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Text-to-music generation models are now capable of generating high-quality music audio in broad styles. However, text control is primarily suitable for the manipulation of global musical attributes like genre, mood, and tempo, and is less suitable for precise control over time-varying attributes such as the positions of beats in time or the changing dynamics of the music. We propose Music ControlNet, a diffusion-based music generation model that offers multiple precise, time-varying controls over generated audio. To imbue text-to-music models with time-varying control, we propose an approach analogous to pixel-wise control of the image-domain ControlNet method. Specifically, we extract controls from training audio yielding paired data, and fine-tune a diffusion-based conditional generative model over audio spectrograms given melody, dynamics, and rhythm controls. While the image-domain Uni-ControlNet method already allows generation with any subset of controls, we devise a new strategy to allow creators to input controls that are only partially specified in time. We evaluate both on controls extracted from audio and controls we expect creators to provide, demonstrating that we can generate realistic music that corresponds to control inputs in both settings. While few comparable music generation models exist, we benchmark against MusicGen, a recent model that accepts text and melody input, and show that our model generates music that is 49% more faithful to input melodies despite having 35x fewer parameters, training on 11x less data, and enabling two additional forms of time-varying control.

When Russia first launched its war against Ukraine in 2014, Rodion Trystan was 23 years old, a soldier in a front-line battalion in the eastern Donbas region. A Russian sniper bullet nearly took his life.

Aaron James lost his nose, mouth and left eye in a work-related accident. Surgeons in New York successfully performed the reconstruction that included a whole-eye implant. His vision was not restored, but the first-of-its-kind procedure may help advance transplant medicine.

“If some form of vision restoration occurred, it would be wonderful, but... the goal was for us to perform the technical operation,” said the chief surgeon, Dr Eduardo Rodriguez.

Marshal Mannerheim, celebrating his 75th birthday on 4 June, 1942, received a surprise visit by Adolf Hitler. Thor Damen, a sound engineer working for the Finnish Broadcasting Company, tossed a microphone on the parcel shelf of the ceremonial carriage, allowing for the two men’s conversation to be covertly recorded.

The SETI Institute, a non-profit scientific research organization, announced today a philanthropic gift of $200m from the estate of Franklin Antonio, a visionary supporter and catalyst of the work of the SETI Institute for more than 12 years. Co-founder of communications chip company, Qualcomm, Antonio passed away on May 13, 2022, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy to enable breakthrough science in the search for intelligent life beyond our world.

European astronomers on Tuesday released the first images from the newly launched Euclid space telescope, designed to unlock the secrets of dark matter and dark energy - hidden forces thought to make up 95% of the universe.

This image contains the most distant black hole ever detected in X-rays, a result that may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe formed. As we report in our press release, this discovery was made using X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) and infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (red, green, blue).

Marc, 63, had freezing of gait before becoming first with advanced Parkinson’s to be fitted with device restoring normal signalling

The Kingdom of Bhutan has become the first country in the world to declare that its entire street dog population is fully sterilized and vaccinated following years of investment in a humane dog management program with global animal charity Humane Society International (HSI).

Why the International Date Line Looks So Stupid

Norwegian startup Photoncycle says it can store solar energy from summer to winter cheaper than batteries

The heads of most animals are easily identifiable, but scientists haven’t been able to say the same for sea stars until now.

Reanalysis of skeletal remains in Spain suggests conflicts took place about 5,000 years ago in neolithic period, say researchers

In the 1980s, geophysicists made a startling discovery: Two continent-sized blobs of unusual material were found deep near the center of the Earth, one beneath the African continent and one beneath the Pacific Ocean.

Each blob is twice the size of the moon, and research over the last decade has shown that they are likely composed of different proportions of elements than the mantle surrounding it.

A newly identified process could explain a variety of natural phenomena and enable new approaches to desalination.

Acute sleep loss increases dopamine release and rewires the brain, new study finds

Mouse experiments reveal the brain-heart connections that cause us to rapidly lose consciousness — and wake up moments later.

The massive false positive rate of general AI detectors had a devastating effect on freelance writer Michael Berben: being falsely accused of cheating, he lost his job.

Tens of millions of homes lie vacant across China following the country’s credit-fuelled construction boom.

Taichung, Taiwan -- Around a tiled square on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Nanjing, a cluster of apartment buildings rise like concrete columns towards a grey sky.

At first glance, the structures look like a testament to China’s awe-inspiring construction boom, which saw the country use more cement between 2011 and 2013 than the United States did throughout the entire 20th century.

But upon closer examination, the development is more like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic story than a symbol of grandeur.

There is no light in any of the buildings and most of them lack doors or windows.

An eerie silence lies over the compound, which is strewn with disassembled equipment and construction materials, broken occasionally only by the sound of a tarp flapping lazily about on top of a stack of iron rods.

There are no residents in sight.

“The workers stopped building in 2019,” Ji Zhang, a 61-year-old resident who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera. “They say it was because the developer ran out of money.”

Over a grainy video call, Ji gestures towards one of the unfinished high-rises, where she and her husband purchased a sixth-floor apartment in 2017.

Ji felt like they were buying into a dream when they poured most of their life savings into a 60 percent down payment for the property.

“It was all just an old village back then, but when the sales agents showed us the plans for the area, I saw how it could give my husband and me the retirement we were looking for,” Ji said.

The compound promised a range of modern amenities, proximity to an array of shopping options and access to far better medical facilities than the urban village outside Nanjing where Ji and her husband had been living.

Most importantly, the apartment offered the chance for Ji and her husband to live much closer to their daughter and two grandchildren in Nanjing.

“But we haven’t had a chance to enjoy any of that,” Ji said with tears in her eyes.

But with their apartment still unfinished five years after their purchase, Ji’s retirement dream lies in tatters.

“And this is not just happening to us,” Ji said, wiping away her tears. “It is unfortunately happening all over China.”

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/10/31/crumbling-buildings-and-broken-dreams-chinas-unfinished-homes

A new survey finds the gender gap in 'home cooking' has widened, with women cooking more meals than men in nearly every country worldwide.

Women cooked just under nine meals per week, on average, in 2022. Men cooked about four per week. These are the results of an annual survey by Gallup and Cookpad, which tracks how often people prepare and eat home-cooked meals in countries around the globe.

When the survey began in 2018, traditional gender roles were well established, but during the pandemic years the survey results showed that men were cooking more. This narrowed the gender gap, explains Andrew Dugan, a research director at Gallup, who has worked on the survey since it began. "Every year since the study started, the gap narrowed," he says. Until now.

The latest results, which Duggan says come as a surprise, point to a reversal of this trend. In 2022, women continued to cook at about the same frequency, but men started to cook less. On average, men cooked a little less than one fewer meal per week.

"It's the first year that the gap actually widened," Dugan says, pointing out that the gap has reverted back to its starting point in 2018. "What it might suggest is [that] the traditional gender roles are starting to reassert themselves," Dugan says.

The gender gap varies by country. In the United States, women cook about two more meals per week on average, than men. The survey report graphs the countries with the largest gender gaps, including Ethiopia, Tajikistan, Egypt, Nepal and Yemen, where women are making about eight more meals per week than men.

The countries with the smallest gender differences in cooking are clustered in Europe, including Spain, the UK, Switzerland, France, and Ireland. There's only one country where men actually cook more than women. Wait for it.....

I> taly. "This is a surprise," Dugan says.

It's not clear why the gap flipped, or why Italy bucked the trend, but we'd love your thoughts. Send us an e-mail, to [email protected]

This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh

link: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/10/30/1209473449/worldwide-women-cook-twice-as-much-as-men-one-country-bucks-the-trend