Double Talk Research Articles

Le rétablissement, méta-glissement vers le rétablissement d’État ?

ContextIn psychiatry or mental health fields, recovery is an individual element: it indicates a state or a dynamic of well-being of a person who has experienced psychological difficulties. However, this individual element becomes part of an assumed support of psychosocial rehabilitation practices, the so-called recovery-oriented practices. ObjectivesThis article introduces thinking about the concept of recovery, from its individual aspect for the involved persons to its role in public policies in psychiatry and mental health. MethodThis article is an epistemological and political thinking, impregnated by literature and initiated by an experience as a psychiatrist in a medico-social team led by a recovery-oriented practice. ResultsVarious facets of this concept of recovery are studied, beginning with its life-giving aspects and its inherent limitations in the field of action and not the field of clinical thinking. Destigmatization, social inclusion and autonomy, consubstantial to recovery-oriented practices, are examined in relation to the limitation of a vision centered on citizenship. Beyond the benefits and limitations of using this concept in our mental health care practices, the use of this word by public authorities to erect it as a good practice – what we call here State Recovery – is questioned at the time of the alleged health democracy. We discuss here the normative and excluding potentiality of a devious use of the idea of recovery by the neoliberalism, avoiding critical thinking by a double talk about a recovery with a circumscribed empowerment. InterpretationsPsychiatric and mental health practices are embedded in a historical, social and political context, and cannot be considered as independent technical sciences. The use of the word recovery illustrates this point and instructs us of the risk of drying up clinical practice and worse if we do not think about the semantic instrumentation of conceptual elements.

Double Talk.

In this series of short essays, stories, poems, and personal observations, Robert A. Burton, neurologist and writer, uses both fiction and nonfiction to explore many paradoxes and contradictions inherent in scientific inquiry. A novelist as well as author of On Being Certain and A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind, Burton brings story to science and science to story.

Janet L. Langlois (1946–2021)

Janet L. Langlois (1946–2021)

Double Talk Detection in hands-free mobile communication- A comprehensive survey

In modern teleconferencing systems, echo cancellation is a mandatory requirement. Echoes arise in Loudspeaker Enclosure Microphone devices because of coupling between loudspeaker and microphone signals. To remove these unwanted echoes from microphone signals, Acoustic Echo Cancellers are used. Several techniques exist for acoustic echo cancellation. Acoustic echo cancelling an adaptive FIR/IIR filter can predict the path of echo and cancel it. The adaptive algorithms give good performance when only the far-end signal is present. But when the near-end signal is present, the adaptive filter tends to diverge. Such a situation creates a double talk scenario. The filter adaptation must be prevented during the double talk period. Accurate detection of double talk is quite difficult and computationally complex. Hence the algorithms for detecting Double Talk are not easy to implement. Increased detection accuracy is achieved at the cost of computational complexity. Further, it is desired to cancel out the far end echo signal, thus giving a good quality of near-end speech signal as output. Here, we provide a detailed study of the different algorithms existing for double talk detection, and future direction of research in the field of double talk detection is proposed.

Collaborative Creative Processes That Challenge Us as "Anomaly", and Affirm Our Indigeneity and Enact Our Sovereignty

Collaborative Creative Processes That Challenge Us as "Anomaly", and Affirm Our Indigeneity and Enact Our Sovereignty

Optimum step-size control for a variable step-size stereo acoustic echo canceller in the frequency domain

The frequency-domain adaptive filter (FDAF) is a competitive candidate for stereo acoustic echo cancellation (SAEC) because of its good convergence and computational efficiency. However, there is a conflict between the convergence rate and the steady-state misalignment when using a constant step size. In this paper, a variable step-size approach is proposed for the stereo echo canceller in the frequency domain. The proposed method uses a first-order Markov model to describe the time-varying echo paths between the loudspeakers and the microphone. Following a statistical convergence analysis of the two-channel FDAF algorithm, the state recursion of the system distance in each frequency bin is given. The optimal step size is then derived by minimizing the system distance. Several practical problems, including noise power spectral density estimation and echo paths change detection, are discussed in details. Moreover, a close link between the proposed optimum step-size control method and the multichannel state–space frequency-domain adaptive filter is established. We show that the proposed variable step-size approach can also be incorporated into the block extended least-mean-square algorithm to fully exploit their benefits. Finally, computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithm exhibits an excellent convergence performance and is very robust to the double talk.

Disappearing Worlds in Life Writing: The Year in Iceland

Disappearing Worlds in Life WritingThe Year in Iceland Gunnthorunn Gudmundsdottir (bio) The year 2018 saw the publication of a variety of auto/biographical works in Iceland, with a broad range of thematic and stylistic approaches. The works I have chosen to focus on here caught the attention of critics and readers alike in very different ways. The works include a delving into a family's difficult past, reflections on people on the margins of society, and musings on the death of the book. What they have in common is that they all focus on a group rather than an individual—a family, a group of artists, a social group—and in one way or another they all examine a lost or disappearing world. This, one could argue, is one of the main themes of life writing in general, but here the authors all convey a palpable sense that they are writing about a world that has been disappearing in the last few decades due to changing mores and social conditions, and the advent of new technologies. Poverty and Abuse in Women's Lives One of the most popular (and talked about) autobiographical works from 2018 was by Ásdís Halla Bragadóttir, a former right-wing politician and a private health care entrepreneur. Hornauga is the second volume of her memoirs; the first volume, Tvísaga: Móðir, dóttir, feður, was published in 2016, which translates as "Double talk: Mother, daughter, fathers." The volumes recount a dramatic and extremely difficult family saga, which is in some ways typical of the stories of childhood abuse and other difficulties we have become very familiar with in recent decades, but in some ways it parts from that tradition as well. The two books follow the lives of Bragadóttir's parents and their ancestors, which might seem straightforward enough, but the past is a complicated and obscure world in their lives, where it is difficult to get to the truth of the matter. Her mother, on whom the first volume focuses, was raised in extreme poverty and experienced horrifying abuse and hardships. As for her father, the stories Bragadóttir heard about his identity are revealed to be baseless (hence the book's title), and the search for her biological father turns out to be a much more tortuous road than she first envisaged. The past has been [End Page 80] silenced and ignored in a variety of ways and for all kinds of reasons, but not least because of the family's unwillingness to face up to past traumas. The two volumes are a mixed bag of, on the one hand, careful historical research, and on the other, an almost melodramatic rendering of the results of this research. The search for the story of her mother's early life and the search for her own biological father are characterized by a painstaking uncovering of the traces of the lives of people, women especially, who lived in extreme poverty in early and mid-twentieth-century Iceland. The volumes detail the hardships and abuse such women were the victims of, and the result of this traumatic past as encountered by the author in her childhood and upbringing. The difficulty in facing the horrors of the past and the posttraumatic effects from which her mother suffered and made her incapable of dealing with her childhood, are at the center of the story. The author is living with the postmemory of these events, and she has an astute eye for the effects they had on family life, not least on her mother's emotional life and continuously high levels of anxiety, as well as the muddied tale surrounding Bragadóttir's own father. The first volume is in many ways effective and powerful, though at times marred by a rather stilted and old-fashioned narrative style, where the narrator recreates and reimagines scenes and conversations from the past with mixed results. But it is also characterized by a strong empathy for her family members, despite the negative influences their behavior may have had on her childhood. Bragadóttir conveys a clear sense of the few choices on offer for women in poverty, and...

Complicit Atmospheres: Anti-Semitism and Midcentury U.S. Fiction

Abstract In this article, I explore how US writers and intellectuals in the years following World War II responded aesthetically to the questions of complicity raised by anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. I discuss two short stories in particular: Vladimir Nabokov's “Double Talk” (1945) and Mary McCarthy's “Artists in Uniform” (1953). These form part of a group of literary works that share a striking and singular theme: the nightmare of the liberal intellectual finding herself or himself complicit with anti-Semitism in the confined space of a social encounter, and unable to escape. In reading these stories for their points of contact and shared concerns, we can begin to build an account of how complicity was addressed by members of a particular cultural formation in the early cold war, that of an East Coast intelligentsia characterized by its rejection of Stalinism, adherence to classically liberal political values and commitment to the aesthetic values of European modernism. More specifically, we gain an insight into why the aesthetics of complicity should be understood as a necessary and constitutive element of this group's intellectual ethos.

A New Decision-Theory-Based Framework for Echo Canceler Control

A control logic has a central role in many echo cancellation systems for optimizing the performance of adaptive filters while estimating the echo path. For reliable control, accurate double-talk (DT) and channel change (CC) detectors are usually incorporated to the echo canceler. This work expands the usual detection strategy to define a classification problem characterizing four possible states of the echo canceler operation. The new formulation allow the use of decision theory to continuously control the transitions among the different modes of operation. The classification rule reduces to a low cost statistics for which it is possible to determine the probability of error under all hypotheses, allowing the classification performance to be accessed analytically. Monte Carlo simulations using synthetic and real data illustrate the reliability of the proposed method.

Residual Echo Reduction for Multichannel Acoustic Echo Cancelers With a Complex-Valued Residual Echo Estimate

This paper proposes a new method to reduce residual echo for multichannel acoustic echo cancelers (AECs). This method estimates complex-valued residual echo and corrects its overestimated amplitude on the basis of a bias model of coherence estimation. Unlike conventional residual echo reduction methods for single-channel AECs, this method takes into account not only the magnitudes but also the phases of far-end signals and frequency responses. The inclusion of the phases gives the correct model of residual echo for multichannel AECs. The correction of the overestimated amplitude of residual echo decreases the distortion of near-end speech during double talk. The proposed method reduces the residual echo in the AEC output by 5–10 dB immediately after environmental changes such as a far-end talker change and an echo-path change. The proposed method provides less distorted near-end speech than the square-root Wiener filter during double talk.

Meditations on the Origin of Philosophy

AbstractWittgenstein in his later writing often remarked on the negative influence of language on philosophy. Here, I call attention to a previously unnoticed but significant way that language has influenced philosophy: we use the very same vocabulary in two different ways, in philosophical talk and in our everyday interactive speaking‐situations. Our propensity for using this double talk has prevented us from resolving most philosophical problems. Is our attraction to philosophical talk the result of our learning to use a phonetic alphabet, so that words can be used outside of interactive situations?

Organizational study of a large U.S. Non-profit: A Diagnosis of Organizational and Leadership Issues

Organizations that are sick with organizational diseases make cutbacks in size and spending, which mostly impact the workforce with massive layoffs. Employees in these organizations are unhappy, frustrated, and live in constant fear of losing their jobs. Employees are doing “pseudo work” (Ivanov, 2017) verses “real work,” pushing the organization into a vicious cycle of more cutbacks and layoffs. This paper discusses organizational diseases, such as double talk, double think, Abilene Paradox, lack of collaboration, lack of innovation, focus on performance evaluations, and examines whether they exist in the company, a large nonprofit organization in the US. The authors then suggest recommendations for improvement to upper management.

From the fuel versus food controversy to the institutional vacuum in biofuel policies: evidence from West African countries

BackgroundSince the early 2000s, biofuel production has been developed in West Africa with the encouragement and support of notably Europe, Brazil, and China. Yet the development of biofuels can also be viewed from the angle of West African interests. The principle arguments advanced in favor of biofuels pointed to their potential to reduce oil trade deficits and improve the populations’ access to ready, cheap energy. Biofuels consequently began to be put on the political agendas of West African countries.Ten years after the first Jatropha plantations for energy use were established in West Africa, and in the light of the uneven development of the biofuel sector across the region, we analyze the factors that surprisingly led to policy inaction in many of these countries.MethodsWe used the concept of policy cycle stages to analyze the involvement of stakeholders in building biofuel policy and the factors behind incomplete public policies. The methods and tools that have been defined for the analysis of the relationships and interplay between actors are based on an analysis of the positions and interests of different stakeholders and on the comparison of their influence and importance in the design and implementation of projects, programs and policies. Our approach is inspired by the literature on Stakeholder Analysis, but also draws from the field of New Institutional Economics. We developed our own analytic framework (the “4C”) which breaks down the interplay between different types of stakeholders and into four types of relationships: coordination, concertation, cooperation and contractualization. Our research process was based on a ranging study conducted between 2011 and 2014. Multilevel approaches were used to understand multi-scale and multi-sector biofuel issues. The analysis employed a large range of methods, including the reading of reports and political texts and conducting interviews. The documentary analysis helped to identify stakeholder groups for the stakeholder analysis. We then carried out interviews with a panel of stakeholders.ResultsThe study shows that it was the energy ministries of West African countries, encouraged by international cooperation agencies, which stepped forward to establish biofuel strategies, paying little attention to the issues at stake for agricultural producers or local communities. Around the same time, increases in food prices on the international market began to damage the image of biofuels, which came to be perceived as a threat to the food security of populations in developing countries. In several countries dependent on outside technical and financial support, this shift in the international discourse influenced the position of agriculture ministries, which became lukewarm or even opposed to biofuels. An outstanding result of the study is that the double talk at the international level—favorable and unfavorable to biofuels—and power games inside the countries crippled the coordination of public action to support the sector, generated an institutional vacuum, led to conflicts between stakeholders, and hampered the sustainable development of biofuel projects and sectors in several West African countries.In conclusion, we then emphasize the need to turn inaction into action: regulation frameworks must be implemented if the biofuel sector is to survive in West Africa.ConclusionsThe development of biofuels in the majority of West African countries suffers from an absence of a clear vision shared by all stakeholders and a lack of coordination between public actors. An institutional vacuum has taken hold which prevents investments in and the sustainable development of the biofuel sector and respectful of the interests of family farmers, who represent the majority of the population. The governments in these countries mainly worked through the ministries in charge of energy, which have become the leaders on the biofuel question. National biofuel policies are thus primarily focused on the energy potential of biofuels and on technical and economic dimensions of processing Jatropha seeds into oil and biodiesel rather than on upstream and downstream social objectives. If the biofuel sector is to survive in West African countries, the inaction of public actors has to be reversed by establishing the institutional frameworks needed to facilitate such development.

Novel DTD and VAD assisted voice detection algorithm for VoIP systems

Echo cancellation plays an important role in current Internet protocol (IP) based voice interactive systems. Voice state detection is an essential part in echo cancellation. It mainly comprises two parts: double talk detection (DTD) and voice activity detection (VAD). DTD is used to detect doubletalk and prevent filter divergence in the presence of near-end speech, and VAD is used to determine the near-end voice activity and output silence indicator when near-end is silent. However, DTD straightforwardly proceeded may mistakenly declare double talk under double silent condition, coefficients update under the far-end silence condition may lead to filter divergence, and current VAD algorithms may misjudge the residual echo from the near end to be far-end voice. Therefore, a voice detection algorithm combining DTD and far-end VAD is proposed. DTD is implemented when VAD declares far-end speech, filtering and coefficients update will be halted when VAD declares far-end silence, and the far-end VAD adopted is multi-feature VAD based on short-time energy and correlation. The new algorithm can improve the accuracy of DTD, prevent filter divergence, and exclude the circumstance that far-end signal only contains residual echo from near end. Actual test results show that the voice state decision of the new algorithm is accurate, and the performance of echo cancellation is improved.

English Literature on Social Discrimination, Fiction, Democracy and Feminism

Indian English literature is the collection of articles written by Indian writers. This article depicts the writings of women authors. Most of the women Indian writers in English literature focussed their views on different concepts such as social discrimination, fiction, non-fiction, literacy, democracy, human rights and feminism. The articles are based on their real life experiences as well. A few writings of Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Meena Anand, Gita Piramal, Jasodhara Bagchi, Manjula Padmanabhan, Meena Alexander, Sarojini Naidu, Nayantara Sahgal and Rama Mehta are summarised in this article. The authors and their contribution to “The God of Small Things, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Interpreter of Meledies, A Voice for Freedom, Dalit Women: Fear and Discrimination, Managing Radical Change, Indian Women: Myth and Reality, House of Thousand Doors, Double talk and Inside the Haveli” are portrayed. These works are considered as the assets of Indian literature which attained several acclamations. The article purely deals with the Indian women writers whose contributions are well utilised for the welfare of the country’s development in different ways.

Donor’s double talk undermines African agency : Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo

Despite a long-standing controversy about aid-effectiveness in general and the impact of aid-dependency on governance in particular, little is known on the effect of donors policies on civic agency for democratization in aid dependent autocratic regimes. In this study it is argued that the long-term effects of double-talk of donors, who openly promote democracy and freedom but covertly follow overriding hidden interest, are a neglected source of failure of civic protest and democratic revolutions in autocratic regimes. The differing outcome of ‘democratic revolutions’ in Togo and Burkina Faso – both ‘aid darlings’ for decades - serves to substantiate this thesis. A systematic and holistic consideration is necessary for an unbiased evaluation of the hidden adverse impact of aid on collective action at the grass-roots. Therefore, a rethinking of temporal and disciplinary ‘fault lines’ in development politics as well as in development studies is essential.

Donor's double talk undermines African agency Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo

Donor's double talk undermines African agency Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo

Donor's double talk undermines African agency: Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo

Donor's double talk undermines African agency: Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo

Wavelet based ICA using maximisation of non-Gaussianity for acoustic echo cancellation during double talk situation

In this paper a new wavelet based Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is proposed for Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) in the presence of double talk scenario. Conventional Echo cancellation systems that use adaptive filter for AEC fails in the double talk situation, which demands a double talk detector. In the proposed method, the near end speech is separated from the acoustic echo by using the measure of maximising the Non-Gaussianity of ICA using kurtosis and Negentropy without the need of double talk detector. The simulations show that the proposed wavelet based ICA method provides higher cancellation of echo with less computation time.

Robust acoustic echo cancellation using Kalman filter in double talk scenario

In this work, a novel Kalman filtering framework is developed for joint acoustic echo and noise cancellation in a double talk scenario. The efficiency of echo cancellation algorithms is reduced when signals other than the echoed far end signal are present, since the echo path cannot be modelled accurately in such cases. A double talk detector is also used in conjunction with an acoustic echo canceller to handle such a double talk scenario. The method presented in this work is able to model both the near-end speech signal and background noise, which makes lt robust in double talk scenarios. Apart from jointly cancelling echo and noise, another advantage of this framework is that it does not require a double talk detector. Additionally an expectation maximisation based algorithm is also proposed in this work to estimate linear prediction coefficients of the near end signal. Extensive performance evaluation over the NOIZEUS corpus demonstrates that the proposed framework performs reasonably better than other speech enhancement methods in terms of misalignment of the estimated echo path and perceptual quality of the reconstructed near-end speech signal.