Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on New Systems and Architecture for Automatic Speech Recognition and Synthesis, held at Bonas, Gers, France, 2-14 July 1984
Intelligent Speech Signal Processing investigates the utilization of speech analytics across several systems and real-world activities, including sharing data analytics, creating collaboration networks between several participants, and implementing video-conferencing in different application areas. Chapters focus on the latest applications of speech data analysis and management tools across different recording systems. The book emphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of the field, presenting different applications and challenges with extensive studies on the design, development and management of intelligent systems, neural networks and related machine learning techniques for speech signal processing.
The NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Computer algorithms for solving linear algebraic equations: the state of the art" was held September 9-21, 1990, at II Ciocco, Barga, Italy. It was attended by 68 students (among them many well known specialists in related fields!) from the following countries: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, UK, USA, USSR, Yugoslavia. Solving linear equations is a fundamental task in most of computational mathematics. Linear systems which are now encountered in practice may be of very large dimension and their solution can still be a challenge in terms of the requirements of accuracy or reasonable computational time. With the advent of supercomputers with vector and parallel features, algorithms which were previously formulated in a framework of sequential operations often need a completely new formulation, and algorithms that were not recommended in a sequential framework may become the best choice. The aim of the ASI was to present the state of the art in this field. While not all important aspects could be covered (for instance there is no presentation of methods using interval arithmetic or symbolic computation), we believe that most important topics were considered, many of them by leading specialists who have contributed substantially to the developments in these fields.
The Marktoberdorf Summer Schools on Informatics were started in 1970, with the intention to convene every second or third year a group of top researchers in computing, devoted to preach their most recent results to an elite of advanced students - young and most promising people - and prepared to stand their questions, criticism and suggestions. The themes of these Advanced Study In stitutes under the sponsorship of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division varied slightly over the years, oscillating more or less around Programming Methodo logy, as the following list shows: 1970 Data Structures and Computer Systems 1971 Program Structures and Fundamental Concepts of Programming 1973 Structured Programming and Programmed Structures 1975 Language Hierarchies and Interfaces 1978 Program Construction 1981 Theoretical Foundations of Programming Methodology 1984 Control Flow and Data Flow: Concepts of Distributed Programming 1986 Logic of Programming and Calculi of Discrete Design 1988 Constructive Methods in Computing Science 1989 Logic, Algebra, and Computation Logic, Algebra, and Computation is the theme of the summer school to which this volume is devoted. It is the tenth in succession, but it is also the first in a new series (the "blue" series) that is intended to alternate in future with the traditional (the "red" series) arrangement; in fact the tenth summer school in the "red" series with the title "Programming and Mathematical Method" , held in 1990, was the subject of celebrating both its serial number and the twenty years of Marktoberdorf Summer Schools altogether.
Limp materials are used in many economically impo~tant industries such as garment manufacture, shoe manufacture, aerospace (composites) and automobiles (seats and trim). The use of sensors is essential for reliable robotic handling of these materials, which are often based on naturally occurring substances such as cotton and leather. The materials are limp and have non-homogeneous mechanical properties which are often impossible to predict accurately. The applications are very demanding for vision and tactile sensing and signal processing, adaptive control systems, planning and systems integration. This book comprises the collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on 'Sensory Robotics for the Handling of Limp Materials', held in October 1988 at II Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy. The aim of the workshop was to examine the state of the art and determine what research is needed to provide the theoretical and technological tools for the successful application of sensory robotics to the handling of limp materials. The meeting also acted as the first-ever forum for the interchange of knowledge between applications-driven researchers and those researching into the provision of fundamental tools. The participants were drawn from academia (20), industry (5), and other non-university research organisations (5).
Supercomputing is an important science and technology that enables the scientist or the engineer to simulate numerically very complex physical phenomena related to large-scale scientific, industrial and military applications. It has made considerable progress since the first NATO Workshop on High-Speed Computation in 1983 (Vol. 7 of the same series). This book is a collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Trondheim, Norway, in June 1989. It presents key research issues related to: - hardware systems, architecture and performance; - compilers and programming tools; - user environments and visualization; - algorithms and applications. Contributions include critical evaluations of the state-of-the-art and many original research results.
The successful implementation of applications in spatial reasoning requires paying attention to the representation of spatial data. In particular, an integrated and uniform treatment of different spatial features is necessary in order to enable the reasoning to proceed quickly. Currently, the most prevalent features are points, rectangles, lines, regions, surfaces, and volumes. As an example of a reasoning task consider a query of the form "find all cities with population in excess of 5,000 in wheat growing regions within 10 miles of the Mississippi River. " Note that this query is quite complex. It requires- processing a line map (for the river), creating a corridor or buffer (to find the area within 10 miles of the river), a region map (for the wheat), and a point map (for the cities). Spatial reasoning is eased by spatially sorting the data (i. e. , a spatial index). In this paper we show how hierarchical data structures can be used to facilitate this process. They are based on the principle of recursive decomposition (similar to divide and conquer methods). In essence, they are used primarily as devices to sort data of more than one dimension and different spatial types. The term quadtree is often used to describe this class of data structures. In this paper, we focus on recent developments in the use of quadtree methods. We concentrate primarily on region data. For a more extensive treatment of this subject, see [SameS4a, SameSSa, SameSSb, SameSSc, SameSga, SameSgbj.
The behaviour of market prices is a fascinating subject for researchers. Opinions vary substantially. from the view that prices accurately and quickly reflect relevant information to the other extreme that prices are not rationally determined and are hence to some degree predictable. This diversity of belief about the efficiency of markets is reflected in these proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "A reappraisal of the efficiency of financial markets". The thirty-one workshop papers cover stock. currency and commodity markets. We are pleased to have contributions on markets in eleven NATO countries: Belgium. Canada. Denmark. France. Germany. Greece. Italy. the Netherlands. Portugal. the United Kingdom and the United States. The workshop papers thus provide a wide-ranging account of contemporary research into financial markets worldwide. The workshop was held at the Hotel do Mar. Sesimbra. Portugal from April 11 th to April 15th. 1988. We record our gratitude to Jose Cabral for ensuring the smooth progress of the workshop. The generous financial assistance of NATO was supplemented by contributions from: The Chicago Board of Trade. Alianca Seguradora. Banco Comercial Portugues. Fundacao Luso-Americana Para 0 Desenvolvimento. Junta Nacional de Investigacao Cientifica e Tecnologica. We speak for all the workshop participants in expressing our thanks to all our sponsors. Rui M. Campos Guimaraes. University of Porto.
The genesis of the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) upon which this volume is based, occurred during the summer of 1986 when we came to the realization that there had been significant progress during the early 1980's in the field of superconducting electronics and in applications of this technology. Despite this progress, there was a perception among many engineers and scientists that, with the possible exception of a limited number of esoteric fundamental studies and applications (e.g., the Josephson voltage standard or the SQUID magnetometer), there was no significant future for electronic systems incorporating superconducting elements. One of the major reasons for this perception was the aversion to handling liquid helium or including a closed-cycle helium liquefier. In addition, many critics felt that IBM's cancellation of its superconducting computer project in 1983 was "proof" that superconductors could not possibly compete with semiconductors in high-speed signal processing. From our perspective, the need for liquid helium was outweighed by improved performance, i. e., higher speed, lower noise, greater sensitivity and much lower power dissipation. For many commercial, medical, scientific and military applications, these attributes can lead to either enhanced capability (e.g., compact real-time signal processing) or measurements that cannot be made using any other technology (e.g., SQUID magnetometry to detect neuromagnetic activity).