Multi-session group scenarios for speech interface design

When developing adaptive speech-based multilingual interaction systems, we need representative data on the user's behaviour. In this paper we focus on a data collection method pertaining to adaptation in the user's interaction with the system. We describe a multi-session group scenario for Wizard of Oz studies with two novel features: firstly, instead of doing solo sessions with a static mailbox, our test users communicated with each other in a group of six, and secondly, the communication took place over several sessions in a period of five to eight days. The paper discusses our data collection studies using the method, concentrating on the usefulness of the method in terms of naturalness of the interaction and long-term developments

Did DR-CAFTA Affect the Exports of the Dominican Republic to the United States?

This article evaluates the impact the Dominican Republic and Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) had on the exports of the Dominican Republic (DR) to the United States. We estimate a gravity model for the DR exports to the 109 trade partners of the country from 1990 to 2014. This model quantifies the effect of the DR-CAFTA since 2007, when the agreement was ratified, and finds that the DR-CAFTA negatively affected DR exports to the US. We conduct further analysis of factors that could explain the decline in exports, in spite of the ratification of the agreement. We find that the 2008–09 crisis was not the driver of the slowdown of DR exports to the US. The increasing competition with Central American countries and other export oriented economies, like China, in the US market seem to have the leading role in the export contraction that we find in our study

Sterile neutrinos with pseudoscalar self-interactions and cosmology

Sterile neutrinos in the electronvolt mass range are hinted at by a number of terrestrial neutrino experiments. However, such neutrinos are highly incompatible with data from the Cosmic Microwave Background and large scale structure. This paper discusses how charging sterile neutrinos under a new pseudoscalar interaction can reconcile eV sterile neutrinos with terrestrial neutrino data. We show that this model can reconcile eV sterile neutrinos in cosmology, providing a fit to all available data which is way better than the standard $\Lambda$CDM model with one additional fully thermalized sterile neutrino. In particular it also prefers a value of the Hubble parameter much closer to the locally measured value.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, uses REVTe

Cosmology with self-interacting sterile neutrinos and dark matter - A pseudoscalar model

Short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments have shown hints of the existence of additional sterile neutrinos in the eV mass range. Such sterile neutrinos are incompatible with cosmology because they suppress structure formation unless they can be prevented from thermalising in the early Universe or removed by subsequent decay or annihilation. Here we present a novel scenario in which both sterile neutrinos and dark matter are coupled to a new, light pseudoscalar. This can prevent thermalisation of sterile neutrinos and make dark matter sufficiently self-interacting to have an impact on galactic dynamics and possibly resolve some of the known problems with the standard cold dark matter scenario. Even more importantly it leads to a strongly self-interacting plasma of sterile neutrinos and pseudoscalars at late times and provides an excellent fit to CMB data. The usual cosmological neutrino mass problem is avoided by sterile neutrino annihilation to pseudoscalars. The preferred value of $H_0$ is substantially higher than in standard $\Lambda$CDM and in much better agreement with local measurements.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, matches published versio

Telling Time:Representations of Ruins in the Grotesques of Sixteenth-Century Italy

Prospects of ruins feature frequently within the grotesques or ornamental frescoes of sixteenth-century Italy. What is at stake in the representations of ruins seems to be at stake on a more general level in the grotesques seen as a compositional device: the visualisation of passages between a form and the formless, or between culture and nature, with change and movement as key concepts. The article addresses how the exploration of transformation, which is fundamental to the representation of ruins in grotesques, is manifested in subject matter, composition, and spatial relations; and how all three are aspects of the telling of time. It is suggested that the prevalence of ruins in grotesques highlights the preoccupation with temporality as a major theme in the visual culture of the period

The choice of sustainability assurance providers in Sweden - An empirical research of underlying factors influencing the manager’s choice of assurance provider

The purpose with this thesis was to examine why Swedish managers choose environmental consultants to a significantly lower extent than auditors as sustainability report assurance provider

Non-local thermodynamic equilibrium stellar spectroscopy with 1D and 3D models - II. Chemical properties of the Galactic metal-poor disc and the halo

From exploratory studies and theoretical expectations it is known that simplifying approximations in spectroscopic analysis (LTE, 1D) lead to systematic biases of stellar parameters and abundances. These biases depend strongly on surface gravity, temperature, and, in particular, for LTE vs. non-LTE (NLTE) on metallicity of the stars. Here we analyse the [Mg/Fe] and [Fe/H] plane of a sample of 326 stars, comparing LTE and NLTE results obtained using 1D hydrostatic models and averaged models. We show that compared to the NLTE benchmark, all other three methods display increasing biases towards lower metallicities, resulting in false trends of [Mg/Fe] against [Fe/H], which have profound implications for interpretations by chemical evolution models. In our best NLTE model, the halo and disc stars show a clearer behaviour in the [Mg/Fe] - [Fe/H] plane, from the knee in abundance space down to the lowest metallicities. Our sample has a large fraction of thick disc stars and this population extends down to at least [Fe/H] ~ -1.6 dex, further than previously proven. The thick disc stars display a constant [Mg/Fe] ~ 0.3 dex, with a small intrinsic dispersion in [Mg/Fe] that suggests that a fast SN Ia channel is not relevant for the disc formation. The halo stars reach higher [Mg/Fe] ratios and display a net trend of [Mg/Fe] at low metallicities, paired with a large dispersion in [Mg/Fe]. These indicate the diverse origin of halo stars from accreted low-mass systems to stochastic/inhomogeneous chemical evolution in the Galactic halo.Comment: 15 pages, accepted for publication in Ap