Signal and Acoustic Modeling for Speech and Communication Disorders demonstrates how speech signal processing and acoustic modeling can be instrumental in early detection and successful intervention with speech deficits resulting from Parkinson's disease, Autism Spectrum disorder, cleft palate, intellectual disabilities, and neuro-motor impairments. Utilizing some of the most advanced methods in signal and acoustic modeling, this eminent group of contributors show how such technologies can inure to the benefit of healthcare and to society writ large. Paradoxically, what most of us take for granted still remains a Sisyphean battle for those with speech and language disorders, who struggle every day to make themselves heard and understood. The purpose of this book is to stimulate a vibrant discussion among speech scientists, system designers, and practitioners on how to best marshal the latest advances in signal and acoustic modeling to address some of the most challenging speech and communication disorders affecting a wide variety of patient populations across the world.

The book explores new ways to reconstruct and enhance speech that is compromised by various neuro-motor disorders - collectively known as "dysarthria." The authors address some of the extant lacunae in speech research of dysarthric conditions: they show how new methods can improve speaker recognition when speech is impaired due to developmental or acquired pathologies; they present a novel multi-dimensional approach to help the speech system both assess dysarthric speech and to perform intelligibility improvement of the impaired speech; they display well-performing software solutions for developmental and acquired speech impairments, and for vocal injuries; and they examine non-acoustic signals and muted nonverbal sounds in relation to audible speech conversion.

This book presents some of the most advanced leading-edge technology for the fourth Industrial Revolution -- known as “Industry 4.0.� The book provides a comprehensive understanding of the interconnections of AI, IoT, big data and cloud computing as integral to the technologies that revolutionize the way companies produce and distribute products and the way local governments deliver their services. The book emphasizes that at every phase of the supply chain, manufactures are found to be interweaving AI, robotics, IoT, big data/machine learning, and cloud computing into their production facilities and throughout their distribution networks. Equally important, the authors show how their research can be applied to computer vision, cyber security, database and compiler theory, natural language processing, healthcare, education and agriculture. Presents the fundamentals of AI, IoT, and cloud computing and how they can be incorporated in Industry 4.0 applications Motivates readers to address challenges in the areas of speech communication and signal processing Provides numerous examples, case studies, technical descriptions, and approaches of AI/ML

Forensic Speaker Recognition: Law Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism is an anthology of the research findings of 35 speaker recognition experts from around the world. The volume provides a multidimensional view of the complex science involved in determining whether a suspect's voice truly matches forensic speech samples, collected by law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies, that are associated with the commission of a terrorist act or other crimes. While addressing such topics as the challenges of forensic case work, handling speech signal degradation, analyzing features of speaker recognition to optimize voice verification system performance, and designing voice applications that meet the practical needs of law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies, this material all sounds a common theme: how the rigors of forensic utility are demanding new levels of excellence in all aspects of speaker recognition. The contributors are among the most eminent scientists in speech engineering and signal processing; and their work represents such diverse countries as Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, Japan, India and the United States. Forensic Speaker Recognition is a useful book for forensic speech scientists, speech signal processing experts, speech system developers, criminal prosecutors and counter-terrorism intelligence officers and agents.

* Includes Text Mining and Natural Language Processing Methods for extracting information from electronic health records and biomedical literature. * Analyzes text analytic tools for new media such as online forums, social media posts, tweets and video sharing. * Demonstrates how to use speech and audio technologies for improving access to online content for the visually impaired. Text Mining of Web-Based Medical Content examines various approaches to deriving high quality information from online biomedical literature, electronic health records, query search terms, social media posts and tweets. Using some of the latest empirical methods of knowledge extraction, the authors show how online content, generated by both professionals and laypersons, can be mined for valuable information about disease processes, adverse drug reactions not captured during clinical trials, and tropical fever outbreaks. Additionally, the authors show how to perform infromation extraction on a hospital intranet, how to build a social media search engine to glean information about patients' own experiences interacting with healthcare professionals, and how to improve access to online health information. This volume provides a wealth of timely material for health informatic professionals and machine learning, data mining, and natural language researchers. Topics in this book include: * Mining Biomedical Literature and Clinical Narratives * Medication Information Extraction * Machine Learning Techniques for Mining Medical Search Queries * Detecting the Level of Personal Health Information Revealed in Social Media * Curating Layperson's Personal Experiences with Health Care from Social Media and Twitter * Health Dialogue Systems for Improving Access to Online Content * Crowd-based Audio Clips to Improve Online Video Access for the Visually Impaired * Semantic-based Visual Information Retrieval for Mining Radiographic Image Data * Evaluating the Importance of Medical Terminology in YouTube Video Titles and Descriptions

Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation of natural language technologies to resolve some of the most vexing natural-language problems that compromise the performance of speech systems today. This fourteen-chapter anthology consists of contributions from industry scientists and from academicians working at major universities in North America and Europe. They include researchers who have played a central role in DARPA-funded programs and developers who craft real-world solutions for corporations. This anthology is aimed at speech engineers, system developers, computer scientists, AI researchers, and others interested in utilizing natural-language technology in both spoken and text-based applications.

"Mobile Speech and Advanced Natural Language Solutions" presents the discussion of the most recent advances in intelligent human-computer interaction, including fascinating new study findings on talk-in-interaction, which is the province of conversation analysis, a subfield in sociology/sociolinguistics, a new and emerging area in natural language understanding. Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation natural language technologies for practical speech processing applications that serve the consumer's need for well-functioning natural language-driven personal assistants and other mobile devices, while also addressing business' need for better functioning IVR-driven call centers that yield a more satisfying experience for the caller. This anthology is aimed at two distinct audiences: one consisting of speech engineers and system developers; the other comprised of linguists and cognitive scientists. The text builds on the experience and knowledge of each of these audiences by exposing them to the work of the other.

Examines various speech technologies deployed in healthcare service robots to maximize the robot's ability to interpret user input. Demonstrates how robot anthropomorphic features and etiquette in behavior promotes user-positive emotions, acceptance of robots, and compliance with robot requests. Analyzes how multimodal medical-service robots and other cyber-physical systems can reduce mistakes and mishaps in the operating room. Evaluates various input methods for improving acceptance of robots in the older adult population. Presents case studies of cognitively and socially engaging robots in the long-term care setting for helping older adults with activities of daily living and in the pediatric setting for helping children with autism spectrum conditions and metabolic disorders. Speech and Automata in Health Care forges new ground by closely analyzing how three separate disciplines - speech technology, robotics, and medical/surgical/assistive care - intersect with one another, resulting in an innovative way of diagnosing and treating both juvenile and adult illnesses and conditions. This includes the use of speech-enabled robotics to help the elderly population cope with common problems associated with aging caused by the diminution in their sensory, auditory and motor capabilities. By examining the emerging nexus of speech, automata, and health care, the authors demonstrate the exciting potential of automata, both speech-driven and multimodal, to affect the healthcare delivery system so that it better meets the needs of the populations it serves. This book provides both empirical research findings and incisive literature reviews that demonstrate some of the more novel uses of speech-enabled and multimodal automata in the operating room, hospital ward, long-term care facility, and in the home. Studies backed by major universities, research institutes, and by EU-funded collaborative projects are debuted in this volume. This volume provides a wealth of timely material for industrial engineers, speech scientists, computational linguists, and for signal processing and intelligent systems design experts. Topics include: Spoken Interaction with Healthcare Robots Service Robot Feature Effects on Patient Acceptance/Emotional Response Designing Embodied and Virtual Agents for the Operating Room The Emerging Role of Robotics for Personal Health Management in the Older-Adult Population Why Input Methods for Robots that Serve the Older Adult Are Critical for Usability Socially and Cognitively Engaging Robots in the Long-Term Care Setting Voice-Enabled Assistive Robots for Managing Autism Spectrum Conditions ASR and TTS for Voice-Controlled Robot Interactions in Treating Children with Metabolic Disorders

Advances in Ubiquitous Computing: Cyber-Physical Systems, Smart Cities and Ecological Monitoring debuts some of the newest methods and approaches to multimodal user-interface design, safety compliance, formal code verification and deployment requirements, as they pertain to cyber-physical systems, smart homes and smart cities, and biodiversity monitoring. In this anthology, the authors assiduously examine a panoply of topics related to wireless sensor networks. These topics include interacting with smart-home appliances and biomedical devices, designing multilingual speech recognition systems that are robust to vehicular, mechanical and other noises common to large metropolises, and an examination of new methods of speaker recognition to control for the emotion-state of the speaker, which can easily impede speaker verification over a wireless medium. This volume recognizes that any discussion of pervasive computing in smart cities must not end there, as the perilous effects of climate change proves that our lives are not circumscribed by the geographically sculpted boundaries of cities, counties, countries, or continents. Contributors address present and emerging technologies of scalable biodiversity monitoring: pest control, disease transmission, environmental monitoring, and habitat preservation. The need to collect, store, process, and interpret vast amounts of data originating from sources spread over large areas and for prolonged periods of time requires immediate data storage and processing, reliable networking, and solid communication infrastructure, along with intelligent data analysis and interpretation methods that can resolve contradictions and uncertainty in the data-all of which can be bolstered by modern advances in ubiquitous computing.

Two Top Industry Leaders Speak Out Judith Markowitz When Amy asked me to co-author the foreword to her new book on advances in speech recognition, I was honored. Amy's work has always been infused with c- ative intensity, so I knew the book would be as interesting for established speech professionals as for readers new to the speech-processing industry. The fact that I would be writing the foreward with Bill Scholz made the job even more enjoyable. Bill and I have known each other since he was at UNISYS directing projects that had a profound impact on speech-recognition tools and applications. Bill Scholz The opportunity to prepare this foreword with Judith provides me with a rare oppor- nity to collaborate with a seasoned speech professional to identify numerous signi- cant contributions to the field offered by the contributors whom Amy has recruited. Judith and I have had our eyes opened by the ideas and analyses offered by this collection of authors. Speech recognition no longer needs be relegated to the ca- gory of an experimental future technology; it is here today with sufficient capability to address the most challenging of tasks. And the point-click-type approach to GUI control is no longer sufficient, especially in the context of limitations of mode- day hand held devices. Instead, VUI and GUI are being integrated into unified multimodal solutions that are maturing into the fundamental paradigm for comput- human interaction in the future.

This book provides the reader with empirical findings on innovative signal processing approaches to detecting pathologies in infant cries, by comparing new technological approaches to standard ones. The contributors examine novel approaches to machine adaptation to dysarthric speech.

The book explores new ways to reconstruct and enhance speech that is compromised by various neuro-motor disorders - collectively known as "dysarthria." The authors address some of the extant lacunae in speech research of dysarthric conditions: they show how new methods can improve speaker recognition when speech is impaired due to developmental or acquired pathologies; they present a novel multi-dimensional approach to help the speech system both assess dysarthric speech and to perform intelligibility improvement of the impaired speech; they display well-performing software solutions for developmental and acquired speech impairments, and for vocal injuries; and they examine non-acoustic signals and muted nonverbal sounds in relation to audible speech conversion.

Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation of natural language technologies to resolve some of the most vexing natural-language problems that compromise the performance of speech systems today. This fourteen-chapter anthology consists of contributions from industry scientists and from academicians working at major universities in North America and Europe. They include researchers who have played a central role in DARPA-funded programs and developers who craft real-world solutions for corporations. This anthology is aimed at speech engineers, system developers, computer scientists, AI researchers, and others interested in utilizing natural-language technology in both spoken and text-based applications.

Forensic Speaker Recognition: Law Enforcement and Counter-Terrorism is an anthology of the research findings of 35 speaker recognition experts from around the world. The volume provides a multidimensional view of the complex science involved in determining whether a suspect's voice truly matches forensic speech samples, collected by law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies, that are associated with the commission of a terrorist act or other crimes. While addressing such topics as the challenges of forensic case work, handling speech signal degradation, analyzing features of speaker recognition to optimize voice verification system performance, and designing voice applications that meet the practical needs of law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies, this material all sounds a common theme: how the rigors of forensic utility are demanding new levels of excellence in all aspects of speaker recognition. The contributors are among the most eminent scientists in speech engineering and signal processing; and their work represents such diverse countries as Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, Japan, India and the United States. Forensic Speaker Recognition is a useful book for forensic speech scientists, speech signal processing experts, speech system developers, criminal prosecutors and counter-terrorism intelligence officers and agents.

Two Top Industry Leaders Speak Out Judith Markowitz When Amy asked me to co-author the foreword to her new book on advances in speech recognition, I was honored. Amy's work has always been infused with c- ative intensity, so I knew the book would be as interesting for established speech professionals as for readers new to the speech-processing industry. The fact that I would be writing the foreward with Bill Scholz made the job even more enjoyable. Bill and I have known each other since he was at UNISYS directing projects that had a profound impact on speech-recognition tools and applications. Bill Scholz The opportunity to prepare this foreword with Judith provides me with a rare oppor- nity to collaborate with a seasoned speech professional to identify numerous signi- cant contributions to the field offered by the contributors whom Amy has recruited. Judith and I have had our eyes opened by the ideas and analyses offered by this collection of authors. Speech recognition no longer needs be relegated to the ca- gory of an experimental future technology; it is here today with sufficient capability to address the most challenging of tasks. And the point-click-type approach to GUI control is no longer sufficient, especially in the context of limitations of mode- day hand held devices. Instead, VUI and GUI are being integrated into unified multimodal solutions that are maturing into the fundamental paradigm for comput- human interaction in the future.

"Mobile Speech and Advanced Natural Language Solutions" presents the discussion of the most recent advances in intelligent human-computer interaction, including fascinating new study findings on talk-in-interaction, which is the province of conversation analysis, a subfield in sociology/sociolinguistics, a new and emerging area in natural language understanding. Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation natural language technologies for practical speech processing applications that serve the consumer's need for well-functioning natural language-driven personal assistants and other mobile devices, while also addressing business' need for better functioning IVR-driven call centers that yield a more satisfying experience for the caller. This anthology is aimed at two distinct audiences: one consisting of speech engineers and system developers; the other comprised of linguists and cognitive scientists. The text builds on the experience and knowledge of each of these audiences by exposing them to the work of the other.

In recent years, scientific research and translation medicine have placed increased emphasis on computational methodology and data curation across many disciplines, both to advance underlying science and to instantiate precision-medicine protocols in the lab and in clinical practice. The nexus of concerns related to oncology, cardiology, and virology (SARS-CoV-2) presents a fortuitous context within which to examine the theory and practice of biomedical data curation. Innovative Data Integration and Conceptual Space Modeling for COVID, Cancer, and Cardiac Care argues that a well-rounded approach to data modeling should optimally embrace multiple perspectives inasmuch as data-modeling is neither a purely formal nor a purely conceptual discipline, but rather a hybrid of both. On the one hand, data models are designed for use by computer software components, and are, consequently, constrained by the mechanistic demands of software environments; data modeling strategies must accept the formal rigors imposed by unambiguous data-sharing and query-evaluation logic. In particular, data models are not well-suited for software-level deployment if such models do not translate seamlessly to clear strategies for querying data and ensuring data integrity as information is moved across multiple points. On the other hand, data modeling is, likewise, constrained by human conceptual tendencies, because the information which is managed by databases and data networks is ultimately intended to be visualized/utilized by humans as the end-user. Thus, at the intersection of both formal and humanistic methodology, data modeling takes on elements of both logico-mathematical frameworks (e.g., type systems and graph theory) and conceptual/philosophical paradigms (e.g., linguistics and cognitive science). The authors embrace this two-sided aspect of data models by seeking non-reductionistic points of convergence between formal and humanistic/conceptual viewpoints, and by leveraging biomedical contexts (viz., COVID, Cancer, and Cardiac Care) so as to provide motivating examples and case-studies in this volume.