Abstract: A novel oligomerization process is provided and includes contacting a hydrocarbon feedstock comprising at least one olefin with an oligomerization catalyst comprising a support component, a metal, and a halogen in an oligomerization reaction zone under oligomerization reaction conditions.

Abstract: Deactivation of an isomerization catalyst is inhibited by charging a hydrocarbon feed having a concentration of an organic aluminum halide compound to an isomerization zone operating under isomerization conditions and containing an isomerization catalyst.

Abstract: A text-to-speech conversion system converts specified text strings into corresponding strings of consonant and vowel phonemes. A parameter generator converts the phonemes into formant parameters, and a formant synthesizer uses the formant parameters to generate a synthetic speech waveform. A library of vowel allophones are stored, each stored vowel allophone being represented by formant parameters for four formants. The vowel allophone library includes a context index for associating each said vowel allophone with one or more pairs of phonemes preceding and following the corresponding vowel phoneme in a phoneme string. When synthesizing speech, a vowel allophone generator uses the vowel allophone library to provide formant parameters representative of a specified vowel phoneme. The vowel allophone generator coacts with the context index to select the proper vowel allophone, as determined by the phonemes preceding and following the specified vowel phoneme.