Скачать книгу - The Distant Echo

A complete overview of distant automatic speech recognition The performance of conventional Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems degrades dramatically as soon as the microphone is moved away from the mouth of the speaker. This is due to a broad variety of effects such as background noise, overlapping speech from other speakers, and reverberation. While traditional ASR systems underperform for speech captured with far-field sensors, there are a number of novel techniques within the recognition system as well as techniques developed in other areas of signal processing that can mitigate the deleterious effects of noise and reverberation, as well as separating speech from overlapping speakers. Distant Speech Recognitionpresents a contemporary and comprehensive description of both theoretic abstraction and practical issues inherent in the distant ASR problem. Key Features: Covers the entire topic of distant ASR and offers practical solutions to overcome the problems related to it Provides documentation and sample scripts to enable readers to construct state-of-the-art distant speech recognition systems Gives relevant background information in acoustics and filter techniques, Explains the extraction and enhancement of classification relevant speech features Describes maximum likelihood as well as discriminative parameter estimation, and maximum likelihood normalization techniques Discusses the use of multi-microphone configurations for speaker tracking and channel combination Presents several applications of the methods and technologies described in this book Accompanying website with open source software and tools to construct state-of-the-art distant speech recognition systems This reference will be an invaluable resource for researchers, developers, engineers and other professionals, as well as advanced students in speech technology, signal processing, acoustics, statistics and artificial intelligence fields.

Love and family life in the global age: grandparents in Salonika and their grandson in London speak together every evening via Skype. A U.S. citizen and her Swiss husband fret over large telephone bills and high travel costs. A European couple can finally have a baby with the help of an Indian surrogate mother. In their new book, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim investigate all types of long-distance relationships, marriages and families that stretch across countries, continents and cultures. These long-distance relationships comprise so many different forms of what they call ‘world families’, by which they mean love and intimate relationships between individuals living in, or coming from, different countries or continents. In all their various forms these world families share one feature in common: they are the focal point in which different aspects of the globalized world become embodied in the personal lives of individuals. Whether they like it or not, lovers and relatives in these families find themselves confronting the world in the inner space of their own lives. The conflicts between the developed and developing worlds come to the surface in world families- they acquire faces and names, creating confusion, surprise, anger, joy, pleasure and pain at the heart of everyday life. This path-breaking book will appeal to a wide readership interested in the changing character of love in our times.

Read the award-winning and Number One bestselling Val McDermid at the top of her game in these three nail-biting crime thrillers.A PLACE OF EXECUTION: In 1963, Alison Carter vanished in the Peak District. Journalist Catherine Heathcote remembers the case from her childhood, and interviews DI George Bennett for his recollection of the hunt for Alison. But when a fresh lead emerges, Bennett tries to pull the story – plunging Catherine into a world of buried secrets and explosive revelations…THE DISTANT ECHO: Four drunken students find the body of a woman in a snow-covered cemetery. Twenty-five years on, a ‘cold case’ review of the murder still has them as the main suspects. But when two of them die in suspicious circumstances, the only way for the remaining two to save themselves is to find out who the real murderer is…THE GRAVE TATTOO: Scholar Jane Gresham believes that the poet William Wordsworth may have sheltered Fletcher Christian, the mutinous First Mate on the Bounty, and turned his tale into an epic poem – which has since disappeared. But the centuries-old mystery is putting lives at risk. And it isn't just the truth that is waiting to be discovered, but a bounty worth millions…

In her second volume of short stories, which follows the hugely successful 'Encounters', Barbara Erskine has created a compelling world of love, betrayal, suspense and grief.A biographer investigating a tragic death hears voices from the past drawing her towards the truth…A nineteenth century parson’s daughter is caught up in the excitement and romance of a smuggling intrigue…A young boy from a deprived background finds his own haven in the wastelands of the inner city…Contemporary, historical, spooky, and humorous – there are over thirty delightful stories, each one guaranteed to capture the reader’s imagination, and all demonstrating Barbara Erskine’s unique powers as a storyteller.

Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release. Storms of passion… Rebecca has never forgotten the irresistible Piers St Clair. But seven years ago, their romantic idyll on a remote Pacific island came to an abrupt end – when she discovered he was married!Rebecca has rebuilt her life but finding love again seems impossible. Then suddenly Piers returns – and all her feelings come flooding back! But there is a new hardness to the man she loves so intensely. Rebecca wonders if they can ever have a future together – but she is in too deep to free herself now…