Abstracts as MP3 Files

In keeping with its general policy of going beyond the ordinary, UMAP 2009 is introducing a new way to familiarize yourself with the papers that will be presented at the conference: With the help of high-quality speech synthesis, the abstracts that you will find on the page Detailed Program have been made into MP3 files that you can listen to away from the computer – for example, while walking or jogging outside or while cleaning up around the house.

Although it may take some getting used to, processing the abstracts of scientific papers in this way makes more sense in some respects than staring at them on the computer screen: It doesn’t take up any of your working time, and in fact you can afford to think as deeply as you like about the content of each paper, using pauses in the playback. (When is the last time you carefully read through all of the abstracts for a conference?)

Files to Download

The MP3 files are offered in two variants:

1. Without pauses: The silences between sentences are just 0.7 seconds long. This version is good if you’d like to listen to the abstracts quickly without taking time to think about them; or if you can hold your thumb on the “Pause” button of your MP3 player to pause the playback when necessary. (It would in general be hard to understand an abstract completely without any pauses, because of the high information density.)
   • Example MP3 File Without Pauses
   • ZIP Archive with 56 MP3 files Without Pauses
   • Total duration: 1 hour, 12 minutes
   • Total size of MP3 files: 12.6 MB
   • Artist: “Abs-No-Pauses”; Album: “UMAP09”
2. With pauses: Silences lasting from 3 to 14 seconds are included after every sentence (the pause length depending on the length of the sentence), so that you can let each sentence sink in without having to touch your MP3 player.
   • Example MP3 File With Pauses
   • ZIP Archive with 56 MP3 files With Pauses (11.8 MB)
   • Total duration: 2 hours, 17 minutes
   • Total size of MP3 files: 23.8 MB
   • Artist: “Abs-With-Pauses”; Album: “UMAP09-Pauses”

Warning About Driving

Listening to these abstracts while driving is not recommended, even if you can keep your hands free for driving: Because of their high information density, scientific abstracts tend to demand more concentration than, say, listening to the news or talking on the phone.

Note About Authors’ Names

The speech synthesis program sometimes mispronounces names that are not common in the English-speaking world. We apologize in advance to authors whose names are mispronounced, and we hope they will agree that it is still worthwhile to have their abstracts distributed in this way.

Comments and Requests

There has not been time yet for systematic user testing of this way of presenting abstracts, so your feedback is welcome concerning things like:

• Length of pauses
• Speed of reading
• Attributes of the MP3 files
• The whole idea of listening to scientific abstracts

Suggestions may lead to the generation of new versions of the MP3 files.

Please add any comments, questions, or suggestions using the “Add new comment” or “Reply” links below. Your comment will be listed as coming from “Anonymous”, but if you like you can put your name in the comment itself. The comment will appear on the page within about a day, after it has been determined not to be spam.