1,720,983 research outputs found
Prosodic Data-Driven Modelling of Narrative Style in FESTIVAL TTS
No full textA general data-driven procedure for creating new prosodic modules for the Italian FESTIVAL Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesizer is described. These modules are based on the “Classification and Regression Trees” (CART) theory.
The prosodic factors taken into consideration are: duration, pitch and loudness. Loudness control has been implemented as an extension to the MBROLA diphone concatenative synthesizer.
The prosodic models were trained using two speech
corpora with different speaking style, and the effectiveness of the CART-based prosody was assessed with a set of evaluation tests
INTERFACE toolkit: A new tool for building IVAs
No full textINTERFACE is an integrated software implemented in Matlab© and created to speed-up the procedure for building an emotive/expressive talking head. Various processing tools, working on dynamic articulatory data physically extracted by an optotracking 3D movement analyzer called ELITE, were implemented to build the animation engine and also to create the correct WAV and FAP files needed for the animation. By the use of INTERFACE, LUCIA, our animated MPEG-4 talking face, can copy a real human by reproducing the movements of passive markers positioned on his face and recorded by an opto-electronic device, or can be directly driven by an emotional XML tagged input text, thus realizing a true audio/visual emotive/expressive synthesis. LUCIA's voice is based on an Italian version of FESTIVAL - MBROLA packages, modified for expressive/emotive synthesis by means of an appropriate APML/VSML tugged language
INTERFACE: A new tool for building emotive/expressive talking heads
No full textIn order to speed-up the procedure for building an emotive/expressive talking head such as LUCIA, an integrated software called INTERFACE was designed and implemented in Matlab©. INTERFACE simplifies and automates many of the operations needed for that purpose. A set of processing tools, focusing mainly on dynamic articulatory data physically extracted by an automatic optotracking 3D movement analyzer, was implemented in order to build up the animation engine, that is based on the Cohen-Massaro coarticulation model, and also to create the correct WAV and FAP files needed for the animation. LUCIA, our animated MPEG-4 talking face, in fact, can copy a real human by reproducing the movements of some markers positioned on his face and recorded by an optoelectronic device, or can be directly driven by an emotional XML tagged input text, thus realizing a true audio visual emotive/expressive synthesis. LUCIA’s voice is based on an Italian version of FESTIVAL - MBROLA packages, modified for expressive/emotive synthesis by means of an appropriate APML/VSML tagged language
Emotional FESTIVAL-MBROLA TTS synthesis
No full textThe topic of this work is an extension of our previous research on the development of a general data-driven procedure for creating a neutral "narrative-style" prosodic module for the Italian FESTIVAL Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesizer, and it is focused on investigating and implementing new strategies for building a new emotional FESTIVAL TTS. The new emotional prosodic modules, similarly to the neutral case, are still based on the "Classification And Regression Tree" (CART) theory. The extension to the emotional speech synthesis is obtained using a differential approach: the emotional prosodic modules learn the differences between the neutral (without emotions) and the emotional prosodic data. Moreover, due to the fact that Voice Quality (VQ) is known to play an important role in emotive speech, a rule-based FESTIVAL-MBROLA VQ-modification module, for control of temporal and spectral characteristics of the synthesis, has also been implemented. Even if emotional synthesis still remains an attractive open issue, our preliminary evaluation results underline the effectiveness of the proposed solution
The impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the cognition of people with dementia
No full text(1) Background: To limit the COVID-19 outbreak, the Italian government implemented social restrictions that may have had psychological and cognitive repercussions on people with dementia. We aimed to analyze cognitive decline during the pandemic year in people evaluated in a memory clinic in northern Italy, the epicenter of COVID-19 spread. (2) Methods: A single-center retrospective study was carried out, including individuals with annual follow-up evaluated in three different years (2020-GROUP, 2019-GROUP, 2018-GROUP). We performed an intergroup comparison of cognitive decline over a one-year follow-up, and an intragroup comparison in the 2020-GROUP to analyze the five-year cognitive decline trajectory, as measured by the MMSE. (3) Results: The 2020-GROUP showed a significant loss of MMSE points per year in the considered follow-up period compared with the 2019-GROUP and 2018-GROUP (p = 0.021). Demographics, clinical features, and the other analyzed variables, including rate of diagnosis, therapy, and comorbidities, did not significantly differ between groups. The five-year cognitive decline trajectory confirmed a significant worsening of cognitive decline between 2019 and 2020 (p < 0.001), while the decrease in MMSE scores was not statistically significant between previous time points. (4) Conclusions: COVID-19 pandemic measures have induced a significant worsening of cognitive decline in people with dementia, needing more careful assistance to minimize the adverse effects of social isolation in case of future lockdowns
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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