Abstract: A retainer employs a flexible arm with an internal rib. In another aspect of the present invention, a retainer has at least one generally triangularly shaped projection laterally extending from an arm. A further aspect of the present invention retainer provides a laterally enlarged member, a trim panel-retaining head and stem, a central post, one or more flexible wings flexibly spanning between a tip of the post and the laterally enlarged member, and an internal rib and/or at least a pair of generally angular extensions flexibly extending from each arm.

Abstract: A speech verification process involves comparison of enrollment and test speech data and an improved method of comparing the data is disclosed, wherein segmented frames of speech are analyzed jointly, rather than independently. The enrollment and test speech are both subjected to a feature extraction process to derive fixed-length feature vectors, and the feature vectors are compared, using a linear discriminant analysis and having no dependence upon the order of the words spoken or the speaking rate. The discriminant analysis is made possible, despite a relatively high dimensionality of the feature vectors, by a mathematical procedure provided for finding an eigenvector to simultaneously diagonalize the between-speaker and between-channel covariances of the enrollment and test data.

Abstract: A fastener can be of the general type inserted into a hole in a panel. Such a fastener may include at least two arcuate hinge segments and a corresponding number of wings extending divergently away from the hinge segments, each hinge segment having two arcuate surfaces spaced apart from the center post. Such a fastener may also include wing-arms that extend convergently towards a region beyond the distal end of the center post and that collectively take on a beak configuration, e.g., ends of the wing-arms taking on a ball-and-socket conformation.

Abstract: A method for performing noise suppression and channel equalization of a noisy voice signal comprising the steps of sampling the noisy voice signal at a predetermined sampling rate fs; segmenting the sampled voice signal into a plurality of frames having a predetermined number of samples per frame, over a predetermined temporal window; generating an N-point spectral sample representation of each of the sample signal frames; determining the magnitude of each of the N-point spectral samples and generating a histogram of the energy associated with each of the N-point spectral samples at a particular frequency; detecting a peak amplitude of the histogram which corresponds to a noise threshold Nf associated with the particular frequency; determining a channel frequency response Cf associated with the particular frequency by determining a geometric mean over all the spectral samples having magnitude exceeding the noise threshold Nf; subtracting from each of the magnitudes of the N point spectral samples the noise th

Abstract: A system and a method is disclosed for verifying a voice of a user conducting a telephone transaction. The system and method includes a mechanism for prompting the user to speak in a limited vocabulary. A feature extractor converts the limited vocabulary into a plurality of speech frames. A pre-processor is coupled to the feature extractor for processing the plurality of speech frames to produce a plurality of processed frames. The processing includes frame selection, which eliminates each of the plurality of speech frames having an absence of words. A Viterbi decoder is also coupled to said feature extractor for assigning a frame label to each of the plurality of speech frames to produce a plurality of frame labels. The processed frames and frame labels are then combined to produce a voice model, which includes each of the plurality of frame labels that correspond to the number of plurality of processed frames.