04. Population Trends of Breeding Grassland Birds at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, 1985–2015

We use data from ongoing bird monitoring programs to assess long-term population trends at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in northeastern Illinois. Midewin is the nation’s first National Tallgrass Prairie and was established in 1996 on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant. Annual bird monitoring began at the site in the early 1980s when it was discovered that the pastures and hayfields maintained by the Army contained significant grassland bird populations. Ninety-four species of breeding birds were recorded at the site between 2009 and 2015, including large populations of several grasslandobligate birds including dickcissel (Spiza americana), eastern meadowlark (Sturnella magna), grasshopper sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum), bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), and Henslow’s sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii). Trend analyses showed that populations of bobolink, grasshopper sparrow, and savannah sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) were stable on the site between 1985 and 2015, whereas dickcissel and Henslow’s sparrow showed significant population increases during this interval. Three species declined significantly between 1985 and 2015: eastern meadowlark, upland sandpiper (Bartramia longicauda), and vesper sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus). The stable population trends for bobolink, grasshopper sparrow, and savannah sparrow contrast sharply with statewide and regional trends for these species, which show large population declines. The recent introduction of bison to the site may help provide the habitat structure needed to maintain large grassland bird populations at the site

A 6 mW, 5,000-Word Real-Time Speech Recognizer Using WFST Models

We describe an IC that provides a local speech recognition capability for a variety of electronic devices. We start with a generic speech decoder architecture that is programmable with industry-standard WFST and GMM speech models. Algorithm and architectural enhancements are incorporated in order to achieve real-time performance amid system-level constraints on internal memory size and external memory bandwidth. A 2.5 × 2.5 mm test chip implementing this architecture was fabricated using a 65 nm process. The chip performs a 5,000 word recognition task in real-time with 13.0% word error rate, 6.0 mW core power consumption, and a search efficiency of approximately 16 nJ per hypothesis.Quanta Computer (Firm)Irwin Mark Jacobs and Joan Klein Jacobs Presidential Fellowshi

Unsupervised Lexicon Discovery from Acoustic Input

We present a model of unsupervised phonological lexicon discovery -- the problem of simultaneously learning phoneme-like and word-like units from acoustic input. Our model builds on earlier models of unsupervised phone-like unit discovery from acoustic data (Lee and Glass, 2012), and unsupervised symbolic lexicon discovery using the Adaptor Grammar framework (Johnson et al., 2006), integrating these earlier approaches using a probabilistic model of phonological variation. We show that the model is competitive with state-of-the-art spoken term discovery systems, and present analyses exploring the model's behavior and the kinds of linguistic structures it learns

Infrared Spectroscopy of GX 1+4/V2116 Oph: Evidence for a Fast Red Giant Wind?

We present infrared spectroscopy of the low-mass X-ray binary GX 1+4/V2116 Oph. This symbiotic binary consists of a 2-min accretion-powered pulsar and an M5 III red giant. A strong He I 1.083 micron emission line with a pronounced P Cygni profile was observed. From the blue edge of this feature, we infer an outflow velocity of 250(50) km/s. This is an order of magnitude faster than a typical red giant wind, and we suggest that radiation from the accretion disk or the neutron star may contribute to the acceleration of the outflow. We infer a wind mass loss rate of around 10^-6 Msun/yr. Accretion from such a strong stellar wind provides a plausible alternative to Roche lobe overflow for supplying the accretion disk which powers the X-ray source. The H I Paschen beta and He I 1.083 micron lines showed no evidence for the dramatic changes previously reported in some optical lines, and no evidence for pulsations at the 2-min pulsar period.Comment: 11 pages including 2 PS figures. To appear in ApJ Letter

Wait-learning: Leveraging conversational dead time for second language education

Second-language learners are often unable to find time for language practice due to constraints in their daily lives. In this paper, we examine how brief moments of waiting during a person's existing social conversations can be leveraged for second language practice, even if the conversation is exchanged in the first language. We present an instant messaging (IM) prototype, WaitChatter, that supports the notion of wait-learning by displaying contextually relevant foreign language vocabulary and micro-quizzes while the user awaits a response from her conversant. The foreign translations are displayed just-in-time in the context of the conversation to promote incidental learning. In a preliminary study of WaitChatter, we found that participants were able to integrate second language learning into their existing instant messaging activities, and that a particularly opportune time to embed foreign language elements may be immediately after the learner sends a chat message.Lincoln Laborator

Open-vocabulary spoken utterance retrieval using confusion networks

This paper presents a novel approach to open-vocabulary spoken utterance retrieval using confusion networks. If out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words are present in queries and the corpus, word-based indexing will not be sufficient. For this problem, we apply phone confusion networks and combine them with word confusion networks. With this approach, we can generate a more compact index table that enables robust keyword matching compared with typical lattice-based methods. In the retrieval experiments with speech recordings in MIT lecture corpus, our method using phone confusion networks outperformed lattice-based methods especially for OOV queries

The effect of fuel sprays on emissions from a gas turbine combustor

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76889/1/AIAA-1979-1321.pd