Audio Recording Device Research Articles

Effective word count estimation for long duration daily naturalistic audio recordings

The ability to count words in extended audio sequences allows researchers to explore characteristics of speakers (i.e., leading, following, task responsibility, personal engagement), as well as the dynamics of two-way or multi-subject conversation scenarios. As such, counting the number of words spoken by a person, offers a rich information source for several applications such as health monitoring (e.g., Autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and etc), second language learning, or language development studies. However, developing robust word count systems that can achieve high performance with low computational cost is very challenging due to the uncertain and dynamic behavior experienced in audio recordings. In this study, we address the problem for large-scale naturalistic audio recordings based on a 100-day audio collection entitled (i.e., Prof-Life-Log). This corpus contains continuously recorded audio from one person using a mobile LENA audio recording device (LENA, 2015). The device captures audio for an entire workday which can last up to 16 hours. Our proposed framework to address word count consists of five main components, (i) Speech Activity Detection(SAD) to remove non-speech parts of the signal, (ii) Speech Enhancement to suppress the effects of background noise, (iii) Primary vs. Secondary Speaker Detection to remove secondary speaker segments, (iv) Syllable Rate Estimation to estimate the syllable rate for the primary speaker, and (v) Linear Minimum Mean Square Error Estimation (LMMSE) to find the linear mapping between syllable rate and word rate in spontaneous speech. In spite of the simplicity of the framework, it shows to be very effective in real scenarios with good performance on various datasets. As an indication of performance, the error of the framework for an entire 16 h day audio file can be as low as 1% in terms of cumulative Word Count Error.

Toward a Greater Understanding: Utilizing Book Discussions to Effectively Engage Students in the Exploration of Women and Leadership Issues

This article examines the use of a book discussion as an instructional tool for developing leadership competency skills in female university students. A book discussion centered on Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In was held as a means to conceptualize discourse regarding leadership issues in the arena of women and leadership in a multidisciplinary campus wide symposium. In an effort to assess the effectiveness of such a program to learn about leadership issues, student commentary was collected during the discussion via an audio recording device. A qualitative exploration of the resulting commentary focused on this initiative as an effort to provide insight into the efficacy of book discussions as a best practice for facilitating the engagement of students in the exploration of leadership issues. As leadership educators seek to develop pedagogical tools that catalyze transformative learning, research regarding tools and methods by which faculty equip students to explore leadership becomes increasingly critical.

A Law and Economics Approach to Privacy Policy Misstatements: Considering the Need for a Cost-Benefits Analysis in the FTC's Deception Framework

It is said that today’s world is shaped by technology and fueled by information. Technological innovations such as mobile phones, audio and video recording devices, and computers, as well as the Internet and the rise of Big Data, have revolutionized our ability to capture, analyze, and share information. Further, information is undoubtedly critical to the economy. When readily available, consumer information enables businesses to “deliver the right products and services to the right customers, at the right time, more effectively and at a lower cost.” It also enhances customer convenience, improves service quality, and allows businesses to target those likely to be interested in the goods and services they offer, reducing waste and the need for mass advertising. Indeed, information about consumer needs and preferences is said to be “the cornerstone of any system that allocates goods and services within an economy.” As more information about consumers becomes available, the economy can more accurately and efficiently meet their needs and preferences.But many privacy advocates argue that the technological revolution that started in the twentieth century and continues today has caused a rapid erosion of personal privacy. Without a doubt, more personal information is readily available today than at any other point in mankind’s history. One proposal to stop this erosion is to stop the avalanche of technology and commercial opportunity responsible for it by intervening in the market for privacy by increasing the cost of consuming other people’s privacy and lowering the profits of voluntarily giving up one’s own privacy. Others argue for a less paternalistic approach, such as an increased emphasis on privacy-enabling technologies like encryption or a greater effort to obtain prior informed consent from consumers. Irrespective of the framing of the issue and the various proposed solutions, most privacy scholars agree that “the collection and use of personal data by businesses and government is spinning out of control.” While merchants that collect, use, store, and share consumer information are not specifically regulated under federal law, they are nevertheless regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which has power under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act to sanction businesses that engage in deceptive or unfair acts or practices in relation to their collection and use of consumer data. But some have called into question the FTC’s method for determining whether to bring a Section 5 enforcement action, arguing for “a deeper integration of economics and cost-benefit analysis” into the FTC’s consumer protection framework. They argue that “[a]n economic approach to privacy regulation [should be] guided by the tradeoff between the consumer welfare benefits of new and enhanced products and services against the potential harm to consumers, both of which arise from the same free flow and exchange of data.” This Essay examines calls for the integration of economic considerations into the FTC’s Section 5 framework. It does so by applying law and economics analysis to the FTC’s recent enforcement action against retail analytics provider Nomi Technologies for a privacy policy misstatement. In Part II, the Essay sets the stage by providing a brief summary of the current state of consumer privacy law and explaining how the FTC became the predominant consumer privacy watchdog in the United States. Part III cites calls for increased economic considerations to temper the FTC’s power and distinguishes the two means through which the FTC may sanction privacy violations — unfairness and deception. Part IV discusses Nomi’s data collection practices and its settlement with the FTC. The Essay proceeds to the law and economics analysis in Part V, using both rational and behavioral models to determine whether the FTC’s deception framework produces economically efficient outcomes in the context of privacy policy misstatements and to recommend efficiency-promoting improvements to that framework.

Maternal Math Talk in the Home and Math Skills in Preschool Children

ABSTRACTResearch Findings: The current study analyzed the relation between the amount of mathematical input that preschool children hear (i.e., math talk) from their mothers in their homes and their early math ability a year later. Forty mother–child dyads recorded their naturalistic exchanges in their homes using an enhanced audio-recording device (the Language ENvironment Analysis System). Results from a sample of naturalistic interactions during mealtimes indicated that all mothers involved their children in a variety of math exchanges, although there were differences in the amount of math input that children received. Moreover, being exposed to more instances of math talk was positively related to children’s early mathematical ability a year after the recordings, even after we controlled for maternal education, self-regulation, and recorded minutes. Practice or Policy: These findings improve the understanding of how mothers use math with their preschool children in naturalistic contexts, providing some insight for parents into how to foster children’s math skills through verbal input in their normal routines. Moreover, these findings inform kindergarten teachers and practitioners about the math input that children receive at home, which may encourage them to adapt their practice by considering the home environment.

Creating a Meaningful Learning Environment: Reflection in Leadership Education

This article examines the use of a book discussion as an instructional tool for developing leadership exploration competency skills in university students, as it pertains to the study of women and leadership. A book discussion centered on Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In washeld as a means to conceptualize discourse regarding leadership issues in the arena of women and leadership in a multidisciplinary campus wide symposium. In an effort to assess the effectiveness of such a program to learn about leadership issues, student commentary was collected during the discussion via an audio recordingdevice. A qualitative exploration of the resulting commentary focused on this initiative as an effort to provide insight into the efficacy of book discussions as a best practice for facilitating the engagement of students in the exploration of leadership issues. As leadership educators seek to develop pedagogical tools that catalyze transformative learning, research regarding tools and methods by which faculty equip students to explore leadership becomes increasingly critical.

A protocol for a randomised clinical trial of the effect of providing feedback on inhaler technique and adherence from an electronic device in patients with poorly controlled severe asthma

IntroductionIn clinical practice, it is difficult to distinguish between patients with refractory asthma from those with poorly controlled asthma, where symptoms persist due to poor adherence, inadequate inhaler technique or...

THE ROLE OF RECAST AND UPTAKE IN ESL TEACHER-LEARNER CONVERSATIONS

The study examined the role of recast and learner uptake following corrective recast in a group setting of teacher-learner conversations. Three female Universiti Teknologi Malaysia students in their twenties participated in the study. The relationship among types of uptake, linguistic focus of recast and the nature of recast were examined. The interactions between the female teacher and the group of female learners in a semi-formal interaction setting were recorded using an audio recording device. The recorded interactions were transcribed and coded for the types of learner uptake (Correct Uptake Episode (CUE), No Uptake Episode (NUE) or Incorrect Uptake Episode (IUE)), linguistic focus of recast (Morphosyntactic / Lexical) and the nature of recast (length of recast / degree of change / saliency of recast). Findings indicate that learners provided CUE and NUE in response to the teacher recast. Lexical recast has appeared to elicit more correct uptake by the learners. Recasts that are shorter, and involved one or two changes in the form of Repetition and Reformulation were found to be more assessable by the learners and more effective in generating successful repair.

Use and relationships among effective practices in co-taught inclusive high school classrooms

Opportunities to respond (OTR) and specific praise are two practices that may be particularly beneficial to students learning in secondary inclusive classrooms. Yet, there is relatively little research on effective inclusion practices involving secondary students with learning disabilities (LD) or studies at the secondary level. This study sought to extend the existing research by evaluating the relationship between rates of OTR and specific praise in co-taught high school core classrooms on student on-task behaviour and class engagement. This study was part of a larger study conducted during the 2010–2011 school year. First, core academic classrooms were observed and data were collected on OTR, praise, and student behaviour. OTR information was collected using an audio recording device. Class audio recordings were divided into 15-minute intervals of whole group instruction and coded for OTR, specific praise, and non-specific praise. Observation data on student behaviour and class engagement that corresponded with each 15-minute interval were identified. Results indicate low levels of teacher use of OTR and praise statements and few significant relationships found between the variables of interest. Implications for practice and future research directions are also presented.

Evaluating Cough Assessment Tools: A Systematic Review

Little is known about the comparative validity, reliability, or responsiveness of instruments for assessing cough frequency or impact, where the term impact encompasses both cough severity and the impact of cough on health-related quality of life. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate instruments that assess cough frequency or impact in adults, adolescents, and children with acute or chronic cough. Seventy-eight studies were included, of which eight were randomized controlled trials and 70 were observational studies. In all age groups, audio and video electronic recording devices had good reliability compared with other methods of assessing cough frequency but had variable correlation with other cough assessments, such as visual analog scale scores, quality-of-life questionnaires, cough diaries, and tussigenic challenges. Among adult and adolescent patients, the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) and the Cough-Specific Quality-of-Life Questionnaire (CQLQ) were valid and reliable, showing high intraclass and test-retest correlations. Among children, the Parent Cough-Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire and Pediatric Cough Questionnaire were valid and reliable. Electronic recording devices can be valid assessments of cough frequency. The LCQ and CQLQ for adults and the Parent Cough-Specific Quality of Life questionnaire for children are valid instruments for assessing cough impact. There is limited but insufficient evidence to determine the reliability or concurrent validity of the different types of cough diaries or visual analog scale scores. There are also limited data to support the responsiveness of recording devices. There is good responsiveness data for the LCQ and CQLQ, but more evidence is needed.

An MDCT-domain audio denoising method with a block switching scheme

In this paper, an audio denoising method is proposed for improving the quality of handheld audio recording devices. The proposed method reduces noise differently depending on the block size in the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) analysis of an audio coder. Specifically, denoising for a long block is performed by multi-band spectral subtraction (MBSS) with perceptually weighted scalefactor bands, while that for a short block is performed by subband power scaling to maintain coherence of power with the previously-denoised long block. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, it is first embedded into MPEG-2 advanced audio coding (AAC) that is popularly used for audio recording devices. Then, its performance is compared with that of a conventional audio denoising method based on block thresholding in terms of cepstral distortion, subjective quality, and computational complexity. It is shown from performance comparison that the proposed method outperforms the block thresholding method in both objective and subjective measurements. Moreover, the complexity of the proposed method is sufficiently lowered to be implemented on most resource-constrained handheld audio recording devices, unlike the conventional method.

A Comparison of the Prenatal Health Behaviors of Women from Four Cultural Groups in Turkey

This research was conducted to uncover women's health behaviors during prenatal periods using a transcultural approach. The qualitative ethnonursing method was used, and the research was conducted at the family health center in Bornova District in Izmir. The data were collected between November 2007 and August 2008 using the purposive sampling method. Eighteen pregnant women were included in the study and in-depth face-to-face semi-structured interviews were recorded on an audio recording device. A thematic analysis revealed four main themes: family, social learning-tradition transfer, perceptions, and behavioral changes.

Financial Fraud Examination and Forensic Investigations of Government Entities and Private Organizations in Cameroon

Investigating financial fraud examination, interviews are often conducted, audits, and other accounting tools to reap relevant information that piles up evidence and clues in detecting the lapses and root cause that stimulated the fraud. For this process to be effective the interviewer has to come up with tactics in conducting the interview to determine if an interviewee is being truthful or not. Before an interview is conducted, at least two people should be involved in the process, one person will be more involved in the interview process and basic jotting and also concentrating on the interviewee countenance when he or she respond to the questions while the other forensic expert will be recording the response from the interviewee. At the end of the interview both forensic experts can analyze whether the interviewee was lying or not. The minimum or basic tools that are needed for the interview to be conducted should involve the interview schedule, a checklist, an audio recording device, a pen for jotting, a laptop or palmtop. The commonest internal highlights that are easy routes to fraud flow are weaknesses in corporate governance, internal control of designed processes and their lapses, failed examination and recommendation of potentially alleged loopholes for operational risk measures.

Recording Mobile Learning

Data collection in M-TEL (Mobile Technology Enhanced Learning) studies is associated with great challenges, as both the learners and data collectors are mobile. One context for M-TEL is outside the controlled environment of the classroom, meaning disturbing sound and noise from the environment, which forces the research community to re-evaluate how the community collects data. This study evaluates how many audio recording devices are needed when collecting data for a subsequent qualitative analysis of an M-TEL study; in the author’s case through interaction and conversation analysis. The author analyzed how much of one learner’s speech was recorded by an audio recorder attached to that learner, and compared this with how much that learner’s speech was recorded by her peer learners’ audio recorders, as well as by a close-up video camera. This article presents a quantitative analysis of the material from different points of view; consecutive in time, the proximity of the learners, activity of the learners, a union between audio recorders, and a union between video and an audio recorder. The author’s conclusion is that in a group of learners, it is necessary to let every learner carry an audio recorder to sufficiently record their speech for later qualitative analysis.

Evaluation of Listener-Based Anuran Surveys with Automated Audio Recording Devices

Volunteer-based audio surveys are used to document long-term trends in anuran community composition and abundance. Current sampling protocols, however, are not region- or species-specific and may not detect relatively rare or audibly cryptic species. We used automated audio recording devices to record calling anurans during 2006–2009 at wetlands in Maine, USA. We identified species calling, chorus intensity, time of day, and environmental variables when each species was calling and developed logistic and generalized mixed models to determine the time interval and environmental variables that optimize detection of each species during peak calling periods. We detected eight of nine anurans documented in Maine. Individual recordings selected from the sampling period (0.5 h past sunset to 0100 h) described in the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program (NAAMP) detected fewer species than were detected in recordings from 30 min past sunset until sunrise. Time of maximum detection of presence and full chorusing for three species (green frogs, mink frogs, pickerel frogs) occurred after the NAAMP sampling end time (0100 h). The NAAMP protocol’s sampling period may result in omissions and misclassifications of chorus sizes for certain species. These potential errors should be considered when interpreting trends generated from standardized anuran audio surveys.

Tech to Ease IEP Pain

Tech to Ease IEP Pain

The Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity and L2 Oral Performance Under Task‐Based Careful Online Planning Condition

The Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity and L2 Oral Performance Under Task‐Based Careful Online Planning Condition

A Qualitative Study To Define, Knowledge, Attitudes And Practices Of About Vaginal Discharge

Aim The purpose of this qualitative study; to define, knowledge, attitudes and practices of women about vaginal discharge and vaginal douche which is a factor related to the discharge. Materials and Methods The research has been performed in Umraniye district of Istanbul with women between ages 23- 65 who have been married at least once. Eleven focus group discussions has been established and interviewed with 63 women. Interviews had been recorded with audio recording devices after receiving permission of the participants, then all the records had been figured out and analyzed in Excel software. Results Most of the women had stated that they could distinguish the vaginal discharge. Besides the ones that consult to the health institutes and doctors about the problems related with the vaginal discharge, considerable proportion of participants had stated that they were referring to the using traditional methods. In a period of time, most of them had applied or were still applying the vaginal douche which is a factor related to the vaginal discharge. Conclusion Mostly the usage of herbal products and hot practises had been defined as traditional methods for eliminating the abnormal discharge. The reason of vaginal douche application had been declared as cleanliness, religious belief and contraception.

An introduction to forensic gunshot acoustics

Due to the proliferation of audio recording devices in the military, law enforcement, and the civilian community, there has been an increase in the number of recorded gunshot sounds submitted for forensic analysis. A gunshot sound is composed of one or more discrete acoustic transient events. The two primary acoustic events are the muzzle blast (bang) and the ballistic shockwave (crack). The acoustic event characteristics depend on their source generating mechanisms and vary according to the firearm make, model, barrel length, and the specific ammunition characteristics. Forensic gunshot analysis deals with a single recorded shot lasting for a fraction of a second. These acoustic events are usually high intensity, often up to 160 dB SPL, are highly directional, and are often recorded in high distortion environments. Forensic gunshot analysis must take into account variations in the source generation characteristics and the sources of distortion for these recorded acoustic events in order to answer these fundamental forensic questions: Is this event a gunshot? Are two events from the same firearm? Who fired first? To illustrate the complex nature of the analysis, we present the gunshot data collected in a pristine controlled environment and the data collected in a forensic environment.

Capture and Analysis of Data from Image-guided Procedures

Improvement of performance during image-guided procedures begins with close observation of existing systems. Recording of procedures and detailed analysis of those recordings may provide considerable insight into how performance might be improved. Multiple video and audio recording devices were used to capture the stimulus/response cycles that occur during uterine artery embolization, transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt creation, and Port-a-Cath placement. These records were compiled, and data regarding radiation use were extracted from each procedure. Recordings from Port-a-Cath placement were also used to assess operator performance during ultrasound (US)-guided venous access and medication handling. The recordings were used to assess how physicians use visual and auditory information to drive decisions during image-guided procedures. Correlating radiation dose with the modality used to acquire the image and the procedure timeline produced a series of clear patterns. Fluoroscopy was used to guide decisions during the vast majority of each procedure. Acquisition of digital subtraction angiographic images caused a substantial increase in radiation flux. There were clear instances in which the additional information provided by the increased dose was considered essential to the decision-making process, but there were also instances in which it appeared that the additional information did not drive intraprocedural decisions. Analysis of a US-guided procedure demonstrated that the physician would not advance the needle whenever its position relative to the target was uncertain. Analysis of these detailed recordings provided important insights into how visual information is used during image-guided procedures. The results suggest there would be considerable benefit to matching information-gathering activities to the operators' capacity to analyze information and make decisions.

AHRA does not protect device distributor against copyright claims arising from broadcaster role

In a case of first impression, and one of the few cases interpreting the statute at issue, a district court in New York City has held that the Audio Home Recording Act, 17 USC sections 1001 et seq. (‘AHRA’), does not immunize a distributor of digital audio recording devices (DARDs) from copyright liability when the infringement claims are based on the distributor's allegedly infringing activity in its simultaneous role as a satellite radio broadcaster. The case illustrates the ambiguous nature of digital transmissions, which can be treated as distributions of musical works as well as digital performances.