498 research outputs found
RFID Technology in Intelligent Tracking Systems in Construction Waste Logistics Using Optimisation Techniques
Construction waste disposal is an urgent issue
for protecting our environment. This paper proposes a
waste management system and illustrates the work
process using plasterboard waste as an example, which
creates a hazardous gas when land filled with household
waste, and for which the recycling rate is less than 10%
in the UK. The proposed system integrates RFID
technology, Rule-Based Reasoning, Ant Colony
optimization and knowledge technology for auditing
and tracking plasterboard waste, guiding the operation
staff, arranging vehicles, schedule planning, and also
provides evidence to verify its disposal. It h relies on
RFID equipment for collecting logistical data and uses
digital imaging equipment to give further evidence; the
reasoning core in the third layer is responsible for
generating schedules and route plans and guidance, and
the last layer delivers the result to inform users. The
paper firstly introduces the current plasterboard
disposal situation and addresses the logistical problem
that is now the main barrier to a higher recycling rate,
followed by discussion of the proposed system in terms
of both system level structure and process structure.
And finally, an example scenario will be given to
illustrate the system’s utilization
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N400 evidence for musical facilitation of word boundary identification in second language exposure
Lexical acquisition requires the ability to identify word boundaries in a continuous auditory speech stream. This complex task is even more challenging when learning a new language in adulthood. Previous studies have shown that word boundary identification can be enhanced by pairing musical tones with native language phonemes. The objective of this dissertation study was to investigate whether musical tones also have this effect in a novel pseudo-language that uses non-native speech sounds. The N400, a brain event-related potential that has been linked with familiarity responses and detection of statistical regularities during exposure to pseudowords, provides an index of brain activation associated with semantico-lexical processing. In this study, language-like stimuli incorporating a French phoneme (a high, front, rounded vowel that is not part of the English phonetic inventory) were presented to typically developing English monolingual adults. Participants were presented to one of two types of exposure conditions for 7 minutes: monotone presentation of the concatenated language-like stimuli; or the same speech stream with a musical tone associated with each syllable. The exposure protocol was based on Schön, Boyer, Moreno et. al. (2008). Exposure was followed by a lexical decision task, requiring participants to distinguish “words” (heard during the exposure in a concatenated speech stream) from “part words” (end of one word and the beginning of another, crossing word boundaries). High-density EEG was recorded during the lexical decision and analyzed offline to determine N400 event-related responses to the stimuli in each condition. Although behavioral measures did not reveal any significant differences between groups or conditions, we found a N4 significantly different response to “partword” in the tone-exposed group, compared to the monotone. This difference only occurred in a frontal region with a right-hemisphere bias, and was not found to be significant over the left hemisphere. This difference suggests that participants in the tone group were supported in differentiating “words” from “partwords”, supporting the view that the inclusion of tonal information is beneficial in the early stages of L2 lexical learning
Writer Identification for chinese handwriting
Abstract Chinese handwriting identification has become a hot research in pattern recognition and image processing. In this paper, we present overview of relevant papers from the previous related studies until to the recent publications regarding to the Chinese Handwriting Identification. The strength, weaknesses, accurateness and comparison of well known approaches are reviewed, summarized and documented. This paper provides broad spectrum of pattern recognition technology in assisting writer identification tasks, which are at the forefront of forensic and biometrics based on identification application
Effects of early language experiences on the auditory brainstem
Recent studies have come to contradicting conclusions as to whether international adoptees, who experience a sudden change in language environment, lose or retain traces of their birth language (Pallier et al., 2003; Ventureyra, Pallier & Yoo, 2004; Pierce, Klein, Chen, Delcenserie, & Genesee, 2014). Though these studies have considered cortical differences between international adoptees and individuals from their birth counties, none has looked at subcortical differences in the brain between the two groups. The current project examined the frequency following response of adult Chinese international adoptees (N = 9) adopted as infants by American English-speaking families in the United States compared to native Mandarin (N = 21) and American English (N = 21) controls. Additional behavioral tasks were completed to explore different levels of linguistic features from phonetics to phonology to semantic knowledge to suprasegmental characteristics of speech. The FFR results indicate mostly good pitch tracking abilities amongst the adoptees that may support future tonal language learning in the adoptees. The behavioral data suggest that the adoptees have minimal access to all levels of linguistic levels of linguistic processing (i.e., phonetic, phonological, lexical, suprasegmental) after adoption and after early exposure to English. Overall, the data provide evidence for the neural commitment theory that humans’ language acquisition is attuned to their language environment early on in life
Rapid Generation of Pronunciation Dictionaries for new Domains and Languages
This dissertation presents innovative strategies and methods for the rapid generation of pronunciation dictionaries for new domains and languages. Depending on various conditions, solutions are proposed and developed. Starting from the straightforward scenario in which the target language is present in written form on the Internet and the mapping between speech and written language is close up to the difficult scenario in which no written form for the target language exists
Ultra-high-speed imaging of bubbles interacting with cells and tissue
Ultrasound contrast microbubbles are exploited in molecular imaging, where bubbles are directed to target cells and where their high-scattering cross section to ultrasound allows for the detection of pathologies at a molecular level. In therapeutic applications vibrating bubbles close to cells may alter the permeability of cell membranes, and these systems are therefore highly interesting for drug and gene delivery applications using ultrasound. In a more extreme regime bubbles are driven through shock waves to sonoporate or kill cells through intense stresses or jets following inertial bubble collapse. Here, we elucidate some of the underlying mechanisms using the 25-Mfps camera Brandaris128, resolving the bubble dynamics and its interactions with cells. We quantify acoustic microstreaming around oscillating bubbles close to rigid walls and evaluate the shear stresses on nonadherent cells. In a study on the fluid dynamical interaction of cavitation bubbles with adherent cells, we find that the nonspherical collapse of bubbles is responsible for cell detachment. We also visualized the dynamics of vibrating microbubbles in contact with endothelial cells followed by fluorescent imaging of the transport of propidium iodide, used as a membrane integrity probe, into these cells showing a direct correlation between cell deformation and cell membrane permeability
The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study
Carminati MN, Knoeferle P. The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study. Presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language and Processing (AMLaP), Riva del Garda, Italy
Contrasting L1 profiles through early orthographic and phonological processing of written English
Reading is fundamental to everyday life and can appear automatic and effortless, but this seemingly simple skill involves complex interactions between neural networks within ~200ms of seeing a word. While a wealth of work has investigated when and how orthography and phonology interact during visual word recognition (VWR), much is still unclear about such early native language (L1) processing and significantly more so when considering reading a second language (L2).
To investigate this, monolingual English participants (native, alphabetic L1), late bilingual Spanish-English participants (non-native, alphabetic L1), and late bilingual Chinese-English participants (non-native, non-alphabetic L1) read English words, pseudohomophones, and pseudowords in orthographic and phonological lexical decision tasks and real English words in an orthogonal rhyme recognition task. Behavioural performance was evaluated alongside event-related potential (ERP) analysis of occipital, occipitotemporal, and frontal-central activity in the ~100ms post-stimulus timeframe (i.e., P1-O, P1-OT, and N100-FC components, respectively) as well as the ~170ms timeframe at occipitotemporal sites (N170-OT) following documented associations with early orthographic and/or phonological processing. Crucially, interpretations of analyses took the markedly different language profiles into account to examine how L1 might influence L2 processing.
Patterns of behaviour and electrophysiology showed similarities but distinguished between groups based on language profiles. Analysis highlighted evidence for early orthography-phonology mapping at occipitotemporal sites, parallel orthographic/phonological processing at frontal-central sites at ~100ms, and a lack of VWR-related occipitotemporal N170 effects across groups. Findings, overall, suggest that language profiles underlie early orthographic and phonological processing and that the three groups have distinct neural strategies for VWR linked to orthographic and phonological aspects of their language profiles. Ultimately, the outcomes support the importance of L1 properties and L1-L2 relationships (i.e., language profiles) in bilingual VWR and the increased consideration of these factors in future development of monolingual and bilingual theories and models of VWR
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