Developing a Child Friendly Text-to-Speech System

This paper discusses the implementation details of a child friendly, good quality, English text-to-speech (TTS) system that is phoneme-based, concatenative, easy to set up and use with little memory. Direct waveform concatenation and linear prediction coding (LPC) are used. Most existing TTS systems are unit-selection based, which use standard speech databases available in neutral adult voices.Here reduced memory is achieved by the concatenation of phonemes and by replacing phonetic wave files with their LPC coefficients. Linguistic analysis was used to reduce the algorithmic complexity instead of signal processing techniques. Sufficient degree of customization and generalization catering to the needs of the child user had been included through the provision for vocabulary and voice selection to suit the requisites of the child. Prosody had also been incorporated. This inexpensive TTS systemwas implemented inMATLAB, with the synthesis presented by means of a graphical user interface (GUI), thus making it child friendly. This can be used not only as an interesting language learning aid for the normal child but it also serves as a speech aid to the vocally disabled child. The quality of the synthesized speech was evaluated using the mean opinion score (MOS).

A socio friendly approach to the analysis of emotive speech

This paper describes certain findings of intonation and intensity study of emotive speech with the minimal use of signal processing algorithms. This study was based on six basic emotions and the neutral, elicited from 1660 English utterances obtained from the speech recordings of six Indian women. The correctness of the emotional content was verified through perceptual listening tests. Marked similarity was noted among pitch contours of like-worded, positive valence emotions, though no such similarity was observed among the four negative valence emotional expressions. The intensity patterns were also studied. The results of the study were validated using arbitrary television recordings for four emotions. The findings are useful to technical researchers, social psychologists and to the common man interested in the dynamics of vocal expression of emotions

Friendly Settlements in the Framework of the Inter- American Human Rights System

The Inter-American system for the protection of human rights provides that disputesbetween States and victims of human rights violations or their representatives can beresolved through a friendly settlement. In this arrangement, conducted before the regionalorgans of protection of human rights, the State accepts its international responsibility,commits itself to investigate and judge the responsible and makes commitmentson compensation to the offended, the victims, on his part, renounce to take the caseto the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Commissionmonitors the legal consistency of the agreement and holds the role of independentobserver. What are these agreements, what possibilities and limitations provide to theopposing parties and, above all, what kind of reparation offer to victims of humanrights violations are issues to resolve in this article.

Baby Van Gogh : el mundo de los colores.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Beethoven : sinfonía de la diversión.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Newton : universo de las formas.

Se pretende familiarizar a bebés y prescolares con círculos, cuadrados, rectángulos, óvalos y triángulos en el contexto de los juguetes, la naturaleza, el arte y los objetos habituales. Esto se acompaña con versiones de composiciones clásicas de Vivaldi.

Baby Neptune : descubriendo el agua.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Beethoven : sinfonía de la diversión.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Galileo : descubriendo el cielo.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Shakespeare : mundo de poesía.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Santa's : music box.

Se muestra a bebés y preescolares el mundo de la Navidad, con sus tradiciones y celebraciones propias. Las imágenes se acompañan con la música de clásicos como Tchaikovsky o Mozart.

Baby Noah : expedición de animales.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Baby Bach : aventura musical.

Se muestra a niños y bebés la importancia y los beneficios de la música clásica. Con la ayuda de estimulantes imágenes se ofrecen versiones de las composiciones clásicas de Johann Sebastian Bach.

Baby Gourmet : el primer plato.

Para niños de 1 a 24 meses

Baby Gourmet : cosecha de otoño-invierno.

Para niños de 3 a 48 meses