A Weighted STOI Intelligibility Metric Based On Mutual Information

It is known that the information required for the intelligibility of a speech signal is distributed non-uniformly in time. In this paper we propose WSTOI, a modified version of STOI, a speech intelligibility metric. With WSTOI the contribution of each time-frequency cell is weighted by an estimate of its intelligibility content. This estimate is equal to the mutual information between two hypothetical signals at either end of a simplified model of human communication. Listening tests show that the modification improves the prediction accuracy of STOI at all performance levels on both long and short utterances. An improvement was observed across all tested noise types and suppression algorithms

Diurnal variation in harbour porpoise detection – potential implications for management

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Bimagnon studies in cuprates with Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering at the O K edge. II - The doping effect in La2-xSrxCuO4

We present RIXS data at O K edge from La2-xSrxCuO4 vs. doping between x=0.10 and x=0.22 with attention to the magnetic excitations in the Mid-Infrared region. The sampling done by RIXS is the same as in the undoped cuprates provided the excitation is at the first pre-peak induced by doping. Note that this excitation energy is about 1.5 eV lower than that needed to see bimagnons in the parent compound. This approach allows the study of the upper region of the bimagnon continuum around 450 meV within about one third of the Brilluoin Zone around \Gamma. The results show the presence of damped bimagnons and of higher even order spin excitations with almost constant spectral weight at all the dopings explored here. The implications on high Tc studies are briefly addressed

A Branching Time Model of CSP

I present a branching time model of CSP that is finer than all other models of CSP proposed thus far. It is obtained by taking a semantic equivalence from the linear time - branching time spectrum, namely divergence-preserving coupled similarity, and showing that it is a congruence for the operators of CSP. This equivalence belongs to the bisimulation family of semantic equivalences, in the sense that on transition systems without internal actions it coincides with strong bisimilarity. Nevertheless, enough of the equational laws of CSP remain to obtain a complete axiomatisation for closed, recursion-free terms.Comment: Dedicated to Bill Roscoe, on the occasion of his 60th birthda

Exchange Splitting and Charge Carrier Spin Polarization in EuO

High quality thin films of the ferromagnetic semiconductor EuO have been prepared and were studied using a new form of spin-resolved spectroscopy. We observed large changes in the electronic structure across the Curie and metal-insulator transition temperature. We found that these are caused by the exchange splitting of the conduction band in the ferromagnetic state, which is as large as 0.6 eV. We also present strong evidence that the bottom of the conduction band consists mainly of majority spins. This implies that doped charge carriers in EuO are practically fully spin polarized.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Foster Care in Missouri

In 2001, approximately 805,000 children in the United States were in foster care. The majority of children entering foster care have experienced prolonged and repeated abuse and neglect. Consequently, many have serious developmental, physical, and emotional problems and require numerous services to ameliorate their problems. Research indicates that the current foster care system does not adequately meet the needs of this population

Bimagnon studies in cuprates with Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering at the O K edge. I - An assessment on La2CuO4 and a comparison with the excitation at Cu L3 and Cu K edges

We assess the capabilities of magnetic Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) at the O $K$ edge in undoped cuprates by taking La_{2}CuO_{4} as a benchmark case, based on a series of RIXS measurements that we present here. By combining the experimental results with basic theory we point out the fingerprints of bimagnon in the O $K$ edge RIXS spectra. These are a dominant peak around 450 meV, the almost complete absence of dispersion both with $\pi$ and $\sigma$ polarization and the almost constant intensity vs. the transferred momentum with $\sigma$ polarization. This behavior is quite different from Cu $L_3$ edge RIXS giving a strongly dispersing bimagnon tending to zero at the center of the Brillouin zone. This is clearly shown by RIXS measurements at the Cu $L_3$ edge that we present. The Cu $L_3$ bimagnon spectra and those at Cu $K$ edge - both from the literature and from our data - however, have the same shape. These similarities and differences are understood in terms of different sampling of the bimagnon continuum. This panorama points out the unique possibilities offered by O $K$ RIXS in the study of magnetic excitations in cuprates near the center of the BZ

Sperm morphology, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) concentration and swimming velocity: unexpected relationships in a passerine bird.

The relationship between sperm energetics and sperm function is poorly known, but is central to our understanding of the evolution of sperm traits. The aim of this study was to examine how sperm morphology and ATP content affect sperm swimming velocity in the zebra finch Taeniopygia guttata We exploited the high inter-male variation in this species and created extra experimental power by increasing the number of individuals with very long or short sperm through artificial selection. We found a pronounced quadratic relationship between total sperm length and swimming velocity, with velocity increasing with length up to a point, but declining in the very longest sperm. We also found an unexpected negative association between midpiece length and ATP content: sperm with a short midpiece generally contained the highest concentration of ATP. Low intracellular ATP is therefore unlikely to explain reduced swimming velocity among the very longest sperm (which tend to have a shorter midpiece)

The relationship between MEG and fMRI

In recent years functional neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI, MEG, EEG and PET have provided researchers with a wealth of information on human brain function. However none of these modalities can measure directly either the neuro-electrical or neuro-chemical processes that mediate brain function. This means that metrics directly reflecting brain ‘activity’ must be inferred from other metrics (e.g. magnetic fields (MEG) or haemodynamics (fMRI)). To overcome this limitation, many studies seek to combine multiple complementary modalities and an excellent example of this is the combination of MEG (which has high temporal resolution) with fMRI (which has high spatial resolution). However, the full potential of multi-modal approaches can only be truly realised in cases where the relationship between metrics is known. In this paper, we explore the relationship between measurements made using fMRI and MEG. We describe the origins of the two signals as well as their relationship to electrophysiology. We review multiple studies that have attempted to characterise the spatial relationship between fMRI and MEG, and we also describe studies that exploit the rich information content of MEG to explore differing relationships between MEG and fMRI across neural oscillatory frequency bands. Monitoring the brain at “rest” has become of significant recent interest to the neuroimaging community and we review recent evidence comparing MEG and fMRI metrics of functional connectivity. A brief discussion of the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to probe the relationship between MEG/fMRI and neurochemistry is also given. Finally, we highlight future areas of interest and offer some recommendations for the parallel use of fMRI and MEG