the knowledge on the bounds of these nonlinearity parameters is not required. Furthermore, it is proved that all closed‐loop signals are bounded and the tracking error converges to a small residual set asymptotically. Two simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Teleportation of a general two-photon state employing a polarization-entangled $$\chi $$ state with nondemolition parity analyses

Employing a polarization-entangled \(\chi \) state, which is a four-photon genuine entangled state, we propose a protocol teleporting a general two-photon polarization state. Firstly, the sender needs to perform one Controlled-NOT gate, one Hadamard gate, and one Controlled-NOT gate on the state to be teleported in succession. Secondly, the sender performs local nondemolition parity analyses based on cross-Kerr nonlinearities and publicizes the achieved outcomes. Finally, conditioned on the sender’s analysis outcomes, the receiver executes the single-photon unitary transformation operations on his own photons to obtain the state originally sit in the sender’s location. Due to the employment of nondemolition parity analyses rather than four-qubit joint measurement, it can be realized more feasible with currently available technologies. Moreover, the resources of Bell states can be achieved because the nondestructive measurement is exploited, which facilitates other potential tasks of quantum information processing.     

Measurement device-independent quantum key distribution with heralded pair coherent state

The original measurement device-independent quantum key distribution is reviewed, and a modified protocol using heralded pair coherent state (HPCS) is proposed to overcome the quantum bit error rate associated with the dark count rate of the detectors in long-distance quantum key distribution. Our simulation indicates that the secure transmission distance can be improved evidently with HPCS owing to the lower probability of vacuum events when compared with weak coherent source scenario, while the secure key rate can be increased with HPCS due to the higher probability of single-photon events when compared with heralded single-photon source scenario. Furthermore, we apply the finite key analysis to the decoy state MDI-QKD with HPCS and obtain a practical key rate.     

A noninvasive method to predict fluid viscosity and nanoparticle size using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) imaging

This study examines the development of an automated particle tracking algorithm to predict the hindered Brownian movement of fluorescent nanoparticles within an evanescent wave field created using total internal reflection fluorescent microscopy. The two-dimensional motion of the fluorescent nanoparticles was tracked, with sub-pixel resolution, by fitting the intensity distribution of the particles to a known Gaussian distribution, thus providing the particle center within a single pixel. Spherical yellow-green polystyrene nanoparticles (200, 500, and 1000 nm in diameter) were suspended in deionized water (control), 10 wt% d-glucose, and 10 wt% glycerol solutions, with 1 mM of NaCl added to each. The motion of tracked nanoparticles was compared with the theoretical tangential hindered Brownian motion to estimate particle diameters and fluid viscosity using a nonlinear regression technique. The automatic tracking algorithm was initially validated by comparing the automated results with manually tracked particles, 1 µm in size. Our results showed that both particle size and solution viscosity were accurately predicted from the experimental mean square displacement. Specifically, the results show that the error of particle size prediction is below 10 % and the error of solution viscosity prediction is less than 1 %. The proposed automatic analysis tool could prove to be useful in bio-application fields for examination of single protein tracking, drug delivery, and cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the proposed tool could be useful in microfluidic areas such as particle tracking velocimetry and noninvasive viscosimetry.     

空间桁架结构的优化配置及振动控制研究

为抑制空间柔性桁架结构的低频振动,采用压电杆件进行优化配置实现桁架结构的振动主动控制;建立了空间桁架结构主动压电杆件的机电耦合模型,利用ANSYS前处理功能编制了压电桁架的机电耦合有限元程序;将可控性度量指标与逐步消减法相结合,实现了空间桁架结构主动杆件的优化配置;对结构进行初始位移扰动、正弦激励以及随机激励,并采用最优模态控制算法进行振动抑制仿真分析,对上述方法进行验证且建立振动控制评价指标进行评价;结果表明将可控性度量指标与逐步消减法相结合的方法可有效抑制空间柔性桁架结构的振动。