Деякі аспекти дослідження стародавніх українських цитр

The article is dedicated to some aspects of origin of vertical medieval Ukrainian zithers. Later they became one of the prototypes of modern bandura (Ukrainian musical instrument)

Modulation masking produced by second-order modulators

Recent studies suggest that an auditory nonlinearity converts second-order sinusoidal amplitude modulation (SAM) (i.e., modulation of SAM depth) into a first-order SAM component, which contributes to the perception of second-order SAM. However, conversion may also occur in other ways such as cochlear filtering. The present experiments explored the source of the first-order SAM component by investigating the ability to detect a 5-Hz, first-order SAM probe in the presence of a second-order SAM masker beating at the probe frequency. Detection performance was measured as a function of masker-carrier modulation frequency, phase relationship between the probe and masker modulator, and probe modulation depth. In experiment 1, the carrier was a 5-kHz sinusoid presented either alone or within a notched-noise masker in order to restrict off-frequency listening. In experiment 2, the carrier was a white noise. The data obtained in both carrier conditions are consistent with the existence of a modulation distortion component. However, the phase yielding poorest detection performance varied across experimental conditions between 0° and 180°, confirming that, in addition to nonlinear mechanisms, cochlear filtering and off-frequency listening play a role in second-order SAM perception. The estimated magnitude of the modulation distortion component ranges from 5%-12%

Les normes comptables et le monde post-Enron.

Que révèlent les scandales financiers récents (Enron, Worldcom...) ? Les failles des normes comptables, l'imbrication trop forte de certains métiers (par exemple l'audit et le conseil), l'insuffisance de la "corporate governance" et plus généralement des modes de régulation ? Comment retrouver la confiance dans un mode post-Enron ? Telles sont les questions que les deux rapports, celui de Jacques Mistral et celui de Christian de Boissieu et de Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, abordent. Après avoir mis en lumière les principales lacunes des normes comptables (évaluation des revenus et des charges, réévaluation du bilan...), le rapport de Jacques Mistral présente les deux approches de réformes des normes comptables en cours (IAS/IFRS et US GAAP) et s'interroge notamment sur leurs possibilités de convergence. Il explore également les nouveaux horizons de la communication financière, l'information extra-comptable et l'utilisation d'Internet. Le rapport de Christian de Boissieu et de Jean-Hervé Lorenzi fait une description de la filière du chiffre (métiers, structures de marché...) et constate qu'un certain nombre de sujets post-Enron sont intimement liés (normes comptables, transparence de l'information...). Le rapport s'interroge ensuite sur les équilibres essentiels à trouver ou à respecter entre la réglementation, les codes de bonne conduite, l'autorégulation ou encore le renforcement de l'éthique des affaires. Les deux rapports sont commentés par Elie Cohen et Dominique Plihon.Normes comptables;

Erratum to: A Serpent/OpenFOAM coupling for 3D burnup analysis

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Sensorineural hearing loss enhances auditory sensitivity and temporal integration for amplitude modulation.

Amplitude-modulation detection thresholds (AMDTs) were measured at 40 dB sensation level for listeners with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (age: 50-64 yr) for a carrier frequency of 500 Hz and rates of 2 and 20 Hz. The number of modulation cycles, N, varied between two and nine. The data were compared with AMDTs measured for young and older normal-hearing listeners [Wallaert, Moore, and Lorenzi (2016). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 139, 3088-3096]. As for normal-hearing listeners, AMDTs were lower for the 2-Hz than for the 20-Hz rate, and AMDTs decreased with increasing N. AMDTs were lower for hearing-impaired listeners than for normal-hearing listeners, and the effect of increasing N was greater for hearing-impaired listeners. A computational model based on the modulation-filterbank concept and a template-matching decision strategy was developed to account for the data. The psychophysical and simulation data suggest that the loss of amplitude compression in the impaired cochlea is mainly responsible for the enhanced sensitivity and temporal integration of temporal envelope cues found for hearing-impaired listeners. The data also suggest that, for AM detection, cochlear damage is associated with increased internal noise, but preserved short-term memory and decision mechanisms.N.W. was supported by a grant from Neurelec Oticon Medical. C.L. was supported by two grants from ANR (HEARFIN and HEART projects). S.D.E. was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) FOR 1732 (TPE). B.C.J.M. was supported by the EPSRC (UK, grant RG78536). This work was also supported by ANR-11-0001-02 PSL* and ANR-10-LABX-0087. We thank Nihaad Paraouty and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions relating to this study

Development of a Reduced Order Model for Fuel Burnup Analysis

Fuel burnup analysis requires a high computational cost for full core calculations, due to the amount of the information processed for the total reaction rates in many burnup regions. Indeed, they reach the order of millions or more by a subdivision into radial and axial regions in a pin-by-pin description. In addition, if multi-physics approaches are adopted to consider the effects of temperature and density fields on fuel consumption, the computational load grows further. In this way, the need to find a compromise between computational cost and solution accuracy is a crucial issue in burnup analysis. To overcome this problem, the present work aims to develop a methodological approach to implement a Reduced Order Model (ROM), based on Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD), in fuel burnup analysis. We verify the approach on 4 years of burnup of the TMI-1 unit cell benchmark, by reconstructing fuel materials and burnup matrices over time with different levels of approximation. The results show that the modeling approach is able to reproduce reactivity and nuclide densities over time, where the accuracy increases with the number of basis functions employed

Robust Neuronal Discrimination in Primary Auditory Cortex Despite Degradations of Spectro-temporal Acoustic Details: Comparison Between Guinea Pigs with Normal Hearing and Mild Age-Related Hearing Loss

International audienceThis study investigated to which extent the primary auditory cortex of young normal-hearing and mild hearing-impaired aged animals is able to maintain invariant representation of critical temporal-modulation features when sounds are submitted to degradations of fine spectro-temporal acoustic details. This was achieved by recording ensemble of cortical responses to conspecific vocalizations in guinea pigs with either normal hearing or mild age-related sensorineural hearing loss. The vocalizations were degraded using a tone vocoder. The neuronal responses and their discrimination capacities (estimated by mutual information) were analyzed at single recording and population levels. For normal-hearing animals, the neuronal responses decreased as a function of the number of the vocoder frequency bands, so did their discriminative capacities at the single recording level. However, small neuronal populations were found to be robust to the degradations induced by the vocoder. Similar robustness was obtained when broadband noise was added to exacerbate further the spectro-temporal distortions produced by the vocoder. A comparable pattern of robustness to degradations in fine spectro-temporal details was found for hearing-impaired animals. However, the latter showed an overall decrease in neuronal discrimination capacities between vocalizations in noisy conditions. Consistent with previous studies, these results demonstrate that the primary auditory cortex maintains robust neural representation of temporal envelope features for communication sounds under a large range of spectro-temporal degradations

Dual Coding of Frequency Modulation in the Ventral Cochlear Nucleus.

Frequency modulation (FM) is a common acoustic feature of natural sounds and is known to play a role in robust sound source recognition. Auditory neurons show precise stimulus-synchronized discharge patterns that may be used for the representation of low-rate FM. However, it remains unclear whether this representation is based on synchronization to slow temporal envelope (ENV) cues resulting from cochlear filtering or phase locking to faster temporal fine structure (TFS) cues. To investigate the plausibility of those encoding schemes, single units of the ventral cochlear nucleus of guinea pigs of either sex were recorded in response to sine FM tones centered at the unit's best frequency (BF). The results show that, in contrast to high-BF units, for modulation depths within the receptive field, low-BF units (<4 kHz) demonstrate good phase locking to TFS. For modulation depths extending beyond the receptive field, the discharge patterns follow the ENV and fluctuate at the modulation rate. The receptive field proved to be a good predictor of the ENV responses for most primary-like and chopper units. The current in vivo data also reveal a high level of diversity in responses across unit types. TFS cues are mainly conveyed by low-frequency and primary-like units and ENV cues by chopper and onset units. The diversity of responses exhibited by cochlear nucleus neurons provides a neural basis for a dual-coding scheme of FM in the brainstem based on both ENV and TFS cues.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Natural sounds, including speech, convey informative temporal modulations in frequency. Understanding how the auditory system represents those frequency modulations (FM) has important implications as robust sound source recognition depends crucially on the reception of low-rate FM cues. Here, we recorded 115 single-unit responses from the ventral cochlear nucleus in response to FM and provide the first physiological evidence of a dual-coding mechanism of FM via synchronization to temporal envelope cues and phase locking to temporal fine structure cues. We also demonstrate a diversity of neural responses with different coding specializations. These results support the dual-coding scheme proposed by psychophysicists to account for FM sensitivity in humans and provide new insights on how this might be implemented in the early stages of the auditory pathway

Economie politique de la LOLF.

La loi organique sur les lois de finances (LOLF), adoptée en 2001, est pleinement mise en application depuis janvier 2006. Cette loi s'inscrit dans un mouvement visant « à substituer un fonctionnement managérial à un fonctionnement juridique » basé sur deux grands principes : l'amélioration de la gestion publique et la transparence. Moins d'un an après la pleine mise en oeuvre de la LOLF et un an après le démarrage des audits de modernisation, ministère par ministère, qui l'accompagnent, ce rapport vise à souligner les enjeux de la réforme budgétaire pour l'État, pour l'organisation administrative et le management public, mais aussi pour l'économie française. Quatre questions sont successivement abordées, avec à l'appui des compléments figurant en annexe de ce rapport et rédigés par différentes personnalités : quels sont les principaux fondements de la réforme budgétaire ? Quelles leçons tirer des expériences menées en la matière à l'étranger ? Quels sont les principaux apports et défis de la LOLF ? Quelles principales recommandations déduire de ce « voyage » dans le nouvel espace budgétaire français ?This report focuses on the principles presiding over the implementation of the LOLF, which, the authors note, is part of a movement towards ‘the substitution of managerial functioning for legal functioning’ based on two major principles: the improvement of public sector management and transparency.LOLF;