On the phonetic realization and variation of consonant geminates in Sakha

This study examines the phonetic realization of geminates of different manners of articulation in an underdocumented Turkic language Sakha using production data from a native speaker. Meanwhile, the temporal compensation between geminates and their surrounding vowels is examined by varying the length of the vowels surrounding the target consonants. Results show that in Sakha, geminates differ from their singleton counterparts mainly by showing a longer overall consonant duration. Regardless, gemination is realized differently for consonants with different manners of articulation. Finally, vowel length is an enhancement cue for the realization of geminates

QoS-aware Adaptive Resource Management in OFDMA Networks

PhDOne important feature of the future communication network is that users in the network are required to experience a guaranteed high quality of service (QoS) due to the popularity of multimedia applications. This thesis studies QoS-aware radio resource management schemes in different OFDMA network scenarios. Motivated by the fact that in current 4G networks, the QoS provisioning is severely constrained by the availability of radio resources, especially the scarce spectrum as well as the unbalanced traffic distribution from cell to cell, a joint antenna and subcarrier management scheme is proposed to maximise user satisfaction with load balancing. Antenna pattern update mechanism is further investigated with moving users. Combining network densi fication with cloud computing technologies, cloud radio access network (C-RAN) has been proposed as the emerging 5G network architecture consisting of baseband unit (BBU) pool, remote radio heads (RRHs) and fronthaul links. With cloud based information sharing through the BBU pool, a joint resource block and power allocation scheme is proposed to maximise the number of satisfi ed users whose required QoS is achieved. In this scenario, users are served by high power nodes only. With spatial reuse of system bandwidth by network densi fication, users' QoS provisioning can be ensured but it introduces energy and operating effciency issue. Therefore two network energy optimisation schemes with QoS guarantee are further studied for C-RANs: an energy-effective network deployment scheme is designed for C-RAN based small cells; a joint RRH selection and user association scheme is investigated in heterogeneous C-RAN. Thorough theoretical analysis is conducted in the development of all proposed algorithms, and the effectiveness of all proposed algorithms is validated via comprehensive simulations.China Scholarship Counci

Second Hankel Determinant for Strongly Bi-Starlike of order α

Let A denote the class of functions f (z) = z + �∞ n=2 anz n which are analytic in the open unit disc U = {z : |z| < 1}. Let S denote the class of all functions in A that are univalent in U. A function f ∈ A is said to be bi-univalent in U if both f and f −1 are univalent in U. Let denote the class of bi-univalent functions in U. In this paper, we obtained the upper bounds for the second Hankel functional |a2a4 − a2 3 | for strongly bi-starlike of order α

Health Information Seeking Behavior Among Perinatal Women: A Systematic Review

The health of perinatal women is critical to maternal well-being and infant development. Understanding how perinatal women seek health information is essential for providing effective antenatal and postnatal care. However, there is a lack of systematic reviews on this topic. This study aimed to conduct a comprehensive literature review of existing research following the PRISMA-SCR guidelines. The results showed that perinatal women commonly seek pregnancy-related health information. Interpersonal sources were identified as the primary and most trusted sources of information. The study also identified various factors and barriers that influence health information seeking, including individual, socio-cultural, structural, and information-related factors, with personal responsibility for health being an influential factor that has not been emphasized previously. It provides valuable insights into the health information seeking behavior of perinatal women. The influence of personal health responsibility, social power dynamics and socio-cultural norms on health information seeking needs to be further investigated

Cellulose isolation from leucaena leucocephala seed: effect on concentration sodium hydroxide / Nur Aini Nabilah Ab Rashid... [et al.]

The isolation of cellulose fibres requires the removal of other components such as lignin, hemicellulose, and pectin from the biomass. In this study, the matured Leucaena leucocephala seeds (LLS) was applied as a raw material to extract cellulose. The influence of sodium hydroxide concentration (2% - 6%) on the structure of cellulose isolated LLS was studied. The highest yield 23.7% of cellulose was extracted using 4 wt% NaOH treatment. The chemical-physical properties of cellulose extracted were characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD). FTIR spectrum indicated that of all treated samples shows the peaks of cellulose structure. The highest crystallinity index of cellulose was obtained from 6% NaOH treatment which is 76.04%. Under FESEM images, the cellulose appeared in fibrils-like structure. The cellulose obtained can be further disintegrate to micro and nano cellulose to increase the chemical physical properties for various application such as in biocomposite, biomedicine and other value-added chemicals

Revisiting Acceptability Judgements

In this work, we revisit linguistic acceptability in the context of large language models. We introduce CoLAC - Corpus of Linguistic Acceptability in Chinese, the first large-scale acceptability dataset for a non-Indo-European language. It is verified by native speakers and is the first acceptability dataset that comes with two sets of labels: a linguist label and a crowd label. Our experiments show that even the largest InstructGPT model performs only at chance level on CoLAC, while ChatGPT's performance (48.30 MCC) is also much below supervised models (59.03 MCC) and human (65.11 MCC). Through cross-lingual transfer experiments and fine-grained linguistic analysis, we provide detailed analysis of the model predictions and demonstrate for the first time that knowledge of linguistic acceptability can be transferred across typologically distinct languages, as well as be traced back to pre-training. Our dataset is publicly available at \url{https://github.com/huhailinguist/CoLAC}

Simmulation of a virtual transducer using potentiometer

This work attempts to design and implement in hardware a transducer with a nonlinear response using potentiometer. Potentiometer is regarded as a linear transducer, while a the response of a nonlinear transducer can be treated as a concatenation of linear segments made out of the response curve of an actual nonlinear transducer at the points of inflections being exhibited by the nonlinear curve. Each straight line segment is characterized by its slope and a constant, called the y-intercept, which is ultimately realized by a corresponding electronic circuit. The complete circuit diagram is made of three stages: (i) the input stage for range selection, (ii) a digital logic to make appropriate selection, (iii) a conditioning circuit for realizing a given straight-line segment identified by its relevant slope and reference voltage. The simulation of the circuit is carried using MULTISIM, and the designed circuit is afterward tested to verify that variations of the input voltage give us an output voltage very close to the response pattern envisaged in the analytical stage of the design. The utility of this work lies in its applications in emulating purpose built transducers that could be used to nicely emulate a transducer in a real world system that is to be controlled by a programmable digital system

Efficacy of VP2 protein expressed in E. coli for protection against highly virulent infectious bursal disease virus

The ability of a heat-inactivated whole virus from a highly virulent infectious bursal disease virus (hvIBDV) and VP2 protein from hvIBDV expressed in E. coli provided protection against a hvIBDV challenge in specific-pathogen-free (SPF) chickens. Six out of seven chickens that were injected three times with crude VP2 protein developed significant antibody titer against IBDV. However, only four out of the seven chickens survived the hvIBDV challenge. Despite showing low antibody titer profiles, all chickens immunized with the heat-inactivated whole virus also survived the challenged with hvIBDV. However, all of these chickens had bursal atrophy and mild to moderate depletion of lymphocytes. Thus, antibodies raised against IBDV VP2 protein expressed in E. coli and denatured IBDV proteins induced some degree of protection against mortality but not against bursal damage following challenge with hvIBDV

A simple strategy guides the complex metabolic regulation in Escherichia coli

A way to decipher the complexity of the cellular metabolism is to study the effect of different external perturbations. Through an analysis over a sufficiently large set of gene knockouts and growing conditions, one aims to find a unifying principle that governs the metabolic regulation. For instance, it is known that the cessation of the microorganism proliferation after a gene deletion is only transient. However, we do not know the guiding principle that determines the partial or complete recovery of the growth rate, the corresponding redistribution of the metabolic fluxes and the possible different phenotypes. In spite of this large variety in the observed metabolic adjustments, we show that responses of E. coli to several different perturbations can always be derived from a sequence of greedy and myopic resilencings. This simple mechanism provides a detailed explanation for the experimental dynamics both at cellular (proliferation rate) and molecular level ((13)C-determined fluxes), also in case of appearance of multiple phenotypes. As additional support, we identified an example of a simple network motif that is capable of implementing this myopic greediness in the regulation of the metabolism

NIR-II fluorescence microscopic bioimaging for intrahepatic angiography and the early detection of Echinococcus multilocularis microlesions

Hepatic alveolar echinococcosis (HAE) is caused by the metacestode of Echinococcus multilocularis, which shows characteristics of malignant tumors with high mortality. However, traditional diagnostic imaging methods are still not sufficient for the recognition of HAE microlesions in the early stages. Near-infrared-II (900–1700 nm, NIR-II) fluorescence microscopic imaging (NIR-II-FMI) has shown great potential for biomedical detection. A novel type of negative target imaging method based on NIR-II-FMI with the assistance of indocyanine green (ICG) was explored. Then, NIR-II-FMI was applied to the early detection of HAE for the first time. The negative targeting NIR-II fluorescence imaging of HAE-infected mice at different stages with the assistance of ICG under 808 nm of laser irradiation was obtained. Especially, HAE microlesions at the early stage were detected clearly. Moreover, clear intrahepatic angiography was achieved under the same NIR-II-FMI system