Silent speech: restoring the power of speech to people whose larynx has been removed

Every year, some 17,500 people in Europe and North America lose the power of speech after undergoing a laryngectomy, normally as a treatment for throat cancer. Several research groups have recently demonstrated that it is possible to restore speech to these people by using machine learning to learn the transformation from articulator movement to sound. In our project articulator movement is captured by a technique developed by our collaborators at Hull University called Permanent Magnet Articulography (PMA), which senses the changes of magnetic field caused by movements of small magnets attached to the lips and tongue. This solution, however, requires synchronous PMA-and-audio recordings for learning the transformation and, hence, it cannot be applied to people who have already lost their voice. Here we propose to investigate a variant of this technique in which the PMA data are used to drive an articulatory synthesiser, which generates speech acoustics by simulating the airflow through a computational model of the vocal tract. The project goals, participants, current status, and achievements of the project are discussed below.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Strategies for Choosing Descent Flight-Path Angles for Small Jets

Three candidate strategies for choosing the descent flight path angle (FPA) for small jets are proposed, analyzed, and compared for fuel efficiency under arrival metering conditions. The strategies vary in operational complexity from a universally fixed FPA, or FPA function that varies with descent speed for improved fuel efficiency, to the minimum-fuel FPA computed for each flight based on winds, route, and speed profile. Methodologies for selecting the parameter for the first two strategies are described. The differences in fuel burn are analyzed over a year s worth of arrival traffic and atmospheric conditions recorded for the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Airport during 2011. The results show that the universally fixed FPA strategy (same FPA for all flights, all year) burns on average 26 lbs more fuel per flight as compared to the minimum-fuel solution. This FPA is adapted to the arrival gate (direction of entry to the terminal) and various timespans (season, month and day) to improve fuel efficiency. Compared to a typical FPA of approximately 3 degrees the adapted FPAs vary significantly, up to 1.3 from one arrival gate to another or up to 1.4 from one day to another. Adapting the universally fixed FPA strategy to the arrival gate or to each day reduces the extra fuel burn relative to the minimum-fuel solution by 27% and 34%, respectively. The adaptations to gate and time combined shows up to 57% reduction of the extra fuel burn. The second strategy, an FPA function, contributes a 17% reduction in the 26 lbs of extra fuel burn over the universally fixed FPA strategy. Compared to the corresponding adaptations of the universally fixed FPA, adaptations of the FPA function reduce the extra fuel burn anywhere from 15-23% depending on the extent of adaptation. The combined effect of the FPA function strategy with both directional and temporal adaptation recovers 67% of the extra fuel relative to the minimum-fuel solution

A silent speech system based on permanent magnet articulography and direct synthesis

In this paper we present a silent speech interface (SSI) system aimed at restoring speech communication for individuals who have lost their voice due to laryngectomy or diseases affecting the vocal folds. In the proposed system, articulatory data captured from the lips and tongue using permanent magnet articulography (PMA) are converted into audible speech using a speaker-dependent transformation learned from simultaneous recordings of PMA and audio signals acquired before laryngectomy. The transformation is represented using a mixture of factor analysers, which is a generative model that allows us to efficiently model non-linear behaviour and perform dimensionality reduction at the same time. The learned transformation is then deployed during normal usage of the SSI to restore the acoustic speech signal associated with the captured PMA data. The proposed system is evaluated using objective quality measures and listening tests on two databases containing PMA and audio recordings for normal speakers. Results show that it is possible to reconstruct speech from articulator movements captured by an unobtrusive technique without an intermediate recognition step. The SSI is capable of producing speech of sufficient intelligibility and naturalness that the speaker is clearly identifiable, but problems remain in scaling up the process to function consistently for phonetically rich vocabularies

Practices participating in a dental PBRN have substantial and advantageous diversity even though as a group they have much in common with dentists at large

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Practice-based research networks offer important opportunities to move recent advances into routine clinical practice. If their findings are not only generalizable to dental practices at large, but can also elucidate how practice characteristics are related to treatment outcome, their importance is even further elevated. Our objective was to determine whether we met a key objective for The Dental Practice-Based Research Network (DPBRN): to recruit a diverse range of practitioner-investigators interested in doing DPBRN studies.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>DPBRN participants completed an enrollment questionnaire about their practices and themselves. To date, more than 1100 practitioners from the five participating regions have completed the questionnaire. The regions consist of: Alabama/Mississippi, Florida/Georgia, Minnesota, Permanente Dental Associates, and Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden). We tested the hypothesis that there are statistically significant differences in key characteristics among DPBRN practices, based on responses from dentists who participated in DPBRN's first network-wide study (n = 546).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were statistically significant, substantive regional differences among DPBRN-participating dentists, their practices, and their patient populations.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although as a group, participants have much in common with practices at large; their substantial diversity offers important advantages, such as being able to evaluate how practice differences may affect treatment outcomes, while simultaneously offering generalizability to dentists at large. This should help foster knowledge transfer in both the research-to-practice and practice-to-research directions.</p

Implications of the prevalence and magnitude of sustained declines for determining a minimum threshold for favourable population size.

We propose a new approach to quantifying a minimum threshold value for the size of an animal population, below which that population might be categorised as having unfavourable status. Under European Union law, the concept of Favourable Conservation Status requires assessment of populations as having favourable or unfavourable status, but quantitative methods for such assessments have not yet been developed. One population threshold that is well established in conservation biology is the minimum viable population (MVP) defined as the size of a small but stable population with an acceptably low risk of extinction within a specified period. Our approach combines this small-population paradigm MVP concept with a multiplier, which is a factor by which the MVP is multiplied to allow for the risk of a sustained future decline. We demonstrate this approach using data on UK breeding bird population sizes. We used 43-year time-series data for 189 species and a qualitative assessment of population trends over almost 200 years for 229 species to examine the prevalence, duration and magnitude of sustained population declines. Our study addressed the problem of underestimation of the duration and magnitude of declines caused by short runs of monitoring data by allowing for the truncation of time series. The multiplier was derived from probability distributions of decline magnitudes within a given period, adjusted for truncation. Over a surveillance period of 100 years, we estimated that there was a 10% risk across species that a sustained population decline of at least sixteen-fold would begin. We therefore suggest that, in this case, a factor of 16 could be used as the multiplier of small-population MVPs to obtain minimum threshold population sizes for favourable status. We propose this 'MVP Multiplier' method as a new and robust approach to obtaining minimum threshold population sizes which integrates the concepts of small-population and declining-population paradigms. The minimum threshold value we propose is intended for use alongside a range of other measures to enable overall assessments of favourable conservation status

Access to Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives in Northeast TN: A Study of Reproductive Care in Hawkins County, TN

Unintended pregnancy leads to many public health consequences like lower educational attainment and diminished career opportunities, with higher rates of unintended pregnancies occurring in lower income communities and among women with drug addiction. Beyond preventing unintended pregnancies, effective contraception helps prevent poor birth spacing, thereby reducing the risk of both premature and low-weight births and maternal mortality and morbidity during the peripartum period. Long acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants, are considered the birth control of choice for women of reproductive potential as they possess a number of advantages: cost-effectiveness, minimal maintenance for 3 to 10 years, reversibility, and high efficacy and continuation rates. Despite these benefits, LARCs have been widely underused in rural communities as a result of many factors including hospital and gynecology department closures, workforce shortages, provider knowledge, and access to care challenges that arise from complex social determinants of health specific to rural US communities. We therefore investigated the knowledge and current practice of clinical providers regarding LARCs counseling and provision in Hawkins County of Northeast Tennessee. Hawkins County is a primarily rural county with clinics serving a large lower income population with a high prevalence of substance use, therefore making it at risk for higher rates of unintended pregnancies. An online survey was sent to all consenting medical providers (NPs, PAs, and physicians) (n=7) to collect information on their practices related to contraception, including LARCs. Following completion of online surveys, semi-structured interviews (n=2) were planned to qualitatively explore providers’ perspectives. Quantitative analysis of survey data and thematic analysis of interviews were conducted. Analysis of survey data shows that though non-OB/GYN primary care providers reported on being somewhat comfortable to comfortable in their ability to counsel patients on LARCs, they reported low levels of actually counseling on LARCs, compared with oral contraception. Furthermore, the survey data also shows low levels of LARC insertion/removal among non-OB/GYN primary care providers, with most noting preference to refer patients to a private OB/GYN provider within the community or the health department. Additionally, non-OB/GYN primary care providers reported little to no interest in including insertion/removal of LARCs within their scope of practice, citing clinic supply, no time for procedures, and low patient desire as reasons. All providers reported believing that there are little to no barriers to obtaining LARCs by patients within Hawkins County.The semi-structured interviews, including one with the county’s main OB/GYN provider, indicated that though there is access to LARCs within Hawkins County, there may still be multiple barriers including possible poor quality of counseling on LARCs by non-OB/GYN primary care providers and preference for counseling specific populations on LARCs rather than all patients of reproductive potential, both of which may contribute to low patient desire for LARCs. This work is a useful starting place for increasing utilization of LARCs within Hawkins County. By exploring current knowledge and practices of primary care providers, we can better address potential systematic barriers to improve access to and utilization of LARCs in rural communities

Lorentz-Covariant Green-Schwarz Superstring Amplitudes

In a recent paper, the BRST formalism for the gauge-fixed N=2 twistor-string was used to calculate Green-Schwarz supersring scattering amplitudes with an arbitrary number of loops and external massless states. Although the gauge-fixing procedure preserved the worldsheet N=2 superconformal invariance of the twistor-string, it broke the target-space SO(9,1) super-Poincar\'e invariance down to an SU(4)xU(1) subgroup. In this paper, generators for the SO(9,1) super-Poincar\'e transformations, as well as manifestly covariant vertex operators, are explicitly constructed out of the gauge-fixed matter fields. The earlier calculated amplitudes are then expressed in manifestly Lorentz-covariant notation.Comment: 11 pages plain Tex, KCL-TH-92-

Integrating user-centred design in the development of a silent speech interface based on permanent magnetic articulography

Abstract: A new wearable silent speech interface (SSI) based on Permanent Magnetic Articulography (PMA) was developed with the involvement of end users in the design process. Hence, desirable features such as appearance, port-ability, ease of use and light weight were integrated into the prototype. The aim of this paper is to address the challenges faced and the design considerations addressed during the development. Evaluation on both hardware and speech recognition performances are presented here. The new prototype shows a com-parable performance with its predecessor in terms of speech recognition accuracy (i.e. ~95% of word accuracy and ~75% of sequence accuracy), but significantly improved appearance, portability and hardware features in terms of min-iaturization and cost

Planck-Scale Physics and the Peccei-Quinn Mechanism

Global-symmetry violating higher-dimension operators, expected to be induced by Planck-scale physics, in general drastically alter the properties of the axion field associated with the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong-CP problem, and render this solution unnatural. The particle physics and cosmology associated with other global symmetries can also be significantly changed.Comment: 10p