On-line Emotion Recognition in a 3-D Activation-Valence-Time Continuum using Acoustic and Linguistic Cues

For many applications of emotion recognition, such as virtual agents, the system must select responses while the user is speaking. This requires reliable on-line recognition of the user’s affect. However most emotion recognition systems are based on turnwise processing. We present a novel approach to on-line emotion recognition from speech using Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks. Emotion is recognised frame-wise in a two-dimensional valence-activation continuum. In contrast to current state-of-the-art approaches, recognition is performed on low-level signal frames, similar to those used for speech recognition. No statistical functionals are applied to low-level feature contours. Framing at a higher level is therefore unnecessary and regression outputs can be produced in real-time for every low-level input frame. We also investigate the benefits of including linguistic features on the signal frame level obtained by a keyword spotter.

Beyond the Sign. Henri Meschonnic's Poetics of Rhythm and Continuum. Towards an Anthropological Theory of Language

Basing the conception of language on the sign represents also an obstacle to the awareness of certain elements of human life, especially to a full understanding of what language or art do, Henri Meschonnic’s poetics of the continuum and of rhythm criticizes the sign based on Benveniste’s terms of rhythm and discourse, developing an anthropology of language. Rhythm, for Meschonnic, is no formal metrical but a semantic principle, each time unique and unforeseeable. As for Humboldt, his starting point is not the word but the ensemble of speech; language is not ergon but energeia. The poem then is not a literary form but a process of transformation that Meschonnic defines as the invention of a form of life by a form of language and vice versa. Thus a poem is a way of thinking and rhythm is form in movement. The particular subject of art and literature is consequently not the author but a process of subjectivation – this is the contrary of the conception of the sign. By demonstrating the limits of the sign, Meschonnic’s poetics attempts to thematize the intelligibility of presence. Art and literature raise our awareness of this element of human life we cannot grasp conceptually. This poetical thinking is a necessary counterforce against all institutionalization.

Application of a picosecond laser plasma continuum light source to a dual-laser plasma photoabsorption experiment

The characteristics of an extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) continuum light source and its application to a dual-laser plasma (DLP) photoabsorption experiment are described. The continuum emitting plasma was formed by focusing a 7 ps, 248 nm, 15 mJ laser pulse onto a number of selected targets known to be good XUV continuum emitters (Sm, W, Au and Pb), while the second absorbing plasma was produced by a 15 ns, 1064 nm, 300 mi pulse. The duration of the continuum emission for these plasmas has a mean value of similar to 150 ps, but depends on both the target material and the picosecond laser pulse energy. Using this picosecond DLP set-up we have been able to measure the photoabsorption spectrum of an actinide ion (thorium) for the first time.

Short-pulse, extreme-ultraviolet continuum emission from a table-top laser plasma light source

We have observed extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) ''line-free'' continuum emission from laser plasmas of high atomic number elements using targets irradiated with 248 nm laser pulses of 7 ps duration at a power density of similar to 10(13) W/cm(2). Using both dispersive spectroscopy and streak camera detection, the spectral and temporal evolution of XUV continuum emission for several target atomic numbers has been measured on a time scale with an upper limit of several hundred picoseconds limited by amplified spontaneous emission. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.

A micro-mechanics damage approach for fatigue of composite materials

A new model for fatigue damage evolution of polymer matrix composites (PMC) is presented. The model is based on a combination of an orthotropic damage model and an isotropic fatigue evolution model. The orthotropic damage model is used to predict the orthotropic damage evolution within a single cycle. The isotropic fatigue model is used to predict the magnitude of fatigue damage accumulated as a function of the number of cycles. This approach facilitates the determination of model parameters since the orthotropic damage model parameters can be determined from available data from quasi-static-loading tests. Then, limited amount of fatigue data is needed to adjust the fatigue evolution model. The combination of these two models provides a compromise between efficiency and accuracy. Decomposition of the state variables down to the constituent scale is accomplished by micro-mechanics. Phenomenological damage evolution models are then postulated for each constituent and for the micro-structural interaction among them. Model parameters are determined from available experimental data. Comparison between model predictions and additional experimental data is presented.