In this paper, a new decision tree-based clustering technique called Phonetic, Dimensional and State Positional Decision Tree (PDS-DT) is proposed. In PDS-DT, phonetic contexts, dimensions and state positions are grouped simultaneously during decision tree construction. PDS-DT provides a complicate distribution sharing structure without any external control parameters. In speaker-independent co...

BACKGROUND Laparoscopic suturing and tying constitute advanced minimally invasive surgery skills. Developing proficiency in the standard methods with needle drivers is often an arduous process. Recent advances in laparoscopic instrumentations has allowed for easier methods of suturing and tying. This study investigated the hypothesis that the use of a specialized suturing device and a specializ...

This paper investigates how the tying of complementary products can be used to both preserve and create monopoly positions, where our focus is on the use of tying to deter the entry of efficient producers. We first show how a firm that is a monopolist of a product in the current period can use tying to preserve its monopoly position in the future. We then show using related arguments how a mono...

BACKGROUND Suturing and knot tying are basic skills for surgeons. Performing these tasks laparoscopically can be a tedious, time-consuming endeavor associated with much frustration. We evaluated a mechanically assisted suture and pretied knot device (Quik-Stitch) for performing the basic tasks of suturing and knot tying. METHODS We performed a time study using 1) intracorporeal suturing and k...

Recently we proposed an alternative method called eigentriphone to solve the data insufficiency problem in triphone acoustic modeling without the need of state tying. The idea is to treat the acoustic modeling problem of infrequent triphones (“poor triphones”) as an adaptation problem from the more frequent triphones (“rich triphones”): firstly, an eigenbasis is developed over the rich triphone...

For large vocabulary recognition system, as well as for flexible vocabulary applications using hidden Markov model(HMM), parameter smoothing and tying have been used to increase the reliability of models. This paper describes bottom-up and topdown clustering techniques for state level tying. This paper also describes a method of applying parameter smoothing to the clustered states and covarianc...