Technical Barrier Effects of a Food Safety Measure – a Case of Finnish Salmonella Control Program

In this paper, indirect costs of Finnish Salmonella Control Program (FSCP) due to its trade effects are evaluated. FSCP is a part of Finnish biosecurity policies intended to shield Finnish food supply and consumption chain from salmonella outbreaks. The program directly increases costs of importing by e.g. requiring costly certificates for imports. Additionally, it may cause anxiety to suppliers of imports as there are added uncertainties in the import process. As similar requirements apply to domestic suppliers, the program should not be thought of as a technical trade barrier (TBT), however, it may affect trade flows indirectly and effects may be assessed in a similar manner as those of TBT’s. The evaluation of the trade effects is performed using a combined price wedge-gravity approach and they are quantified as tariff-equivalents. After determining the tariff equivalent, sensitivity results are provided as some of the parameter values used in the calculation are difficult to observe directly.International trade, biosecurity, welfare analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Radiation of the Inner Horizon of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om Black Hole

Despite of over thirty years of research of the black hole thermodynamics our understanding of the possible role played by the inner horizons of Reissner-Nordstr\"om and Kerr-Newman black holes in black hole thermodynamics is still somewhat incomplete: There are derivations which imply that the temperature of the inner horizon is negative and it is not quite clear what this means. Motivated by this problem we perform a detailed analysis of the radiation emitted by the inner horizon of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole. As a result we find that in a maximally extended Reissner-Nordstr\"om spacetime virtual particle-antiparticle pairs are created at the inner horizon of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole such that real particles with positive energy and temperature are emitted towards the singularity from the inner horizon and, as a consequence, antiparticles with negative energy are radiated away from the singularity through the inner horizon. We show that these antiparticles will come out from the white hole horizon in the maximally extended Reissner-Nordstr\"om spacetime, at least when the hole is near extremality. The energy spectrum of the antiparticles leads to a positive temperature for the white hole horizon. In other words, our analysis predicts that in addition to the radiation effects of black hole horizons, also the white hole horizon radiates. The black hole radiation is caused by the quantum effects at the outer horizon, whereas the white hole radiation is caused by the quantum effects at the inner horizon of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures. References added, discussion slightly expanded in Secs. I and V. To appear in IJMP

Finnish Children Producing English Vowels — Studying in an English Immersion Class Affects Vowel Production

The aim of this study was to examine how earlier second language teaching affects Finnish school children’s pronunciation of British English vowels. Two groups of Finnish children between the ages of eleven and thirteen were tested. The early learners studied in an English immersion class in a Finnish elementary school while the control group attended a regular Finnish speaking class at the same school. The task consisted of twenty three English stimulus words which included the twelve monophthong English target vowels in voiced and voiceless environments. The words were repeated seven times during the task. The participants produced the words after a native model and the target vowel qualities were then acoustically analysed. Statistical analysis revealed a group main effect. More specifically the analysis showed that the groups differed significantly in the way they produced target vowel second formant (F2) values. The F2 difference was only significant in the voiced context. Closer examination of the groups’ vowel qualities revealed that the control group tended to produce the F2 values higher than the early learner group in most of the target vowels. The higher F2 values can be an indication of more frontal tongue position or less lip rounding during vowel production

Motoric training alters speech sound perception and production – active listening does not lead into learning outcomes

Accurate speech-sound perception and production are prerequisites for communication in a non-native language. Earlier research has shown that new categorization and pronunciation patterns evolve in different learning settings and that these skills can be trained with various methods. We tested the effects of two types of training protocols on the production and identification of L2 vowels embedded in a pseudo-word context. Group 1 (Producers) participated in a listen and repeat training, where they produced the target stimulus /tᵾ:ti/ and the non-target stimulus /ty:ti/ after the example in a pseudo-randomized order; Group 2 (Listeners) was instructed to count the number of targets /tᵾ:ti/ in the same stimulus train without any motoric production movements. The results showed clearly that listen and repeat training led to plastic changes both in production and in identification, while no learning effects were obtained with the listening paradigm. This suggests a significant role of motoric experience in the acquisition of speech.Peer reviewe

The production of voicing in Namibian English stops by speakers of Khoekhoegowab

This study examines whether Namibian English spoken by L1 Khoekhoegowab speakers has word-initial stop voicing contrasts, and how they might be realized in freely produced speech. The data consists of English interviews collected from nine speakers of Namibian English. For analysis, a total of 365 words beginning with a stop-vowel sequence were extracted from the interviews, and analyzed for voice onset time (VOT). To examine the realization of voicing, the extracted words are divided into voiced and voiceless categories based on their phonological voicing in other varieties of English and their VOTs are compared statistically. The VOTs of voiceless stops are significantly longer than those of voiced stops. The results suggest a short-lag vs. aspiration contrast in word-initial stops in Namibian English and provide new information about the phonetic features of Namibian English consonants.This study examines whether Namibian English spoken by L1 Khoekhoegowab speakers has word-initial stop voicing contrasts, and how they might be realized in freely produced speech. The data consists of English interviews collected from nine speakers of Namibian English. For analysis, a total of 365 words beginning with a stop-vowel sequence were extracted from the interviews, and analyzed for voice onset time (VOT). To examine the realization of voicing, the extracted words are divided into voiced and voiceless categories based on their phonological voicing in other varieties of English and their VOTs are compared statistically. The VOTs of voiceless stops are significantly longer than those of voiced stops. The results suggest a short-lag vs. aspiration contrast in word-initial stops in Namibian English and provide new information about the phonetic features of Namibian English consonants

Phonetic training and non-native speech perception - New memory traces evolve in just three days as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN) and behavioural measures

Language-specific, automatically responding memory traces form the basis for speech sound perception and new neural representations can also evolve for non-native speech categories. The aim of this study was to find out how a three-day phonetic listen-and-repeat training affects speech perception, and whether it generates new memory traces. We used behavioural identification, goodness rating, discrimination, and reaction time tasks together with mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response registrations to determine the training effects on native Finnish speakers. We trained the subjects the voicing contrast in fricative sounds. Fricatives are not differentiated by voicing in Finnish, i.e., voiced fricatives do not belong to the Finnish phonological system. Therefore, they are extremely hard for Finns to learn. However, only after three days of training, the native Finnish subjects had learned to perceive the distinction. The results show striking changes in the MMN response; it was significantly larger on the second day after two training sessions. Also, the majority of the behavioural indicators showed improvement during training. Identification altered after four sessions of training and discrimination and reaction times improved throughout training. These results suggest remarkable language-learning effects both at the perceptual and pre-attentive neural level as a result of brief listen-and-repeat training in adult participants.</p

NON-NATIVE SPEECH SOUND PRODUCTION CHANGES EVEN WITH PASSIVE LISTENING TRAINING

The difficulty of non-native speech sound acquisition depends on several factors in addition to the central role of the mother tongue sound system. Age of exposure, amount of exposure as well as the type of training provided have been shown to have an effect on learning outcomes. In addition, theories of speech perception suggest that perception and production may either be strongly dependent upon each other as to the degree that perception triggers motoric patterns as well, or that activation of the auditory system is enough for perception so that the production system remains inactivated. In order to study whether mere exposure to auditory stimulation would result in production changes, we selected two groups of Finnish learners in a two-day listen-and-repeat training protocol. Both groups were auditively exposed to a non-native speech sound contrast embedded in a semi-synthetically produced pseudo-word context /ty:ti/ - /tʉ:ti/.  While the passive listening group merely listened to the stimulus pairs without any motoric actions, the production group actively produced the stimulus words according to the provided model. We performed acoustic analyses and extracted the values of the two lowest resonance frequencies, formant 1 (F1) and formant 2 (F2) from the productions. The results indicated no statistically significant differences between the groups, neither in the formant values nor in their standard deviations. However, as a function of training, both groups showed clear changes in the standard deviation values thus indicating changes in production performances. This suggests that both training protocols have an effect on production learning, and more importantly, that the motoric commands seem to alter on the basis of mere auditory stimulation. This further suggests that the motoric system is activated even in perceptual tasks.</p