Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) is a technology created over two decades ago. EMA enables to acquire spatiotemporal data from sensors placed on the tongue in order to obtain information about the positioning of the tongue, its shape and dynamics during vocalizations of various sounds of human speech. The articulograph is often supported by an audio recorder and a vision system. In this paper, a novel system integrating EMA, audio and visual data recording is presented. The articulatory data was obtained with a Carsten's AG500 articulograph. The vision system was constructed from 3 high-speed cameras (Gazelle GZL-CL-22C5M-C) manufactured by Point Grey. The cameras registered movements of markers attached to the face of the speakers. The audio recorder consisted of a 16-channel microphone array and an electronic device that registered and processed signals from the microphones. The microphone array made it possible to map sources of sound propagation on the speaker’s face. The simultaneous recording of signals from EMA, the video system and the audio recorder is controlled from a computer with a host program and is supported by a synchronizer. The electromagnetic articulograph registers signals from EMA sensors which return their spatiotemporal positions with the sampling frequency of 200 Hz. The readouts of the spatial positioning of sensors attached to the tongue provide information about its shape and movements in time. There are three cameras registering the movements of external articulators and organs (e.g. lips, jaw and cheeks) from the front and side views. The cameras register movies with the frame rate of 200 FPS. The circular microphone array with 16 microphones records 16-channel audio with 96 kHz sampling rate and 16 bit resolution. During the recording sessions, the participants read aloud words that are displayed on the screen. An application on the host computer sends commands to AG500 which in turn generates synchronization signals in the TTL standard to external devices. These signals are used for activating the audio recorder and the synchronizer in the video system. Articulographic and simple acoustic analysis is performed with created in MATLAB software called phonEMAtool. This software is very useful and ergonomic for fast feature extraction of tongue movements during speech. The application allows to display simultaneously: speech waveform, EMA sensors position and orientation, phonetic segmentation. Before an analysis, the data from AG500 are pre-processed twice with a Savitzky-Golay filter so as to remove undesirable noise. In the paper an exemplary analysis performed by the phonEMAtool of particular articulatory gestures in the articulation of [m] in the Polish word Tamara is presented. Another analysis is beamforming of audio signals in order to obtain three-dimensional acoustic field distribution images. In the paper an example of this technique applied to the analysis of the nasal consonant in the word Tamara [tamara] has been shown. Analysis indicated that the highest intensity of the acoustic field during the pronunciation of the consonant [m] occurs in the nose region and for vowel [a], the highest intensity is observed in the mouth. Due to movement registration of facial markers the reconstruction of positions of external articulators can be obtained. With additional face triangulation using Delaunay algorithm some differences between positions of external articulators can be easily tracked. The measurement system described in this paper is effective and allows for an examination of the vocal tract in 3 ways: tongue movements, acoustic field intensity distribution and external articulator movements. A particularly useful tool is the dedicated acoustic camera based on multi-channel audio recorder and a microphone array. The results obtained with this equipment are unique and show great research and application potential.
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Ambassadeur Simon Smits is Ambassadeur internationale organisaties in Nederland. Als 'diplomaat dicht bij huis' fungeert hij als aanspreekpunt voor de professionals die werken bij internationale organisaties als het EMA, het Internationaal Gerechtshof en Europol. Met Simon spreken we over het belang van het hebben van internationale organisaties voor een land als Nederland, over internationale ecosystemen en over stroopwafeldiplomatie. En wat vinden die expats eigenlijk van ons land?
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A pilot speech production experiment combined articulatory data obtained using Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA), along with acoustic measures, to investigate the effects of cluster size (CC vs. CCC) and morpheme boundaries on consonant cluster synchronicity for five speakers of Polish. We found that being placed in a larger cluster leads to less synchronous productions of two-consonant sequences. We also found, surprisingly, greater synchronicity for clusters spanning a morpheme boundary than for the same cluster within a morpheme. Our findings may be interpreted from a listener-oriented perspective in which speech production is sensitive to perceptual considerations.
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This paper is about the political imbalance in the EU when it comes to attracting European agencies. Over the years, mainly due to the Brexit negotiations and for cost-efficiency reasons, many EU agencies moved from the UK to elsewhere, finding a new sea for headquarters functions or other departments. Whenever such a move is announced, EU countries and their candidate host cities jump into the breach to make a beneficial offer. The way these processes take place is a vector of the politicization of European integration. Nevertheless, these new locations of the EU agencies have won the bidding contest, is a process that usually takes place under the radar. The decision-making of these kinds of processes rests with the member states of the agency. Instead of choosing the most strategic place and ensuring an equal distribution among EU countries, which is the deal, often the highest bidder or the state contributing the most wins the agency. Interestingly, these processes have hardly been studied in the light of the increased politicization. This paper is an attempt to fill this research gap, by focusing on three cases and the processes of decision-making. The cases are the Collège européen de police (European Police College, CEPOL) which moved from the UK to Budapest in 2014, the European Medicine Agency (EMA) moving from London to Amsterdam in 2019, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) which moved its EU-funded program to Bonn and Helsinki mid-2021. The research strategy is as follows: the cases and the lobbying processes are described, then the main political actors are described, and the outcomes are described. The main research question is: How do these processes of political decision-making work out in practice? By answering this question, this study contributes to the discussion on globalized decision-making across the EU and the politicized imbalance which is the result of this.
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The effects of stress may be alleviated when its impact or a decreased stress-resilience are detected early. This study explores whether wearable-measured sleep and resting HRV in police officers can be predicted by stress-related Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) measures in preceding days and predict stress-related EMA outcomes in subsequent days. Eight police officers used an Oura ring to collect daily Total Sleep Time (TST) and resting Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and an EMA app for measuring demands, stress, mental exhaustion, and vigor during 15-55 weeks. Vector Autoregression (VAR) models were created and complemented by Granger causation tests and Impulse Response Function visualizations. Demands negatively predicted TST and HRV in one participant. TST negatively predicted demands, stress, and mental exhaustion in two, three, and five participants, respectively, and positively predicted vigor in five participants. HRV negatively predicted demands in two participants, and stress and mental exhaustion in one participant. Changes in HRV lasted longer than those in TST. Bidirectional associations of TST and resting HRV with stress-related outcomes were observed at a weak-to-moderate strength, but not consistently across participants. TST and resting HRV are more consistent predictors of stress-resilience in upcoming days than indicators of stress-related measures in prior days.
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The effects of stress may be alleviated when its impact or a decreased stress-resilience are detected early. This study explores whether wearable-measured sleep and resting HRV in police officers can be predicted by stress-related Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) measures in preceding days and predict stress-related EMA outcomes in subsequent days. Eight police officers used an Oura ring to collect daily Total Sleep Time (TST) and resting Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and an EMA app for measuring demands, stress, mental exhaustion, and vigor during 15–55 weeks. Vector Autoregression (VAR) models were created and complemented by Granger causation tests and Impulse Response Function visualizations. Demands negatively predicted TST and HRV in one participant. TST negatively predicted demands, stress, and mental exhaustion in two, three, and five participants, respectively, and positively predicted vigor in five participants. HRV negatively predicted demands in two participants, and stress and mental exhaustion in one participant. Changes in HRV lasted longer than those in TST. Bidirectional associations of TST and resting HRV with stress-related outcomes were observed at a weak-to-moderate strength, but not consistently across participants. TST and resting HRV are more consistent predictors of stress-resilience in upcoming days than indicators of stress-related measures in prior days.
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1e alinea column: De kwetsbaarheid van onze IT-infrastructuur en informatiesystemen is de afgelopen jaren uitgegroeid tot een levensgroot issue. Van het Diginotar-debacle tot het lekken van medische gegevens van honderdduizenden Nederlanders, keer op keer wordt duidelijk dat de beveiliging van gevoelige informatiesystemen te wensen overlaat en dat dat leidt tot grote schade. Tegelijkertijd is er maar weinig verbetering in de beveiliging van onze systemen en lijkt het soms alsof we de afgelopen 10 jaar geen meter opgeschoten zijn. We lossen het maar niet op.
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Non-professional runners make extensive use of consumer-available wearable devices and smartphone apps to monitor training sessions, health, and physical performance. Despite the popularity of these products, they usually neglect subjective factors, such as psychosocial stress, unexpected daily physical (in)activity, sleep quality perception, and/or previous injuries. Consequently, the implementation of these products may lead to underperformance, reduced motivation, and running-related injuries. This paper investigates how the integration of subjective training, off-training, and contextual factors from a 24/7 perspective might lead to better individual screening and health protection methods for recreational runners. Using an online-based Ecological Momentary Assessment survey, a seven-day cohort study was conducted. Twenty participants answered daily surveys three times a day regarding subjective off-training and contextual data; e.g., health, sleep, stress, training, environment, physiology, and lifestyle factors. The results show that daily habits of people are unstructured, unlikely predictable, and influenced by factors, such as the demands of work, social life, leisure time, or sleep. By merging these factors with sensor-based data, running-related systems would be able to better assess the individual workload of recreational runners and support them to reduce their risk of suffering from running-related injuries
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Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) is one of the instrumental phonetic research methods used for recording and assessing articulatory movements. Usually, articulographic data are analysed together with standard audio recordings. This paper, however, demonstrates how coupling the articulograph with devices providing other types of information may be used in more advanced speech research. A novel measurement system is presented that consists of the AG 500 electromagnetic articulograph, a 16-channel microphone array with a dedicated audio recorder and a video module consisting of 3 high-speed cameras. It is argued that synchronization of all these devices allows for comparative analyses of results obtained with the three components. To complement the description of the system, the article presents innovative data analysis techniques developed by the authors as well as preliminary results of the system’s accuracy.
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Presentatie van evaluatieonderzoek Kennisnet-projecten Leren van de Toekomst 3+4 en toelichting model innovatiekracht, op conferentie Earli, Limassol, Cyprus.
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