Speaker adapted dynamic lexicons containing phonetic deviations of words     

Bahram Vazirnezhad  Farshad Almasganj  Seyed Mohammad Ahadi  Ari Chanen 《浙江大学学报(A卷英文版)》2009,10(10):1461-1475

Speaker variability is an important source of speech variations which makes continuous speech recognition a difficult task. Adapting automatic speech recognition （ASR） models to the speaker variations is a well-known strategy to cope with the challenge, Almost all such techniques focus on developing adaptation solutions within the acoustic models of the ASR systems. Although variations of the acoustic features constitute an important portion of the inter-speaker variations, they do not cover variations at the phonetic level. Phonetic variations are known to form an important part of variations which are influenced by both micro-segmental and suprasegmental factors. Inter-speaker phonetic variations are influenced by the structure and anatomy of a speaker＇s articulatory system and also his/her speaking style which is driven by many speaker background characteristics such as accent, gender, age, socioeconomic and educational class. The effect of inter-speaker variations in the feature space may cause explicit phone recognition errors. These errors can be compensated later by having appropriate pronunciation variants for the lexicon entries which consider likely phone misclassifications besides pronunciation. In this paper, we introduce speaker adaptive dynamic pronunciation models, which generate different lexicons for various speaker clusters and different ranges of speech rate. The models are hybrids of speaker adapted contextual rules and dynamic generalized decision trees, which take into account word phonological structures, rate of speech, unigram probabilities and stress to generate pronunciation variants of words. Employing the set of speaker adapted dynamic lexicons in a Farsi （Persian） continuous speech recognition task results in word error rate reductions of as much as 10.1% in a speaker-dependent scenario and 7.4% in a speaker-independent scenario.  相似文献   

To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?     

Michel Laroche  Mohammad Reza Habibi  Marie-Odile Richard 《International Journal of Information Management》2013

There is an ongoing debate over the activities of brands and companies in social media. Some researchers believe social media provide a unique opportunity for brands to foster their relationships with customers, while others believe the contrary. Taking the perspective of the brand community building plus the brand trust and loyalty literatures, our goal is to show how brand communities based on social media influence elements of the customer centric model (i.e., the relationships among focal customer and brand, product, company, and other customers) and brand loyalty. A survey-based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on customer/product, customer/brand, customer/company and customer/other customers relationships, which in turn have positive effects on brand trust, and trust has positive effects on brand loyalty. We find that brand trust has a fully mediating role in converting the effects of enhanced relationships in brand community to brand loyalty. The implications for marketing practice and future research are discussed.  相似文献   

Reference Ranges for Serum Total Cholesterol, HDL-Cholesterol, LDL-Cholesterol, and VLDL-Cholesterol and Triglycerides in Healthy Iranian Ahvaz Population     

Mohammad Taha Jalali  Abdolhosain Mosavi Honomaror  Abdolkarim Rekabi  Mahmod Latifi 《Indian journal of clinical biochemistry : IJCB》2013,28(3):277-282

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are recognized as major mortality causes and imposes tremendously heavy socio-economic burden worldwide. A vast variety of risk factors have been introduced in the literature known to enhance the incidence of CVD, such as hyperlipidemia. Therefore in order to make an accurate clinical decision it is essential to have appropriate reference ranges for lipids and lipoprotein particles in a particular population. Healthy female (n = 601) and male (n = 617) cases were randomly selected according to certain exclusion criteria from individuals visiting the major University hospital clinics situated in different part of Ahvaz city, Iran, from June 2010 to December 2010. Fasting blood samples (10 ml) were collected and analyzed for total cholesterol, total triglyceride and HDL-C employing enzymatic assays of CHOD-PAP, GPO-PAP and homogenous methods respectively. The samples were obtained such to include the ethnic populations of Persian, Arab. Lore leaving in this city. The data were analyzed statistically by SPSS-18 software. The obtained results were analyzed then age ethnic-wise and reference ranges (mean ± 1SD) were calculated. Remarkable differences between the obtained results for our population with other nations were seen. Also ethnic difference for HDL-C among our cases was noted. The observed significant differences among different nations and ethnicities emphasizes the need for nation-specific, local reference ranges for lipids and lipoproteins particles, to be established.  相似文献   

Democratising Education in a Decentralised System: South African policy and practice     

Yusuf Sayed 《Compare》2002,32(1):35-46

This paper examines the democratisation of education in South Africa within the context of the policy of educational decentralisation with regards to key policy texts, namely, the South African Schools Act (SASA) and the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF). It begins by exploring the concept of decentralisation with specific reference to the notions of democratisation and participation. This leads to an examination of these concepts within the South African context. The final section examines the policy impact of participation and democratisation in relation to the powers and functions of School Governing Bodies (SGBs) by considering four illustrative examples, namely, religion, language, admissions and teacher employment. The paper concludes by considering the policy gap between policy rhetoric and practice in relation to attempts to entrench democracy and participation, and enhance participation at the school level.  相似文献   

Structuring collaboration in mixed-ability groups to promote verbal interaction,learning, and motivation of average-ability students     

Mohammad Saleh  Ard W. LazonderTon de Jong 《Contemporary educational psychology》2007

Average-ability students often do not take full advantage of learning in mixed-ability groups because they hardly engage in the group interaction. This study examined whether structuring collaboration by group roles and ground rules for helping behavior might help overcome this participatory inequality. In a plant biology course, heterogeneously grouped fourth-grade boys (n=164) were randomly assigned to a structured collaboration condition or an unconstrained comparison condition. Results indicated positive effects of structured collaboration on average-ability students’ achievement, motivation, and contribution to the group interaction. Another positive result was that structuring collaboration did not lower the scores of the high and low-ability students on these measures.  相似文献   

Argumentation-Based Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (ABCSCL): A synthesis of 15 years of research     

Omid Noroozi  Armin Weinberger  Harm J.A. Biemans  Martin Mulder  Mohammad Chizari 《Educational Research Review》2012,7(2):79-106

Learning to argue is an essential objective in education; and online environments have been found to support the sharing, constructing, and representing of arguments in multiple formats for what has been termed Argumentation-Based Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (ABCSCL). The purpose of this review is to give an overview of research in the field of ABCSCL and to synthesize the findings. For this review, 108 publications (89 empirical studies and 19 conceptual papers) on ABCSCL research dating from 1995 through 2011 were studied to highlight the foci of the past 15 years. Building on Biggs’ (2003) model, the ABCSCL publications were systematically categorized with respect to student prerequisites, learning environment, processes, and outcomes. Based on the quantitative and qualitative findings, this paper concludes that ABCSCL environments should be designed in a systematic way that takes the variety of specific conditions for learning into account. It also offers suggestions for educational practice and future research.  相似文献   

Online discussion compensates for suboptimal timing of supportive information presentation in a digitally supported learning environment     

Omid Noroozi  Maria C. Busstra  Martin Mulder  Harm J. A. Biemans  Hilde Tobi  Anouk Geelen  Pieter van’t Veer  Mohammad Chizari 《Educational technology research and development : ETR & D》2012,60(2):193-221

This study used a sequential set-up to investigate the consecutive effects of timing of supportive information presentation (information before vs. information during the learning task clusters) in interactive digital learning materials (IDLMs) and type of collaboration (personal discussion vs. online discussion) in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) on student knowledge construction. Students (N = 87) were first randomly assigned to the two information presentation conditions to work individually on a case-based assignment in IDLM. Students who received information during learning task clusters tended to show better results on knowledge construction than those who received information only before each cluster. The students within the two separate information presentation conditions were then randomly assigned to pairs to discuss the outcomes of their assignments under either the personal discussion or online discussion condition in CSCL. When supportive information had been presented before each learning task cluster, online discussion led to better results than personal discussion. When supportive information had been presented during the learning task clusters, however, the online and personal discussion conditions had no differential effect on knowledge construction. Online discussion in CSCL appeared to compensate for suboptimal timing of presentation of supportive information before the learning task clusters in IDLM.  相似文献   

Green roofs for storm water management: a review     

ANWAR Mohamm  RASUL Mohammad G  KHAN Masud M. K 《重庆大学学报(英文版)》2012,11(1):5-11

The rapid urbanization and industrialization involve an unsustainable use of natural systems,leading to various problems in cities.The urban hydrological system experiences fluctuating amount of surfac...  相似文献   

Quality assurance strategies for affiliated institutions of HE: a case study of the affiliates under National University of Bangladesh   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Gazi Mahabubul Alam  Pradip Kumar Mishra  Mirja Mohammad Shahjamal 《Higher Education》2014,68(2):285-301

Presently, education is considered as the main weapon for national development. However, this tenet has been challenged by several economists. Their findings give rise to a further question: whilst expansion of education increases globally, what is it exactly that continues to hinder a country’s progression? There is no short answer, but one major area of concern is the quality and relevance of the education available. Research for this paper, the first of its kind in Bangladesh, has been carried out by interviews and observation in the affiliates of the National University of Bangladesh, where 80 % of the students in higher education are the underprivileged. The findings show that the legislators ignore the fact that quality of education in the affiliates is perceived as important.  相似文献   

Predicting crest settlement in concrete face rockfill dams using adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system and gene expression programming intelligent methods     

Danial BEHNIA  Kaveh AHANGARI  Ali NOORZAD  Sayed Rahim MOEINOSSADAT 《浙江大学学报(A卷英文版)》2013,14(8):589-602

This paper deals with the estimation of crest settlement in a concrete face rockfill dam （CFRD）, utilizing intelligent methods. Following completion of dam construction, considerable movements of the crest and the body of the dam can develop during the first impoundment of the reservoir. Although there is vast experience worldwide in CFRD design and construction, few accurate experimental relationships are available to predict the settlement in CFRD. The goal is to advance the development of intelligent methods to estimate the subsidence of dams at the design stage. Due to dam zonifieation and uncertainties in material properties, these methods appear to be the appropriate choice. In this study, the crest settlement behavior of CFRDs is analyzed based on compiled data of 24 CFRDs constructed during recent years around the world, along with the utilization of gene ex- pression programming （GEP） and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system （ANFIS） methods. In addition, dam height （H）, shape factor （St）, and time （t, time after first operation） are also assessed, being considered major factors in predicting the settlement behavior. From the relationships proposed, the values ofR2 for both equations of GEP （with and without constant） were 0.9603 and 0.9734, and for the three approaches of ANFIS （grid partitioning （GP）, subtractive clustering method （SCM）, and fuzzy c-means clustering （FCM）） were 0.9693, 0.8657, and 0.8848, respectively. The obtained results indicate that the overall behavior evaluated by this approach is consistent with the measured data of other CFRDs.  相似文献