Aerodynamic and Acoustic Characteristics of Voice in Prader-Willi Syndrome

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a multisystem disorder caused by DNA abnormalities involving chromosome 15. Major characteristics are infant hypotonia, hypogonadism, mental retardation, a short stature, atypical facial appearance, and the onset of obesity due to insatiable hunger in early childhood. Also, speech and language abnormalities have been reported including voice disorders. These have seldom been studied in detail, however. This paper reports the results of an acoustic and aerodynamic investigation of the voice in 22 individuals with PWS. Two age groups were distinguished, a group of children [chronological age (CA) 6 years, 7 months through 11 years, 7 months; total intelligence quotient (TIQ) 40-88] and a group of adolescents and adults (CA 17 years, 1 month through 29 years, 5 months; TIQ 41-94). Both aerodynamic and acoustic parameters were obtained and compared with normative data from the Belgian Study Group on Voice Disorders. It was found that voice difficulties do commonly occur in individuals with PWS including impairment of frequency levels, voice quality, and poor aerodynamic capabilities.     

Catalyst-free alcoholysis of phosphane-boranes: a smooth, cheap, and efficient deprotection procedure

Catalyst-free alcoholytic deprotection of borane-protected phosphorus compounds offers a smooth, efficient, and clean alternative to existing deprotection methods. In this paper we report our results on the general applicability of deprotecting phosphane- and phosphite-borane adducts by means of simple alcoholysis without the use of molecular sieves as a catalyst. Phosphane-boranes bearing at least one aromatic substituent are readily deprotected in high yields. Borane complexes of trialkylphosphanes or phosphites, however, cannot be deprotected in this way. The main merit of our method is its simplicity: apart from evaporation of the solvent, no further work-up or purification is needed.     

Convergence of algebraic multigrid based on smoothed aggregation

Summary. We prove an abstract convergence estimate for the Algebraic Multigrid Method with prolongator defined by a disaggregation followed by a smoothing. The method input is the problem matrix and a matrix of the zero energy modes of the same problem but with natural boundary conditions. The construction is described in the case of a general elliptic system. The condition number bound increases only as a polynomial of the number of levels, and requires only a uniform weak approximation property for the aggregation operators. This property can be a-priori verified computationally once the aggregates are known. For illustration, it is also verified here for a uniformly elliptic diffusion equations discretized by linear conforming quasiuniform finite elements. Only very weak and natural assumptions on the hierarchy of aggregates are needed. Received March 1, 1998 / Revised version received January 28, 2000 / Published online: December 19, 2000     

Scheduling of power generation via large-scale nonlinear optimization

We investigate methods for solving high-dimensional nonlinear optimization problems which typically occur in the daily scheduling of electricity production: problems with a nonlinear, separable cost function, lower and upper bounds on the variables, and an equality constraint to satisfy the demand. If the cost function is quadratic, we use a modified Lagrange multiplier technique. For a nonquadratic cost function (a penalty function combining the original cost function and certain fuel constraints, so that it is generally not separable), we compare the performance of the gradient-projection method and the reduced-gradient method, both with conjugate search directions within facets of the feasible set. Numerical examples at the end of the paper demonstrate the effectiveness of the gradient-projection method to solve problems with hundreds of variables by exploitation of the special structure.     

Charged particle multiplicity distributions at 200 and 900 GeV c.m. energy

Multiplicity distributions of charged particles produced in non single-diffractive collisions between protons and antiprotons at centre of mass energies of 200 and 900 GeV are presented. The data were recorded in the UA5 streamer chambers at the CERN Collider, which was operated in a pulsed mode between the two energies. A new method to correct for acceptance limitations and inefficiencies based on the principle of maximum entropy has been used. Multiplicity distributions in full phase space and in intervals of pseudorapidity are presented in tabular form. The violation of KNO scaling in full phase space found by the UA5 group at an energy of 546 GeV is confirmed also at 200 and 900 GeV. The shape of the 900 GeV distribution in full phase space is narrower in the peak region than at 200 GeV but exhibits a pronounced high multiplicity tail. The negative binomial distribution fits data at 200 GeV in all pseudorapidity intervals and in small intervals at 900 GeV. In large intervals at 900 GeV, however, the negative binomial distribution. Fits to the partially coherent laser distribution are also presented as well as comparisons with predictions of the Dual Parton, the Fritiof and the Pythia models.