1,990 research outputs found
How visual cues to speech rate influence speech perception
Spoken words are highly variable and therefore listeners interpret speech sounds relative to the surrounding acoustic context, such as the speech rate of a preceding sentence. For instance, a vowel midway between short /É/ and long /a:/ in Dutch is perceived as short /É/ in the context of preceding slow speech, but as long /a:/ if preceded by a fast context. Despite the well-established influence of visual articulatory cues on speech comprehension, it remains unclear whether visual cues to speech rate also influence subsequent spoken word recognition. In two âGo Fishâ-like experiments, participants were presented with audio-only (auditory speech + fixation cross), visual-only (mute videos of talking head), and audiovisual (speech + videos) context sentences, followed by ambiguous target words containing vowels midway between short /É/ and long /a:/. In Experiment 1, target words were always presented auditorily, without visual articulatory cues. Although the audio-only and audiovisual contexts induced a rate effect (i.e., more long /a:/ responses after fast contexts), the visual-only condition did not. When, in Experiment 2, target words were presented audiovisually, rate effects were observed in all three conditions, including visual-only. This suggests that visual cues to speech rate in a context sentence influence the perception of following visual target cues (e.g., duration of lip aperture), which at an audiovisual integration stage bias participantsâ target categorization responses. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how what we see influences what we hear
Unaddressed participantsâ gaze in multi-person interaction : Optimizing recipiency
One of the most intriguing aspects of human communication is its turn-taking system. It requires the ability to process on-going turns at talk while planning the next, and to launch this next turn without considerable overlap or delay. Recent research has investigated the eye movements of observers of dialogs to gain insight into how we process turns at talk. More specifically, this research has focused on the extent to which we are able to anticipate the end of current and the beginning of next turns. At the same time, there has been a call for shifting experimental paradigms exploring social-cognitive processes away from passive observation toward on-line processing. Here, we present research that responds to this call by situating state-of-the-art technology for tracking interlocutorsâ eye movements within spontaneous, face-to-face conversation. Each conversation involved three native speakers of English. The analysis focused on questionâresponse sequences involving just two of those participants, thus rendering the third momentarily unaddressed. Temporal analyses of the unaddressed participantsâ gaze shifts from current to next speaker revealed that unaddressed participants are able to anticipate next turns, and moreover, that they often shift their gaze toward the next speaker before the current turn ends. However, an analysis of the complex structure of turns at talk revealed that the planning of these gaze shifts virtually coincides with the points at which the turns first become recognizable as possibly complete. We argue that the timing of these eye movements is governed by an organizational principle whereby unaddressed participants shift their gaze at a point that appears interactionally most optimal: It provides unaddressed participants with access to much of the visual, bodily behavior that accompanies both the current speakerâs and the next speakerâs turn, and it allows them to display recipiency with regard to both speakersâ turns
Unaddressed participantsĂąâŹâą gaze in multi-person interaction: optimizing recipiency
One of the most intriguing aspects of human communication is its turn-taking system. It requires the ability to process on-going turns at talk while planning the next, and to launch this next turn without considerable overlap or delay. Recent research has investigated the eye movements of observers of dialogues to gain insight into how we process turns at talk. More specifically, this research has focused on the extent to which we are able to anticipate the end of current and the beginning of next turns. At the same time, there has been a call for shifting experimental paradigms exploring social-cognitive processes away from passive observation towards online processing. Here, we present research that responds to this call by situating state-of-the-art technology for tracking interlocutorsâ eye movements within spontaneous, face-to-face conversation. Each conversation involved three native speakers of English. The analysis focused on question-response sequences involving just two of those participants, thus rendering the third momentarily unaddressed. Temporal analyses of the unaddressed participantsâ gaze shifts from current to next speaker revealed that unaddressed participants are able to anticipate next turns, and moreover, that they often shift their gaze towards the next speaker before the current turn ends. However, an analysis of the complex structure of turns at talk revealed that the planning of these gaze shifts virtually coincides with the points at which the turns first become recog-nizable as possibly complete. We argue that the timing of these eye movements is governed by an organizational principle whereby unaddressed participants shift their gaze at a point that appears interactionally most optimal: It provides unaddressed participants with access to much of the visual, bodily behavior that accompanies both the current speakerâs and the next speakerâs turn, and it allows them to display recipiency with regard to both speakersâ turns
Hybrid organicâinorganic structures trigger the formation of primitive cell-like compartments
We would like to thank COST action Chemobrionics (CA17120) and DYNALIFE (CA21169) for giving us the opportunity to meet and conceive important ideas crucial for the manuscript preparation. We would also like to thank Department CIBIO Core Facilities which are supported by the European Regional Development Fund 2014 to 2020. This work was funded in part from the European Unionâs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 824060 (project ACDC).Alkaline hydrothermal vents have become a candidate setting for the origins of life on Earth and beyond. This is due to several key features including the presence of gradients of temperature, redox potential, pH, the availability of inorganic minerals, and the existence of a network of inorganic pore spaces that could have served as primitive compartments. Chemical gardens have long been used as experimental proxies for hydrothermal vents. This paper investigates-10pc]Please note that the spelling of the following author name in the manuscript differs from the spelling provided in the article metadata: Richard J. G. Löffler. The spelling provided in the manuscript has been retained; please confirm. a set of prebiotic interactions between such inorganic structures and fatty alcohols. The integration of a medium-chain fatty alcohol, decanol, within these inorganic minerals, produced a range of emergent 3 dimensions structures at both macroscopic and microscopic scales. Fatty alcohols can be considered plausible prebiotic amphiphiles that might have assisted the formation of protocellular structures such as vesicles. The experiments presented herein show that neither chemical gardens nor decanol alone promote vesicle formation, but chemical gardens grown in the presence of decanol, which is then integrated into inorganic mineral structures, support vesicle formation. These observations suggest that the interaction of fatty alcohols and inorganic mineral structures could have played an important role in the emergence of protocells, yielding support for the evolution of living cells.COST (CA17120)DYNALIFE (CA21169)European Regional Development Fund 2014 to 2020European Unionâs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme 824060 (project ACDC
Observations of the Crab Nebula with H.E.S.S. Phase II
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) phase I instrument was an
array of four mirror area Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov
Telescopes (IACTs) that has very successfully mapped the sky at photon energies
above GeV. Recently, a telescope was added to
the centre of the existing array, which can be operated either in standalone
mode or jointly with the four smaller telescopes. The large telescope lowers
the energy threshold for gamma-ray observations to several tens of GeV, making
the array sensitive at energies where the Fermi-LAT instrument runs out of
statistics. At the same time, the new telescope makes the H.E.S.S. phase II
instrument. This is the first hybrid IACT array, as it operates telescopes of
different size (and hence different trigger rates) and different field of view.
In this contribution we present results of H.E.S.S. phase II observations of
the Crab Nebula, compare them to earlier observations, and evaluate the
performance of the new instrument with Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference
(ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherland
Gaze Direction Signals Response Preference in Conversation
In this article, we examine gaze direction in responses to polar questions using both quantitative and conversation analytic (CA) methods. The data come from a novel corpus of conversations in which participants wore eye- tracking glasses to obtain direct measures of their eye movements. The results show that while most preferred responses are produced with gaze toward the questioner, most dispreferred responses are produced with gaze aversion. We further demonstrate that gaze aversion by respondents can occasion self-repair by questioners in the transition space between turns, indicating that the relationship between gaze direction and preference is more than a mere statistical association. We conclude that gaze direction in responses to polar questions functions as a signal of response preference. Data are in American, British, and Canadian English
Evaluation of a Single-Matrix Food Attractant Tephritid Fruit Fly Bait Dispenser for Use in Federal Trap Detection Programs
The use of synthetic food attractant lures for Tephritid fruit fly trapping is
presently being incorporated into U.S. state and federal detection programs. These lures
consist of ammonium acetate, trimethylamine hydrochloride and putrescine contained
in individual packages that are attached to the inside (top) of plastic McPhail-type
traps. Two chemical packets are placed in the traps for Anastrepha spp., where as
three are attached for Ceratitis capitata. This report presents data on trap captures of
the above species comparing the current (individually packaged) baits with a novel
dispenser containing either two or three components into a single matrix. Tests were
conducted in Florida and Hawaii using hand release of sterile Caribbean fruit fly
(Caribfly), Anastrepha suspensa and the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata
(medfly)/ aerially released medfly/ and wild caribfly populations (Florida) and wild
medfly (Hawaii). Observations in the Florida study indicated that minor formulation
adjustment should increase the efficacy of the Anastrepha attractant, whereas less of
an adjustment may be required to capture Ceratitis capitata. Results in open field tests in Hawaii indicated that the three-component synthetic food attractant in a single cone unit was just as effective in capturing wild male and female Medflies as the same food attractants in individual packets. The single matrix has some advantages in handling and ease-of-use, especially with the Multilure trap
Dynamic Many-Body Theory. II. Dynamics of Strongly Correlated Fermi Fluids
We develop a systematic theory of multi-particle excitations in strongly
interacting Fermi systems. Our work is the generalization of the time-honored
work by Jackson, Feenberg, and Campbell for bosons, that provides, in its most
advanced implementation, quantitative predictions for the dynamic structure
function in the whole experimentally accessible energy/momentum regime. Our
view is that the same physical effects -- namely fluctuations of the wave
function at an atomic length scale -- are responsible for the correct
energetics of the excitations in both Bose and Fermi fluids. Besides a
comprehensive derivation of the fermion version of the theory and discussion of
the approximations made, we present results for homogeneous He-3 and electrons
in three dimensions. We find indeed a significant lowering of the zero sound
mode in He-3 and a broadening of the collective mode due to the coupling to
particle-hole excitations in good agreement with experiments. The most visible
effect in electronic systems is the appearance of a ``double-plasmon''
excitation.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.
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