Mortimer Spit on South Pender Island is an accessible sandy beach located north of the bridge separating North and South Pender Island. Access is from a short but steep road just past the bridge on South Pender Island. A favourite spot for families, the water is often warm enough fro swimming and the spit is a great spot to watch the boats working their way through the Pender Canal between Port Browning and Bedwell Harbour.


After being in an accident, what should I do?
You will need to report the accident to your insurance company. Since you can choose the collision repair facility of your choice, tell them you want Torres Collision to handle your repair. You can contact us at 409-832-3466, after being in business for 73+ years with over 200 years of combined experience, we will get your vehicle back to factory condition.
Do I have to take my vehicle to a body shop that my insurance company recommends?
You are legally allowed to choose the automotive body shop of your choice. Do not be steered! Insurance companies will likely offer you a few options, but we accept all insurance companies and will handle any non-insurance work. Choose the shop you trust.
Why should I use Torres Collision?
Torres Collision is family owned and operated collision repair facility that has been providing top-notch collision repair to the Beaumont, TX area for over 73 years. We have trained I-CAR technicians and are an I-CAR Gold Class and ASE Blue Certified Shop. We have the expertise and materials to repair your vehicle to factory standards. We have been a 3M Top Shop Member and have been a Reader's Choice Award Winner for the best automotive collision repair. Torres Collision is a collision repair facility you can trust!
Can you match the automotive paint color exactly?
Yes. We only use the best paints and processes in the automotive industry, allowing us to expertly match and paint your vehicle perfectly.
What should I to protect the paint finish after the vehicle repair?
The first sixty days are the most critical for a long lasting durable finish.
Do: Wash your vehicle with cool water using a very mild household detergent. Wash your vehicle in the shade, and dry with a soft towel. Don't: Commercial car washes should be avoided during this time.
Do not wax or polish for the first sixty days. Gravel roads should be avoided or any area that would have flying debris.
Do I get a lifetime warranty?
Torres Collision provides a lifetime workmanship warranty on your collision repair. We are note interested in just a quick fix, we want you satisfied and want to be your collision repair facility for life.


Third Annual Goldberg Clinic/Brooks Retreat Fall Gathering - Another Great Day to Remember!
Once again the Party Angels blessed us and we had a beautiful day for the Third Annual Goldberg Clinic/ Retreat At Brooks Celebration. With a great turnout of good friends/patients/students it was a glorious Fall Day in the Country.
In the Goldberg Clinic Fall Olympics we had winners in both our Apple Bobbing Contest and our Annual Foosball Tournament with outstanding performances registered by our prized athletes! After these performances, Apple Bobbing and Foosball are likely to become Olympic Events!
We truly thank all of you who honored us by attending. See pictures from the happy day below.


text:
Charles Creighton may refer to:

 Charles Creighton (physician) (1847–1927), British physician and medical author
 Charles Creighton (referee) (1876–1949), Irish-American soccer referee
 Charles F. Creighton (1863–1907), Attorney General of the Kingdom of Hawaii, 1892
 Charles W. Creighton (1885–1947), American politician and lawyer

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
TalhaRathore's recent collection at Chawkandi Gallery
by Talha Rathore
Within the scope of traditional commissioned miniatures, much of the paintings shared a poignant dialogue or narration with the viewers. The eclipse of storytelling within contemporary miniature could be due to a variety of reasons yet TalhaRathore's recent collection intertwines a multitude of personal stories alongside reflections of the changes in her surrounding environment.
Exhibited at the Chawkandi Gallery in Karachi, 'Celebrating Life' creates a simple yet multi-faceted visual dialogue with the viewers. Moreover the titles chosen by TalhaRathore for her paintings convey a sense of home, spirituality and life lessons; the artist claims herself that she particular uses 'lyrical and passionate tittles' such 'Eternity In a Moment', 'Song of Life', 'I Still Remember' to infuse the work with a sense of personality. Visually, in comparison with her previous miniatures, the paintings have taken a more centralized form, with more focus on singular symbols like the trees. The presence of trees evoke a rejuvenation-al and resilient harmony within the series, their fresh lime green hues and bright cadmium tones suggest positivity. There are beautiful intricate foliage details within the trees, some miniscule leaves hint passive light pinks, while others glow in fervent greens. These details can be synchronized with the artist's claim for finding the small pleasures in life and appreciating them to the fullest. The linearity present in calm shapes and threads running throughout the compositions recall the preciseness required from miniature, yet this contrasts with wholesome primary colours and sensitive visuals.
However TalhaRathore still carries forward with the exploration of amoebae, atoms and maps. She seems to confide in the unicellular and organic nature of science; used as symbols and metaphors for characters and progressions in her journey, the visual vocabulary is more fluid and entrancing rather than stoic and factual (which is usually what one associates with scientific diagrams). The repeated use ofcircles in 'The Harmony of All That is', 'Tide of Hope' and the 'Life Forms' series echo a sense of comfort and security. At the same time, 'Celebrating Life' ensues a theme of translucency and lucidity throughout the work as figures and multimedia layer over each other allowing different elements to remain separate entities within one piece. The use of maps has connotations of the artist's journey, long distances and her diaspora situation, it could however contrastingly give the feeling of familiarity and guidance. This could tie into the collections' attempt to recreate a safe haven of memories, positivity and longevity.
While some pieces with the collection of 'Celebrating Life' indulge with bright citrus colours, TalhaRathoredemures the mood of the series with the ochre maps and the rusty trees which are reminiscent of traditional Mughal miniature landscape. The artist emphasizes that no matter the use of contemporary forms and multimedia, the miniature painting style is imbued in the wasli. A stylized figure with the ever familiar arched eyebrow geared into jeans and a t-shirt, stands through the background of maps. However, she interacts with the map, pullingon a road line that tugs into a thread; this illustrates a dialogue within the elements in the paintings. The narratives are not psychologized or overwhelming detailed/rendered, the wholesome compositions recite the 'sukoon' vibe which the artist seeks to project in this exhibition. Continuing upon the mood of stability and reassurance, TalhaRathore recalls her childhood memories during the rainy monsoon when she would make paper boats and hope to see them float in water for ages. The impracticality yet serene innocence in this act is a symbol of the title 'Celebrating Life'as the artist finds the paper boat a metaphor of the joys and endless possibilities on earth. Meanwhile a tight thread from the paper boat wraps around the trees and is held in position glows luminescently in white; a reoccurring image in most of the paintings, the boat seems to stand the test of time from the artist's childhood.
The series of miniatures encompasses traditional technique with liberties taken to envision fresh compositions. While the collection suggests a personal insight into the artist's life and her perspective on change and memories, the paintings are open to the viewer's own interpretation. In spite of the linear geography within the paintings which make use of maps, there is an omniscient simplicity and dedication of the paintings which makes it easy for viewers to derive meaning from them.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
WVXU Stories
Howard Wilkinson Honored As One Of Ohio's Best Politics Reporters
91.7 WVXU | By John Kiesewetter
Howard Wilkinson when he was inducted into the Cincinnati Journal Hall of Fame in 2012.
It's official: Howard Wilkinson will be honored in Columbus as one of the best Ohio politics reporters today -- which I've known since we worked together on The Post student newspaper at Ohio University 40+ years ago.
But he's much more than that. He's one of the best storytellers I've ever read -- on practically any subject.
And he's my dear friend, so objectivity here might go out the window, along with the Journalism 101 rule about referring to your story subject by last name.
Credit WVXU-FM
To me, he's Howard. Ask anyone about him here at WVXU-FM, or at the Enquirer, or former"Posties" from OU, and they just say "Howard." No last name needed. He's one of a kind: Howard. And unlike Beyonce, Bono, Madonna, Elvis, Cher and most celebrities known by one name, Howard is completely devoid of ego. He's just Howard. But I digress.
Howard will be presented an honorary "Certificate In Applied Politics" from the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute at the Sheraton on Capitol Square at noon Wednesday, along with retired political reporter Tom Beres from Cleveland's WKYC-TV.
The Bliss Institute, the bipartisan research and teaching institute dedicated to understanding the political process, says Howard "has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nomination conventions."
Credit John Kiesewetter archives
That's me at left, talking to Howard in The Post newsroom at Ohio University in 1975.
I know he covered the 1974 election, because I was taking his dictation back in The Post newsroom on the Athens campus. He was calling in his story about former Gov. James A. Rhodes' shocking upset of incumbent Gov. John J. Gilligan early Wednesday morning, about 11 hours after polling places closed. Rhodes actually had conceded for TV cameras Tuesday evening, and the 11 p.m. newscasts and Ohio's morning newspapers declared Gilligan the winner.
But Howard and colleague Ken Klein were in Ohio election headquarters until 6 a.m. updating their story for our paper that morning. Gilligan didn't get the boost he needed from Democrats in Northeastern Ohio, and lost.
When The Post arrived on campus about 8 a.m. with the headline, "Rhodes up by 10,000; recount likely,"many thought it was another April Fool's joke by the college newspaper.
Credit John Kiesewetter
The Post front page on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 1974.
While studying journalism at OU, Howard discovered and pursued his passion for covering Ohio politics. As often as he could, he'd borrow a car (often my '64 Chevy Impala) and drive to Columbus, where he essentially got master's and doctorate degrees watching how Hugh McDiarmid and other statehouse reporters did their jobs. It became his mission to explain the inner working of politics and news makers in plain, common sense, unbiased reporting. He got to know everybody who is anybody in Ohio politics, and they all know him, and respect him, and confide in him. He did it for 30 years at the Enquirer, and he's done the same for WVXU since 2012.
Credit John Kiesewetter / 1953
Howard before throwing a ceremonial first pitch at Great American Ball Park in 2012.
But he wasn't just a politics reporter.
He writes about baseball, especially his beloved Reds, present and past. He writes about battlefields and wars dating back to the Civil War; war veterans and their issues, concerns and heroics; prisoners of war like Staff Sgt. Keith Maupin. Howard loves history so much that he vacations by walking the battlefields at Gettysburg, not the beaches at Destin.
He could write about anything and everything. I once watched him cover Golden Gloves boxing for the Troy (Ohio) Daily News before the Enquirer hired him in October 1982.
Howard was such a celebrity in Troy that the paper made T-shirts with his caricature saying, "I know Howard Wilkinson."
Credit Joseph Kiesewetter
Reds mascots congratulate Howard after his first pitch in 2012
When Howard was hired by the Enquirer in 1982, I was features section editor at the time. And on Opening Day I showcased my all-time favorite Howard story on the Tempo section cover, about him eating peanuts as a kid during his first visit to Crosley Field. With so many uniformed employees (ushers) around, Howard worried he'd get in trouble by throwing his peanut shells on the ground – so he unzipped his fly and stuck them in his pants. (Sorry, Howard, only you can tell this one right!)
Every year I get jealous for two reasons when the editors kept asking Howard to do the big Reds Opening Day feature story – because he got the assignment, and because he did it 100 times better than I ever could.
Or anyone else.
That's Howard. He's one of a kind. Congratulations, my friend.
Howard and me at WVXU-FM
Copyright 2021 91.7 WVXU. To see more, visit .
John Kiesewetter
John Kiesewetter joined the WVXU news team as a TV/Media blogger on July 1 2015, after nearly 30 years covering local and national broadcasting for The Cincinnati Enquirer. He'll be posting news about Greater Cincinnati TV, radio and movies; updating your favorite former local TV/radio personalities or stars who grew up here; and breaking news about national TV, radio and media trends. You'll also learn about Cincinnati's rich broadcasting history.
See stories by John Kiesewetter


SpaceX's Telstar 19 VANTAGE mission lifted off beautifully on July 22nd, 2018 at 1:50 AM EDT.
Here are my favorite images from the launch!
If you'd like to become a Patron/upgrade your Patreon tier to download hi-resolution versions of these photos, click here!


I was looking for an answer for the question whether creative thoughts can be represented in/by a building? Can they be cast into space?
What kind of space is the one which can inhabit the largest amount of inspiration?
To investigate the spatial behavior of thoughts I decided to trace my own thinking. Writing a 'diary' is the perfect tool to structure my thoughts along a timeline. I happened to write diary and several blogs for many years so that part of work was already done. To understand the spatial aspects of my thoughts I developed a 'mindmap', a visual representation of my mind. The outstanding similarity of this mindmap to the imagery of social network maps and tagclouds of blogs became an important concept tool throughout the design process.
We live in an information society where the amount of information we consume increases day by day. We subscribe to newspapers and magazines, buy books, CDs and DVDs and download incredible amounts of digital content. We pay for countless TV channels most of which we hardly ever watch. We sign up for broadband internet connection and talk-more-pay-less mobile services. We spend enormous amount of money on information resources, services and devices, much more probably than we spend to fulfill our other basic needs. Why? Notable part of such information consumed is inspiration we need to enrich our life. The more information the more inspiration. The more inspiration the more excitement, the more taste of life.
Can we design a building which is especially focused on the exchange of inspiration?
I introduced the term 'all-you-can-think' similarly to those all-you-can-eat restaurants and all-you-can-drink bars. Just think of a space where you can access unlimited creative inspirations. 'All-you-can-think' should be a cultural space for social interaction where creative people can talk and meet. Somehow similar to the famed Pecha Kucha Nights where you can feel an extra high voltage of creativity shared among the people, both presenters and audience.
Can all this be represented in a building?
I set up an analogy as creativity appears in form of inspiration pollens, floating around freely in space. When such pollens of creativity reach a critical mass in our proximity inspiration just happens. Based on this analogy I defined six basic ways of getting inspired, depending on how we interact with these pollens: 1. We enter a zone of high-density f.e. we go to see a theatre performance or look at an art-piece. 2. We visit an art exhibition which has a purpose to gather more inspiration pollens by setting up a collection. 3. We slow-down in a meditative or sacred space which raises our awareness to a higher level. 4. We move around in space so we accidently meet more such pollens. Important notice is that we need always need an excuse to move on. 5. We are hit by pollens which are broadcasted and spread through all sorts of media. 6. We take stimulants.
'All-you-can-think' should be a compound of all these.
Such a building must be in the focal point of the city. The building I designed is located just off the always crowded Moszkva square, the Piccadilly of Budapest. The building consists of spaces which provides plenty ways of getting inspired: cafeteria connected directly to the lowered semi-public garden; meeting point just opposite to the stop of line 4-6, the busiest tram-line in town; vertical public space accessible for all; presentation room for show-and-tell events; bar which is an obligatory ingredient; terrace, an urban interpretation of panorama deck; a more quite exhibition space; and on the top, furthest away from the noise of the street and nearest to the sky: meditation roof terrace.
Prefabricated acrylic elements with built-in LEDs are implanted in the vertical in-situ concrete walls. These elements provide a perforated appearance by transmitting daylight during daytime. The embedded LEDs illuminate and emit light so the façade works as a high-resolution media façade during the night.
The building levels can be accessed linearly by climbing up the stairs which is bent around the inner volumes. Our perception follows a timeline similarly to a diary. However this linear route has a spatial expansion. The multi-layered visual appearance of the building – see through the openings on the facade, light transmitted through monoLED pixels and the façade which can be entirely animated – changes in time. It evokes the spatial qualities of a mindmap to be experienced in time.


Today, Wayne Gates, NDP MPP for Niagara Falls, continued to press the Liberal government to protect the Great Lakes and Ontario water ways, and stop the dumping of raw sewage into the Niagara River.
"Last week, the International Joint Commission released its first assessment on the progress by both US and Canadian governments on the protection of our Great Lakes and rivers," said Gates. "There certainly has been a lack of action by the premier to address the dumping of sewage into the Niagara River this past summer." This week, a report commissioned by the International Joint Commission criticized the government for their lack of action on addressing sewage spills and monitoring of toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes.


text:
The Great Days > News > CREW vows to sue Donald Trump if he runs for president, citing 14th Amendment
CREW vows to sue Donald Trump if he runs for president, citing 14th Amendment
posted on Nov. 03, 2022 at 11:29 pm
A liberal-leaning watchdog group warned former President Donald Trump on Thursday that it would sue to keep him off the ballot should he run for president in 2024.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Mr. Trump in a letter that it would "pursue your disqualification" because of his role in the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, citing a post-Civil War provision of the U.S. Constitution.
Noah Bookbinder, the group's president and CEO, wrote to Mr. Trump that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment "provides that no individual who engages in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution — after having previously taken an oath to support it — shall hold any federal or state office."
The provision was intended to keep rebel Confederate officials from holding U.S. government posts after the end of the Civil War. Mr. Bookbinder said it disqualifies Mr. Trump "based on your engaging in the insurrection that culminated on January 6, 2021."
"The evidence that you engaged in insurrection as contemplated by the Fourteenth Amendment — including by mobilizing, inciting, and aiding those who attacked the Capitol — is overwhelming," Mr. Bookbinder wrote.
CREW posted the letter on its website.
No federal official has been barred from office based on this provision as applied to the Jan. 6 riots, despite liberals' efforts to bar Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina from running.
One federal judge in New Mexico did remove Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin over the amendment's clause. That was the first successful use of the provision since 1869.
Shirley Allen November 3, 2022
Midterm election finale shifts focus to Donald Trump's 2024 announcement
Shot fired at family home of N. Carolina U.S. House candidate


text:
NEWSCABAL > finance > IFS says UK needs £40bn of tax rises and spending cuts to balance books
IFS says UK needs £40bn of tax rises and spending cuts to balance books
November 26, 2020finance
posted on Nov. 26, 2020 at 11:32 am
Tax increases and spending cuts totalling £40bn will be needed to balance the books as a combination of weak growth and pressure on the NHS and welfare budgets leads to worse than expected public finances in the coming years, a leading thinktank has said.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which specialises in tax and spending, said it was unlikely that the economy would perform as well as the independent Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted in its latest forecasts.
The thinktank added that the chancellor was also likely to bow to demands to extend the one-year £20 a week increase in universal credit and also be forced to continue allocating money to fight the Covid-19 pandemic after the 2021-2 financial year.
Paul Johnson, the IFS's director, said that on the OBR's central projection there was "only" a 3% long-term hit to the size of the economy caused by the virus, and while painful this would be smaller than the impact of the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The OBR said it would require £27bn of tax increases and spending cuts for tax revenues to cover day-to-day government spending.
"Those central scenarios are not great," Johnson said. "But they are not terrifying. We have had much bigger economic shocks and fiscal tightenings before. See the last decade."
However, he added: "I'm not so sure this is really a central scenario though. There are clearly downside risks to the economy from Covid and our ability to respond to it and, as the OBR make clear, from a no-deal Brexit. Of course, history need not repeat itself but remember that the long-term economic, and hence fiscal, hit from the financial crisis was far greater than predicted at the time."
READ DUP's Foster defiant on Brexit border 'red line'
Johnson said that despite allocating £55bn to fight the pandemic next year, Sunak had actually delivered a "pretty austere" spending review.
"It cut non-Covid-related public service spending by more than £10bn next year, and in subsequent years, relative to plans. It is not obvious that either the need or the appetite for public spending has diminished since March. There has been no top-up to NHS spending plans after next year. Frankly, I would be most surprised if these plans were adhered to."
The government has insisted that there will be no return to austerity, but Johnson said it would feel very much like it for non-protected Whitehall departments
Johnson added that despite allocating a "whopping" £55bn for Covid next year, he had allocated "precisely zero" for subsequent years. "I hope he is right that we will no longer need to spend anything at all on test and trace, PPE and the rest, but I wouldn't bet on it."
The Treasury's current plans involve ending the temporary increase in universal credit from April next year. "It was intended as a temporary policy and it is government policy to end it. Experience suggests, though, that pressure will build for it to be kept and the government may change course in response," Johnson said.
He added that once all the pressures were added together his central scenario was that borrowing will be at least 1% of national income higher in 2024-25 and thereafter.
"In that case, if the chancellor did want to aim for current budget balance he'd eventually need a 2% of national income fiscal tightening – about £40bn in today's terms."
READ Thyssenkrupp proposes former Bayer finance chief as CFO
newscabal November 26, 2020
Shrewsbury Town manager Cotterill in ICU due to COVID-19
EV charging groups race to meet UK's 2030 petrol and diesel car sales ban
Vauxhall could have to pay 1million drivers £2,500 each after emissions "cheating" allegations, lawyers say
Neville steps down as England women's team manager
People are learning the languages of their heritage in lockdown – this is why
Fewer UK children 'school ready' after Covid nursery closures
EE's 'Gaming Unleashed' bundle looks like a solid deal
Bird Suspected To Have Flown To Nigeria From Europe Caught In Cross River state
Arteta explains concerns for Arsenal stars after avoiding Tierney "risk"
Pamela Anderson believes Donald Trump will pardon 'anti-fake news' Julian Assange in final hours as president
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© GrandPa Media 2020


The Obama Foundation Scholars Program features a graduate degree tailored for promising international leaders – the Master of Arts degree in International Development and Policy (MAIDP) – offered by the world-renowned University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. In addition to pursuing a Master of Arts degree in International Development and Policy, you'll have the opportunity to receive a full scholarship that includes access to exceptional programming outside of the classroom. Through the Obama Foundation Scholars Program, you'll be connected to one another, the UChicago and Obama Foundation networks, and gain additional skills, training, and inspiration that will help you change your community and, ultimately, the world. The Obama Foundation Scholars Program offers an extraordinary scholarship that covers tuition and expenses and provides a living stipend, funding for books and course materials, medical insurance, housing, and opportunities to experience unique out-of-the-classroom programming. Any travel costs for these experiences will also be fully covered.


text:
BEML Ltd leads losers in 'A' group
Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, Yes Bank Ltd, Navkar Corporation Ltd and IIFL Finance Ltd are among the other losers in the BSE's 'A' group today, 13 August 2019.
BEML Ltd crashed 12.80% to Rs 711.75 at 14:49 IST.The stock was the biggest loser in the BSE's 'A' group.On the BSE, 74860 shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 40044 shares in the past one month.
Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd lost 11.25% to Rs 50.5. The stock was the second biggest loser in 'A' group.On the BSE, 23.62 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 8.47 lakh shares in the past one month.
Yes Bank Ltd tumbled 9.50% to Rs 74.3. The stock was the third biggest loser in 'A' group.On the BSE, 115.16 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 106.13 lakh shares in the past one month.
Navkar Corporation Ltd fell 8.42% to Rs 25.55. The stock was the fourth biggest loser in 'A' group.On the BSE, 68916 shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 46481 shares in the past one month.
IIFL Finance Ltd corrected 8.32% to Rs 113. The stock was the fifth biggest loser in 'A' group.On the BSE, 4948 shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 3848 shares in the past one month.


text:
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}

Voice conversion (VC) refers to a technique that converts a certain aspect of speech from a source to that of a target without changing the linguistic content \cite{VC, GMM-VC}. In this work, we focus on speaker conversion, which is the most widely investigated type of VC.
From an information perspective, VC can be performed by first extracting the spoken contents from the source speech, and then synthesizing the converted speech from the extracted contents with the identity of the target speaker.
Such a paradigm is sometimes referred to as recognition-synthesis (rec-syn) based VC, as depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:framework}.
Formally, starting from the source speech $\mathbf{X}$, a recognizer first extracts the spoken contents, $\mathbf{H}$, which is then consumed by the synthesizer to generate the converted speech, $\mathbf{Y}$:
\begin{equation}
    {\mathbf{Y}} = {\text{Synth}}({\mathbf{H}}), {\mathbf{H}}={\text{Recog}}({\mathbf{X}}). \label{eq:formulation}
\end{equation}
In the latest voice conversion challenge 2020 (VCC2020) \cite{vcc2020}, one of the baselines directly concatenated an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model and a text-to-speech (TTS) model \cite{vcc2020-asr-tts}. In addition, several top performing systems also implemented such a framework \cite{vcc2020-task1-top}, showing state-of-the-art performance in terms of both naturalness and similarity.

In rec-syn based VC, an ASR model trained on a labeled dataset is often used to extract the \textit{supervised} spoken content representation, such as text \cite{vcc2020-asr-tts} or phonetic posteriorgram (PPG) \cite{VC-PPG}. The collection of labeled datasets is often costly, especially in a low-resource setting, such as the cross-lingual VC scenario \cite{vcc2020}. Therefore, researchers have resorted to unsupervised or the so-called self-supervised speech representation (S3R) learning paradigm, where a large-scale unlabeled data is used to learn rich, compact speech representations. S3Rs have been applied to any-to-one VC \cite{vqw2v-vc}, many-to-many VC \cite{speech-resynthesis}, any-to-any VC \cite{fragmentvc, s2vc} and cross-lingual VC \cite{prosody-asr-tts}.

In addition to its label-free property, S3R based VC is also attractive in it being a good probing task for S3R analysis. A recently published SUPERB benchmark \cite{superb} dedicates to compare different S3Rs across a range of \textit{discriminative} speech processing tasks, while it remains unclear what representations are optimal for \textit{generation} tasks like VC. For instance, wav2vec 2.0 \cite{wav2vec2} has been shown to be powerful in not only ASR but also speaker and language recognition \cite{wav2vec2-sid-lid}, implying that it encodes rich content, speaker and language information. Based on the discussion on the information perspective of VC, we may hypothesize that a good ${\mathbf{H}}$ in Eq.~\ref{eq:formulation} should be compact in content but contains little to none speaker information. Based on such an assumption, wav2vec 2.0 may not be an optimal representation for VC.

\begin{figure}[t]
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=0.75\columnwidth]{framework_v3.png}
	\caption{The training and conversion procedures in any-to-one recognition-synthesis based VC. \label{fig:framework}}
	\vspace{-0.5cm}
\end{figure}

In this paper, we describe S3PRL-VC, an extension of the S3PRL toolkit and SUPERB.
Our main focus was any-to-one (A2O) VC, where the synthesizer is trained in a target-speaker-dependent fashion. We used the VCC2020 dataset, which allows us to test intra-lingual and cross-lingual settings. We also provide an any-to-any (A2A) extension by using an off-the-shelf d-vector \cite{d-vector} model to encode the unseen speaker information.
We implemented models resembling the top systems in VCC2018 \cite{VC-WNV-adapt} and VCC2020 \cite{vcc2020-task2-top}, which allows us to focus on the comparison.
We conducted a large-scale evaluation, both objectively and subjectively, to compare the performance between not only different S3Rs but also state-of-the-art systems.
S3PRL-VC is a competitive system by yielding (1) a comparable performance with VCC2020 top systems in the A2O setting in terms of similarity, and (2) state-of-the-art performance in S3R-based A2A VC.
Our main contributions are:
\begin{itemize}
	\item Inheriting the property of SUPERB, our S3PRL-VC implementation ensures fast benchmarking but also state-of-the-art performance. Such a fast, easy-to-use property benefits not only S3R researchers but also the VC community.
	\item We present a large-scale comparison of S3Rs from the VC point-of-view, providing new insights and perspectives to analyze the representations. We also compared with top systems in VCC2020 that used PPGs, showing the limitation and competitiveness of S3Rs.
\end{itemize}

\vspace{-0.3cm}
\section{Tasks}

\subsection{General description of VCC2020}

All experiments in this work are benchmarked on the VCC2020 dataset \cite{vcc2020}. There are two tasks in VCC2020, with intra-lingual VC being task 1 and cross-lingual VC being task 2.
The two tasks share the same two English male and female source speakers. The target speakers include two male and two female English speakers for task 1, and one male and one female speaker each of Finnish, German, and Mandarin for task 2.
For each speaker, 70 utterances (roughly five minutes) in their respective languages and contents are provided, and there are 25 test sentences for evaluation.
During conversion, ${\mathbf{X}}$ (which is in English) is converted as if it was uttered by the target speaker while keeping the linguistic contents unchanged.

\subsection{Intra-lingual and cross-lingual any-to-one VC}

We first consider the two tasks in VCC2020 under the A2O setting. Any-to-one VC aims to convert from any arbitrary speech into that of a predefined target speaker. The training and conversion processes are depicted in Figure~\ref{fig:framework}. The ability to encode ${\mathbf{H}}$ from any unseen speaker is ensured by the common practice of training S3Rs on a multi-speaker dataset. Using the target speaker dataset, ${\mathbf{D}_\text{trg}}$, the synthesizer is trained to reconstruct the acoustic feature from ${\mathbf{H}}$. In the conversion phase, the converted features, ${\mathbf{Y}}$, are generated following Eq.~\ref{eq:formulation}.
Finally, a waveform synthesizer (ex. neural vocoder) generates the converted waveform.

Any-to-one VC is a good probing task to investigate several characteristics of an upstream S3R model. First, a fundamental requirement of VC is the linguistic consistency, so there is a positive correlation between the VC performance of an S3R model and its ability to faithfully encode ${\mathbf{H}}$. Second, if an S3R model encodes rich speaker information, then the source speaker information in ${\mathbf{X}}$ will conflict with the target speaker attributes injected by the synthesizer, which hurts the VC performance. Finally, during the synthesizer training in cross-lingual VC, the S3R model may fail to generalize to ${\mathbf{X}}$ from a non-English target speaker since most existing S3R models are trained with English datasets only. It is worthwhile to examine the ability of mono-lingual S3R models to transfer to different languages.

\subsection{Intra-lingual any-to-any VC}

We then provide an extension for the A2A scenario, also known as zero-shot VC. A2A VC attempts to convert to a target speaker where ${\mathbf{D}_\text{trg}}$ is so limited (less than one minute) such that fine-tuning in infeasible. A2A VC models are usually trained on a multi-speaker dataset. Instead of recovering the target speaker information by the synthesizer as in A2O VC, we use speaker embeddings, $s$, extracted by an off-the-shelf speaker encoder, which is pretrained on an automatic speaker verification (ASV) dataset and objective. Such a paradigm is also used in zero-shot TTS \cite{adaptation-verification}. In training, the speaker embedding extracted from the target waveform is used. During conversion, given ${\mathbf{D}_\text{trg}}$, ${\mathbf{s}}$ is formed as an average of each embedding from each utterance. We may then rewrite Eq.~\ref{eq:formulation} as:
\begin{equation}
    \vspace{-0.1cm}
    {\mathbf{Y}} = {\text{Synth}}({\mathbf{H}}, {\mathbf{s}}), {\mathbf{H}}={\text{Recog}}({\mathbf{X}}), {\mathbf{s}}={\text{SpkEnc}}({\mathbf{D}_\text{trg}}). \label{eq:a2a-formulation}
\end{equation}

\begin{figure}[t]
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{all_models_dvec}
	\caption{The models implemented in this work. Left: the simple model. Middle: the simple model with an AR loop. Right: the Tacotron2 model, with extension to an any-to-any model by accepting a d-vector as the speaker embedding. \label{fig:models}}
	\vspace{-0.5cm}
\end{figure}

\begin{table*}[ht!]
\centering

\footnotesize

\caption{Objective evaluation results on different VC settings over various S3Rs. For MCD and WER, the smaller the better; for ASV, the higher the better.}

\label{tab:obj}

\begin{tabular}{|l||r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|r|}
\hline
\multirow{3}{*}{Upstream}  & \multicolumn{9}{c|}{Intra-lingual A2O} & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{Cross-lingual A2O} & \multicolumn{3}{c|}{Intra-lingual A2A} \\ \cline{2-15}
& \multicolumn{3}{c|}{Simple} & \multicolumn{3}{c|}{Simple-AR} & \multicolumn{3}{c|}{Taco2-AR} & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{Taco2-AR} & \multicolumn{3}{c|}{Taco2-AR} \\ \cline{2-15}
& MCD  & WER  & ASV  & MCD  & WER  & ASV  & MCD  & WER  & ASV  & WER & \multicolumn{1}{r|}{ASV} & MCD  & WER  & ASV  \\ \hline \hline

mel & 8.41 & 48.5 & 59.00 & 8.92 & 22.7 & 49.75 & 8.47 & 38.3 & 77.25 & 39.0 & 46.67 & 9.49 & 4.2 & 19.50 \\
PPG (TIMIT) & 7.78 & 69.0 & 85.50 & 7.83 & 58.9 & 95.25 & 7.18 & 33.6 & 99.75 & 51.0 & 84.67 & \textbf{8.31} & 12.9 & \textbf{83.50} \\ \hline
PASE+ & 9.29 & 5.0 & 26.75 & 9.52 & 5.7 & 26.00 & 8.66 & 30.6 & 63.20 & 36.3 & 34.67 & 9.85 & 4.2 & 8.00 \\
APC & 8.67 & 8.6 & 48.00 & 8.73 & 7.1 & 41.75 & 8.05 & 27.2 & 87.25 & 33.9 & 52.33 & 9.57 & 3.5 & 23.25 \\
VQ-APC & 8.12 & 10.8 & 81.25 & 8.37 & 7.4 & 60.50 & 7.84 & 22.4 & 94.25 & 28.4 & 68.00 & 9.43 & 4.0 & 22.00 \\
NPC & 7.74 & 39.0 & 92.75 & 8.15 & 21.1 & 76.75 & 7.86 & 30.4 & 94.75 & 37.6 & 59.00 & 9.39 & 4.4 & 21.00 \\
Mockingjay & 8.58 & 31.3 & 51.00 & 8.74 & 9.5 & 47.00 & 8.29 & 35.1 & 79.75 & 39.2 & 46.00 & 9.43 & 5.0 & 25.00 \\
TERA & 8.60 & 11.4 & 46.50 & 8.67 & 6.0 & 42.50 & 8.21 & 25.1 & 83.75 & 29.2 & 49.33 & 9.31 & 5.2 & 18.75 \\
Modified CPC & 8.71 & 9.4 & 40.00 & 8.87 & 7.0 & 30.00 & 8.41 & 26.2 & 71.00 & 35.3 & 32.83 & 9.61 & 4.1 & 10.75 \\
DeCoAR 2.0 & 8.31 & 7.4 & 54.75 & 8.33 & 6.4 & 53.00 & 7.83 & 17.1 & 90.75 & 26.8 & 59.33 & 9.28 & 4.0 & 27.00 \\
wav2vec & 7.45 & 14.0 & \textbf{95.50} & 7.64 & 4.9 & 90.50 & 7.45 & 10.1 & 98.25 & 13.9 & 75.83 & 8.77 & 3.5 & 40.00 \\
vq-wav2vec & \textbf{7.41} & 13.4 & 91.00 & \textbf{7.24} & 11.6 & \textbf{98.75} & \textbf{7.08} & 13.4 & \textbf{100.00} & 21.0 & \textbf{88.83} & 8.47 & 4.2 & 73.25  \\
wav2vec 2.0 Base & 7.80 & 24.7 & 92.75 & 7.77 & 5.0 & 86.50 & 7.50 & 10.5 & 98.00 & 14.9 & 82.17 & 9.03 & 3.2 & 27.00 \\
wav2vec 2.0 Large & 7.64 & 12.5 & 81.75 & 7.67 & 9.0 & 82.75 & 7.63 & 15.8 & 97.25 & 22.7 & 78.00 & 8.99 & 4.1 & 22.25 \\
HuBERT Base & 7.70 & \textbf{5.5} & 89.25 & 7.79 & \textbf{4.7} & 84.25 & 7.47 & \textbf{8.0} & 98.50 & \textbf{13.5} & 82.33 &  9.19 & 3.4 & 23.25 \\
HuBERT Large & 7.54 & 5.6 & 95.00 & 7.54 & 5.6 & 93.00 & 7.22 & 9.0 & 99.25 & 15.9 & 86.50 & 9.13 & \textbf{3.0} & 27.75 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\vspace{-0.5cm}
\end{table*}

\vspace{-0.4cm}
\section{Implementation}

\subsection{Recognizer (upstream models)}

Table~\ref{tab:obj} depicts the list of S3Rs we compared in this work, which are the upstream models supported in S3PRL at the date of publication. For a complete list of information (architecture, objective, etc.), refer to \cite{superb}.
All upstreams are trained with English data (mostly Librispeech).
In addition to the S3Rs, two extra upstreams were included: (1) mel-spectrogram, ``mel'', and (2) ``PPG (TIMIT)'', which is trained supervisedly on the TIMIT dataset.

\subsection{Synthesizer model design}
\label{ssec:synthesizer}

Mel-spectrogram was selected as the target acoustic feature. We implemented several models to resemble top systems of past VCCs, as illustrated in Figure~\ref{fig:models}. We avoid expensive model components like attention \cite{transformer} for fast benchmarking.

\noindent\textbf{Simple:} We start from the model used by the top system in VCC2018 \cite{VC-WNV-adapt}. The simple model consists of a single layer feed-forward network (FFN), two long short-term memory layers with projection (LSTMP), and a linear projection layer.

\noindent\textbf{Simple-AR:} As autoregressive (AR) modeling has been shown to be effective in speech synthesis \cite{ar-rnn-mdn-spss}, we added an AR loop to the simple model. At each time step, the previous output is consumed by the first LSTMP layer. Dropout is essential in the AR loop to avoid exposure bias brought by teacher-forcing \cite{ar-f0-spss, Taco}.

\noindent\textbf{Taco2-AR:} We increase the model complexity by using a model architecture similar to that of Tacotron 2 \cite{Taco2}, which resembles the model used by the top system in VCC2020 \cite{vcc2020-task2-top}. Different from Tacotron 2, the attention module was not used as it was reported to be useless in \cite{vcc2020-task2-top}.

\subsection{Other setups}

\noindent\textbf{Any-to-any settings.} The dataset used to train the A2A VC model is the VCTK dataset \cite{vctk}. For the speaker encoder, we used the d-vector model \cite{d-vector} trained on a mix of datasets, including LibriSpeech, VoxCeleb 1 and 2.

\noindent\textbf{Waveform synthesizer.} We used the HiFi-GAN \cite{hifigan}, a state-of-the-art parallel real-time neural vocoder. For the A2O setup, we mixed the data of all 14 speakers in VCC2020 with the VCTK dataset, while for the A2A setup we used only the VCTK dataset.

\section{Evaluation metrics and protocols}

\subsection{Objective evaluation}

We chose three objective evaluation metrics, all of which measure different aspects of a VC system. Mel cepstrum distortion (MCD) is an intrusive, L2-norm based metric which measures the general performance. Word error rate (WER) measures the intelligibility and the linguistic consistency, and in this work we used a pretrained wav2vec 2.0 model. The accept rate from a pretrained ASV model measures the speaker similarity by calculating the cosine similarity using speaker embeddings. For scenarios like the cross-lingual A2O task where the reference speech is not accessible, we report WER and ASV only since they are non-intrusive.

\subsection{Subjective evaluation}

For the subjective test, we asked listening participants to evaluate two common aspects in VC: naturalness and similarity.
Listeners were asked to evaluate the naturalness on a five-point scale.
For conversion similarity, a natural target speech and a converted speech were presented, and listeners were asked to judge whether the two samples were produced by the same speaker on a four-point scale.

For each system, a total of 80 utterances (5 random $\times$ 16 conversion pairs)  were evaluated. Recordings of the target speakers were also included in the naturalness test and served as the upper bound.
We used an open-source toolkit \cite{p808-open-source} that implemented the ITU-T Recommendation P.808 \cite{p808} to screen unreliable ratings obtained through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). We recruited more than 280 listeners from the United States and had each sample rated by five different participants on average.
Audio samples are available online\footnote{\url{https://bit.ly/3oydaY2}}.

\vspace{-0.2cm}
\section{Evaluation results and discussions}

\subsection{Comparison of different models}

We first investigate the impact of using different synthesizer models described in Section~\ref{ssec:synthesizer} in the intra-lingual A2O setting, as shown in Table~\ref{tab:obj}. First, only by adding the AR loop to the Simple model, most S3Rs benefit from large improvements in WER. With Taco-AR, all S3Rs except PASE+ and modified CPC achieved an ASV accept rate higher 80\%, while all S3Rs suffered from a degradation in WER.
This shows that increasing the model capacity can significantly improve the speaker similarity, while sacrificing the intelligibility.
However, we would like to emphasize that WER is a strict measurement of intelligibility, and human can actually recognize better than machine.
On the other hand, the Taco2-AR model yields the best MCD scores, which, as we will show later, correlates better with subjective naturalness and similarity.
Also, we empirically found the training time of the three models similar.
Based on these reasons, we decided to use the taco2-AR model for the succeeding tasks and comparisons.

\subsection{Results on different tasks}

Next, we compare the results of using S3Rs for different tasks. Looking again at Table~\ref{tab:obj}, we first find S3Rs trained on a mono-lingual corpus can still work well in the cross-lingual setting, demonstrating the ability to transfer across languages.
However, compared with the intra-lingual A2O task, it could be clearly observed that all S3Rs degraded in terms of both the WER and ASV accept rate, which is similar to the findings in \cite{vcc2020-prediction}. Finally, in the intra-lingual A2A setting, all S3Rs yielded WERs much lower than those in the A2O setting, while the MCD values and ASV accept rates were significantly worse. Even the best upstream, vq-wav2vec, yielded only an accept rate of $73.25$. One possible reason is that in the A2A VC setting, modern S3Rs still fail to disentangle content, such that the synthesizer preserves too much speaker information. Another reason may be that a jointly trained speaker encoder \cite{s2vc} is essential for S3R-based VC.

\begin{table}[t]
\centering

\footnotesize

\caption{Comparison with state-of-the-art systems. All upstreams use the Taco2-AR model.}

\label{tab:comparison}

\begin{tabular}{|>{\scriptsize}l||r|r|r|r|c|c|}
\hline
System & MCD & WER & ASV & Naturalness & Similarity \\

\hline \hline
\multicolumn{6}{|c|}{Intra-lingual A2O} \\ \hline
mel & 8.47 & 38.3 & 77.25 & 2.61 $\pm$ 0.11 & 35$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
PPG (TIMIT)& 7.18 & 33.6 & 99.75 & 3.32 $\pm$ 0.10 & 58$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
\hline
PASE+ & 8.66 & 30.6 & 63.20 & 2.58 $\pm$ 0.12 & 31$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
APC & 8.05 & 27.2 & 87.25 & 2.92 $\pm$ 0.11 & 43$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
VQ-APC & 7.84 & 22.4 & 94.25 & 3.08 $\pm$ 0.10 & 40$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
NPC & 7.86 & 30.4 & 94.75 & 2.98 $\pm$ 0.11 & 46$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
Mockingjay & 8.29 & 35.1 & 79.75 & 2.81 $\pm$ 0.12 & 42$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
TERA & 8.21 & 25.1 & 83.75 & 2.91 $\pm$ 0.12 & 37$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
Modified CPC & 8.41 & 26.2  & 71.00  & 2.74 $\pm$ 0.11 & 33$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
DeCoAR 2.0  & 7.83  & 17.1  & 90.75  & 3.04 $\pm$ 0.11 & 43$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
wav2vec & 7.45 & 10.1 & 98.25 & 3.40 $\pm$ 0.05 & 52$\%$ $\pm$ 2$\%$ \\
vq-wav2vec & 7.08 & 13.4 & 100.00 & 3.59 $\pm$ 0.10 & 59$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
wav2vec 2.0 B. & 7.50 & 10.5 & 98.00 & 3.36 $\pm$ 0.06 & 51$\%$ $\pm$ 2$\%$ \\
wav2vec 2.0 L. & 7.63 & 15.8 & 97.25 & 3.26 $\pm$ 0.10 & 50$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
HuBERT B. & 7.47 & 8.0 & 98.50 & 3.48 $\pm$ 0.10 & 55$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
HuBERT L. & 7.22 & 9.0 & 99.25 & 3.47 $\pm$ 0.10 & 54$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
\hline
USTC-2018$\dagger$ & -- & 6.5 & 99.00 & 4.20 $\pm$ 0.08 & 55$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
USTC-2020 & 6.98 & 5.4 & 100.00 & 4.41 $\pm$ 0.07 & 82$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
SRCB & 8.90 & 11.5 & 92.00 & 4.16 $\pm$ 0.08 & 68$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
CASIA & 7.13 & 11.0 & 98.25 & 4.25 $\pm$ 0.08 & 61$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
ASR+TTS & 6.48 & 8.2 & 100.00 & 3.84 $\pm$ 0.09 & 75$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
\hline
Target & -- & 0.7 & -- & 4.57 $\pm$ 0.14 & -- \\

\hline \hline
\multicolumn{6}{|c|}{Cross-lingual A2O} \\ \hline
PPG (TIMIT)& -- & 51.0 & 84.67 & 2.79 $\pm$ 0.08 & 43$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
\hline
vq-wav2vec & -- & 21.0 & 88.83 & 3.28 $\pm$ 0.08 & 44$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
HuBERT L. & -- & 15.9 & 86.50 & 3.13 $\pm$ 0.08 & 41$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
\hline
USTC-2018 & -- & 5.6 & 97.67 & 4.17 $\pm$ 0.06 & 34$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
USTC-2020 & -- & 7.6 & 96.00 & 4.27 $\pm$ 0.07 & 43$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
SRCB & -- & 8.6 & 78.67 & 4.34 $\pm$ 0.07 & 34$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
CASIA & -- & 10.5 & 91.67 & 4.11 $\pm$ 0.07 & 45$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
ASR+TTS & -- & 34.5 & 67.83 & 2.51 $\pm$ 0.08 & 39$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
\hline
Target & -- & -- & -- & 4.48 $\pm$ 0.12 & -- \\

\hline \hline
\multicolumn{6}{|c|}{Intra-lingual A2A} \\ \hline
PPG (TIMIT) & 8.32 & 12.7 & 84.25 & 3.41 $\pm$ 0.08 & 34$\%$ $\pm$ 4$\%$ \\
\hline
vq-wav2vec & 8.47 & 4.2 & 73.25 & 3.58 $\pm$ 0.09 & 28$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
\hline
S2VC$\dagger$ & -- & 12.4 & 71.50 & 2.90 $\pm$ 0.09 & 29$\%$ $\pm$ 3$\%$ \\
\hline
\multicolumn{6}{l}{\makecell[l]{$\dagger$: Systems generate 16kHz, so MCD is not calculable and direct score\\comparison should be made with caution.}}\\
\end{tabular}
\vspace{-0.5cm}
\end{table}

\begin{table}[t]
\centering
\caption{Linear correlation coefficients between different metrics.}
\label{tab:correlation}

\begin{tabular}{|c||c|c|c|c|c|}
\hline
Metric & MCD & WER & ASV & Nat. & Sim. \\
\hline \hline
MCD & -- & 0.678 & -0.934 & -0.968 & -0.961 \\
WER & -- & -- & -0.640 & -0.808 & -0.587 \\
ASV & -- & -- & -- & 0.910 & 0.911 \\
Nat. & -- & -- & -- & -- & 0.932 \\
Sim. & -- & -- & -- & -- & -- \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\vspace{-0.5cm}
\end{table}

\subsection{Comparing with top systems using subjective evaluation}

We then compared S3R-based VC models with state-of-the-art systems. \textbf{USTC-2018} \cite{VC-WNV-adapt}, \textbf{USTC-2020} \cite{vcc2020-task1-top, vcc2020-task2-top}\footnote{USTC's systems used text and PPG for the intra-lingual and cross-lingual tasks, respectively.}, \textbf{SRCB} \cite{vcc2020-srcb}, \textbf{CASIA} \cite{vcc2020-casia} were top systems in VCC2020, all of which adopted PPGs, synthesizer pretraining on a multi-speaker dataset, and AR vocoders. Notably, they used thousands of hours of internal data for training. \textbf{ASR+TTS} \cite{vcc2020-asr-tts} was the seq2seq+non-AR vocoder baseline in VCC2020. \textbf{S2VC} \cite{s2vc} is the STOA system for A2A VC. The results are shown in Table~\ref{tab:comparison}. We summarize our observations as follows:
\begin{itemize}
    \item vq-wav2vec outperformed all other upstreams in the subjective test, with a 3.59 naturalness and 59$\%$ similarity in the intra-lingual A2O setting.
    \item In the A2O settings, there was still a naturalness gap between vq-wav2vec and other VCC2020 top systems (3.59 v.s. 4.16-4.25, 3.28 v.s. 4.11-4.34). As for similarity, vq-wav2vec was on par with USTC-2018 and CASIA in the intra-lingual A2O setting, and achieved top in the cross-lingual setting.
    \item In the A2A setting, vq-wav2vec was on par with S2VC in similarity, while being significantly better in naturalness. Our system is therefore the new state-of-the-art in S3R-based A2A VC.
\end{itemize}

\vspace{-0.1cm}
\subsection{Impact of supervision}

Although top systems using PPG greatly outperformed vq-wav2vec in naturalness, they used AR vocoders and the system was trained on large internal datasets, so the impact of supervision is not yet clear. To this end, we compared vq-wav2vec result with ``PPG (TIMIT)'' and the same vocoder. The high WERs and low naturalness scores showed that the PPG was indeed of low quality. Nonetheless, in all three settings, ``PPG (TIMIT)'' can achieve similar or higher similarity scores than vq-wav2vec. This shows that supervision greatly contributes to similarity, especially in difficult settings like A2A VC.
This also shows that the ability of current S3Rs to disentangle speaker information is still limited when compared to PPG, and can be further improved in the future.

\vspace{-0.1cm}
\subsection{Justify the objective metrics with correlation analysis}

Conducting a subjective test whenever a new S3R is developed cannot meet the fast benchmark requirement of SUPERB. Therefore, we examine if the objective measures align well with human perception. Using the intra-lingual A2O results over different upstreams, we calculated pairwise linear correlation coefficients. Results in Table~\ref{tab:correlation} suggested that MCD best aligned with both naturalness and similarity.
Note that in this correlation analysis, we considered systems that used the same decoder and neural vocoder. Since the correlation result is strongly affected by the pool of methods evaluated in a listening test, this good correlation could be observed only in such a homogeneous condition. Nonetheless, this result is still very useful for the benchmarking requirement of SUPERB.

\vspace{-0.1cm}
\section{Conclusions and future work}

We presented S3PRL-VC, an extension of the S3PRL toolkit that applied S3R to VC. We described the model design choice, and covered a variety of tasks. Extensive experiments, both objective and subjective, evaluated the capability of various S3Rs   when applied to different VC scenarios. By comparing S3Rs with supervised presentations like PPG, we showed the competitiveness of S3Rs in certain settings, meanwhile shedding light on improving directions.

We suggest different future directions for readers from different communities. From the VC perspective, it is worthwhile to continue investigating better downstream model design. For instance, in A2A VC, a proper speaker encoder should be used instead of fixed d-vector. Meanwhile, we encourage to use VC as a probing task when designing a new S3R model, considering the challenges to overcome brought by all aspects required in VC.

\noindent{\textbf{Acknowledgements}}
We would like to thank the S3PRL/SUPERB team for the fruitful discussions. This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 21J20920, JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR19A3, and a project, JPNP20006, commissioned by NEDO, Japan.

\bibliographystyle{IEEEbib}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


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I oppose the proposed Biometric Law because of how easily it can chip away at a citizen's liberty, without him feeling a thing.
For forty years I have studied the stunningly complex problem of enemy rationality, especially in certain earlier published writings concerning the particular nuclear threat from Iran.
In the past, Hamas has proven that when it wants to, it can prevent attacks on Israel. It would be a mistake to allow these governments to have it both ways -- on one hand claiming they are legitimate and sovereign governments, while on the other hand avoiding responsibility for terror attacks.
On March 7, the PA President convened yet another urgent meeting of PLO and Fatah leaders in Ramallah to discuss the content of this "mother of all letters" which he intends to send to Israel. The meeting, which came less than 48 hours after Obama's speech, reflected the increased concern of the Palestinians over the world's fading attention to their problems.
We left Santa Fe on our way to visit the Painted Forest and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Part of our day was spent traveling on the historic Route 66 and we stopped at the state visitor's center as we entered Arizona. At each state visitor's center, we stopped to gather information about interesting sites and to request coupon booklets with reduced entry coupons.
The "Arab Spring" is anything but a "great revolution." It is a spring of massacres, destruction and violence, as Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, the head of Lebanon's Maronite Church, put it. "We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing," he told Reuters. "This is turning to winter. We cannot implement reforms by force and arms. How can it be an Arab Spring when people are being killed every day?"
As only a distinctly last resort, Israel needs nuclear weapons for nuclear war fighting.


text:
IBM Labs: Patented Invention Prevents Devices From Running Compromised Software Code
Invention provides security controls that restrict and prevent access to apps unless their original, previously encrypted code remains unchanged and uncompromised
ARMONK, N.Y., Dec. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) inventors have patented a technique that can enable businesses to improve cloud security and support secure transactions by preventing mobile devices from accessing software code that has been maliciously or inadvertently modified after it was encrypted.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )
With the rise of the mobile workforce, many businesses are embracing bring your own device (BYOD) environments or they have employees using mobile devices while working at remote, off-site locations. These scenarios introduce new security vulnerabilities to corporate networks because employees can unknowingly download and attempt to run cloud apps that have been sabotaged. IBM's patented invention helps businesses increase their confidence associated with implementing BYOD policies while averting nefarious code before it has a chance to cause any problems.
IBM received U.S. Patent #8,341,747, "Method to provide a secure virtual machine launcher," for the invention.
"This patented invention will help organizations confidently and securely embrace the advantages of a mobile workforce while remaining protected against malicious content or intent," said Andrew Cornwall, inventor and mobile software developer, IBM. "Our technique helps businesses prevent altered apps from running and unleashing their wrath on businesses, their networks and their customers."
IBM's invention provides security controls that restrict and prevent access to apps unless their original, previously encrypted code remains unchanged and uncompromised. For example, if an app is modified after it has been encrypted -- without being properly decrypted and re-encrypted -- IBM's patented security mechanism will recognize that the code was altered and prevent it from running.
This approach is differentiated by detecting if an app has been modified before being executed, versus after, and provides businesses with additional control over which apps can be accessed.
Security for Mobile Leaders
According to a recent IBM Institute for Business Value survey, mobile leaders are making noteworthy investments in BYOD strategies, recognizing it requires a new approach to IT support and customer service. IBM found that leaders understand the importance of making mobile capabilities secure with 79% reporting that their organizations have well-documented policies in place for employees using mobile devices (versus 48% of non-leaders).
IBM's secure virtual machine (VM) launcher invention can address the complexity of deploying and improving the security of business-critical cloud-based apps. A VM is a computer application used to create a virtual environment that mirrors physical operation systems, applications and programs. While VMs are frequently used for enterprise tasks, such as remote backup and disaster recovery, they also are increasingly embedded in consumer devices such as mobile phones, tablets and portable game consoles to ease software updates and management.
IBM's invention can be applied to encrypted files that are sent from the cloud or a corporate server to a VM. The objective is to prevent embedded devices from executing code that has been altered -- either maliciously or inadvertently.
With billions of embedded VM devices currently in use -- from an estimated three billion mobile phones to 125 million smart televisions -- and millions of additional applications projected in the future, IBM's secure VM launcher patent has the potential to deliver improved security to a wide range of devices and applications.
IBM inventors around the globe are focused on researching and developing new technologies and techniques that will pave the way to leadership for IBM and its clients. Along with the IBM MobileFirst portfolio of solutions, this patented invention can help ensure that users have access to the apps they need without risk to the corporate network.
IBM invests more than $6 billion annually in R&D and has topped the list of U.S.
patent recipients for 20 consecutive years. IBM's invention and patent leadership is illustrated at http://ibm.co/11k6fRn.
Closing the Visibility Gap: Microsoft and TLS Protocol Decryption
The ROI Story: Identifying & Justifying Disruptive Technology


How important is it to send a thank you note after an interview? Very important, say most HR managers. In fact, most recruiters and HR managers will tell you that sending a thank you note after your email is just one more step in the interview process. An extremely important part, if you want to get the job.
When times are comfortable, it's easy to become relaxed. We're all guilty of it; our immediate needs are taken care of, so we begin to settle in to our current jobs and roles. While most will say they want increased roles eventually, the initiative to continue seeking better jobs and careers begins to slow as comfort takes over and change is seen as risk.
The U.S. economy is booming, manufacturing jobs truly are coming back, and an unemployment rate of about 4 percent is at a 17-year low. That means opportunities for new jobs and career advancement for people from virtually all walks of life.


April 17, 2013 Ah Hin Tom, 92, of Honolulu, a retired postmaster and an Army veteran, died in Honolulu. He was born in Wailuku. He is survived by wife Rose P., sons Richmond and Gary Wong, daughter Joanne, brothers Kenneth and Charles, sisters Mildred Chong and Diane Young, seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Visitation and Taoist services: 10 a.m. Sunday at Borthwick Mortuary. Burial: 1 p.m. at Hawaiian Memorial Park. Casual attire. Flowers welcome. Online condolences: borthwickoahu.com.


Each of the alumni below were a part of Cross Country while they attended North East . Register if you would like to be listed below.
Looking for North East North East, PA alumni who participated in Cross Country but are not listed? Classmates.com® has hundreds of more North East North East, PA alumni listed.
If you participated in Cross Country while at North Easthigh School North East, Pennsylvania, be the first to add your name.


All hail the new Queen of Social influence, Kylie Jenner. One woman, one tweet, one point three billion dollars. You heard it, Kylie Jenner has yet again dominated the age of Social Influencers. Whether it was a purposeful attack against Snapchat or not, she has single-Tweetedly cost Snapchat $1.3 billion in value.
However, the damage had already been done. With this in mind, it's not just Kylie who holds the power to destroy and it's not just Snapchat who has to worry. Here you'll learn about the most authoritative social influencers in Tech and Business from 2017, according to Forbes.
Appearing on the popular US shows Ellen and Late Night with Conan O'Brien, it's safe to say Gary Vaynerchuk has a great power over the social world. With Celebrity net worth today estimating his net worth of $160 million, he is one social influencer all businesses want to collab with. In fact, Forbes even named him the number one Tech and Business influencer of 2017.
Also among Forbes top Tech and Business influencers is Lewis Hilsenteger, YouTuber and owner of Unboxed therapy. He has 1.62 million followers on Twitter and 10,120,053 subscribers on YouTube. That's a lot of reach. His latest video alone has received 1,807,038 views in just 4 days!
Justine Ezarik was listed as one of the top 50 most influential women in tech by Fast Company and impressively has 1.93 million followers. It's no wonder she made the top influencers, especially when you find out that by the age of 12 she taught herself HTML and made her own website in 1996.
Are social influencers important to your business?
Need we say more? Social influencers are becoming a reliable place for consumers to look for advice on buying products. And because users find them so relatable and feel as though they hold a more personal connection when compared to brands, influencers are only going to become, well, more influential.
If you want help with your social media campaign, we can help!


text:
This playbook includes the following tasks:
- Collect indicators to be used in your threat hunting process
- Retrieve IOCs related to HAFNIUM and the exploited exchange 0-day vulnerabilities
- Discover IOCs related to the attack
- Query firewall logs to detect malicious network activity
- Search endpoint logs for malicious hashes to detect compromised hosts (Available from Cortex XSOAR 5.5.0).
- Block indicators
Read more about the attack on our Unit42 blog: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/microsoft-exchange-server-vulnerabilities/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
"Hot Legs" is a single by Rod Stewart. It was written by Gary Grainger and Rod Stewart. Stewart included the song on his 1977 album Foot Loose & Fancy Free. The 1978 single performed moderately well on the United States Hot 100 (#28), and very well on the UK pop chart (#5). In the UK, "Hot Legs" and "I Was Only Joking" charted together as a double A-side. In 1993, Stewart recorded a live version during his MTV Unplugged session which appears on the album Unplugged...and Seated. Artists who have recorded cover versions of "Hot Legs" include Tom Jones, Tina Turner, and American rock band Orgy. Bon Jovi have occasionally covered this song during their "The Circle Tour".
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Hot_Legs
Foot Loose & Fancy Free
add to main playlist Play in Full Screen You're Insane
add to main playlist Play in Full Screen Born Loose
add to main playlist Play in Full Screen (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want to Be Right
add to main playlist Play in Full Screen You Got a Nerve


Miley Cyrus marked Valentine's Day by sharing sweet new photos from her December wedding to Liam Hemsworth.
Plus, Post Malone and the Red Hot Chili Peppers!
'Listen to their song ... & be a part of the movement to help end gun violence!


text:
require "broker"
require "utils.print"
require "unityTest"
require "log".level = "debug"

httpPort      = 8080  -- Outgoing http port
httpsPort     = 443 -- Outgoing https port

--SERVER        = "10.8.0.214"
SERVER        = "HWS01DEV"
PROTOCOL      = PROTOCOLS.HTTP
PORT          = httpPort

local broker = Broker (SERVER, PORT, PROTOCOL)

-- Just a syntatic sugar
local POST = METHOD.POST

local UserNotEnabledError = { ErrorName = "UserNotEnabledError", ErrorCode = 101 }
local AuthenticationError = { ErrorName = "AuthenticationError", ErrorCode = 102 }
local InvalidTokenError   = { ErrorName = "InvalidTokenError"  , ErrorCode = 103 }

-- Auxiliary variable used between tests
local token

local path = "WFS/Service/Impl/Authentication.svc/%s"

local function checkDefaultProfile(Profile)
  assertNotNil(Profile)
  assertType(Profile, "table")

  if Profile.Login == "quality_4" then return end

  assertNotNil(Profile.Mail)
  assertNotNil(Profile.Login)
  assertNotNil(Profile.Name)

  assertType(Profile.Mail , "string")
  assertType(Profile.Login, "string")
  assertType(Profile.Name , "string")
end

local function checkToken(Token)
  assertNotNil(Token)

  assertNotNil(Token.Token)
  assertNotNil(Token.TimeLeft)

  assertType(Token.Token, "string")
  assertType(Token.TimeLeft, "number")
end

--[[ This test should receive an exception from the server ]]--
function testWrongLogin(data, err)
  local resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("Login"), data)
  local test = checkError(resultData, err)
end

function testFineLogin(data)
  local resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("Login"), data)

  assertType(resultData, "table")

  local Profile = resultData.Profile
  local Token   = resultData.Token

  checkDefaultProfile(Profile)
  checkToken(Token)

  token = Token.Token
end

function testGetUserProfile()
  local resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("GetUserProfile"), token)
  assertType(resultData, "table")
  checkDefaultProfile(resultData)
end

function testRenewToken()
  local resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("RenewToken"), token)

  checkToken(resultData)

  -- Sending an invalid token to be renewed
  resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("RenewToken"), "cadcadcadvavad")
  checkError(resultData, InvalidTokenError)
end

function testInvalidateToken()
  local resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("InvalidateToken"), token)

  assertType(resultData, "boolean")
  assertEquals(resultData, true)
end

function testInvalidToken()
  local resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("GetUserProfile"), token)
  checkError(resultData, InvalidTokenError)

  resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("InvalidateToken"), token)
  checkError(resultData, InvalidTokenError)

  resultData, resultStr = broker:postJSON(path:format("RenewToken"), token)
  checkError(resultData, InvalidTokenError)
end

local time = os.time()

for i = 1, arg[1] or 1 do
  local wrongPass = { User = "quality_1",    Password = "qubit26000" }
  local wrongUser = { User = "quality_1aaa", Password = "qubit2600"  }
  local fineLogin = { User = "quality_",    Password = "qubit2600"  }

  print()
  test(testWrongLogin     , "Test wrong password", wrongPass, AuthenticationError)
  test(testWrongLogin     , "Test wrong username", wrongUser, AuthenticationError)

  -- This is a map indicating invalid quality_* users
  local invalid_users = { [8] = 1, [9] = 1, [12] = 1, [13] = 1, [14] = 1, [16] = 1, [17] = 1, [18] = 1, [20] = 1, [23] = 1, [24] = 1, [25] = 1}

  for i = 1, 31 do
    -- users that does not exist AHHAHAH
    if not invalid_users[i] then
      local login = { User = fineLogin.User .. tostring(i), Password = fineLogin.Password }
      test(testFineLogin      , "Test fine login"    , login)
    end
  end

  test(testGetUserProfile , "Test user profile"  , fineLogin)
  test(testRenewToken     , "Test renew token")
  test(testInvalidateToken, "Test invalidate token")
  test(testInvalidToken   , "Test invalid token")
end

serverInfo()
print()
testsSummary()


text:
Mileage user fee? Vehicle sales tax? Panel begins work on finding new ways to pay for Pa.'s transportation needs
Updated: Mar. 26, 2021, 6:59 a.m. |
This graphic prepared by the state Department of Transportation illlustrates the amount of money that the department says is needed to properly fund the state's transportation system. Screenshot from PennDOT's livestreamed meeting
Jan Murphy | jmurphy@pennlive.com
Work has begun on finding new ways to raise more money for road and bridge projects and allow Pennsylvania to phase out its gas tax.
The Transportation Revenue Options Commission, or T-ROC as it is called, held its inaugural meeting on Thursday to launch its efforts to identify alternative funding sources. Gov. Tom Wolf appointed the panel, which is made up of nearly four dozen government officials and representatives from the business, transportation and other sectors. Wolf gave the commission until Aug. 1 to produce a report with its recommendations.
Have something to say about tolls for the I-83 South Bridge? Public comment deadline is close
The state's gas tax – around 53 cents a gallon, the second highest in the nation – has become a less reliable funding source to pay for road and bridge projects. But it remains the primary revenue stream for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
With people driving less and some driving more fuel-efficient cars or electric vehicles, PennDOT officials say this tax no longer is able to generate the money that is needed to keep the state's transportation network in good repair.
The commission spent its time on Thursday receiving a primer on the scope of the state's transportation network and how the $8.6 billion PennDOT currently spends annually to maintain roads and bridges falls about $9 billion short of what it considers as necessary.
During the session that got a late start due to some technical issues, consultants Paul Caulfield and Keith Chase asked panel members for their thoughts on the benefits of a good transportation network and the consequences of doing nothing to address the funding problem.
At one point, the members were asked how much beyond the $8.6 billion PennDOT currently spends on roads and bridges would they like to see their alternative funding recommendations raise. The group settled in at $13.9 billion, or $5.3 billion in new transportation dollars.
Caulfield laid out a menu of possible revenue sources and how much they are estimated to generate annually. Some examples were:
Doubling the state's vehicle registration fee could generate between $750 million to $1.5 billion;
A vehicle sales tax of 1.93% to 2.14% could generate $450 million to $500 million;
An electric car fee of $150 to $200 could generate $5.5 million to $9.2 million;
A mileage-based user fee that charges 3.16 cents per mile, which was said to be the equivalent of the current gas tax, up to 7 cents a mile could generate $3.8 billion to $8.4 billion;
Statewide tolling of interstates, which currently the federal government does not allow, could generate $1.8 billion to $2 billion; and
Congestion pricing – a toll charged to use major roadways during rush hours – in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Allentown could generate $525 million to $900 million.
"These are just some samplings and maybe giving you a sense of the order of magnitude of what different approaches may bring back," Caulfield told the commission.
The timeline for the commission's work has the panel generating and evaluating various options when it meets in April. In May, it will begin to identify recommended options and complete that work in June by identifying the recommendations it supports along with the rationale behind them.
July will be spent pulling a report together and finalizing the commission's work to present to the governor by his Aug. 1 deadline.
PennDOT Secretary Yassmin Gramian encouraged all members of the panel to study the materials the department provided and be active in the discussion.
"We are going to work together to come up with a solution for our transportation funding," she said.
But Gramian made it clear whatever recommendations the commission arrives at will be their own, not PennDOT's.
"This is your plan," Gramian said. "This is your funding plan."
This is a list of the members of the Transportation Revenue Options Commission provided at the meeting. March 25, 2021 Screenshot from PennDOT meeting.
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.


text:
Q: ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds); Line gives an error, Why? I want to export my database to an Excel worksheet. I'm using Visual Studio 2017.
I tried Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel;
        SqlConnection conDataBase = new SqlConnection(conString);
        SqlCommand cmdDatabase = new SqlCommand("Select * from Table_2 ;",conDataBase);

        try
        {
            SqlDataAdapter sda = new SqlDataAdapter();
            sda.SelectCommand = cmdDatabase;
            DataTable dbdataset = new DataTable();
            sda.Fill(dbdataset);
            BindingSource bsource = new BindingSource();

            /*  bsource.DataSource = dbdataset;
            dataGridView1.DataSource = bsource;
            sda.Update(dbdataset);
            */

            DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
            ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
            sda.Fill(dbdataset);
            ds.Tables.Add(dbdataset);
            ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
        }

A: I would recommend using SSMS to do this rather than Visual Studio. You can use the Wizard tool within SQL Server to export data to an excel file and you can create an SSIS package if you need to do this on an ongoing basis. See this article for additional info How to import and Export SQL Server data to an Excel File
If you really do want to use Interop it may be better to explicitly export each table.
//Launch an Excel session
        Application excelapp = new Application();
        excelapp.Visible = true;

        _Workbook workbook = (_Workbook)(excelapp.Workbooks.Add(Type.Missing));
        _Worksheet worksheet = (_Worksheet)workbook.ActiveSheet;

        //Create Worksheet Headers
        worksheet.Cells[1, 1] = "Order number";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 2] = "Delivery carrier";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 3] = "Shipper arrive early";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 4] = "Shipper city";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 5] = "Shipper state";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 6] = "Consignee arrive early";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 7] = "Consignee city";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 8] = "Consignee state";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 9] = "BOL";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 10] = "Consignee reference";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 11] = "Shipper actual arrival";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 12] = "Shipper actual departure";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 13] = "Status";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 14] = "Consignee actual arrival";
        worksheet.Cells[1, 15] = "Consignee actual departure";

        int row1 = 1;

        //Format text type in excel
        worksheet.Cells[1, 1].EntireColumn.NumberFormat = "@";

        //Write Data to Each Row of Worksheet
        foreach (DB_DataSet.Row row in report_Data)
        {
            row1++;

            worksheet.Cells[row1, 1] = row.Order_number;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 2] = row.Delivery_Carrier;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 3] = row.Shipper_arrive_early;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 4] = row.Shipper_city;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 5] = row.Shipper_state;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 6] = row.Consignee_arrive_early;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 7] = row.Consignee_city;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 8] = row.Consignee_state;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 9] = row.BOL;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 10] = row.Consignee_reference;
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 11] = row.Shipper_Actual_Arrival;
            try { worksheet.Cells[row1, 12] = row.Shipper_Actual_departure; } catch { }
            try { worksheet.Cells[row1, 13] = row.status; } catch { }
            try { worksheet.Cells[row1, 14] = row.Consignee_actual_arrival; } catch { }
            try { worksheet.Cells[row1, 15] = row.Consignee_actual_departure; } catch { }

            //Format Worksheet
            worksheet.Cells[row1, 15].EntireRow.Font.Name = "Arial";
        }

Thank you,
Joseph

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The New Yorker Radio Hour features a diverse mix of interviews, profiles, storytelling, and an occasional burst of humor inspired by the magazine, and shaped by its writers, artists, and editors. This isn't a radio version of a magazine, but something all its own, reflecting the rich possibilities of audio storytelling and conversation.
Assemblyman slows N.J. gubernatorial campaign, lieutenant governor begins hers
Phil Gregory
Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli tells reporters at the New Jersey Statehouse that he's scaling back his campaign for governor because of side effects from radiation therapy. (Phil Gregory/WHYY)
One Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey is scaling back his campaign. Another is just getting into the race.
Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli is planning to limit his campaign appearances to two or three days a week because of side effects from radiation therapy after surgery for throat cancer.
"I thought I would be one of those people who would get through radiation therapy entirely without feeling the most significant aspect of those side effect challenges," he said Thursday. "I'm not."
Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno has filed papers to enter the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
Ciattarelli said he isn't worried that his modified campaign schedule will hurt his chances of defeating her.
"I just saw her in the hallways and said I got a four-month head start on you. You might be able to pick some ground on me in the next month," said Ciattarelli, R-Somerset. "But come February we're both going to be out there pounding away."
Ciattarelli expects to make a complete recovery and get back to full campaign schedule by mid-February. And Guadagno is expected to formally announce her candidacy Tuesday.
On the Democratic side, Phil Murphy, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany and former Goldman Sachs executive, is considered the front-runner.
The primary elections are set for June 6.
Camden County Sheriff becomes first Black president of N.J. sheriffs' association
After his installation, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) honored him for his historic ascension to lead the sheriffs' association.
Voorhees Twp. native Tommy Paul reaches Australian Open semifinal, faces Djokovic next
Paul is the first man from the United States to make it to the final four at Melbourne Park since Andy Roddick in 2009.
Tobacco control in the Delaware Valley improves slightly, but funding falls short
The American Lung Association's annual State of Tobacco Control report shows some progress in reducing smoking-related illnesses, but gaps remain.
Listen 1:17
About Phil Gregory
pgregory@wbgo.org


text:
The 2019 KTM Enduro Racing Team
After what was a great year of racing in 2018, KTM Australia has announced that the dynamic duo of Daniel Milner and Lyndon Snodgrass will remain with the factory KTM Enduro Racing Team for 2019.
The 27-year-old Milner, entering his third season with KTM Australia's factory off-road squad, is coming off of his most successful campaign to date that saw him clinch the A4DE title overall and AORC E3 crown with a perfect win rate, along with earning the elusive outright honours. The popular Victorian also played an instrumental role in assisting Team Australia to the World Trophy at the International Six Days Enduro (ISDE) in Chile, where he ranked first in the individual standings aboard KTM 500EXC-F machinery.
Daniel Milner: "It's really good to be back with the KTM Enduro Racing Team and to be riding the KTM 350EXC-F is honestly really exciting for me as a rider. Having the year that I had this year, hopefully we can carry that momentum into 2019 – that's the goal! I've been on the new bike already and the agility of it, being so light, makes it so much fun to ride and my speed has been really competitive already. I almost rode the 350 when I first signed with KTM, but we went with the 450 back then and won on that, then won on the 500 this year and now I'm aiming to do the same on a different capacity bike again. It's always good to change it up and I'm super-happy to be with KTM Australia for another year."
Fellow Victorian Snodgrass, 20, also embarks on his third season with the in-house KTM Enduro Racing Team, putting a stellar year behind him after securing 10 podiums on his way to runner-up in the AORC E2 series rankings. He was also alongside Milner as a member of the winning Australian ISDE World Trophy team. The opening stop of AORC is scheduled for 9-10 March at Gympie in Queensland, while the A4DE is set for 1-4 May at Moruya in New South Wales. Next season will see Milner step across to the KTM 350EXC-F as he switches to the E2 ranks, while Snodgrass will compete in E1 aboard a KTM 250EXC-F.
Lyndon Snodgrass: "I'm pumped to be part of the KTM Enduro Racing Team again in 2019. We've had two good years together, so now to be part of the team for a third year is awesome – it's a great environment to go racing in. Next year I will be on the KTM 250EXC-F and aiming for that top step, so to be working with everybody from KTM Australia again is a real positive for my career and I'm looking forward to it!"
ISDE: DANIEL MILNER – THE WORLD'S FASTEST
MEET THE ATHLETE: LYNDON SNODGRASS
Articles, Latest, News
You are here: Home > Articles > The 2019 KTM Enduro Racing Team


you removed all the Christmas trees and cases and stuff regarding this but zombies still run around with snowman's head ???
back to the wish since the first release where I started playing I always wish that you make an update so we can sort in Global inventory so that it's possible to put favorite rifles at the top snipers together just move it around like we can do in the backpack Global inventory it is a bit irritating and confusion to scroll through all the weapons that is accumulated Through Time to find just that one weapon which another player wish to trade with or that I want you to use right now so I would love that it's something you would take care of for us….
Zombies are related to the "Winter" event. Haha. Hope this makes that a bit more clear. That is also why the "Winter 2018 Skinbox" is still spawning. When winter is over, we will remove this.
Sort button for the Global inventory is literally something we have been discussing / brainstorming about for a couple of years now. Don't get me wrong here; we do want it. There is just a huge "back side" behind this whole feature that players don't know about. Mostly the reason we can not add this as of right now, the way we want to, is because it would be too much of a strain on the Database. I can get into crazy details but I don't think that's needed.
We have however considered to counter this "strain" by making it for example that you need to pay GC to use the sort button, add a cool down, or things like this that would counter the part where players wouldn't be able to "spam" this. In the end we are still afraid the strain would be too much, even for GC.
I'd like to see if you have further ideas and suggestions? Maybe there is something we didn't think of yet.
Either way, I hope to have given you a better insight regarding this situation.
This new runningspeed is horrible.
If we have de same function at Lounge? The itens will be stack automatically. My inventory have stanags 30 at parts. 5 stanags out of the major group.
The meds are stack automatically.
And if you want sell AR you will be tired to click to full BP. Pass using shift+ Righ click is hard to do for weapons?
I will test tonight the att.
Nice work putting a hard experience in the game.
I have tested the game in survival mode, really enjoyed to play FPS in the zone with radiation. Really liked the crafting addon, survival should have more things to kraft and less to collect. A little suggestion would be to change the visual of gas masks; crafted one, regular and improved gas mask look out the same. I think improved one should have a wider range of view, while crafted one should be opaque and scratched (its made out from an empty bottle after all). I like the road you´re taking, still think it could be much more radical (check crafting system of the game "how to survive", that would be awesome). Nice work, keep it up and thanks!
You mean, that when one player in your group dies, you all die?
Yes i mean like that.
how about just making it alphabetical?
thanks devs for all your work, i do enjoy this game.
Zones randomly appear and are usually up for around 20 minutes. During this time ALL the zombies in this area are buffed. They don't die easy AT ALL and can tank a lot of bullets. All zombies killed in this area drop special higher-end loot. To tip it off there is a chance a "Toxic Super Zombie" spawns in this area. This special super zombie can ONLY spawn in a radiated area and is VERY hard to kill. Players receive very high-end loot by killing this particular zombie.
This is the first version of the new radiation zones and a lot will be tweaked a long the way. Please let us know further feedback!
It's reverted. You probably already know but just like to type it here for those who read this and don't know yet.
Hey! I answered these comments from bottom to top, so could you please read my reply that starts with: "DUDE. How did I not think about this?!" a bit further below. Thanks!
Hey! Thanks for this feedback! We will see what we can do. We will keep adding more things to craft from patch to patch. Not sure if you read the further ideas but one thing I'd like to see in the Survival game-mode is the ability for players to dismantle ammo. For example; dismantling a Stanag (30) clip would give the player 30 AR bullets and 1 empty stanag clip. This way players can then use these AR bullets to fill up a Stanag (60) clip or other type of AR ammo using AR bullets.
It's an interesting approach to be honest but I just can't imagine this to be a thing. If I would be playing a Battle Royale game myself and I would die, I would cheer for my team mates to still win, help them, give call outs etc.
It's just how it is unfortunately with the very thin Battle Royale community.
DUDE. How did I not think about this?!
This is EXACTLY what I mean with when I tell people to help us brainstorm and keep putting in random ideas.
A stack / clean up button in the global inventory. This stacks all the ammo, weapons etc. <- This right here is the thing I thought you meant and I was talking about. This is very intensive for our database etc etc etc.
A sort global inventory button. Now I understand what you requested! <- This sorting can be done client sided so basically NO issues / reasons why not to do this. Think about if you could sort your items by: A-Z, Item type, Item ID, etc. This would be so useful!
I am passing this along to the rest of the guys in a meeting we have this Friday!
Great! Good job and thanks for the input!
They have a chance of dropping much more rare stuff. Before I am able to answer your question; could you tell me what game-mode this is in? Survival? or Open World?
For example; dismantling a Stanag (30) clip would give the player 30 AR bullets and 1 empty stanag clip. This way players can then use these AR bullets to fill up a Stanag (60) clip or other type of AR ammo using AR bullets.
That would be great! Dismantling clips is usefull, I have lots of clips with 20 - 25 bullets that cant be stacked so they occupy a lot of space, this would be great to improve space of global inventory and when travelling with small or medium backpacks.
* 10 minutes of radiation ? It takes a lot of time to get there. More time or stop time when you are there?
* The gas damage does not seem to be worse than running out of night vision .
* Repellent should not work in this area.
* Within 24 hours (in the game), the area appear how many times?
Nice work and I will try record in day now.


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