2,951 research outputs found
Impact of ASR performance on free speaking language assessment
In free speaking tests candidates respond in spontaneous speech to prompts. This form of test allows the spoken language proficiency of a non-native speaker of English to be assessed more fully than read aloud tests. As the candidate's responses are unscripted, transcription by automatic speech recognition (ASR) is essential for automated assessment. ASR will never be 100% accurate so any assessment system must seek to minimise and mitigate ASR errors. This paper considers the impact of ASR errors on the performance of free speaking test auto-marking systems. Firstly rich linguistically related features, based on part-of-speech tags from statistical parse trees, are investigated for assessment. Then, the impact of ASR errors on how well the system can detect whether a learner's answer is relevant to the question asked is evaluated. Finally, the impact that these errors may have on the ability of the system to provide detailed feedback to the learner is analysed. In particular, pronunciation and grammatical errors are considered as these are important in helping a learner to make progress. As feedback resulting from an ASR error would be highly confusing, an approach to mitigate this problem using confidence scores is also analysed
Multi-strange baryon production in Au+Au collisions at top RHIC energy as a probe of bulk properties
We report STAR preliminary results on multi-strange baryon production in
Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=200 GeV at RHIC. Its implication for the
formation of a new state of matter is discussed. The system size dependence on
the production of strange baryons is investigated to study the onset of strange
quark equilibration in the medium. The nuclear modification factor of Lambda,
Xi and Omega is also presented. Its suppression at p_T>3 GeV/c supports the
formation of a dense interacting medium at RHIC. The spectra of multi-strange
baryons reveal that within a hydro-inspired model, they may decouple prior than
lighter particles and that their flow may be mostly developed at a partonic
level. This idea is emphasized by the measurement of the v_2 of Xi+AntiXi and
Omega+AntiOmega whose behaviour is close to the Lambda+AntiLambda baryon
elliptic flow in the intermediate p_T region where a constituent quark scaling
of v_2 is observed.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, Strange Quark Matter 2004 conference proceeding
Strangeness Production at RHIC in the Perturbative Regim
We investigate strange quark production in Au-Au collisions at RHIC in the
framework of the Parton Cascade Model(PCM). The yields of (anti-) strange
quarks for three production scenarios -- primary-primary scattering, full
scattering, and full production -- are compared to a proton-proton baseline.
Enhancement of strange quark yields in central Au-Au collisions compared to
scaled p-p collisions increases with the number of secondary interactions. The
centrality dependence of strangeness production for the three production
scenarios is studied as well. For all production mechanisms, the strangeness
yield increases with . The perturbative QCD regime
described by the PCM is able to account for up to 50% of the observed
strangeness at RHIC.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, IOP forma
What's Interesting About Strangeness Production? - An Overview of Recent Results
In this paper I highlight a few selected topics on strange particle
production in heavy-ion collisions. By studying the yield and spectra of
strange particles we hope to gain understanding of the conditions reached in,
and the ensuing dynamics of, the systems produced when ultra-relativistic
heavy-ions are collided.Comment: 17 Pages, 18 figures, Hot Quarks 2004 Proceeding
Time Dependence of Chemical Freeze-out in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
We investigate chemical and thermal freeze-out time dependencies for strange
particle production for CERN SPS heavy ion collisions in the framework of a
dynamical hadronic transport code. We show that the Lambda yield changes
considerably after hadronization in the case of Pb+Pb collisions, whereas for
smaller system sizes (e.g. S+S) the direct particle production dominates over
production from inelastic rescattering. Chemical freeze-out times for strange
baryons in Pb+Pb are smaller than for non-strange baryons, but they are still
sufficiently long for hadronic rescattering to contribute significantly to the
final Lambda yield. Based on inelastic and elastic cross section estimates we
expect the trend of shorter freeze-out times (chemical and kinetic), and thus
less particle production after hadronization, to continue for multi-strange
baryons.Comment: 10 pages, 7 postscript figure
, K and f Production in Au-Au and pp Collisions at = 200 GeV
Preliminary results on , KK and production using the mixed-event
technique are presented. The measurements are performed at mid-rapidity by the
STAR detector in = 200 GeV Au-Au and pp interactions at RHIC.
The results are compared to different measurements at various energies.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. Talk presented at Quark Matter 2002, Nantes,
France, July 18-24, 2002. To appear in the proceedings (Nucl. Phys. A
Creativity and Autonomy in Swarm Intelligence Systems
This work introduces two swarm intelligence algorithms -- one mimicking the behaviour of one species of ants (\emph{Leptothorax acervorum}) foraging (a `Stochastic Diffusion Search', SDS) and the other algorithm mimicking the behaviour of birds flocking (a `Particle Swarm Optimiser', PSO) -- and outlines a novel integration strategy exploiting the local search properties of the PSO with global SDS behaviour. The resulting hybrid algorithm is used to sketch novel drawings of an input image, exploliting an artistic tension between the local behaviour of the `birds flocking' - as they seek to follow the input sketch - and the global behaviour of the `ants foraging' - as they seek to encourage the flock to explore novel regions of the canvas. The paper concludes by exploring the putative `creativity' of this hybrid swarm system in the philosophical light of the `rhizome' and Deleuze's well known `Orchid and Wasp' metaphor
Production in Au+Au and pp Collisions at = 200GeV at STAR
Mid-rapidity and are
measured in Au+Au and pp collisions at =200GeV using the STAR
detector at RHIC. The mass is systematically shifted at small
transverse momentum for both Au+Au and pp collisions. The
transverse mass spectra are measured in Au+Au collisions at different
centralities and in pp collisions. The mean transverse momentum
as a function of the collision centrality is compared to those of identified
, and . The and ratios are
compared to measurements in A+A, , , collisions at
various colliding energies. The physics implications of these measurements are
also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of Strange Quarks in Matter
(SQM2003), Atlantic Beach, USA, to be published in J. Phys.
Energy dependence of kaon production in central Pb+Pb collisions
Recent results from the NA49 experiment on the energy dependence of charged
kaon production in central Pb+Pb collisions are presented. First results from
the new data at 80 AGeV beam energy are compared with those from lower and
higher energies. A difference in the energy dependence of the /
and / ratios is observed. The / ratio shows a
non-monotonic behaviour with a maximum near 40 AGeV.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, proceedings of talk at SQM2001, Frankfurt,
Germany, to appear in J. Phys.
Strange hadrons as dense matter probes
The spectra of strange hadrons have been measured in detail as a function of
centrality for a variety of collision systems and energies at RHIC. Recent
results are presented and compared to those measured at the SPS. The effects of
the system size on strange particle production and kinematics are examined. I
place specific emphasis on comparing A-A to pp production and discuss how
strangeness can be used to probe the dense matter produced in heavy-ion
collisions.Comment: Proceedings of the Strange Quark Matter Conference 200
- …