This paper presents a new analytic method that can be used for analyzing perceptual relevance of unit selection costs and/or their sub-components as well as for tuning of unit selection weights. The proposed method is leveraged to investigate the behavior of a unit selection based system. The outcome is applied in a simple experiment with the aim to improve speech output quality of the system b...

this research aims to study the relationship between the components of quality costs and quality in company. the relationship between the components of quality costs and quality in company has been studied separately for materials, manpower, machinery, and whole of company. in this study, traditional method was used to collect quality costs and paf model was used to determine the components of ...

BACKGROUND The burden of untreated tooth decay remains high and oral healthcare utilisation is low for the majority of children in South Africa. There is need for alternative methods of improving access to low cost oral healthcare. The mobile dental unit of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) has been operational for over 25 years, providing alternative oral healthcare to children and ad...

We consider the activity-based costing situation, in which for each of several comparable operational units, multiple cost drivers generate a single cost pool. Our study focuses on published data from a set of property tax collection offices, called rates departments, for the London metropolitan area. We define what may be called benchmark or most efficient costs per unit of driver. A principle...

We study a two-unit cold standby system in steady-state. The online unit goes through a finite number of stages of successive degradation preceding the failure. The units are reparable, there is a repairman and two types of maintenance are considered, preventive and corrective. The preventive repair aims to improve the degradation of a unit being operative. The corrective repair is necessary wh...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE this paper examines the impact of demographic change from 2007 to 2021 on the total cost of stroke in Ireland and analyses potential impacts of expanded access to stroke unit care and thrombolytic therapy on stroke outcomes and costs. METHODS total costs of stroke are estimated for the projected number of stroke cases in 2021 in Ireland. Analysis also estimates the pote...

In this paper, some practical solid transportation models are formulated considering per trip capacity of each type of conveyances with crisp and rough unit transportation costs. This is applicable for the system in which full vehicles, e.g. trucks, rail coaches are to be booked for transportation of products so that transportation cost is determined on the full of the conveyances. The models w...

BACKGROUND External assistance can rapidly strengthen health programmes in developing countries, but such funding can also create sustainability challenges. From 2004-2011, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) provided more than $ 8 million to the Blood Transfusion Service of Namibia (NAMBTS) for supplies, equipment, and staff salaries. This analysis describes the impact...

A novel unit preselection criterion for concatenative speech synthesis is proposed. To reduce the computational cost for unit selection, units that are unlikely to be selected should be pruned as preselection before Viterbi search. Since the criterion is defined as the difference between the cost of the locally optimal sequence where a unit is fixed and that of the globally optimal sequence, no...