The Blizzard Challenge 2009

The Blizzard Challenge 2009 was the fifth annual Blizzard Challenge. As in 2008, UK English and Mandarin Chinese were the chosen languages for the 2009 Challenge. The English corpus was the same one used in 2008. The Mandarin corpus was provided by iFLYTEK. As usual, participants with limited resources or limited experience in these languages had the option of using unaligned labels that were provided for both corpora and for the test sentences. An accent-specific pronunciation dictionary was also available for the English speaker. This year, the tasks were organised in the form of ‘hubs ’ and ‘spokes ’ where each hub task involved building a general-purpose voice and each spoke task involved building a voice for a specific application. A set of test sentences was released to participants, who were given a limited time in which to synthesise them and submit the synthetic speech. An online listening test was conducted to evaluate naturalness, intelligibility, degree of similarity to the original speaker and, for one of the spoke tasks, “appropriateness.

Transmission amplitudes from Bethe ansatz equations

We consider the Heisenberg spin chain in the presence of integrable spin defects. Using the Bethe ansatz methodology, we extract the associated transmission amplitudes, that describe the interaction between the particle-like excitations displayed by the models and the spin impurity. In the attractive regime of the XXZ model, we also derive the breather's transmission amplitude. We compare our findings with earlier relevant results in the context of the sine-Gordon model.Comment: 27 pages Latex. References adde

Inversion identities for inhomogeneous face models

We derive exact inversion identities satisfied by the transfer matrix of inhomogeneous interaction-round-a-face (IRF) models with arbitrary boundary conditions using the underlying integrable structure and crossing properties of the local Boltzmann weights. For the critical restricted solid-on-solid (RSOS) models these identities together with some information on the analytical properties of the transfer matrix determine the spectrum completely and allow to derive the Bethe equations for both periodic and general open boundary conditions.Comment: Latex, 20 page

Junction type representations of the Temperley-Lieb algebra and associated symmetries

Inspired by earlier works on representations of the Temperley-Lieb algebra we introduce a novel family of representations of the algebra. This may be seen as a generalization of the so called asymmetric twin representation. The underlying symmetry algebra is also examined and it is shown that in addition to certain obvious exact quantum symmetries non trivial quantum algebraic realizations that exactly commute with the representation also exist. Non trivial representations of the boundary Temperley-Lieb algebra as well as the related residual symmetries are also discussed. The corresponding novel R and K matrices solutions of the Yang-Baxter and reflection equations are identified, the relevant quantum spin chain is also constructed and its exact symmetry is studied.Comment: 19 pages, LaTex. Published in Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications (SIGMA

Scattering in Twisted Yangians

We study the bulk and boundary scattering of the sl(N) twisted Yangian spin chain via the solution of the Bethe ansatz equations in the thermodynamic limit. Explicit expressions for the scattering amplitudes are obtained and the factorization of the bulk scattering is shown. The issue of defects in twisted Yangians is also briefly discussed.Comment: 10 pages, Latex. Based on a talk presented by AD, in "Integrable systems and quantum symmetries", Prague, June 2015. Related results are also presented in: arXiv:1410.5991, arXiv:1412.648

Μελέτη της κρουστικής απόκρισης πλακών αποτελούμενων από σύγχρονα πολύστρωτα υλικά

Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο--Μεταπτυχιακή Εργασία. Διεπιστημονικό-Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών (Δ.Π.Μ.Σ.) “Υπολογιστική Μηχανική

Regulation of Unrequested Solicitation in Japan: The Way Toward a Do-Not-Call and Do-Not-Knock System?

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15K16973