Conversational interfaces: advances and challenges

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a new breed of human-computer interfaces that combines several human language technologies to enable humans to converse with computers using spoken dialogue for information access, creation and processing. In this paper, we introduce the nature of these conversational interfaces and describe the underlying human language technologies on which they are based. After summarizing some of the recent progress in this area around the world, we discuss development issues faced by researchers creating these kinds of systems and present some of the ongoing and unmet research challenges in this field     

Ruby masers for maximum G/Top

The Deep-Space Network (DSN) includes world-wide networks of 26-, 34- and 70-m antennas in Australia, Spain, and the USA. Ruby masers are used on the 34and 70-m antennas to maximize the system operating noise temperature and thereby maximize the DSN receiving system figure of merit, antenna gain divided by system operating noise temperature. These systems are used for deep-space telecommunications, solar system radar, and radio astronomy. Cavity, traveling-wave, and reflected-wave maser designs and performance characteristics from 960 MHz to 34 GHz are summarized. Effective noise temperatures of ruby masers are addressed with emphasis on a 33.68-GHz maser where quantum noise is a major source of noise     

Integrating AVHRR satellite data and NOAA ground observations to predict surface air temperature: a statistical approach

Ground station temperature data are not commonly used simultaneously with the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) to model and predict air temperature or land surface temperature. Technology was developed to acquire near-synchronous datasets over a 1?000?000?km² region with the goal of improving the measurement of air temperature at the surface. This study compares several statistical approaches that combine a simple AVHRR split window algorithm with ground meterological station observations in the prediction of air temperature. Three spatially dependent (kriging) models were examined, along with their non-spatial counterparts (multiple linear regressions). Cross-validation showed that the kriging models predicted temperature better (an average of 0.9°C error) than the multiple regression models (an average of 1.4°C error). The three different kriging strategies performed similarly when compared to each other. Errors from kriging models were unbiased while regression models tended to give biased predicted values. Modest improvements seen after combining the data sources suggest that, in addition to air temperature modelling, the approach may be useful in land surface temperature modelling.     

Multistream Articulatory Feature-Based Models for Visual Speech Recognition

We study the problem of automatic visual speech recognition (VSR) using dynamic Bayesian network (DBN)-based models consisting of multiple sequences of hidden states, each corresponding to an articulatory feature (AF) such as lip opening (LO) or lip rounding (LR). A bank of discriminative articulatory feature classifiers provides input to the DBN, in the form of either virtual evidence (VE) (scaled likelihoods) or raw classifier margin outputs. We present experiments on two tasks, a medium-vocabulary word-ranking task and a small-vocabulary phrase recognition task. We show that articulatory feature-based models outperform baseline models, and we study several aspects of the models, such as the effects of allowing articulatory asynchrony, of using dictionary-based versus whole-word models, and of incorporating classifier outputs via virtual evidence versus alternative observation models.     

Sub-Critical Crack Growth Behavior of a Low-Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic

The strength of sintered low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) disks was measured under dry (<2% relative humidity [RH]) and wet (98% RH) conditions, using ring-on-ring, biaxial-flexure testing in the stressing rate range of 0.002–2 MPa/s. The empirical sub-critical crack growth parameters, n and A , were calculated. The values of the parameters in the wet environment were higher than in the dry environment. It is argued that the high RH n value is more representative of material behavior. Results of fractographic examination are reported and expected lifetime and safe design stresses for LTCC are calculated.     

Trying to beat the system: Misuse of the Internet to assist in avoiding the detection of psychological symptom dissimulation.

Although the Internet may be beneficial to clinical practice, its potential for misuse cannot be overlooked. The current probe identified Internet Web sites that contained information that violated the test security of psychological assessment instruments. Five individuals, using multiple search engines, conducted Internet searches to evaluate samples of Web sites. Sites were classified into 1 of 3 levels according to the degree of threat they posed to test security. A small number (2-5%) appeared to be a direct threat to test security. The findings are discussed and recommendations for promoting more ethical use of the Internet are made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

F型复合玻璃添加剂在生产中的应用

本文采用在生产车间一条线上做试验,试制F型复合玻璃添加剂在高白料中的澄清效果。试验结果表明:它是一种综合应用价值较高的理想的新型玻璃助剂,其澄清效果及经济效益均优于砒霜。     

Prevalence and correlates of depressive syndromes among adults visiting an Indian Health Service primary care clinic

Depression is common among patients visiting primary care clinics. In order to describe the prevalence of depressive syndromes in an American Indian primary care clinic population and to help define the clinical correlates of depressive syndromes in this setting, a clinic-based research study of depression was undertaken by the Indian Health Service (IHS). One hundred and six patients from an IHS primary care clinic were systematically enlisted for participation in the study. Participants completed the Inventory for Diagnosing Depression (IDD). Twenty-two (20.7%) responded with answers scoring positive for a depressive syndrome. Nine of these 22 (8.9% of the 106 participants) met IDD criteria for a major depressive syndrome. A diagnosis of depression, a past history of depression, use of mental health facilities, unexplained pains, and antidepressant medication use were associated with the presence of a depressive syndrome.