Mutation Accumulation May Be a Minor Force in Shaping Life History Traits

Is senescence the adaptive result of tradeoffs between younger and older ages or the nonadaptive burden of deleterious mutations that act at older ages? To shed new light on this unresolved question we combine adaptive and nonadaptive processes in a single model. Our model uses Penna's bit-strings to capture different age-specific mutational patterns. Each pattern represents a genotype and for each genotype we find the life history strategy that maximizes fitness. Genotypes compete with each other and are subject to selection and to new mutations over generations until equilibrium in gene-frequencies is reached. The mutation-selection equilibrium provides information about mutational load and the differential effects of mutations on a life history trait - the optimal age at maturity. We find that mutations accumulate only at ages with negligible impact on fitness and that mutation accumulation has very little effect on the optimal age at maturity. These results suggest that life histories are largely determined by adaptive processes. The non-adaptive process of mutation accumulation seems to be unimportant at evolutionarily relevant ages

Influence of some component errors on the loop impedance measurement accuracy

Mierzoną wartość impedancji pętli zwarciowej otrzymuje się na podstawie pomiaru dwóch wartości napięć dla obwodu nieobciążonego oraz obciążonego, najczęściej rezystancją, która stanowi sztuczne zwarcie. W referacie przedstawiono analizę wpływu błędu pomiaru okresu napięcia sieci na dokładność wyznaczenia impedancji, dla metod wykorzystujących pomiary wartości skutecznych napięć. Jak pokazały przeprowadzone badania nawet niewielkie błędy pomiaru okresu mogą mieć istotny wpływ na dokładność wyznaczenia szukanej impedancji.A measured loop impedance value is obtained by measuring two voltage values for unloaded and loaded circuit [1], most often with resistive load, which is an artificial short-circuit (Fig. 1). The paper presents analysis of the impact of the voltage period measurement error on the loop impedance measurement accuracy for the methods based on the value of RMS voltages. For the assumed parameters of the circuit under test [3, 4, 5] there is performed analysis of the period measurement error (Fig. 3), and resulting from it the RMS voltage designation error (Fig. 4). Subsequently, there are shown the results of studies on the effects of these errors on the loop impedance measurement (Fig. 5). As studies have shown, even small errors of the period measurement, which for the assumed parameters of the circuit under test may reach the values between 0,05% and 0,18%, may have a significant impact on the accuracy of the loop impedance measurement. The loop impedance measurement error can reach the values of approximately 4%

Implementation of generalized particular sampling algorithm for determining the fundamental harmonic in LabVIEW environment

Praca dotyczy opisu oraz implementacji uogólnionego algorytmu szczególnego próbkowania dla wyznaczania amplitudy harmonicznej podstawowej w środowisku LabVIEW. Algorytm szczególnego próbkowania umożliwia wyodrębnienie informacji o wartości amplitudy harmonicznej podstawowej ze spróbkowanego, odkształconego sygnału przy zastosowaniu stosunkowo prostych środków technicznych. Aplikacja może mieć zastosowanie w urządzeniach pomiarowych wyposażonych w prosty mikrokontroler. Zaleta opracowanego oprogramowania jest jego elastyczność, polegającą na automatycznym doborze zestawu próbek niezbędnych do filtracji wyższych harmonicznych, spełniającym zadeklarowane przez użytkownika wymagania.The paper presents an implementation of generalized Particular Sampling Algorithm for determination the fundamental harmonic in LabVIEW environment. This algorithm is used to extract information about fundamental harmonic from distorted sampling signal. Information about the fundamental harmonic of current or voltage is substantial in many types of measurements. For example, some parameters in the protective measures in the power systems, like loop impedance or ground impedance, are calculated using such information. These parameters are very important in evaluation of effectiveness of protection against electric shocks. Extracted information about the fundamental harmonic with the application of Particular Sampling Method is possible using simplified technical resources compared to FFT algorithm. The measurement device based on Particular Sampling Method can be equipped with a simple microcontroller. In the literature a concrete implementations of this method were used. The sampling program, which was created so far manually, has been determined by the set of eliminated harmonics. The main advantage of presented software developed in LabVIEW environment is its flexibility, i.e. the sampling program is created automatically. The results obtained from the use of this software are consistent with the results of previous studies

Test stand for testing high – voltage switches

Akcelerator ciężkich jonów SIS100 jest budowany na terenie ośrodka badań jądrowych GSI w Darmstadt (Niemcy) w ramach międzynarodowego projektu FAIR. Cząstki elementarne będą w nim rozpędzane do prędkości przekraczających 99% prędkości światła przy pomocy elektromagnesów nadprzewodnikowych, z których będzie zbudowany akcelerator. Przed umieszczeniem magnesów w akceleratorze są one poddawane szczegółowej kontroli w celu oceny ich przydatności do pracy w warunkach nadprzewodnictwa. W Politechnice Gdańskiej jest opracowywany system umożliwiający zautomatyzowaną kontrolę kluczowych parametrów elektrycznych elektromagnesów na etapie ich budowy a także eksploatacji. W celu spełnienia wysokich wymagań dotyczących parametrów oraz trwałości działania, system pomiarowy musi być zbudowany z restrykcyjnie dobranych elementów. W referacie przedstawiono opis stanowiska testującego najważniejsze elementy systemu wraz z przykładowymi wynikami badań.The SIS100 Heavy Ion Accelerator is being built at the GSI nuclear research centre in Darmstadt (Germany) as part of the international FAIR project. The elementary particles will be accelerated to speeds exceeding 99% of the speed of light by means of superconducting electromagnets, from which the accelerator is built. Before magnets are placed in the accelerator, they are subjected to a detailed inspection in order to assess their suitability for operation in superconductivity conditions. At the Gdansk University of Technology, a system is being developed which allows for automated control of key electrical parameters of electromagnets at the stage of their construction and operation. In order to meet the high requirements concerning parameters and durability of operation, the measuring system must be built of carefully selected elements. High voltage switches are very important elements of this system. Selection of the right switches was an important problem due to the requirements concerning parameters and durability. The paper describes the constructed stand testing selected electrical parameters of the switches

Phoneme Segmentation Based on Wavelet Spectra Analysis

A phoneme segmentation method based on the analysis of discrete wavelet transform spectra is described. The localization of phoneme boundaries is particularly useful in speech recognition. It enables one to use more accurate acoustic models since the length of phonemes provide more information for parametrization. Our method relies on the values of power envelopes and their first derivatives for six frequency subbands. Specific scenarios that are typical for phoneme boundaries are searched for. Discrete times with such events are noted and graded using a distribution-like event function, which represent the change of the energy distribution in the frequency domain. The exact definition of this method is described in the paper. The final decision on localization of boundaries is taken by analysis of the event function. Boundaries are, therefore, extracted using information from all subbands. The method was developed on a small set of Polish hand segmented words and tested on another large corpus containing 16 425 utterances. A recall and precision measure specifically designed to measure the quality of speech segmentation was adapted by using fuzzy sets. From this, results with F-score equal to 72.49% were obtained

The Role of Acoustic Features in Marking Accent and Delimiting Sentence Boundaries in Spoken Polish

In this article the authors investigated and presented statistical models of acoustic phenomena observed within realizations of phonemes and the correlations of the acoustic properties with functional features, such as accents and sentence boundaries. The authors used two databases: the first one contained separately produced sentences and the second one - phrases extracted from larger, continuous stretches of natural speech. The authors also statistically analyzed the selected features of Polish phonemes' realizations (the duration, energy and power of the phonemes, the fundamental frequency of voiced phones) in order to detect their relations with the phone location in a sentence. Additionally, the authors built the probabilistic models and suggested the evaluation methods to assess quantitatively the phenomena known from phonetic literature. Finally, the authors have identified the pre-boundary lengthening of the phones and a decrease of energy and pitch as the markers of sentence endings. In the place of accented syllables, we have observed a significant increase of total energy and power, accompanied by a local increase of F0. Finally, we have indicated possible application of the results for speech technology

Implementation of application in the LabVIEW environment for research the impast of dynamic interferences voltage changes on the accuracy of a subharmonic method

Wyznaczanie rezystancji lub impedancji uziemienia metoda podharmonicznej umożliwia uzyskanie dobrej dokładności pomiaru nawet w obecności silnych zakłóceń pochodzących od prądów błądzących występujących w gruncie. Metoda podharmonicznej wykazuje znaczna odporność na zakłócenia o częstotliwości sieciowej jak i stałoprądowe. Problem mogą stanowić natomiast zmiany dynamiczne sygnałów zakłócających spowodowane np. rozruchami urządzeń elektrycznych. Prezentowana praca dotyczy implementacji algorytmu w środowisku LabVIEW, umożliwiajacego symulacje wpływu dynamicznych zmian napięcia zakłócającego na dokładność metody podharmonicznej. Zastosowanie tego narzędzia pozwala m.in. na określenie parametrów wykorzystywanej metody filtracji (liczby pobieranych próbek) zapewniających osiągniecie przyjętej dokładności pomiaru przy założonym poziomie zakłóceń.Level of interferences caused by the occurrence of ground stray currents, among which currents of power frequency are of prevailing importance, is an important factor affecting the accuracy of resistance or impedance measurement. High accuracy of the measurement of grounding parameters in the context of interferences of 50Hz is achievable with the use of a subharmonic method. Simple to apply as it is, the method based on using 25Hz as a measuring signal effectively eliminates impacts of power frequency interfering signals and DC signals. What may pose a problem are dynamic fluctuations of the amplitude of interfering signals which need to be taken into account particularly in highly industrialized areas. The fluctuations may be induced primarily by the ignition of electrical devices, including DC driving engines and devices powered by a 6-pulse rectifier. The article revolves around an application created in the LabVIEW environment and intended for examining the sensitivity of a subharmonic method to interfering signals, including those of a dynamic nature as well. The presented application appears to be a convenient tool which allows to choose the proper type of a method to execute measurements of the required accuracy when various interferences are present

Detection of Sentence Boundaries in Polish Based on Acoustic Cues

In this article the authors investigated and presented the experiments on the sentence boundaries annotation from Polish speech using acoustic cues as a source of information. The main result of the investigation is an algorithm for detection of the syntactic boundaries appearing in the places of punctuation marks. In the first stage, the algorithm detects pauses and divides a speech signal into segments. In the second stage, it verifies the configuration of acoustic features and puts hypotheses of the positions of punctuation marks. Classification is performed with parameters describing phone duration and energy, speaking rate, fundamental frequency contours and frequency bands. The best results were achieved for Naive Bayes classifier. The efficiency of the algorithm is 52% precision and 98% recall. Another significant outcome of the research is statistical models of acoustic cues correlated with punctuation in spoken Polish