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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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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Deze studie kent de volgende opbouw. Voordat er concrete stappen gezet kunnen worden om onderwijs meer inclusief te maken, is het van belang om te weten waarom juist deze stappen gezet dienen te worden. Daarom gaan wij in hoofdstuk 2 eerst in op inzichten die een licht werpen op mechanismen die ten grondslag liggen aan interacties tussen studenten en docenten. Wij proberen hiermee wellicht onbewuste, en daarmee nauwelijks zichtbare processen die zich afspelen tussen docenten en studenten, in de schijnwerpers te plaatsen. Deze mechanismen uiten zich in zowel docent- als studentgedrag, die onderling ook weer op elkaar inwerken. In hoofdstuk 3 kijken we naar in onderzoek genoemde handelingsperspectieven voor docenten om een inclusieve leeromgeving tot stand te brengen en te bevorderen. En ten slotte in hoofdstuk 4 zullen we de theoretische bevindingen in een samenvattend hoofdstuk proberen in te bedden in de dagelijkse onderwijspraktijk.
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Een van de instrumenten voor de bepaling van de kwaliteit en van de aanwezigheid van opgetreden schade vormt het niet-destructief onderzoek (NDO), waarvan vele uitvoeringsvormen zijn ontwikkeld en waaraan binnen de kaders van de wetgeving en de in gebruik zijnde Codes zowel aan de apparatuur als aan de bediening eisen worden gesteld. Zo moeten ook de uitvoerders van NDO in de praktijk gecertificeerd zijn.
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Bespreking van onderzoek van Rychard Bouwens in ‘Waar wij trots op zijn. De ontdekkingen van 2011’ van de Universiteit Leiden Faculteit der Wiskunde & Natuurwetenschappen. Het valt goed te begrijpen voor iedereen met een basale kennis van klassieke fotografie: bij weinig licht neem je een lange sluitertijd. En dat is wat Rychard Bouwens deed. Om naar de zogenaamde Dark Ages van het heelal te kijken, hield hij de Hubble-ruimtetelescoop maar liefst 87 uur lang op een plek gericht.
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Bespreking van onderzoek van Anton Akhmerov in ‘Waar wij trots op zijn. De ontdekkingen van 2011’ van de Universiteit Leiden Faculteit der Wiskunde & Natuurwetenschappen. De Leidse theoretisch natuurkundige Anton Akhmerov promoveerde in mei op een onderzoek naar functionele toepassingen van grafeen, een eenlaags koolstofmateriaal dat de afgelopen jaren volop in de belangstelling staat. Daarnaast werkte hij ook nog aan quantumcomputers, omdat hij tijd over had in zijn onderzoek.
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Bespreking van onderzoek van Erik Danen in ‘Waar wij trots op zijn. De ontdekkingen van 2011’ van de Universiteit Leiden Faculteit der Wiskunde & Natuurwetenschappen. Celbioloog Erik Danen doet onderzoek naar de verwoestende – maar in evolutionaire termen ook wonderlijke – strategieën van de kankercel. Met welke trucs verspreiden kankercellen zich door het lichaam? Hoe overleven ze een aanval van een chemokuur? En hoe wrang is het dat de één procent cellen die de therapie overleeft vervolgens dubbelhard terugslaat.
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Bespreking van onderzoek van Todor Stefanov in ‘Waar wij trots op zijn. De ontdekkingen van 2011’ van de Universiteit Leiden Faculteit der Wiskunde & Natuurwetenschappen. De Bulgaar Todor Stefanov onderzoekt methoden en middelen voor het ontwerpen en programmeren van multiprocessorsystemen die zijn geïntegreerd in een enkele chip. Dit om de verwerking van signalen en beelden in bijvoorbeeld smartphones te verbeteren. En dat moet snel, want ieder jaar komt er wel weer een nieuwe generatie op de markt.
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Given the growing number of older people, society as a whole should ideally provide a higher quality of life (QoL) for its ageing citizens through the concept of personalised ageing. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are subject to constant and rapid development, and can contribute to the goal of an improved QoL for older adults. In order to utilise future ICT solutions as a part of an age-friendly smart environment that helps achieve personalised ageing with an increased QoL, one must first determine whether the existing ICT solutions are satisfying the needs of older people. In order to accomplish that, this study contributes in three ways. First, it proposes a framework for the QoL of older adults, in order to provide a systematic review of the state-of-the-art literature and patents in this field. The second contribution is the finding that selected ICT solutions covered by articles and patents are intended for older adults and are validated by them. The third contribution of the study are the six recommendations that are derived from the review of the literature and the patents which would help move the agenda concerning the QoL of older people and personalised ageing with the use of ICT solutions forward. Original article at MDPI; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17082940 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives")
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With artificial intelligence (AI) systems entering our working and leisure environments with increasing adaptation and learning capabilities, new opportunities arise for developing hybrid (human-AI) intelligence (HI) systems, comprising new ways of collaboration. However, there is not yet a structured way of specifying design solutions of collaboration for hybrid intelligence (HI) systems and there is a lack of best practices shared across application domains. We address this gap by investigating the generalization of specific design solutions into design patterns that can be shared and applied in different contexts. We present a human-centered bottom-up approach for the specification of design solutions and their abstraction into team design patterns. We apply the proposed approach for 4 concrete HI use cases and show the successful extraction of team design patterns that are generalizable, providing re-usable design components across various domains. This work advances previous research on team design patterns and designing applications of HI systems.
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