Voice input/output capabilities at Perception Technology Corporation

Condensed resumes of key company personnel at the Perception Technology Corporation are presented. The staff possesses recognition, speech synthesis, speaker authentication, and language identification. Hardware and software engineers' capabilities are included

Sex hormonal modulation of hemispheric asymmetry and interhemispheric crosstalk

Fluctuating levels of sex hormones (estrogen, E and progesterone, P) during the menstrual cycle have been shown to affect fundamental principles of brain organization, that is functional cerebral asymmetries (FCAs). Regarding a possible underlying mechanism, it seems likely that dynamics in FCAs are driven by hormonal modulations of interhemispheric crosstalk (i.e., interhemispheric inhibition). Whether other aspects of interhemispheric interaction, such as interhemispheric integration (IHI), are also susceptible to menstrual cycle-related hormonal changes has not yet been examined. Moreover, most of the findings come from studies investigating younger women during hormonal distinct cycle phases. This approach, however, does not allow conclusions about causal relationships between hormonal changes and functional brain organization. It seems, thus, necessary to directly manipulate the hormonal status of participants via exogenous hormone therapy (HT).The present thesis focused on sex hormonal changes in IHI and FCAs in normally cycling women and postmenopausal women with and without HT. Younger women were tested twice, once during the low-hormone menstrual phase and once during the high-P luteal phase. Postmenopausal women were tested in a between-participants design differentiating between postmenopausal women using E therapy (ET), those using E plus synthetic progestins, and postmenopausal controls without HT. The results show that IHI in normally cycling women fluctuates across the menstrual cycle with an enhanced interhemispheric processing during the luteal phase. Thus, it seems that aspects of interhemispheric interaction (i.e., IHI) other than those involved in FCAs are also affected by the menstrual cycle and cycle-related hormonal changes. In contrast, HT, and ET in particular, after the menopause seems to affect intrahemispheric processing whereas intrahemispheric was essentially unaffected by HT. A modulation of intrahemispheric functioning (i.e. right hemisphere functioning) which was related to estradiol-levels also became evident when postmenopausal women were tested on a right hemisphere dominated asymmetry task. The findings can be explained by a faster and more pronounced age-related decline in interhemispheric relative to intrahemispheric processing which seems to be accompanied by a higher sensitivity to HT. Aging processes together with differences in the hormonal status (exogenous changes as a result of HT vs. endogenous changes during the menstrual cycle) may also explain divergent behavioural outcomes in postmenopausal women and younger women. Taken together, the findings show that the female brain retains its plasticity even after reproductive ages and remains susceptible to the effects of sex hormones throughout lifetime

Determination and evaluation of clinically efficient stopping criteria for the multiple auditory steady-state response technique

Background: Although the auditory steady-state response (ASSR) technique utilizes objective statistical detection algorithms to estimate behavioural hearing thresholds, the audiologist still has to decide when to terminate ASSR recordings introducing once more a certain degree of subjectivity. Aims: The present study aimed at establishing clinically efficient stopping criteria for a multiple 80-Hz ASSR system. Methods: In Experiment 1, data of 31 normal hearing subjects were analyzed off-line to propose stopping rules. Consequently, ASSR recordings will be stopped when (1) all 8 responses reach significance and significance can be maintained for 8 consecutive sweeps; (2) the mean noise levels were ≤ 4 nV (if at this “≤ 4-nV” criterion, p-values were between 0.05 and 0.1, measurements were extended only once by 8 sweeps); and (3) a maximum amount of 48 sweeps was attained. In Experiment 2, these stopping criteria were applied on 10 normal hearing and 10 hearing-impaired adults to asses the efficiency. Results: The application of these stopping rules resulted in ASSR threshold values that were comparable to other multiple-ASSR research with normal hearing and hearing-impaired adults. Furthermore, in 80% of the cases, ASSR thresholds could be obtained within a time-frame of 1 hour. Investigating the significant response-amplitudes of the hearing-impaired adults through cumulative curves indicated that probably a higher noise-stop criterion than “≤ 4 nV” can be used. Conclusions: The proposed stopping rules can be used in adults to determine accurate ASSR thresholds within an acceptable time-frame of about 1 hour. However, additional research with infants and adults with varying degrees and configurations of hearing loss is needed to optimize these criteria

A study of word association aids in information retrieval

Issued as Final project reports [nos. 1-2], Project no. G-36-65

Automatic speaker recognition

06.03.2018 tarihli ve 30352 sayılı Resmi Gazetede yayımlanan “Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanun Ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması Hakkında Kanun” ile 18.06.2018 tarihli “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” gereğince tam metin erişime açılmıştır

The Economic Effects Of The AFL-CIO Merger

To the student of economics, the aspects of labor should be very important. Labor plays a very important role in our economy and should be studied with great care and in detail. In studying labor we will encounter the labor problem which is so prevalent in our present day. You can hardly pick up the newspaper or read magazines without encountering some aspects of the labor problem. If one continues to follow the labor news he will discover not one, but many labor problems. A bus union may strike, tying up transportation to a major degree; unemployment may plague one city while another suffers from a labor shortage; an employee may believe that profit sharing may solve the labor problem; an explosion traps 10 coal miners; a statistician reports that wages are rising, and all of these could be extended before they would cover all the types of labor problems. In common with other areas of the social sciences, labor problems face the difficulty that they cannot be analyzed under laboratory conditions. In consequence, it is difficult to trace or prove cause-and-effect relationships and most generalizations within the field reflect the opinions of careful observers rather than scientific laws. This does not mean that inductive studies are lacking. Many excellent ones have been made that utilize controlled sampling and statistical techniques of evaluation, but they deal largely with the details upon which informed opinions must be based, rather than with broad conclusions of general interest. At this point, the writer wishes to say that in pursuing his problem he will use informed opinions rather than broad conclusions of the general interest. These opinions will be the opinions of the experts. Statement Of The Problem The problem of this paper lies within the effects of large controlled, coordinated, and influential labor groups upon our economy. These large labor groups referred to may be called unions . This paper is restricted to one large labor group which is said to be one of the largest in the world. The labor group referred to is the AFL-CIO. The AFL and the CIO merged in 1955 and have caused much controversy as to what effects will result. The problem of this paper is to determine what are the actual economic effects of the AFL-CIO merger. An attempt will be made to list various predicted effects of the merger and analyze each to determine its actual validity. These will be compared to the actual effects of the merger up to the present, and a brief look into the future will be discussed

Silent Speech Interfaces for Speech Restoration: A Review

This work was supported in part by the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) under Grant PID2019-108040RB-C22/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. The work of Jose A. Gonzalez-Lopez was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under Juan de la Cierva-Incorporation Fellowship (IJCI-2017-32926).This review summarises the status of silent speech interface (SSI) research. SSIs rely on non-acoustic biosignals generated by the human body during speech production to enable communication whenever normal verbal communication is not possible or not desirable. In this review, we focus on the first case and present latest SSI research aimed at providing new alternative and augmentative communication methods for persons with severe speech disorders. SSIs can employ a variety of biosignals to enable silent communication, such as electrophysiological recordings of neural activity, electromyographic (EMG) recordings of vocal tract movements or the direct tracking of articulator movements using imaging techniques. Depending on the disorder, some sensing techniques may be better suited than others to capture speech-related information. For instance, EMG and imaging techniques are well suited for laryngectomised patients, whose vocal tract remains almost intact but are unable to speak after the removal of the vocal folds, but fail for severely paralysed individuals. From the biosignals, SSIs decode the intended message, using automatic speech recognition or speech synthesis algorithms. Despite considerable advances in recent years, most present-day SSIs have only been validated in laboratory settings for healthy users. Thus, as discussed in this paper, a number of challenges remain to be addressed in future research before SSIs can be promoted to real-world applications. If these issues can be addressed successfully, future SSIs will improve the lives of persons with severe speech impairments by restoring their communication capabilities.Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI) PID2019-108040RB-C22/AEI/10.13039/501100011033Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under Juan de la Cierva-Incorporation Fellowship IJCI-2017-3292