Standardization of meibomian gland dysfunction in an Egyptian population sample using a non-contact meibography technique

AIM:To develop normative data for meibomian gland dysfunction(MGD)parameters,using non-contact meibography technique of Sirius Costruzione Strumenti Oftalmici(CSO)machine,in an Egyptian population sample.METHODS:Observational,cross-sectional,analytic study,in which 104 Egyptian volunteers were included.Both upper lids were examined,using“Sirius CSO”machine.Each eyelid was given a degree of meibomian gland loss(MGL),which was calculated by the software of the machine.RESULTS:Mean percentage MGL in right upper lid was of 30.9%±12.6%,and that of left upper lid was 32.6%±11.8%.Thirty-four volunteers(32.7%)had first-degree MGL in their right upper lid,and 67.3%had second-degree loss.One volunteer(1%)had zero-degree MGL in left upper lid,28(26.9%)had first-degree loss,and 75(72.1%)had second-degree loss.Degree of MGL in right upper eyelid was not related to age,but degree of MGL in left upper eyelid increased with age.There was statistically significant difference between both genders for degree of MGL in right eye(P=0.036)and in left eye(P=0.027).CONCLUSION:Noncontact meibography is a useful non-invasive tool for diagnosing MGL.MGL is diagnosed in 100%of apparently normal individuals;26.9%-32.7%of which have first-degree MGL,and 67.3%-72.1%have second-degree MGL.

Non-contact wide-field viewing system-assisted scleral buckling surgery for retinal detachment in silicone oilfilled eyes

AIM:To evaluate scleral buckling(SB)surgery using a noncontact wide-field viewing system and 23-gauge intraocular illumination for the treatment of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment in silicone oil(SO)-filled eyes.METHODS:Totally 9 patients(9 eyes)with retinal detachment in SO-filled eyes were retrospectively analyzed.All patients underwent non-contact wide-field viewing system-assisted buckling surgery with 23-gauge intraocular illumination.SO was removed at an appropriate time based on recovery.The patients were followed up for at least 3mo after SO removal.Retinal reattachment,complications,visual acuity and intraocular pressure(IOP)before and after surgery were observed.RESULTS:Patients were followed up for a mean of 8.22mo(3-22mo)after SO removal.All patients had retinal reattachment.At the final follow-up,visual acuity showed improvement for 8 patients,and no change for 1 patient.The IOP was high in 3 patients before surgery,but it stabilized after treatment;it was not affected in the other patients.None of the patients had infections,hemorrhage,anterior ischemia,or any other complication.CONCLUSION:This new non-contact wide-field viewing system-assisted SB surgery with 23-gauge intraocular illumination is effective and safe for retinal detachment in SO-filled eyes.

Comparing Fine-Tuning, Zero and Few-Shot Strategies with Large Language Models in Hate Speech Detection in English

Large Language Models(LLMs)are increasingly demonstrating their ability to understand natural language and solve complex tasks,especially through text generation.One of the relevant capabilities is contextual learning,which involves the ability to receive instructions in natural language or task demonstrations to generate expected outputs for test instances without the need for additional training or gradient updates.In recent years,the popularity of social networking has provided a medium through which some users can engage in offensive and harmful online behavior.In this study,we investigate the ability of different LLMs,ranging from zero-shot and few-shot learning to fine-tuning.Our experiments show that LLMs can identify sexist and hateful online texts using zero-shot and few-shot approaches through information retrieval.Furthermore,it is found that the encoder-decoder model called Zephyr achieves the best results with the fine-tuning approach,scoring 86.811%on the Explainable Detection of Online Sexism(EDOS)test-set and 57.453%on the Multilingual Detection of Hate Speech Against Immigrants and Women in Twitter(HatEval)test-set.Finally,it is confirmed that the evaluated models perform well in hate text detection,as they beat the best result in the HatEval task leaderboard.The error analysis shows that contextual learning had difficulty distinguishing between types of hate speech and figurative language.However,the fine-tuned approach tends to produce many false positives.

Video-Based Deception Detection with Non-Contact Heart Rate Monitoring and Multi-Modal Feature Selection

Deception detection plays a crucial role in criminal investigation.Videos contain a wealth of information regarding apparent and physiological changes in individuals,and thus can serve as an effective means of deception detection.In this paper,we investigate video-based deception detection considering both apparent visual features such as eye gaze,head pose and facial action unit(AU),and non-contact heart rate detected by remote photoplethysmography(rPPG)technique.Multiple wrapper-based feature selection methods combined with the K-nearest neighbor(KNN)and support vector machine(SVM)classifiers are employed to screen the most effective features for deception detection.We evaluate the performance of the proposed method on both a self-collected physiological-assisted visual deception detection(PV3D)dataset and a public bag-oflies(BOL)dataset.Experimental results demonstrate that the SVM classifier with symbiotic organisms search(SOS)feature selection yields the best overall performance,with an area under the curve(AUC)of 83.27%and accuracy(ACC)of 83.33%for PV3D,and an AUC of 71.18%and ACC of 70.33%for BOL.This demonstrates the stability and effectiveness of the proposed method in video-based deception detection tasks.

Multi-Objective Equilibrium Optimizer for Feature Selection in High-Dimensional English Speech Emotion Recognition

Speech emotion recognition(SER)uses acoustic analysis to find features for emotion recognition and examines variations in voice that are caused by emotions.The number of features acquired with acoustic analysis is extremely high,so we introduce a hybrid filter-wrapper feature selection algorithm based on an improved equilibrium optimizer for constructing an emotion recognition system.The proposed algorithm implements multi-objective emotion recognition with the minimum number of selected features and maximum accuracy.First,we use the information gain and Fisher Score to sort the features extracted from signals.Then,we employ a multi-objective ranking method to evaluate these features and assign different importance to them.Features with high rankings have a large probability of being selected.Finally,we propose a repair strategy to address the problem of duplicate solutions in multi-objective feature selection,which can improve the diversity of solutions and avoid falling into local traps.Using random forest and K-nearest neighbor classifiers,four English speech emotion datasets are employed to test the proposed algorithm(MBEO)as well as other multi-objective emotion identification techniques.The results illustrate that it performs well in inverted generational distance,hypervolume,Pareto solutions,and execution time,and MBEO is appropriate for high-dimensional English SER.

An Adaptive Hate Speech Detection Approach Using Neutrosophic Neural Networks for Social Media Forensics

Detecting hate speech automatically in social media forensics has emerged as a highly challenging task due tothe complex nature of language used in such platforms. Currently, several methods exist for classifying hatespeech, but they still suffer from ambiguity when differentiating between hateful and offensive content and theyalso lack accuracy. The work suggested in this paper uses a combination of the Whale Optimization Algorithm(WOA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to adjust the weights of two Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLPs)for neutrosophic sets classification. During the training process of the MLP, the WOA is employed to exploreand determine the optimal set of weights. The PSO algorithm adjusts the weights to optimize the performanceof the MLP as fine-tuning. Additionally, in this approach, two separate MLP models are employed. One MLPis dedicated to predicting degrees of truth membership, while the other MLP focuses on predicting degrees offalse membership. The difference between these memberships quantifies uncertainty, indicating the degree ofindeterminacy in predictions. The experimental results indicate the superior performance of our model comparedto previous work when evaluated on the Davidson dataset.

Exploring Sequential Feature Selection in Deep Bi-LSTM Models for Speech Emotion Recognition

Machine Learning(ML)algorithms play a pivotal role in Speech Emotion Recognition(SER),although they encounter a formidable obstacle in accurately discerning a speaker’s emotional state.The examination of the emotional states of speakers holds significant importance in a range of real-time applications,including but not limited to virtual reality,human-robot interaction,emergency centers,and human behavior assessment.Accurately identifying emotions in the SER process relies on extracting relevant information from audio inputs.Previous studies on SER have predominantly utilized short-time characteristics such as Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients(MFCCs)due to their ability to capture the periodic nature of audio signals effectively.Although these traits may improve their ability to perceive and interpret emotional depictions appropriately,MFCCS has some limitations.So this study aims to tackle the aforementioned issue by systematically picking multiple audio cues,enhancing the classifier model’s efficacy in accurately discerning human emotions.The utilized dataset is taken from the EMO-DB database,preprocessing input speech is done using a 2D Convolution Neural Network(CNN)involves applying convolutional operations to spectrograms as they afford a visual representation of the way the audio signal frequency content changes over time.The next step is the spectrogram data normalization which is crucial for Neural Network(NN)training as it aids in faster convergence.Then the five auditory features MFCCs,Chroma,Mel-Spectrogram,Contrast,and Tonnetz are extracted from the spectrogram sequentially.The attitude of feature selection is to retain only dominant features by excluding the irrelevant ones.In this paper,the Sequential Forward Selection(SFS)and Sequential Backward Selection(SBS)techniques were employed for multiple audio cues features selection.Finally,the feature sets composed from the hybrid feature extraction methods are fed into the deep Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory(Bi-LSTM)network to discern emotions.Since the deep Bi-LSTM can hierarchically learn complex features and increases model capacity by achieving more robust temporal modeling,it is more effective than a shallow Bi-LSTM in capturing the intricate tones of emotional content existent in speech signals.The effectiveness and resilience of the proposed SER model were evaluated by experiments,comparing it to state-of-the-art SER techniques.The results indicated that the model achieved accuracy rates of 90.92%,93%,and 92%over the Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song(RAVDESS),Berlin Database of Emotional Speech(EMO-DB),and The Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture(IEMOCAP)datasets,respectively.These findings signify a prominent enhancement in the ability to emotional depictions identification in speech,showcasing the potential of the proposed model in advancing the SER field.

Audio-Text Multimodal Speech Recognition via Dual-Tower Architecture for Mandarin Air Traffic Control Communications

In air traffic control communications (ATCC), misunderstandings between pilots and controllers could result in fatal aviation accidents. Fortunately, advanced automatic speech recognition technology has emerged as a promising means of preventing miscommunications and enhancing aviation safety. However, most existing speech recognition methods merely incorporate external language models on the decoder side, leading to insufficient semantic alignment between speech and text modalities during the encoding phase. Furthermore, it is challenging to model acoustic context dependencies over long distances due to the longer speech sequences than text, especially for the extended ATCC data. To address these issues, we propose a speech-text multimodal dual-tower architecture for speech recognition. It employs cross-modal interactions to achieve close semantic alignment during the encoding stage and strengthen its capabilities in modeling auditory long-distance context dependencies. In addition, a two-stage training strategy is elaborately devised to derive semantics-aware acoustic representations effectively. The first stage focuses on pre-training the speech-text multimodal encoding module to enhance inter-modal semantic alignment and aural long-distance context dependencies. The second stage fine-tunes the entire network to bridge the input modality variation gap between the training and inference phases and boost generalization performance. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed speech-text multimodal speech recognition method on the ATCC and AISHELL-1 datasets. It reduces the character error rate to 6.54% and 8.73%, respectively, and exhibits substantial performance gains of 28.76% and 23.82% compared with the best baseline model. The case studies indicate that the obtained semantics-aware acoustic representations aid in accurately recognizing terms with similar pronunciations but distinctive semantics. The research provides a novel modeling paradigm for semantics-aware speech recognition in air traffic control communications, which could contribute to the advancement of intelligent and efficient aviation safety management.

Analysis on the Translation Methods of the Reported Speech in German Academic Papers-Taking the Translation of“Die Internationalisierung der deutschen Hochschulen”as an Example

Reporting is essential in language use,including the re-expression of other people’s or self’s words,opinions,psychological activities,etc.Grasping the translation methods of reported speech in German academic papers is very important to improve the accuracy of academic paper translation.This study takes the translation of“Internationalization of German Universities”(Die Internationalisierung der deutschen Hochschulen),an academic paper of higher education,as an example to explore the translation methods of reported speech in German academic papers.It is found that the use of word order conversion,part of speech conversion and split translation methods can make the translation more accurate and fluent.This paper helps to grasp the rules and characteristics of the translation of reported speech in German academic papers,and also provides a reference for improving the quality of German-Chinese translation.

Chaotic Elephant Herd Optimization with Machine Learning for Arabic Hate Speech Detection

In recent years,the usage of social networking sites has considerably increased in the Arab world.It has empowered individuals to express their opinions,especially in politics.Furthermore,various organizations that operate in the Arab countries have embraced social media in their day-to-day business activities at different scales.This is attributed to business owners’understanding of social media’s importance for business development.However,the Arabic morphology is too complicated to understand due to the availability of nearly 10,000 roots and more than 900 patterns that act as the basis for verbs and nouns.Hate speech over online social networking sites turns out to be a worldwide issue that reduces the cohesion of civil societies.In this background,the current study develops a Chaotic Elephant Herd Optimization with Machine Learning for Hate Speech Detection(CEHOML-HSD)model in the context of the Arabic language.The presented CEHOML-HSD model majorly concentrates on identifying and categorising the Arabic text into hate speech and normal.To attain this,the CEHOML-HSD model follows different sub-processes as discussed herewith.At the initial stage,the CEHOML-HSD model undergoes data pre-processing with the help of the TF-IDF vectorizer.Secondly,the Support Vector Machine(SVM)model is utilized to detect and classify the hate speech texts made in the Arabic language.Lastly,the CEHO approach is employed for fine-tuning the parameters involved in SVM.This CEHO approach is developed by combining the chaotic functions with the classical EHO algorithm.The design of the CEHO algorithm for parameter tuning shows the novelty of the work.A widespread experimental analysis was executed to validate the enhanced performance of the proposed CEHOML-HSD approach.The comparative study outcomes established the supremacy of the proposed CEHOML-HSD model over other approaches.

Research on the Application of Second Language Acquisition Theory in College English Speech Teaching

The teaching of English speeches in universities aims to enhance oral communication ability,improve English communication skills,and expand English knowledge,occupying a core position in English teaching in universities.This article takes the theory of second language acquisition as the background,analyzes the important role and value of this theory in English speech teaching in universities,and explores how to apply the theory of second language acquisition in English speech teaching in universities.It aims to strengthen the cultivation of English skilled talents and provide a brief reference for improving English speech teaching in universities.

Audiovisual speech recognition based on a deep convolutional neural network

Audiovisual speech recognition is an emerging research topic.Lipreading is the recognition of what someone is saying using visual information,primarily lip movements.In this study,we created a custom dataset for Indian English linguistics and categorized it into three main categories:(1)audio recognition,(2)visual feature extraction,and(3)combined audio and visual recognition.Audio features were extracted using the mel-frequency cepstral coefficient,and classification was performed using a one-dimension convolutional neural network.Visual feature extraction uses Dlib and then classifies visual speech using a long short-term memory type of recurrent neural networks.Finally,integration was performed using a deep convolutional network.The audio speech of Indian English was successfully recognized with accuracies of 93.67%and 91.53%,respectively,using testing data from 200 epochs.The training accuracy for visual speech recognition using the Indian English dataset was 77.48%and the test accuracy was 76.19%using 60 epochs.After integration,the accuracies of audiovisual speech recognition using the Indian English dataset for training and testing were 94.67%and 91.75%,respectively.

基于Speech SDK的语音应用程序实现

利用MicrosoftSpeechSDK的APIforText-to-Speech和APIforSpeechRecognition,采用VisualBa-sic6.0语言,建立文本语音转换应用程序和实现语音识别程序,简单地实现了语音识别的功能,识别出来的内容即可保存为文件,也可作为命令使用,让计算机执行某项操作。

基于Speech SDK的机器人语音交互系统设计

介绍了一种基于Microsoft Speech SDK5.1的机器人语音交互系统,利用Speech SDK5.1提供的应用程序编程接口SAPI进行语音识别,对识别结果在逻辑程序中处理,使用Inter-phonic5.0语音合成技术替代TTS技术来合成语音,实现了AHRR-I接待机器人的语音对话和语音控制。

Support vector machines for emotion recognition in Chinese speech

Support vector machines (SVMs) are utilized for emotion recognition in Chinese speech in this paper. Both binary class discrimination and the multi class discrimination are discussed. It proves that the emotional features construct a nonlinear problem in the input space, and SVMs based on nonlinear mapping can solve it more effectively than other linear methods. Multi class classification based on SVMs with a soft decision function is constructed to classify the four emotion situations. Compared with principal component analysis (PCA) method and modified PCA method, SVMs perform the best result in multi class discrimination by using nonlinear kernel mapping.

A novel speech emotion recognition algorithm based on combination of emotion data field and ant colony search strategy

In order to effectively conduct emotion recognition from spontaneous, non-prototypical and unsegmented speech so as to create a more natural human-machine interaction; a novel speech emotion recognition algorithm based on the combination of the emotional data field （EDF） and the ant colony search （ACS） strategy, called the EDF-ACS algorithm, is proposed. More specifically, the inter- relationship among the turn-based acoustic feature vectors of different labels are established by using the potential function in the EDF. To perform the spontaneous speech emotion recognition, the artificial colony is used to mimic the turn- based acoustic feature vectors. Then, the canonical ACS strategy is used to investigate the movement direction of each artificial ant in the EDF, which is regarded as the emotional label of the corresponding turn-based acoustic feature vector. The proposed EDF-ACS algorithm is evaluated on the continueous audio）＇visual emotion challenge （AVEC） 2012 dataset, which contains the spontaneous, non-prototypical and unsegmented speech emotion data. The experimental results show that the proposed EDF-ACS algorithm outperforms the existing state-of-the-art algorithm in turn-based speech emotion recognition.

Speech enhancement based on leakage constraints DF-GSC

In order to improve the performance of general sidelobe canceller （GSC） based speech enhancement, a leakage constraints decision feedback generalized sidelobe canceller（LCDF-GSC） algorithm is proposed. The method adopts DF-GSC against signal mismatch, and introduces a leakage factor in the cost function to deal with the speech leakage problem which is caused by the part of the speech signal in the noise reference signal. Simulation results show that although the signal-to-noise ratio （SNR） of the speech signal through LCDF-GSC is slightly less than that of DF-GSC, the IS measurements show that the distortion of the former is less than that of the latter. MOS （mean opinion score） scores also indicate that the LCDF-GSC algorithm is better than DF- GSC and the Weiner filter algorithm,

语音分析软件Speech Analyzer和Praat在上海市区方言鼻化韵单一化演变研究中的应用

目前我国方言语音演变研究中音位的确定主要以传统意义上的研究方法为多,音位归纳主要凭个人经验。若记音人本身记音能力有限,可能造成记录结果与方言实际读音存在偏差。因此,如果在传统记音方法的基础上,辅以语音分析软件,将使方言语音研究更为精密、客观。以Speech Analyzer和Praat语音分析软件为例,結合上海市区方言鼻化韵单一化,即鼻化韵中前a后ɑ的对立完全消失,发成中A这一语音演变现象,以Speech Analyzer确定鼻化元音位置,以Praat做共振峰分析,为这一语音演变现象的确定提供证据。

Speech-ABR安静及噪声环境下音位的对比研究

目的对比speech-ABR在安静及噪声环境下单音节声母、韵母及声调的变化,研究噪声对单音节音位的影响。方法招募正常听力受试者40例(男20例,女20例),母语为汉语普通话。Speech-ABR刺激声为260ms时程的合成言语声/mi/,声调为三声,刺激强度为70d B SPL,记录右耳安静状态下及噪声状态下(信噪比SNR=-10d B)speech-ABR的反应波形。对比起始反应波形(onset response,OR)、过渡反应波形(consonant-to-vowel transition)及频率跟随反应波形(frequency following response,FFR)的潜伏期的变化。并对比安静及噪声状态下声调追踪(pitch tracking)相关系数r的变化。使用SPSS18.0软件进行数据统计分析,数据采用配对t检验分析两组的差异,P<0.05时为差异有统计学意义。结果260ms时程/mi/诱发的言语听性脑干反应波形特征,主要由潜伏期为10ms内的起始反应、潜伏期为80-220ms内的频率跟随反应及最后的终止反应组成,以及潜伏期在10-80ms内的辅音-元音过渡反应。其中起始反应部分为辅音部分所诱发;过渡反应部分为辅-元音的过渡信息诱发;由/mi/中的元音部分所诱发的频率跟随反应部分共由15个波形组成。经配对t检验分析,在安静及噪声环境下进行对比,起始反应峰值(辅音部分)平均潜伏期延长0.85±0.17ms(P=0.000)。过度反应峰值平均潜伏期延长0.75±0.15ms((P=0.000)。频率跟随反应峰值平均潜伏期延长0.38±0.10ms(P=0.000),结果均具有统计学意义。安静环境下声调追踪反应相关系数r均值为0.84±0.08,噪声环境下相关系数r均值为0.74±0.12,两者对比结果具有统计学意义((P=0.000)。结论在噪声环境下,测试音的辅音、元音对应波形潜伏期均发生变化,声调追踪系数会有所下降,提示三种音位均会受到噪声的影响。与以往主观的言语识别率测试方式及诱发电位测试相比,speech-ABR是一种客观方式评估言语声受到噪声干扰情况的测试方法。

Auditory attention model based on Chirplet for cross-corpus speech emotion recognition

To solve the problem of mismatching features in an experimental database, which is a key technique in the field of cross-corpus speech emotion recognition, an auditory attention model based on Chirplet is proposed for feature extraction.First, in order to extract the spectra features, the auditory attention model is employed for variational emotion features detection. Then, the selective attention mechanism model is proposed to extract the salient gist features which showtheir relation to the expected performance in cross-corpus testing.Furthermore, the Chirplet time-frequency atoms are introduced to the model. By forming a complete atom database, the Chirplet can improve the spectrum feature extraction including the amount of information. Samples from multiple databases have the characteristics of multiple components. Hereby, the Chirplet expands the scale of the feature vector in the timefrequency domain. Experimental results show that, compared to the traditional feature model, the proposed feature extraction approach with the prototypical classifier has significant improvement in cross-corpus speech recognition. In addition, the proposed method has better robustness to the inconsistent sources of the training set and the testing set.