It has recently been shown that deep neural networks (DNN) can improve the quality of statistical parametric speech synthesis (SPSS) when using a source-filter vocoder. Our own previous work has furthermore shown that a dynamic sinusoidal model (DSM) is also highly suited to DNN-based SPSS, whereby sinusoids may either be used themselves as a “direct parameterisation” (DIR), or they may be enco...

Three competing models of cognitive aging (neural compensation, capacity limitations, neural inefficiency) were examined in relation to working memory for novel non-verbal material. To accomplish this goal young (n=25) and old (n=25) participants performed a delayed item recognition (DIR) task while being scanned with bold fMRI. The stimuli in the DIR task consisted of computer-generated closed...

We study the multiway cut problem in directed graphs and one of its special cases, the node-weighted multiway cut problem in undirected graphs. In DIRECTED MULTIWAY CUT (DIR-MC) the input is an edge-weighted directed graph G = (V,E) and a set of k terminal nodes {s1, s2, . . . , sk} ⊆ V ; the goal is to find a min-weight subset of edges whose removal ensures that there is no path from si to sj ...

Deformable image registration (DIR) has potential to enable novel approaches in radiotherapy (RT) such as dose accumulation, online adaptive planning, and response monitoring. Although DIR is predominantly formulated as a single-objective optimization problem, its inherent nature is multi-objective, i.e., there are multiple, conflicting objectives that need to be optimized simultaneously. A maj...

Caching is an e ective technique for improving performance in Databases and Information Retrieval (IR) systems. Traditional IR systems access the collection indices to perform searches. Such searches on large corpora for queries oft repeated can be computationally redundant. In addition, querying remote sources can be expensive because of large communication overheads and frequent inavailabilit...

PURPOSE We assessed the improved motion-sensitized driven equilibrium (iMSDE) technique for multiple contrast 3-dimensional vessel wall imaging at 3T. METHODS Carotid images were obtained using iMSDE combined with turbo field echo (iMSDE-TFE) and conventional double inversion-recovery turbo spin-echo (DIR-TSE) in 5 healthy adult subjects. The tissue signal-to-noise efficiency (SNReff), SNR di...

This work developed a three-dimensional (3D) diffusion-prepared segmented steady-steady free precession (DP-SSFP) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) sequence for black-blood (BB) thoracic aortic and carotid wall visualization. In 14 healthy volunteers, BB CMR of the thoracic aorta (n = 7) and carotid arteries (n = 7) was performed over 12 cm and 3 cm of transversal coverage, respectively, ...

BACKGROUND Pakistan has a high incidence of cancer. The most severely affected province is the North West Frontier Province, which has districts of low socioeconomic status such as those in Dir. The purpose of this study was to analyze the cancer registry record of patients from the districts in Dir in order to obtain a net cancer incidence for use in proposing future health plans. METHODS Th...

Putative dopaminergic (pDAergic) ventral tegmental area neurons play an important role in brain pathways related to addiction. Extended exposure of pDAergic neurons to moderate concentrations of dopamine (DA) results in a time-dependent decrease in sensitivity of pDAergic neurons to DA inhibition, a process called dopamine inhibition reversal (DIR). We have shown that DIR is mediated by phospho...

The automatic segmentation of brain tissues in magnetic resonance (MR) is usually performed on T1-weighted images, due to their high spatial resolution. T1w sequence, however, has some major downsides when brain lesions are present: the altered appearance of diseased tissues causes errors in tissues classification. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we employed two different MR sequences: fl...