Production of the word-final English /t/-/d/ contrast by native speakers of English, Mandarin, and Spanish.

The primary aim of this study was to determine if adults whose native language permits neither voiced nor voiceless stops to occur in word-final position can master the English word-final /t/-/d/ contrast. Native English-speaking listeners identified the voicing feature in word-final stops produced by talkers in five groups: native speakers of English, experienced and inexperienced native Spanish speakers of English, and experienced and inexperienced native Mandarin speakers of English. Contrary to hypothesis, the experienced second language (L2) learners' stops were not identified significantly better than stops produced by the inexperienced L2 learners; and their stops were correctly identified significantly less often than stops produced by the native English speakers. Acoustic analyses revealed that the native English speakers made vowels significantly longer before /d/ than /t/, produced /t/-final words with a higher F1 offset frequency than /d/-final words, produced more closure voicing in /d/ than /t/, and sustained closure longer for /t/ than /d/. The L2 learners produced the same kinds of acoustic differences between /t/ and /d/, but theirs were usually of significantly smaller magnitude. Taken together, the results suggest that only a few of the 40 L2 learners examined in the present study had mastered the English word-final /t/-/d/ contrast. Several possible explanations for this negative finding are presented. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the native English listeners made perceptual use of the small, albeit significant, vowel duration differences produced in minimal pairs by the nonnative speakers. A significantly stronger correlation existed between vowel duration differences and the listeners' identifications of final stops in minimal pairs when the perceptual judgments were obtained in an "edited" condition (where post-vocalic cues were removed) than in a "full cue" condition. This suggested that listeners may modify their identification of stops based on the availability of acoustic cues.     

Evaluating the function of phonetic perceptual phenomena within speech recognition: an examination of the perception of /d/-/t/ by adult cochlear implant users

This study examined whether cochlear implant users must perceive differences along phonetic continua in the same way as do normal hearing listeners (i.e., sharp identification functions, poor within-category sensitivity, high between-category sensitivity) in order to recognize speech accurately. Adult postlingually deafened cochlear implant users, who were heterogeneous in terms of their implants and processing strategies, were tested on two phonetic perception tasks using a synthetic /da/-/ta/ continuum (phoneme identification and discrimination) and two speech recognition tasks using natural recordings from ten talkers (open-set word recognition and forced-choice /d/-/t/ recognition). Cochlear implant users tended to have identification boundaries and sensitivity peaks at voice onset times (VOT) that were longer than found for normal-hearing individuals. Sensitivity peak locations were significantly correlated with individual differences in cochlear implant performance; individuals who had a /d/-/t/ sensitivity peak near normal-hearing peak locations were most accurate at recognizing natural recordings of words and syllables. However, speech recognition was not strongly related to identification boundary locations or to overall levels of discrimination performance. The results suggest that perceptual sensitivity affects speech recognition accuracy, but that many cochlear implant users are able to accurately recognize speech without having typical normal-hearing patterns of phonetic perception.     

Cross-language specialization in phonetic processing: English and Hindi perception of /w/-/v/ speech and nonspeech

This study examined the perceptual specialization for native-language speech sounds, by comparing native Hindi and English speakers in their perception of a graded set of English /w/-/v/ stimuli that varied in similarity to natural speech. The results demonstrated that language experience does not affect general auditory processes for these types of sounds; there were strong cross-language differences for speech stimuli, and none for stimuli that were nonspeech. However, the cross-language differences extended into a gray area of speech-like stimuli that were difficult to classify, suggesting that the specialization occurred in phonetic processing prior to categorization.     

Trading relations in the perception of /r/-/l/ by Japanese learners of English

The role of language-specific factors in phonetically based trading relations was examined by assessing the ability of 20 native Japanese speakers to identify and discriminate stimuli of two synthetic /r/-/l/ series that varied temporal and spectral parameters independently. Results of forced-choice identification and oddity discrimination tasks showed that the nine Japanese subjects who were able to identify /r/ and /l/ reliably demonstrated a trading relation similar to that of Americans. Discrimination results reflected the perceptual equivalence of temporal and spectral parameters. Discrimination by the 11 Japanese subjects who were unable to identify the /r/-/l/ series differed significantly from the skilled Japanese subjects and native English speakers. However, their performance could not be predicted on the basis of acoustic dissimilarity alone. These results provide evidence that the trading relation between temporal and spectral cues for the /r/-/l/ contrast is not solely attributable to general auditory or language-universal phonetic processing constraints, but rather is also a function of phonemic processes that can be modified in the course of learning a second language.     

Differential use of temporal cues to the /s/-/z/ contrast by native and non-native speakers of English

This study examined the effect of linguistic experience on perception of the English /s/-/z/ contrast in word-final position. The durations of the periodic ("vowel") and aperiodic ("fricative") portions of stimuli, ranging from peas to peace, were varied in a 5 X 5 factorial design. Forced-choice identification judgments were elicited from two groups of native speakers of American English differing in dialect, and from two groups each of native speakers of French, Swedish, and Finnish differing in English-language experience. The results suggested that the non-native subjects used cues established for the perception of phonetic contrasts in their native language to identify fricatives as /s/ or /z/. Lengthening vowel duration increased /z/ judgments in all eight subject groups, although the effect was smaller for native speakers of French than for native speakers of the other languages. Shortening fricative duration, on the other hand, significantly decreased /z/ judgments only by the English and French subjects. It did not influence voicing judgments by the Swedish and Finnish subjects, even those who had lived for a year or more in an English-speaking environment. These findings raise the question of whether adults who learn a foreign language can acquire the ability to integrate multiple acoustic cues to a phonetic contrast which does not exist in their native language.     

Assimilation and contrast in the phonetic perception of vowels.

The perceptual mechanisms of assimilation and contrast in the phonetic perception of vowels were investigated. In experiment 1, 14 stimulus continua were generated using an /i/-/e/-/a/ vowel continuum. They ranged from a continuum with both ends belonging to the same phonemic category in Japanese, to a continuum with both ends belonging to different phonemic categories. The AXB method was employed and the temporal position of X was changed under three conditions. In each condition ten subjects were required to judge whether X was similar to A or to B. The results demonstrated that assimilation to the temporally closer sound occurs if the phonemic categories of A and B are the same and that contrast to the temporally closer sound occurs if A and B belong to different phonemic categories. It was observed that the transition from assimilation to contrast is continuous except in the /i'/-X-/e/ condition. In experiment 2, the total duration of t 1 (between A and X) and t 2 (between X and B) was changed under five conditions. One stimulus continuum consisted of the same phonemic category in Japanese and the other consisted of different phonemic categories. Six subjects were required to make similarity judgements of X. The results demonstrated that the occurrence of assimilation and contrast to the temporally closer sound seemed to be constant under each of the five conditions. The present findings suggest that assimilation and contrast are determined by three factors: the temporal position of the three stimuli, the acoustic distance between the three stimuli on the stimulus continuum, and the phonemic categories of the three stimuli.     

Acoustic and perceptual evaluation of Mandarin tone productions before and after perceptual training

Training American listeners to perceive Mandarin tones has been shown to be effective, with trainees' identification improving by 21%. Improvement also generalized to new stimuli and new talkers, and was retained when tested six months after training [Y. Wang et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106, 3649-3658 (1999)]. The present study investigates whether the tone contrasts gained perceptually transferred to production. Before their perception pretest and after their post-test, the trainees were recorded producing a list of Mandarin words. Their productions were first judged by native Mandarin listeners in an identification task. Identification of trainees' post-test tone productions improved by 18% relative to their pretest productions, indicating significant tone production improvement after perceptual training. Acoustic analyses of the pre- and post-training productions further reveal the nature of the improvement, showing that post-training tone contours approximate native norms to a greater degree than pretraining tone contours. Furthermore, pitch height and pitch contour are not mastered in parallel, with the former being more resistant to improvement than the latter. These results are discussed in terms of the relationship between non-native tone perception and production as well as learning at the suprasegmental level.     

Phonetic training with acoustic cue manipulations: a comparison of methods for teaching English /r/-/l/ to Japanese adults

Recent work [Iverson et al. (2003) Cognition, 87, B47-57] has suggested that Japanese adults have difficulty learning English /r/ and /l/ because they are overly sensitive to acoustic cues that are not reliable for /r/-/l/ categorization (e.g., F2 frequency). This study investigated whether cue weightings are altered by auditory training, and compared the effectiveness of different training techniques. Separate groups of subjects received High Variability Phonetic Training (natural words from multiple talkers), and 3 techniques in which the natural recordings were altered via signal processing (All Enhancement, with F3 contrast maximized and closure duration lengthened; Perceptual Fading, with F3 enhancement reduced during training; and Secondary Cue Variability, with variation in F2 and durations increased during training). The results demonstrated that all of the training techniques improved /r/-/l/ identification by Japanese listeners, but there were no differences between the techniques. Training also altered the use of secondary acoustic cues; listeners became biased to identify stimuli as English /l/ when the cues made them similar to the Japanese /r/ category, and reduced their use of secondary acoustic cues for stimuli that were dissimilar to Japanese /r/. The results suggest that both category assimilation and perceptual interference affect English /r/ and /l/ acquisition.     

The limits of training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: eight case studies

Eight monolingual Japanese listeners were trained to identify English /r/ and /l/ by using 560 training tokens produced by ten talkers in three positions (200 word initial, 200 consonant cluster, and 160 intervocalic tokens). Their baseline performance and transfer of learning were measured using 200 word initial and 200 consonant cluster tokens produced by additional ten talkers. Long-term training (15 days) with feedback indeed increased sensitivity to the nontraining tokens, but tremendous individual differences were found in terms of initial and final sensitivity and response bias. Even after training, however, there remained some tokens for each subject that were misidentified at a level significantly below chance, suggesting that truly nativelike identification of /r/ and /l/ may never be achieved by adult Japanese learners of English.     

On the possible role of auditory short-term adaptation in perception of the prevocalic [m]-[n] contrast

Acoustic information about the place of articulation of a prevocalic nasal consonant is distributed over two distinct signal portions, the nasal murmur and the onset of the following vowel. The spectral properties of these signal portions are perceptually important, as is their relationship (the pattern of spectral change). A series of experiments was conducted to investigate to what extent relational place of articulation information derives from a peripheral auditory interaction, viz., short-term adaptation caused by the murmur. Experimental manipulations intended to disrupt the effects of such adaptation included separation of the murmur and the vowel by intervals of silence, presentation to different ears, and reversal of order. Other tests of the possible role of adaptation included manipulation of murmur duration, murmur-vowel cross splicing, and high-pass filtering of the excised vowel onset. While the results of several experiments were compatible with the peripheral adaptation hypothesis, others did not support it. An alternative hypothesis, that the manner cues provided by the murmur are crucial for accurate place judgments, was also discredited. It was concluded that, at least under good listening conditions, the perception of spectral relationships does not depend on peripheral auditory enhancement and probably rests on a central comparison process.     

Study of the reactions 118Sn(d,t) and98Mo(d,t): (I). Spectroscopy of 117Sn and 97Mo

The vector analyzing power and differential cross section have been measured at a deuteron energy of 12.0 MeV for ${}^{118}\text{Sn}\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{t}\text{)}$ transitions to six states of ¹¹⁷Sn (E_x = 0.0, 0.16, 0.31, 0.71, 1.02 and 1.18 MeV), for ${}^{98}\text{Mo}\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{t}\text{)}$ transitions to eight states of ⁹⁷Mo (E_x = 0.0, 0.68, 0.72, 0.89, 1.12, 1.28, 2.39 and 2.52 MeV), and for ${}^{118}\text{Sn}\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{d}\text{)}\text{and}{}^{98}\text{Mo}\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{d}\text{)}$. Deuteron optical model potentials were obtained from analysis of the elastic scattering measurements, and were used in a DWBA analysis of the $\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{t}\text{)}$ results. Comparison of the measurements and DWBA predictions for σ(θ) and for iT₁₁(θ) allows unambiguous determination of tl_n and j_n for all ¹¹⁸Sn(d, t) and most ⁹⁸Mo(d, t) transitions. Differences in the triton energy relative to the Coulomb barrier cause marked qualitative differences in the measured cross sections and analyzing powers between ${}^{118}\text{Sn}\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{t}\text{)}\text{and}{}^{98}\text{Mo}\text{(}\text{d}\text{,}\text{t}\text{)}$ transitions of the same l_n and j_n.     

Cryopreservation of winter-dormant apple buds: II - tissue water status after desiccation at -4C and before further cooling

The established protocol for the cryopreservation of winter-dormant Malus buds requires that stem explants, containing a single, dormant bud are desiccated at -4 degree C, for up to 14 days, to reduce their water content to 25-30 percent of fresh weight. Using three apple cultivars, with known differences in response to cryopreservation, the pattern of evaporative water loss has been characterised, including early freezing events in the bud and cortical tissues that allow further desiccation by water migration to extracellular ice. There were no significant differences between cultivars in this respect or in the proportions of tissue water lost during the desiccation process. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (to -90 degree C) of intact buds indicated that bud tissues of the cultivar with the poorest response to cryopreservation had the highest residual water content at the end of the desiccation process and froze at the highest temperature.     

Anomalous behavior of l = 0 transitions in Mo(d,p) and Mo(d,t) reactions

The states of ⁹⁹Mo dominantly populated by l = 0 transitions in ⁹⁸Mo(d,p) and in ¹⁰⁰Mo(d,t) are not the same. The ratio S(d,t)/S(d,p) for these states differs by a factor of 21 which is an order of magnitude larger than in any other known case. This represents a breakdown of the quasi-particle model.     

注入Ar+的蓝宝石晶体退火前后光致发光谱的分析

对注入Ar⁺后不同晶面取向的蓝宝石晶体在不同退火条件下的光致发光谱进行了分析.分析结果表明:三种晶面取向的蓝宝石样品经Ar⁺注入后,其光致发光谱中均出现了新的位于506nm处的发光峰;真空和空气气氛下的退火均对样品在506nm处的发光有增强作用,不同晶面取向的样品发光增强程度不同,且发光增强至最大时的退火温度也不同,空气气氛下的退火使样品发光增强程度更为显著.由此可以看出,退火气氛、退火温度和晶面取向均对样品发光峰强度有影响. 关键词： 2O₃')" href="#">Al₂O₃ 离子注入 退火 光致发光谱     

A study of 50V using the direct reactions 49Ti (3He,d) and 51V(d,t)

Energy levels in ⁵⁰V up to 4.3 MeV have been studied using the ⁴⁹Ti(³He, d)⁵⁰V and ⁵¹V(d,t)⁵⁰V reactions with ³He particles of 22 MeV and deuterons of 19.5 MeV incident energy. More than eighty levels are seen, with angular distributions taken for forty-one levels in the (³He, d) reaction and for the ten lowest levels in the (d, t) reaction. The angular distributions are compared with the distorted-wave Born approximation (DWBA) to extract the l-values of the transferred nucleons and obtain the spectroscopic strengths. In the stripping reaction, a small amount of l = 0 and l = 2 strength is seen, indicating the presence of s and d proton holes in the g.s. of ⁴⁹Ti. The results are compared with a recent shell-model calculation based on an $\text{(}\text{f}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>7</mtext><mtext>2</mtext>}}\text{)}{}^{\mathrm{n}}$ configuration, and show qualitative agreement.     

提高验证牛顿第二定律实验精度的创新和改进

在验证牛顿第二定律实验中,除了教会学生动手操作、数据采集与处理外,还要向学生传授物理实验思想、实验设计方案、数学模型建立、误差分析与误差纠正等方面的内容。笔者撰写此论文,意在通过挖掘该实验创新知识点,以便达到培养学生创新思维和创造力的目的。     

X-ray absorption analysis of sputter-grown Co/Pt stackings before and after helium irradiation

We have studied the local order around cobalt atoms in Pt/Co/Pt layered systems gradually modified by irradiation using 30 keV helium ions. Using X-ray diffraction and X-ray Absorption Fine Structure, we have determined the crystallographic order, the number of Co-Co and Co-Pt bonds and the corresponding bond lengths both in-plane and in the perpendicular direction. The comparison with an interdiffusion model highlights the unexpected complexity of the initial Pt/Co/Pt nanostructure. We use the Néel/Bruno model of magnetic anisotropy to correlate the structure and the magnetic hysteresis properties. We then identify the structural consequences of irradiation onto the short range order. The irradiation induces a substitutional mixing maintaining the initial crystallographic structure. We confirm that the mixing rate is in agreement with a ballistic mechanism of mixing. In addition, we show that the previously reported irradiation-induced controlled decrease of the magnetic anisotropy can not be solely attributed to Co-Pt intermixing: irradiation also significantly releases the 3.4% tensile strain of the cobalt-rich dense planes. We finally speculate on the class of magnetic materials the concept of light ion irradiation could be extended to.     

Surface and interfacial properties of PVDF/acrylic copolymer blends before and after UV exposure

Morphological and chemical properties of both the surface and interface of poly(vinylidene fluoride)/poly(methyl methacrylate)-co-poly(ethyl acrylate) (PVDF/PMMA-co-PEA) blend films have been investigated before and after the samples were exposed to ultraviolet (UV) irradiation using a xenon arc lamp at 50 °C and 9% relative humidity (RH) for 7 months. Surface and interfacial morphologies were studied by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Chemical composition information was obtained by confocal Raman microscopy, attenuated total reflection-FTIR spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and contact angle measurements. Results show an enrichment of the PVDF material at the air surface, while the acrylic copolymer enriches the interface. Blends having greater than 50% mass fraction of PVDF show little change in the surface morphology after UV exposure for 7 months. However, for a lower PVDF content, blends exhibit significant degradation of PMMA-co-PEA copolymer and a much rougher surface after UV exposure. Microstructural changes in the PVDF spherulites are also observed after UV degradation. It is found that the surface and interfacial morphologies are correlated with the chemical properties.