Science News
New Research Advances Voice Security Technology
ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2010) — Most people are familiar with security technology that scans a person's handprint or eye for identification purposes. Now, thanks in part to research from North Carolina State University, we are closer to practical technology that can test someone's voice to confirm their identity. "The big picture is speaker authentication by computer," says Dr. Robert Rodman, professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a new paper on the subject. "The acoustic parameters of the voice are affected by the shape of the vocal tract, and different people have different vocal tracts," Rodman explains. "This new research will help improve the speed of speech authentication, without sacrificing accuracy."
Rodman explains that speech authentication could have a host of applications in this age of heightened security and mobile electronics. "Potential users of this technology include government, financial, health-care and telecommunications industries," Rodman says, "for applications ranging from preventing ID theft and fraud to data protection."
Current computer models that are used to compare acoustic profiles, effectively evaluating whether a speaker is who he says he is, may take several seconds or more to process the information, which is still too long for the technology to gain widespread acceptance. "In order for this technology to gain traction among users," Rodman says, "the response time needs to improve without increasing the error rate."
To address this problem, Rodman and his fellow researchers modified existing computer models to streamline the authentication process so that it operates more efficiently. "This is part of the evolution of speech authentication software," Rodman says, "and it moves us closer to making this technology a practical, secure tool."
The research was co-authored by NC State's Rodman; Rahim Saeidi, Tomi Kinnunen and Pasi Franti of the University of Joensuu in Finland; and Hamid Reza Sadegh Mohammadi of the Iranian Academic Center for Education, Culture & Research.
The research, "Joint Frame and Gaussian Selection for Text Independent Speaker Verification", will be presented at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Dallas, March 14-19. The research was funded, in part, by the Centre for International Mobility.
NC State's Department of Computer Science is part of the university's College of Engineering.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308102202.htm
“Current computer models […] may take several seconds or more to process the information, which is still too long for the technology to gain widespread acceptance.”
In this sentence, the relative pronoun which refers to the

What seems to be the type of text presented here?

According to the text what’s the inevitable catastrophe that will unfold in the years and decades to come?

What’s the meaning of unfold in this sentence: they constitute an inevitable catastrophe that will unfold in the years and decades to come?

The theater seats _____ so _____ thatmy children _____ want to go back there.

The director disliked everyone _____ he showed himself sort of friendly, _________

The work _____ this script _____made _____ 2003 but it needs brushing _____.

According to the text the score…

Themain problemthat the text above brings is that…

________, if they like the project they______find a way to save it.

I think it _____ be a great show, ______ nobody _____be talking __________ it

These people _____ complained _____ the kind of language they hear ______themovies nowadays.

In the first line of the last paragraph, “the latest buzz on the…” , theword could be understand as

By reading the text abovewe understand that...

This machine runs on a ________.That will make any other seem old.

Choose the best option.

The lights went ____ twice when I was ____ the computer this morning, so I had to stop working ____ the project. Well, that's why I'ml ate.