Traditional approaches to model pronunciation variations either require expert knowledge or extensive speech databases. In the cases where non-native speech is considered they are too costly, especially if a flexible modelling of various accents is desired. We propose to exclusively use native speech databases to derive non-native pronunciation variants. We use a phoneme recognizer to generate ...

A national German funding initiative for Medical Informatics focusing at data integration for medicine gives an opportunity to reopen a window to Germany. In the open window appears a best paper selection of the 2015 annual conference of the German Society of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology and papers of the German journal GMS Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (MIBE)...

In this paper, we describe a search procedure for statistical machine translation (MT) based on dynamic programming (DP). Starting from a DP-based solution to the traveling salesman problem, we present a novel technique to restrict the possible word reordering between source and target language in order to achieve an eÆcient search algorithm. A search restriction especially useful for the trans...

This paper explores the use of unlabeled data in a knowledge-poor approach to German NER. German is especially interesting for NER since not only names but all nouns are capitalized. Therefore, large and reliable lexical resources are necessary to develop and adapt systems for NER. Motivated by a model of word form observance, distinguishing three levels of different granularity, a method for t...

A graphemic representation of vowel mutated a is first documented in Middle High German texts. As a consequence of a strict letter-to-letter pronunciation, graphemic <ä> was pronounced as [ɛ(ː)] in Early New High German and was subsequently prescribed in pronunciation dictionaries. Especially the pronunciation of long [ɛː] has become an issue of debate. Many scholars point out that [ɛː] had mer...

The present paper discusses the intonational features of 3 Swiss German dialects: Valais Swiss German (WS), representing the Alpine variety, and Zurich (ZH) and Berne (BE) Swiss German, representing the Midland dialects. By application of the Fujisaki intonation model, 24 speakers of the mentioned dialects are investigated according to their global as well as local intonational features. The BE...

The concept of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is becoming increasingly important not only in research, but also in practice. SOA has emerged as a major topic, especially in regards to the banking industry as it is one of the cutting-edge industries concerning service-orientation. SOA implementation in the German banking industry varies, with some still in the adoption phase and others alre...

90 he German cockroach, with its long history of close association with humans, is most often regarded as merely an unpleasant pest with the potential to transmit disease-causing microbes. However, recent research has demonstrated that this insidious pest has a much greater impact on public health than was once thought. German cockroaches, first implicated in allergic disease nearly 40 years ag...

Incomplete Risk Adjustment and Adverse Selection in the German Public Health Insurance System by Thomas Knaus and Robert Nuscheler The German statutory health insurance market was exposed to competition in 1996. To avoid adverse selection, a prospective risk compensation scheme was introduced in 1994. Due to their low contribution rates, company-based sickness funds were able to attract a lot o...