Speech data acquisition: the underestimated challenge

(This version makes 1 correction to the references: BARBOSA 2012 was cited in the text but missing from the list of references.)International audienceThe second half of the 20th century was the dawn of information technology; and we now live in the digital age. Experimental studies of prosody develop at a fast pace, in the context of an "explosion of evidence" (Janet Pierrehumbert, Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago). The ease with which anyone can now do recordings should not veil the complexity of the data collection process, however. This article aims at sensitizing students and scientists from the various fields of speech and language research to the fact that speech-data acquisition is an underestimated challenge. Eliciting data that reflect the communicative processes at play in language requires special precautions in devising experimental procedures and a fundamental understanding of both ends of the elicitation process: speaker and recording facilities. The article compiles basic information on each of these requirements and recapitulates some pieces of practical advice, drawing many examples from prosody studies, a field where the thoughtful conception of experimental protocols is especially crucial

Boston Hospitality Review: Fall 2014

Boston Market Hotel Review by Andrea Foster -- The Prevalence of Longevity Amongst Leading Brands by Bradford Hudson -- European River Cruising On The Rise Among American Tourists by Melinda Jàszbernèny -- Building A Spirit of Inclusion: Pan Am and The Cultural Revolution by Mirembe B. Birigwa -- Re-imagining The Hotel Guestroom for The Millennial Business Traveler by Alexis Oliver -- Introducing RevPASH: The Free Webtool Application by Peter Szend

Phonetic lessons from automatic phonemic transcription: preliminary reflections on Na (Sino-Tibetan) and Tsuut’ina (Dene) data

International audienceAutomatic phonemic transcription tools now reach high levels of accuracy on a single speaker with relatively small amounts of training data: on the order of 100 to 250 minutes of transcribed speech. Beyond its practical usefulness for language documentation, use of automatic transcription also yields some insights for phoneticians. The present report illustrates this by going into qualitative error analysis on two test cases, Yongning Na (Sino-Tibetan) and Tsuut’ina (Dene). Among other benefits, error analysis allows for a renewed exploration of phonetic detail: examining the output of phonemic transcription software compared with spectrographic and aural evidence. From a methodological point of view, the present report is intended as a case study in Computational Language Documentation: an interdisciplinary approach that associates fieldworkers (“diversity linguists”) and computer scientists with phoneticians/phonologists

AI naturalists might hold the key to unlocking biodiversity data in social media imagery

The increasing availability of digital images, coupled with sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for image classification, presents an exciting opportunity for biodiversity researchers to create new datasets of species observations. We investigated whether an AI plant species classifier could extract previously unexploited biodiversity data from social media photos (Flickr). We found over 60,000 geolocated images tagged with the keyword “flower” across an urban and rural location in the UK and classified these using AI, reviewing these identifications and assessing the representativeness of images. Images were predominantly biodiversity focused, showing single species. Non-native garden plants dominated, particularly in the urban setting. The AI classifier performed best when photos were focused on single native species in wild situations but also performed well at higher taxonomic levels (genus and family), even when images substantially deviated from this. We present a checklist of questions that should be considered when undertaking a similar analysis

Translating between the roots of the identity in quantum computers

The Clifford+T quantum computing gate library for single qubit gates can create all unitary matrices that are generated by the group . The matrix T can be considered the fourth root of Pauli Z, since T-4 = Z or also the eighth root of the identity I. The Hadamard matrix H can be used to translate between the Pauli matrices, since (HTH)(4) gives Pauli X. We are generalizing both these roots of the Pauli matrices (or roots of the identity) and translation matrices to investigate the groups they generate: the so-called Pauli root groups. In this work we introduce a formalization of such groups, study finiteness and infiniteness properties, and precisely determine equality and subgroup relations

Noncontact atomic force microscopy simulator with phase-locked-loop controlled frequency detection and excitation

A simulation of an atomic force microscope operating in the constant amplitude dynamic mode is described. The implementation mimics the electronics of a real setup including a digital phase-locked loop (PLL). The PLL is not only used as a very sensitive frequency detector, but also to generate the time-dependent phase shifted signal driving the cantilever. The optimum adjustments of individual functional blocks and their joint performance in typical experiments are determined in detail. Prior to testing the complete setup, the performances of the numerical PLL and of the amplitude controller were ascertained to be satisfactory compared to those of the real components. Attention is also focused on the issue of apparent dissipation, that is, of spurious variations in the driving amplitude caused by the nonlinear interaction occurring between the tip and the surface and by the finite response times of the various controllers. To do so, an estimate of the minimum dissipated energy that is detectable by the instrument upon operating conditions is given. This allows us to discuss the relevance of apparent dissipation that can be conditionally generated with the simulator in comparison to values reported experimentally. The analysis emphasizes that apparent dissipation can contribute to the measured dissipation up to 15% of the intrinsic dissipated energy of the cantilever interacting with the surface, but can be made negligible when properly adjusting the controllers, the PLL gains and the scan speed. It is inferred that the experimental values of dissipation usually reported in the literature cannot only originate in apparent dissipation, which favors the hypothesis of "physical" channels of dissipation

La metodología de la enseñanza de la música en los centros educativos del nivel primario en la ciudad de Santiago de Veraguas

Esta investigación titulada: La metodología de la enseñanza de la música, en los centros educativos del nivel primario de la ciudad de Santiago de Veraguas, tuvo como propósito indagar acerca de la enseñanza de la música. Los educadores en las escuelas primarias de esta región de Panamá,utilizaron como diseño: el holístico inductivo, porque parte de los aspectos generales y exponen las características del problema estudiado, por lo que también es de tipo descriptivo. Se permitió la recolección de la información a través de una encuesta sobre las experiencias en relación con la temática del estudio y se complementó con observaciones directas en las aulas y los aportes de los informantes claves. Los hallazgos revelaron que es necesario que el Ministerio de Educación, nombre educadores especializados en música para mejorar su enseñanza en el nivel primario, además de implementar capacitaciones para los docentes a fin de orientar su trabajo pedagógico en la enseñanza de esta asignatura. El estudio recoge el aporte significativo de autores que con sus escritos han deseado ayudar a mejorar la metodología de esta materia en la escuela primaria panameña. La propuesta que se presenta describe algunos métodos y estrategias para que el docente en el aula mejore la enseñanza de esta asignatura tan valiosa en la formación integral del estudiante de este nivel de escolarida

Integrating Automatic Transcription into the Language Documentation Workflow: Experiments with Na Data and the Persephone Toolkit

Automatic speech recognition tools have potential for facilitating language documentation, but in practice these tools remain little-used by linguists for a variety of reasons, such as that the technology is still new (and evolving rapidly), user-friendly interfaces are still under development, and case studies demonstrating the practical usefulness of automatic recognition in a low-resource setting remain few. This article reports on a success story in integrating automatic transcription into the language documentation workflow, specifically for Yongning Na, a language of Southwest China. Using Persephone, an open-source toolkit, a single-speaker speech transcription tool was trained over five hours of manually transcribed speech. The experiments found that this method can achieve a remarkably low error rate (on the order of 17%), and that automatic transcriptions were useful as a canvas for the linguist. The present report is intended for linguists with little or no knowledge of speech processing. It aims to provide insights into (i) the way the tool operates and (ii) the process of collaborating with natural language processing specialists. Practical recommendations are offered on how to anticipate the requirements of this type of technology from the early stages of data collection in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor activity in patients with gene-rearrangement positive non-small cell lung cancer-an IMMUNOTARGET case series.

BACKGROUND Prior IMMUNOTARGET registry data had suggested that responses to immune [anti PD(L)1] monotherapy in gene-arranged non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were rare or absent, depending on the specific oncogene. METHODS IMMUNOTARGET sites reporting prior registry data or new individual cases of gene rearranged NSCLC seeming to benefit from immune monotherapy were explored in detail looking to both validate their diagnosis of a functional gene rearrangement and to look for features potentially differentiating them from other such cases associated with low response rates. RESULTS Five cases of NSCLC with a gene rearrangement with reported responses or prolonged stabilization from immune monotherapy were identified in total. All had little or no prior smoking history and had programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) values ranging from zero to 100%. A confirmed rearrangement partner was reported in only 2 of the cases (CD74-ROS1 and KIF5B-RET), however in one of the other three cases [analplastic lymophoma kinase (ALK)], significant benefit from a relevant prior targeted therapy was noted, also consistent with the rearrangement status being correctly assigned. CONCLUSIONS Not all driver oncogene subtypes of NSCLC are equally responsive to immune monotherapy, however even among patients with well-validated gene rearranged NSCLC which has traditionally been considered immune hyporesponsive, objective responses can occur. Additional explorations of the features associated with and underlying the immune hypo-responsiveness of most, but not all, cases of gene-rearranged NSCLC are required