Gertrude Stein called it the only really modern novel form that has come into existence, yet the mystery genre was a century old before it featured its first gay main character. Since then, lavender detective fiction has been one of the fastest growing segments of the genre, incorporating gay and lesbian cultural elements and offering crossover appeal, yet it is still marginalized and largely unknown to mainstream readers. also providing new, more accurate images of lesbians and gay men than generally found in mainstream literature and popular media. This survey of gay and lesbian detective...

"Mobile Speech and Advanced Natural Language Solutions" presents the discussion of the most recent advances in intelligent human-computer interaction, including fascinating new study findings on talk-in-interaction, which is the province of conversation analysis, a subfield in sociology/sociolinguistics, a new and emerging area in natural language understanding. Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation natural language technologies for practical speech processing applications that serve the consumer's need...

Speech and automata in the healthcare environment provides information for the integration of embodied agents into the healthcare delivery system.

Editors Amy Neustein and Judith A. Markowitz have recruited a talented group of contributors to introduce the next generation of natural language technologies to resolve some of the most vexing natural-language problems that compromise the performance of speech systems today. This fourteen-chapter anthology consists of contributions from industry scientists and from academicians working at major universities in North America and Europe. They include researchers who have played a central role in DARPA-funded programs and developers who craft real-world solutions for corporations. This...