Improving spoken term detection using complementary information

This research has made contributions to the area of spoken term detection (STD), defined as the process of finding all occurrences of a specified search term in a large collection of speech segments. The use of visual information in the form of lip movements of the speaker in addition to audio and the use of topic of the speech segments, and the expected frequency of words in the target speech domain, are proposed. By using these complementary information, improvement in the performance of STD has been achieved which enables efficient search of key words in large collection of multimedia documents.

Transforming teaching practice through virtual classrooms: A study of staff and student views of synchronous learning

Australia is a vast land and access to quality higher education is challenging for many Australians that live outside the larger metropolitan areas. In 2010, the School of Education at an Australian university (Curtin University in Western Australia) moved to flexible delivery of a fully online Bachelor of Education degree for their rural students. The new model of delivery allows access for students from any location provided they have a computer and an internet connection.A number of teaching staff had previously used an asynchronous environment to deliver learning modules housed within a learning management system (LMS) but had not used synchronous software with their students. To enhance the learning environment and to provide high quality learning experiences to students learning at a distance, the adoption of synchronous software (Elluminate Live) was introduced. This software is a real-time virtual classroom environment that allows for communication through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video conferencing, alongside a large number of collaboration tools to engage learners.This research paper reports on the integration of a live e-learning solution into the current Learning Management System (LMS) environment. Staff were interviewed about their perceptions and a questionnaire was administered to a sample of students to identify their experience with the synchronous software in order to inform future practice.

Negotiating social and moral order in internet relay chat

Although internet chat is a significant aspect of many internet users’ lives, the manner in which participants in quasi-synchronous chat situations orient to issues of social and moral order remains to be studied in depth. The research presented here is therefore at the forefront of a continually developing area of study. This work contributes new insights into how members construct and make accountable the social and moral orders of an adult-oriented Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel by addressing three questions: (1) What conversational resources do participants use in addressing matters of social and moral order? (2) How are these conversational resources deployed within IRC interaction? and (3) What interactional work is locally accomplished through use of these resources? A survey of the literature reveals considerable research in the field of computer-mediated communication, exploring both asynchronous and quasi-synchronous discussion forums. The research discussed represents a range of communication interests including group and collaborative interaction, the linguistic construction of social identity, and the linguistic features of online interaction. It is suggested that the present research differs from previous studies in three ways: (1) it focuses on the interaction itself, rather than the ways in which the medium affects the interaction; (2) it offers turn-by-turn analysis of interaction in situ; and (3) it discusses membership categories only insofar as they are shown to be relevant by participants through their talk. Through consideration of the literature, the present study is firmly situated within the broader computer-mediated communication field. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis were adopted as appropriate methodological approaches to explore the research focus on interaction in situ, and in particular to investigate the ways in which participants negotiate and co-construct social and moral orders in the course of their interaction. IRC logs collected from one chat room were analysed using a two-pass method, based on a modification of the approaches proposed by Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) and ten Have (1999). From this detailed examination of the data corpus three interaction topics are identified by means of which participants clearly orient to issues of social and moral order: challenges to rule violations, ‘trolling’ for cybersex, and experiences regarding the 9/11 attacks. Instances of these interactional topics are subjected to fine-grained analysis, to demonstrate the ways in which participants draw upon various interactional resources in their negotiation and construction of channel social and moral orders. While these analytical topics stand alone in individual focus, together they illustrate different instances in which participants’ talk serves to negotiate social and moral orders or collaboratively construct new orders. Building on the work of Vallis (2001), Chapter 5 illustrates three ways that rule violation is initiated as a channel discussion topic: (1) through a visible violation in open channel, (2) through an official warning or sanction by a channel operator regarding the violation, and (3) through a complaint or announcement of a rule violation by a non-channel operator participant. Once the topic has been initiated, it is shown to become available as a topic for others, including the perceived violator. The fine-grained analysis of challenges to rule violations ultimately demonstrates that channel participants orient to the rules as a resource in developing categorizations of both the rule violation and violator. These categorizations are contextual in that they are locally based and understood within specific contexts and practices. Thus, it is shown that compliance with rules and an orientation to rule violations as inappropriate within the social and moral orders of the channel serves two purposes: (1) to orient the speaker as a group member, and (2) to reinforce the social and moral orders of the group. Chapter 6 explores a particular type of rule violation, solicitations for ‘cybersex’ known in IRC parlance as ‘trolling’. In responding to trolling violations participants are demonstrated to use affiliative and aggressive humour, in particular irony, sarcasm and insults. These conversational resources perform solidarity building within the group, positioning non-Troll respondents as compliant group members. This solidarity work is shown to have three outcomes: (1) consensus building, (2) collaborative construction of group membership, and (3) the continued construction and negotiation of existing social and moral orders. Chapter 7, the final data analysis chapter, offers insight into how participants, in discussing the events of 9/11 on the actual day, collaboratively constructed new social and moral orders, while orienting to issues of appropriate and reasonable emotional responses. This analysis demonstrates how participants go about ‘doing being ordinary’ (Sacks, 1992b) in formulating their ‘first thoughts’ (Jefferson, 2004). Through sharing their initial impressions of the event, participants perform support work within the interaction, in essence working to normalize both the event and their initial misinterpretation of it. Normalising as a support work mechanism is also shown in relation to participants constructing the ‘quiet’ following the event as unusual. Normalising is accomplished by reference to the indexical ‘it’ and location formulations, which participants use both to negotiate who can claim to experience the ‘unnatural quiet’ and to identify the extent of the quiet. Through their talk participants upgrade the quiet from something legitimately experienced by one person in a particular place to something that could be experienced ‘anywhere’, moving the phenomenon from local to global provenance. With its methodological design and detailed analysis and findings, this research contributes to existing knowledge in four ways. First, it shows how rules are used by participants as a resource in negotiating and constructing social and moral orders. Second, it demonstrates that irony, sarcasm and insults are three devices of humour which can be used to perform solidarity work and reinforce existing social and moral orders. Third, it demonstrates how new social and moral orders are collaboratively constructed in relation to extraordinary events, which serve to frame the event and evoke reasonable responses for participants. And last, the detailed analysis and findings further support the use of conversation analysis and membership categorization as valuable methods for approaching quasi-synchronous computer-mediated communication.

Literature review

There are many studies that reveal the nature of design thinking and the nature of conceptual design as distinct from detailed or embodiment design. The results can assist in our understanding of how the process of design can be supported and how new technologies can be introduced into the workplace. Existing studies provide limited information about the nature of collaborative design as it takes place on the ground and in the actual working context. How to provide appropriate and effective of support for collaborative design information sharing across companies, countries and heterogeneous computer systems is a key issue. As data are passed between designers and the computer systems they employ, many exchanges are made. These exchanges may be used to establish measures of the benefits that new support systems can bring. Collaboration support tools represent a fast growing section of the commercial software market place and a reasonable range of products are available. Many of them offer significant application to design for the support of distributed meetings by the provision of video and audio communications and the sharing of information, including collaborative sketching. The tools that specifically support 3D models and other very design specific features are less common and many of those are in prototype stages of development. A key question is to find viable ways of combining design information visualisation support with the collaboration support technologies that can be seen today. When collaborating, different views will need to be accessible at different times to all the collaborators. The architects may want to explain some ideas on their model, the structural engineers on their model and so on. However, there are issues of ownership when the structural engineer wants to manipulate the architect’s model and vice versa. The modes of working, synchronous or asynchronous may have a bearing as in a synchronous session there is control of what is happening.

Generic skills in design teams : literature review

Recent developments in networked three dimensional (3D) virtual worlds, and the proliferation of high bandwidth communications technology, have the potential to dramatically improve collaboration in the construction industry. This research project focuses on the early stages of a construction project in which the models for the project are developed and revised. The project investigates three aspects of collaboration in virtual environments: 1. The processes that enable effective collaboration using high bandwidth information communication technology (ICT); 2. The models that allow for multiple disciplines to share their views in a synchronous virtual environment; 3. The generic skills used by individuals and teams when engaging with high bandwidth information communication technology. The third aspect of the project, listed above, led by the University of Newcastle, explores the domain of People and the extent to which they contribute to the effectiveness of virtual teams. This report relates, primarily, to this aspect.

Generic skills in design teams

Recent developments in networked three dimensional (3D) virtual worlds and the proliferation of high bandwidth communications technology have the potential to dramatically improve collaboration in the construction industry. This research project focuses on the early stages of a design/construction project in which models for a project are developed and revised. We have investigated three aspects of collaboration in virtual environments: 1. The processes that enable effective collaboration using high bandwidth information communication technology (ICT); 2. The models that allow for multiple disciplines to share their views in a synchronous virtual environment; 3. The generic skills used by individuals and teams when engaging with high bandwidth information communication technology.

Relative entropy rate based multiple hidden Markov Model Approximation

This paper proposes a novel relative entropy rate (RER) based approach for multiple HMM (MHMM) approximation of a class of discrete-time uncertain processes. Under different uncertainty assumptions, the model design problem is posed either as a min-max optimisation problem or stochastic minimisation problem on the RER between joint laws describing the state and output processes (rather than the more usual RER between output processes). A suitable filter is proposed for which performance results are established which bound conditional mean estimation performance and show that estimation performance improves as the RER is reduced. These filter consistency and convergence bounds are the first results characterising multiple HMM approximation performance and suggest that joint RER concepts provide a useful model selection criteria. The proposed model design process and MHMM filter are demonstrated on an important image processing dim-target detection problem.

Enforcing P3P policies using a digital rights management system

The protection of privacy has gained considerable attention recently. In response to this, new privacy protection systems are being introduced. SITDRM is one such system that protects private data through the enforcement of licenses provided by consumers. Prior to supplying data, data owners are expected to construct a detailed license for the potential data users. A license specifies whom, under what conditions, may have what type of access to the protected data. The specification of a license by a data owner binds the enterprise data handling to the consumer’s privacy preferences. However, licenses are very detailed, may reveal the internal structure of the enterprise and need to be kept synchronous with the enterprise privacy policy. To deal with this, we employ the Platform for Privacy Preferences Language (P3P) to communicate enterprise privacy policies to consumers and enable them to easily construct data licenses. A P3P policy is more abstract than a license, allows data owners to specify the purposes for which data are being collected and directly reflects the privacy policy of an enterprise.

Virtual reality or virtually real : blended teaching and learning in a Master's level research methods class

This paper examines the enabling effect of using blended learning and synchronous internet mediated communication technologies to improve learning and develop a Sense of Community (SOC) in a group of post-graduate students consisting of a mix of on-campus and off-campus students. Both quantitative and qualitative data collected over a number of years supports the assertion that the blended learning environment enhanced both teaching and learning. The development of a SOC was pivotal to the success of the blended approach when working with geographically isolated groups within a single learning environment.

Fluorescence spectrometric study on the interactions of isoprocarb and sodium 2-isopropylphenate with bovine serum albumin

The binding interaction of the pesticide Isoprocarb and its degradation product, sodium 2-isopropylphenate, with bovine serum albumin (BSA) was studied by spectrofluorimetry under simulated physiological conditions. Both Isoprocarb and sodium 2-isopropylphenate quenched the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA. This quenching proceeded via a static mechanism. The thermodynamic parameters (ΔH°, ΔS° and ΔG°) obtained from the fluorescence data measured at two different temperatures showed that the binding of Isoprocarb to BSA involved hydrogen bonds and that of sodium 2-isopropylphenate to BSA involved hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions. Synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy of the interaction of BSA with either Isoprocarb or sodium 2-isopropylphenate showed that the molecular structure of the BSA was changed significantly, which is consistent with the known toxicity of the pesticide, i.e., the protein is denatured. The sodium 2-isopropylphenate, was estimated to be about 4–5 times more toxic than its parent, Isoprocarb. Synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy and the resolution of the three-way excitation–emission fluorescence spectra by the PARAFAC method extracted the relative concentration profiles of BSA, Isoprocab and sodium 2-isopropylphenate as a function of the added sodium 2-isopropylphenate. These profiles showed that the degradation product, sodium 2-isopropylphenate, displaced the pesticide in a competitive reaction with the BSA protein.

A model to predict hypovigilance during a monotonous task

The driving task requires sustained attention during prolonged periods, and can be performed in highly predictable or repetitive environments. Such conditions could create drowsiness or hypovigilance and impair the ability to react to critical events. Identifying vigilance decrement in monotonous conditions has been a major subject of research, but no research to date has attempted to predict this vigilance decrement. This pilot study aims to show that vigilance decrements due to monotonous tasks can be predicted through mathematical modelling. A short vigilance task sensitive to short periods of lapses of vigilance called Sustained Attention to Response Task is used to assess participants’ performance. This task models the driver’s ability to cope with unpredicted events by performing the expected action. A Hidden Markov Model (HMM) is proposed to predict participants’ hypovigilance. Driver’s vigilance evolution is modelled as a hidden state and is correlated to an observable variable: the participant’s reactions time. This experiment shows that the monotony of the task can lead to an important vigilance decline in less than five minutes. This impairment can be predicted four minutes in advance with an 86% accuracy using HMMs. This experiment showed that mathematical models such as HMM can efficiently predict hypovigilance through surrogate measures. The presented model could result in the development of an in-vehicle device that detects driver hypovigilance in advance and warn the driver accordingly, thus offering the potential to enhance road safety and prevent road crashes.

Power sharing and stability enhancement of an autonomous microgrid with inertial and non-inertial DGs with DSTATCOM

This paper proposes a method of enhancing system stability with a distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM) in an autonomous microgrid with multiple distributed generators (DG). It is assumed that there are both inertial and non-inertial DGs connected to the microgrid. The inertial DG can be a synchronous machine of smaller rating while inertia less DGs (solar) are assumed as DC sources. The inertia less DGs are connected through Voltage Source Converter (VSC) to the microgrid. The VSCs are controlled by either state feedback or current feedback mode to achieve desired voltage-current or power outputs respectively. The power sharing among the DGs is achieved by drooping voltage angle. Once the reference for the output voltage magnitude and angle is calculated from the droop, state feedback controllers are used to track the reference. The angle reference for the synchronous machine is compared with the output voltage angle of the machine and the error is fed to a PI controller. The controller output is used to set the power reference of the synchronous machine. The rate of change in the angle in a synchronous machine is restricted by the machine inertia and to mimic this nature, the rate of change in the VSCs angles are restricted by a derivative feedback in the droop control. The connected distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM) provides ride through capability during power imbalance in the microgrid, especially when the stored energy of the inertial DG is not sufficient to maintain stability. The inclusion of the DSATCOM in such cases ensures the system stability. The efficacies of the controllers are established through extensive simulation studies using PSCAD.

Literacy education in the context of globalisation

This review chapter provides an overview of English language literacy education in the contexts of cultural and economic globalisation. Drawing case study examples of India and China, the authors outline three complementary models: the development paradigm, the hegemony paradigm and the new literacies paradigm. The analysis focuses on effects of the spread of English on vernacular languages and the non-synchronous issues raised by digital production cultures. Noting the difficulties of education systems in contending with new literacies - it argues for the reframing of transnational relations, global material conditions and new communications technologies as the objects of critical literacy education.

Student perceptions of the impact of online discussion forum participation on learning outcomes

Choosing the “right” type of technology, either synchronous or asynchronous, to facilitate learning outcomes is a new challenge as the pace of emerging technologies increases and diversifies. Teachers are encouraged to design courses that require collaboration in online learning communities to facilitate the development of higher order thinking skills for life long learning. It is therefore important to gather evidence of the kinds of opportunities afforded to students and whether the students themselves endorse collaborative online tools as a legitimate method of assisting in their learning. This paper outlines the way in which one secondary school has used an online discussion forum to support students in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program in enhancing research skills and skills for lifelong learning. The paper considers whether online collaborative tools are perceived by students as a positive way to improve learning outcomes.

Sequential decision fusion for controlled detection errors

Information fusion in biometrics has received considerable attention. The architecture proposed here is based on the sequential integration of multi-instance and multi-sample fusion schemes. This method is analytically shown to improve the performance and allow a controlled trade-off between false alarms and false rejects when the classifier decisions are statistically independent. Equations developed for detection error rates are experimentally evaluated by considering the proposed architecture for text dependent speaker verification using HMM based digit dependent speaker models. The tuning of parameters, n classifiers and m attempts/samples, is investigated and the resultant detection error trade-off performance is evaluated on individual digits. Results show that performance improvement can be achieved even for weaker classifiers (FRR-19.6%, FAR-16.7%). The architectures investigated apply to speaker verification from spoken digit strings such as credit card numbers in telephone or VOIP or internet based applications.