title: Natural language processing in speech understanding systems

authors: Holmes, Geoffrey

subjects: Machine learning

abstract: Speech understanding systems (SUS's) came of age in late 1971 as a result of a five year development programme instigated by the Information Processing Technology Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense in the United States. The aim of the programme was to research and develop practical man-machine communication systems. It has been argued since, that the main contribution of this project was not in the development of speech science, but in the development of artificial intelligence. That debate is beyond the scope of this paper, though no one would question the fact that the field to benefit most within artificial intelligence as a result of this programme is natural language understanding. More recent projects of a similar nature, such as projects in the United Kingdom's ALVEY programme and Europe's ESPRIT programme have added further developments to this important field. This paper presents a review of some of the natural language processing techniques used within speech understanding systems. In particular, techniques for handling syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information are discussed. They are integrated into SUS's as knowledge sources. The most common application of these systems is to provide an interface to a database. The system has to perform a dialogue with a user who is generally unknown to the system. Typical examples are train and aeroplane timetable enquiry systems, travel management systems and document retrieval systems.

text: Natural language processing in speech understanding systems Speech understanding systems (SUS's) came of age in late 1971 as a result of a five year development programme instigated by the Information Processing Technology Office of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense in the United States. The aim of the programme was to research and develop practical man-machine communication systems. It has been argued since, that the main contribution of this project was not in the development of speech science, but in the development of artificial intelligence. That debate is beyond the scope of this paper, though no one would question the fact that the field to benefit most within artificial intelligence as a result of this programme is natural language understanding. More recent projects of a similar nature, such as projects in the United Kingdom's ALVEY programme and Europe's ESPRIT programme have added further developments to this important field. This paper presents a review of some of the natural language processing techniques used within speech understanding systems. In particular, techniques for handling syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information are discussed. They are integrated into SUS's as knowledge sources. The most common application of these systems is to provide an interface to a database. The system has to perform a dialogue with a user who is generally unknown to the system. Typical examples are train and aeroplane timetable enquiry systems, travel management systems and document retrieval systems.

year: 1992

title: Maintaining SLOs of cloud-native applications via self-adaptive resource sharing

authors: Podolskiy, Vladimir

subjects: computer science

abstract: With changing workloads, cloud service providers can leverage vertical container scaling (adding/removing resources) so that Service Level Objective (SLO) violations are minimized and spare resources are maximized. In this paper, we investigate a solution to the self-adaptive problem of vertical elasticity for co-located containerized applications. First, the system learns performance models that relate SLOs to workload, resource limits and service level indicators. Second, it derives limits that meet SLOs and minimize resource consumption via a combination of optimization and restricted brute-force search. Third, it vertically scales containers based on the derived limits. We evaluated our technique on a Kubernetes private cloud of 8 nodes with three deployed applications. The results registered two SLO violations out of 16 validation tests; acceptably low derivation times facilitate realistic deployment. Violations are primarily attributed to application specifics, such as garbage collection, which require further research to be circumvented.

text: Maintaining SLOs of cloud-native applications via self-adaptive resource sharing With changing workloads, cloud service providers can leverage vertical container scaling (adding/removing resources) so that Service Level Objective (SLO) violations are minimized and spare resources are maximized. In this paper, we investigate a solution to the self-adaptive problem of vertical elasticity for co-located containerized applications. First, the system learns performance models that relate SLOs to workload, resource limits and service level indicators. Second, it derives limits that meet SLOs and minimize resource consumption via a combination of optimization and restricted brute-force search. Third, it vertically scales containers based on the derived limits. We evaluated our technique on a Kubernetes private cloud of 8 nodes with three deployed applications. The results registered two SLO violations out of 16 validation tests; acceptably low derivation times facilitate realistic deployment. Violations are primarily attributed to application specifics, such as garbage collection, which require further research to be circumvented.

year: 2019

title: How do colorectal cancer patients rate their GP: a mixed methods study

authors: Blackmore, Tania Louise

subjects: Science & Technology

abstract: Background: New Zealand (NZ) has a high incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) and low rates of early diagnosis. With screening not yet nationwide, the majority of CRC is diagnosed through general practice. A good patient-general practitioner (GP) relationship can facilitate prompt diagnosis, but when there is a breakdown in this relationship, delays can occur. Delayed diagnosis of CRC in NZ receives a disproportionally high number of complaints directed against GPs, suggesting deficits in the patient-GP connection. We aimed to investigate patient-reported confidence and ratings of their GP following the diagnostic process. 
Methods: This study is a mixed methods analysis of responses to a structured questionnaire and free text comments from patients newly diagnosed with CRC in the Midland region of NZ. A total of 195 patients responded to the structured questionnaire, and 113 patients provided additional free text comments. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the study population and chi square analysis determined the statistical significance of factors possibly linked to delay. Free text comments were analysed using a thematic framework. 
Results: Most participants rated their GP as ‘Very good/Good’ at communication with patients about their health conditions and involving them in decisions about their care, and 6.7% of participants rated their overall level of confidence and trust in their GP as ‘Not at all’. Age, gender, ethnicity and a longer diagnostic interval were associated with lower confidence and trust. Free text comments were grouped in to three themes: 1. GP Interpersonal skills; (communication, listening, taking patient symptoms seriously), 2. Technical competence; (speed of referral, misdiagnoses, lack of physical examination), and 3. Organisation of general practice care; (appointment length, getting an appointment, continuity of care). 
Conclusions: Māori, females, and younger participants were more likely to report low confidence and trust in their GP. Participants associate a poor diagnostic experience with deficits in the interpersonal and technical skills of their GP, and health system factors within general practice. Short appointment times, access to appointments and poor GP continuity are important components of how patients assess their experience and are particularly important to ensure equal access for Māori patients.

text: How do colorectal cancer patients rate their GP: a mixed methods study Background: New Zealand (NZ) has a high incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) and low rates of early diagnosis. With screening not yet nationwide, the majority of CRC is diagnosed through general practice. A good patient-general practitioner (GP) relationship can facilitate prompt diagnosis, but when there is a breakdown in this relationship, delays can occur. Delayed diagnosis of CRC in NZ receives a disproportionally high number of complaints directed against GPs, suggesting deficits in the patient-GP connection. We aimed to investigate patient-reported confidence and ratings of their GP following the diagnostic process. 
Methods: This study is a mixed methods analysis of responses to a structured questionnaire and free text comments from patients newly diagnosed with CRC in the Midland region of NZ. A total of 195 patients responded to the structured questionnaire, and 113 patients provided additional free text comments. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the study population and chi square analysis determined the statistical significance of factors possibly linked to delay. Free text comments were analysed using a thematic framework. 
Results: Most participants rated their GP as ‘Very good/Good’ at communication with patients about their health conditions and involving them in decisions about their care, and 6.7% of participants rated their overall level of confidence and trust in their GP as ‘Not at all’. Age, gender, ethnicity and a longer diagnostic interval were associated with lower confidence and trust. Free text comments were grouped in to three themes: 1. GP Interpersonal skills; (communication, listening, taking patient symptoms seriously), 2. Technical competence; (speed of referral, misdiagnoses, lack of physical examination), and 3. Organisation of general practice care; (appointment length, getting an appointment, continuity of care). 
Conclusions: Māori, females, and younger participants were more likely to report low confidence and trust in their GP. Participants associate a poor diagnostic experience with deficits in the interpersonal and technical skills of their GP, and health system factors within general practice. Short appointment times, access to appointments and poor GP continuity are important components of how patients assess their experience and are particularly important to ensure equal access for Māori patients.

year: 2021-04-08