Towards improved speech recognition for resource poor languages

In recent times, the improved levels of accuracy obtained by Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology has made it viable for use in a number of commercial products. Unfortunately, these types of applications are limited to only a few of the world’s languages, primarily because ASR development is reliant on the availability of large amounts of language specific resources. This motivates the need for techniques which reduce this language-specific, resource dependency. Ideally, these approaches should generalise across languages, thereby providing scope for rapid creation of ASR capabilities for resource poor languages. Cross Lingual ASR emerges as a means for addressing this need. Underpinning this approach is the observation that sound production is largely influenced by the physiological construction of the vocal tract, and accordingly, is human, and not language specific. As a result, a common inventory of sounds exists across languages; a property which is exploitable, as sounds from a resource poor, target language can be recognised using models trained on resource rich, source languages. One of the initial impediments to the commercial uptake of ASR technology was its fragility in more challenging environments, such as conversational telephone speech. Subsequent improvements in these environments has gained consumer confidence. Pragmatically, if cross lingual techniques are to considered a viable alternative when resources are limited, they need to perform under the same types of conditions. Accordingly, this thesis evaluates cross lingual techniques using two speech environments; clean read speech and conversational telephone speech. Languages used in evaluations are German, Mandarin, Japanese and Spanish. Results highlight that previously proposed approaches provide respectable results for simpler environments such as read speech, but degrade significantly when in the more taxing conversational environment. Two separate approaches for addressing this degradation are proposed. The first is based on deriving better target language lexical representation, in terms of the source language model set. The second, and ultimately more successful approach, focuses on improving the classification accuracy of context-dependent (CD) models, by catering for the adverse influence of languages specific phonotactic properties. Whilst the primary research goal in this thesis is directed towards improving cross lingual techniques, the catalyst for investigating its use was based on expressed interest from several organisations for an Indonesian ASR capability. In Indonesia alone, there are over 200 million speakers of some Malay variant, provides further impetus and commercial justification for speech related research on this language. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the candidature, limited research had been conducted on the Indonesian language in the field of speech science, and virtually no resources existed. This thesis details the investigative and development work dedicated towards obtaining an ASR system with a 10000 word recognition vocabulary for the Indonesian language.

A framework for reasoning about inherent parallelism in modern object-oriented languages

With the emergence of multi-core processors into the mainstream, parallel programming is no longer the specialized domain it once was. There is a growing need for systems to allow programmers to more easily reason about data dependencies and inherent parallelism in general purpose programs. Many of these programs are written in popular imperative programming languages like Java and C]. In this thesis I present a system for reasoning about side-effects of evaluation in an abstract and composable manner that is suitable for use by both programmers and automated tools such as compilers. The goal of developing such a system is to both facilitate the automatic exploitation of the inherent parallelism present in imperative programs and to allow programmers to reason about dependencies which may be limiting the parallelism available for exploitation in their applications. Previous work on languages and type systems for parallel computing has tended to focus on providing the programmer with tools to facilitate the manual parallelization of programs; programmers must decide when and where it is safe to employ parallelism without the assistance of the compiler or other automated tools. None of the existing systems combine abstraction and composition with parallelization and correctness checking to produce a framework which helps both programmers and automated tools to reason about inherent parallelism. In this work I present a system for abstractly reasoning about side-effects and data dependencies in modern, imperative, object-oriented languages using a type and effect system based on ideas from Ownership Types. I have developed sufficient conditions for the safe, automated detection and exploitation of a number task, data and loop parallelism patterns in terms of ownership relationships. To validate my work, I have applied my ideas to the C] version 3.0 language to produce a language extension called Zal. I have implemented a compiler for the Zal language as an extension of the GPC] research compiler as a proof of concept of my system. I have used it to parallelize a number of real-world applications to demonstrate the feasibility of my proposed approach. In addition to this empirical validation, I present an argument for the correctness of the type system and language semantics I have proposed as well as sketches of proofs for the correctness of the sufficient conditions for parallelization proposed.

Managing specialised knowledge in technopreneurial firms : the Australian experience

Technology-oriented young firms play an important role for innovation and commercialisation of new ideas. These firms are often founded by engineers, scientists or academics who posses great scientific/technological knowledge, but limited know-how in other aspects of managing a business including knowledge management. Successful managing and integrating their specialised knowledge is of particular importance when it comes to developing a new product or process. This article therefore focuses on the particularities of the knowledge management process in technopreneurial firms. Using a qualitative investigation from a sample of Australian SMEs, a number of key observations are derived which show the challenges of managing knowledge and how important knowledge management is as a management tool for R&D and innovation process in technology-oriented SMEs. Findings suggest that knowledge management and integration processes in these firms are very much project focused and mainly based on ad hoc and informal processes and not embedded within the overall organisational routines.

Understanding the diversity of non-specialised units within Australian property degrees

Building on the recommendations of the Bradley Review (2008), the Australian Federal government intends to promote a higher level of penetration of tertiary qualification across the broader Australian community which is anticipated to result in increased levels of standardisation across university degrees. In the field of property, tertiary academic programs are very closely aligned to the needs of a range of built environment professions and there are well developed synergies between the relevant professional bodies and the educational institutions. The strong nexus between the academic and the professional content is characterised by ongoing industry accreditation which nominates a range of outcomes which the academic programs must maintain across a range of specified metrics. Commonly, the accrediting bodies focus on standard of minimum requirements especially in the area of specialised subject areas where they require property graduates to demonstrate appropriate learning and attitudes. In addition to nominated content fields, in every undergraduate degree program there are also many other subjects which provide a richer experience for the students beyond the merely professional. This study focuses on the nonspecialised knowledge field which varies across the universities offering property degree courses as every university has the freedom to pursue its own policy for these non-specialised units. With universities being sensitive to their role of in the appropriate socialisation of new entrants, first year units have been used as a vehicle to support students’ transition into university education and the final year units seek to support students’ integration into the professional world. Consequentially, many property programs have to squeeze their property-specific units to accommodate more generic units for both first year and final year units and the resulting diversity is a feature of the current range of property degrees across Australia which this research will investigate. The matrix of knowledge fields nominated by the Australian Property Institute for accreditation of degrees accepted for Certified Practising Valuer (CPV) educational requirement and the complementary requirements of the other major accrediting body (RICS) are used to classify and compare similarities and differences across property degrees in the light of the streamlining anticipated from the Bradley Review.

Managing specialised knowledge in technopreneurial firms : evidence from Australian SMEs

This paper analyses particularities of the knowledge management process in technopreneurial firms with particular focus on knowledge identification, acquisition, utilisation and integration. Using a qualitative investigation from a sample of Australian SMEs, a number of key observations are derived which show the challenges of managing knowledge and how important knowledge management is as a management tool for R&D and innovation process in technology-oriented SMEs. Findings suggest that knowledge management and integration processes in these firms are very much project focused and mainly based on ad hoc and informal processes and not embedded within the overall organisational routines.

Futures languages in Taiwan

Taiwan is a rapidly changing society, facing many challenges. In this state of flux, it is important to step back and see the big picture. The NewFutures 2000 conference, which commemorated fifty years of the of Tamkang University, in TamShui (the northernmost tip), Taiwan (Republic of China) and was held on 5–7 November 2000, gave Taiwanese an opportunity to gain just such a perspective. The ostensible aim of the conference was to explore ‘transformations in education, culture and technology’. But numerous perspectives and academic approaches were explored; predictions, normative visions, probable futures, alternative futures, ethical futures, epistemological re-constructions, studies and deconstruction’s of images of the future, myth and worldview—all received attention, sometimes overwhelming the participants with contradictory and overbearing ideas. [introduction]

Information accountability with policy languages for e-Health

ICT is becoming a prominent part of healthcare delivery but brings with it information privacy concerns for patients and competing concerns by the caregivers. A proper balance between these issues must be established in order to fully utilise ICT capabilities in healthcare. Information accountability is a fairly new concept to computer science which focuses on fair use of information. In this paper we investigate the different issues that need to be addressed when applying information accountability principles to manage healthcare information. We briefly introduce an information accountability framework for handling electronic health records (eHR). We focus more on digital rights management by considering data in eHRs as digital assets and how we can represent privacy policies and data usage policies as these are key factors in accountability systems.

Drama and languages education : authentic assessment through process drama

In this chapter I explore the ways process drama can enrich and enliven the assessment regime of a middle school beginner language program. The chapter draws on five months’ language teaching which I did to collect data during my doctoral research. I taught a secondary co-educational class of 12-13 year olds (first year secondary school) for their German lessons while the teacher who had invited me in observed the lessons. Throughout the project there was an emphasis on student participation through questionnaire, discussion and interview...

Languages of Communication : Indigenous language and/or English?

My interest in producing this paper on Indigenous languages was borne out of conversations with and learnings from community members in the Torres Straits and those connected to the ‘Dream Circle’. Nakata (2003, p. 12) laments the situation whereby ‘teachers are transitionary and take their hard-earned knowledge with them when they leave’. I am thus responding to the call to add to the conversation in a productive albeit culturally loaded way. To re-iterate, I am neither Indigenous nor am I experienced in teaching and learning in these contexts. As problematic as these two points are, I am in many ways typical of the raft of inexperienced white Australian teachers assigned to positions in school contexts where Indigenous students are enrolled or in mainstream contexts with substantial populations of Indigenous students. By penning this article, it is neither my intention to contribute to the silencing of Indigenous educators or Indigenous communities. My intention is to articulate my teacherly reflections as they apply to the topic under discussion. The remainder of this paper is presented in three sections. The next section provides a brief overview of the number of Indigenous people and Indigenous languages in Australia and the role of English as a language of communication. The section which follows draws on theorisations from second/additional language acquisition to overview three different schools of thought about the consequences of English in the lives of Indigenous Australians. The paper concludes by considering the tensions for inexperienced white Australian teachers caught up in the fray.

The psychological treatment of refugees and asylum seekers : what does the literature tell us?

Over the past five years, Australia has accepted approximately 50 000 individuals through its Humanitarian program. To integrate these individuals specialised medical and psychological services have been established in major centres of Australia. Australia has been involved in a heated and partisan debate as to the policy of the government in responding to the refugee situation. Regardless of the outcome of the debate, it is imperative that Australia establishes and develops effective policies and processes to respond to the mental health needs of refugees and asylum seekers. To this end, the current review provides an overview of published studies relating to the psychological treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, as well as studies covering the delivery of related services in response to the needs of this group. In this review we aim to provide an informed perspective in terms of research evidence where this is available. Reported research is supported by findings from local focus groups conducted in Queensland, Australia. The overall aim is to provide an optimum response to facilitate the development of effective and humane programs for a significantly disadvantaged group in our community.