Acoustic and linguistic features influence talker changedetection

A listening test is proposed in which human participants detect talker changes in two natural, multi-talker speech stimuli sets—a familiar language (English) and an unfamiliar language (Chinese). Miss rate, false-alarm rate, and response times (RT) showed a significant dependence on language familiarity. Linear regression modeling of RTs using diverse acoustic features derived from the stimuli showed recruitment of a pool of acoustic features for the talker change detection task. Further, benchmarking the same task against the state-of-the-art machine diarization system showed that the machine system achieves human parity for the familiar language but not for the unfamiliar language

A mixed valence complex of gold with dimethyl sulfoxide

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/24578/1/0000861.pd

Preparation of Ultrafine Fe–Pt Alloy and Au Nanoparticle Colloids by KrF Excimer Laser Solution Photolysis

We prepared ultrafine Fe–Pt alloy nanoparticle colloids by UV laser solution photolysis (KrF excimer laser of 248 nm wavelength) using precursors of methanol solutions into which iron and platinum complexes were dissolved together with PVP dispersant to prevent aggregations. From TEM observations, the Fe–Pt nanoparticles were found to be composed of disordered FCC A1 phase with average diameters of 0.5–3 nm regardless of the preparation conditions. Higher iron compositions of nanoparticles require irradiations of higher laser pulse energies typically more than 350 mJ, which is considered to be due to the difficulty in dissociation of Fe(III) acetylacetonate compared with Pt(II) acetylacetonate. Au colloid preparation by the same method was also attempted, resulting in Au nanoparticle colloids with over 10 times larger diameters than the Fe–Pt nanoparticles and UV–visible absorption peaks around 530 nm that originate from the surface plasmon resonance. Differences between the Fe–Pt and Au nanoparticles prepared by the KrF excimer laser solution photolysis are also discussed

Charge transfer spectra of some gold(III) complexes

Tetrahalo complexes of Au(III) show two intense bands in the ultraviolet. These are interpreted as charge‐transfer bands; the transfer is from halogen p to gold d orbitals. The two bands are associated with p_σ→d_x²—y2 and p_π→d_x²—y² transitions. The iodo complex undergoes spontaneous reduction; reason for this is discussed. The ethylenediamine complexes of Au(III) also exhibit interesting charge‐transfer phenomenon

On the impact of language familiarity in talker change detection

The ability to detect talker changes when listening to conversational speech is fundamental to perception and understanding of multi-talker speech. In this paper, we propose an experimental paradigm to provide insights on the impact of language familiarity on talker change detection. Two multi-talker speech stimulus sets, one in a language familiar to the listeners (English) and the other unfamiliar (Chinese), are created. A listening test is performed in which listeners indicate the number of talkers in the presented stimuli. Analysis of human performance shows statistically significant results for: (a) lower miss (and a higher false alarm) rate in familiar versus unfamiliar language, and (b) longer response time in familiar versus unfamiliar language. These results signify a link between perception of talker attributes and language proficiency. Subsequently, a machine system is designed to perform the same task. The system makes use of the current state-of-the-art diarization approach with x-vector embeddings. A performance comparison on the same stimulus set indicates that the machine system falls short of human performance by a huge margin, for both languages

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