Speaker-sex discrimination for voiced and whispered vowels at short durations

Whispered vowels, produced with no vocal fold vibration, lack the periodic temporal fine structure which in voiced vowels underlies the perceptual attribute of pitch (a salient auditory cue to speaker sex). Voiced vowels possess no temporal fine structure at very short durations (below two glottal cycles). The prediction was that speaker-sex discrimination performance for whispered and voiced vowels would be similar for very short durations but, as stimulus duration increases, voiced vowel performance would improve relative to whispered vowel performance as pitch information becomes available. This pattern of results was shown for women’s but not for men’s voices. A whispered vowel needs to have a duration three times longer than a voiced vowel before listeners can reliably tell whether it’s spoken by a man or woman (∼30 ms vs. ∼10 ms). Listeners were half as sensitive to information about speaker-sex when it is carried by whispered compared with voiced vowels

The Real Costs and Financial Challenges of Library Networking: Part 1

Library networking has created a number of administrative and policy issues. Questions of governance, budgeting, cooperation, and reporting lines must be addressed. In some cases, these issues must be addressed by librarians; in others, by campus administrators. In any event, the importance of the research library must be recognized, and support for the library's priorities must be marshalled.published or submitted for publicatio

A short proof of Stein's universal multiplier theorem

We give a short proof of Stein's universal multiplier theorem, purely by probabilistic methods, thus avoiding any use of harmonic analysis techniques (complex interpolation or transference methods)

Exactly solvable model of superstring in Ramond-Ramond plane wave background

We describe in detail the solution of type IIB superstring theory in the maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background with constant null Ramond-Ramond 5-form field strength. The corresponding light-cone Green-Schwarz action found in hep-th/0112044 is quadratic in both bosonic and fermionic coordinates. We find the spectrum of the light-cone Hamiltonian and the string representation of the supersymmetry algebra. The superstring Hamiltonian has a ``harmonic-oscillator'' form in both the string-oscillator and the zero-mode parts and thus has discrete spectrum in all 8 transverse directions. We analyze the structure of the zero-mode sector of the theory, establishing the precise correspondence between the lowest-lying ``massless'' string states and the type IIB supergravity fluctuation modes in the plane-wave background. The zero-mode spectrum has certain similarity to the supergravity spectrum in AdS_5 x S^5 of which the plane-wave background is a special limit. We also compare the plane-wave string spectrum with expected form of the light-cone gauge spectrum of superstring in AdS_5 x S^5.Comment: 33 pages, latex. v4: minor sign corrections in (1.5) and (3.62), to appear in PR

On the construction of hierarchic models

One of the main problems in the field of model-based diagnosis of technical systems today is finding the most useful model or models of the system being diagnosed. Often, a model showing the physical components and the connections between them is all that is available. As systems grow larger and larger, the run-time performance of diagnostic algorithms decreases considerably when using these detailed models. A solution to this problem is using a hierarchic model. This allows us to first diagnose the system using an abstract model, and then use this solution to guide the diagnostic process using a more detailed model. The main problem with this approach is acquiring the hierarchic model. We give a generic hierarchic diagnostic algorithm and show how the use of certain classes of hierarchic models can increase the performance of this algorithm. We then present linear time algorithms for the automatic construction of these hierarchic models, using the detailed model and extra information about cost of probing points and invertibility of components

Composite fermions traversing a potential barrier

Using a composite fermion picture, we study the lateral transport between two two-dimensional electron gases, at filling factor 1/2, separated by a potential barrier. In the mean field approximation, composite fermions far from the barrier do not feel a magnetic field while in the barrier region the effective magnetic field is different from zero. This produces a cutoff in the conductance when represented as a function of the thickness and height of the barrier. There is a range of barrier heights for which an incompressible liquid, at $\nu =1/3$, exists in the barrier region.Comment: 3 pages, latex, 4 figures available upon request from [email protected]. To appear in Physical Review B (RC) June 15t

Modal analysis and nonlinear characterization of an airborne power ultrasonic transducer with rectangular plate radiator

Some industrial processes like particle agglomeration or food dehydration among others can be enhanced by the use of power ultrasonic technologies. These technologies are based on an airborne power ultrasonic transducer (APUT) constituted by a pre-stressed Langevin-type transducer, a mechanical amplifier and an extensive plate radiator. In order to produce the desired effects in industrial processing, the transducer has to vibrate in an extensional mode driving an extensive radiator in the desired flexural mode with high amplitude displacements. Due to the generation of these high amplitude displacements in the radiator surfaces, non-linear effects like frequency shifts, hysteresis or modal interactions, among others, may be produced in the transducer behavior. When any nonlinear effect appears, when applying power, the stability and efficiency of this ultrasonic technology decreases, and the transducer may be damaged depending on the excitation power level and the nature of the nonlinearity. In this paper, an APUT with flat rectangular radiator is presented, as the active part of an innovative system with stepped reflectors. The nonlinear behavior of the APUT has been characterized numerically and experimentally in case of the modal analysis and experimentally in the case of dynamic analysis. According to the results obtained after the experiments, no modal interactions are expected, nor do other nonlinear effects

Discovering mirror particles at the Large Hadron Collider and the implied cold universe

The Mirror Matter or Exact Parity Model sees every standard particle, including the physical neutral Higgs boson, paired with a parity partner. The unbroken parity symmetry forces the mass eigenstate Higgs bosons to be maximal mixtures of the ordinary and mirror Higgs bosons. Each of these mass eigenstates will therefore decay 50% of the time into invisible mirror particles, providing a clear and interesting signature for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which could thus establish the existence of the mirror world. However, for this effect to be observable the mass difference between the two eigenstates must be sufficiently large. In this paper, we study cosmological constraints from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis on the mass difference parameter. We find that the temperature of the radiation dominated (RD) phase of the universe should never have exceeded a few 10's of GeV if the mass difference is to be observable at the LHC. Chaotic inflation with very inefficient reheating provides an example of how such a cosmology could arise. We conclude that the LHC could thus discover the mirror world and simultaneously establish an upper bound on the temperature of the RD phase of the universe.Comment: 8pages including 1 figure, RevTeX; minor changes and added references; this version accepted by Phys Lett