Comparisons of pharynx, source, formant, and pressure characteristics in operatic and musical theatre singing

Belting, a vocal technique typically cultivated in musical theatre singing, differs timbrally from operatic singing in many interesting respects. The underlying phonatory differences have not been previously investigated in detail. Yet, belting is frequently associated with disturbances of voice function. Articulatory and phonatory characteristics are investigated in a female subject who is a professional singer (co-author JL) trained in both the operatic and belting styles and in an intermediate vocal technique (“mixed”). This article presents data obtained from this subject by video-fiberoptic observation of the pharynx, inverse filtering of airflow, and measurement of subglottal pressure. The results reveal that belting was characterized by very high subglottal pressures and sound levels, and apparently also by a comparatively high degree of glottal adduction. Comparisons with other investigations of related aspects of belting and operatic singing support the assumption that the data obtained from our subject are representative for these vocal techniques.     

A study of type I intermittency of a circular differential equation under a discontinuous right-hand side

In this paper we study a circular differential equation under a discontinuous periodic input, developing a quadratic differential equations system on S¹ and a linear differential equations system in the Minkowski space M³. The symmetry groups of these two systems are, respectively, PSOo(2,1) and SOo(2,1). The Poincaré circle map is constructed exactly, and a critical value αc of the parameter is identified. Depending on α of the input amplitude the equation may exhibit periodic, subharmonic or quasiperiodic motions. When α varies from α>αc to α<αc, there undergoes an inverse tangent bifurcation; consequently, the resultant Poincaré circle map offers one route to the quasiperiodicity via a type I intermittency. In the parameter range of α<αc the orbit generated by the Poincaré circle map is either m-periodic or quasiperiodic when n/m is a rational or an irrational number.     

Binding energy of impurity states in an inverse parabolic quantum well under magnetic field

 We have investigated the effects of the magnetic field which is directed perpendicular to the well on the binding energy of the hydrogenic impurities in an inverse parabolic quantum well (IPQW) with different widths as well as different Al concentrations at the well center. The Al concentration at the barriers was always x_max=0.3. The calculations were performed within the effective mass approximation, using a variational method. We observe that IPQW structure turns into parabolic quantum well with the inversion effect of the magnetic field and donor impurity binding energy in IPQW strongly depends on the magnetic field, Al concentration at the well center and well dimensions.     

Inverse Piston Problem for the System of One-Dimensional Isentropic Flow

In this paper, the authors consider the inverse piston problem for the system of one-dimensional isentropic flow and obtain that, under suitable conditions, the piston velocity can be uniquely determined by the initial state of the gas on the right side of the piston and the position of the forward shock.     

ISLAND, revisited

This paper is in answer to the comment on the GRG paper: Lockerbie N.A. Gen. Rel. Grav. 36, 593 (2004), made by A.V. Sanders, G.T. Gillies (ibid.). N. A. Lockerbie is a member of the STEP (Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle) Science Study Team, and an Associate of the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK.     

Characterization of spherical particles using high-order neural networks and scanning flow cytometry

We retrieve the radius R, real n and imaginary k parts of the refractive index of homogeneous spherical particles using angular distribution of the light-scattering intensity. To solve the inverse light-scattering problem we use a high-order neural-network technique. The effect of network parameters on optimization is examined. The technique is evaluated for noise-corrupted input data at 0.6 μm<R<10.6 μm, 1.02<n<1.38, and 0<k<0.03. The errors of retrieval for nonabsorbing particles do not exceed 0.05 μm for radius and 0.015 for refractive index. The experimental verification is fulfilled by experimental data retrieved by means of a scanning flow cytometer. The light-scattering profiles of polystyrene beads and spherized red blood cells are processed with the high-order neural networks and a non-linear regression at Mie theory. The parameters retrieved by the high-order neural networks correlate well with the parameters retrieved by the least-square method.     

An inverse radiative transfer problem of simultaneously estimating profiles of temperature and radiative parameters from boundary intensity and temperature measurements

A parallel-plane space filled with absorbing, emitting, isotropically scattering, gray medium is studied in this paper. The boundary intensity and boundary temperature profiles are calculated for the inverse analysis. For the simultaneous estimation of temperature, absorption and scattering coefficient profiles in the medium, the sum of residuals of boundary intensity and temperature after being weighted by a balance factor is minimized through using a Newton-type iteration algorithm and the least-squares method. To avoid over-updating for the parameters, the relative updating magnitude during the iteration process is constrained not to be >0.5. It is shown that the boundary intensity measurement alone is not enough to estimate simultaneously the temperature (source) and the radiative properties (both absorption and scattering coefficients) when the measurement data contain sensitive random errors. The boundary temperature measurement can serve as a necessary supplementation to the boundary intensity to make this kind of inverse radiative transfer problem resolvable. It was shown that a compensation relationship between absorption and scattering coefficients makes it difficult to fix them accurately. Parabolic profiles for the three parameters are used to validate the estimation method. When the optical thickness approaches 4.0, the results for the radiative properties are not acceptable, although the result for temperature profile is reasonable. This means the method needs further improvements.     

THE INVERSE EIGENPROBLEM WITH RANK-ONE UPDATING AND ITS STABLITY

Let ∑, Г be two n-by-n diagonal matrices with σi,γi as their diagonals. For the inverse eigenvalue problem: look for y∈Rn such that Г + yyT is similar to ∑, we prove thatu also the sufficient condition for the solvability of this inverse problem. Its solution (set) is given explicitly. In some case, the problem is unstable. But we prove that the sums of the square of some contigious components keep stable, i.e., small sum keeps small, large sum has a small relative perturbation, see Theorem 3.     

重建吸收介质参数(ρ(3),α(3))(英)

本文考虑重建吸收介质的密度ρ（3）和吸收系数α（3）的双参数反演问题。通过波动方程特征积分的方法并引人辅助函数，我们得到了原反问题的一个等价的封闭的积分方程组。利用本文的反演方法，ρ（3）tα（3）可以由反射数据f（t）和透射数据g（t）在深度变量子下同时恢复出来。     

Some hydrodynamic aspects of 3-phase inverse fluidized bed

Hydrodynamics of 3-phase inverse fluidized bed is studied experimentally using low density particles for different liquid and gas velocities. The hydrodynamic characteristics studied include pressure drop, minimum liquid and gas fluidization velocities and phase holdups. The minimum liquid fluidization velocity determined using the bed pressure gradient, decreases with increase in gas velocity. The axial profiles of phase holdups shows that the liquid holdup increases along the bed height, whereas the solid holdup decreases down the bed. However, the gas holdup is almost uniform in the bed.