The AMI Meeting Corpus is a multi-modal data set consisting of 100 hours of meeting recordings. It is being created in the context of a project that is developing meeting browsing technology and will eventually be released publicly. Some of the meetings it contains are naturally occurring, and some are elicited, particularly using a scenario in which the participants play different roles in a design team, taking a design project from kick-off to completion over the course of a day. The corpus is being recorded using a wide range of devices including close-talking and far-field microphones, individual and room-view video cameras, projection, a whiteboard, and individual pens, all of which produce output signals that are synchronized with each other. It is also being hand-annotated for many different phenomena, including orthographic transcription, discourse properties such as named entities and dialogue acts, summaries, emotions, and some head and hand gestures. We describe the data set, including the rationale behind using elicited material, and explain how the material is being recorded, transcribed and annotated.

This paper describes steps involved in the design and realization of a new type of pressure sensor based on the optical fiber Bragg grating. A traditional pressure sensor has very limited usage in heavy industrial environments, particularly in explosive or electromagnetically noisy environments. Utilization of optics in these environments eliminates all surrounding influences. An initial motivation for our development was the research, experimental validation, and realization of a complex smart pressure sensor based on the optical principle. The main benefit of this solution consists of increasing sensitivity, resistance to electromagnetic interference, dimensions, and potential increased accuracy.

No abstract

Extremely deep freshwater filled cave systems are common in karst systems globally. The origin and evolution of such caves are usually attributed to hypogenic (bottom-up) processes, in which acidic groundwater dissolves limestone from below. However, these deep cave systems can form by epigenic (top-down) processes, with meteoric waters descending from the surface underground. The Hranice Abyss (Czech Republic), with a reached depth of 473.5 m, is the deepest mapped extent of such a system globally, although its maximum depth is unknown. Multiple geophysical data sets (gravity, electrical resistivity tomography, audiomagnetotellurics, and seismic refraction and reflection) are used to investigate the extent and formation of the Hranice Abyss. The geophysical results suggest the Hranice Abyss extends to depths of~1 km. Further, we identify structures within the karst, including buried cockpit karst towers with several NW-SE-oriented valleys. The new geophysical results from the Hranice Abyss, considered in combination with geological constraints of the region (tectonic evolution and morphology of karst structure), suggest an epigenic formation process, rather than the traditionally invoked hypogenic origin. Formation by epigenic rather than hypogenic processes has implications for local and regional karst history associated with areas hosting deep karst systems.