Speaker-independent emotion recognition exploiting a psychologically-inspired binary cascade classification schema

In this paper, a psychologically-inspired binary cascade classification schema is proposed for speech emotion recognition. Performance is enhanced because commonly confused pairs of emotions are distinguishable from one another. Extracted features are related to statistics of pitch, formants, and energy contours, as well as spectrum, cepstrum, perceptual and temporal features, autocorrelation, MPEG-7 descriptors, Fujisakis model parameters, voice quality, jitter, and shimmer. Selected features are fed as input to K nearest neighborhood classifier and to support vector machines. Two kernels are tested for the latter: Linear and Gaussian radial basis function. The recently proposed speaker-independent experimental protocol is tested on the Berlin emotional speech database for each gender separately. The best emotion recognition accuracy, achieved by support vector machines with linear kernel, equals 87.7%, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches. Statistical analysis is first carried out with respect to the classifiers error rates and then to evaluate the information expressed by the classifiers confusion matrices. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Adaptive model-driven user interface development systems

Adaptive user interfaces (UIs) were introduced to address some of the usability problems that plague many software applications. Model-driven engineering formed the basis for most of the systems targeting the development of such UIs. An overview of these systems is presented and a set of criteria is established to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of the state-of-the-art, which is categorized under architectures, techniques, and tools. A summary of the evaluation is presented in tables that visually illustrate the fulfillment of each criterion by each system. The evaluation identified several gaps in the existing art and highlighted the areas of promising improvement

MariX, an advanced MHz-class repetition rate X-ray source for linear regime time-resolved spectroscopy and photon scattering

The need of a fs-scale pulsed, high repetition rate, X-ray source for time-resolved fine analysis of matter (spectroscopy and photon scattering) in the linear response regime is addressed by the conceptual design of a facility called MariX (Multi-disciplinary Advanced Research Infrastructure for the generation and application of X-rays) outperforming current X-ray sources for the declared scope. MariX is based on the original design of a two-pass two-way superconducting linear electron accelerator, equipped with an arc compressor, to be operated in CW mode (1 MHz). MariX provides FEL emission in the range 0.2–8 keV with 108 photons per pulse ideally suited for photoelectric effect and inelastic X-ray scattering experiments. The accelerator complex includes an early stage that supports an advanced inverse Compton source of very high-flux hard X-rays of energies up to 180 keV that is well adapted for large area radiological imaging, realizing a broad science programme and serving a multidisciplinary user community, covering fundamental science of matter and application to life sciences, including health at preclinical and clinical level

Design of analog front-ends for the RD53 demonstrator chip

The RD53 collaboration is developing a large scale pixel front-end chip, which will be a tool to evaluate the performance of 65 nm CMOS technology in view of its application to the readout of the innermost detector layers of ATLAS and CMS at the HL-LHC. Experimental results of the characterization of small prototypes will be discussed in the frame of the design work that is currently leading to the development of the large scale demonstrator chip RD53A to be submitted in early 2017. The paper is focused on the analog processors developed in the framework of the RD53 collaboration, including three time over threshold front-ends, designed by INFN Torino and Pavia, University of Bergamo and LBNL and a zero dead time front-end based on flash ADC designed by a joint collaboration between the Fermilab and INFN. The paper will also discuss the radiation tolerance features of the front-end channels, which were exposed to up to 800 Mrad of total ionizing dose to reproduce the system operation in the actual experiment

Home-owned versus foreign-owned firms in the UK automotive industry : exploring the microfoundations of ambidextrous production and supply chain positioning

The UK automotive industry is home to a large number of foreign firms, demonstrating the open nature of competition. However, the industry necessitates both exploitative and explorative capabilities. Contingency theory suggests that firms align their internal structure with contextual factors. As such, the aims of this study were to investigate whether it was possible to distinguish home-owned (UK) and foreign-owned firms based upon: a) the microfoundations of ambidextrous production, which are conceptualised as lean and agile routines; and b) the tier at which these firms operate in the automotive supply chain. Survey data were collected from 85 home-owned and 55 foreign-owned firms within the UK Midlands automotive industry. Logistic regression results revealed that home-owned firms were significantly more likely to be implementing explorative (agile) production methods, whereas foreign-owned firms were significantly more likely to be implementing exploitative (lean) production. Home-owned and foreign-owned firms were found to be significantly more likely to be operating upstream and downstream in the automotive supply chain respectively. Thus, the findings support a contingency theory explanation, suggesting that firms align their performance priorities with contextual factors, but we argue that home-owned and foreign-owned firms have evolved to compete based on their different innovative capabilities, which are located at different tiers of the automotive supply chain. On this basis, although neither home-owned nor foreign-owned firms were found to be endogenously ambidextrous, we argue that foreign-owned firms internationalise into the UK automotive sector to exploit the explorative capabilities acquired by home-owned firms operating upstream in automotive supply chains, thus enabling ambidextrous capabilities at an exogenous, industrial level

Notational support for the design of augmented reality systems

There is growing interest in augmented reality (AR) as technologies are developed that enable ever smoother integration of computer capabilities into the physical objects that populate the everyday lives of users. However, despite this growing importance of AR technologies, there is little tool support for the design of AR systems. In this paper, we present two notations, ASUR and UMLi, that can be used to capture design-significant features of AR systems. ASUR is a notation for designing user interactions in AR environments. UMLi is a notation for designing the user interfaces to interactive systems. We use each notation to specify the design of an augmented museum gallery. We then compare the two notations in terms of the types of support they provide and consider how they might be used together