scholarly journals Discrete anatomical coordinates for speech production and synthesis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Florencia Assaneo ◽  
Daniela Ramirez Butavand ◽  
Marcos A Trevisan ◽  
Gabriel B Mindlin
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Tract ◽  
Electronic Device ◽  
Threshold Strategy ◽  
Experimental Phonology ◽  
Finite Set ◽  
Intelligible Speech ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Continuous Movements ◽  
The Continuum

The sounds of all languages are described by a finite set of symbols, which are extracted from the continuum of sounds produced by the vocal organ. How the discrete phonemic identity is encoded in the continuous movements producing speech remains an open question for the experimental phonology. In this work, this question is assessed by using Hall-effect transducers and magnets -mounted on the tongue, lips and jaw- to track the kinematics of the oral tract during the vocalization ofvowel-consonant-vowelstructures. Using athreshold strategy, the time traces of the transducers were converted into discrete motor coordinates unambiguously associated with the vocalized phonemes. Furthermore, the signals of the transducers combined with the discretization strategy were used to drive a low-dimensional vocal model capable of synthesizing intelligible speech. The current work not only addressed a relevant inquiry of the biology of language, but also shows the performance of the experimental technique to monitor the displacement of the main articulators of the vocal tract while speaking. This novel electronic device represents an economic and portable option to the standard system used to study the vocal tract movements.

scholarly journals Students’ Conceptions of Academic Success: Themes, Guiding Lines and Contradictions

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
S.V. Yaroshevskaya ◽  
T.A. Sysoeva
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Self Development ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Self Learning ◽  
Academic Year ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
The Continuum

Academic success is a popular topic of psychological and pedagogical studies, but such studies usually emphasize factors that affect academic success or variables associated with it.What constitutes academic success remains an open question if at all posited.Researchers tend to use simplified operationalizations, mainly the academic performance, and ignore the students’ point of view.The purpose of this study is to clarify students’ perceptions of academic success.A qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews about learning experience was conducted.The study involved 20 students from various Moscow universities who completed their first academic year (aged 17—42).The technique of reflective thematic analysis was applied.Main themes are the following: “Performance” (learning is considered successful if grades are high and there are no academic troubles), “Knowledge” (learning is successful if the curriculum is being assimilated, or professional knowledge increasing, of one’s horizons are expanding), “Sense of self” (learning is considered successful if there is interest in studying, enthusiasm, as well as internal comfort and/or self-development).Themes are arranged in a sequence, moving from external criteria to internal ones.A number of contradictions are found in the informants’ perceptions of success.In the continuum of themes, different understandings of success are attributed to different instances (university, profession, life activities, Self) and allow us to see the diversity and inconsistency of higher education meanings that explain the observed paradoxes.

scholarly journals A search for accreting young companions embedded in circumstellar disks

2019 ◽  
Vol 622 ◽  
pp. A156 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Cugno ◽  
S. P. Quanz ◽  
S. Hunziker ◽  
T. Stolker ◽  
H. M. Schmid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Accretion Rate ◽  
Giant Planet ◽  
Circumstellar Disks ◽  
Primary Star ◽  
Very Large Telescope ◽  
Upper Limits ◽  
Spread Function ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Host Stars ◽  
The Continuum

Context. In recent years, our understanding of giant planet formation progressed substantially. There have even been detections of a few young protoplanet candidates still embedded in the circumstellar disks of their host stars. The exact physics that describes the accretion of material from the circumstellar disk onto the suspected circumplanetary disk and eventually onto the young, forming planet is still an open question. Aims. We seek to detect and quantify observables related to accretion processes occurring locally in circumstellar disks, which could be attributed to young forming planets. We focus on objects known to host protoplanet candidates and/or disk structures thought to be the result of interactions with planets. Methods. We analyzed observations of six young stars (age 3.5–10 Myr) and their surrounding environments with the SPHERE/ZIMPOL instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Hα filter (656 nm) and a nearby continuum filter (644.9 nm). We applied several point spread function (PSF) subtraction techniques to reach the highest possible contrast near the primary star, specifically investigating regions where forming companions were claimed or have been suggested based on observed disk morphology. Results. We redetect the known accreting M-star companion HD142527 B with the highest published signal to noise to date in both Hα and the continuum. We derive new astrometry (r=62.8−2.7+2.1 mas and PA=(98.7±1.8)°) and photometry (ΔN_Ha = 6.3−0.3+0.2 mag, ΔB_Ha = 6.7 ± 0.2 mag and ΔCnt_Ha = 7.3−0.2+0.3 mag) for the companion in agreement with previous studies, and estimate its mass accretion rate (Ṁ ≈ 1−2 × 10−10 M⊙yr−1). A faint point-like source around HD135344 B (SAO206462) is also investigated, but a second deeper observation is required to reveal its nature. No other companions are detected. In the framework of our assumptions we estimate detection limits at the locations of companion candidates around HD100546, HD169142, and MWC 758 and calculate that processes involving Hα fluxes larger than ~ 8 × 10−14–10−15 erg s−1 cm−2 (Ṁ > 10−10−10−12 M⊙yr−1) can be excluded. Furthermore, flux upper limits of ~10−14−10−15 erg s−1 cm−2 (Ṁ < 10−11–10−12 M⊙yr−1) are estimated within the gaps identified in the disks surrounding HD135344 B and TW Hya. The derived luminosity limits exclude Hα signatures at levels similar to those previously detected for the accreting planet candidate LkCa15 b.

scholarly journals Dimensionality reduction for k-distance applied to persistent homology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shreya Arya ◽  
Jean-Daniel Boissonnat ◽  
Kunal Dutta ◽  
Martin Lotz
Keyword(s):  
Dimensionality Reduction ◽  
Persistent Homology ◽  
Random Projection ◽  
Distance Functions ◽  
Random Projections ◽  
Annual Symposium ◽  
Gaussian Width ◽  
College Park ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Open Question

AbstractGiven a set P of n points and a constant k, we are interested in computing the persistent homology of the Čech filtration of P for the k-distance, and investigate the effectiveness of dimensionality reduction for this problem, answering an open question of Sheehy (The persistent homology of distance functions under random projection. In Cheng, Devillers (eds), 30th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, SOCG’14, Kyoto, Japan, June 08–11, p 328, ACM, 2014). We show that any linear transformation that preserves pairwise distances up to a $$(1\pm {\varepsilon })$$ ( 1 ± ε ) multiplicative factor, must preserve the persistent homology of the Čech filtration up to a factor of $$(1-{\varepsilon })^{-1}$$ ( 1 - ε ) - 1 . Our results also show that the Vietoris-Rips and Delaunay filtrations for the k-distance, as well as the Čech filtration for the approximate k-distance of Buchet et al. [J Comput Geom, 58:70–96, 2016] are preserved up to a $$(1\pm {\varepsilon })$$ ( 1 ± ε ) factor. We also prove extensions of our main theorem, for point sets (i) lying in a region of bounded Gaussian width or (ii) on a low-dimensional submanifold, obtaining embeddings having the dimension bounds of Lotz (Proc R Soc A Math Phys Eng Sci, 475(2230):20190081, 2019) and Clarkson (Tighter bounds for random projections of manifolds. In Teillaud (ed) Proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Computational Geom- etry, College Park, MD, USA, June 9–11, pp 39–48, ACM, 2008) respectively. Our results also work in the terminal dimensionality reduction setting, where the distance of any point in the original ambient space, to any point in P, needs to be approximately preserved.

Articulatory Phonology

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Pouplier
Keyword(s):  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Vocal Tract ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Articulatory Phonology ◽  
Control Units ◽  
Formidable Challenge ◽  
The Many ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Linguistic Units

One of the most fundamental problems in research on spoken language is to understand how the categorical, systemic knowledge that speakers have in the form of a phonological grammar maps onto the continuous, high-dimensional physical speech act that transmits the linguistic message. The invariant units of phonological analysis have no invariant analogue in the signal—any given phoneme can manifest itself in many possible variants, depending on context, speech rate, utterance position and the like, and the acoustic cues for a given phoneme are spread out over time across multiple linguistic units. Speakers and listeners are highly knowledgeable about the lawfully structured variation in the signal and they skillfully exploit articulatory and acoustic trading relations when speaking and perceiving. For the scientific description of spoken language understanding this association between abstract, discrete categories and continuous speech dynamics remains a formidable challenge. Articulatory Phonology and the associated Task Dynamic model present one particular proposal on how to step up to this challenge using the mathematics of dynamical systems with the central insight being that spoken language is fundamentally based on the production and perception of linguistically defined patterns of motion. In Articulatory Phonology, primitive units of phonological representation are called gestures. Gestures are defined based on linear second order differential equations, giving them inherent spatial and temporal specifications. Gestures control the vocal tract at a macroscopic level, harnessing the many degrees of freedom in the vocal tract into low-dimensional control units. Phonology, in this model, thus directly governs the spatial and temporal orchestration of vocal tract actions.

A Face-on Accretion System in High Mass Star-Formation: Possible Dusty Infall Streams within 100 Astronomical Unit

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (S336) ◽  
pp. 267-270
Author(s):  
Kazuhito Motogi ◽  
Tomoya Hirota ◽  
Kazuo Sorai ◽  
Yoshinori Yonekura ◽  
Koichiro Sugiyama ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Equatorial Plane ◽  
Dust Emission ◽  
High Mass ◽  
Mass Star ◽  
Astronomical Unit ◽  
Very Large Array ◽  
The Face ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Long Baselines ◽  
The Continuum

AbstractWe report on interferometric observations of a face-on accretion system around the high mass young stellar object, G353.273+0.641. The innermost accretion system of 100-au radius was resolved in a 45-GHz continuum image taken with the Jansky Very Large Array. Our SED analysis indicated that the continuum could be explained by optically-thick dust emission. 6.7 GHz CH3OH masers associated with the same system were also observed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The masers showed a spiral-like, non-axisymmetric distribution with a systematic velocity gradient. The line-of-sight velocity field is explained by an infall motion along a parabolic streamline that falls onto the equatorial plane of the face-on system. The streamline is quasi-radial and reaches the equatorial plane at a radius of 16 au. The physical origin of such a streamline is still an open question and will be constrained by the higher-resolution thermal continuum and line observations with ALMA long baselines.

scholarly journals Counting curves on surfaces

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750012
Author(s):  
Norman Do ◽  
Musashi A. Koyama ◽  
Daniel V. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Moduli Spaces ◽  
Symplectic Geometry ◽  
Differential Forms ◽  
Combinatorial Problem ◽  
Partition Functions ◽  
Low Dimensional Topology ◽  
Moduli Spaces Of Curves ◽  
Finite Set ◽  
Curves On Surfaces ◽  
Low Dimensional

We consider an elementary, and largely unexplored, combinatorial problem in low-dimensional topology: for a compact surface [Formula: see text], with a finite set of points [Formula: see text] fixed on its boundary, how many configurations of disjoint arcs are there on [Formula: see text] whose boundary is [Formula: see text]? We find that this enumerative problem, counting curves on surfaces, has a rich structure. We show that such curve counts obey an effective recursion, in the general spirit of topological recursion, and exhibit quasi-polynomial behavior. This “elementary curve-counting” is in fact related to a more advanced notion of “curve-counting” from algebraic geometry or symplectic geometry. The asymptotics of this enumerative problem are closely related to the asymptotics of volumes of moduli spaces of curves, and the quasi-polynomials governing the enumerative problem encode intersection numbers on moduli spaces. Among several other results, we show that generating functions and differential forms for these curve counts exhibit structure that is reminiscent of the mathematical physics of free energies, partition functions and quantum curves.

scholarly journals Fractional Power-Law Intraband Optical Conductivity in the Low-Dimensional Dirac Material CaMnBi2

Crystals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 428
Author(s):  
M. B. Schilling ◽  
C. X. Wang ◽  
Y. G. Shi ◽  
R. K. Kremer ◽  
M. Dressel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Optical Conductivity ◽  
Low Temperatures ◽  
Fractional Power ◽  
Electronic System ◽  
Quantum Criticality ◽  
Free Carriers ◽  
Universal Power Law ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Open Question

We studied the broadband optical conductivity of CaMnBi2, a material with two-dimensional Dirac electronic bands, and found that both components of the intraband conductivity follow a universal power law as a function of frequency at low temperatures. This conductivity scaling differs from the Drude(-like) behavior, generally expected for free carriers, but matches the predictions for the intraband response of an electronic system in a quantum critical region. Since no other indications of quantum criticality are reported for CaMnBi2 so far, the cause of the observed unusual scaling remains an open question.

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