Performance Analysis of Advanced Front Ends on the Aurora Large Vocabulary Evaluation

Over the past few years, speech recognition technology performance on tasks ranging from isolated digit recognition to conversational speech has dramatically improved. Performance on limited recognition tasks in noiseree environments is comparable to that achieved by human transcribers. This advancement in automatic speech recognition technology along with an increase in the compute power of mobile devices, standardization of communication protocols, and the explosion in the popularity of the mobile devices, has created an interest in flexible voice interfaces for mobile devices. However, speech recognition performance degrades dramatically in mobile environments which are inherently noisy. In the recent past, a great amount of effort has been spent on the development of front ends based on advanced noise robust approaches. The primary objective of this thesis was to analyze the performance of two advanced front ends, referred to as the QIO and MFA front ends, on a speech recognition task based on the Wall Street Journal database. Though the advanced front ends are shown to achieve a significant improvement over an industry-standard baseline front end, this improvement is not operationally significant. Further, we show that the results of this evaluation were not significantly impacted by suboptimal recognition system parameter settings. Without any front end-specific tuning, the MFA front end outperforms the QIO front end by 9.6% relative. With tuning, the relative performance gap increases to 15.8%. Finally, we also show that mismatched microphone and additive noise evaluation conditions resulted in a significant degradation in performance for both front ends

The second 'CHiME' Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge: Datasets, tasks and baselines

International audienceDistant-microphone automatic speech recognition (ASR) remains a challenging goal in everyday environments involving multiple background sources and reverberation. This paper is intended to be a reference on the 2nd 'CHiME' Challenge, an initiative designed to analyze and evaluate the performance of ASR systems in a real-world domestic environment. Two separate tracks have been proposed: a small-vocabulary task with small speaker movements and a medium-vocabulary task without speaker movements. We discuss the rationale for the challenge and provide a detailed description of the datasets, tasks and baseline performance results for each track

The third `CHiME' Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge: Dataset, task and baselines

International audienceThe CHiME challenge series aims to advance far field speech recognition technology by promoting research at the interface of signal processing and automatic speech recognition. This paper presents the design and outcomes of the 3rd CHiME Challenge, which targets the performance of automatic speech recognition in a real-world, commercially-motivated scenario: a person talking to a tablet device that has been fitted with a six-channel microphone array. The paper describes the data collection, the task definition and the base-line systems for data simulation, enhancement and recognition. The paper then presents an overview of the 26 systems that were submitted to the challenge focusing on the strategies that proved to be most successful relative to the MVDR array processing and DNN acoustic modeling reference system. Challenge findings related to the role of simulated data in system training and evaluation are discussed

Gold mining in Guatemala: community health and resistance amidst violence

Background: The Canadian mining industry has been linked to reports of environmental degradation, social insecurity and human rights violations. Due to a historical context of colonialism, genocide and state neglect, Indigenous populations may be particularly vulnerable to large-scale mining health threats. Research Purpose: The overarching purpose of this investigation was to understand the influence of mining operations on the wellbeing of a Mam Mayan community in the Western highlands of Guatemala. Specifically, this study examined: (1) the political context in which mining operations are situated; (2) community mental health experiences; and (3) the role of resistance in shaping these political and health contexts. Methodology: Indigenous knowledges and a critical paradigmatic lens informed the research design, an anti-colonial narrative analysis, employing participatory action research (PAR) principles. Data collection was determined in collaboration with participants and included focus group interviews, photo-voice and one-on-one interviews. A total of 54 men and women from 14 villages in the municipality participated in the research. Findings: Macro-level findings revealed that community health challenges were embedded in intersecting, socio-politically complex landscapes. These conditions largely informed how local residents experienced the socio-cultural and economic changes occasioned by local mining operations. At the meso-level, community health experiences were reflected in an overarching narrative of social unraveling, characterized by a climate of fear and discord, and; embodied expressions of distress. In response to these threats, community acts of resistance revealed unique health strengths enacted through: a shared cultural identity; spiritual knowing and being; defending our rights, defending our territory; and speaking truth to power. Discussion and Conclusion: Community health experiences were embedded in systemic and intersecting macro-level forces of oppression and inequity. At the meso-level, an overarching narrative of social unraveling revealed an intricate mesh of interconnected community health threats. Residents attributed increased militarization, conflict and violence to the presence of local mining operations. Embodied expressions of distress were described as complex, severe and debilitating conditions of suffering. These findings suggest important implications for nursing and health policy and scholarship. Keywords: Indigenous health; community health; Guatemala; mining; intersecting; social unraveling; violence; distress; embodied; conflic