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Barbara Wise

Publications and source records attributed to Barbara Wise.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2003

Dysfunctional elimination syndrome: is it related to urinary tract infection or vesicoureteral reflux diagnosed early in life?

OBJECTIVE: It has been suggested that urinary tract infections (UTIs) early in life predispose to dysfunctional elimination syndrome (DES). This study evaluated the relationship between early UTI, vesicoureteral reflux (VUR), and DES by comparing two cohorts of school-aged children. METHODS: The UTI cohort (n = 123) included children previously enrolled in a prospective treatment trial conducted between 1992 and 1997. All were diagnosed with a febrile UTI before 2 years of age. The comparison cohort (n = 125) included children who were evaluated for fever in the emergency department between 1992 and 1997, whose urine culture was negative. Dysfunctional elimination symptoms were compared in the two cohorts by having families complete a revised version of the Dysfunctional Voiding Scoring System. RESULTS: Completed questionnaires were received from 248 children. There were no significant differences in selected demographic or clinical characteristics between the two cohorts. DES was present in 22% and 21% of children with and without a history of early UTI, respectively. Among children with UTIs, 18% of those with VUR and 25% of those without VUR had DES. CONCLUSIONS: Dysfunctional elimination is common in a general pediatric population. Neither UTI nor VUR diagnosed before 2 years of age was associated with DES in school-aged children.

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PubMedDate not supplied

Accurate visible speech synthesis based on concatenating variable length motion capture data.

We present a novel approach to synthesizing accurate visible speech based on searching and concatenating optimal variable-length units in a large corpus of motion capture data. Based on a set of visual prototypes selected on a source face and a corresponding set designated for a target face, we propose a machine learning technique to automatically map the facial motions observed on the source face to the target face. In order to model the long distance coarticulation effects in visible speech, a large-scale corpus that covers the most common syllables in English was collected, annotated and analyzed. For any input text, a search algorithm to locate the optimal sequences of concatenated units for synthesis is desrcribed. A new algorithm to adapt lip motions from a generic 3D face model to a specific 3D face model is also proposed. A complete, end-to-end visible speech animation system is implemented based on the approach. This system is currently used in more than 60 kindergarten through third grade classrooms to teach students to read using a lifelike conversational animated agent. To evaluate the quality of the visible speech produced by the animation system, both subjective evaluation and objective evaluation are conducted. The evaluation results show that the proposed approach is accurate and powerful for visible speech synthesis.

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