Improving parsing by incorporating "prosodic clause boundaries" into a grammar

In written language, punctuation is used to separate main and subordinate clause. In spoken language, ambiguities arise due to missing punctuation, but clause boundaries are often marked prosodically and can be used instead. We detect PCBs (Prosodically markedClauseBoundaries) by using prosodic features (duration, intonation, energy, and pause information) with a neural network, achieving a recognition rate of 82%. PCBs are integrated into our grammar using a special syntactic category "break" that can be used in the phrase-structure rules of the grammar in a similar way as punctuation is used in grammars for written language. Whereas punctuation in most cases is obligatory, PCBs are sometimes optional. Moreover, they can in principle occur everywhere in the sentence due e.g. to hesitations or misrecognition. To cope with these problems we tested two different approaches: A slightly modified parser for word chains containing PCBs and a word graph parser that takes the probabilities of PCBs into account. Tests were conducted on a subset of infinitive subordinate clauses from a large speech database containing sentences from the domain of train table inquiries. The average number of syntactic derivations could be reduced by about 70 % even when working on recognized word graphs

Improving parsing of spontaneous speech with the help of prosodic boundaries

Parsing can be improved in automatic speech understanding if prosodic boundary marking is taken into account, because syntactic boundaries are often marked by prosodic means. Because large databases are needed for the training of statistical models for prosodic boundaries, we developed a labeling scheme for syntactic-prosodic boundaries within the German VERBMOBIL project (automatic speech-to-speech translation). We compare the results of classifiers (multi-layer perceptrons and language models) trained on these syntactic-prosodic boundary labels with classifiers trained on perceptual-prosodic and purely syntactic labels. Recognition rates of up to 96% were achieved. The turns that we need to parse consist of 20 words on the average and frequently contain sequences of partial sentence equivalents due to restarts, ellipsis, etc. For this material, the boundary scores computed by our classifiers can successfully be integrated into the syntactic parsing of word graphs; currently, they improve the parse time by 92% and reduce the number of parse trees by 96%. This is achieved by introducing a special Prosodic Syntactic Clause Boundary symbol (PSCB) into our grammar and guiding the search for the best word chain with the prosodic boundary scores

Three-dimensional topological field theory and symplectic algebraic geometry I

We study boundary conditions and defects in a three-dimensional topological sigma-model with a complex symplectic target space X (the Rozansky-Witten model). We show that boundary conditions correspond to complex Lagrangian submanifolds in X equipped with complex fibrations. The set of boundary conditions has the structure of a 2-category; morphisms in this 2-category are interpreted physically as one-dimensional defect lines separating parts of the boundary with different boundary conditions. This 2-category is a categorification of the Z/2-graded derived category of X; it is also related to categories of matrix factorizations and a categorification of deformation quantization (quantization of symmetric monoidal categories). In the appendix we describe a deformation of the B-model and the associated category of branes by forms of arbitrary even degree.Comment: 76 pages, AMS-latex. v2: references, acknowledgments, and a discussion of grading ambiguities have been adde

TRIGA-SPEC: A setup for mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy at the research reactor TRIGA Mainz

The research reactor TRIGA Mainz is an ideal facility to provide neutron-rich nuclides with production rates sufficiently large for mass spectrometric and laser spectroscopic studies. Within the TRIGA-SPEC project, a Penning trap as well as a beam line for collinear laser spectroscopy are being installed. Several new developments will ensure high sensitivity of the trap setup enabling mass measurements even on a single ion. Besides neutron-rich fission products produced in the reactor, also heavy nuclides such as 235-U or 252-Cf can be investigated for the first time with an off-line ion source. The data provided by the mass measurements will be of interest for astrophysical calculations on the rapid neutron-capture process as well as for tests of mass models in the heavy-mass region. The laser spectroscopic measurements will yield model-independent information on nuclear ground-state properties such as nuclear moments and charge radii of neutron-rich nuclei of refractory elements far from stability. This publication describes the experimental setup as well as its present status.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figure

Data-driven classification of individual cells by their non-Markovian motion

We present a method to differentiate organisms solely by their motion based on the generalized Langevin equation (GLE) and use it to distinguish two different swimming modes of strongly confined unicellular microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The GLE is a general model for active or passive motion of organisms and particles that can be derived from a time-dependent general many-body Hamiltonian and in particular includes non-Markovian effects (i.e., the trajectory memory of its past). We extract all GLE parameters from individual cell trajectories and perform an unbiased cluster analysis to group them into different classes. For the specific cell population employed in the experiments, the GLE-based assignment into the two different swimming modes works perfectly, as checked by control experiments. The classification and sorting of single cells and organisms is important in different areas; our method, which is based on motion trajectories, offers wide-ranging applications in biology and medicine

Data-driven classification of individual cells by their non-Markovian motion

We present a method to differentiate organisms solely by their motion based on the generalized Langevin equation (GLE) and use it to distinguish two different swimming modes of strongly confined unicellular microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (CR). The GLE is the most general model for active or passive motion of organisms and particles and in particular includes non-Markovian effects, i.e., the trajectory memory of its past. We extract all GLE parameters from individual cell trajectories and perform an unbiased cluster analysis to group them into different classes. For the specific cell population employed in the experiments, the GLE-based assignment into the two different swimming modes works perfectly, as checked by control experiments. The classification and sorting of single cells and organisms is important in different areas, our method that is based on motion trajectories offers wide-ranging applications in biology and medicine.Comment: 15 Pages main text including 5 figures, then 22 Pages Supplementary Information (SI) including 8 figures and 2 video file

THE CASE FOR THE STATELESS SOCIETY: LAW

Koji su argumenti koji govore protiv vlade? Ima ih nekoliko. Prvo, u slučaju neuspjeha, postoji automatski izlaz: tvrtke koje ne ostvare dobit, objavit će bankrot, a njihovi resursi imaju tendenciju otići drugim, učinkovitijim upraviteljima. Drugo, poduzetnici upravljaju svojim vlastitim financijskim sredstvima ili sredstvima koja im je netko dobrovoljno povjerio. Međutim, to ne vrijedi za birokrate i političare. I što je najvažnije, prilikom svake komercijalne interakcije na tržištu, bilo da se radi o prodaji, kupovini, iznajmljivanju, davanju ili uzimanju zajma, prisutna je uzajamna dobit, barem u ex ante smislu predviđanja te također i ex post, po završetku obavljene trgovine. To se rijetko događa u etatizmu, svakako ne kad su u pitanju izvori financiranja i oporezivanja, budući da oni nisu dobrovoljni. Iznimka su relativno nevažni slučajevi kada kupac kupi nešto od vlade, poput recimo karte za prelazak mosta ili proizvođač proda nešto toj organizacijia (vladi), poput zrakoplova. Članak koji je pred vama je pokušaj elaboriranja ovih razmišljanja.What is the argument against the government? There are several. For one thing, there is an automatic exit for failure: businesses that do not earn a profit go bankrupt, and their resources tend to migrate to other, more effective, managers. For another, entrepreneurs operate with their own funds, or those voluntarily entrusted to them. This does not apply to bureaucrats and politicians, in sharp contrast. Perhaps most important, in the case of each and every commercial interaction in the market, buying, selling, renting, lending, borrowing, there is a mutual gain at least in the ex-ante sense of anticipations, and usually ex-post, after the trade, as well. This rarely occurs under statism, at least not with regard to its source of funds, taxation, since it is not voluntary. An exception would be the relatively unimportant cases in which a consumer purchases something from the government, such as a ticket to cross a bridge, or a producer sells something to this organization, such as an airplane. The present paper is an attempt to elaborate upon this considerations

Health and Pleasure in Consumers' Dietary Food Choices: Individual Differences in the Brain's Value System

Taking into account how people value the healthiness and tastiness of food at both the behavioral and brain levels may help to better understand and address overweight and obesity-related issues. Here, we investigate whether brain activity in those areas involved in self-control may increase significantly when individuals with a high body-mass index (BMI) focus their attention on the taste rather than on the health benefits related to healthy food choices. Under such conditions, BMI is positively correlated with both the neural responses to healthy food choices in those brain areas associated with gustation (insula), reward value (orbitofrontal cortex), and self-control (inferior frontal gyrus), and with the percent of healthy food choices. By contrast, when attention is directed towards health benefits, BMI is negatively correlated with neural activity in gustatory and reward-related brain areas (insula, inferior frontal operculum). Taken together, these findings suggest that those individuals with a high BMI do not necessarily have reduced capacities for self-control but that they may be facilitated by external cues that direct their attention toward the tastiness of healthy food. Thus, promoting the taste of healthy food in communication campaigns and/or food packaging may lead to more successful self-control and healthy food behaviors for consumers with a higher BMI, an issue which needs to be further researched

Guidelines for pre-operative cardiac risk assessment and perioperative cardiac management in non-cardiac surgery : the Task Force for Preoperative Cardiac Risk Assessment and Perioperative Cardiac Management in Non-cardiac Surgery of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and endorsed by the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA)

Non-cardiac surgery; Pre-operative cardiac risk assessment; Pre-operative cardiac testing; Pre-operative coronary artery revascularization; Perioperative cardiac management; Renal disease; Pulmonary disease; Neurological disease; Anaesthesiology; Post-operative cardiac surveillanc

Intrinsic Cell-to-Cell Variance from Experimental Single-Cell Motility Data

When analyzing the individual positional dynamics of an ensemble of moving objects, the extracted parameters that characterize the motion of individual objects, such as the mean-squared instantaneous velocity or the diffusivity, exhibit a spread that is due to the convolution of three different effects: (i) Motion stochasticity, caused by the fluctuating environment and enhanced by limited observation time, (ii) measurement errors that depend on details of the detection technique, and (iii) the intrinsic parameter variance that characterizes actual differences between individual objects, which is the quantity of ultimate interest. We develop the theoretical framework to separate these three effects based on the generalized Langevin equation, which constitutes the most general description of active and passive dynamics, as it derives from the underlying general many-body Hamiltonian for the studied system without approximations. We apply our methodology to determine intrinsic cell-to-cell differences of living and actively moving human breast-cancer cells, algae cells, and, as a benchmark, size differences of passively moving polystyrene beads in water. We find algae and human breast-cancer cells to exhibit significant individual differences, reflected by the spread of the intrinsic mean squared instantaneous velocity over two orders of magnitude, which is remarkable in light of the genetic homogeneity of the investigated breast-cancer cells and highlights their phenotypical diversity. Quantification of the intrinsic variance of single-cell properties is relevant for infection biology, ecology, and medicine, and it opens up new possibilities to estimate population heterogeneity on the single-organism level in a nondestructive manner. Our framework is not limited to motility properties but can be readily applied to other experimental time-series data