MCE 2018: The 1st Multi-target Speaker Detection and Identification Challenge Evaluation

The Multi-target Challenge aims to assess how well current speech technology is able to determine whether or not a recorded utterance was spoken by one of a large number of blacklisted speakers. It is a form of multi-target speaker detection based on real-world telephone conversations. Data recordings are generated from call center customer-agent conversations. The task is to measure how accurately one can detect 1) whether a test recording is spoken by a blacklisted speaker, and 2) which specific blacklisted speaker was talking. This paper outlines the challenge and provides its baselines, results, and discussions.Comment: http://mce.csail.mit.edu . arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1807.0666

East Meets East: Chinese Discover the Modern World in Japan, 1854-1898

Opinion Foru

Energy Transmission into the Human Hand from Vibrating Tools

A method for calculating power transmitted to the hands of operators who use vibrating hand tools is presented. Results that relate to a comprehensive multidiscipline NIOSH field study of several hundred chipper and grinder workers who used pneumatic hand tools are discussed. These results indicated that the total power in the frequency range of 6.3 to 1000 Hz transmitted to the hand ranged from 1080 to 7230 J/s for the chisel and from 0.852 to 157 J/s the handle of chipping hammers. For pneumatic grinders the power transmitted to the hands of the tool operators was in the range of 0.00658 to 0.235 J/s over the same frequency range

Farm Labor Monopsony: Farm Business And The Child Hierarchical Model Of Fertility

Arthur Lewis (1954) classic article on duel labor markets suggests that subsistence labor, due to high fertility and overpopulation, causes low wages.  Basu (1999) and Dessy (2000) show a compelling theory for high fertility in developing countries where regions go into a poverty trap of low labor demand, low wages and overpopulation.  An alternative explanation for overpopulation has to do with a simple farm business model where farming families have a labor monopsony for their own child labor.  Child labor, not from society at large but from the farm family’s own children, can be a source of labor to run a farm business.  The farm business model shows how, due to simple monopsony characteristics, it may be cheaper for a farmer to use fertility induced, family child labor, rather than expensive non-family labor, to provide his labor supply and increase his rent.  Children can provide the farmer with labor that has a psychological barrier to exit, making it easy to add human capital without paying a high wage.  However, due to sibling rivalry and child psychological growth stages of binding, delegating and expelling, older children will be forced to leave the farm inducing greater fertility to replace them.  We assume capital investment options and the use of technology are limited for such farms due to monsoon rainy seasons, dense forests or steep hills, which suggests the need for labor intensive farms.  The end result is that child labor is a way to provide significant profit to a farm business.

The Legacies of Deindustrialization and the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor

Creation of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and release of a master plan for cultural and physical resource development is creating a new standard for private, local, state, and federal partnerships. Actions by the Corridor\u27s partners are shaped by both past and contemporary economic development issues. Using tools of humanistic inquiry — history, economics, preservation, sociology, political science — for social and economic purposes signifies far-reaching shifts and possibilities for public planning and policy philosophies in both public and private agencies

Deep Knowledge: A Strategy For University Budgetary Cuts

During and after the Financial Crisis of 2008, many institutions of higher learning have had revenue and budgetary reductions, forcing them to make severe university budget cuts and university reductions in force.  Often the university cuts are preceded by a process of evaluation of academic programs where institutions determine what they stand for and value.  One option, when forced to downsize, is to use a business model, such as Sullivan (2004) explains, where high-value, low-cost programs are kept and low-value, high-cost programs are cut.  However, a business model of education does not reflect the true social value of education or the importance of arts, sciences and humanities, where students learn how to struggle with, write about and understand the world.  John Henry Cardinal Newman’s (1852) treatise, The Idea of a University, suggests an alternative strategy of cost cutting that has to do with deep knowledge, i.e. keep the oldest programs in existence on a given university.  Using the deep knowledge concept, a university will cut young (junior programs) first and retain old (senior) programs until the very last, rather than deciding cuts based on a business model.  The deep knowledge concept emphasizes a Socratic ideal where professors and students wrestle over concepts, such as the meaning of “beauty.