Applying A Normalized Compression Metric To The Measurement Of Dialect Distance

The paper discusses the application of a similarity metric based on compression to the measurement of the distance among Bulgarian dia- lects. The similarity metric is de ned on the basis of the notion of Kolmo- gorov complexity of a le (or binary string). The application of Kolmogorov complexity in practice is not possible because its calculation over a le is an undecidable problem. Thus, the actual similarity metric is based on a real life compressor which only approximates the Kolmogorov complexity. To use the metric for distance measurement of Bulgarian dialects we rst represent the dialectological data in such a way that the metric is applicable. We propose two such representations which are compared to a baseline distance between dialects. Then we conclude the paper with an outline of our future work.

The role of mundane mobility and contact in dialect death and dialect birth

Urry begins his 2007 book, Mobilities, by throwing some quite stunning statistics at his readers: in 2010, there were one billion legal international arrivals at ports and airports; in 1800 people in the US travelled on average 50 metres per day, today it is 50 kilometres per day; 8.7% of world employment is in tourism; and, at any one time, there are 360,000 passengers in flight above the United States (2007: 3-4). But very many of these mobilities for the individuals concerned are or have become rather unexceptional – a flight to a holiday in Majorca or Florida, a journey on a crowded commuter train into Madrid or Tokyo, a cross-Channel ferry to Calais in France to pick up some cheap wine and a camembert. Whilst much of the theoretically influential dialectological literature on mobility reports on long-distance, often permanent, often dangerous migrations, I turn our attention here to the dialectological consequences of this unexceptional everyday movement. I will argue here that, just as more dramatic and long-distance mobilities can trigger linguistic change, so too can the much more mundane movements we engage in in everyday life. I demonstrate that the linguistic consequences of that contact are similar if not the same – perhaps less dramatic, perhaps involving the convergence of an initially less divergent array of variants – but typologically of the same ilk. And I demonstrate that because these mobilities have been long-term, intensive and ongoing, their consequences on the dialect landscape have been highly significant. Important to remember, however, is that these mobilities are socially stratified and unevenly distributed. As Wolff put it: “the suggestion of free and equal mobility is … a deception, since we don’t all have the same access to the road” (1993: 253).

Maintenance or loss of dialect Andalusian features: Internal and external factors

In the last sixty years a steadily maintained process of convergence towards the Castilian national standard has been occurring in Southern Spain affecting urban middle-class speakers’ varieties, particularly phonology and lexis. As a consequence, unmarked features characterising innovative southern pronunciation have become less frequent and, at the same time, certain standard marked features have been adapted to the southern phonemic inventory. Then, urban middle-class varieties have progressively been stretching out the distance separating them from working-class and rural varieties, and bringing them closer to central Castilian varieties. Intermediate, yet incipient koineised varieties have been described including also transitional Murcia and Extremadura dialects (Hernández & Villena 2009, Villena, Vida & von Essen 2015). (1) Some of the standard phonologically marked features have spread out among southern speakers exclusively based on their mainstream social prestige and producing not only changes in obstruent phoneme inventory –i.e. acquisition of /s/ vs. /θ/ contrast, but also standstill and even reversion of old consonant push- or pull-chain shifts –e.g. /h/ or /d/ fortition, affricate /ʧ/, etc. as well as traditional lexis shift (Villena et al. 2016). Internal (grammar and word frequency) and external (stratification, network and style) factors constraining those features follow similar patterns in the Andalusian speech communities analysed so far (Granada, Malaga) but when we zoom in on central varieties, which are closer to the national standard and then more conservative, differences in frequency increase and conflict sites emerge. (2) Unmarked ‘natural’ phonological features characterising southern dialects, particularly deletion of syllable-final consonant, do not keep pace with this trend of convergence towards the standard. Thus a combination of southern innovative syllable-final and standard conservative onset-consonant features coexist. (3). The main idea is that this intermediate variety is formed through changes suggesting that Andalusian speakers look for the best way of accepting marked prestige features without altering coherence within their inventory. Either reorganisation of the innovative phonemic system in such a way that it may include Castilian and standard /s/ vs. /θ/ contrast or re-syllabification of aspirated /s/ before dental stop are excellent examples of how and why linguistic features are able to integrate intermediate varieties between the dialect-standard continuum.

Comparison of high-speed videokeratoscopy and ultrasound distance sensing for measuring the longitudinal corneal apex movements

Two different methods to measure binocular longitudinal corneal apex movements were synchronously applied. High-speed videokeratoscopy at a sampling frequency of 15 Hz and a customdesigned ultrasound distance sensor at 100 Hz were used for the left and the right eye, respectively. Four healthy subjects participated in the study. Simultaneously, cardiac electric cycle (ECG) was registered for each subject at 100 Hz. Each measurement took 20 s. Subjects were asked to suppress blinking during the measurements. A rigid headrest and a bite-bar were used to minimize undesirable head movements. Time, frequency and time-frequency representations of the acquired signals were obtained to establish their temporal and spectral contents. Coherence analysis was used to estimate the correlation between the measured signals. The results showed close correlation between both corneal apex movements and the cardiopulmonary system. Unraveling these relationships could lead to better understanding of interactions between ocular biomechanics and vision. The advantages and disadvantages of the two methods in the context of measuring longitudinal movements of the corneal apex are outlined.

Closing the cultural distance gap: managing value-based knowledge in MNC by using MEP

Today more than ever, generating and managing knowledge is an essential source of competitive advantage for every organization, and particularly for Multinational corporations (MNC). However, despite the undisputed agreement about the importance of creating and managing knowledge, there are still a large number of corporations that act unethically or illegally. Clearly, there is a lack of attention in gaining more knowledge about the management of ethical knowledge in organizations. This paper refers to value-based knowledge, as the process of recognise and manage those values that stand at the heart of decision-making and action in organizations. In order to support MNCs in implementing value-based knowledge process, the managerial ethical profile (MEP) has been presented as a valuable tool to facilitate knowledge management process at both the intra-organizational network level and at the inter-organizational network level.

ePortfolios and preservice teachers : governing at a distance through non-human actors

This chapter seeks to develop an analysis of the contemporary use of the ePortfolio (Electronic Portfolio) in education practices. Unlike other explorations of this new technology which are deterministic in their approach, the authors seek to reveal the techniques and practices of government which underpin the implementation of the e-portfolio. By interrogating a specific case study example from a large Australian university’s preservice teacher program, the authors find that the e-portfolio is represented as eLearning technology but serves to govern students via autonomization and self responsibilization. Using policy data and other key documents, they are able to reveal the e-portfolio as a delegated authority in the governance of preservice teachers. However, despite this ongoing trend, they suggest that like other practices of government, the e-portfolio will eventually fail. This however the authors conclude opens up space for critical thought and engagement which is not afforded presently.

Distance Education and the Integration of E-learning in a Graduate Program

Historically, distance education consisted of a combination of face-to-face blocks of time and surface mailed packages. However, advances in information technology literacy and the abundance of personal computers has placed e-learning in increased demand. The authors describe the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the blending of e-learning with face-to-face education in the postgraduate nursing forum. Experiences of this particular student group are also discussed.

The effect of dialect mismatch on likelihood-maximising speech enhancement for noise-robust speech recognition

Traditional speech enhancement methods optimise signal-level criteria such as signal-to-noise ratio, but these approaches are sub-optimal for noise-robust speech recognition. Likelihood-maximising (LIMA) frameworks are an alternative that optimise parameters of enhancement algorithms based on state sequences generated for utterances with known transcriptions. Previous reports of LIMA frameworks have shown significant promise for improving speech recognition accuracies under additive background noise for a range of speech enhancement techniques. In this paper we discuss the drawbacks of the LIMA approach when multiple layers of acoustic mismatch are present – namely background noise and speaker accent. Experimentation using LIMA-based Mel-filterbank noise subtraction on American and Australian English in-car speech databases supports this discussion, demonstrating that inferior speech recognition performance occurs when a second layer of mismatch is seen during evaluation.

Focus-score weighted super-resolution for uncooperative iris recognition at a distance and on the move

Uncooperative iris identification systems at a distance and on the move often suffer from poor resolution and poor focus of the captured iris images. The lack of pixel resolution and well-focused images significantly degrades the iris recognition performance. This paper proposes a new approach to incorporate the focus score into a reconstruction-based super-resolution process to generate a high resolution iris image from a low resolution and focus inconsistent video sequence of an eye. A reconstruction-based technique, which can incorporate middle and high frequency components from multiple low resolution frames into one desired super-resolved frame without introducing false high frequency components, is used. A new focus assessment approach is proposed for uncooperative iris at a distance and on the move to improve performance for variations in lighting, size and occlusion. A novel fusion scheme is then proposed to incorporate the proposed focus score into the super-resolution process. The experiments conducted on the The Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge portal database shows that our proposed approach achieves an EER of 2.1%, outperforming the existing state-of-the-art averaging signal-level fusion approach by 19.2% and the robust mean super-resolution approach by 8.7%.

The Heavy Vehicle Study : a case-control study investigating risk factors for crash in long distance heavy vehicle drivers in Australia

Background Heavy vehicle transportation continues to grow internationally; yet crash rates are high, and the risk of injury and death extends to all road users. The work environment for the heavy vehicle driver poses many challenges; conditions such as scheduling and payment are proposed risk factors for crash, yet the precise measure of these needs quantifying. Other risk factors such as sleep disorders including obstructive sleep apnoea have been shown to increase crash risk in motor vehicle drivers however the risk of heavy vehicle crash from this and related health conditions needs detailed investigation. Methods and Design The proposed case control study will recruit 1034 long distance heavy vehicle drivers: 517 who have crashed and 517 who have not. All participants will be interviewed at length, regarding their driving and crash history, typical workloads, scheduling and payment, trip history over several days, sleep patterns, health, and substance use. All participants will have administered a nasal flow monitor for the detection of obstructive sleep apnoea. Discussion Significant attention has been paid to the enforcement of legislation aiming to deter problems such as excess loading, speeding and substance use; however, there is inconclusive evidence as to the direction and strength of associations of many other postulated risk factors for heavy vehicle crashes. The influence of factors such as remuneration and scheduling on crash risk is unclear; so too the association between sleep apnoea and the risk of heavy vehicle driver crash. Contributory factors such as sleep quality and quantity, body mass and health status will be investigated. Quantifying the measure of effect of these factors on the heavy vehicle driver will inform policy development that aims toward safer driving practices and reduction in heavy vehicle crash; protecting the lives of many on the road network.