A fast algorithm for speech polarity detection using long-term linear prediction

Speech polarity detection is a crucial first step in many speech processing techniques. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed that improvises the existing technique using the skewness of the voice source (VS) signal. Here, the integrated linear prediction residual (ILPR) is used as the VS estimate, which is obtained using linear prediction on long-term frames of the low-pass filtered speech signal. This excludes the unvoiced regions from analysis and also reduces the computation. Further, a modified skewness measure is proposed for decision, which also considers the magnitude of the skewness of the ILPR along with its sign. With the detection error rate (DER) as the performance metric, the algorithm is tested on 8 large databases and its performance (DER=0.20%) is found to be comparable to that of the best technique (DER=0.06%) on both clean and noisy speech. Further, the proposed method is found to be ten times faster than the best technique.

Efficient Protocol for Authenticated Email Search

Executing authenticated computation on outsourced data is currently an area of major interest in cryptology. Large databases are being outsourced to untrusted servers without appreciable verification mechanisms. As adversarial server could produce erroneous output, clients should not trust the server's response blindly. Primitive set operations like union, set difference, intersection etc. can be invoked on outsourced data in different concrete settings and should be verifiable by the client. One such interesting adaptation is to authenticate email search result where the untrusted mail server has to provide a proof along with the search result. Recently Ohrimenko et al. proposed a scheme for authenticating email search. We suggest significant improvements over their proposal in terms of client computation and communication resources by properly recasting it in two-party settings. In contrast to Ohrimenko et al. we are able to make the number of bilinear pairing evaluation, the costliest operation in verification procedure, independent of the result set cardinality for union operation. We also provide an analytical comparison of our scheme with their proposal which is further corroborated through experiments.

Vocal Tract Length Normalization Features for Audio Search

This paper presents speaker normalization approaches for audio search task. Conventional state-of-the-art feature set, viz., Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) is known to contain speaker-specific and linguistic information implicitly. This might create problem for speaker-independent audio search task. In this paper, universal warping-based approach is used for vocal tract length normalization in audio search. In particular, features such as scale transform and warped linear prediction are used to compensate speaker variability in audio matching. The advantage of these features over conventional feature set is that they apply universal frequency warping for both the templates to be matched during audio search. The performance of Scale Transform Cepstral Coefficients (STCC) and Warped Linear Prediction Cepstral Coefficients (WLPCC) are about 3% higher than the state-of-the-art MFCC feature sets on TIMIT database.

Status of the MSSM Higgs sector using global analysis and direct search bounds, and future prospects at the High Luminosity LHC

In this paper, we search for the regions of the phenomenological minimal supersymmetric standard model (pMSSM) parameter space where one can expect to have moderate Higgs mixing angle (alpha) with relatively light (up to 600 GeV) additional Higgses after satisfying the current LHC data. We perform a global fit analysis using most updated data (till December 2014) from the LHC and Tevatron experiments. The constraints coming from the precision measurements of the rare b-decays B-s -> mu(+)mu(-) and b -> s gamma are also considered. We find that low M-A(less than or similar to 350) and high tan beta(greater than or similar to 25) regions are disfavored by the combined effect of the global analysis and flavor data. However, regions with Higgs mixing angle alpha similar to 0.1-0.8 are still allowed by the current data. We then study the existing direct search bounds on the heavy scalar/pseudoscalar (H/A) and charged Higgs boson (H-+/-) masses and branchings at the LHC. It has been found that regions with low to moderate values of tan beta with light additional Higgses (mass <= 600 GeV) are unconstrained by the data, while the regions with tan beta > 20 are excluded considering the direct search bounds by the LHC-8 data. The possibility to probe the region with tan beta <= 20 at the high luminosity run of LHC are also discussed, giving special attention to the H -> hh, H/A -> t (t) over bar and H/A -> tau(+)tau(-) decay modes.

Archeal lectins: An identification through a genomic search

Forty-six lectin domains which have homologues among well established eukaryotic and bacterial lectins of known three-dimensional structure, have been identified through a search of 165 archeal genomes using a multipronged approach involving domain recognition, sequence search and analysis of binding sites. Twenty-one of them have the 7-bladed -propeller lectin fold while 16 have the -trefoil fold and 7 the legume lectin fold. The remainder assumes the C-type lectin, the -prism I and the tachylectin folds. Acceptable models of almost all of them could be generated using the appropriate lectins of known three-dimensional structure as templates, with binding sites at one or more expected locations. The work represents the first comprehensive bioinformatic study of archeal lectins. The presence of lectins with the same fold in all domains of life indicates their ancient origin well before the divergence of the three branches. Further work is necessary to identify archeal lectins which have no homologues among eukaryotic and bacterial species. Proteins 2016; 84:21-30. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Simulated long-term climate response to idealized solar geoengineering

Solar geoengineering has been proposed as a potential means to counteract anthropogenic climate change, yet it is unknown how such climate intervention might affect the Earth's climate on the millennial time scale. Here we use the HadCM3L model to conduct a 1000year sunshade geoengineering simulation in which solar irradiance is uniformly reduced by 4% to approximately offset global mean warming from an abrupt quadrupling of atmospheric CO2. During the 1000year period, modeled global climate, including temperature, hydrological cycle, and ocean circulation of the high-CO2 simulation departs substantially from that of the control preindustrial simulation, whereas the climate of the geoengineering simulation remains much closer to that of the preindustrial state with little drift. The results of our study do not support the hypothesis that nonlinearities in the climate system would cause substantial drift in the climate system if solar geoengineering was to be deployed on the timescale of a millennium.

Alternative search strategies for a BSM resonance fitting the ATLAS diboson excess

We study an s-channel resonance R as a viable candidate to fit the diboson excess reported by ATLAS. We compute the contribution of the similar to 2 TeV resonance R to semileptonic and leptonic final states at the 13 TeV LHC. To explain the absence of an excess in the semileptonic channel, we explore the possibility where the particle R decays to additional light scalars X, X or X, Y. A modified analysis strategy has been proposed to study the three-particle final state of the resonance decay and to identify decay channels of X. Associated production of R with gauge bosons has been studied in detail to identify the production mechanism of R. We construct comprehensive categories for vector and scalar beyond-standard-model particles which may play the role of particles R, X, Y and find alternate channels to fix the new couplings and search for these particles.

Object attributes combine additively in visual search

We perceive objects as containing a variety of attributes: local features, relations between features, internal details, and global properties. But we know little about how they combine. Here, we report a remarkably simple additive rule that governs how these diverse object attributes combine in vision. The perceived dissimilarity between two objects was accurately explained as a sum of (a) spatially tuned local contour-matching processes modulated by part decomposition; (b) differences in internal details, such as texture; (c) differences in emergent attributes, such as symmetry; and (d) differences in global properties, such as orientation or overall configuration of parts. Our results elucidate an enduring question in object vision by showing that the whole object is not a sum of its parts but a sum of its many attributes.