scholarly journals An Acoustical Study of the Fricative /s/ in the Speech of Palestinian-speaking Broca's Asphasics – Preliminary Findings

2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisham Adam

This study was conducted with four Palestinian-speaking Broca's aphasics and four normal speakers to examine the production of the fricative /s/ and to analyze the difference in acoustic patterns between the two groups. The acoustic analysis revealed that the Broca's aphasics were able to maintain the phonetic distinction between voiced and voiceless fricatives and did not exhibit voicing or devoicing errors. This result is inconsistent with findings from other languages. The spectral peak of the alveolar /s/ was lower for the aphasic subjects than for the control speakers. The Broca's aphasics displayed a longer duration for /s/ than the control subjects did. The /s/ spectra for the Broca's aphasics were "flatter" than the /s/ spectra for the control speakers and were characterized by a relatively low-frequency energy peak. Substitution errors predominated. In most cases, a one-distinctive-feature error occurred that primarily involved the place of articulation. Generally, the findings of the study suggest that the errors exhibited by Broca's aphasics reflect articulatory movements and articulatory implementation deficits rather than a selection of inappropriate speech segments.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-41
Author(s):  
VLADIMIR NIKONOV ◽  
◽  
ANTON ZOBOV ◽  

The construction and selection of a suitable bijective function, that is, substitution, is now becoming an important applied task, particularly for building block encryption systems. Many articles have suggested using different approaches to determining the quality of substitution, but most of them are highly computationally complex. The solution of this problem will significantly expand the range of methods for constructing and analyzing scheme in information protection systems. The purpose of research is to find easily measurable characteristics of substitutions, allowing to evaluate their quality, and also measures of the proximity of a particular substitutions to a random one, or its distance from it. For this purpose, several characteristics were proposed in this work: difference and polynomial, and their mathematical expectation was found, as well as variance for the difference characteristic. This allows us to make a conclusion about its quality by comparing the result of calculating the characteristic for a particular substitution with the calculated mathematical expectation. From a computational point of view, the thesises of the article are of exceptional interest due to the simplicity of the algorithm for quantifying the quality of bijective function substitutions. By its nature, the operation of calculating the difference characteristic carries out a simple summation of integer terms in a fixed and small range. Such an operation, both in the modern and in the prospective element base, is embedded in the logic of a wide range of functional elements, especially when implementing computational actions in the optical range, or on other carriers related to the field of nanotechnology.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (6) ◽  
pp. 483-492
Author(s):  
Seonghyeon Baek ◽  
Iljae Lee

The effects of leakage and blockage on the acoustic performance of particle filters have been examined by using one-dimensional acoustic analysis and experimental methods. First, the transfer matrix of a filter system connected to inlet and outlet pipes with conical sections is measured using a two-load method. Then, the transfer matrix of a particle filter only is extracted from the experiments by applying inverse matrices of the conical sections. In the analytical approaches, the one-dimensional acoustic model for the leakage between the filter and the housing is developed. The predicted transmission loss shows a good agreement with the experimental results. Compared to the baseline, the leakage between the filter and housing increases transmission loss at a certain frequency and its harmonics. In addition, the transmission loss for the system with a partially blocked filter is measured. The blockage of the filter also increases the transmission loss at higher frequencies. For the simplicity of experiments to identify the leakage and blockage, the reflection coefficients at the inlet of the filter system have been measured using two different downstream conditions: open pipe and highly absorptive terminations. The experiments show that with highly absorptive terminations, it is easier to see the difference between the baseline and the defects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
T M Mikkola ◽  
H Kautiainen ◽  
M Mänty ◽  
M B von Bonsdorff ◽  
T Kröger ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose Mortality appears to be lower in family caregivers than in the general population. However, there is lack of knowledge whether the difference in mortality between family caregivers and the general population is dependent on age. The purpose of this study was to analyze all-cause mortality in relation to age in family caregivers and to study their cause-specific mortality using data from multiple Finnish national registers. Methods The data included all individuals, who received family caregiver's allowance in Finland in 2012 (n = 42 256, mean age 67 years, 71% women) and a control population matched for age, sex, and municipality of residence (n = 83 618). Information on dates and causes of death between 2012 and 2017 were obtained from the Finnish Causes of Death Register. Flexible parametric survival modeling and competing risk regression adjusted for socioeconomic status were used. Results The total follow-up time was 717 877 person-years. Family caregivers had lower all-cause mortality than the controls over the follow-up (8.1% vs. 11.6%) both among women (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.61-0.68) and men (HR: 0.73, 95% CI: 0.70-0.77). Younger adult caregivers had equal or only slightly lower mortality than their controls, but after age 60, the difference increased markedly resulting in over 10% lower mortality in favor of the caregivers in the oldest age groups. Caregivers had lower mortality for all the causes of death studied, namely cardiovascular, cancer, neurological, external, respiratory, gastrointestinal and dementia than the controls. Of these, the lowest was the risk for dementia (subhazard ratio=0.29, 95%CI: 0.25-0.34). Conclusions Older family caregivers have lower mortality than the age-matched controls from the general population while younger caregivers have similar mortality to their peers. This age-dependent advantage in mortality is likely to reflect selection of healthier individuals into the family caregiver role. Key messages The difference in mortality between family caregivers and the age-matched general population varies considerably with age. Advantage in mortality observed in family caregiver studies is likely to reflect the selection of healthier individuals into the caregiver role, which underestimates the adverse effects of caregiving.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yağmur Demircan Yalçın ◽  
Taylan Berkin Töral ◽  
Sertan Sukas ◽  
Ender Yıldırım ◽  
Özge Zorlu ◽  
...  

AbstractWe report the development of a lab-on-a-chip system, that facilitates coupled dielectrophoretic detection (DEP-D) and impedimetric counting (IM-C), for investigating drug resistance in K562 and CCRF-CEM leukemia cells without (immuno) labeling. Two IM-C units were placed upstream and downstream of the DEP-D unit for enumeration, respectively, before and after the cells were treated in DEP-D unit, where the difference in cell count gave the total number of trapped cells based on their DEP characteristics. Conductivity of the running buffer was matched the conductivity of cytoplasm of wild type K562 and CCRF-CEM cells. Results showed that DEP responses of drug resistant and wild type K562 cells were statistically discriminative (at p = 0.05 level) at 200 mS/m buffer conductivity and at 8.6 MHz working frequency of DEP-D unit. For CCRF-CEM cells, conductivity and frequency values were 160 mS/m and 6.2 MHz, respectively. Our approach enabled discrimination of resistant cells in a group by setting up a threshold provided by the conductivity of running buffer. Subsequent selection of drug resistant cells can be applied to investigate variations in gene expressions and occurrence of mutations related to drug resistance.


2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 1114-1119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Liu ◽  
Michael D. Miller ◽  
Robert M. Danovich ◽  
Nathan Vandergrift ◽  
Fangping Cai ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTRaltegravir is highly efficacious in the treatment of HIV-1 infection. The prevalence and impact on virologic outcome of low-frequency resistant mutations among HIV-1-infected patients not previously treated with raltegravir have not been fully established. Samples from HIV treatment-experienced patients entering a clinical trial of raltegravir treatment were analyzed using a parallel allele-specific sequencing (PASS) assay that assessed six primary and six secondary integrase mutations. Patients who achieved and sustained virologic suppression (success patients,n= 36) and those who experienced virologic rebound (failure patients,n= 35) were compared. Patients who experienced treatment failure had twice as many raltegravir-associated resistance mutations prior to initiating treatment as those who achieved sustained virologic success, but the difference was not statistically significant. The frequency of nearly all detected resistance mutations was less than 1% of viral population, and the frequencies of mutations between the success and failure groups were similar. Expansion of pre-existing mutations (one primary and five secondary) was observed in 16 treatment failure patients in whom minority resistant mutations were detected at baseline, suggesting that they might play a role in the development of drug resistance. Two or more mutations were found in 13 patients (18.3%), but multiple mutations were not present in any single viral genome by linkage analysis. Our study demonstrates that low-frequency primary RAL-resistant mutations were uncommon, while minority secondary RAL-resistant mutations were more frequently detected in patients naïve to raltegravir. Additional studies in larger populations are warranted to fully understand the clinical implications of these mutations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 2065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonguk Kim ◽  
Hafeezur Rehman ◽  
Wahid Ali ◽  
Abdul Muntaqim Naji ◽  
Hankyu Yoo

In extensively used empirical rock-mass classification systems, the rock-mass rating (RMR) and tunneling quality index (Q) system, rock-mass quality, and tunnel span are used for the selection of rock bolt length and spacing and shotcrete thickness. In both systems, the rock bolt spacing and shotcrete thickness selection are based on the same principle, which is used for the back-calculation of the rock-mass quality. For back-calculation, there is no criterion for the selection of rock-bolt-spacing-based rock-mass quality weightage and shotcrete thickness along with tunnel-span-based rock-mass quality weightage. To determine this weightage effect during the back-calculation, five weightage cases are selected, explained through example, and applied using published data. In the RMR system, the weightage effect is expressed in terms of the difference between the calculated and back-calculated rock-mass quality in the two versions of RMR. In the Q system, the weightage effect is presented in plots of stress reduction factor versus relative block size. The results show that the weightage effect during back-calculation not only depends on the difference in rock-bolt-spacing-based rock-mass quality and shotcrete along with tunnel-span-based rock-mass quality, but also on their corresponding values.


2001 ◽  
Vol 47 (156) ◽  
pp. 37-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bintanja ◽  
Carleen H. Reijmer

AbstractThis paper addresses the causes of the prevailing meteorological conditions observed over an Antarctic blue-ice area and their effect on the surface mass balance. Over blue-ice areas, net accumulation is zero and ablation occurs mainly through sublimation. Sublimation rates are much higher than over adjacent snowfields. The meteorological conditions favourable for high sublimation rates (warm, dry and gusty) are due to the specific orographic setting of this blue-ice area, with usually a steep upwind mountainous slope causing strong adiabatic heating. Diabatic warming due to radiation, and entrainment of warm air from aloft into the boundary layer augment the warming. The prevailing warm, dry conditions explain roughly 50% of the difference in sublimation, and the different characteristics of blue ice (mainly its lower albedo) the other 50%. Most of the annual sublimation (∼70%) takes place during the short summer (mainly in daytime), with winter ablation being restricted to occasional warm, dry föhn-like events. The additional moisture is effectively removed by entrainment and horizontal advection, which are maximum over the blue-ice area. Low-frequency turbulent motions induced by the upwind mountains enhance the vertical turbulent transports. Strong gusts and high peak wind speeds over blue-ice areas cause high potential snowdrift transports, which can easily remove the total precipitation, thereby maintaining zero accumulation.


1994 ◽  
Vol 366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fouad M. Aliev

ABSTRACTWe performed dielectric spectroscopy measurements to study dynamics of collective modes of ferroelectric (FLC) and molecular motion of nematic (NLC) liquid crystals with polar molecules confined in silica macroporous and microporous glasses with average pore sizes of 1000 Å (volume fraction of pores 40%) and 100 Å (27%) respectively. For FLC the Goldstone and the soft modes are found in macropores. The rotational viscosity associated with the soft mode is about 10 times higher in pores than in the bulk. These modes are not detected in micropores although low frequency relaxation is present. The last one probably is not connected with the nature of liquid crystal but is associated with surface polarization effects typical for two component heterogeneous media. The difference between the dynamics of orientational motion of the polar molecules of NLC in confined geometries and in the bulk is qualitatively determined by the total energy Fs of the interaction between molecules and the surface of the pore wall, which is found Fs ≈ 102erg/cm2.


1991 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 1101-1114
Author(s):  
Jerry A. Carter ◽  
Noel Barstow ◽  
Paul W. Pomeroy ◽  
Eric P. Chael ◽  
Patrick J. Leahy

Abstract Evidence is presented supporting the view that high-frequency seismic noise decreases with increased depth. Noise amplitudes are higher near the free surface where surface-wave noise, cultural noise, and natural (wind-induced) noise predominate. Data were gathered at a hard-rock site in the northwestern Adirondack lowlands of northern New York. Between 15- and 40-Hz noise levels at this site are more than 10 dB less at 945-m depth than they are at the surface, and from 40 to 100 Hz the difference is more than 20 dB. In addition, time variability of the spectra is shown to be greater at the surface than at either 335- or 945-m depths. Part of the difference between the surface and subsurface noise variability may be related to wind-induced noise. Coherency measurements between orthogonal components of motion show high-frequency seismic noise is more highly organized at the surface than it is at depth. Coherency measurements between the same component of motion at different vertical offsets show a strong low-frequency coherence at least up to 945-m vertical offsets. As the vertical offset decreases, the frequency band of high coherence increases.


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