Prosodic transcription of Glasgow English: an evaluation study of GlaToBI

GlaToBI, a version of the ToBI prosodic transcription system which can be used to transcribe the intonation patterns of western Scottish (Glasgow) English, is currently under development. An assessment of GlaToBI, similar to the evaluation studies that were undertaken for the original ToBI system [7], and for GToBI, a version developed for German [4], has been carried out to test the new system 's reliability, learnability and comprehensiveness. The results of this study show that this adaptation of the ToBI system can be applied with the expected level of reliability to the transcription of Glasgow English. 1. INTRODUCTION Very little corpus based work has been done on the prosodic features of English dialects other than Standard American and southern British (Received Pronunciation). However, with the creation of databases such as the University of Edinburgh's HCRC Map Task corpus [1], the predominant dialect of which is western Scottish (Glasgow) English, the opportunity has arisen..

Beyond technology and finance: pay-as-you-go sustainable energy access and theories of social change

Two-thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, a precursor of poverty reduction and development. The international community has ambitious commitments in this regard, e.g. the UN's Sustainable Energy for All by 2030. But scholarship has not kept up with policy ambitions. This paper operationalises a sociotechnical transitions perspective to analyse for the first time the potential of new, mobileenabled, pay-as-you-go approaches to financing sustainable energy access, focussing on a case study of pay-as-you-go approaches to financing solar home systems in Kenya. The analysis calls into question the adequacy of the dominant, two-dimensional treatment of sustainable energy access in the literature as a purely financial/technology, economics/ engineering problem (which ignores sociocultural and political considerations) and demonstrates the value of a new research agenda that explicitly attends to theories of social change – even when, as in this paper, the focus is purely on finance. The paper demonstrates that sociocultural considerations cut across the literature's traditional two-dimensional analytic categories (technology and finance) and are material to the likely success of any technological or financial intervention. It also demonstrates that the alignment of new payas- you-go finance approaches with existing sociocultural practices of paying for energy can explain their early success and likely longevity relative to traditional finance approaches

Cross-level Validation of Topological Quantum Circuits

Quantum computing promises a new approach to solving difficult computational problems, and the quest of building a quantum computer has started. While the first attempts on construction were succesful, scalability has never been achieved, due to the inherent fragile nature of the quantum bits (qubits). From the multitude of approaches to achieve scalability topological quantum computing (TQC) is the most promising one, by being based on an flexible approach to error-correction and making use of the straightforward measurement-based computing technique. TQC circuits are defined within a large, uniform, 3-dimensional lattice of physical qubits produced by the hardware and the physical volume of this lattice directly relates to the resources required for computation. Circuit optimization may result in non-intuitive mismatches between circuit specification and implementation. In this paper we introduce the first method for cross-level validation of TQC circuits. The specification of the circuit is expressed based on the stabilizer formalism, and the stabilizer table is checked by mapping the topology on the physical qubit level, followed by quantum circuit simulation. Simulation results show that cross-level validation of error-corrected circuits is feasible.Comment: 12 Pages, 5 Figures. Comments Welcome. RC2014, Springer Lecture Notes on Computer Science (LNCS) 8507, pp. 189-200. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland (2014), Y. Shigeru and M.Shin-ichi (Eds.

Democratic Opposition Parties and Democratic Outcomes in Hybrid Regimes

Leading up to and following the end of the Cold War a new wave of democratisation commenced in Sub-Saharan Africa and around the world which, in both cases, has been characterized by “blocked transitions,” the “rise of competitive authoritarianism,” and the proliferation of hybrid regimes. This thesis is primarily concerned with “democratic” outcomes within these hybrid regimes. Excluding data from prior to the end of the Cold War in global investigations of democracy, this thesis utilizes a temporally truncated dataset to reanalyse dominant theories of democratisation both at the global and regional (Sub-Saharan Africa) level, finding that when contaminating effects are removed the strongest correlation with democratic outcomes lies in the strength of prominent opposition parties

“where Words Fail, Music Speaks”: Emotion Regulation Strategies Using Music When Experiencing Sadness

Past literature has suggested that individuals use the emotion regulation strategies of catharsis, emotional support, understanding emotions, and mood congruency when deciding to listen to sad music when feeling sad (Friedman et al., 2012; Garrido & Schubert, 2013; Sedikides, 1992; Taylor & Friedman, 2015; van Goethem & Sloboda, 2011). This thesis sought to confirm this by comparing these four strategies to revival, another emotion regulation strategy that uses happy music instead of sad music. The final sample of participants consisted of 122 undergraduate and graduate students at a Midwestern university. Participants completed questionnaires designed to measure how they typically regulate their emotions by listening to music, why they typically choose to listen to sad music, and a measure of current sadness before watching a sad film clip. After this clip, participants rated their feelings of sadness again and were randomly assigned one of the five emotion regulation strategies to use when selecting a song of their choice to listen to. After listening to music, participants completed additional questionnaires used to measure current sadness for a final time, their reasons for selecting their song of choice, and their satisfaction with their song choice. External raters were also utilized to rate the emotionality, arousal, and speed of the participant selected songs. Results indicated that all participants, regardless of emotion regulation strategy used, experienced significant decreases in feelings of sadness after listening to their songs of choice. There were no significant differences in how satisfied participants were with their song choices. Based on ratings provided by the external raters, song choices differed in that songs chosen by participants in the catharsis, emotional support, understanding emotions, and mood congruency conditions were rated as significantly sadder, calmer, and slower than songs chosen by participants in the revival condition. These results suggest that catharsis, emotional support, understanding emotions, and mood congruency are emotion regulation strategies that are used when experiencing feelings of sadness and a decision is made to listen to sad music. Future research would benefit from examining these emotion regulation strategies in other sadness-inducing situations and identifying any differences in their success

Toward Vision 2020: Organisational Learning Practices in Malaysia

The Malaysian Government has adopted organisational learning as a key strategy to assist the country achieve its Vision 2020. This paper reports on a study that investigated the organisational learning strategies practised in Malaysian organisations across four key industries: government, manufacturing, health and academic. Western authors define organisational learning as a process of knowledge acquisition that involves continuous change to create, acquire and transfer knowledge (Garvin 1993; Miller 1996; Williams 2001). The study sought to determine the extent of learning strategies currently being implemented to obtain and transfer knowledge, as well as assess further opportunities for take-up of learning strategies. Thirty-five managers, government officials and academics participated in in-depth interviews in 2004. Data was transcribed manually, and then interrogated using NVivo software to explore similarities and differences within and between the sectors. The findings suggest Malaysian organisations which are implementing organisational learning strategies prefer active and cooperative learning strategies that are delivered through structured training and development programs

Quantum computers based on electron spins controlled by ultra-fast, off-resonant, single optical pulses

We describe a fast quantum computer based on optically controlled electron spins in charged quantum dots that are coupled to microcavities. This scheme uses broad-band optical pulses to rotate electron spins and provide the clock signal to the system. Non-local two-qubit gates are performed by phase shifts induced by electron spins on laser pulses propagating along a shared waveguide. Numerical simulations of this scheme demonstrate high-fidelity single-qubit and two-qubit gates with operation times comparable to the inverse Zeeman frequency.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, introduction is clarified, the section on two-qubit gates was expanded and much more detail about gate fidelities is given, figures were modified, one figure replaced with a figure showing gate fidelities for relevant parameter

Electrophoretic mobility of a charged colloidal particle: A computer simulation study

We study the mobility of a charged colloidal particle in a constant homogeneous electric field by means of computer simulations. The simulation method combines a lattice Boltzmann scheme for the fluid with standard Langevin dynamics for the colloidal particle, which is built up from a net of bonded particles forming the surface of the colloid. The coupling between the two subsystems is introduced via friction forces. In addition explicit counterions, also coupled to the fluid, are present. We observe a non-monotonous dependence of the electrophoretic mobility on the bare colloidal charge. At low surface charge density we observe a linear increase of the mobility with bare charge, whereas at higher charges, where more than half of the ions are co-moving with the colloid, the mobility decreases with increasing bare charge.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure