Adaptation by normal listeners to upward spectral shifts of speech: Implications for cochlear implants

Multi-channel cochlear implants typically present spectral information to the wrong ''place'' in the auditory nerve array, because electrodes can only be inserted partway into the cochlea. Although such spectral shifts are known to cause large immediate decrements in performance in simulations, the extent to which listeners can adapt to such shifts has yet to be investigated. Here, the effects of a four-channel implant in normal listeners have been simulated, and performance tested with unshifted spectral information and with the equivalent of a 6.5-mm basalward shift on the basilar membrane (1.3-2.9 octaves, depending on frequency). As expected, the unshifted simulation led to relatively high levels of mean performance (e;g., 64% of words in sentences correctly identified) whereas the shifted simulation led to very poor results (e.g., 1% of words). However, after just nine 20-min sessions of connected discourse tracking with the shifted simulation, performance improved significantly for the identification of intervocalic consonants, medial vowels in monosyllables, and words in sentences (30% of words). Also, listeners were able to track connected discourse of shifted signals without lipreading at rates up to 40 words per minute. Although we do not know if complete adaptation to the shifted signals is possible, it is clear that short-term experiments seriously exaggerate the long-term consequences of such spectral shifts. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)02012-3]

The Application of a Cylindrical-spherical Floating Ring Bearing as a Device to Control Stability of Turbogenerators

The development of a new device to control stability of turbogenerators is described. The device comprises a floating ring installed between the journal and bearing housing of a fluid film bearing. The journal and the inner surface of the ring are cylindrical while the outer surface of the ring and bearing surface are spherical providing axial location of the ring and self-alignment of the bearing. The employment of this device would lead to a consistent machine performance. System stability may be controlled by changing a number of bearing and floating ring parameters. This device also offers an additional advantage of having a very low frictional characteristic. A feasibility study was carried out to investigate the suitability of the new device to turbogenerator applications. Both theoretical analysis and experimental observations were carried out. Initial results suggest that the new floating ring device is a competitive alternative to other conventional arrangements

Energy absorption by "sparse" systems: beyond linear response theory

The analysis of the response to driving in the case of weakly chaotic or weakly interacting systems should go beyond linear response theory. Due to the "sparsity" of the perturbation matrix, a resistor network picture of transitions between energy levels is essential. The Kubo formula is modified, replacing the "algebraic" average over the squared matrix elements by a "resistor network" average. Consequently the response becomes semi-linear rather than linear. Some novel results have been obtained in the context of two prototype problems: the heating rate of particles in Billiards with vibrating walls; and the Ohmic Joule conductance of mesoscopic rings driven by electromotive force. Respectively, the obtained results are contrasted with the "Wall formula" and the "Drude formula".Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, short pedagogical review. Proceedings of FQMT conference (Prague, 2011). Ref correcte

Frequency-sweep examination for wave mode identification in multimodal ultrasonic guided wave signal

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Ultrasonic guided waves can be used to assess and monitor long elements of a structure from a single position. The greatest challenges for any guided wave system are the plethora of wave modes arising from the geometry of the structural element which propagate with a range of frequency-dependent velocities and the interpretation of these combined signals reflected by discontinuities in the structural element. In this paper, a novel signal processing technique is presented using a combination of frequency-sweep measurement, sampling rate conversion, and Fourier transform. The technique is applied to synthesized and experimental data to identify different modes in complex ultrasonic guided wave signals. It is demonstrated throughout the paper that the technique also has the capability to derive the time of flight and group velocity dispersion curve of different wave modes in field inspections. © 2014 IEEE

Modelling the Galactic Magnetic Field on the Plane in 2D

We present a method for parametric modelling of the physical components of the Galaxy's magnetised interstellar medium, simulating the observables, and mapping out the likelihood space using a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo analysis. We then demonstrate it using total and polarised synchrotron emission data as well as rotation measures of extragalactic sources. With these three datasets, we define and study three components of the magnetic field: the large-scale coherent field, the small-scale isotropic random field, and the ordered field. In this first paper, we use only data along the Galactic plane and test a simple 2D logarithmic spiral model for the magnetic field that includes a compression and a shearing of the random component giving rise to an ordered component. We demonstrate with simulations that the method can indeed constrain multiple parameters yielding measures of, for example, the ratios of the magnetic field components. Though subject to uncertainties in thermal and cosmic ray electron densities and depending on our particular model parametrisation, our preliminary analysis shows that the coherent component is a small fraction of the total magnetic field and that an ordered component comparable in strength to the isotropic random component is required to explain the polarisation fraction of synchrotron emission. We outline further work to extend this type of analysis to study the magnetic spiral arm structure, the details of the turbulence as well as the 3D structure of the magnetic field.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, updated to published MNRAS versio

Rate of energy absorption by a closed ballistic ring

We make a distinction between the spectroscopic and the mesoscopic conductance of closed systems. We show that the latter is not simply related to the Landauer conductance of the corresponding open system. A new ingredient in the theory is related to the non-universal structure of the perturbation matrix which is generic for quantum chaotic systems. These structures may created bottlenecks that suppress the diffusion in energy space, and hence the rate of energy absorption. The resulting effect is not merely quantitative: For a ring-dot system we find that a smaller Landauer conductance implies a smaller spectroscopic conductance, while the mesoscopic conductance increases. Our considerations open the way towards a realistic theory of dissipation in closed mesoscopic ballistic devices.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, published version with updated ref

Total Quantum Zeno effect and Intelligent States for a two level system in a squeezed bath

In this work we show that by frequent measurements of adequately chosen observables, a complete suppression of the decay in an exponentially decaying two level system interacting with a squeezed bath is obtained. The observables for which the effect is observed depend on the the squeezing parameters of the bath. The initial states which display Total Zeno Effect are intelligent states of two conjugate observables associated to the electromagnetic fluctuations of the bath.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure