The entropy of intoxicated speech - lexical creativity and heavy tongues

Spontaneous speech produced in sober and intoxicated conditions has been compared in information theoretic terms on the phoneme and word level to examine phonological and lexical aspects of intoxication. Word level entropy has been calculated to capture roughly the effect of alcohol on cognitive lexical creativity. Phoneme level entropy is intended to reflect heavy tongue influences on phoneme combinations. Moreover, mispronunciations have been investigated by relating canonical to realised pronunciation by means of mutual information and the Levenshtein distance. To account for the gradual nature of intoxication, examinations have been carried out regarding the offsets and slopes of linear functions mapping the blood alcohol concentration to the information theoretic variables. It turned out that male speakers compensate less for the alcohol-induced degradations with regard to lexical creativity and articulatory precision than female speakers. Furthermore, the pronunciation of male speakers generally deviates more from canonical forms

Exploring the connection of acoustic and distinctive features

This study is a contribution to link the abstract phonological level to the acoustic signal level by identifying the main acoustic correlates for the distinctive feature set developed by Chomsky and Halle (1968). The acoustic features were extracted by the openSMILE toolkit from spontaneous speech data. For each distinctive feature a set of closely related acoustic features was derived by means of correlation-based feature selection. Based on the respective acoustic feature pools C4.5 trees and support vector machines for binary feature classification were trained. The classification performance ranged from 76 to 89% for vocalic features and from 78 to 93% for consonantal features. The methods proposed in this study can be of use to identify systematic speech signal correspondencies for phonological models and as a starting point for distinctive feature detection in speech recognition

A dialect distance metric based on string and temporal alignment

The Levenshtein distance is an established metric to represent phonological distances between dialects. So far, this metric has usually been applied on manually transcribed word lists. In this study we introduce several extensions of the Levenshtein distance by incorporating probabilistic edit costs as well as temporal alignment costs. We tested all variants for compliance with the axioms that within-dialect utterance pairs are phonologically more similar than across-dialect ones. In contrast to former studies we are not applying the metrics on preselected, prototypical word lists but on real connected speech data which was automatically segmented and labeled. It turned out, that the transcription edit distances already performed well in reflecting the difference between within- and across-dialect comparisons, and that the adding of a temporal component rather weakens the performance of the metrics

Precision Mass Measurements of 129-131Cd and Their Impact on Stellar Nucleosynthesis via the Rapid Neutron Capture Process

Masses adjacent to the classical waiting-point nuclide 130Cd have been measured by using the Penning- trap spectrometer ISOLTRAP at ISOLDE/CERN. We find a significant deviation of over 400 keV from earlier values evaluated by using nuclear beta-decay data. The new measurements show the reduction of the N = 82 shell gap below the doubly magic 132Sn. The nucleosynthesis associated with the ejected wind from type-II supernovae as well as from compact object binary mergers is studied, by using state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations. We find a consistent and direct impact of the newly measured masses on the calculated abundances in the A = 128 - 132 region and a reduction of the uncertainties from the precision mass input data

Reduction of Leading-Edge Noise by Tailored Turbulence Anisotropy

This paper investigates the effect of anisotropic turbulence on the generation of leading-edge aerofoil-turbulence interaction noise, and further considers the dual impact of anisotropy in conjunction with an acoustically compliant (porous) edge. Thin airfoil theory is used to model an aerofoil as a semi-infinite plate and the scattering of incoming turbulence is solved via application of the Wiener-Hopf technique. In the case of a compliant plate modelled as having an impedance boundary condition, a useful numerical formulation using the Maliuzhuinets function is presented. This theoretical solution encapsulates the diffraction problem for gust-airfoil interaction, and is integrated over a wavenumber-frequency spectrum to account for anisotropic incoming turbulence. We verify our model against anisotropic data obtained experimentally by placing a leading edge in the wake of a cylinder, then proceed to demonstrate potential noise reduction from implementing Robin boundary conditions and by exploiting the anisotropic turbulence spectrum

Fibronectin rescues estrogen receptor α from lysosomal degradation in breast cancer cells

Estrogen receptor α (ERα) is expressed in tissues as diverse as brains and mammary glands. In breast cancer, ERα is a key regulator of tumor progression. Therefore, understanding what activates ERα is critical for cancer treatment in particular and cell biology in general. Using biochemical approaches and superresolution microscopy, we show that estrogen drives membrane ERα into endosomes in breast cancer cells and that its fate is determined by the presence of fibronectin (FN) in the extracellular matrix; it is trafficked to lysosomes in the absence of FN and avoids the lysosomal compartment in its presence. In this context, FN prolongs ERα half-life and strengthens its transcriptional activity. We show that ERα is associated with β1-integrin at the membrane, and this integrin follows the same endocytosis and subcellular trafficking pathway triggered by estrogen. Moreover, ERα+ vesicles are present within human breast tissues, and colocalization with β1-integrin is detected primarily in tumors. Our work unravels a key, clinically relevant mechanism of microenvironmental regulation of ERα signaling.Fil: Sampayo, Rocío Guadalupe. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Instituto de Nanosistemas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Oncología "Ángel H. Roffo"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Toscani, Andrés Martin. Universidad Nacional de Luján; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Rubashkin, Matthew G.. University of California; Estados UnidosFil: Thi, Kate. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Estados UnidosFil: Masullo, Luciano Andrés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Violi, Ianina Lucila. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones en Bionanociencias "Elizabeth Jares Erijman"; ArgentinaFil: Lakins, Jonathon N.. University of California; Estados UnidosFil: Caceres, Alfredo Oscar. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Hines, William C.. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Estados UnidosFil: Coluccio Leskow, Federico. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Luján; ArgentinaFil: Stefani, Fernando Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Chialvo, Dante Renato. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Escuela de Ciencia y Tecnología. Centro Internacional de Estudios Avanzados; ArgentinaFil: Bissell, Mina J.. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Estados UnidosFil: Weaver, Valerie M.. University of California; Estados UnidosFil: Simian, Marina. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Instituto de Nanosistemas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Oncología "Ángel H. Roffo"; Argentin

Charge radii and electromagnetic moments of 195-211At

Hyperfine-structure parameters and isotope shifts of At195-211 have been measured for the first time at CERN-ISOLDE, using the in-source resonance-ionization spectroscopy method. The hyperfine structures of isotopes were recorded using a triad of experimental techniques for monitoring the photo-ion current. The Multi-Reflection Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer, in connection with a high-resolution electron multiplier, was used as an ion-counting setup for isotopes that either were affected by strong isobaric contamination or possessed a long half-life; the ISOLDE Faraday cups were used for cases with high-intensity beams; and the Windmill decay station was used for short-lived, predominantly α-decaying nuclei. The electromagnetic moments and changes in the mean-square charge radii of the astatine nuclei have been extracted from the measured hyperfine-structure constants and isotope shifts. This was only made possible by dedicated state-of-the-art large-scale atomic computations of the electronic factors and the specific mass shift of atomic transitions in astatine that are needed for these extractions. By comparison with systematics, it was possible to assess the reliability of the results of these calculations and their ascribed uncertainties. A strong deviation in the ground-state mean-square charge radii of the lightest astatine isotopes, from the trend of the (spherical) lead isotopes, is interpreted as the result of an onset of deformation. This behavior bears a resemblance to the deviation observed in the isotonic polonium isotopes. Cases for shape coexistence have been identified in At197,199, for which a significant difference in the charge radii for ground (9/2-) and isomeric (1/2+) states has been observed