An Investigation into the use of the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) as a Means of Distribution Virtual Reality Tourist Information Across the World Wide Web

The purpose of the work described was to investigate the use of the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) as a tool to distribute tourist information across the web. This was done by the creation of a web site containing two Virtual Reality models of tourist interest. These were then valuated using a number of techniques both online and offline. This paper describes the methods used to create and evaluate these models as well as giving a overview of some of the results obtained

An application of desktop virtual reality to the hospitality industry

This paper discusses research being carried out to produce real-time interactive Virtual Reality (VR) models of some areas of Tourism interest in Ireland. In particular, issues concerning the development of prototype VR models of an ancient Irish monastic village are described

Irishmen in the British Service during the French Revolutionary Wars, 1793-1802

The French Revolutionary wars had their origins in changing political and social attitudes during the eighteenth century. The Age of Enlightenment, with its ideas of citizenship, human rights and republicanism, inspired reformers to adopt radical approaches to politics and this in turn gave rise to the Age of Revolution. The notion of the common people challenging the authority of absolute monarchy became reality, the most prominent example being the French Revolution. Other European nations, fearing a spread of French power and revolutionary ideals, declared war on France, thus beginning a period of warfare that would last for over twenty years. Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain in February 1793, drawing Britain into a conflict that marked a major turning point in military history

FS ≠ FS (Formulaicity and Prosody)

Research in recent years has convincingly shown the importance in informal speech of formulaic sequences (FSs), or pre-fabricated linguistic segments. Work being undertaken at the Technological University Dublin (DIT) aims to extend research into FSs by including the aspect of prosody. In this presentation we outline the construction of a novel speech corpus at DIT, based on intelligent access to natural dialogue recorded at a high audio quality. Search strings can be examined in their phonetic and dialogic context, and what Cauldwell called the ‘acoustic blur of speech’ made accessible to learner and researcher alike by means of DIT’s slow-down technology. This learning and research asset allows informal speech to be studied as a dynamic phenomenon rather than via the static record of transcription. The presenters will discuss initial findings of the effectiveness of DIT’s slow-down technology with Chinese learners of English, specifically in the area of formulaic sequences. We examine the role of technology in bridging the intonational gap between Mandarin prosody, which is mainly concerned with lexical demarcation, and English prosody, which works in larger units. We also demonstrate the effect of speed of delivery and pitch range on FSs as they are spoken, and how their communicative function changes with lower speech rates and increased tonal range. The presentation will round off by locating the DIT corpus in the context of existing corpora and its relevance to language learners, linguistic researchers and materials developers

An Expert System-Based Approach to Hospitality Company Diagnosis

This paper describes the development of a prototype Expert System-based Analysis and Diagnostic (ESAD) package for the Hotel and Catering Industry. This computerised tool aids the hospitality manager in methodically scrutinising the hotel unit and environment, combining key information with systematic reasoning. The system searches through its extensive knowledge base, investigating complicated relationships. The number of possibilities considered is increased which will broaden the depth and breadth of the analysis and therefore should improve the quality of the managers decision making

The Need for a Speech Corpus

This paper outlines the ongoing construction of a speech corpus for use by applied linguists and advanced EFL/ESL students. The first section establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills and pronunciation practice for EFL/ESL students. It argues for the need to use authentic native-to-native speech in the teaching/learning process so as to promote social inclusion and contextualises this within the literature, based mainly on the work of Swan, Brown and McCarthy. The second part addresses features of native speech flow which cause difficulties for EFL/ESL students (Brown, Cauldwell) and establishes the need for improvements in the teaching of listening skills. Examples are given of reduced forms characteristic of relaxed native speech, and how these can be made accessible for study using the Technological University Dublin’s slow-down technology, which gives students more time to study native speech features, without tonal distortion. The final section introduces a novel Speech Corpus being developed at DIT. It shows the limits of traditional corpora and outlines the general requirements of a Speech Corpus. This tool–which will satisfy the needs of teachers, learners and researchers–will link digitally recorded, natural, native-to-native speech so that each transcript segment will be linked to its associated sound file. Users will be able to locate desired speech strings, play, compare and contrast them—and slow them down for more detailed study

Subradiant edge states in an atom chain with waveguide-mediated hopping

We analyze the topological and dynamical properties of a system formed by two chains of identical emitters coupled to a waveguide, whose guided modes induce all-to-all excitation hopping. We find that, in the single excitation limit, the bulk topological properties of the Hamiltonian that describes the coherent dynamics of the system are identical to the ones of a one-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. However, due to the long-range character of the exchange interactions, we find weakening of the bulk-boundary correspondence. This is illustrated by the variation of the localization length and mass gap of the edge states encountered as we vary the lattice constant and offset between the chains. Most interestingly, we analytically identify parameter regimes where edge states arise which are fully localized to the boundaries of the chain, independently of the system size. These edge states are shown to be not only robust against positional disorder of the atoms in the chain, but also subradiant, i.e., dynamically stable even in the presence of inevitable dissipation processes, establishing the capacity of waveguide QED systems for the realization of symmetry protected topological phases

DIT’s Dynamic Speech Corpus and Dialogic Fluency

Monologic fluency is characterised by a lack of pauses and a smooth oral delivery. Dialogic fluency in L1-L1 unscripted speech, however, is characterized by seeming dis-fluency, hesitations, false starts etc. Yet the L1 speakers make perfect sense to each other. The Dynamic Speech Corpus (DSC) currently being developed under the FLUENT project at the Technological University Dublin (DIT). In dialogue, language represents only one of the communication channels at play in what is a dynamic, unscripted social interchange rather than a stand-alone linguistic performance. The language stream is supplemented by pragmatic considerations and a greater emphasis on prosody. DIT’s DSC is based on natural, native-to-native dialogues and recorded at a high level of audio quality and is being developed mainly for autonomous learners. It will afford access to a unique audio resource based on unscripted dialogues between friends and acquaintances, exemplifying informal, native-speaker speech and natural turn-taking, rather than scripted interactions. The presentation demonstrates how users can locate and study samples of L1-to-L1 speech, as well as various phonetic phenomena such as speed-induced elisions in their full, pragmatic, dialogic context. This will allow the learner user to focus on the manner in which native speakers produce reduced forms and slow them down for detailed study. The corpus will be a rich resource for users who wish to study the communicative value of prosody and formulaic sequences, and particular attention will be paid to turn-taking strategies, along with other forms of interaction, which some researchers see as a ‘fifth skill’

Generation of High Quality Audio Natural Emotional Speech Corpus using Task Based Mood Induction

Detecting emotional dimensions [1] in speech is an area of great research interest, notably as a means of improving human computer interaction in areas such as speech synthesis [2]. In this paper, a method of obtaining high quality emotional audio speech assets is proposed. The methods of obtaining emotional content are subject to considerable debate, with distinctions between acted [3] and natural [4] speech being made based on the grounds of authenticity. Mood Induction Procedures (MIP’s) [5] are often employed to stimulate emotional dimensions in a controlled environment. This paper details experimental procedures based around MIP 4, using performance related tasks to engender activation and evaluation responses from the participant. Tasks are specified involving two participants, who must co-operate in order to complete a given task [6] within the allotted time. Experiments designed in this manner also allow for the specification of high quality audio assets (notably 24bit/192Khz [7]), within an acoustically controlled environment [8], thus providing means of reducing unwanted acoustic factors within the recorded speech signal. Once suitable assets are obtained, they will be assessed for the purposes of segregation into differing emotional dimensions. The most statistically robust method of evaluation involves the use of listening tests to determine the perceived emotional dimensions within an audio clip. In this experiment, the FeelTrace [9] rating tool is employed within user listening tests to specify the categories of emotional dimensions for each audio clip

HTML5 and the Learner of Spoken Languages

Traditional corpora are not renowned for being user friendly. If learners are to derive maximum benefit from speech corpora, then better interfaces are needed. This paper proposes such a role for HTML5. DIT’s dynamic speech corpus, FLUENT, contains a limited series of informal dialogues between friends and acquaintances. They are characterised by naturalness and their audio quality and marked-up using a schema which allows learners to retrieve features of spoken language, such as speaker intention, formulaicity and prosodic characteristics such as speed of delivery. The requirement to combine audio assets and synchronous text animation has in the past necessitated the use of browser ‘plug-in’ technologies, such as Adobe Flash. Plug-in-based systems all suffer from major drawbacks. They are not installed by default on deployed browsers. More critically they obscure the underlying speech corpus structure. Also proprietary UIs offer no standard way of dealing with accessibility or dynamic interface reconfiguration, e.g. moving from corpus playback to concordance views. This makes design of a unified interface framework, with audio playback, synchronous text and speech, more difficult. Given the profusion of plug-in architectures and plug-in types, it is clear that such an environment is unsustainable for building tools for speech corpus visualisation. In order to overcome these challenges, FLUENT drew heavily on the HTML5 specification coupled with a user-centred design for L2 learners to specify and develop scalable, reusable and accessible UIs for many devices.This paper describes the design of the corpus schema and its close integration with the UI model