The Sammon Transform performs data projections in a topology-preserving manner on the basis of an arbitrary distance measure. We use the weights of the observation probabilities of semi-continuous HMMs that were adapted to the current speaker as input. Experiments on laryngectomized speakers with tracheoesophageal substitute voice, hoarse and normal speakers show encouraging results. Different ...

In 1965, Njastad [2] introduced the notion of α-sets in topological space. In 1983, Mashhour et al. [1] introduced, with the help of α-sets, a weak form of continuity which they termed as α-continuity. Noiri [3] introduced the same concept, but under the name strong semicontinuity. Noiri [4] defined with the aid of α-sets a new weakened form of continuous mapping called weakly α-continuous mapp...

In a study of over 10,000 acquisitions between 1991 and 2002, we find evidence that past success raises future performance in private, or semi-private, bids but not in public bids. We also find that past success was not associated with the number of prior acquisitions. We attribute this past success to an unobserved acquisition competence and argue that acquisition competence must be based on s...

Because of non-convexities in the model, computing much of anything along the nondominated frontier of a large-scale (1000 to 3000 securities) portfolio selection problem with semi-continuous variables is a task that has not previously been achieved. But (a) given the speed at which the nondominated frontier of a classical portfolio problem can now be computed and (b) the possibility that there...

gC(μ) := { F0(C) Fμ(C) if Fμ(C) > 0 ; +∞ if Fμ(C) = 0. Then fC is an upper semicontinuous function: if μ ∈ SM is such that Fμ(C) > 0, then fC is continuous at point μ. Otherwise, fC(μ) = ∞ and fC is trivially upper semicontinuous at point μ. Clearly, one has G(μ) = infC∈C fC(μ) ; as an infimum of upper semicontinuous functions, it is itself upper semicontinuous, and therefore attains its maximu...