Visible lexical stress cues on the face do not influence audiovisual speech perception

Producing lexical stress leads to visible changes on the face, such as longer duration and greater size of the opening of the mouth. Research suggests that these visual cues alone can inform participants about which syllable carries stress (i.e., lip-reading silent videos). This study aims to determine the influence of visual articulatory cues on lexical stress perception in more naturalistic audiovisual settings. Participants were presented with seven disyllabic, Dutch minimal stress pairs (e.g., VOORnaam [first name] & voorNAAM [respectable]) in audio-only (phonetic lexical stress continua without video), video-only (lip-reading silent videos), and audiovisual trials (e.g., phonetic lexical stress continua with video of talker saying VOORnaam or voorNAAM). Categorization data from video-only trials revealed that participants could distinguish the minimal pairs above chance from seeing the silent videos alone. However, responses in the audiovisual condition did not differ from the audio-only condition. We thus conclude that visual lexical stress information on the face, while clearly perceivable, does not play a major role in audiovisual speech perception. This study demonstrates that clear unimodal effects do not always generalize to more naturalistic multimodal communication, advocating that speech prosody is best considered in multimodal settings

Percolation in the classical blockmodel

Classical blockmodel is known as the simplest among models of networks with community structure. The model can be also seen as an extremely simply example of interconnected networks. For this reason, it is surprising that the percolation transition in the classical blockmodel has not been examined so far, although the phenomenon has been studied in a variety of much more complicated models of interconnected and multiplex networks. In this paper we derive the self-consistent equation for the size the global percolation cluster in the classical blockmodel. We also find the condition for percolation threshold which characterizes the emergence of the giant component. We show that the discussed percolation phenomenon may cause unexpected problems in a simple optimization process of the multilevel network construction. Numerical simulations confirm the correctness of our theoretical derivations.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Tropopause and hygropause variability over the equatorial Indian Ocean during February and March 1999.

Measurements of temperature, water vapor, total water, ozone, and cloud properties were made above the western equatorial Indian Ocean in February and March 1999. The cold-point tropopause was at a mean pressure-altitude of 17 km, equivalent to a potential temperature of 380 K, and had a mean temperature of 190 K. Total water mixing ratios at the hygropause varied between 1.4 and 4.1 ppmv. The mean saturation water vapor mixing ratio at the cold point was 3.0 ppmv. This does not accurately represent the mean of the measured total water mixing ratios because the air was unsaturated at the cold point for about 40% of the measurements. As well as unsaturation at the cold point, saturation was observed above the cold point on almost 30% of the profiles. In such profiles the air was saturated with respect to water ice but was free of clouds (i.e., backscatter ratio <2) at potential temperatures more than 5 K above the tropopause and hygropause. Individual profiles show a great deal of variability in the potential temperatures of the cold point and hygropause. We attribute this to short timescale and space-scale perturbations superimposed on the seasonal cycle. There is neither a clear and consistent “setting” of the tropopause and hygropause to the same altitude by dehydration processes nor a clear and consistent separation of tropopause and hygropause by the Brewer-Dobson circulation. Similarly, neither the tropopause nor the hygropause provides a location where conditions consistently approach those implied by a simple “tropopause freeze drying” or “stratospheric fountain” hypothesis

Technical aspects of directional drilling with use a part of existing boreholes

Postęp techniki i technologii w wiertnictwie, umożliwia wykorzystywanie otworów kierunkowych w różnych sytuacjach wiertniczych. Otwory te stały się powszechnie wykorzystywane w wierceniach udostępniających złoża ropy naftowej i gazu ziemnego. Wiercenie otworów kierunkowych wykorzystuje kilka technik, które mogą być użyte do wiercenia otworów o złożonej trajektorii. Dzięki wierceniom kierunkowym można obniżyć koszty wiercenia poprzez użycie istniejących już otworów tak, aby przynajmniej ich część została wykorzystana w trakcie wiercenia nowego otworu. Taki sposób wiercenia wykorzystuje informacje i doświadczenia zdobyte podczas wiercenia istniejącego otworu, a to pozwala zaprojektować optymalną konstrukcję nowego otworu oraz zmniejsza ryzyko wystąpienia komplikacji wiertniczych. Artykuł analizuje możliwości wykorzystania różnych technik wiercenia otworów w przypadku wiercenia kierunkowego z już istniejącego otworu z uwzględnieniem technicznych możliwości ich zastosowania, niezbędnego wyposażenia oraz możliwości zwiększenia efektywności prac.Advancement in drilling techniques and technology enables using directional boreholes for a variety of drilling situations. Directional drilling technologies started to be commonly applied for gas and oil reservoir completion. The directional drillings use few techniques that can be applied to drill a borehole with the composed trajectory. Thanks using the directional drillings are possible to lower the drilling investment costs and increasing its efficiency by using some part of existing boreholes. Such idea of drilling let's take advantages of experiences collected while drilling of existing borehole, determinate proper borehole design and reduce the risk of drilling complications. This paper analyses possibility of using different techniques for directional drilling by using part of existing wellbore

The results of inclinometric measurement analysis on monitoring wells in the area of small research polygon VSB - Technical University of Ostrava

Postęp techniki i technologii w wiertnictwie, umożliwia wykorzystywanie otworów wiertniczych w różnych sytuacjach. Dzięki nim możemy korzystać z ekologicznej energii, jaką oferuje górotwór. Otwory wiertnicze stały się powszechnie wykorzystywane w wierceniach geotermalnych. W roku 2009 powstał na terenie VSB - Uniwersytet Techniczny w Ostrawie poligon naukowo-doświadczalny. Powstanie poligonu badawczego miało na celu prowadzenie badań nad zachowaniem się odbudowy energii masywu skalnego w otoczeniu otworów geotermalnych używanych przez indywidualnych odbiorców energii. Na terenie poligonu odwiercono dwa otwory geotermalne oraz 9 otworów monitorujących o głębokości 140 m każdy. Podczas prac wiertniczych prowadzono szczegółową rejestrację parametrów wiercenia, włączając w to rejestrację kątów odchylenia osi otworów w funkcji głębokości. W niniejszy artykule zaprezentowano analizę warunków wiercenia otworów geotermalnych oraz zaprezentowano wyniki uzyskanych badań nad krzywieniem się osi krótkich otworów geotermalnych.In the year 2009 arisen in the campus of VSB - Technical University of Ostrava new research polygon called Small Research Polygon (SRP). This research polygon is intended for investigation of regeneration and accumulation behavior of rock massive in the surroundings of energy exploited wells used by "small" consumers house holders. In the area of the Small Research Polygon are situated two operating wells attached to one heat pump and 9 monitored wells (each one of 140 m deep). A special complex of logging measurements including inclinometry was made during the realization of this project. The main goal of this article is data analysis about a steric progression of well axis in light of possible influences on curving of boreholes

Audiovisual Perception of Lexical Stress: Beat Gestures are stronger Visual Cues for Lexical Stress than visible Articulatory Cues on the Face

Human communication is inherently multimodal. Auditory speech but also visual cues can be used to understand another talker. This is especially known about the perception of segments of speech (i.e., speech sounds). However, less is known about the influence of visual information on the perception of suprasegmental aspects of speech like lexical stress. This study investigated the influence of different visual information (e.g., facial cues & beat gestures) on the perception of lexical stress and found that beat gestures, but not facial cues affect lexical stress perception. These results highlight the importance of considering suprasegmental aspects of language in multimodal contexts and expand our understanding of audiovisual speech perception and integration