Text-based and Signal-based Prediction of Break Indices and Pause Durations

The relation between symbolic and signal features of prosodic boundaries is experimentally studied using prediction methods. Text-based break index prediction turns out to be fairly good, but signal-based prediction and pause duration prediction perform worse. A possible reason is that random signal feature variations, as usually produced by humans, are hard to predict

The Memory of Persistence

This composition for Wind Ensemble (like Concert Band but usually only one player on a part) was Scott Master\u27s Thesis for completing a Master of Music degree in Composition at Butler University. Written in 2010, the piece is a combination of styles, philosophies, and techniques, all in balance with each other. Avant-garde and traditional techniques are used; tonality and atonality vie with each other, resulting in a combination of the two; specific musical directions are balanced by a degree of choice available to each participant. “The Memory of Persistence” is about a journey. No specific personal story is presented, nor is the piece programmatic, but the progress and development of the piece could mirror many life situations and be accessible to anyone from that point of view. There is a progression from simple to complex, from innocence to maturity, that is demonstrated in the instrumentation as well as the melodic and harmonic elements. The title of the composition is an allusion to Salvador Dali’s painting called “The Persistence of Memory.” Even the font of the score’s title page is based on Dali’s own handwriting. Dali was a major player in the Surrealism movement of the twentieth century, combining classical elements of art with unusual, surprising, or even outrageous twists. “The Memory of Persistence” does the same thing in a musical setting. Yet, even without knowledge of Dali, the listener can understand the title because the piece demonstrates persistence through difficulty while retaining the memory of the past and incorporating it into current life

Text Preprocessing for Speech Synthesis

In this paper we describe our text preprocessing modules for English text-to-speech synthesis. These modules comprise rule-based text normalization subsuming sentence segmentation and normalization of non-standard words, statistical part-of-speech tagging, and statistical syllabification, grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, and word stress assignment relying in parts on rule-based morphological analysis

On the Necessity for High-availability Data Center Backends in a Distributed Wireless System

When business processes depend on the processing capabilities within a data center, the typical system architecture use a high-availability setup to maintain a high level of service. Faced with a specific machine-to-machine system consisting of many endpoints that collect and forward data to the data center we argue that the dependability of the overall system does not necessitate a high level of service for the data center components. Taking an existing discrete event simulation model of a distributed technical system we investigate and discuss the effects of prolonged outages of the data center on the major business processes of the system

Linguistically motivated parameter estimation methods for a superpositional intonation model

This paper proposes two novel approaches for parameter estimation of a superpositional intonation model. These approaches present linguistic and paralinguistic assumptions for initializing a pre-existing standard method. In addition, all restrictions on the configuration of commands were eliminated. The proposed linguistic hypotheses can be based on either pitch accents or lexical stress, which give rise to two different estimation methods. These two hypotheses were validated by comparison of the estimation performance relative to two standard methods, one manual and one automatic. The results of the experiments for German, English and Spanish corpora show that the proposed methods outperform the standard ones.Fil: Torres, Humberto Maximiliano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Inmunología, Genética y Metabolismo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Inmunología, Genética y Metabolismo; ArgentinaFil: Gurlekian, Jorge Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Inmunología, Genética y Metabolismo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Inmunología, Genética y Metabolismo; ArgentinaFil: Mixdorff, Hansjörg. Beuth University Berlin; AlemaniaFil: Pfitzinger, Hartmut. Pfitzinger Voice Design; Alemani

Microscopic calculation of the spin-dependent neutron scattering lengths on 3He

We report on the spin.dependent neutron scattering length on 3He from a microscopic calculation of p-3H, n-3He, and d-2H scattering employing the Argonne v18 nucleon-nucleon potential with and without additional three-nucleon force. The results and that of a comprehensive R-matrix analysis are compared to a recent measurement. The overall agreement for the scattering lengths is quite good. The imaginary parts of the scattering lengths are very sensitive to the inclusion of three-nucleon forces, whereas the real parts are almost insensitive.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Elastic p-3He and n-3H scattering with two- and three-body forces

We report on a microscopic calculation of n-3H and p-3He scattering employing the Argonne v_{18} and v_8' nucleon-nucleon potentials with and without additional three-nucleon force. An R-matrix analysis of the p-3He and n-3H scattering data is presented. Comparisons are made for the phase shifts and a selection of measurements in both scattering systems. Differences between our calculation and the R-matrix results or the experimental data can be attributed to only two partial waves (3P0 and 3P2). We find the effect of the Urbana IX and the Texas-Los Alamos three-nucleon forces on the phase shifts to be negligible.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.

The UPs and Downs of Citation Titles: What Librarians Should Know When Helping Students

Whether you are an academic librarian, school librarian, or public librarian, if you work in Reference you probably get asked about how to cite a book or article in a particular style. One of the thorniest parts about helping someone with a citation is knowing how that style capitalizes words in the title. It is not obvious. The three primary citation styles (MLA, APA, and Chicago) have all published updated citation style manuals in the last couple of years and there have been some changes even in how titles are capitalized. This article describes the changes and breaks down the differences between each of the citation styles

Don\u27t cry yourself a river: A framework to bridge the clinical-to-academia transition gap

This presentation aligns the AACN Healthy Work Environment Standards with the Kouzes & Posner Leadership Model as a framework for enhancing professional wellbeing within academic environments. The presenters will: compare and integrate the two models, discuss strategies for application and integration, and explore potential obstacles and barriers to employee engagement

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RUNNING KINEMATICS AND PERFORMANCE IN ELITE TRIATHLETES

The purpose of this study was to examine the running kinematics of Elite, U23 and Junior triathletes and their relationships to performance during an Olympic or sprint distance race. A total of 238 male and female triathletes were analysed to determine ground contact time, flight time, stride rate, stride length, foot-strike type and velocity for each lap and an overall representative mean created for each variable across the race. Women displayed notably greater differences in kinematics between Junior and Elite fields than was observed in the men. Large correlations were observed for running performance with contact time (r = 0.500-0.580, p < 0.001) and stride length (r = 0.552-0.664, p < 0.001). Analysis of foot strike type revealed a significant interaction with contact time, with heel strike longer than mid-foot strike, but no relationship with running velocity