Recognize Tone Languages Using Pitch Information

An innovative method for speech recognition of tone languages is reported. By definition, the tone of a syllable is determined by the pitch contour of the entire syllable. We propose that the pitch information on the main vowel of a syllable is sufficient to determine the tone of that syllable. Therefore, to recognize tone languages, only main vowels are needed to associate with tones. The number of basic phonetic units required to recognize tone languages is greatly reduced. We then report experimental results on Cantonese and Mandarin. In both cases, using the main vowel method, while the number of phonemes and the quantity of training data are substantially reduced, the decoding accuracy is improved over other methods. Possible applications of the new method to other tone languages, including Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Swedish, and Norwegian are discussed

A portable micro glucose sensor based on copper-based nanocomposite structure

Precisely detecting the concentration of glucose in the human body is an attractive way to prevent or treat diabetes. Portable glucose sensors with non-enzymatic catalytic materials have received great attention in recent years. Herein, a facile strategy for fabricating a high-performance electrochemical sensor is proposed. A non-enzymatic three-electrode integrated glucose sensor device based on CuO nano-coral arrays/nanoporous Cu (NCA/NPC) is designed and fabricated. The portable NCA/NPC glucose sensor device exhibits high catalytic activity for glucose. The great performance of the NCA/NPC glucose sensor device derives from the excellent conductivity of the NPC substrate and the high electrocatalytic activity of CuO nano-coral arrays. This device exhibits a high sensitivity of 1621 μA mM -1 cm -2 in the linear range of 0.0005-5.0 mM, low detection limit of 200 nM (S/N = 3), fast response time of 3 s, good anti-interference performance, excellent repeatability and considerable stability for glucose detection. This work will certainly provide an efficient structure and proper catalytic material choices for future non-enzymatic glucose sensors