Detecting Prominence in Conversational Speech: Pitch Accent, Givenness and Focus

The variability and reduction that are characteristic of talking in natural interaction make it very difficult to detect prominence in conversational speech. In this paper, we present analytic studies and automatic detection results for pitch accent, as well as on the realization of information structure phenomena like givenness and focus. For pitch accent, our conditional random field model combining acoustic and textual features has an accuracy of 78%, substantially better than chance performance of 58%. For givenness and focus, our analysis demonstrates that even in conversational speech there are measurable differences in acoustic properties and that an automatic detector for these categories can perform significantly above chance

TRAVEL PREDICTION APPLICATION

The present disclosure is directed to a method and system for predicting cardholder\u27s travel behavior using payment transaction data such as credit card transaction data. The method comprises receiving, by a server computer, a plurality of authorization request messages from a plurality of access devices. Thereafter, the method comprises storing, by the server computer, data relating to the plurality of authorization request messages. Further, the method comprises generating, by the server computer, a model from the stored data. Once the model is generated, the method comprises receiving, by the server computer, a request relating to a user or a - class of users. Thereafter, server computer determines a predicted travel behavior for the user, or the class of users using the model and sends a response to the request, the response comprising the predicted travel behavior

TRAVEL PREDICTION APPLICATION

The present disclosure is directed to a method and system for predicting cardholder\u27s travel behavior using payment transaction data such as credit card transaction data. The method comprises receiving, by a server computer, a plurality of authorization request messages from a plurality of access devices. Thereafter, the method comprises storing, by the server computer, data relating to the plurality of authorization request messages. Further, the method comprises generating, by the server computer, a model from the stored data. Once the model is generated, the method comprises receiving, by the server computer, a request relating to a user or a - class of users. Thereafter, server computer determines a predicted travel behavior for the user, or the class of users using the model and sends a response to the request, the response comprising the predicted travel behavior

Private Index Coding

This paper has been presented at: 2018 IEEE International Symposium On Information Theory (ISIT)We study the problem of index coding under the privacy requirement that receivers do not learn anything more than the messages they already have as side information and the message they want from the server. To achieve this private index coding, we consider the use of secret keys that are shared among various subsets of users and the server. We characterize key access structures that allow private index coding. For up to three receivers, we characterize the rate region of transmission and key rates and show that scalar coding is optimal; we also show that scalar linear codes are sub-optimal for four receivers. Furthermore, when no keys are available, we consider a weaker notion of privacy analogous to weak security. Finally, for a different setting in which the server is allowed to send messages exclusively to a subset of users, we study the number of transmissions required to achieve error-free decoding and privacy.Prabhakaran and N. Karamchandani acknowledge initial discussions with Parathasarathi Panda and Vaishakh Ravi. V. Narayanan was supported by a travel fellowship from the Sarojini Damodaran Foundation. This work was done while Jithin Ravi was at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and IIT Bombay. He has received funding from ERC grant 714161

Development of sunlight-driven eutectic phase change material nanocomposite for applications in solar water heating

Organic phase change materials (PCMs) have been utilized as latent heat energy storage medium for effective thermal management. In this work, a PCM nanocomposite, consisting of a mixture of two organic PCMs (referred to as eutectic gel PCM) and minimal amount (0.5 wt%) of nanographite (NG) as a supporting material, was prepared. Differential scanning calorimeter was used to determine the melting temperature and latent heat of pristine PCM, paraffin (61.5 °C and 161.5 J/g), eutectic gel PCM (54 °C and 158 J/g) and eutectic gel PCM nanocomposite (53.5 °C and 155 J/g). The prepared PCM nanocomposites exhibited enhanced thermal conductivity and ultrafast thermal charging characteristics. The nanocomposites were employed for two different applications: (i) providing hot water using an indigenously fabricated solar water heating (SWH) system and (ii) solar rechargeable glove that can be rapidly warmed and used. Experimental results on SWH system show that the use of PCM nanocomposites helps to increase the charging rate of PCM while reducing the discharging rate of heat by PCM to water, thus enhancing the maximum utilization of solar energy and hence improving the efficiency of the SWH system. The experimental results on solar rechargeable glove revealed that the glove has the ability to retain the temperature up to 3 hours