Dichotic integration of acoustic-phonetic information: Competition from extraneous formants increases the effect of second-formant attenuation on intelligibility

Differences in ear of presentation and level do not prevent effective integration of concurrent speech cues such as formant frequencies. For example, presenting the higher formants of a consonant-vowel syllable in the opposite ear to the first formant protects them from upward spread of masking, allowing them to remain effective speech cues even after substantial attenuation. This study used three-formant (F1+F2+F3) analogues of natural sentences and extended the approach to include competitive conditions. Target formants were presented dichotically (F1+F3; F2), either alone or accompanied by an extraneous competitor for F2 (i.e., F1±F2C+F3; F2) that listeners must reject to optimize recognition. F2C was created by inverting the F2 frequency contour and using the F2 amplitude contour without attenuation. In experiment 1, F2C was always absent and intelligibility was unaffected until F2 attenuation exceeded 30 dB; F2 still provided useful information at 48-dB attenuation. In experiment 2, attenuating F2 by 24 dB caused considerable loss of intelligibility when F2C was present, but had no effect in its absence. Factors likely to contribute to this interaction include informational masking from F2C acting to swamp the acoustic-phonetic information carried by F2, and interaural inhibition from F2C acting to reduce the effective level of F2

High-pressure cryogelation of nanosilica and surface properties of cryosilicas

Silica cryogels (cryosilicas) in a powder state were synthesized with different concentrations of fumed silica A-300 (CA-300 = 5-20 wt.%), sonicated in aqueous suspension, then frozen at -14 oC at different pressures in a high-pressure stainless steel reactor (a freezing bomb), and dried in air at room temperature. To analyze the effects of low temperature and high pressure, samples were also prepared at -14 oC or room temperature and standard pressure. The structural and adsorption properties of the powder materials were studied using nitrogen adsorption, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetry, low-temperature 1H NMR spectroscopy and thermally stimulated depolarization current. The structural, textural, adsorption and relaxation characteristics of high-pressure cryogel hydrogels and related dried powders are strongly dependent on the silica content in aqueous suspensions frozen at 1, 450 or 1000 atmospheres and then dried. The largest changes are found with CA-300 = 20 wt.% which are analyzed with respect to the interfacial behavior of nonpolar, weakly polar and polar adsorbates using low temperature 1H NMR spectroscopy

Rigorous Polynomial Approximation using Taylor Models in Coq

International audienceOne of the most common and practical ways of representing a real function on machines is by using a polynomial approximation. It is then important to properly handle the error introduced by such an approximation. The purpose of this work is to offer guaranteed error bounds for a specific kind of rigorous polynomial approximation called Taylor model. We carry out this work in the Coq proof assistant, with a special focus on genericity and efficiency for our implementation. We give an abstract interface for rigorous polynomial approximations, parameter- ized by the type of coefficients and the implementation of polynomials, and we instantiate this interface to the case of Taylor models with inter- val coefficients, while providing all the machinery for computing them. We compare the performances of our implementation in Coq with those of the Sollya tool, which contains an implementation of Taylor models written in C. This is a milestone in our long-term goal of providing fully formally proved and efficient Taylor models

What drives sound symbolism? Different acoustic cues underlie sound-size and sound-shape mappings

Sound symbolism refers to the non-arbitrary mappings that exist between phonetic properties of speech sounds and their meaning. Despite there being an extensive literature on the topic, the acoustic features and psychological mechanisms that give rise to sound symbolism are not, as yet, altogether clear. The present study was designed to investigate whether different sets of acoustic cues predict size and shape symbolism, respectively. In two experiments, participants judged whether a given consonant-vowel speech sound was large or small, round or angular, using a size or shape scale. Visual size judgments were predicted by vowel formant F1 in combination with F2, and by vowel duration. Visual shape judgments were, however, predicted by formants F2 and F3. Size and shape symbolism were thus not induced by a common mechanism, but rather were distinctly affected by acoustic properties of speech sounds. These findings portray sound symbolism as a process that is not based merely on broad categorical contrasts, such as round/unround and front/back vowels. Rather, individuals seem to base their sound-symbolic judgments on specific sets of acoustic cues, extracted from speech sounds, which vary across judgment dimensions

Comparison of health conditions treated with traditional and biomedical health care in a Quechua community in rural Bolivia

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The objective of the present study was to reveal patterns in the treatment of health conditions in a Quechua-speaking community in the Bolivian Andes based on plant use data from traditional healers and patient data from a primary health care (PHC) service, and to demonstrate similarities and differences between the type of illnesses treated with traditional and biomedical health care, respectively.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A secondary analysis of plant use data from semi-structured interviews with eight healers was conducted and diagnostic data was collected from 324 patients in the community PHC service. Health conditions were ranked according to: (A) the percentage of patients in the PHC service diagnosed with these conditions; and (B) the citation frequency of plant use reports to treat these conditions by healers. Healers were also queried about the payment modalities they offer to their patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Plant use reports from healers yielded 1166 responses about 181 medicinal plant species, which are used to treat 67 different health conditions, ranging from general symptoms (e.g. fever and body pain), to more specific ailments, such as arthritis, biliary colic and pneumonia. The results show that treatment offered by traditional medicine overlaps with biomedical health care in the case of respiratory infections, wounds and bruises, fever and biliary colic/cholecystitis. Furthermore, traditional health care appears to be complementary to biomedical health care for chronic illnesses, especially arthritis, and for folk illnesses that are particularly relevant within the local cultural context. Payment from patients to healers included flexible, outcome contingent and non-monetary options.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Traditional medicine in the study area is adaptive because it corresponds well with local patterns of morbidity, health care needs in relation to chronic illnesses, cultural perceptions of health conditions and socio-economic aspects of health care. The quantitative analysis of plant use reports and patient data represents a novel approach to compare the contribution of traditional and biomedical health care to treatment of particular health conditions.</p

A Chemocentric Approach to the Identification of Cancer Targets

A novel chemocentric approach to identifying cancer-relevant targets is introduced. Starting with a large chemical collection, the strategy uses the list of small molecule hits arising from a differential cytotoxicity screening on tumor HCT116 and normal MRC-5 cell lines to identify proteins associated with cancer emerging from a differential virtual target profiling of the most selective compounds detected in both cell lines. It is shown that this smart combination of differential in vitro and in silico screenings (DIVISS) is capable of detecting a list of proteins that are already well accepted cancer drug targets, while complementing it with additional proteins that, targeted selectively or in combination with others, could lead to synergistic benefits for cancer therapeutics. The complete list of 115 proteins identified as being hit uniquely by compounds showing selective antiproliferative effects for tumor cell lines is provided

Retained capacity for perceptual learning of degraded speech in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer's disease

This work was supported by the Alzheimer’s Society (AS-PG-16-007), the National Institute for Health Research University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, the UCL Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre (PR/ylr/18575) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K006711/1). Individual authors were supported by the Medical Research Council (PhD Studentship to CJDH and RLB; MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship to JDR), the Wolfson Foundation (Clinical Research Fellowship to CRM), Alzheimer’s Research UK (ART-SRF2010-3 to SJC) and the Wellcome Trust (091673/Z/10/Z to JDW)