Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 114-119). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Eastern Illinois University.

Face au volume croissant de données audio et multimédia, les technologies liées à l'indexation de données et à l'analyse de contenu ont suscité beaucoup d'intérêt dans la communauté scientifique. Parmi celles-ci, la segmentation et le regroupement en locuteurs, répondant ainsi à la question 'Qui parle quand ?' a émergé comme une technique de pointe dans la communauté de traitement de la parole. D'importants progrès ont été réalisés dans le domaine ces dernières années principalement menés par les évaluations internationales du NIST. Tout au long de ces évaluations, deux approches se sont démarquées : l'une est bottom-up et l'autre top-down. L'ensemble des systèmes les plus performants ces dernières années furent essentiellement des systèmes types bottom-up, cependant nous expliquons dans cette thèse que l'approche top-down comporte elle aussi certains avantages. En effet, dans un premier temps, nous montrons qu'après avoir introduit une nouvelle composante de purification des clusters dans l'approche top-down, nous obtenons des performances comparables à celles de l'approche bottom-up. De plus, en étudiant en détails les deux types d'approches nous montrons que celles-ci se comportent différemment face à la discrimination des locuteurs et la robustesse face à la composante lexicale. Ces différences sont alors exploitées au travers d'un nouveau système combinant les deux approches. Enfin, nous présentons une nouvelle technologie capable de limiter l'influence de la composante lexicale, source potentielle d'artefacts dans le regroupement et la segmentation en locuteurs. Notre nouvelle approche se nomme Phone Adaptive Training par analogie au Speaker Adaptive Training / The ever-expanding volume of available audio and multimedia data has elevated technologies related to content indexing and structuring to the forefront of research. Speaker diarization, commonly referred to as the `who spoke when?' task, is one such example and has emerged as a prominent, core enabling technology in the wider speech processing research community. Speaker diarization involves the detection of speaker turns within an audio document (segmentation) and the grouping together of all same-speaker segments (clustering). Much progress has been made in the field over recent years partly spearheaded by the NIST Rich Transcription evaluations focus on meeting domain, in the proceedings of which are found two general approaches: top-down and bottom-up. Even though the best performing systems over recent years have all been bottom-up approaches we show in this thesis that the top-down approach is not without significant merit. Indeed we first introduce a new purification component leading to competitive performance to the bottom-up approach. Moreover, while investigating the two diarization approaches more thoroughly we show that they behave differently in discriminating between individual speakers and in normalizing unwanted acoustic variation, i.e.\ that which does not pertain to different speakers. This difference of behaviours leads to a new top-down/bottom-up system combination outperforming the respective baseline system. Finally, we introduce a new technology able to limit the influence of linguistic effects, responsible for biasing the convergence of the diarization system. Our novel approach is referred to as Phone Adaptive Training (PAT).

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<p> The distribution of Mg and Sr in speleothem from Yorkshire, England, Vancouver Island and West Virginia, was investigated. Concentrations of Mg range from 300 to greater than 3000 parts per million. Concentrations of Sr range from less than 100 to a few hundred parts per million. Sr partitioning between seepage water and calcite may be more rate sensitive than Mg partitioning.</p> <p> It is possible that Mg and Sr in speleothem could provide information on kinetics and mechanism of speleothem formation and on seepage water and source rock composition.</p> <p> It may be possible to interpret Mg concentration in speleothem in terms of temperature if equilibrium partitioning of Mg between calcite and seepage waters can be demonstrated.</p> / Thesis / Bachelor of Science (BSc)

Phloem vascular tissues transport sugars synthesized by photosynthesis in mature leaves by a process called phloem loading in source tissues and unloading in sink tissues. Phloem loading in source leaves is catalyzed by Suc/H+ symporters (SUTs) which are energized by proton motive force. In Arabidopsis the principal and perhaps exclusive SUT catalyzing phloem loading is AtSUC2. In mutant plants harboring a T-DNA insertion in each of the functional SUT-family members, only Atsuc2 mutants demonstrate overtly debilitated phloem transport. Analysis of a mutant allele (Atsuc2-4) of AtSUC2 with a T-DNA insertion in the second intron showed severely stunted phenotype similar to previously analyzed Atsuc2 null alleles. However unlike previous alleles Atsuc2-4 produced viable seeds. Analysis of phloem specific promoters showed that promoter expression was regulated by Suc concentration. Unlike AtSUC2p, heterologous promoter CoYMVp was not repressed under high Suc conc. Further analysis was conducted using CoYMVp to test the capacity of diverse clades in SUT-gene family for transferring Suc in planta in Atsuc2 - / - mutant background. AtSUC1 and ZmSUT1 from maize complemented Atsuc2 mutant plants to the highest level compared to all other transporters. Over-expression of the above SUTs in phloem showed enhanced Suc loading and transport, but against expectations, plants were stunted. The implications of SUT over-expression to enhance phloem transport and loading are discussed and how it induces a perception of phosphate imbalance is presented.

This dissertation demonstrates that substantial ductility improvement is possible for low-manganese transformation induced plasticity steel compositions through the quenching and partitioning heat treatment approach using a Gleeble thermo-mechanical simulator. Two investigated compositions had unique microstructures and mechanical behavior from an identical applied quenching and partitioning process. Electron backscattered diffraction analyses indicate that Comp-2 and Comp-5 both contained retained austenite which resulted in enhanced ductility. The face-centered cubic phase (austenite) more efficiently mitigates strain incompatibilities when located at martensitic grain boundaries known for hot spots and damage initiation. This location effect leads to enhanced ductility and improved toughness in a lean, transformation induced plasticity steel. However, the increase in ductility in Comp-2 and Comp-5 is limited; the partitioning of carbon cannot stabilize austenite to reach strength/ductility targets set by the Department of Energy. Comp-2 and Comp-5 lack sufficient manganese to stabilize austenite to a higher degree. Chem-2A will be explored to determine if the partitioning stage can stabilize austenite closer to the martensite finish temperature. Periodic intercritical annealing will be applied to Chem-1A to see if mechanical properties can be increased further than current research values. Ultimately, through literature, Manganese is proven to be a more effective austenite stabilizer than carbon, and with tailored heat-treatment, the DOE targets can be reached.

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