One result of the trend towards globalization is an increased number of projects that focus on natural language processing. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies, for example, hold great promise in facilitating global communications and collaborations. Unfortunately, to date, most research projects focus on single widely spoken languages. Therefore, the cost to adapt a particular ASR tool for use with other languages is often prohibitive. This work takes a more general approach. We propose an International Phoneticizing Engine (IPE) that interprets input files supplied in our Phonetic Language Identity (PLI) format to build a dictionary. IPE is language independent and rule based. It operates by decomposing the dictionary creation process into a set of well-defined steps. These steps reduce rule conflicts, allow for rule creation by people without linguistics training, and optimize run-time efficiency. Dictionaries created by the IPE can be used with the Sphinx speech recognition system. IPE defines an easy-to-use systematic approach that can lead to internationalization of automatic speech recognition systems.

It has long been known that high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss (HFHL) can contribute to difficulty in speech understanding by elderly listeners. This study evaluated the relative contribution of HFHL and age to speech understanding. Subjects included adult middle-aged and old groups with normal hearing or with limited HFHL. The Hearing-in-Noise-Test (HINT) was used to measure speech perception performance in quiet and in noise. The middle-aged groups showed significant effects of HFHL for speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise, but the old groups showed the difference in quiet only due to high frequency hearing. The results suggest that HFHL may affect speech intelligibility differently with age and therefore hearing aid selection needs to take into account the influence of age.

The characteristics of a PZT transducer with a cylindrical rear surface were investigated theoretically and experimentally. The transducer was assumed as a set of finite rectangular ceramic elements for applying the staircase model to the theoretical analysis and the KLM equivalent circuit model was modified for analyzing its electric impedance and pulse-echo response. All results were compared with those of a conventional plane transducer which has a constant thickness of average value for the cylindrical arc. It was noted that the transducer with a cylindrical rear surface has several subsidiary resonant frequencies which are able to widen bandwidth.

In this paper, we propose a modified Viterbi algorithm to compensate for endpoint detection error during the decoding phase of an isolated word recognition task. Since the conventional Viterbi algorithm explores only the search space whose boundaries are fixed to the endpoints of the segmented utterance by the endpoint detector, the recognition performance is highly dependent on the accuracy level of endpoint detection. Inaccurately segmented word boundaries lead directly to recognition error. In order to relax the degradation of recognition accuracy due to endpoint detection error, we describe an unconstrained search of word boundaries and present an algorithm to explore the search space with efficiency. The proposed algorithm was evaluated by performing a variety of simulated endpoint detection error cases on an isolated word recognition task. The proposed algorithm reduced the Word Error Rate (WER) considerably, from 84.4% to 10.6%, while consuming only a little more computation power.

Hydraulic actuator and electro-magnetic liner actuator have been used as typical active vibration control methods. However these methods have many kinds of disadvantages such as causing space limit, difficult maintenance, complicate structures, etc. The purpose of this paper was to study on the possibility of active vibration control using piezoelectric transducer. Piezoelectric transducer generated a vibration and GIC (General Impedance Converter) amplifier was adopted to give adjustable vibration signal to transducer and high amplitude of vibration. Resonance frequency of piezoelectric transducer was controlled by GIC amplifier and higher amplitude of vibration was achieved. Finally active vibration control using piezoelectric transducer was performed.

Compressional wave velocity and shear wave velocity were measured for gassy sediments collected from Jinhae Bay, Korea. To distinguish inhomogeneities of gassy sediments, Computed Tomography (CT) was carried out for gassy sediment using CT Scanner. The cored sediments are composed of homogeneous and soft mud (greater than $8{\Phi}$ in mean grain size) containing clay content more than 50%. In depth interval of gassy sediments, compressional wave velocity is significantly decreased from 1480m/s to 1360m/s, indicating that the gas greatly affects compressional wave velocity due to a gas and/or degassing cracks. Shear wave velocity shows a slight increasing pattern from ${\sim}55\;m/s$ in the upper part of the core to ${\sim}58\;m/s$ at 320 cm depth, and then decreases to ${\sim}54\;m/s$ in the lower part of the core containing a small amount of gas. But shear wave velocity in the gassy sediments is slightly greater than that of non-gassy sediments in the upper part of the core. Thus, the Vp/Vs ratio is decreased (from 30 to 25) in gas charged zone. The Vp/Vs ratio is well correlated with shear wave velocity, but no correlation with compressional wave velocity. This suggests that low concentrations of gas have little affects on shear wave velocity. By CT images, the gas in the sediments is mostly concentrated around inner edge of core liner due to a long duration after sediment collection.