Assessment of PD Speech Anomalies @ Home

Background: Voice processing in real-time is challenging. A drawback of previous work for Hypokinetic Dysarthria (HKD) recognition is the requirement of controlled settings in a laboratory environment. A personal digital assistant (PDA) has been developed for home assessment of PD patients. The PDA offers sound processing capabilities, which allow for developing a module for recognition and quantification HKD. Objective: To compose an algorithm for assessment of PD speech severity in the home environment based on a review synthesis. Methods: A two-tier review methodology is utilized. The first tier focuses on real-time problems in speech detection. In the second tier, acoustics features that are robust to medication changes in Levodopa-responsive patients are investigated for HKD recognition. Keywords such as Hypokinetic Dysarthria , and Speech recognition in real time were used in the search engines. IEEE explorer produced the most useful search hits as compared to Google Scholar, ELIN, EBRARY, PubMed and LIBRIS. Results: Vowel and consonant formants are the most relevant acoustic parameters to reflect PD medication changes. Since relevant speech segments (consonants and vowels) contains minority of speech energy, intelligibility can be improved by amplifying the voice signal using amplitude compression. Pause detection and peak to average power rate calculations for voice segmentation produce rich voice features in real time. Enhancements in voice segmentation can be done by inducing Zero-Crossing rate (ZCR). Consonants have high ZCR whereas vowels have low ZCR. Wavelet transform is found promising for voice analysis since it quantizes non-stationary voice signals over time-series using scale and translation parameters. In this way voice intelligibility in the waveforms can be analyzed in each time frame. Conclusions: This review evaluated HKD recognition algorithms to develop a tool for PD speech home-assessment using modern mobile technology. An algorithm that tackles realtime constraints in HKD recognition based on the review synthesis is proposed. We suggest that speech features may be further processed using wavelet transforms and used with a neural network for detection and quantification of speech anomalies related to PD. Based on this model, patients' speech can be automatically categorized according to UPDRS speech ratings.

Dialectal Speech in Literature and Translation : Bachelor Degree Thesis in English Linguistics

This essay studies how dialectal speech is reflected in written literature and how this phenomenon functions in translation. With this purpose in mind, Styron's Sophie's Choice and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are analysed using samples of non-standard orthography which have been applied in order to reflect the dialect, or accent, of certain characters. In the same way, Lundgren's Swedish translation of Sophie's Choice and Ferres and Rolfe's Spanish version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are analysed. The method consists of linguistically analysing a few text samples from each novel, establishing how dialect is represented through non-standard orthography, and thereafter, comparing the same samples with their translation into another language in order to establish whether dialectal features are visible also in the translated novels. It is concluded that non-standard orthography is applied in the novels in order to represent each possible linguistic level, including pronunciation, morphosyntax, and vocabulary. Furthermore, it is concluded that while Lundgren's translation intends to orthographically represent dialectal speech on most occasions where the original does so, Ferres and Rolfe's translation pays no attention to dialectology. The discussion following the data analysis establishes some possible reasons for the exclusion of dialectal features in the Spanish translation considered here. Finally, the reason for which this study contributes to the study of dialectology is declared.

O hate speech e suas limitações

O objetivo deste trabalho de conclusão de curso é externar a relevância do direito à liberdade de expressão, especialmente em casos de discursos ofensivos e de incitação ao ódio, além de investigar se em algumas situações ele pode ser limitado para ceder a outros valores e de que forma. Por exemplo, através da técnica da ponderação ou de outros parâmetros pré-estabelecidos, os quais têm a função facilitar a resolução de casos difíceis, isto é, situações em que há a colisão entre direitos e deve-se chegar à conclusão de qual deles deve preponderar.

Brazil: challenges for freedom of speech online

Escola de Direito de São Paulo da Fundação Getulio Vargas

Bovine Biofertilizer and Water Regime Effects on Growth and Bulb Quality of Garlic

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Effects of hearing protector devices on speech intelligibility

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of hearing protection devices (HPDs) on the understanding of speech in young adults with normal hearing, both in a silent situation and in the presence of ambient noise. The experimental research was carried out with the following variables: five different conditions of HPD use (without protectors, with two earplugs and with two earmuffs); a type of noise (pink noise); 4 test levels (60, 70, 80 and 90 dB[A]); 6 signal/noise ratios (without noise, + 5, + 10, zero, - 5 and - 10 dB); 5 repetitions for each case, totalling 600 tests with 10 monosyllables in each one. The variable measure was the percentage of correctly heard words (monosyllabic) in the test. The results revealed that, at the lowest levels (60 and 70 dB), the protectors reduced the intelligibility of speech (compared to the tests without protectors) while, in the presence of ambient noise levels of 80 and 90 dB and unfavourable signal/noise ratios (0, -5 and -10 dB), the HPDs improved the intelligibility. A comparison of the effectiveness of earplugs versus earmuffs showed that the former offer greater efficiency in respect to the recognition of speech, providing a 30% improvement over situations in which no protection is used. As might be expected, this study confirmed that the protectors' influence on speech intelligibility is related directly to the spectral curve of the protector's attenuation. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. Ltd. All rights reserved.

Comparative Analysis of Objective Distortion Measures for Speech Signals Degraded by Noise

Speech signals degraded by additive noise can affects different applications in telecommunication. The noise may degrades the intelligibility of the speech signals and its waveforms as well. In some applications such as speech coding, both intelligibility and waveform quality are important but only intelligibility has been focused lastly. So, modern speech quality measurement techniques such as PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality) have been used and classical distortion measurement techniques such as Cepstral Distance are becoming unused. In this paper it is shown that some classical distortion measures are still important in applications where speech corrupted by additive noise has to be evaluated.

Analysis of speech fluency in Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder, often referred as being characterized by dissociation between verbal and non-verbal abilities, although the number of studies disputing this proposal is emerging. Indeed, although they have been traditionally reported as displaying increased speech fluency, this topic has not been fully addressed in research. In previous studies carried out with a small group of individuals with WS, we reported speech breakdowns during conversational and autobiographical narratives suggestive of language difficulties. In the current study, we characterized the speech fluency profile using an ecologically based measure - a narrative task (story generation) was collected from a group of individuals with WS (n = 30) and typically developing group (n = 39) matched in mental age. Oral narratives were elicited using a picture stimulus - the cookie theft picture from Boston Diagnosis Aphasia Test. All narratives were analyzed according to typology and frequency of fluency breakdowns (non-stuttered and stuttered disfluencies). Oral narratives in WS group differed from typically developing group, mainly due to a significant increase in the frequency of disfluencies, particularly in terms of hesitations, repetitions and pauses. This is the first evidence of disfluencies in WS using an ecologically based task (oral narrative task), suggesting that these speech disfluencies may represent a significant marker of language problems in WS. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection for bulb maturity in onion

Embora seja possível produzir cebola (Allium cepa) o ano inteiro no Brasil, a maioria dos cultivares nacionais apresentam bulbos com baixa qualidade, o que proporcionou grande importação de cebola da Argentina, do tipo Valenciana, que não bulbifica no Brasil, mas que agradou os consumidores brasileiros. Para estudar o efeito da seleção para maturidade de bulbos baseada em progênies de meios irmãos obtidas do híbrido triplo intervarietal [Crioula x (Pira Ouro x Valenciana Sintética 14)] foram semeadas 17 progênies selecionadas para maturidade precoce e 25 para tardia, além da geração F1 e dos cultivares Pira Ouro (dias curtos), Crioula (intermediários) e Armada (dias longos), totalizando 46 tratamentos. O delineamento foi em blocos ao acaso, com três repetições de 32 plantas por parcela, cultivadas em bandejas de isopor. As progênies precoces apresentaram ciclo médio variando de 67 a 83 dias e as tardias de 85 a 103 dias. Na comparação da porcentagem de plantas improdutivas esta diferença também foi evidente, variando de 0,0% a 6,2% nas precoces e de 8,1% a 59,5% nas tardias. Os coeficientes de herdabilidades obtidos foram elevados, variando de 0,65 (porcentagem de plantas improdutivas, na seleção tardia) a 0,80 (peso médio de bulbo, na seleção precoce), sendo, em média, superiores na população selecionada para maturidade precoce. Foram obtidas progênies com peso de bulbo superior às testemunhas 'Pira Ouro' e 'Crioula' e com ciclo que não diferia destas. A seleção para maturidade foi altamente eficiente e a população selecionada para maturidade precoce apresenta grande potencial de originar cultivares adaptados, com produção e qualidade de bulbos superiores às disponíveis no mercado brasileiro.

Achados espectrais das vogais [a] e [ã] em diferentes aberturas velofaríngeas

TEMA: o controle do tamanho da abertura velofaríngea é uma variável importante na caracterização do perfil acústico da fala hipernasal. OBJETIVO: investigar os aspectos espectrais das frequências de F1, F2, F3, formante nasal(FN) e anti-formante, em Hertz, para as vogais [a] e [ã] na presença de aberturas feitas no bulbo de réplicas da prótese de palato de uma paciente com insuficiência velofaríngea. MÉTODO: gravações de produções de quatro palavras (pato/mato e panto/manto) inseridas em frase veículo foram obtidas em cinco condições de funcionamento velofaríngeo: prótese sem aberturas (condição controle: CC), prótese com abertura de 10mm² no bulbo (condição experimental - CE10), com abertura de 20mm² (condição experimental - CE20), com abertura de 30mm² (condição experimental - CE30), e sem prótese (condição experimental aberta - CEA). Cinco fonoaudiólogos julgaram a nasalidade de fala ao vivo, durante a leitura de um texto oral. As gravações foram usadas para análise espectral. RESULTADOS: valores de F1 foram significativamente mais altos para [a] que para [ã] em todas as condições. Valores de F2 para [a] em CE20 e CE30 foram significantemente mais baixos que nas outras condições, aproximando-se dos valores para [ã]. Valores de F3 não foram significativamente diferentes nas diferentes condições. Houve relação entre os achados de FN e anti-formantes e a percepção de nasalidade para as condições CE10 e CE20. CONCLUSÃO: foram observadas mudanças significativas nos valores espectrais estudados de acordo com alterações no tamanho da abertura velofaríngea.