Knowledge of the speech production mechanism is essential for the development of speech production models and theories. Magnetic Resonance Imaging delivers high quality images of soft tissues, has multiplanar capacity and allows for the visualization of the entire vocal tract. To our knowledge, there are no complete and systematic Magnetic Resonance Imaging studies of European Portuguese produc...

Lack of auditory feedback for hearing impaired children leads eventually to a speaking disability in them. Hence, hearing impaired children are unable to speak, in spite of having proper speech production mechanism. Even if the hearing impaired child tries to speak by visualizing lip movements, his articulation, accuracy, stress and intonation patterns are affected, since vowels & consonants wi...

BACKGROUND Speech production and speech phonetic features gradually improve in children by obtaining audio feedback after cochlear implantation or using hearing aids. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate automated classification of voice disorder in children with cochlear implantation and hearing aids. METHODS We considered 4 disorder categories in children's voice using the foll...

Chronic nasopharyngitis (CNP) associated with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is etiopathogenetically based on the virus-induced chronic inflammation of pharyngeal tonsil. Studies using immunological methods have shown that EBV involved in hypertrophy lymphoid tissue pharynx children and adolescents, since tonsil site primary infection persistence virus. The surgery does not often resolve problem 19-2...

Triple A (AAA) syndrome (also known as Allgrove syndrome) is a rare multi systemic disorder. The disease usually manifests with adrenal insufficiency in early childhood. Apart from insufficiency, alacrima and achalasia represent the two other classical findings associated disease. Motor neuron like presentation of seldom reported literature. We describe case diagnosed since childhood who later ...

Two kinds of marks have been set by the listeners (frontiers and accents), which are attached to the syllable nucleus. The MLP fed with any of the previously described values (F0,duration...), no matter the size of the temporal window, is not capable of reproducing the accent marking with a good score. Thus we consider that listeners' accent marks are not consistent, at least from a local point...

Speech production is an important human function involving a set of organs with specific morphological and dynamic aspects. The inter-speaker variability, the coarticulation or the nasality are some interesting aspects to improve a realistic 3D modeling of the vocal tract. For this, the understanding of the mechanism of speech production is crucial, as the current image data is not sufficient t...

Properties of ASL The idea that sign languages are not a concatenation of universally understood pantomimes or concrete gestures has been hard to unroot. In fact, just as there are and Computational Sciences many spoken languages, there are many unique and Georgetown University different signed languages. Recent advances in linguis-Washington, DC 20007 tics have revealed that sign languages suc...

Rehabilitation of surgical resection defects is always a challenging clinical scenario. These defects pose a major physiological and psychological threat not only to the patients, but to the entire family. A multidisciplinary team approach, thorough investigation, long term follow up, proper counselling and sympathetic attitude may help to bring these suffering patients back to normal life stre...

In this master thesis, the formant frequencies of an excellent male Swedish barbershop quartet were examined. The choice of topic was based on several factors that ought to make the tuning of the formant frequencies extremely important in the strive for the characteristic barbershop sound. The quartet was recorded, singing parts of the song 'Paper Moon'. In the recordings, each singer had an in...