Performance Disparities Between Accents in Automatic Speech Recognition

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) services are ubiquitous, transforming speech into text for systems like Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant, and Microsoft's Cortana. However, researchers have identified biases in ASR performance between particular English language accents by racial group and by nationality. In this paper, we expand this discussion both qualitatively by relating it to historical precedent and quantitatively through a large-scale audit. Standardization of language and the use of language to maintain global and political power have played an important role in history, which we explain to show the parallels in the ways in which ASR services act on English language speakers today. Then, using a large and global data set of speech from The Speech Accent Archive which includes over 2,700 speakers of English born in 171 different countries, we perform an international audit of some of the most popular English ASR services. We show that performance disparities exist as a function of whether or not a speaker's first language is English and, even when controlling for multiple linguistic covariates, that these disparities have a statistically significant relationship to the political alignment of the speaker's birth country with respect to the United States' geopolitical power

A STUDY OF RECOVERY FROM GENERAL ANAESTHESIA AFTER PREOPERATIVE ADMINISTRATION OF ANTIMICROBIAL

ABSTRACT Antimicrobials are used prophylactily in any major surgery to cover perioperative wound infection and other infectious complication ,that may have interaction with muscle relaxant used for general anesthesia and the aim of our study is drug interaction and behavioural response of newly introduced antibiotics used with rocuronium. Gentamicin shortened onset and duration of block after intubating dose of rocuronium and also prolonged duration of extubation after last dose of rocuronium where as meropenem and ceftriaxone did not alter onset, duration and recovery characterstics of rocuronium. . From our study we can conclude that meropenem and ceftriaxone but not gentamicin, can be used safely during general anesthesia. The near ideal muscle relaxant must span the range of short, intermediate and long acting duration (as required by surgical procedure),have rapid onset, be highly metabolized, have no cumulative or cardiovascular effect, to be independent of kidney for elimination, and be easily antagonized. The most commonly used clinical agentsatracurium, doxacurium, vecuronium, pancuronium and pipecuronium-demonstrate some, but not all, of these properties. KEYWORDS : Rocuronium bromide is a relatively new nondepolarizing muscle relaxant. It is the first of these agents to have an onset time possibly as brief as that of suxamethonium without adverse side effect. Rocuronium bromide is mono-quaternary, aminosteroidal, nondepolarizing neuromuscular blocking agent with a rapid onset of actio

The social life of English: Language and gender in western India, 1850–1940

This dissertation explores the process by which the English language and English education built upon and exacerbated gender differences in colonial India. Conversely, it traces the manner in which the social division of gender in these locations shaped the purpose, access to, and content of English studies. Focusing on the western Indian cities of Bombay and Poona, the project has examined government records, reports from the more prominent schools introduced to teach English to Indian girls, newspaper accounts and popular cultural debates over the method and purpose of women\u27s English education, and finally the writings of some of western India\u27s first English educated men and women. The dissertation emphasises the close relationship between ‘English’ and ‘women’ by arguing that the meaning and constitution of both were under constant surveillance and contest. The relationship was inflected by the definition of ‘foreign’ culture, domesticity, the ‘vernacular’ and tradition. The history of English was thus gendered in its formulation. Next demonstrating the symbiotic dynamic between English and ‘the vernacular’, the project argues that the manner in which English came to be separated from ‘indigenous’ languages was vitally supported by the politics of gender difference. This ‘engendering’ of the relationship between the vernacular and English saw the latter take on a curiously masculine authority. The dissertation also traces the growing power of literature as generated by the bourgeois project of refining and controlling a certain kind of desirable femininity. This was deeply imbricated in the ongoing process of delineating social class. The manner in which English literature became synonymous with English supported the relationship between English literary studies and the education of bourgeois womanhood. Finally, the dissertation discusses the manner by which some English educated women and men themselves defined English, and the possibility that ‘English’ provided them with a flight from the determinations of gender and class. The history of Indian English thus intersected in various ways with the production of gendered subjectivities. This project strives to elicit the details of this mutually constitutive relationship

Performance Disparities between Accents in Automatic Speech Recognition (Student Abstract)

In this work, we expand the discussion of bias in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) through a large-scale audit. Using a large and global data set of speech, we perform an audit of some of the most popular English ASR services. We show that, even when controlling for multiple linguistic covariates, ASR service performance has a statistically significant relationship to the political alignment of the speaker's birth country with respect to the United States' geopolitical power

Understanding and using sensitivity, specificity and predictive values

In this article, we have discussed the basic knowledge to calculate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. We have discussed the advantage and limitations of these measures and have provided how we should use these measures in our day-to-day clinical practice. We also have illustrated how to calculate sensitivity and specificity while combining two tests and how to use these results for our patients in day-to-day practice