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By the time he'd turned twenty, Ray Dwyer looked like a movie gangster's bodyguard, and was either feared or adored by everyone who knew him. He drove trucks on a [...]

There is an increasing interest in developing direct calculation methods and procedures for determining extreme wave loads on ship girders (e.g. ISSC, 2000 [1]). Ships experiencing bottom and bow flare slamming have heightened the need for computational tools suitable to accurately predict motion and structural responses. The associated nonlinear impact problem is complicated by the complex free surface and body boundary conditions. This paper examines a 'blended' linear-nonlinear method by which extreme loads due to bottom impact and flare slamming can be determined. Using a high-speed container ship as an example, comparisons of motions, shear and bending moments, and pressures are made in head and oblique bow-quartering waves. The time-domain computer program used in the comparison is based upon partially nonlinear models. The program, NSHIPMO, is an blended strip theory method using 'impact' stations over the forward part of the ship and partially nonlinear stations over the rest. Body exact hydrostatics and Froude-Krylov excitation are used over the entire hull. The impact theory of Troesch and Kang [2] is employed to estimate the sectional nonlinear impact forces acting upon the specified nonlinear sections, while the linear theory of Salvesen et al. (STF) [3] is used to blend the remainder of the hydrodynamic forces, that is the radiation and diffraction components. Results from the simulation are presented with discussions of accuracy and time of computation. Several issues associated with the blended nonlinear time-domain simulation are presented, including modeling issues related to directional yaw-sway control and a vertical plane dynamic instability in long waves that has not previously been recognized. [DOI: 10.1115/1.1578499]

The connections between poetic syllables have finally broken down, We pushed on them so long our arms were hurting. --From Erin Mouth's 'Ordinary Cranium' included in the Winter 1991 edition [...]

Helen Dzurko--raised in the Church and, especially in these later years, still a follower, or, as Father Stankowicz says, a believer--knows she should believe in what is happening on Abe [...]

There is no empirical basis for determining goals for stuttering treatment. One approach that might resolve this issue is to systematically investigate persons who claim to have recovered from stuttering without the assistance of treatment. However, critical methodological and conceptual issues must be overcome first in order to assure these persons had a valid stuttering problem and that their recovery was independent of treatment. This study examined a validation procedure for solving these issues based on the combination of two methods: independent verification and self-reports. Forty-two subjects participated: 14 adults who recovered from stuttering without assistance, 14 adults with persistent stuttering, and 14 adults who were normally fluent speakers. For the independent verification, a Speech Behavior Checklist was administered to 42 individuals familiar with the recovered subjects' past speech and the other subjects' current speech. Results indicated that persons who knew the recovered subjects when they used to stutter recalled speech behaviors consistent with subjects who still stuttered, but not the same as speech behaviors consistent with subjects who never stuttered. These findings were supported by an objective analysis of the recovered subjects' descriptions of their past stuttering. Furthermore, a content analysis of subjects' self-reports indicated that recovery was independent of treatment. KEY WORDS: spontaneous recovery, self-report, self-directed, cross-validation, treatment outcome

The efficacy of stuttering treatment has been a contentious issue in recent years. Two issues of primary concern include the treated stutterer's abnormal speech quality and the problem of continually self-monitoring fluency skills. One approach to addressing these issues is to obtain stutterers' self-ratings of speech quality and levels of speech monitoring. However, the reliability and validity of such self-ratings need to be assessed before they are suitable for use in stuttering treatment. The present study investigated one method of estimating the reliability and validity of stutterers' self-ratings of how natural their speech sounds (speech naturalness), and how natural they feel about the amount of attention they are paying to the way they are speaking (feel naturalness). Twelve adult stutterers were instructed to self-rate the speech and feel naturalness of their speech under a variety of rhythmic stimulation conditions across repeated rating occasions. With some qualifications, the results showed that stutterers were relatively consistent and valid self-raters of speech quality and levels of speech monitoring.

The study reported in this paper was designed to replicate and extend the results of an earlier study (Ingham, Cordes, & Gow, 1993) that investigated time-interval judgments of stuttering. Results confirmed earlier findings that interjudge agreement is higher for these interval-recording tasks than has been previously reported for event-based analyses of stuttering judgments or for time-interval analyses of event judgments. Results also confirmed an earlier finding that judges with intrajudge agreement levels of 90% or better show higher interjudge agreement than judges with lower intrajudge agreement scores. This study failed to find differences between audiovisual and audio-only judgment conditions; between relatively experienced and relatively inexperienced student judges; and, most importantly, between the judgments made, and the agreement levels achieved, by judges from two different clinical research settings. The implications of these findings for attempts to develop a reliable measurement method for stuttering are discussed.

@ the Table of the Great: Hospitable Editing and the Internet Shakespeare Editions Project Patrick Finn St. Mary's College Patrickfinn@shaw.ca Finn, Patrick. '@ the Table of the Great: Hospitable Editing [...]

This study investigated the modification of speech naturalness during stuttering treatment. It systematically replicated an earlier study (Ingham & Onslow, 1985) that demonstrated that unnatural-sounding stutter-free speech could be shaped into more natural-sounding stutter-free speech by using regular feedback of speech-naturalness ratings during speaking tasks. In the present study, the same procedure was used with three persons who stutter--2 adolescent girls and 1 adult man--during rhythmic stimulation conditions. The two adolescent participants spoke only English, but Spanish was the first and English the second language (ESL) of the adult participant. For the 2 adolescents, it was demonstrated that their unnatural-sounding rhythmic speech could be shaped to levels found among normally fluent speakers without losing the fluency-inducing benefits of rhythmic speech. The findings indicate that speech-naturalness feedback may be a powerful procedure for overcoming a problematic aspect of rhythmic speech treatments of stuttering. However, it was not possible to deliver reliable speech-naturalness feedback to the adult ESL speaker, who also displayed a strong dialect. The study highlights the need to find strategies to improve interjudge agreement when using speech-naturalness ratings with speakers who display a strong dialect. KEY WORDS: stuttering, rhythmic stimulation, speech naturalness, treatment, The search for ways to improve speech quality during or after stuttering treatment continues to be an important clinical issue. The issue is usually related to treatments that use the [...]

Current evidence suggests that young children who recover from stuttering are essentially stutter-free. However, there is no evidence to indicate if their speech is perceptually indistinguishable from normally fluent peers or whether they retain perceptually unusual speech. One important example of recovery from stuttering is children who have recovered without receiving formal treatment. An investigation was conducted to determine if the speech of these children is perceptually different from the speech of children who have never stuttered. Speakers consisted of 10 preschool and early school-age children documented as recovered from stuttering without benefit of formal treatment. In a series of studies they were compared with 10 children who had never stuttered. Three groups of judges - sophisticated, unsophisticated, and experienced - were separately asked, using videotaped speech samples of the children, to decide which samples were from children who used to stutter. Results revealed that the children who recovered from stuttering were perceptually indistinguishable from the normal controls. The same result was obtained regardless of whether the samples were presented in paired-stimulus or single-stimulus mode. Two of the groups of judges were also instructed to rate the speech naturalness of the speech samples. The speakers were not distinguished on this measure either. Methodological issues and the implications of the findings are discussed. KEY WORDS: spontaneous recovery, speech naturalness, speech fluency

The purpose of this study was to determine if the speech of adults who self-judged that they were recovered from stuttering without the assistance of treatment is perceptually different from that of adults who never stuttered. Fifteen adult speakers verified as persons who had recovered from a valid stuttering problem without the assistance of treatment were compared with 15 adult speakers verified as persons with normally fluent speech. Judges viewed videotaped speech samples of all speakers and were instructed to decide whether a speaker used to stutter or never stuttered. A separate group of judges rated the same samples for speech naturalness. Various speech behavior measures were also obtained. Results revealed that the speech of speakers who used to stutter was perceptually different from that of speakers who never stuttered. This difference was correlated with unnatural sounding speech and a high frequency of part-word repetitions. KEY WORDS: spontaneous recovery, treatment outcome, speech naturalness, self-report, speech fluency

This study investigated the effect of speech dialect on listeners' speech naturalness ratings by systematically replicating Martin, Haroldson, and Triden's (1984) study using three groups of speaker samples. Two groups consisted of speakers with General American dialect-one with persons who stutter and the other with persons who do not stutter. The third group also consisted of speakers who do not stutter but who spoke non-General American dialect. The results showed that speech naturalness ratings distinguished among the three speaker groups. The ' variables that appeared to influence speech naturalness ratings were type of dialect, speech fluency, and speaking rate, though they differed across speaker groups. The findings also suggested that strength of speech dialect may be a scaleable dimension that judges can rate with acceptable levels of reliability. Dialect may also be an important factor that needs to be incorporated or controlled within systems designed to train speech naturalness ratings. It may also be an important factor in determining the extent to which stuttering treatment produces natural sounding speech. KEY WORDS: speech naturalness, stuttering, reliability, multicultural, assessment