Stressed vowel duration and phonemic length contrast

As far as phonemic length contrast is concerned, we observe a high degree of durational overlap between phonemically long and short vowels in monosyllabic CVC words (which is enforced by a greater pitch excursion), whereas in polysyllables the differences seem to be perceptually non-salient (>40 ms, cf. Lehiste 1970). This suggests that the differences in vowel duration are not significant enough to underlie phonological length contrast

Is Metrical Foot a Phonetic Object?

The assumption behind this pilot study is that metrical feet are not ‘groups of syllables’ or ‘interstress intervals’ but rather ‘groups of vowels’ extracted from the phonetic material contained between two stresses. We analysed the duration, pitch, intensity and acoustic energy of all vowels in isolated pronunciations of 72 initially stressed items (mono-, di- and trisyllables). The results reveal that pre-fortis clipping of the stressed vowel and final lengthening are interrelated, which suggests that stressed and unstressed final vowels are able to ‘negotiate’ their durations. Such ‘communication’ between the stressed vowels and the final unstressed ones is possible only if a mediating constituent (the foot) is postulated. Most importantly, we found no significant differences (p < .05) between the total acoustic energy and the total vowel duration in words having a different number of syllables, which supports the assumption of foot-level isochrony in English. It was also observed that the significant increase in vowel duration in stressed CVC monosyllables co-occurs with a significantly greater pitch slope, which we interpret to be a tonally driven implementation of minimal foot binarity requirement

Narrow or broad? : questioning the scope of public reason

This paper considers a fundamental issue set against the backcloth of John Rawls's political theory, namely the issue of the proper scope of public reason. The concept of the scope of public reason refers to situations when publicly accessible reasons have moral priority over other normative considerations. The case is worth considering because, although making several remarks, Rawls's position on the problem is ambiguous. In the paper, the author reconstructs the accurate scope by invoking two criteria: person oriented and issue oriented. The philosophical discussion on the subject is dominated by two interpretations of the breadth of public reason; however, the author believes we may indicate four plausible answers to the stated question

Support For Distributed Programming In Extreme Style

The basic limitation emerging from practising eXtreme Programming methodology is theconstraint of close physical proximity between the members of the collaborating team including customer. This became the main idea behind research on XP supporting environmentfor geographically distributed teams. This work presents basic assumptions, elaborated architecture and selected implementation issues for the system of this type. Deliberations aresupplied with the initial results of the verification of its usability based on the users tests

Topography of thin films containing Ni-Ga intermetallic compounds formed on GaN(0001)

Studies, carried out in situ by scanning tunneling microscope (STM), on the topography of thin films containing Ni-Ga intermetallic compounds are presented in this report. It is shown that conditions of the film preparation influence size and shape of 3-D formations constituted of the compounds. The films are formed in two ways. The first one in which pre-deposited at room temperature Ni film is annealed at 650 ºC, and the second one where Ni is evaporated directly onto the substrate kept at 650 ºC. Films obtained by using the second procedure should be more suitable for catalytic applications. Grains of the compounds formed in these films do not show tendency for coalescence and are more strongly dispersed in contrary to the grains formed in the films obtained by using first procedure

Current based Normalized Triple Covariance as a bearings diagnostic feature in induction motor

Diagnosis of induction motors, conducted remotely by measuring and analyzing the supply current is attractive with the lack of access to the engine. So far there is no solution, based on analysis of current, the credibility of which allow use in industry. Statistics of IM bearing failures of induction motors indicate, that they constitute more than 40% of IM damage, therefore bearing diagnosis is so important. The article provides an overview of selected methods of diagnosis of induction motor bearings, based on measurement of the supply current. The problem here is the high disturbance components level of the motor current in relation to diagnostic components. The paper presents the new approach to signal analysis solutions, based on statistical methods, which have been adapted to be used by this diagnostic system. First experimental results with use of this method are also presented, they confirm the advantages of this method

Value choices in European COVID-19 vaccination schedules : how vaccination prioritization differs from other forms of priority setting

With the limited initial availability of COVID-19 vaccines in the first months of 2021, decision-makers had to determine the order in which different groups were prioritized. Our aim was to find out what normative approaches to the allocation of scarce preventive resources were embedded in the national COVID-19 vaccination schedules. We systematically reviewed and compared prioritization regulations in 27 members of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Israel. We differentiated between two types of priority categories: groups that have increased infection fatality rate (IFR) compared to the average for the general population and groups chosen because their members experience increased risk of being infected (ROI). Our findings show a clear trend: all researched schedules prioritized criteria referring to IFR (being over 65 years old and coexisting health conditions) over the ROI criteria (eg occupation and housing conditions). This is surprising since, in the context of treatment, it is common and justifiable to adopt different allocation principles (eg introducing a saving more life-year approach or prioritizing younger patients). We discuss how utilitarian, prioritarian, and egalitarian principles can be applied to interpret normative differences between the allocation of curative and preventive interventions

Copper-decorated CNTs as a possible electrode material in supercapacitors

Copper is probably one of the most important metal used in the broad range of electronic applications. It has been developed for many decades, and so it is very hard to make any further advances in its electrical and thermal performance by simply changing the manufacture to even more oxygen-free conditions. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) due to their excellent electrical, thermal and mechanical properties seem like an ideal component to produce Cu-CNT composites of superior electrochemical performance. In this report we present whether Cu-CNT contact has a beneficial influence for manufacturing of a new type of carbon-based supercapacitor with embedded copper particles. The prepared electrode material was examined in symmetric cell configuration. The specific capacity and cyclability of composite were compared to parent CNT and oxidized CNT