144 research outputs found
ISCAN: a System for Integrated Phonetic Analyses Across Speech Corpora
Speech corpora of many languages, styles, and formats exist in the world, representing significant potential for the phonetic sciences. However in practice there are significant practical and methodological barriers to conducting the “same study” across
corpora, including necessary technical skills and
non-comparability of results using non-standardized
measures. We introduce an open-source software
system for Integrated Speech Corpus ANalysis (ISCAN), which enables automated acoustic phonetic
analysis across spoken corpora of diverse formats
and sizes. A web-browser-based GUI and Python
package allow for different user backgrounds. The
system is a major update of core functionality for
fully- automated speech corpus analysis (importing, enriching, querying) from a previous version, to
meet new goals: different user configurations, working with restricted datasets, and interacting with data
(visualization and correction). The system’s flexibility for different projects is shown in two use cases:
large-scale automatic segmental analysis of spontaneous speech across English dialects, and smallerscale semi-automatic prosodic analysis
Numerical simulations with a first order BSSN formulation of Einstein's field equations
We present a new fully first order strongly hyperbolic representation of the
BSSN formulation of Einstein's equations with optional constraint damping
terms. We describe the characteristic fields of the system, discuss its
hyperbolicity properties, and present two numerical implementations and
simulations: one using finite differences, adaptive mesh refinement and in
particular binary black holes, and another one using the discontinuous Galerkin
method in spherical symmetry. The results of this paper constitute a first step
in an effort to combine the robustness of BSSN evolutions with very high
accuracy numerical techniques, such as spectral collocation multi-domain or
discontinuous Galerkin methods.Comment: To appear in Physical Review
Recoil velocities from equal-mass binary black-hole mergers: a systematic investigation of spin-orbit aligned configurations
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular
momentum are of special interest, as studies indicate that this configuration
is preferred in nature. If the spins of the two bodies differ, there can be a
prominent beaming of the gravitational radiation during the late plunge,
causing a recoil of the final merged black hole. We perform an accurate and
systematic study of recoil velocities from a sequence of equal-mass black holes
whose spins are aligned with the orbital angular momentum, and whose individual
spins range from a = +0.584 to -0.584. In this way we extend and refine the
results of a previous study and arrive at a consistent maximum recoil of 448 +-
5 km/s for anti-aligned models as well as to a phenomenological expression for
the recoil velocity as a function of spin ratio. This relation highlights a
nonlinear behavior, not predicted by the PN estimates, and can be readily
employed in astrophysical studies on the evolution of binary black holes in
massive galaxies. An essential result of our analysis is the identification of
different stages in the waveform, including a transient due to lack of an
initial linear momentum in the initial data. Furthermore we are able to
identify a pair of terms which are largely responsible for the kick, indicating
that an accurate computation can be obtained from modes up to l=3. Finally, we
provide accurate measures of the radiated energy and angular momentum, finding
these to increase linearly with the spin ratio, and derive simple expressions
for the final spin and the radiated angular momentum which can be easily
implemented in N-body simulations of compact stellar systems. Our code is
calibrated with strict convergence tests and we verify the correctness of our
measurements by using multiple independent methods whenever possible.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, 5 table
Hyperboloidal slices for the wave equation of Kerr-Schild metrics and numerical applications
We present new results from two open source codes, using finite differencing
and pseudo-spectral methods for the wave equations in (3+1) dimensions. We use
a hyperboloidal transformation which allows direct access to null infinity and
simplifies the control over characteristic speeds on Kerr-Schild backgrounds.
We show that this method is ideal for attaching hyperboloidal slices or for
adapting the numerical resolution in certain spacetime regions. As an example
application, we study late-time Kerr tails of sub-dominant modes and obtain new
insight into the splitting of decay rates. The involved conformal wave equation
is freed of formally singular terms whose numerical evaluation might be
problematically close to future null infinity.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure
Recommended from our members
Tilted frames of reference have similar effects on perception of the gravitational vertical and the planning of vertical saccadic eye movements
We investigated the effects of a tilted reference frame (i.e., allocentric visual context) on perception of the gravitational vertical and saccadic eye movements along a planned egocentric vertical path. Participants (n=5) in a darkened room fixated a point in the center of a circle on an LCD display, and decided which of two sequentially presented dots was closer to the unmarked ‘6 o’clock’ position on that circle (i.e., straight down towards their feet). The slope of their perceptual psychometric functions showed that participants were able to locate which dot was nearer the vertical with a precision of 1-2°. For three of the participants, a square frame centered at fixation and tilted (in the roll direction) 5.6° from the vertical caused a strong perceptual bias, manifest as a shift in the psychometric function, in the direction of the traditional ‘rod and frame’ effect, without affecting precision. The other two participants showed negligible or no equivalent biases. The same subjects participated in the saccade version of the task, in which they were instructed to shift their gaze to the 6 o’clock position as soon as the central fixation point disappeared. The participants who showed perceptual biases showed biases of similar magnitude in their saccadic end points, with a strong correlation between perceptual and saccadic biases across all subjects. Tilting of the head 5.6° reduced both perceptual and saccadic biases in all but one observer, who developed a strong saccadic bias. Otherwise, the overall pattern and significant correlations between results remained the same. We conclude that our observers' saccades-to-the-vertical were dominated by perceptual input, which outweighed any gravitational or head-centered input
Recommended from our members
The Poggendorff illusion affects manual pointing as well as perceptual judgements
Pointing movements made to a target defined by the imaginary intersection of a pointer with a distant landing line were examined in healthy human observers in order to determine whether such motor responses are susceptible to the Poggendorff effect. In this well-known geometric illusion observers make systematic extrapolation errors when the pointer abuts a second line (the inducer). The kinematics of extrapolation movements, in which no explicit target was present, where similar to those made in response to a rapid-onset (explicit) dot target. The results unambiguously demonstrate that motor (pointing) responses are susceptible to the illusion. In fact, raw motor biases were greater than for perceptual responses: in the absence of an inducer (and hence also the acute angle of the Poggendorff stimulus) perceptual responses were near-veridical, whilst motor responses retained a bias. Therefore, the full Poggendorff stimulus contained two biases: one mediated by the acute angle formed between the oblique pointer and the inducing line (the classic Poggendorff effect), which affected both motor and perceptual responses equally, and another bias, which was independent of the inducer and primarily affected motor responses. We conjecture that this additional motor bias is associated with an undershoot in the unknown direction of movement and provide evidence to justify this claim. In conclusion, both manual pointing and perceptual judgements are susceptible to the well-known Poggendorff effect, supporting the notion of a unitary representation of space for action and perception or else an early locus for the effect, prior to the divergence of processing streams
Recommended from our members
Rereading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: plurality and contestation, not consensus
In this paper I examine the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. My analysis counters conventional narratives of consensus and imposition that characterize the development of the UN human rights regime. The central argument is that within the founding text of the contemporary human rights movement there is an ambiguous account of rights, which exceeds easy categorization of international rights as universal moral principles or merely an ideological imposition by liberal powers. Acknowledging this ambiguous history, I argue, opens the way to an understanding of human rights as an ongoing politics, a contestation over the terms of legitimate political authority and the meaning of “humanity” as a political identity
Interactions between visual and semantic processing during object recognition revealed by modulatory effects of age of acquisition
The age of acquisition (AoA) of objects and their names is a powerful determinant of processing speed in adulthood, with early-acquired objects being recognized and named faster than late-acquired objects. Previous research using fMRI (Ellis et al., 2006. Traces of vocabulary acquisition in the brain: evidence from covert object naming. NeuroImage 33, 958–968) found that AoA modulated the strength of BOLD responses in both occipital and left anterior temporal cortex during object naming. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to explore in more detail the nature of the influence of AoA on activity in those two regions. Covert object naming recruited a network within the left hemisphere that is familiar from previous research, including visual, left occipito-temporal, anterior temporal and inferior frontal regions. Region of interest (ROI) analyses found that occipital cortex generated a rapid evoked response (~ 75–200 ms at 0–40 Hz) that peaked at 95 ms but was not modulated by AoA. That response was followed by a complex of later occipital responses that extended from ~ 300 to 850 ms and were stronger to early- than late-acquired items from ~ 325 to 675 ms at 10–20 Hz in the induced rather than the evoked component. Left anterior temporal cortex showed an evoked response that occurred significantly later than the first occipital response (~ 100–400 ms at 0–10 Hz with a peak at 191 ms) and was stronger to early- than late-acquired items from ~ 100 to 300 ms at 2–12 Hz. A later anterior temporal response from ~ 550 to 1050 ms at 5–20 Hz was not modulated by AoA. The results indicate that the initial analysis of object forms in visual cortex is not influenced by AoA. A fastforward sweep of activation from occipital and left anterior temporal cortex then results in stronger activation of semantic representations for early- than late-acquired objects. Top-down re-activation of occipital cortex by semantic representations is then greater for early than late acquired objects resulting in delayed modulation of the visual response
GRB Light Curves in the Relativistic Turbulence Model
Randomly oriented relativistic emitters in a relativistically expanding shell
provides an alternative to internal shocks as a mechanism for producing GRBs'
variable light curves with efficient conversion of energy to radiation. In this
model the relativistic outflow is broken into small emitters moving
relativistically in the outflow's rest frame. Variability arises because an
observer sees an emitter only when its velocity points towards him so that only
a small fraction of the emitters are seen by a given observer. Models with
significant relativistic random motions require converting and maintaining a
large fraction of the overall energy into these motions. While it is not clear
how this is achieved, we explore here, using two toy models, the constraints on
parameters required to produce light curves comparable to the observations. We
find that a tight relation between the size of the emitters and the bulk and
random Lorentz factors is needed and that the random Lorentz factor determines
the variability. While both models successfully produce the observed
variability there are several inconsistencies with other properties of the
light curves. Most of which, but not all, might be resolved if the central
engine is active for a long time producing a number of shells, resembling to
some extent the internal shocks model.Comment: Significantly revised with a discussion of additional models.
Accepted for publication in APJ
- …