I suggest everyone visits our webpage and looks at how beautiful we all are thanks to @carignan.bsky.social 's amazing photography skills ;-) www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/researc...

One more cohort of PALS0047 R programmers receives their rubber ducks! Everyone say, "Hello World!"

Currently updating the slides for the debugging lecture in my Star-Wars-meme-laden "Programming in R" module to discuss using LLMs in the debugging process. The prompt was to "create a function in R that plots vowels in different colors".

Speech science meets Hollywood 🎬

Filming is officially underway for our upcoming promotional video for the SHaPS department and MSc Language Sciences programme!

Very many congratulations, DOCTOR Nagamine!! 🥳

Out now in Journal of Phonetics! In comparing nasal coarticulation across three languages, our results suggest that vowel nasalization has become a *source* of coarticulation in English, adding further evidence of an ongoing sound change in the language. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Out now in JASA! Using EMA to track head motion, we find evidence that co-speech head nod gestures are used in French as a way of enhancing and magnifying different levels of prosodic prominence. pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art...

Sneak peek! Cross-linguistic lip rounding across 86 speakers and three languages shows evidence for a trading relation between protrusion and area, regardless of the phonological status of vowel rounding. So much time, effort, and computation for the six numbers in this graph!

Have you ever been interested in using the "earbuds method" to measure acoustic nasalance, but were perhaps unsure of how the accuracy compares to a traditional nasometer? Then check out my new #OpenAccess article out now in JASA! pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art...

Aaaaannnd... accepted! 🥳 Looks like needing to shave my beard beard paid off in the end. Coming soon to an Open Access JASA publication near you.

Out now in Journal of Phonetics! We introduce our new and improved open source 3D-printable Adjustable Laboratory Probe Holder for UltraSound (ALPHUS), a highly modular and adaptable solution for different research/clinical needs in ultrasound tongue imaging: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I shaved my beard this morning in order to collect some data this afternoon (which requires adhesive tape on my face)... only to forget the crucial equipment at home when I left for my train. So how's your day starting off?

Don't forget our special SSF panel today at 16:00 GMT. If you're a speech/language scientist and you've ever been curious about switching to/from industry, you won't want to miss it!

Are you a phonetician / speech scientist interested in transitioning to/from industry? Then come join our next Speech Science Forum this Thursday, where we have a panel of five speakers who will share their experiences and the lessons they have learned: www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/events/...

Any colleagues who have made the switch from academia to industry: would you be interested in being part of a panel discussion for students in our MSc Language Sciences programme at UCL? Please reply if you would like to help!

*Starts working on article at 9:00* *Looks at clock and sees it's now 14:00* "Hmmm, I should probably eat something today."

Clearing up this point *early* in my new methods article, so that there's no doubt: "The aim of this research is not to denigrate or undermine the earbuds method but, rather, to provide a context by which to understand more accurately the measurements that arise from its usage."

This year's PALS0047 intro R programming students have been the absolute best! This nearly made me cry like a baby 😭

PALS0047 students are officially code-debugging masters, now that they have the most important, crucial tool in their debugging toolbox... rubber duckies! 🦆🦆🦆

I'm currently writing up the results for my new paper, "Ground-truth validation of the 'earbuds method' for measuring acoustic nasalance", and the conclusion is essentially that I can potentially recommend the method... but only after proper consideration of 8 (!!!) caveats.

New in Frontiers in Communication: using neural US and UK English TTS voices as perception stimuli, our findings suggest that vowel nasality helps listeners correctly identify coda nasality, but at the same time it hinders identification of vowel quality: www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Advice for the "earbuds method" of measuring nasalance: bandpass filter your signal to approximately the 400-700Hz range before calculating nasalance, regardless of the earbud type used. Incidentally, this is very close to the 300-750Hz filter range already recommended for nasometers!

I actually get to work on not just *one* but *two* new papers today 😍

install.packages("brms") *hits enter* *dies from old age*

Possibly the strangest image I've yet to include in a paper: me facing off against myself... Spy vs. Spy... Jekyll vs. Hyde... flat vs. silicone earbuds.

Friends don't let friends consider only global correlations as the basis of measurement validation.

Instead of actually working on writing my new paper on validating the "earbuds method" for measuring acoustic nasalance, I'm just making more pretty figures. As is tradition.

AI interpretability can help us find patterns in unknown data. AI interpretability can help us run experiments that will eventually tell us how we're similar and different from machines. My talk on biological and artificial neural intelligence: animals, humans, machines. youtu.be/JjvxUT9K-pA

Look, ma! My nasal cavity made it into a book!

These have got to be some of the *prettiest* figures I've ever made for a paper 😍

Lancaster is hiring (again!) multiple open-contract positions at all levels under the (broadly construed) Security and Protection Science initiative. This includes any relevant work in linguistics, law, etc., so do check us out:

I think that "Hanning" (i.e. window/function/kernel) is one of my favorite examples of morphological generalization, because it shows that even the exacting fields of engineering aren't immune to it.

After their first peer code review session today, PALS0047 students have set up their own WhatsApp group for arranging meetups to discuss and improve their programming skills. I couldn't be more proud!

The Rubber Ducky Army is ready and waiting in my office to help current and future PALS0047 students debug their code

My morning adventures in peer review, a.k.a. The Duality of Man: one article rejected, one article accepted as-is.

I just found a paper I wrote for a seminar in grad school, with intro sections titled, "F1 as a cue to nasalization" and "Nasalization as a cue to change in vowel height". Little did I know at the time that this problem would be so interesting that I'd still be working on it 15 years later.

In a conversation with a friend about whether I actually employ a rubber ducky in my own debugging process: "My method of debugging usually involves drinking more coffee, swearing, and sweating profusely."

Did I just purchase 300 rubber duckies to give out to all my programming students *over the next decade*, during the final week of term when we discuss debugging methods? Of course I did, don't be silly.

First day working with a new keyboard and I'm very excited. I'm a simple man, what can I say?

PSA: materials for "Programming in R: Applications for Speech Data Processing" are free! Use numbers in the range [01-10] for respective weeks: Lecture: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/pals... Tutorial: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/pals... Answers (except weeks 5 & 8): www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/pals...

It's nice to be able to use my principal components variable importance reconstruction (PC-VIR) method, from a previous paper with @egurtzegi.bsky.social, in my current research... even if the methods paper itself was rejected for publication 😬

Despite me asking very nicely, my data problem did not sort itself out while I was at the gym this afternoon. Rude.

Spinning AC/DC and rocking along while programming. Still can't believe this is my job 🤘

Excellent! Our paper on using an XGBoost implementation of the NAF method for measuring patterns of vowel nasalization in Arabana is now the second most popular article in @LabPhon. Apparently lots of readers are interested in acoustic methodology 👍 www.journal-labphon.org/article/id/9...

After some baseline correction and data pruning, I've now honed on what look to be my final results for this mini-study on validating the earbuds method of measuring nasality against a ground truth of acoustic nasalance. The method *may* work, but with some caveats. 1/8

The results are in for a more careful, controlled test of the earbuds method for measuring nasality against an established ground truth (a Glottal Enterprises nasometer)... And the outcome is... the same as before! Don't use them! (at least not as recommended in the original article) 1/4

SCIENCE® (round 2)

An excellent level of interest for my "Programming in R: Applications for Speech Data Processing" module: 20 are currently registered (only 6 were officially registered last year!), including all 11 students on our new Technology of Language and Speech route of the MSc Language Sciences programme.

Heading to the train station for my first day of teaching as an Associate Professor 🥳