The complementary roles of non-verbal cues for Robust Pronunciation Assessment

Research on pronunciation assessment systems focuses on utilizing phonetic and phonological aspects of non-native (L2) speech, often neglecting the rich layer of information hidden within the non-verbal cues. In this study, we proposed a novel pronunciation assessment framework, IntraVerbalPA. % The framework innovatively incorporates both fine-grained frame- and abstract utterance-level non-verbal cues, alongside the conventional speech and phoneme representations. Additionally, we introduce ''Goodness of phonemic-duration'' metric to effectively model duration distribution within the framework. Our results validate the effectiveness of the proposed IntraVerbalPA framework and its individual components, yielding performance that either matches or outperforms existing research works.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to ICASSP 202

Automatic Pronunciation Assessment -- A Review

Pronunciation assessment and its application in computer-aided pronunciation training (CAPT) have seen impressive progress in recent years. With the rapid growth in language processing and deep learning over the past few years, there is a need for an updated review. In this paper, we review methods employed in pronunciation assessment for both phonemic and prosodic. We categorize the main challenges observed in prominent research trends, and highlight existing limitations, and available resources. This is followed by a discussion of the remaining challenges and possible directions for future work.Comment: 9 pages, accepted to EMNLP Finding

Global Food Price Shock and the Poor in Egypt and Ukraine

The global food price shock of 2006-2008 has particularly affected poorer strata of populations in several developing countries. In Egypt and some other countries it has put food subsidy schemes to the test. This paper develops two comparable computable general equilibrium models for Egypt and Ukraine which are used to simulate direct and indirect impacts of the food price surge and various policy options on the performance of the main macroeconomic indicators as well as on poverty outcomes. The results illustrate the limited ability of realistic policy responses to mitigate negative social consequences of an external price shock. Food import tariff cuts are a partial remedy faring better than other analysed options. Furthermore, the Egyptian system of food subsidies needs substantial reforms limiting the related fiscal burden and improving the targeting of the poor population.food subsidy, agriculture, price shock, poverty, Ukraine, Egypt

Multi-View Multi-Task Representation Learning for Mispronunciation Detection

The disparity in phonology between learner's native (L1) and target (L2) language poses a significant challenge for mispronunciation detection and diagnosis (MDD) systems. This challenge is further intensified by lack of annotated L2 data. This paper proposes a novel MDD architecture that exploits multiple `views' of the same input data assisted by auxiliary tasks to learn more distinctive phonetic representation in a low-resource setting. Using the mono- and multilingual encoders, the model learn multiple views of the input, and capture the sound properties across diverse languages and accents. These encoded representations are further enriched by learning articulatory features in a multi-task setup. Our reported results using the L2-ARCTIC data outperformed the SOTA models, with a phoneme error rate reduction of 11.13% and 8.60% and absolute F1 score increase of 5.89%, and 2.49% compared to the single-view mono- and multilingual systems, with a limited L2 dataset.Comment: 5 page

It’s About Time: The Long Overdue Demise of Statutes of Repose in Latent Toxic Tort Litigation

International audienceToubkal is a new hardware architecture which provides secure, efficient and flexible hardware isolation. It is a modular system that offers strong separation of different hardware modules within a system. Lightweight devices use mainly a Memory Protection Unit (MPU) to protect the memory and create an isolation architecture. However, the MPU offers only a memory control access for the software running on the system. This scheme does not prevent other hardware components from accessing system memories. Toubkal aims to enhance these MPU architectures by adding a new hardware layer to create different access environments for different hardware components. Toubkal has been designed in such a way that it can easily be adapted to the system needs in terms of security, safety and performances. It does not require any change in the existing hardware modules. We present a detailed description of the architecture, then we compare and discuss run-time, area overhead as well as security limitations using different policies and options. The first experimental hardware module increases between 0.08% and 8.5% a single core Rocket Chip cells area

Nurses' Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Nursing Informatics System in Outpatient Clinics of Children's Cancer Hospital (57357) at Cairo

Technology in health care is increasingly becoming an integral part of the Egypt. Health care delivery system and is declared by strategists as a means whereby sustained improvement in health-care outcomes may be attained. This study was carried out aiming to assess nurses` Knowledge, attitude and practice about the nursing informatics system at out -patient clinics of Children's Cancer Hospital (57357), at Cairo. A descriptive research design will be utilized in this study was carried out in this hospital during April 2013. Sample consists of nineteen male and female nurses who are working in out-patient clinics. This study was conducted at the different out-patient clinics at Children Cancer Hospital (57357) at Cairo. Two tools were utilized to collect data pertinent to the study; one of them is a socio demographic data sheet and the second tool is a structured interview questioner schedule developed by investigator. Findings of this study showed that the majority of the sample was females and more than half of them were single. In addition to, it was found that, more than half of them academic faculties. Also, there was highly statistical significant difference between total knowledge of nursing informatics system according to total practice and total attitude of nursing informatics system. This study concluded that nurses are responsible for a substantial part of the patient record and hence are particularly affected by the computerization. The appliance of information system into nursing provides important advantages of the nursing personnel’s data and contributing to the improvement of the operating effectiveness of the nursing service. Recommendation: In Egypt (2013), nursing informatics is a new specialty and therefore should cover major sectors of the healthcare system where nurses work; this includes the clinical, administrative, research and education areas. Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude and practices nursing informatics, Nursing Informatics System, Hospital Information System

A fault fuzzy-ontology for large scale fault-tolerant wireless sensor networks

International audienceFault tolerance is a key research area for many of applications such as those based on sensor network technologies. In a large scale wireless sensor network (WSN), it becomes important to find new methods for fault-tolerance that can meet new application requirements like Internet of things, urbane intelligence and observation systems. The challenge is beyond the limit of a single wireless sensor network and concerns multiple widely interconnected sub networks. The domain of fault grows considerably because of this new configuration. In this context, the paper proposes a fault fuzzy-ontology (FFO) for large scale WSNs to be used within a Web service architecture for diagnosis and testing

Impact of Renal of Lymphatic Hyperplasia on Blood Pressure Regulation in Male Mice

Chronic high blood pressure, or hypertension, is identified as a risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and chronic kidney disease. The primary cause of most hypertension is increased peripheral vascular resistance that is controlled, in large part, by the kidney’s water handling. In the kidney, specific immune cell subsets and overall renal inflammation have both been identified as drivers of hypertension in preclinical models. Lymphatic vessels serve as a route of both fluid and immune cell clearance and their expansion, lymphangiogenesis, is necessary for the resolution of tissue inflammation. We hypothesized that by increasing renal lymphangiogenesis, renal inflammation would be reduced and blood pressure would be normalized during salt-sensitive hypertension. To investigate the role of renal immune cell trafficking in instances of blood pressure challenge, we employed a murine model of inducible renal lymphatic expansion. Mice expressing a lymphatic growth factor, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-D, under the control of a TRE-promoter were crossed with mice expressing a Kidney Specific Protein-regulated transactivator (rtTA). Upon administration of doxycycline, the rtTA-dox complex binds to the TRE promoter region, causing transcription of VEGF-D only in renal tubular epithelial cells. The resultant kidney-specific VEGF-D overexpression caused expansion of the existing renal lymphatic network in addition to generating de novo lymphangiogenesis in the cortex of “Kid-VD” mice. We then utilized the Kid-VD mouse model during an established rodent hypertension regimen of nitric oxide inhibition and high salt diet loading to identify the impact – through weekly blood pressure measures - and mechanism – by cellular, protein, and RNA analysis – of expanded renal lymphatics on blood pressure regulation. Lymphatic circulation may thus provide a new target for the treatment of chronic hypertension and its associated co-morbidities

The Supreme Court and Antitrust Analysis: The Near Triumph of the Chicago School

MTV2 workshop: Test Methods for Verification and Validatio