Dubbing is a mode of audiovisual translation (AVT) usually performed by experienced dubbing actors for professional purposes. Nowadays, thanks to advances in technology, everybody can create personal dubbed versions of audiovisual content for humorous and parodic as well as therapeutic and pedagogical purposes. The aim of this pilot project was to investigate the potential and applicability of amateur dubbing within the hospital setting, targeting children and adolescents. The project was carried out at Meyer Children's Hospital in Florence (Italy). Like other non-pharmacological activities, amateur dubbing was designed to make hospitalization a less traumatic experience for young patients and promote their general well-being. A research team (including psychologists, dubbing actors and a linguist) developed a theoretically sound and replicable set of procedures that combine new technologies with traditional pain management methods. The amateur dubbing workshops, carried out from January 2017 until the end of December 2019, involved 297 children and adolescents (male=29.8%; female=70.2%), aged 6-17, from different wards (i.e. Oncology, Neuropsychiatry, Pediatric Unit, Diabetology, Neurology, Surgery, etc.). This pilot project has proven to be a positive experience for all the patients and their families, in terms of the children's well-being, quality of life and socialization (i.e. expression of emotions, distraction and reduction of distress). Amateur dubbing as a healthcare activity has resulted in interesting recreational and psychological implications and benefits. Clearly, its implementation as a type of non-pharmacological technique needs to be further refined.
Given a piece of text, a video clip, and reference audio, the movie dubbing (also known as Visual Voice Cloning, V2C) task aims to generate speeches that clone reference voice and align well with the video in both emotion and lip movement, which is more challenging than conventional text-to-speech synthesis tasks. To align the generated speech with the inherent lip motion of the given silent video, most existing works utilize each video frame to query textual phonemes. However, such an attention operation usually leads to mumble speech because different phonemes are fused for video frames corresponding to one phoneme (video frames are finer-grained than phonemes). To address this issue, we propose a diffusion-based movie dubbing architecture, which improves pronunciation by Hierarchical Phoneme Modeling (HPM) and generates better mel-spectrogram through Acoustic Diffusion Denoising (ADD). We term our model as HD-Dubber. Specifically, our HPM bridges the visual information and corresponding speech prosody from three aspects: (1) aligning lip movement with the speech duration based on each phoneme unit by contrastive learning; (2) conveying facial expression to phoneme-level energy and pitch; and (3) injecting global emotions captured from video scenes into prosody. On the other hand, ADD exploits a denoising diffusion framework to transform the noise signal into a mel-spectrogram via a parameterized Markov chain conditioned on textual phonemes and reference audio. ADD has two novel denoisers, the Style-adaptive Residual Denoiser (SRD) and the Phoneme-enhanced U-net Denoiser (PUD), to enhance speaker similarity and improve pronunciation quality. Extensive experimental results on the three benchmark datasets demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance of the proposed method. The source code and trained models will be made available to the public.
Helping people recover from aphasia is among the top 10 research priorities relating to life after stroke. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility of dubbing techniques (using newly developed software) for post-stroke aphasia therapy and explore its potential efficacy. Randomised, crossover, interventional, feasibility trial that included patients with chronic post-stroke non-fluent aphasia. The intervention consisted of an individualised programme (16 sessions; 8 weeks) based on dubbing words and sentences progressively adapted to the severity of the aphasia. Patients were allocated to groups that underwent therapy within the first 3 months, or between 3 and 6 months from inclusion, each group serving as the control during the non-therapy periods. Outcomes were the pre-post differences in the Communicative Activity Log, the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, the General Health Questionnaire-12, the Stroke Aphasia Quality of Life Scale, and the Western Aphasia Battery Revised, administered by psychologists blinded to the patients' allocation. Recruitment was limited due to COVID-19 and prematurely stopped because of funding coming to an end. A total of 23 patients were randomised, 20 of whom completed the study (1 withdrew consent, and 2 dropped out). The adherence rate to the allocated group was 95.3%. No statistically significant differences were found in any of the outcomes; however, 17 (85%) patients reported subjective improvements in communication skills. This trial shows the feasibility of dubbing therapy (using dedicated software) for patients with post-stroke non-fluent aphasia. Although it lacks statistical power, certain effects on language and communication cannot be ignored.
Three studies were conducted with birds dubbed at hatch vs. dubbed and dewattled at 118 days or 255 to 260 days of age or with normal hens. In the first, involving 5928 pullets of four strains housed 1 per cage, dubbing and dewattling at 255 to 260 days caused small adverse effects on egg numbers as compared with nondubbed controls. Body size was reduced, and both egg weight (EW) and shell strength were increased slightly. In the second study, involving 8180 pullets of nine strains housed 1 per cage, dubbing and dewattling at 118 days slightly increased survivor egg production (SEP) and laying house mortality, and reduced age at first egg, 240-day EW, and 450-day Haugh units (HU), as compared with dubbing only at hatch. There were significant strain by dubbing treatment interactions for hen-day rate of lay (HDR) and SEP. In the third study, involving 1824 pullets of three strain crosses housed 2 and 3 birds per cage (three different cage sizes), there were no significant differences between birds dubbed at hatch and those not dubbed. Variation in age at 50% production, SEP, and HDR was reduced for the dubbed groups. These studies show that the older the birds are when dubbed, the greater the negative effects of dubbing. Hens dubbed at hatch exhibit no effects with the early dubbing or adverse effects in the laying house.
Cancer cells revamp the regulatory processes that control translation to induce tumor-specific translational programs that can adapt to a hostile microenvironment as well as withstand anticancer therapeutics. Translational initiation has been established as a common downstream effector of numerous deregulated signaling pathways that together culminate in prooncogenic expression. Other mechanisms, including ribosomal stalling and stress granule assembly, also appear to be rewired in the malignant phenotype. Therefore, better understanding of the underlying perturbations driving oncogenic translation in the transformed state will provide innovative therapeutic opportunities. This review highlights deubiquitinating enzymes that are activated/dysregulated in hematologic malignancies, thereby altering the translational output and contributing to tumorigenesis.
Controlling cell proliferation is one of the hallmarks of cancer. A number of critical checkpoints ascertain progression through the different stages of the cell cycle, which can be aborted when perturbed, for instance by errors in DNA replication and repair. These molecular checkpoints are regulated by a number of proteins that need to be present at the right time and quantity. The ubiquitin system has emerged as a central player controlling the fate and function of such molecules such as cyclins, oncogenes and components of the DNA repair machinery. In particular, proteases that cleave ubiquitin chains, referred to as deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs), have attracted recent attention due to their accessibility to modulation by small molecules. In this review, we describe recent evidence of the critical role of DUBs in aspects of cell cycle checkpoint control, associated DNA repair mechanisms and regulation of transcription, representing pathways altered in cancer. Therefore, DUBs involved in these processes emerge as potentially critical targets for the treatment of not only hematological, but potentially also solid tumors.
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Ferroptosis, a form of iron-dependent, nonapoptotic cell death that is induced by excessive lipid peroxidation, has been recently identified as a new tumor suppression mechanism. In this issue of Cancer Research, Liu and colleagues demonstrate that the deubiquitinase (DUB) OTUB1 is frequently overexpressed in human cancers, and functions to "dub" (trim) the ferroptosis process in cancer cells and promotes tumor development by stabilizing the cystine transporter, SLC7A11. This study not only reveals a hitherto unappreciated regulatory mechanism of ferroptosis but also identifies potential therapeutic targets for cancer treatment.See related article by Liu et al., p. 1913.
In a recent issue of Molecular Cell, two independent studies (Zhang et al., 2008; Zhao et al., 2008) provide compelling evidence that targeted deubiquitylation of histones is intimately linked to transcription activation, epigenetic regulation, and cancer progression.
Posttranslational modifications of histone H2A through the attachment of ubiquitin or poly-ubiquitin conjugates are common in mammalian genomes and play an important role in the regulation of chromatin structure, gene expression, and DNA repair. Histone H2A deubiquitinases (H2A-DUBs) are a group of structurally diverse enzymes that catalyze the removal ubiquitin from histone H2A. In this review we provide a concise summary of the mechanisms that mediate histone H2A ubiquitination in mammalian cells, and review our current knowledge of mammalian H2A-DUBs, their biochemical activities, and recent developments in our understanding of their functions in mammalian physiology.
China seems to have entered into a new global leadership phase of economic diplomacy where its actors increasingly resort to new resources, tools and strategies serving well-defined national interests, such as the Made in China 2025 initiative, the Dual Circulation Strategy (DCS) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This has intensified the interrelated challenges to the EU's economic security, industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy, contributing to increasing supply chain vulnerabilities and dependencies. This increased economic challenge resulted in more assertive multi-layered EU-level policy approach, characterized by the de-risking strategy with four complementary policy goals. We used deductive coding of meticulously selected leadership speeches by Chinese top policymakers between 2013 and 2022 to assess whether this shift in EU-China economic diplomacy relations had an impact on the key narratives within the official Chinese high-level policy statements. The coding focuses on the significant and meaningful representation of the EU by China and vice versa, and on particular positive or negative descriptions of the EU by China and vice versa. Our main findings entail that, despite the more grounded EU approach towards China, no significant alterations are apparent in Chinese leadership discourse which remains at a pragmatic level focused on mutual benefits as long as economic engagement affairs are not interlinked with Chinese governance or territorial issues. These findings suggest that China needs the EU as a reliable economic partner amid the growing geostrategic tensions towards the US or Japan, which provides the EU with a strategic room for manoeuvre towards open strategic autonomy. Such autonomy could be strengthened by re-negotiating core aspects of economic links with China, such as the relocation of more productive facilities of Chinese green technologies to Europe or pushing for a more open attitude from China towards European investments in critical economic sectors. This article looks at how China’s approach to economic diplomacy has changed in recent decades, especially towards Europe. We see that China now relies more on big national strategies like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or Made in China 2025 initiative. The main aim of these strategies is to make China’s economy stronger and more independent, therefore they create political and economic problems for the EU, such as greater dependence on Chinese supply chains and risks to Europe’s economic security and industrial strength. In response, the EU has also changed its official policy, dubbing China a “systemic rival” and adopting a strategy to reduce risks. This includes strengthening EU industries, using trade protection tools, protecting critical sectors and working more closely with like-minded partners. In spite of the changed European rhetoric, China’s official language has not changed much and still stresses cooperation and mutual benefits. This is true until the EU does not delve into issues perceived sensitive by China, such as governance or territorial questions. Overall, the article argues that the EU is still not powerless and has room to rethink and reshape its economic relationship with China.
In recent years, the unique circular structure of circular RNAs (circRNAs) has been the focus of much attention and research. RNA molecules without coding function weave a complex regulatory network in mammals, affecting the progress of many biological processes. This discovery opens up a new perspective on the function of the genome. However, the powerful regulatory functions of circular RNAs in fish are still unclear. We identified a novel circular RNA, dubbing it circeIF4G3. Through qPCR and dual luciferase assays, we found that circeIF4G3 reduces the production of antiviral genes and inflammatory factors. We discovered that circeIF4G3 both hindered cell proliferation and diminished cell viability concurrently. These results suggest that circeIF4G3 is not only involved in the innate immunity of miiuy croaker, but also plays an inhibitory role in it. This discovery provides a new research approach for a deeper understanding of the immune regulatory mechanism of miiuy croaker. This study enriches the non-coding RNAs regulatory network in innate immunity in teleost fish, and establishes a foundation for investigating the role of circular RNAs in teleost fish's innate immunity.
Talking Head Generation (THG) is a rapidly advancing field at the intersection of computer vision, deep learning, and speech synthesis, enabling the creation of animated human-like heads that can produce speech and express emotions with high visual realism. The core objective of THG systems is to synthesize coherent and natural audio-visual outputs by modeling the intricate relationship between speech signals, facial dynamics, and emotional cues. These systems find widespread applications in virtual assistants, interactive avatars, video dubbing for multilingual content, educational technologies, and immersive virtual and augmented reality environments. Moreover, the development of THG has significant implications for accessibility technologies, cultural preservation, and remote healthcare interfaces. This survey paper presents a comprehensive and systematic overview of the technological landscape of Talking Head Generation. We begin by outlining the foundational methodologies that underpin the synthesis process, including generative adversarial networks (GANs), motion-aware recurrent architectures, and attention-based models. A taxonomy is introduced to organize the diverse approaches based on the nature of input modalities and generation goals. We further examine the contributions of various domains such as computer vision, speech processing, and human-robot interaction, each of which plays a critical role in advancing the capabilities of THG systems. The paper also provides a detailed review of datasets used for training and evaluating THG models, highlighting their coverage, structure, and relevance. In parallel, we analyze widely adopted evaluation metrics, categorized by their focus on image quality, motion accuracy, synchronization, and semantic fidelity. Operating parameters such as latency, frame rate, resolution, and real-time capability are also discussed to assess deployment feasibility. Special emphasis is placed on the integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which has significantly enhanced the adaptability and realism of talking head systems through more powerful and generalizable learning frameworks.
Social media has become a prominent source of health educational short videos (HESVs), yet their quality varies significantly, with many being inaccurate, incomplete, or poorly presented. Both healthcare professionals and the public lack clear criteria to evaluate HESVs quality when seeking health information on social media. This study aims to evaluate the quality of HESVs on YouTube and Douyin based on Lasswell's 5 W communication model, and analyze the key factors for selecting high-quality HESVs. 200 videos were selected from YouTube and Douyin, respectively, between October 1 and November 30, 2024. Four independent reviewers analyzed the quality of HESVs using the Lasswell's Video Quality scale (LassVQ), modified DISCERN (M-DISCERN), and Global Quality Score (GQS). Comparative analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression were conducted by R 4.3.2 software. The median video length was 189 s on YouTube and 88 s on Douyin. Douyin videos received significantly more likes (152190 vs. 116354, P < 0.001) and comments (10496 vs. 2726, P < 0.001) than YouTube videos. The median quality scores on YouTube and Douyin were: LassVQ (3.77 vs. 3.66, P = 0.0254), M-DISCERN (3.12 vs. 2.41, P < 0.001), and GQS (4 vs. 4, P = 0.906). Except for like volume on Douyin (r = 0.25-0.4, P < 0.001), no significant correlation between engagement metrics and the quality of HESVs. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that key factors for high-quality video selection included visible reference information (YouTube: P = 0.002, Douyin: P = 0.014), necessary relevant information (Douyin: P < 0.001), clear dubbing, louder than background music (YouTube: P = 0.005, Douyin: P = 0.021), perception of knowledge acquisition (Douyin: P = 0.021), perception of action necessity (Douyin: P = 0.031), motivation to share (YouTube: P < 0.001), recommended as a trending video (Douyin: P = 0.033). The quality of HESVs on YouTube and Douyin is inadequate. Users should prioritize trending HESVs produced by experts, with clear dubbing, visible references, essential content, and a clear sense of knowledge acquisition, action necessity, and sharing motivation.
The aim to provide a causal theory of spacetime is not new. The overall program, however, was largely deemed unsuccessful, chiefly due to criticism voiced by Smart (Monist 53:385-395, 1969), Nerlich (Br J Philos Sci 33(4):361-388, 1982) and Earman (Synthese 24:74-86, 1972). Recently, Baron and Le Bihan (Noûs 58:202-224, 2023) have argued that developments in contemporary physics should make us reconsider this verdict. More precisely, they argue the emergence of spacetime from causal set theory (CST), where "the metric structure of spacetime can be recovered from its causal structure" (Baron and Le Bihan 2023, 2), "suggests a very natural way to reformulate the causal theory of spacetime" (ibid., 9)-an account which they end up dubbing the non-identity causal theory. This paper questions the success of Baron and Le Bihan's non-identity theory. It is shown that (1) the specific grounding Baron and Le Bihan propose for timelike and spacelike relations is not plausible even when charitably reconstructed; and (2) that a causal theory of spacetime based on general relativity is just as successful for establishing a non-identity theory as a theory based on CST. In short then, we argue that the causal theory of spacetime proposed by Baron and Le Bihan is supported just as well (or badly) by the physics that already took centre stage in the original discussions of the causal theory of spacetime.
Background/Objectives: The present pilot study tested and reports the Italian adaptation of the Reading the Mind in Film test (RMF), an ecological test for assessing, in Italian adults with and without Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC), complex emotion and mental state recognition in natural settings and everyday situations. Method: A sample of young adults with Autism Spectrum Condition (with ASC; n = 22), attending a filmmaking course at a post-diploma school (Scuola Futuro Lavoro) took part in the study and was compared with a control group of neurotypical university students (without ASC; n = 22). All participants underwent individual testing and completed the Italian version of the Autism Questionnaire before performing the Italian version of both the RMF task and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). The latter, widely used to evaluate the ability to detect what someone else is thinking or feeling from the eye region. Results: The findings of the control group were in line with the original study, demonstrating the validity and reliability of the translation and the dubbing procedure of the RMF test. However, no main significant differences in performance were found between the two groups. Conclusions: Such results suggest that taking a course in film and video making may have helped the autistic students learn how to recognize mental states.
Lipreading, which plays a major role in the communication of the hearing impaired, lacked a French standardised tool. Our aim was to create and validate an audio-visual (AV) version of the French Matrix Sentence Test (FrMST). Video recordings were created by dubbing the existing audio files. Thirty-five young, normal-hearing participants were tested in auditory and visual modalities alone (Ao, Vo) and in AV conditions, in quiet, noise, and open and closed-set response formats. Lipreading ability (Vo) ranged from 1 % to 77%-word comprehension. The absolute AV benefit was 9.25 dB SPL in quiet and 4.6 dB SNR in noise. The response format did not influence the results in the AV noise condition, except during the training phase. Lipreading ability and AV benefit were significantly correlated. The French video material achieved similar AV benefits as those described in the literature for AV MST in other languages. For clinical purposes, we suggest targeting SRT80 to avoid ceiling effects, and performing two training lists in the AV condition in noise, followed by one AV list in noise, one Ao list in noise and one Vo list, in a randomised order, in open or close set-format.