An infrastructure for Turkish prosody generation in text-to-speech synthesis

Text-to-speech engines benefit from natural language processing while generating the appropriate prosody. In this study, we investigate the natural language processing infrastructure for Turkish prosody generation in three steps as pronunciation disambiguation, phonological phrase detection and intonation level assignment. We focus on phrase boundary detection and intonation assignment. We propose a phonological phrase detection scheme based on syntactic analysis for Turkish and assign one of three intonation levels to words in detected phrases. Empirical observations on 100 sentences show that the proposed scheme works with approximately 85% accuracy

Ponašanja tvrdoće i povećanja gustoće prahova bakra i bronce kompaktiranih procesima hladnog prešanja u matrici smjerom jedne osi

In this study hardness and densification behaviour of copper and bronze powders under wet bag cold isostatic and uniaxial die pressing processes are examined. In uniaxial pressing the specimens were compacted up to a pressure of 800 MPa. Cold isostatic pressing (CIP) resulted in better densification for both of the studied powder materials. Attained densities were 94 % for copper and 82 % for bronze powders. In uniaxial die pressing greater pressurisation was needed to attain the same densification that obtained with CIP. The microhardness of both of the studied materials were measured before and after pressing processes. Higher pressure resulted in dislocation and strain hardening and increased hardness of powders.U ovom radu se istraživala promjena tvrdoće i povećanje gustoće prahova bakra i bronce prešanih na hladno u matrici smjerom jedne osi, te izostatski pomoću fluidnog medija. Pri hladnom prešanju u matrici smjerom jedne osi uzorci su kompaktirani s tlakovima do 800 MPa. Hladno izostatsko prešanje (CIP) rezultira znatnijim povećanjem gustoće kod oba praškasta materijala. Dobivene gustoće bile su 94 % za bakarni i 82 % za brončani prah. Kod prešanja u matrici smjerom jedne osi bilo je potrebno upotrijebiti veće tlakove da bi se postigla ista gustoća kao ona dobivena CIP postupkom. Mikrotvrdoća oba proučavana materijala mjerena je prije i nakon procesa prešanja. Veći tlakovi uzrokuju očvrščavanje dislokacijama i naprezanjem, te povećavaju tvrdoću prahova

Relationship between Oral Anaerobic Bacteria and Otitis Media with Effusion

Objective: In this study hypothesing the translocation of oral bacteria from oropharynx into the middle ear cavity may be involved in the pathogenesis of otitis media with effusion (OME), we aimed to investigate the presence and similarity of Fusobacterium nucleatum and Treponema denticola in saliva, nasopharyngeal secretion and the middle ear effusion samples from the children with OME

The combination of phacoemulsification surgery and intravitreal triamcinolone injection in patients with cataract and diabetic macular edema

AbstractPurposeTo assess the safety and efficiency of combined phacoemulsification (PHACO) surgery and intravitreal triamcinolone (IVTA) injection with or without macular grid laser photocoagulation in patients with cataract and diabetic macular edema.Material and methodsThis prospective study included 41 eyes of 36 diabetic patients with cataract and coexisting clinically significant macular edema (CSME). After PHACO and IVTA injection eyes were divided into two groups: the laser and IVTA group (Group 1) and only IVTA group (Group 2). Preoperative and postoperative best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central macular thickness (CMT), and intraocular pressure (IOP) were recorded. Paired sample t-test was used to compare data in the groups and C square test for qualitative variables.ResultsPostoperative BCVA was significantly higher than the initial BCVA during the follow-up period in both groups (p<0.01). The BCVA 6months after surgery was significantly higher in group 1 than in group 2 (p<0.01). There was no statistically significant difference in IOP between two groups preoperatively and postoperatively during the follow-up period (p>0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between both groups in mean CMT preoperatively and 2nd week, 2nd month and 3rd month after surgery (p>0.05). The mean CMT 6months after surgery was statistically significantly lower in group 1 than in group 2 (p<0.01).ConclusionsPHACO surgery combined with IVTA injection improves BCVA and provides a decrease in CMT in diabetic patients with CSME. Additional macular grid laser photocoagulation after surgery helps to preserve this improvement in BCVA and decrease in CMT

Laryngeal involvement in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis

The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of laryngeal tuberculosis (LT) among patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis. A total of 319 patients under treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis were subjected to laryngoscopy. Five patients (1.5%) with LT were identified. Odynophagia was the most common complaint, followed by alteration in voice. The larynx returned to its normal appearance in 3-8months (average 18weeks) by antituberculous medication. Physicians dealing with pulmonary tuberculosis should keep in mind that symptoms of laryngeal involvement may be minor, and laryngoscopy should always be performed when laryngeal involvement is suspected in order to isolate highly infectious patients. Response to antituberculous medication is usually late in LT and diagnosis by "wait and watch” policy will cause a significant delay in the diagnosis of a possible larynx carcinom

Effects of Two Fluoride Varnishes and One Fluoride/Chlorhexidine Varnish on Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus Biofilm Formation in Vitro

Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate and to compare the effect of two fluoride varnishes and one fluoride/chlorhexidine varnish on Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus biofilm formation, in vitro

Statistical morphological disambiguation with application to disambiguation of pronunciations in Turkish /

The statistical morphological disambiguation of agglutinative languages suffers from data sparseness. In this study, we introduce the notion of distinguishing tag sets (DTS) to overcome the problem. The morphological analyses of words are modeled with DTS and the root major part-of-speech tags. The disambiguator based on the introduced representations performs the statistical morphological disambiguation of Turkish with a recall of as high as 95.69 percent. In text-to-speech systems and in developing transcriptions for acoustic speech data, the problem occurs in disambiguating the pronunciation of a token in context, so that the correct pronunciation can be produced or the transcription uses the correct set of phonemes. We apply the morphological disambiguator to this problem of pronunciation disambiguation and achieve 99.54 percent recall with 97.95 percent precision. Most text-to-speech systems perform phrase level accentuation based on content word/function word distinction. This approach seems easy and adequate for some right headed languages such as English but is not suitable for languages such as Turkish. We then use a a heuristic approach to mark up the phrase boundaries based on dependency parsing on a basis of phrase level accentuation for Turkish TTS synthesizers

Lomna žilavost trenjem zavarenih spojeva iz AlCu4SiMg aluminijske legure

The objective of paper was to determine the fracture toughness of friction stir welding (FSW) joints of EN AW-2014 AlCu4SiMg) aluminium alloy, and to compare the fracture toughness of FSW with that of conventional metal inert gas (MIG) process. FSW of aluminium alloy was performed on a conventional semiautomatic milling machine. Defect free FSW welds were produced on alloy plates at constant tool rotation and traverse speed of 1600 rpm and 200 mm/min, respectively. The results of Vickers hardness and Charpy impact tests were used to evaluate the fracture toughness of welded joints. Low heat input, absence of melting and filler metal resulted in better fracture toughness for FSW joints