This paper proposes a new type of acoustic model called the discrete mixture HMM (DMHMM). As large scale speech databases have been constructed for speaker-independent HMMs, continuous mixture HMMs (CMHMMs) are needed to increase the number of mixture components in order to represent complex distributions. This leads to a high computational cost for calculating output probabilities. The DMHMM r...

In this paper we present a new approach for a generalized tying of mixture components for continuous mixture-density HMM-based speech recognition systems. With an iterative pruning and splitting procedure for the mixture components, this approach ooers a very accurate and detailed representation of the acoustic space and at the same time keeps the number of parameters reasonably small in favor ...

background : so far, several studies were conducted to estimate the prevalence of cigarette smoking in iran, but none of them used a statistical model to deal with unobserved smokers. the present study planned to estimate the accurate prevalence of cigarette smoking using mixture of truncated poisson distribution. methods : a cross-sectional study was conducted in hamadan, west of iran in 2009,...

I propose to study the impact of national cultural differences on knowledge sharing activities in global virtual teams. Specially, I will put the research in a specific context of Chinese culture and the U.S. culture. Only Chinese perceptions of the impact of cultural differences between China and the U.S. will be studied. I propose to use a two-phase study. In phase one, an exploratory case st...

We present an experimental setup to evaluate the relative peiformance of single gaussian and mixture of gaussians models for skin color modeling. Firstly, a sample set of J, J 20, 000 skin pixels from a number of ethnic groups is selected and represented in the chromaticity space. In the following, parameter estimation for both the single gaussian and seven (with 2 to 8 gaussian components) gau...

The aim of this paper is to introduce procedural steps for extension of the 1Dhomodyne phase correction for k-space truncation in all gradient encodingdirections. Compared to the existing method applied to 2D partial k-space,signal losses introduced by the phase correction filter is observed to beminimal for the extended approach. In addition, the modified form of phasecorre...

This article is devoted to the asymptotic analysis of the electromagnetic fields scattered by a perfectly conducting plane containing two sub-wavelength rectangular cavities. The problem is formulated through an integral equation, and a spectral analysis of the integral operator is performed. Using the generalized Rouché theorem on operator valued functions, it is possible to localize two types...

It is a great pleasure to have the chance of reading and commenting on this very interesting paper that provides a unified view on non-gaussian mixture models. It is a very hot topic that has recently been receiving increasing attention in the literature. This paper is especially welcome as it offers to the reader an up-to-date review, with interesting stimuli for reflection and further insight...

The use of a phase plate in electron microscopy has shown renewed interest, triggered by a publication on this topic in 2001 by Danev and Nagayama [1]. This interest can be understood from the fact that many samples that are studied in TEM are weak phase objects. The use of a phase plate is the obvious method of choice to convert otherwise invisible phase modulations into visible amplitude modu...

This paper discusses the various challenges encountered during iterative testing of an insurance company’s home page prototypes. The study focuses on the methodology details, including the selection of prototypes and usability evaluation methods and the considerations for practical trade-offs. During Phase 1, six individual think-aloud interviews were conducted to compare three prototypes. Part...