1,153 research outputs found
Speech and crosstalk detection in multichannel audio
The analysis of scenarios in which a number of microphones record the activity of speakers, such as in a round-table meeting, presents a number of computational challenges. For example, if each participant wears a microphone, speech from both the microphone's wearer (local speech) and from other participants (crosstalk) is received. The recorded audio can be broadly classified in four ways: local speech, crosstalk plus local speech, crosstalk alone and silence. We describe two experiments related to the automatic classification of audio into these four classes. The first experiment attempted to optimize a set of acoustic features for use with a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifier. A large set of potential acoustic features were considered, some of which have been employed in previous studies. The best-performing features were found to be kurtosis, "fundamentalness," and cross-correlation metrics. The second experiment used these features to train an ergodic hidden Markov model classifier. Tests performed on a large corpus of recorded meetings show classification accuracies of up to 96%, and automatic speech recognition performance close to that obtained using ground truth segmentation
An analysis of break-even prices and yields between dryland and irrigated cropping in Saskatchewan
Non-Peer Reviewe
Irrigation and farm-level risks: an historical analysis of the South Saskatchewan River Irrigation District
Non-Peer Reviewe
Non-minimal coupling, boundary terms and renormalization of the Einstein-Hilbert action
A consistent variational procedure applied to the gravitational action
requires according to Gibbons and Hawking a certain balance between the volume
and boundary parts of the action. We consider the problem of preserving this
balance in the quantum effective action for the matter non-minimally coupled to
metric. It is shown that one has to add a special boundary term to the matter
action analogous to the Gibbons-Hawking one. This boundary term modifies the
one-loop quantum corrections to give a correct balance for the effective action
as well. This means that the boundary UV divergences do not require independent
renormalization and are automatically renormalized simultaneously with their
volume part. This result is derived for arbitrary non-minimally coupled matter.
The example of 2D Maxwell field is considered in much detail. The relevance of
the results obtained to the problem of the renormalization of the black hole
entropy is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, latex. More discussion added, the case of 2D Maxwell field
considered in more detail
A comparison of Noether charge and Euclidean methods for Computing the Entropy of Stationary Black Holes
The entropy of stationary black holes has recently been calculated by a
number of different approaches. Here we compare the Noether charge approach
(defined for any diffeomorphism invariant Lagrangian theory) with various
Euclidean methods, specifically, (i) the microcanonical ensemble approach of
Brown and York, (ii) the closely related approach of Ba\~nados, Teitelboim, and
Zanelli which ultimately expresses black hole entropy in terms of the Hilbert
action surface term, (iii) another formula of Ba\~nados, Teitelboim and Zanelli
(also used by Susskind and Uglum) which views black hole entropy as conjugate
to a conical deficit angle, and (iv) the pair creation approach of Garfinkle,
Giddings, and Strominger. All of these approaches have a more restrictive
domain of applicability than the Noether charge approach. Specifically,
approaches (i) and (ii) appear to be restricted to a class of theories
satisfying certain properties listed in section 2; approach (iii) appears to
require the Lagrangian density to be linear in the curvature; and approach (iv)
requires the existence of suitable instanton solutions. However, we show that
within their domains of applicability, all of these approaches yield results in
agreement with the Noether charge approach. In the course of our analysis, we
generalize the definition of Brown and York's quasilocal energy to a much more
general class of diffeomorphism invariant, Lagrangian theories of gravity. In
an appendix, we show that in an arbitrary diffeomorphism invariant theory of
gravity, the ``volume term" in the ``off-shell" Hamiltonian associated with a
time evolution vector field always can be expressed as the spatial
integral of , where are the constraints
associated with the diffeomorphism invariance.Comment: 29 pages (double-spaced) late
Cross section of the processes , , , in the energy region 200 MeV 3 GeV
The cross section for different processes induced by annihilation,
in the kinematical limit
, is
calculated taking into account first order corrections to the amplitudes and
the corrections due to soft emitted photons, with energy in the center of mass of the colliding beams. The results
are given separately for charge--odd and charge--even terms in the final
channels and . In case of pions, form
factors are taken into account. The differential cross sections for the
processes: , , have been calculated and the
corresponding formula are given in the ultrarelativistic limit . For a quantitative evaluation of the
contribution of higher order of the perturbation theory, the production of
, including radiative corrections, is calculated in the approach of
the lepton structure functions. This allows to estimate the precision of the
obtained results as better than 0.5% outside the energy region corresponding to
narrow resonances. A method to integrate the cross section, avoiding the
difficulties which arise from singularities is also described.Comment: 25 pages 3 firgur
Inviscid dynamical structures near Couette flow
Consider inviscid fluids in a channel {-1<y<1}. For the Couette flow
v_0=(y,0), the vertical velocity of solutions to the linearized Euler equation
at v_0 decays in time. At the nonlinear level, such inviscid damping has not
been proved. First, we show that in any (vorticity) H^{s}(s<(3/2)) neighborhood
of Couette flow, there exist non-parallel steady flows with arbitrary minimal
horizontal period. This implies that nonlinear inviscid damping is not true in
any (vorticity) H^{s}(s<(3/2)) neighborhood of Couette flow and for any
horizontal period. Indeed, the long time behavior in such neighborhoods are
very rich, including nontrivial steady flows, stable and unstable manifolds of
nearby unstable shears. Second, in the (vorticity) H^{s}(s>(3/2)) neighborhood
of Couette, we show that there exist no non-parallel steadily travelling flows
v(x-ct,y), and no unstable shears. This suggests that the long time dynamics in
H^{s}(s>(3/2)) neighborhoods of Couette might be much simpler. Such contrasting
dynamics in H^{s} spaces with the critical power s=(3/2) is a truly nonlinear
phenomena, since the linear inviscid damping near Couette is true for any
initial vorticity in L^2
Random Convex Hulls and Extreme Value Statistics
In this paper we study the statistical properties of convex hulls of
random points in a plane chosen according to a given distribution. The points
may be chosen independently or they may be correlated. After a non-exhaustive
survey of the somewhat sporadic literature and diverse methods used in the
random convex hull problem, we present a unifying approach, based on the notion
of support function of a closed curve and the associated Cauchy's formulae,
that allows us to compute exactly the mean perimeter and the mean area enclosed
by the convex polygon both in case of independent as well as correlated points.
Our method demonstrates a beautiful link between the random convex hull problem
and the subject of extreme value statistics. As an example of correlated
points, we study here in detail the case when the points represent the vertices
of independent random walks. In the continuum time limit this reduces to
independent planar Brownian trajectories for which we compute exactly, for
all , the mean perimeter and the mean area of their global convex hull. Our
results have relevant applications in ecology in estimating the home range of a
herd of animals. Some of these results were announced recently in a short
communication [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 103}, 140602 (2009)].Comment: 61 pages (pedagogical review); invited contribution to the special
issue of J. Stat. Phys. celebrating the 50 years of Yeshiba/Rutgers meeting
Symmetries at stationary Killing horizons
It has often been suggested (especially by Carlip) that spacetime symmetries
in the neighborhood of a black hole horizon may be relevant to a statistical
understanding of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. A prime candidate for this
type of symmetry is that which is exhibited by the Einstein tensor. More
precisely, it is now known that this tensor takes on a strongly constrained
(block-diagonal) form as it approaches any stationary, non-extremal Killing
horizon. Presently, exploiting the geometrical properties of such horizons, we
provide a particularly elegant argument that substantiates this highly
symmetric form for the Einstein tensor. It is, however, duly noted that, on
account of a "loophole", the argument does fall just short of attaining the
status of a rigorous proof.Comment: 11 pages, Revte
The Hyperfine Spin Splittings In Heavy Quarkonia
The hyperfine spin splittings in heavy quarkonia are studied using the
recently developed renormalization group improved spin-spin potential which is
independent of the scale parameter . The calculated energy difference
between the and the fits the experimental data well, while
the predicted energy difference between the center of the gravity
of states and the state of charmonium has the correct
sign but is somewhat larger than the experimental data. This is not surprising
since there are several other contributions to , which we discuss,
that are of comparable size ( MeV) that should be included, before
precise agreement with the data can be expected. The mass differences of the
, , , and
are also predicted.Comment: 17 page
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