Native and Non-Native Speaker Judgements on the Quality of Synthesized Speech

The difference between native speakers' and non-native speak- ers' naturalness judgements of synthetic speech is investigated. Similar/difference judgements are analysed via a multidimen- sional scaling analysis and compared to Mean opinion scores. It is shown that although the two groups generally behave in a similar manner the variance of non-native speaker judgements is generally higher. While both groups of subject can clearly distinguish natural speech from the best synthetic examples, the groups' responses to different artefacts present in the synthetic speech can vary

How Hollywood Films Portray Illness

The author speaks about Hollywood\u27s depiction of medicine and illness if often wrong and breaks down his analysis in this article

Post-Retirement Adjustments of Pension Benefits

This paper examines why pension plans increased their liabflities by giving benefit increases to persons no longer working even though almost al lof them were not required to do so by any legally enforceable contract. In our model workers and firms have implicit contracts under which post-retirement increases in benefits are purchased by workers through lower wages or initial benefits. Such arrangements permit both plans and workersto share the risk of uncertain rates of return. They also allow beneficiaries to invest at a higher net rate of return than they could obtain elsewhere because of tax advantages and, in large plans, economies of scale. We also discuss how post-retirement adjustments can be used to influence turnover. Some empirical implications of the model are tested over a sample of beneficiaries of defined benefit plans. The major empirical findings are:(1) There is strong evidence of compensating differentials in final salary and initial pension benefits for beneficiaries receiving post-retirement adjustments.(2) Regardless of how the size of pension plans is measured(beneficiaries, participants, amount of benefits paid), large pension plans provide larger post-retirement benefit increases.(3) Beneficiaries of collectively bargained plans are more likelyto receive benefit increases and, among those receiving benefit increases, receive larger increases.(4) Benefit increases are larger in percentage terms for those who have been retired the longest and for those with the most years of service.

Why Do Pensions Reduce Mobility?

Previous studies have found that workers who are covered by pensions are much less likely than other workers to leave their jobs, but the evidence on how specific pension characteristics affect turnover is inconclusive. This paper examines how mobility is affected by vesting standards, the compensation level, and the capital loss of pension wealth for job changers. In two different data sets, we find that the capital loss is strongly associated with lower turnover rates, whereas vesting and the compensation level have relatively little impact. Large capital losses are mainly associated with lower layoff rates rather than lower quit rates.

Pension Wealth, Age-Wealth Profiles and the Distribution of Net Worth

This study estimates the magnitude of pension wealth and compares pension wealth to net worth for households in the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finance (SCF). The SCF is the first data set to provide detailed information on both household finances and pension characteristics. The pension information is provided by the employer, so that it is much more detailed and likely to be more accurate than the pension data used in previous studies. Pension wealth was estimated under two sets of assumptions. Under the projected earnings approach, mean pension wealth is $98,291, which represents 43 percent of mean net worth for households with pensions. Under the legal method of calculating pension wealth, mean pension wealth is$47,541, which represents 26 percent of mean net worth for households with pensions. Both estimates are much larger than those obtained in earlier studies. The study also examines how estimates of inequality in the wealth distribution change when pension wealth is added to household balance sheets. Using a variety of methods and assumptions, the distribution becomes more equal when the definition of wealth is expanded to include pension assets.

Pensions, Bonding, and Lifetime Jobs

A well-known, if underappreciated, finding in the mobility literature is that turnover is much lower in jobs covered by pensions than in other jobs. This could result from capital losses for job changes created by most benefit formulas, the tendency of turnover-prone individuals to avoid jobs covered by pensions, or higher overall compensation levels in such jobs. A switching bivariate probit model of pension coverage and turnover is developed to estimate the effect of each of these factors. The results show that capital losses are the main factor responsible for lower turnover in jobs covered by pensions, but self-selection and compensation levels also play an important role. This is the first direct evidence that bonding is important for understanding long-term employment relationships.

Analysis of fluid/mechanical systems using EASY5

This paper illustrates how the use of a general analysis package can simplify modeling and analyzing fluid/mechanical systems. One such package is EASY5, a Boeing Computer Services product. The basic transmission line equations for modeling piped fluid systems are presented, as well as methods of incorporating these equations into the EASY5 environment. The paper describes how this analysis tool has been used to model several fluid subsystems of the Space Shuttle Orbiter

Disagreement in Partners’ Reports of Financial Difficulty

We use unique data in which both partners report about household finances to demonstrate that there is often disagreement about whether the household has experienced financial difficulty in the past year. Four alternative explanations for this disagreement are tested using the data. The results indicate that disagreement may be related to the severity of the underlying material hardship rather than to gender differences, information asymmetries, or individual (as opposed to household) views of financial difficulty. This implies that standard surveys which collect information about the household’s financial position from a representative individual may fail to completely characterize the nature of material hardship.

Bias Associated with Electrofishing Estimates for Mountain Whitefish in Rivers: Four Different Ways we Killed Whitefish this Summer

Habitat loss, competition from exotic species, and a warming environment clearly are changing cold-water aquatic communities in western North America. As a result, the need to accurately quantify and detect trends in many species, rather than just threatened and endangered salmonine stocks whose low densities often preclude statistical certainty, is critical. Conventional monitoring has ignored many sympatric species, like mountain whitefish (Prosopium williamsoni). One challenge to monitoring other species is a lack of information on how to accurately sample their densities and monitor population status. Despite their broad distribution and locally high densities across their range in western North America, anecdotal evidence suggests their densities are declining and their distributions are changing, similar to those of sympatric salmonines. However, other anecdotal evidence suggests they may be more sensitive to electrofishing than salmonines. Thus, conventional monitoring many lead to biased estimates. We evaluated effects of capture technique, handling, and density on the survival of caged mountain whitefish in four separate week-long simulated mark recapture estimate studies in three sections of the Bitterroot River, Montana. In each study mountain whitefish succumbed to a variety of stressors and mortality ranged from 46-87 percent. Mortality was significantly greater than compared to paired treatments with rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), where none died. As a result of the effects of a variety of stressors on survival and condition, we caution against mark recapture estimates for mountain whitefish in rivers