bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Intensionality behind Legal Concepts and Their Extensional Boundaries: Between Conventionalism and Interpretivism
Authors: Arapinis Alexandra , Condello Angela
Published: November 2016

This article constitutes an attempt to reexamine a crucial issue of legal theory from the perspective of philosophy of language and of social ontology: by analyzing a jurisprudential case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, we explain how Searle's account on rules in The Construction of Social Reality constitutes an important starting point for the clarification of the old jurisprudential debate between conventionalism and interpretivism. In a nutshell, we show that Searle's framework, while strictly conventionalist, makes it possible to conceive of the distinction between the semantic content of rules (their intended purpose) and their extension, by drawing a parallel with the idea of “deep conventions” (and “essential rules”) as well as with the semantic conventions in natural language. The paper thus touches on the broader problem of the relations between legal concepts and nonlegal values (law and morality).
An Inquiry into a Normative Concept of Legal Efficacy
Authors: Santos Campos Andre
Published: November 2016

This essay argues that legal efficacy understood as existent binding force and as dominance of a system of coercion vis‐à‐vis competing systems is not strictly a matter of fact, but involves what can be termed justified normativity in a factual context. The argument is divided into four sections. The first three sections describe different dimensions of a normative concept of legal efficacy applied to legal systems: efficacy as persuasiveness, as indirect communication, and as constitutive obedience. The final section focuses on the efficacy of individual norms and adds a new criterion – membership – which establishes a multi‐layered test of efficacy.
Is there only One Correct Legal Answer to a Question of Fact? Three Talmudic Answers to a Jurisprudential Dilemma
Authors: Sinai Yuval , Golding Martin P.
Published: November 2016

This article focuses on questions of pure fact‐of‐the‐matter and asks whether two omniscient judges (or jurists or scholars) may disagree over the legal answer to a straightforward question of a matter of fact. There are approaches to legal theory among some western and Jewish philosophers of law whereby at least superficially it is possible that two or more contradictory legal statements regarding a given reality can be equally correct. The article provides a critical analysis of three different models derived from the Jewish legal literature, and reviews the contributions of Jewish sources to the understanding of the phenomenon of disagreements concerning matters of fact.
Monochorial diamniotic dizygotic twins in a German Shepherd Dog: A case report
Authors: Urhausen C , Wolf K , Beineke A , Dierks C , Schmicke M , Einspanier A , Günzel‐Apel AR
Published: November 2016

Contents

Case report: A 6.5‐year‐old clinically healthy German Shepherd Dog with regular oestrous cycles of 6 months was presented for pregnancy diagnosis on day 38 after ovulation (p.ov.). Ultrasonography revealed three individual placental sites in progressed resorption and two vital adequately developed foetuses sharing a joint placenta. On days 41 and 48 p.ov., sonographic signs indicated normal development of both foetuses, but on day 52 p.ov., both foetuses were found to be dead. A caesarean section was performed the same day. Examination of the removed uterus confirmed the diagnosis of a “twin” pregnancy with two foetuses sharing the same placental site but separate amniotic membranes. One foetus showed generalized oedema (anasarca). Bacterial culture of swabs taken from inside the placental cavity was negative. At histological examination of the uterus, no signs of inflammation were found. Serum relaxin concentrations (day 38, 41, 48 and 52. p.ov.) were consistent with those of bitches with normal pregnancies. Cytogenetic analysis of the two foetuses revealed dizygotic twins, one male and one female according to SRY‐PCR. By genotyping 17 high‐polymorphic canine microsatellites, it could be demonstrated that the two foetuses developed from two different oocytes.
Market Instruments for a Sustainable Economy: Environmental Fiscal Policy and Manifest Divergences
Authors: Villar‐Rubio Elena , Huete‐Morales María‐Dolores
Published: November 2016

The introduction of environmental taxation policies had reached most European countries by the late 1990s. The pricing of activities considered harmful to the environment has given rise to the design of various economic instruments, such as environmental taxes, aimed at promoting environmental responsibility and at enabling the Kyoto Protocol targets to be met, and at the same time generating a marked increase in tax revenues. The aim of this article is to examine whether convergence in environmental taxation has taken place among 27 EU countries, doing so by analyzing time series and applying unit root tests. Our findings show there has been no such convergence, overall, despite the existence of groups of countries with common patterns of behavior.
Development of the Environmental Education Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument
Authors: Moseley Christine , Utley Juliana , Angle Julie , Mwavita Mwarumba
Published: November 2016

The increasing popularity of including environmental topics and issues in school curricula has created a need for effective environmental education teachers. One way to evaluate teacher effectiveness is through teacher efficacy, a belief measure that evaluates a teacher's perception that he/she can teach effectively. Research suggests that teachers’ instructional decisions are influenced by their beliefs, which are framed by their personal experiences. Because teacher efficacy is content specific, the purpose of this study was to develop a survey, the Environmental Education Teacher Efficacy Belief Instrument (EETEBI), to measure the teacher efficacy beliefs of preservice teachers as they relate to environmental education teaching strategies and outcomes.
A new anterolateral surgical approach for total hip replacement
Authors: Grano Giovanni , Pavlidou Maria , Todesco Alberto , Palermo Augusto , Molfetta Luigi
Published: November 2016

Purpose: the purpose of the present paper is to present the short-term results of a “detachment-free” (DF) anterolateral approach for primary total hip replacement (THR) performed in a large series of patients.

Methods: two hundred patients submitted to primary THR were retrospectively reviewed for the present study. In all cases, the surgery was performed using a minimally invasive DF anterolateral approach, which entails no disconnection of tendons and no muscle damage. The study population consisted of 96 men (48%) and 104 women (52%), with an average age of 69.4 years (range 38-75). Clinical and radiographic follow-up was performed after 12 months.

Results: the clinical results, evaluated using the Harris Hip Score, were excellent in 95% of the cases and good in 5%; no cases had fair or poor results. X-rays taken at 3, 6 and 12 months after surgery did not show heterotopic ossification, mobilization of the prosthetic components, or hip dislocation. No infections, deep vein thrombosis, or failure of the gluteal muscles were reported.

Conclusions: the DF anterolateral approach for THR proved safe and provided effective results at shortterm follow-up.

Level of evidence: Level IV, therapeutic case series.
Arthroscopic fixation of coronoid process fractures through coronoid tunnelling and capsular plication
Authors: Arrigoni Paolo , D’Ambrosi Riccardo , Cucchi Davide , Nicoletti Simone , Guerra Enrico
Published: November 2016

Purpose: the purpose of this study is to describe a new arthroscopic technique for reduction and fixation of coronoid process fractures (CPFs) and report clinical and functional results in 4 patients after a 24-month follow-up.

Methods: four patients underwent arthroscopic reduction and fixation of isolated CPFs (acute or non-unions, type I or type II according to the Regan-Morrey classification) performed using a new technique based on coronoid tunnelling and capsular plication. The patients were evaluated 6, 12 and 24
months after surgery, using the Disability of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand scale (DASH), the Mayo Elbow Performance Index (MEPI), and a visual analog scale (VAS); elbow range of motion (ROM) and joint stability were also evaluated and the rate of complications was reported.

Results: all 4 patients completed the follow-up. At 6, 12 and 24 months, respectively, they recorded mean DASH scores of 22, 14 and 7, mean MEPI scores of 74, 82 and 94, and mean VAS scores of 4, 2 and 1. The mean ROM increased in all directions (at 6, 12 and 24 months, respectively: flexion: 112°, 125°, 144°; extension: 3°, 5°, 6°; pronation: 76°, 84°, 91°; supination: 78°, 82°, 86°). No signs of instability were observed and no complications were reported.

Conclusions: the new all-arthroscopic coronoid tunnelling and capsular plication technique here proposed can restore elbow function, ROM and stability and allows anatomical reconstruction of the joint after type I or type II CPFs. if performed by an experienced arthroscopist, it is a valid alternative to open reduction and external fixation.

Level of evidence: Level IV, retrospective case series.
Chronic knee extensor mechanism lesions in total knee arthroplasty: a literature review
Authors: Cottino Umberto , Deledda Davide , Rosso Federica , Blonna Davide , Bonasia Davide , Rossi Roberto
Published: November 2016

Knee extensor mechanism rupture is a serious complication of total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Its prevalence ranges from 1 to 10% and it is commonly observed as a chronic multifactorial pathology with the patellar tendon as the most common site of rupture.

Knee extensor mechanism reconstruction can be performed using allogenic or synthetic grafts. In the literature it is still not clear whether one of these techniques is superior to the other and the choice is usually tailored to the patient case by case. Allografts allow better restoration of the anatomical landmarks, whereas the mesh technique is more reproducible and the graft does not elongate over time. Allografts carry an increased risk of infection compared with synthetic reconstructions, while the mesh technique is cheaper and more readily available.

In this paper, we review the etiology, diagnosis and treatment of this pathology, drawing on the most recent literature.
Posterior tibial tendon displacement behind the tibia and its interposition in an irreducible isolated ankle dislocation: a case report and literature review
Authors: Ortolani Alessandro , Bevoni Roberto , Russo Alessandro , Marcacci Maurilio , Girolami Mauro
Published: November 2016

Isolated posteromedial ankle dislocation is a rare condition thanks to the highly congruent anatomical configuration of the ankle mortise, in which the medial and lateral malleoli greatly reduce the rotational movement of the talus, and the strength of the ligaments higher than the malleoli affords protection against fractures. However, other factors, like medial malleolus hypoplasia, laxity of the ligaments, peroneal muscle weakness and previous ankle sprains, could predispose to pure dislocation. In the absence of such factors, only a complex high-energy trauma, with a rotational component, can lead to this event.

Irreducibility of an ankle dislocation, which is rarely encountered, can be due to soft tissue interposition. Dislocation of the posterior tibial tendon can be the cause of an irreducible talar dislocation; interposition of this tendon, found to have slid posteriorly to the distal tibia and then passed through the tibioperoneal syndesmosis, is reported in just a few cases of ankle fracture-dislocation.
As2S3 thin films deposited by atomic layer deposition
Authors: Färm Elina , Heikkilä Mikko J. , Vehkamäki Marko , Mizohata Kenichiro , Ritala Mikko , Leskelä Markku , Kemell Marianna
Published: November 2016

As2S3 thin films were deposited on glass and silicon (100) substrates by atomic layer deposition from tris(dimethylamino)arsine [(CH3)2N)3As] and H2S. Amorphous films were deposited at an exceptionally low temperature of 50 °C. No film growth was observed at higher temperatures. The films were amorphous and contained H and C as the main impurities. The refractive index was 2.3 at 1.0 μm. The films were sensitive to air humidity, but their stability was significantly improved by a protective Al2O3 layer.
Massive Ta diffusion observed in Cu thin films but not in Ag counterparts
Authors: Mardani Shabnam , Norström Hans , Gustavsson Fredrik , Nyberg Tomas , Primetzhofer Daniel , Leifer Klaus , Wu Dongping , Zhang Shi-Li
Published: November 2016

This letter presents an extensive investigation by means of microscopic and chemical analyses finding Ta diffusion in Cu films but not in Ag films. This difference in Ta diffusion persists in all samples containing either Cu/Ta or Ag/Ta interfaces, wherein both a driving force for diffusion and point defects for mediation of atomic movement are present. By referring to atomistic simulation results in the literature, it is plausible that the subtle difference between the Cu/Ta and Ag/Ta interfaces plays a crucial role in differentiating them in making Ta available for diffusion. The energetically favored binding between Cu and Ta assists in liberating Ta atoms from being strongly bound by surrounding Ta atoms, as the bond strength of Cu-Ta is about one third that of Ta-Ta. Hence, the formation of the much weaker Cu–Ta bonds acts as an important intermediate step. Such a mechanism does not exist for the Ag/Ta interface.
Overview of acoustic environment of child daycare facilities in Japan: Current situation and recent researches
Authors: Kawai Keiji , Ueno Kanako , Noguchi Saki , Funaba Hisao
Published: November 2016

Demands for child daycare facilities are continuously increasing in Japan as the Japanese society is changing with respect to women's social advancement in the workforce. However, since there are virtually no guidelines for the acoustic design of daycare facilities in Japan, many daycare classrooms have been built without considering acoustics or sound insulation. As a result, the rooms tend to be too noisy and too reverberant for children in the process of language and listening acquisition. This is a report both on the present situation and architectural trend of daycare facilities and on the existing researches for the acoustic environment of daycare classrooms, aiming to share the information about daycare facilities in Japan for the discussions to develop guidelines of acoustic design.
Teachers’ accumulation of silence and voicing periods of continuous speech in classroom with different reverberation times
Authors: Bottalico Pasquale
Published: November 2016

The relationship between the distribution of continuous silence and voicing periods accumulated (duration of continuous voiced and unvoiced segments of 0.05 s) by teachers teaching in classrooms with different reverberation time (RT) was examined. Understanding the distributions of these accumulations and the relationship with the RT has implications on potential vocal fatigue risk factors and it can be a useful information for clinicians. Twenty-two primary school teachers were monitored over 1 or 2 four-hour workdays with the Ambulatory Phonation Monitor. The RT ranged between 0.58 s and 1.58 s, with a median equal to 0.9 s. The classrooms were classified as low RT (0.58 s < RT < 0.90 s) and high RT (0.90 s ≤ RT < 1.58 s). The values of silence accumulation in low RT classrooms were significantly shorter than the accumulation in high RT classrooms in almost the whole range of accumulation periods (0.2 s—10 s). The difference was negligible for time shorter than 1.5 s and longer than 8 s. The values of voice accumulation in low RT classrooms are significantly shorter than the accumulation in high RT classrooms in almost the whole range of accumulation periods (0.2 s—1.31 s).
Measurements of the acoustic properties of crude oil
Authors: Loranger Scott , Bassett Christopher , Weber Thomas C.
Published: November 2016

The acoustic response of crude oil is dependent on the density and sound speed contrast between the oil and the surrounding media. To detect and quantify crude oil in the marine environment, it is crucial to have accurate measures of the density and sound speed at oceanographically relevant temperatures and pressures. A meta-analysis of currently available sound speed data has found a paucity of sound speed data for crude oil at relevant temperatures (<298 K) and pressures (0.1-30 MPa). Typical sound speed measurements are confined to reservoir temperatures (>300K) and pressures (>100 MPa). In order to evaluate the use of currently available data, time-of-flight measurements in a few different types of crude oil were performed in a purpose-built chamber that simulated oceanographic conditions. These test data were compared with extrapolated sound speed curves from currently available data.
Efficient sequential Monte Carlo estimation of range-dependent seabed properties
Authors: Mandolesi Eric , Dettmer Jan , Dosso Stan E. , Holland Charles W. , Martinelli Sheri
Published: November 2016

Seabed geoacoustic properties play a crucial role in shallow-water sonar applications, including the detection of unexploded ordnance. Our goal is improved efficiency of Bayesian seabed parameter and uncertainty estimation for large data volumes. While Bayesian uncertainty estimation provides important information for sonar applications, the approach is computationally expensive which limits utility for large surveys, where an abundance of range-dependent data can be collected. This work considers the efficiency of a particle filter to quantify information content of multiple data sets along the survey track by considering results from previous data along the track to inform the importance sampling at the current point. Efficiency is improved by tempering the likelihood function of particle subsets and including exchange moves (parallel tempering), and by adapting the proposal distribution for the Markov-chain steps. In particular, perturbations are proposed in principal-component space, with the rotation matrix computed via eigenvector decomposition of the unit-lag parameter covariance matrix. The algorithm is applied to 350 data sets collected along a 13-km track on the Malta Plateau, Central Mediterranean Sea. Improved efficiency from parallel tempering and principal-component proposal densities are studied. [Work supported by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, U.S. Department of Defence.]
Toward estimating ocean temperature through passive acoustics
Authors: Santos Ana Bela , Felisberto Paulo , Jesus Sérgio M.
Published: November 2016

In this paper, we analyze the noise recorded in two drifting vertical line arrays (VLAs) deployed 1 km apart, in the area of the Setubal’s underwater canyon off the west coast of Portugal during RADAR’07 sea trial. Automatic Information System (AIS) recordings for this period reveal a major tanker passing by the area, whose acoustic signature is clearly seen in the spectrogram. The influence of the underwater canyon in the recorded spectrograms is discussed by simulations. By cross-correlating and spatially filtering (beamforming) the signals received at the VLAs, a wave front structure is obtained with coherent information from propagating paths traversing both VLAs and respective arrival times. This work is a contribution for application in a passive ocean acoustics framework to the estimation of sound speed perturbations in the water column.
Applying double-difference methods for fine-scale acoustic tracking using a short aperture vertical array
Authors: Tenorio-Hallé Ludovic , Thode Aaron M. , Sarkar Jit , Verlinden Chris , Tippmann Jeffrey , Hodgkiss William S. , Kuperman William A.
Published: November 2016

Ray tracing can estimate an acoustic source’s depth and range in a waveguide by exploiting multipath arrival information on a vertical array. However, environmental mismatch in the model or array tilt can yield highly scattered trajectories when ray tracing multiple events. “Double-difference” methods have been used to localize earthquakes (Waldhauser and Ellsworth, 2000) and fin whales (Wilcock, 2012) by determining the relative locations of multiple events, rather than their absolute positions. This approach, which exploits changes in relative travel times between events, has recently been reformulated to recover the dive trajectory of a source using a single multi-hydrophone vertical array, whenever three acoustic rays are available for each event. Here, the method is expanded such that changes in ray elevation angles between events can be used to reduce the number of rays required. This technique is tested on data recorded on a short aperture vertical array off the coast of Southern California in 4 km deep water. Trajectories from both a controlled towed source and sperm whale dives are examined. [Work supported by Office of Naval Research—Marine Mammals and Biology and Ocean Acoustics Program.]
Ultrasound imaging of extravascular molecular targets with light and optically triggered nanoscale contrast agents
Authors: Emelianov Stanislav
Published: November 2016

To obtain high sensitivity, specificity, and signal/contrast-to-noise ratio imaging of disease, detection of biomarkers or biochemical and cellular processes is often needed. Typically, such information is gathered using imaging contrast agents. Unfortunately, microbubbles—most common ultrasound contrast agent, are too large to escape vascular compartments. Thus, contrast-enhanced molecular ultrasound imaging is often limited to molecular markers on the vascular endothelium and other intravascular targets. Recently, we introduced several high-resolution, high-sensitivity, depth-resolved ultrasound-based molecular imaging techniques augmented with nanometer scale imaging contrast agents capable of visualizing molecular signatures of cells in context of structural and functional properties of tissue. In this presentation, several examples of molecular ultrasound imaging based on synergistic combination of light and sound will be given. Specifically, clinical problems including detection and phenotyping of primary tumor, assessment of micrometastatic lesions in sentinel lymph node, and image-guided cancer cell therapy will be described. Design and synthesis of clinically relevant contrast nanoagents with properties desired for cellular/molecular ultrasound imaging will be discussed. Finally, the presentation will conclude with the analysis of how molecular ultrasound can change both fundamental medical science and the utility of clinical ultrasound imaging in diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
Dual-wavelength photoacoustic microscopy for cell tracking
Authors: Li Pai-Chi
Published: November 2016

Understanding cell interactions can help to develop cell-based therapeutic strategies such as immunotherapy. The ability to track cells thus becomes an important task. 3D in vitro models have become a promising platform for such cell studies. However, conventional optical imaging methods are no longer adequate in 3D models due to limited penetration. To overcome this problem, we developed a dual-wavelength optical-resolution photoacoustic microscope (2L-OR-PAM) to study CD8 + cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) trafficking in a 3D tumor microenvironment. With the aid of molecular probes, the 2L-OR-PAM system can track both the CTLs and the tumor cells. An Nd:YLF laser was used as a pump laser at 523nm passing into a dye laser to generate near-infrared light at 813-nm. Two types of AuNPs were used to target the cancer cells and the CTLs. An x-y galvanometer scanner was employed to obtain a high scanning rate. The lateral and the axial resolutions were measured at 1.6 μm and 5 μm, respectively. We successfully showed that the 2L-OR-PAM can map the distribution of CTLs and 3D structures of Hepta1-6 tumor spheres. The 2L-OR-PAM can provide cellular and molecular information and it has the potential for preclinical screening requiring cell tracking.
Structuring an introductory acoustics course to be a vehicle for improving pre-calculus math skills and recruiting students to technical careers
Authors: Piacsek Andrew A.
Published: November 2016

“Why do I have to take this math course—when will I ever use this stuff?” and “I could never be a scientist—I'm terrible at math.” These statements are familiar to educators the world over, much to our frustration... and to the detriment of society's goals of being scientifically and mathematically literate and having a large and diverse population of STEM professionals. The present paper describes elements of a general education course in acoustics at Central Washington University (“Physics of Musical Sound”) that serve vital secondary functions of improving math skills and fostering an appreciation of acoustics-related careers, appropriate for the typical demographic of students from diverse academic and social backgrounds, many of whom have not declared a major, that are attracted to the interdisciplinary nature of the course. These secondary goals, as well as the subject matter, are also highly appropriate for high school students. The content, the skills, and the applications are closely linked, leveraging students' native interest in, and familiarity with, music and sound to provide the incentive to develop and hone math concepts. Specific content, applications, and pedagogical approaches will be discussed.
Musical mind control: Acoustic convergence to background music in speech production
Authors: Podlubny Ryan G.
Published: November 2016

Talkers adjust their speech to resemble that of their interlocutors—a phenomenon known as speech convergence. Broadly defined, convergence describes automatic synchronization to some external source, and this effect has been recognized in various linguistic domains (e.g., syntactic structuring, morphological choices, and vowel production). Using a speech-in-noise reading-task, this paper explores whether or not speech production also converges with non-linguistic signals: Specifically, might a speaker’s rhythm, pitch or intensity be influenced by fluctuations in background music? Participants read passages aloud while music was presented at ~45 dB(A) via headphones. Music was composed with relatively flat envelopes in the domains of interest, and in test-conditions only Pitch, Tempo, or Intensity was altered. Manipulation was gradual (linear function) and would similarly return to the point of origin after reaching a target (Pitch = -200 cents; Amp = + 6dB; Tempo = -20 beats per minute). Control conditions (i.e., no acoustic manipulation) broke up test conditions. Analyzing data from 25 English speakers identifies significant convergence effects in the Pitch condition (tempo and intensity analyses have not yet been conducted). Using Generalized Additive Mixed Models, the predicted Time by Condition interactions were observed, suggesting that environmental noise may constantly be influencing speech production.
Amplitude death in delay-coupled thermoacoustic oscillators
Authors: Hyodo Hiroaki , Shinkai Itaru , Biwa Tetsushi
Published: November 2016

A phenomenon of thermoacoustic oscillation is seen as an undesirable vibration in combustion engineering as it can cause serious damage to the combustor. Lots of methods such as controlling a secondary fuel supply and addition of Helmholtz resonators are proposed to suppress the oscillations, but they often become complicated. As a simple and reliable method, we try to make use of mutual interaction of the coupled thermoacoustic oscillators to stop oscillations completely. It has been demonstrated in the system of coupled electrical circuits that “amplitude death,” meaning the stabilization of zero amplitude states, is induced by time-delay coupling even when the oscillators have the same frequency. In this study, we introduce the time-delay coupling in thermoacoustic oscillators by using hollow tubes. In the tube coupling, the sound propagation time through the tube corresponds to the delay time, while the tube diameter controls the coupling strength. The condition of amplitude death is experimentally found for various tube lengths, diameters, and number of tubes. Thus, the tube coupling provides the way to annihilate thermoacoustic oscillations. The results are compared with those of linear stability analysis based on basic equations of hydrodynamics. Both results are qualitatively consistent with each other.
Thermoacoustics of a T-burner: How to better estimate the combustion response function from a T-burner experiment
Authors: Park Taeyoung , Lee Hunki , Ohm Won-Suk , Lee Dohyung
Published: November 2016

The combustion response function, representing the coupling between the pressure oscillation and the combustion rate of a solid propellant, is a key indicator of combustion instability (large unwanted pressure oscillations in a combustion chamber) of a solid rocket motor. To obtain the response function experimentally, a T-burner is often used, in which the lowest longitudinal acoustic resonance of the cylindrical enclosure is excited by the combustion of propellant samples (acting like speakers) at both ends. The existing formula used to derive the combustion response function from a T-burner experiment is based on a series of rather crude assumptions. For example, acoustically rigid boundaries are assumed at both ends, whereas impedance boundary conditions may be more appropriate to reflect the introduction of combustion products from the propellant. In this talk, we propose a few modifications to the current T-burner analysis regime, which could improve the accuracy of the measured response function. The new method is demonstrated using an actual T-burner test. [This work was supported by Defense Acquisition Program Administration and Agency for Defense Development under the contract UD140024GD.]
Evaluation of environmental noise by analyzing faint random vibration in structural health monitoring
Authors: Takahashi Yoshinori
Published: November 2016

A number of big intermittent aftershocks often follow a great earthquake. Even if a building could avoid collapse by the first main quake, there would be no guarantee that the building can survive from the aftershocks. However, if it is possible to monitor the condition of the building constantly using some faint random vibration caused by environmental noise such as wind, weak earthquakes, and traffic noise, the safety of the victims should be more secured. In a field of machinery diagnostics, although several diagnostic methods using vibration based on environmental noise have been proposed, those methods require that the characteristics of the noise are known since the resonance of the object is shadowed by the environmental noise spectrum. The author has proposed an emphasizing method of hidden resonances in a time-invariant transfer function and has also applied the method to structural health monitoring by analyzing faint random vibration caused by environmental noise. This report presents the results of experiment in an actual building. The results showed that rain showers or temporal thunders gave some influences on the estimation for the resonance of the buildings; however, it was possible to avoid the influences by selecting the analysis parameters correctly.
Skull-shaped antenna enables near-field super-resolution in acoustic source localization using elastic waves
Authors: Reinwald Michael , Catheline Stefan , Grimal Quentin , Boschi Lapo
Published: November 2016

Internal cues such as bone conducted sound (i.e., long signals involving reverberation within the skull) may be beneficial to acoustic source localization in humans. We investigate the potential of bone conduction for human localization in the near field. Following previous work of the authors, we use a conceptual processing model that translates elastic waves conducted and reverberated in a skull-like object into spatial positioning through a time-reversal analysis. The localization accuracy is tested for one and two piezoelectric receivers glued close to the position of the ears, measuring solely the vibrations of the object. The sound source is placed along the azimuthal and sagittal planes for distances to the skull between 5 and 100 cm. We are able to estimate the source position in the near-field (<20cm) with a resolution below the diffraction limit (¼ of a wavelength) for frequencies in the physiological hearing range (~2kHz). We infer that anatomical details of the skull give rise to complex features of the skull’s Green’s function enabling super-resolution localization. The role of the skull is presumably particularly relevant in marine animals, owing to the effectiveness of energy transfer from water to bones. We are currently investigating this phenomenon on dolphin skulls.
Passive structural health monitoring using cross correlation of ambient vibrations in an aluminum plate
Authors: Jung Sun Ah , Lee Keunhwa , Seong Woojae
Published: November 2016

Green’s function extracted from cross correlating ambient diffuse field is used for structural health monitoring. Experimental study was conducted to detect structural damages in an aluminum plate using two accelerometers. Green’s function obtained by the cross correlation in an undamaged plate is compared to the signal directly generated by an impact hammer. A good agreement between active (impact hammer) and passive (cross correlation) processing is demonstrated. Various damage scenarios, including mass addition and hole in the plate, are investigated. Different from damage index definition in a recent study which compares the causal and anti-causal part of the Greens’ function using the reciprocity theorem, we computed the damage index by comparing the causal part of Green’s function of an undamaged plate to that of a damaged plate. Distributions of damage indices, according to various number of noise sources for each type of damage type, are analyzed. Using the support vector machine, we classified the damage index distributions. Error analysis of these classifications is given; it shows that present damage index definition provides better damage diagnosis than previous definitions even when using small number of sources.
Singing voice synthesizer with non-filter waveform generation using spectral phase reconstruction
Authors: Hamada Yasuhiro , Ono Nobutaka , Sagayama Shigeki
Published: November 2016

This paper discusses a singing voice synthesis system based on non-filter waveform generation using spectral phase reconstruction as an alternative method to replace the conventional source-filter model. Source-filter model has been considered as an essential technique in the long history of speech synthesis as it simulates the human process of speech production consisting of excitation and resonances, even after hidden Markov model was introduced in the 90s toward statistically trainable speech synthesis. Filter (particularly, recursive filter), however, may cause serious problems in undesired amplitude and long time decay when sharp resonances in recursive filter match harmonics of F0 of the excitation. As the ultimate purpose of usage of filter is to transfer the spectrogram designed in the TTS system to the listener’s hearing organs, an alternative solution can be brought from “phase reconstruction” without using filters. We propose a spectral phase reconstruction, instead of using filter, to generate waveform from the desired power spectrogram. We applied this framework to singing voice synthesis where fundamental frequency (F0) was modified according to the target melody. The result of the listening tests showed that the proposed method gives higher quality of naturalness than previous methods with recursive filter.
An Indonesian concatenative speech synthesis system
Authors: Hirai Toshio , Setiawan Ivan
Published: November 2016

An Indonesian concatenative speech synthesis system was developed that can (1) differentiate between the pronunciation of [e] and [@] (XSAMPA) by utilizing a pronunciation dictionary and pronunciation rules and (2) automatically create derived words that are then inserted into the pronunciation dictionary, which is used in converting text into phonemes. Speech data were recorded from a female native Indonesian speaker. Phrases included proper nouns and text samples from Indonesian textbooks, newspaper articles, and TV scripts, which covered almost all possible Indonesian syllables. There were 4,490 phrases lasting a total of 5.1 hours. The transcription was constructed considering pauses during narration. A forced alignment technique was used to obtain the phoneme boundary of the speech, and each phoneme and its acoustic/linguistic features were added to a database. In the synthesis step, an input text was converted into phonemes. An appropriate segment sequence, which has features similar to the phonemes should have and shows the least concatenative distortion, was selected from the database and was concatenated into a waveform. The synthesized speech was of acceptable quality, but we discovered some problems, such as sound discontinuity. The parameter weights of cost function to evaluate the similarity and the distortion should be optimized further.
Robust text-to-speech duration modelling with a deep neural network
Authors: Henter Gustav E. , Ronanki Srikanth , Watts Oliver , Wester Mirjam , Wu Zhizheng , King Simon
Published: November 2016

Accurate modeling and prediction of speech-sound durations is important for generating more natural synthetic speech. Deep neural networks (DNNs) offer powerful models, and large, found corpora of natural speech are easily acquired for training them. Unfortunately, poor quality control (e.g., transcription errors) and phenomena such as reductions and filled pauses complicate duration modelling from found speech data. To mitigate issues caused by these idiosyncrasies, we propose to incorporate methods from robust statistics into speech synthesis. Robust methods can disregard ill-fitting training-data points—errors or other outliers—to describe the typical case better. For instance, parameter estimation can be made robust by replacing maximum likelihood with a robust estimation criterion based on the density power divergence (a.k.a. the β-divergence). Alternatively, a standard approximation for output generation with mixture density networks (MDNs) can be interpreted as a robust output generation heuristic. To evaluate the potential benefits of robust techniques, we adapted data from a free online audiobook to build several DNN-based text-to-speech systems, with either conventional or robust duration prediction. Our objective results indicate that robust methods described typical durations better than the baselines. Additionally, listeners significantly preferred synthetic speech generated using the robust methods in a subjective evaluation.
Speech synthesizers controlled by the movements of non-vocal organs
Authors: Ito Masashi
Published: November 2016

A speech-like signal can be synthesized without the text-to-speech conversion if speech parameters, such as loudness, pitch, and phonemic information, are successively determined in the utterance. To control the parameters, human body motions have been utilized in this type of speech synthesis. The speech synthesizers controlled by the movement of non-vocal organs (MNVO) are expected to provide effective assistant tools for speech disabilities. Although there have been extensive studies for the MNVO synthesizers, the optimal conversion strategy from body motions to speech parameters has not been clarified yet. This is because that the optimal MNVO speech synthesizer requires both usability and expressiveness while they have a trade-off relationship in general. In order to address this problem, a refined architecture of the MNVO synthesizer is proposed in the present study. This is characterized by an explicit separation between motion detection and speech synthesis processes, which makes it possible to examine a common conversion strategy regardless of the input devices. Based on this architecture, several MNVO speech synthesizers were realized using different types of the motion sensors. Evaluating the performances of these systems, the effect and limitation of the proposed architecture is discussed.
A DNN-based text-to-speech synthesis system using speaker, gender, and age codes
Authors: Luong Hieu Thi , Takaki Shinji , Kim SangJin , Yamagishi Junichi
Published: November 2016

Adaptation and manipulation techniques for creating various characteristics of synthetic speech are important research topics in the speech synthesis field. In this work, we investigate the performance of a DNN-based text-to-speech synthesis system that uses speaker, gender, and age codes as well as the text inputs (1) for modeling speaker-independent models called “average voice models,” (2) for performing speaker adaptation using a small amount of adaptation data, and also (3) for manipulating characteristics of synthetic speech based on the codes. For these purposes, we extracted a set of studio-quality speech data uttered by 68 males and 70 females, whose age vary between 10 and 80, from our large-scale Japanese corpus and carried out the three experiments: (1) We constructed a DNN-based speaker-independent model using one-hot vectors representing a set of the above speakers. (2) We performed speaker adaptation by estimating a code vector for a new speaker via the back-propagation. (3) We performed manual manipulation of the code vector to modify perceived characteristics, gender, and/or age of synthetic speech. Experimental results showed that high-performance speaker-independent models can be constructed using the proposed code vectors and additionally that adaptation and manipulation using the codes can also be performed effectively.
Spectral and pitch modeling with hybrid approach to singing voice synthesis using hidden semi-Markov model and deep neural network
Authors: Hongo Kouki , Nose Takashi , Ito Akinori
Published: November 2016

We propose a corpus-based singing voice synthesis system combining the hidden Markov model (HMM) and the Deep Neural Network (DNN). Recently, in the area of text-to-speech synthesis, it was reported that the DNN-based speech synthesis method showed better speech quality than the HMM-based one. However, when we introduced the DNN to statistical singing voice synthesis, it did not improve the synthetic singing voice quality. Thus, we introduced the DNN in the singing voice synthesis in a different way. Instead of modeling the speech spectra, we exploited the DNN to model the difference between the spectra of natural singing voice and synthetic singing voice from the HMM. To do that, we used the DNN to map the input musical information such as lyrics, tones, durations into the difference of output acoustic features between the natural and synthetic singing voice. This allows us to reconstruct the spectral fine structures in singing voice generated by HMMs. Our results proved that the proposed method improved the quality of synthetic singing voice compared to the conventional methods.
Low delay statistical singing voice conversion with direct waveform modification based on spectral differential considering global variance
Authors: Kobayashi Kazuhiro , Toda Tomoki , Nakamura Satoshi
Published: November 2016

This paper presents a low-delay statistical singing voice conversion (SVC) method with direct waveform modification based on spectral differential (DIFFSVC) considering global variance (GV). Statistical SVC based on a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is a technique to convert singer identity of a source singer's voice into that of a target singer converting several acoustic features. We have successfully improved quality of converted singing voices by proposing the DIFFSVC considering the GV to avoid parameterization errors caused by vocoding process and alleviate over-smoothing effects. On the other hand, this method is based on batch-type conversion processing, and therefore, it is difficult to directly apply it to real-time conversion processing that needs a low delay conversion method. In this paper, to develop a high-quality and real-time SVC system, we propose a low-delay DIFFSVC method using GV-based post-filtering process. The experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed method makes it possible to improve speech quality of the converted singing voice in low-delay conversion processing. [This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 26280060, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow Number 16J10726, and by the JST OngaCREST project.]
A method to estimate glottal source waves and vocal tract shapes for widely pronounced types using ARX-LF model
Authors: Li Yongwei , Morikawa Daisuke , Akagi Masato
Published: November 2016

Accurate estimates of glottal source waves and vocal tract shapes can be used for speech synthesis with high quality. One of source-filter models, ARX-LF model, is widely used to estimate glottal source waves of neutral speech and singing voices. This paper extends the ARX-LF model to accurately estimate glottal source waves and vocal tract shapes with more widely pronounced types. The proposed method mainly contains two steps: the first step is to set initial values of LF parameters and shift glottal closure instant position, and the second step is to save optimum LF parameters and vocal tract coefficients when mean-square equation error is the smallest. The voices are synthesized by different LF parameters and fixed vocal tract filter model, which are used to test whether the proposed method can work well. The results show that the proposed method has ability to estimate LF parameters in more widely pronounced types. The proposed method is further used to estimate glottal source waves and vocal tract shapes of emotional voices. Spectral tilts of estimated glottal waves and vocal tract shapes derived from ARX filters are consistent with other reports and human speech production mechanisms.
Multimodal control system for autonomous vehicles using speech and gesture recognition
Authors: Nakagawa Takuma , Kitaoka Norihide
Published: November 2016

The recent development of autonomous vehicles has attracted much attention, but operating these vehicles may be too complex for average users. Therefore, we propose an intuitive, multimodal interface for the control of autonomous vehicles using speech and gesture recognition to interpret and execute the commands of users. For example, if the user says “turn there” while pointing at a landmark, the vehicle can utilize this behavior to correctly understand and comply with the user’s intent. To achieve this, we designed a two-part interface consisting of a multimodal understanding component and a dialog control component. Our multimodal understanding and dialog control components can be seen as a concatenation of two separate transducers. One transducer is used for multimodal understanding and the other for a conventional dialog system. We then construct a combined transducer from these two transducers. We developed various scenarios which might arise while operating an autonomous vehicle and displayed these scenes on a monitor. Subjects were then asked to operate a virtual car using speech commands and pointing gestures to control the vehicle while observing the monitor. The questionnaire results show that subjects felt they were able to easily and naturally operate the autonomous vehicle using utterances and gestures.