This dissertation examines the imaginative ways in which three postcolonial writers overcome a fractured collective past by creating a double-voiced discourse narrative framework that allows them to envision a reality that might-have-been while acknowledging the presence of dominant discourses that are. Morrison, Condé, and Farah overlap contradictory forms in order to show that narrative boundaries are self-imposed, mythical, and arbitrary. Intersection among these differing narratives in each text creates dialogism--a balance between dominant and counter-discourse. Because the contrasting viewpoints of dominant and counter-discourse both have a historical perspective, Morrison, Condé, and Farah work to retain a delicate intertextual fabric in their novels--a fabric woven from several narratives to create a text that rests paradoxically on the task of revealing the narrative contradictions while also showing that they can't be completely separated from each other as the singular hegemonic voice argues.

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The study explores the role and contribution of education in developing a localized and relevant HIV/AIDS prevention strategy through a multi-voiced approach, involving the educational institutions, as well as the traditional leaders, community-members, including parents. The study comprised all public schools in one Zambian province from 2002-2008.  The study explores, among other factors, the role of traditional culture in mitigating and exacerbating the spread of the disease. Zambia was one of the countries hardest hit by the HIV/AIDs epidemic, and one of the few countries in the region that, in 2002, had a clear policy on the role of education in fighting the epidemic. Through the process of developing and implementing a learner-centered interactive HIV/AIDS education program in the province. based upon MOE`s  HIV/AIDS policies and strategies, syllabi, and teachers guides, and at the same time emphasizing the broader community as a point of departure. The qualitative and interpretivist research was conducted within a constructivist grounded theoretical approach. The study applies comprehensive and multilayered perspectives while utilizing a broad range of methods.   Documentary analyses, structured and semi-structured interviews, in depth conversations with traditional and educational leaders, teachers, parents and pupils, were all carried out during the period of the study. Nvivo, a computer-supported data analysis tool was used to support the process of categorizing the qualitative data and the study applied Cultural- and Historical Activity Theory for analytic purposes. The study revealed the mismatch between the decentralized, national HIV/AIDS prevention education approach, as stated in the policy documents and the global UNAIDS, centralized and cross-sectoral strategies favored by the Zambian government. The uncoordinated efforts did not reach  the grassroots level, where professionals, at district and school level, perceived and applied policies in highly different ways, if at all reaching students and the communities. The main categories of drivers of the epidemic were of socio-cultural and economic character, e.g. polygamy, sexual cleansing, local healing, gender inequality and poverty,  sexual violence, multiple concurrent sexual partners and prostitution, but there were also variety of local drivers, depending upon context. When analyzing the participatory approaches of the HIV/AIDS prevention strategy, predominantly, at the school-community level, the findings revealed that the traditional leaders, being legitimate leaders in their kingdoms, and the custodians of culture and traditions, were found to be gate openers to promote behavioral change and cultural transformation in their villages. The traditional leaders worked hand in hand with the schools and the villagers. Their involvement legitimated that discourses and HIV/AIDS prevention actions were taken at school as well as within their own chiefdom. Utilizing their traditional leadership structures, the chiefs sustained their cultural rites, e.g. cleansing, in order to chase away the evil spirits, by turning the rites into practices that do no put people at risk for contracting HIV. Particularly at the global and state level, culture has been seen as drivers of the epidemic. The study revealed that the traditional leaders used their role as significant others, became gate-openers, using their legitimate role as custodians of culture to transform cultural rites and practices.

This master's thesis investigated realizations of typologically marked structures (word final stops) in the interlanguages of 15 ESL learners across Arabic, Brazilian-Portuguese and Japanese first languages (L1s). In general, previous theories of markedness (see Eckman's MARKEDNESS DIFFERENTIAL HYPOTHESIS and STRUCTURAL CONFORMITY HYPOTHESIS) and transfer (such as Major's ONTOGENY MODELS) were upheld in that more marked structures proved more problematic than less marked areas. Where uniformity of modification strategies was found, OPTIMALITY THEORY was implemented to illustrate process of acquisition undertaken during interlanguage development. In an isolated speech task, participants who demonstrated acquisition of more marked structures (ie., voiced final stops) were also successful with their less marked counterparts (voiceless final stops), but not vice versa. In connected speech, more advanced participants' modifications of target structures (such as assimilation of voicing and place of articulation) were more similar to patterns exhibited by native speakers of the target language while less advanced participants' productions (ie., lack of intervocalic voicing) were more reflective of their L1. These findings support the hypothesis that interlanguages adhere to universal grammar and, thus, behave as natural languages. Finally, future directions such as potential research of L1/L2 perception issues and pedagogical implications of the study's results are explored.

The wavelet transform is a modern signal processing tool. The wavelet transform earned itself a great success mainly for its unique properties, such as the capability of recognizing very fast changes in processed signal. The theoretical part of this work is introduction to wavelet theory, more specifically wavelet types, a wavelet transform and its application in systems dealing with signal denoising. A main problem connected to speech signals denoising was introduced. The problem is degradation of the speech signal when denoising unvoiced parts. It is because of the fact that unvoiced parts and noise itself have very similar characteristics. The solution would be to apply different attitude to voiced and unvoiced segments of the speech. The main goal of this diploma thesis was to create an application implementing the speech signal denoising using the wavelet transform. The special attention should have been paid to applying different attitude to voiced and unvoiced segments of the speech. The demanded application is programmed as a grafical user interface (GUI) in MATLAB environment. The algorithm implemented in this form allows users to test introduced procedures with a great comfort. This work presents achieved results and discusses them considering general requirements posed on an application of given type. The most important conlusion of this Diploma Thesis is the fact that some kind of trade-off between sufficient signal denoising and keeping the speech understandable has to be made.

Ability of human listeners to understand altered speech is argued as evidence of uniquely human processing abilities, but early auditory experience also may contribute to this capability. I tested the ability of Panzee, a language-trained chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), reared and spoken to from infancy by humans, to recognize synthesized words. Training and testing was conducted with different sets of English words in natural, “harmonics-only” (resynthesized using only voiced components), or “noise-vocoded” (based on amplitude-modulated noise bands) forms, with Panzee choosing from “lexigram” symbols that represented words. In Experiment 1 performance was equivalent with words in natural and harmonics-only form. In Experiment 2 performance with noise-vocoded words was significantly higher than chance but lower than with natural words. Results suggest specialized processing mechanisms are not necessary to speech perception in the absence of traditional acoustic cues, with the more important factor for speech-processing abilities being early immersion in a speech-rich environment.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T18:12:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Wilson Gava Junior.pdf: 1334336 bytes, checksum: d3d92d3bb204a4bb2373747afd19403a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-07-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / INTRODUCTION: in the singing voice field, the relationships established between the singer s mastering of breathing and vocal emission have always been widely discussed with different points of view. In this matter, breath support is one of the main agents. It is important to note that there are few studies that contribute with practical models designed towards the learning of this ability. AIM: to analyze the Voiced Breathing Support Program (PARS), developed by the author, through the learning process of three popular singers. METHODS: an initial interview was performed to select the subjects, and three professional popular singers, with different characteristics, were chosen to take part in the study. The PARS was developed, individually, in weekly one-hour encounters, in three interdependent phases (awareness, development and sedimentation). Throughout the process, a log of each encounter was filled in, and the audio files were registered, for each singer. Perceptive parameters of voice were also analyzed and compared before and after the program. RESULTS: Subject one had a learning process which involved all levels of knowledge and provided a change in attitude regarding breath support establishment. This subject finished all three phases of the PARS in the expected time-span. There were observed improvements in body aspects, the articulation was more precise, there was an increase of five half-tones in vocal tessitura, and stability in tuning at the end of the program. In the learning process of singer two, different awareness strategies were deeded. This subject needed a higher number of encounters in development and sedimentation phases in order to learn breath support. The parameters that were improved at the end of the PARS were: breathing, breath coordination while singing, resonance, articulation and vocal tessitura, which increased six half-tones. The process of subject three presented difficulties that were basically related to awareness and anatomic and physiologic limitations. They influenced the subject s not being able to obtain a change in attitude in order to learn breath support. Subject three accomplished the awareness and development phases in a higher number of encounters. The awareness phase was not finished and the subject did not acquire breath support. This singer maintained inadequate parameters at the end of the PARS, with only a discrete improvement in tuning. FINAL COMMENTS: Of the three subjects in this study, two established breath support through the PARS. The learning process for each subject occurred in different ways, despite the diversity of each studied subject. There was a link established between knowing and performing, and this promoted a change in attitude regarding respiratory aspects. As far as the vocal aspects, for two singers there were improvements in resonance, articulation, vocal tessitura and tuning / INTRODUÇÃO: no campo da voz cantada, as relações estabelecidas entre o domínio da respiração e a emissão vocal do cantor sempre foram assuntos geradores de polêmica. Nesse ponto, o apoio respiratório é um dos principais agentes. Vale ressaltar, também, que poucos estudos apresentaram propostas práticas direcionadas para seu aprendizado. OBJETIVO: analisar o Programa de Apoio Respiratório Sonorizado (PARS), criado pelo pesquisador, por meio do processo de aprendizado de três cantores populares. MÉTODOS: foi realizada uma entrevista inicial para seleção, na qual três cantores populares profissionais, com diferentes características, foram escolhidos. O PARS foi desenvolvido, de forma individual, em encontros semanais de uma hora de duração, em três fases complementares (sensibilização, desenvolvimento e sedimentação). Para cada cantor, durante todo o processo, foi elaborado um diário dos encontros e registros em áudio. Também, foram analisados e comparados parâmetros perceptivos da voz, antes do inicio do programa e depois. RESULTADOS: o sujeito um teve um processo de aprendizado que envolveu todos os níveis de conhecimento e promoveu uma mudança de atitude com relação ao estabelecimento do apoio. Esse sujeito concluiu três fases do PARS dentro do período esperado. Foram observadas melhoras nos aspectos corporais, articulação ficou mais precisa, houve ampliação de cinco semitons na tessitura vocal e estabilidade na afinação ao final do PARS. No processo de aprendizado, do segundo cantor, foram necessárias estratégias diferenciadas para a propriocepção. Esse sujeito necessitou de um número maior de encontros nas fases de desenvolvimento e sedimentação para aprender o apoio respiratório. Os parâmetros com mudança positiva, ao final do PARS, foram: respiração, coordenação pneumofonoarticulatória, ressonância, articulação e tessitura vocal, com ampliação de seis semitons. O processo do sujeito três apresentou dificuldades, em relação, basicamente, a propriocepção e a limitações anatomofisiológicas. Essas influenciaram para que o sujeito não conseguisse uma mudança de atitude para o aprendizado do apoio. O sujeito três realizou as fases de sensibilização e desenvolvimento em um número maior de encontros. A fase de sensibilização não foi concluída e o sujeito não adquiriu o apoio respiratório. O cantor manteve parâmetros inadequados ao final do PARS, com apenas uma discreta melhora na afinação. CONSIDERAÇÕES FINAIS: dos três sujeitos do estudo, dois estabeleceram o apoio respiratório por meio do PARS. O processo de aprendizado de cada um ocorreu de forma distinta, a despeito da diversidade de cada sujeito pesquisado. Estabeleceu-se um enlace entre o saber e o fazer, de forma a promover uma mudança de atitude com relação aos aspectos respiratórios. Com relação aos aspectos vocais, para dois cantores ocorreram melhoras na ressonância, na articulação, na tessitura e na afinação

Submitted by JOSÉ RADAMÉS BENEVIDES DE MELO null (radamesbenevides@hotmail.com) on 2017-06-19T03:23:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE - JOSÉ RADAMÉS BENEVIDES DE MELO Final.pdf: 2615521 bytes, checksum: 233b3ef29e09e466ce63b5e68e8095c4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com) on 2017-06-19T14:43:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 melo_jrb_dr_arafcl.pdf: 2615521 bytes, checksum: 233b3ef29e09e466ce63b5e68e8095c4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-19T14:43:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 melo_jrb_dr_arafcl.pdf: 2615521 bytes, checksum: 233b3ef29e09e466ce63b5e68e8095c4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-04-20 / Diário do hospício e O cemitério dos vivos são textos escritos por Lima Barreto durante sua segunda internação no Hospício Nacional de Alienados, e a partir dela, no Rio de Janeiro, entre 25 de dezembro de 1919 e 2 de fevereiro de 1920. O primeiro é tido como anotações para a elaboração do segundo, um romance inacabado, cujo processo de produção foi interrompido pela morte do autor (1/11/1922). O objetivo geral desta pesquisa é analisar a constituição de vozes sociais sobre a loucura e a psiquiatria – por meio das relações dialógicas, do discurso bivocal (polêmicas aberta e velada) e do autor – no diálogo entre Diário do hospício, O cemitério dos vivos, de Lima Barreto, outros enunciados e outras vozes sociais. Os objetivos específicos são: 1) identificar as vozes sociais com as quais dialoga Lima Barreto no processo de constituição dos enunciados que integram o corpus de pesquisa e descrever como se estabelece o diálogo entre esses enunciados limabarretianos; 2) examinar a bivocalidade polêmica no diálogo entre Diário do hospício e O cemitério dos vivos, no que diz respeito: i) à polêmica aberta estabelecida entre esses enunciados e os discursos da ciência psiquiátrica de sua época; e ii) à polêmica velada entre a fala limabarretiana e outras falas literárias do início do século XX; 3) perscrutar, ao compreendermos o autor como posição de autor, autor-criador/atividade de autor, autor puro e posicionamento de autor, os movimentos desses diálogos no processo de constituição autoral e das diversas vozes sociais sobre a loucura e a psiquiatria, no diálogo dos enunciados objetos deste estudo. Esta pesquisa está fundamentada nos pressupostos teórico-metodológicos propostos e desenvolvidos pelo Círculo de Bakhtin, Medviédev e Volochínov e nos desdobramentos teórico-metodológicos que a eles se coadunam. Os resultados mostram que a constituição das vozes sociais sobre a loucura e a psiquiatria no diálogo entre Diário do hospício, O cemitério dos vivos, outros enunciados e outras vozes sociais se dá por meio de alguns processos complexos como a autoria e a polêmica. Isso quer dizer que a constituição dessas vozes sociais é mediada pelo processo de autoria, cujas quatro dimensões (auto puro, autor criador, posição de autor e posicionamento autoral) exercem papel fundamental. Além disso, como a autoria, nesses enunciados, se dá de modo significativo por meio da bivocalidade polêmica, entende-se que as polêmicas aberta e velada são partes constitutivas do processo de formação dessas duas vozes sociais. Mas não é só isso, falar em autoria e em bivocalidade polêmica como processos constituidores de vozes sociais é tocar, necessariamente, na questão da atividade humana e de seus vínculos com a linguagem. A constituição dessas duas vozes mobiliza ainda duas esferas de criação ideológica, a literária e a psiquiátrica. Na relação com as esferas, o posicionamento de autor é construído num movimento direcionado para o interior da própria esfera literária e num movimento direcionado para uma outra esfera, a psiquiátrica. / Diário do hospício and O cemitério dos vivos are texts written by Lima Barreto during his second admission in Hospício Nacional de Alienados, , and from there respectively, in Rio de Janeiro, between December 25, 1919 and February 2, 1920. The first is taken as annotations to development of the second, an unfinished novel, whose production was interrupted by the death of the author (1/11/1922). The overall objective of this research is to analyze the constitution of social voices about madness and psychiatry – through dialogical relations, polemical double-voiced discourse and the author-creator – in the dialogue between Diário do hospício and O cemitério dos vivos, works of Lima Barreto. The specific objectives are: 1) identify the social voices with which Lima Barreto dialogues in the process of formation of statements that make up the corpus of this research and describe how the dialogue between these limabarretianos statements is established; 2) examine the polemical double-voiced in the dialogue between Diário do hospício and O cemitério dos vivos, regarding to: i) the open polemic established between these statements and speeches of psychiatric science of his day; and ii) the veiled polemic between limabarretiana speech and other literary discourse of the early twentieth century, through his utterances; 3) search, to understand the author as an author’s position, author-creator/ author’s activity, pure author and author’s positioning, the movements of these dialogues on process of authorial formation procedures and the different social voices about madness and psychiatry, in the dialogue utterances of objects of this study, other utterances and other social voices. This research is grounded in the theoretical and methodological principles proposed and developed by Circle of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov and the theoretical and methodological developments regarding to them. The results show that the constitution of social voices about madness and psychiatry in the dialogue between Diário do hospício, O cemitério dos vivos, other utterances and other social voices occurs through some complex processes such as authorship and polemic. This means that the constitution of these social voices is mediated by the process of authorship, whose four dimensions (pure author, author-creater, author’s position and author’s positioning) play a fundamental role. Moreover, as authorship in these statements occurs in a significant way through polemical double-voiced discourse, it is understood that the open and veiled polemics are part of the process of formation of these two social voices. But it is not only this, to speak in authorship and in polemical double-voiced discourse as processes that constitute social voices is to touch, necessarily, on the question of human activity and its links with language. The constitution of these two voices still mobilizes two spheres of ideological creation, literary and psychiatric. In relation to the spheres, the author's positioning is constructed in a movement directed to the interior of the literary sphere itself and in a movement directed to another sphere, the psychiatric.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-08-01T12:02:48Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissert_RafaelAlves-BC.pdf: 4054416 bytes, checksum: b14eecff58d266c6c5fcccdab9b7bb1b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-01T12:02:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissert_RafaelAlves-BC.pdf: 4054416 bytes, checksum: b14eecff58d266c6c5fcccdab9b7bb1b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-25 / CNPq / Esta pesquisa investiga, sob a perspectiva das Teorias de Percepção da Fala em L2 (FLEGE, 1995; KUHL; IVERSON, 1995; BEST, 1995; BEST; TYLER, 2007) e da Teoria dos Sistemas Dinâmicos (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1997; DE BOT; LOWER; VERSPOOR, 2007; ELLIS, 2008), os efeitos da instrução fonética explícita na produção dos fonemas fricativos sonoros labiodentais, alveolares e alveopalatais, /v,z,3/, e indícios de sua projeção na percepção do contraste de vozeamento entre suas homorgânicas surdas, /f,sj/, que formam pares mínimos em português, por hispanofalantes aprendizes de Português como Língua Estrangeira (PLE). Para tanto, analisamos duas turmas de PLE da Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB) e da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), dos níveis de proficiência básico e avançado, que se encontravam em processo de imersão linguística. O protocolo de coleta de dados consistiu-se na leitura em voz alta de frases foneticamente balanceadas em que os fonemas / f,v,s,zj,3/ estivessem em posição de onset silábico inicial ou medial (CV) em três posições de tonicidade e de atonicidade diante, quando possível, das sete vogais orais do PB: [i,e,£,a,o,o,u]. Também utilizamos um Teste Auditivo-Perceptivo de múltipla escolha (Multiple Forced Choice), em que os informantes tiveram de assinalar uma das opções do par mínimo exposto a partir do estímulo auditivo recebido. O período de coleta de dados e a instrução fonética explícita ocorreram no período de 3 meses para apenas uma turma, a da UFPB, denominada Turma de Intervenção; a turma da UFPE foi a que não recebeu nenhum tipo de instrução, denominada Turma de Controle. Os dados coletados em ambas as turmas receberam tratamento acústico, através do programa Praat (BOERSMA; WEENINCK, 2006), que nos permitiu investigar as principais estratégias de pronúncia utilizadas pelos informantes nas três coletas de dados realizadas (Teste 1, Teste 2 e Teste 3). Os resultados mostraram, para a Turma de Intervenção, que mesmo em processo naturalístico (cf. ELLIS, 2008), altamente favorável à aprendizagem de L2, o informante tende a não perceber algumas características fonético-fonológicas presentes no input linguístico disponível e que o processo de aprendizagem de uma L2 é complexo, dinâmico e não linear, na medida em que os informantes oscilaram algumas vezes entre as formas “corretas”, que seriam aquelas produzidas por um nativo do PB, e entre os “erros gradientes” (ZIMMER; ALVES, 2011), que caracterizam gestos articulatórios próximos à L2. A mesma gradiência foi observada nos Testes Auditivo-Perceptivos, aplicados ao longo dos três testes. Contudo, os resultados mostraram que, em se comparando a TI e a TC, a instrução fonética explícita funciona como uma excelente ferramenta para o ensino de PLE na produção; indícios de sua projeção na percepção também foram constatados. / This research investigates, from the perspective of the L2 Speech Perception Theories (FLEGE, 1995; KUHL; IVERSON, 1995; BEST, 1995; BEST; TYLER, 2007) and the Dynamical Systems Theory (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1997; DE BOT; LOWER; VERSPOOR, 2007; ELLIS, 2008) approaches, the effects of explicit phonetics instruction in the production of labiodental, alveolar and alveopalatal voiced fricatives, /v,z,3/, and its evidence on perception of the voicing contrast between the homorganic unvoiced /f,sj/, which forms minimal pairs in Portuguese, by Spanish leaners of Portuguese as Foreign Language (PFL). Thereby, we analyzed two groups of PFL at the UFPB and at the UFPE, in two kinds of proficiency levels (basic and advanced), which were at linguistic input process. The data collection protocol it was constituted by reading aloud phases phonetically balanced where the phonemes /f,v,s,zj,3/ were at the medial or initial syllabic onset (CV) in three stressed and unstressed positions against, when was possible, the seven oral Portuguese vowels: [i,e,£,a,o,o,u]. We used an Auditory Perception Test of multiple choices (Multiple Forced Choice), where the listeners had to point out, between the minimal pairs exposed, the hearing stimulus received. As well as the data collection period, the explicit phonetics instruction occurred in the period of three months just for one group, from the UFPB, named as Intervention Group; the UFPE group was the one that did not receive any phonetic instruction, named as Control Group. The data collected in both groups received an acoustic treatment, through the software Praat (BOERSMA; WEENINCK, 2006), allowing us to investigate the main pronouncing strategies used by learners at the three data collection conducted (Test 1, Teste 2 and Test 3). The results of Test 1 showed for both groups (Intervention Group and Control Group) that even in the naturalistic context (ELLIS, 2008) highly favorable to the L2 learning, the learners tends to not recognize some phonetics and phonologic characteristics being in the available linguistic input and that the learning process of the L2 seems to be complex, dynamic and nonlinear, because the learners sometimes oscillated between the correct forms, corresponding that one produced by a Brazilian native, and the called “gradient errors” (ZIMMER; ALVES, 2011), sharing articulatory gestures near to the L2. The same gradience was observed in the Auditory Perception Tests, applied along the three tests. However, the results showed that, comparing both Intervention and Control Groups, explicit phonetics instruction works as an excellent tool to the PFL teaching in the production; evidences in the perception also were found.

In many scenarios, events such as singularities and transients that carry important information about a signal undergo spreading during acquisition or transmission and it is important to localize the events. For example, edges in an image, point sources in a microscopy or astronomical image are blurred by the point-spread function (PSF) of the acquisition system, while in a speech signal, the epochs corresponding to glottal closure instants are shaped by the vocal tract response. Such events can be extracted with the help of techniques that promote sparsity, which enables separation of the smooth components from the transient ones. In this thesis, we consider development of such sparsity promoting techniques. The contributions of the thesis are three-fold: (i) an auditory-motivated continuous wavelet design and representation, which helps identify singularities; (ii) a sparsity-driven deconvolution technique; and (iii) a sparsity-driven deconvolution technique for reconstruction of nite-rate-of-innovation (FRI) signals. We use the speech signal for illustrating the performance of the techniques in the first two parts and super-resolution microscopy (2-D) for the third part. In the rst part, we develop a continuous wavelet transform (CWT) starting from an auditory motivation. Wavelet analysis provides good time and frequency localization, which has made it a popular tool for time-frequency analysis of signals. The CWT is a multiresolution analysis tool that involves decomposition of a signal using a constant-Q wavelet filterbank, akin to the time-frequency analysis performed by basilar membrane in the peripheral human auditory system. This connection motivated us to develop wavelets that possess auditory localization capabilities. Gammatone functions are extensively used in the modeling of the basilar membrane, but the non-zero average of the functions poses a hurdle. We construct bona de wavelets from the Gammatone function called Gammatone wavelets and analyze their properties such as admissibility, time-bandwidth product, vanishing moments, etc.. Of particular interest is the vanishing moments property, which enables the wavelet to suppress smooth regions in a signal leading to sparsi cation. We show how this property of the Gammatone wavelets coupled with multiresolution analysis could be employed for singularity and transient detection. Using these wavelets, we also construct equivalent lterbank models and obtain cepstral feature vectors out of such a representation. We show that the Gammatone wavelet cepstral coefficients (GWCC) are effective for robust speech recognition compared with mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC). In the second part, we consider the problem of sparse blind deconvolution (SBD) starting from a signal obtained as the convolution of an unknown PSF and a sparse excitation. The BD problem is ill-posed and the goal is to employ sparsity to come up with an accurate solution. We formulate the SBD problem within a Bayesian framework. The estimation of lter and excitation involves optimization of a cost function that consists of an `2 data- fidelity term and an `p-norm (p 2 [0; 1]) regularizer, as the sparsity promoting prior. Since the `p-norm is not differentiable at the origin, we consider a smoothed version of the `p-norm as a proxy in the optimization. Apart from the regularizer being non-convex, the data term is also non-convex in the filter and excitation as they are both unknown. We optimize the non-convex cost using an alternating minimization strategy, and develop an alternating `p `2 projections algorithm (ALPA). We demonstrate convergence of the iterative algorithm and analyze in detail the role of the pseudo-inverse solution as an initialization for the ALPA and provide probabilistic bounds on its accuracy considering the presence of noise and the condition number of the linear system of equations. We also consider the case of bounded noise and derive tight tail bounds using the Hoe ding inequality. As an application, we consider the problem of blind deconvolution of speech signals. In the linear model for speech production, voiced speech is assumed to be the result of a quasi-periodic impulse train exciting a vocal-tract lter. The locations of the impulses or epochs indicate the glottal closure instants and the spacing between them the pitch. Hence, the excitation in the case of voiced speech is sparse and its deconvolution from the vocal-tract filter is posed as a SBD problem. We employ ALPA for SBD and show that excitation obtained is sparser than the excitations obtained using sparse linear prediction, smoothed `1=`2 sparse blind deconvolution algorithm, and majorization-minimization-based sparse deconvolution techniques. We also consider the problem of epoch estimation and show that epochs estimated by ALPA in both clean and noisy conditions are closer to the instants indicated by the electroglottograph when with to the estimates provided by the zero-frequency ltering technique, which is the state-of-the-art epoch estimation technique. In the third part, we consider the problem of deconvolution of a specific class of continuous-time signals called nite-rate-of-innovation (FRI) signals, which are not bandlimited, but specified by a nite number of parameters over an observation interval. The signal is assumed to be a linear combination of delayed versions of a prototypical pulse. The reconstruction problem is posed as a 2-D SBD problem. The kernel is assumed to have a known form but with unknown parameters. Given the sampled version of the FRI signal, the delays quantized to the nearest point on the sampling grid are rst estimated using proximal-operator-based alternating `p `2 algorithm (ALPAprox), and then super-resolved to obtain o -grid (O. G.) estimates using gradient-descent optimization. The overall technique is termed OG-ALPAprox. We show application of OG-ALPAprox to a particular modality of super-resolution microscopy (SRM), called stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). The resolution of the traditional optical microscope is limited by di raction and is termed as Abbe's limit. The goal of SRM is to engineer the optical imaging system to resolve structures in specimens, such as proteins, whose dimensions are smaller than the di raction limit. The specimen to be imaged is tagged or labeled with light-emitting or uorescent chemical compounds called uorophores. These compounds speci cally bind to proteins and exhibit uorescence upon excitation. The uorophores are assumed to be point sources and the light emitted by them undergo spreading due to di raction. STORM employs a sequential approach, wherein each step only a few uorophores are randomly excited and the image is captured by a sensor array. The obtained image is di raction-limited, however, the separation between the uorophores allows for localizing the point sources with high precision. The localization is performed using Gaussian peak- tting. This process of random excitation coupled with localization is performed sequentially and subsequently consolidated to obtain a high-resolution image. We pose the localization as a SBD problem and employ OG-ALPAprox to estimate the locations. We also report comparisons with the de facto standard Gaussian peak- tting algorithm and show that the statistical performance is superior. Experimental results on real data show that the reconstruction quality is on par with the Gaussian peak- tting.