Semantic congruence in audio–haptic simulation of footsteps

In this paper we present an experiment whose goal is to investigate subjects’ ability to match pairs of synthetic auditory and haptic stimuli which simulate the sensation of walking on different surfaces. In three non-interactive conditions the audio–haptic stimuli were passively presented through a desktop system, while in three interactive conditions participants produced the audio–haptic feedback interactively while walking. Results show that material typology (i.e., solid or aggregate) is processed very consistently in both the auditory and haptic modalities. Subjects expressed a higher level of semantic congruence for those audio–haptic pairs of materials which belonged to the same typology. Furthermore, better matching ability was found for the passive case compared to the interactive one, although this may be due to the limits of the technology used for the interactive haptic simulations.     

Significance of Auditory and Kinesthetic Feedback to Singers'' Pitch Control

An accurate control of fundamental frequency (F0) is required from singers. This control relies on auditory and kinesthetic feedback. However, a loud accompaniment may mask the auditory feedback, leaving the singers to rely on kinesthetic feedback. The object of the present study was to estimate the significance of auditory and kinesthetic feedback to pitch control in 28 students beginning a professional solo singing education. The singers sang an ascending and descending triad pattern covering their entire pitch range with and without masking noise in legato and staccato and in a slow and a fast tempo. F0 was measured by means of a computer program. The interval sizes between adjacent tones were determined and their departures from equally tempered tuning were calculated. The deviations from this tuning were used as a measure of the accuracy of intonation. Statistical analysis showed a significant effect of masking that amounted to a mean impairment of pitch accuracy by 14 cent across all subjects. Furthermore, significant effects were found of tempo as well as of the staccato/legato conditions. The results indicate that auditory feedback contributes significantly to singers' control of pitch.     

Integration efficiency for speech perception within and across sensory modalities by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired individuals

In face-to-face speech communication, the listener extracts and integrates information from the acoustic and optic speech signals. Integration occurs within the auditory modality (i.e., across the acoustic frequency spectrum) and across sensory modalities (i.e., across the acoustic and optic signals). The difficulties experienced by some hearing-impaired listeners in understanding speech could be attributed to losses in the extraction of speech information, the integration of speech cues, or both. The present study evaluated the ability of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners to integrate speech information within and across sensory modalities in order to determine the degree to which integration efficiency may be a factor in the performance of hearing-impaired listeners. Auditory-visual nonsense syllables consisting of eighteen medial consonants surrounded by the vowel [a] were processed into four nonoverlapping acoustic filter bands between 300 and 6000 Hz. A variety of one, two, three, and four filter-band combinations were presented for identification in auditory-only and auditory-visual conditions: A visual-only condition was also included. Integration efficiency was evaluated using a model of optimal integration. Results showed that normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners integrated information across the auditory and visual sensory modalities with a high degree of efficiency, independent of differences in auditory capabilities. However, across-frequency integration for auditory-only input was less efficient for hearing-impaired listeners. These individuals exhibited particular difficulty extracting information from the highest frequency band (4762-6000 Hz) when speech information was presented concurrently in the next lower-frequency band (1890-2381 Hz). Results suggest that integration of speech information within the auditory modality, but not across auditory and visual modalities, affects speech understanding in hearing-impaired listeners.     

Synthesis, characterization, and controlled aggregation of biotemplated polystyrene nanodisks

Cross-linked polystyrene nanodisks were prepared by controlled polymerization of styrene and divinylbenzene in the interior of bicelles, discoidal lipid aggregates. Aggregation behavior of polymer nanodisks was studied in water, organic solvents, and solid phase. Nanodisks form stable dispersions in aqueous solutions of surfactants, such as sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). Varying SDS/nanodisk ratio allowed us to control the size of nanodisk aggregates. Nanodisks are readily solubilized in nonpolar organic solvents, such as toluene and carbon tetrachloride, to yield stable monodisperse suspensions. These findings open opportunities for creating nanodisk-based nanocomposite materials. Stable nanodisk suspension in toluene enabled small angle neutron scattering (SANS) measurements. SANS data confirmed the nanodisk diameter and allowed accurate measurement of nanodisk thickness (19.5 ± 1.0 Å). In solid phase, nanodisks aggregate in sub-micron platelets.     

Relationship Between Masking Levels and Phonatory Stability in Normal-Speaking Women

Disruption of auditory feedback such as masking has been shown to influence vocal production. A reliable finding is an increase in intensity level; an increase in fundamental frequency (F0) is a less robust finding. Research is lacking concerning the effects of auditory masking on measures of phonatory stability such as jitter and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). This study investigated changes in intensity, F0, jitter, and HNR in 22 normally speaking college aged women. Subjects produced the vowel /a/ under three conditions: no masking level (0-dB ML), 50-dB ML, and 80-dB ML. Significant differences between conditions emerged for intensity; means for the other measures were not significantly different. Intraindividual differences between conditions for each variable are discussed in the framework of auditory versus kinesthetic feedback.     

Speech perception studies using a multichannel electrotactile speech processor, residual hearing, and lipreading

Three studies are reported on the speech perception of normally hearing and hearing-impaired adults using combinations of visual, auditory, and tactile input. In study 1, mean scores for four normally hearing subjects showed that addition of tactile information, provided through the multichannel electrotactile speech processor, to either audition alone (300-Hz low-pass-filtered speech) or lipreading plus audition resulted in significant improvements in phoneme and word discrimination scores. Information transmission analyses demonstrated the effectiveness of the tactile aid in providing cues to duration, F1 and F2 features for vowels, and manner of articulation features for consonants, especially features requiring detection and discrimination of high-frequency information. In study 2, six different cutoff frequencies were used for a low-pass-filtered auditory signal. Mean scores for vowel and consonant identification were significantly higher with the addition of tactile input to audition alone at each cutoff frequency up to 1500 Hz. The mean speechtracking rate was also significantly increased by the additional tactile input up to 1500 Hz. Study 3 examined speech discrimination of three hearing-impaired adults. Additional information available through the tactile aid was shown to improve speech discrimination scores; however, the degree of increase was inversely related to the level of residual hearing. Results indicate that the electrotactile aid may be useful for patients with little residual hearing and for the severely to profoundly hearing impaired, who could benefit from the high-frequency information presented through the tactile modality, but unavailable through hearing aids.     

超声聚焦探头在固体中辐射声场的动态光弹测量方法

超声聚焦探头在声场聚焦区域具有很高的检测灵敏度和分辨力,是工业超声检测中常用的探头。聚焦探头在固体中的聚焦特性直接影响检测效果,其传统测量方法通过水中聚焦参数间接换算而来,结果存在一定的误差。动态光弹法可以直接观测透明固体中的探头辐射声场,具有直观、无反射体或水听器的浸入影响、全场观测等特征。进一步采用圆偏振光并结合Senarmont补偿法,可精确测量透明固体中探头辐射声场的绝对应力分布,给出聚焦探头在固体中的聚焦参数,包括焦距、焦柱长度和焦斑宽度。实验测量结果与有限元仿真计算及小球反射法测量结果吻合较好,表明了动态光弹法定量测量聚焦探头辐射声场的可行性。     

Accents, focus distribution, and the perceived distribution of given and new information: An experiment

This article reports on an experiment examining some perceptual consequences of correspondences between accent patterns, the distribution of plus and minus focus, and the distribution of new and given information in Dutch spoken sentences. "Accent patterns" refer here to the distribution of intonational accents over spoken sentences. Each accent marks a sentence constituent as plus focus, i.e., as highlighted by the speaker. Constituents not so marked are called minus focus. The main questions examined here are to what extent are plus focus constituents generally perceived as conveying new information, and minus focus constituents as conveying earlier introduced or given information. The linguistic material for the experiment was formed by brief radio news items, each two sentences long. Leading sentences determined the distribution of new and given information in target sentences. The accent patterns and, hence, the possible focus distributions in the target utterances were varied systematically by manipulating their synthetic pitch contours according to the rules for Dutch intonation. Subjects were asked to rate on a scale from 1-10 the acceptability of each possible combination of a leading with a target utterance. Results showed that the most preferred or acceptable distributions of new and given information closely match the distributions of plus and minus focus. It was also found that new information can hardly ever acceptably be associated with minus focus, but given information can rather often, although not always, acceptably be associated with plus focus. This appears to be limited to certain conditions, defined by a combination of syntactic and focus structure of the sentence. In these conditions, plus focus cannot be perceived only as signaling new information, but also as highlighting thematic relations with the context. These results are related to work on text-to-speech systems.     

Multi-Focus Image Fusion Based on Hessian Matrix Decomposition and Salient Difference Focus Detection

Multi-focus image fusion integrates images from multiple focus regions of the same scene in focus to produce a fully focused image. However, the accurate retention of the focused pixels to the fusion result remains a major challenge. This study proposes a multi-focus image fusion algorithm based on Hessian matrix decomposition and salient difference focus detection, which can effectively retain the sharp pixels in the focus region of a source image. First, the source image was decomposed using a Hessian matrix to obtain the feature map containing the structural information. A focus difference analysis scheme based on the improved sum of a modified Laplacian was designed to effectively determine the focusing information at the corresponding positions of the structural feature map and source image. In the process of the decision-map optimization, considering the variability of image size, an adaptive multiscale consistency verification algorithm was designed, which helped the final fused image to effectively retain the focusing information of the source image. Experimental results showed that our method performed better than some state-of-the-art methods in both subjective and quantitative evaluation.     

Effects of a professional solo singer education on auditory and kinesthetic feedback—a longitudinal study of singers'' pitch control

The significance of auditory and kinesthetic feedback to pitch control in singing was described in a previous report of this project for students at the beginning of their professional solo singer education.(1) As it seems reasonable to assume that pitch control can be improved by training, the same students were reinvestigated after 3 years of professional singing education. As in the previous study, the singers sang an ascending and descending triad pattern with and without masking noise in legato and staccato and in a slow and a fast tempo. Fundamental frequency and interval sizes between adjacent tones were determined and compared with their equivalents in the equally tempered tuning. The average deviations from these values were used as estimates of intonation accuracy. Intonation accuracy was reduced by masking noise, by staccato as opposed to legato singing, and by fast as opposed to slow performance. The contribution of the auditory feedback to pitch control was not significantly improved after education, whereas the kinesthetic feedback circuit was improved in slow legato and slow staccato tasks. The results support the assumption that the kinesthetic feedback contributes substantially to intonation accuracy.     

Auditory perception of material is fragile while action is strikingly robust

While many psychoacoustic studies have found that listeners can recover some causal properties of sound-generating objects (such as the material), comparatively little is known about the causal properties of the sound-generating actions and how they are perceived. This article reports on a study comparing the performance of listeners required to identify either the actions or the materials used to generate sound stimuli. Stimuli were recordings of a set of cylinders of two sizes and four materials (wood, plastic, glass, metal) undergoing four different actions (scraping, rolling, hitting, bouncing). Experiment 1 tested how well each sound conveyed that it was generated with a different action or material. Experiment 2 measured both accuracy and reaction times for the identification of actions and materials. Listeners were faster and more accurate at identifying the action than the material. Even for the subset of sounds for which actions and materials were equivalently well identified, listeners were faster at identifying the action than the material. These results suggest that the auditory system is well-suited to extract information about sound-generating actions.     

Elastic wave field computation in multilayered nonplanar solid structures: a mesh-free semianalytical approach

Multilayered solid structures made of isotropic, transversely isotropic, or general anisotropic materials are frequently used in aerospace, mechanical, and civil structures. Ultrasonic fields developed in such structures by finite size transducers simulating actual experiments in laboratories or in the field have not been rigorously studied. Several attempts to compute the ultrasonic field inside solid media have been made based on approximate paraxial methods like the classical ray tracing and multi-Gaussian beam models. These approximate methods have several limitations. A new semianalytical method is adopted in this article to model elastic wave field in multilayered solid structures with planar or nonplanar interfaces generated by finite size transducers. A general formulation good for both isotropic and anisotropic solids is presented in this article. A variety of conditions have been incorporated in the formulation including irregularities at the interfaces. The method presented here requires frequency domain displacement and stress Green's functions. Due to the presence of different materials in the problem geometry various elastodynamic Green's functions for different materials are used in the formulation. Expressions of displacement and stress Green's functions for isotropic and anisotropic solids as well as for the fluid media are presented. Computed results are verified by checking the stress and displacement continuity conditions across the interface of two different solids of a bimetal plate and investigating if the results for a corrugated plate with very small corrugation match with the flat plate results.     

The method of increments—a wavefunction-based ab initio correlation method for solids

An overview of wavefunction-based correlation methods generalised for the application to solids is presented. Those methods based on a preceding Hartree–Fock treatment explicitly calculate the many-body wavefunction in contrast to the density-functional theory which relies on the ground-state density of the system. This review focus on the so-called method of increments where the correlation energy of the solid is expanded in terms of localised orbitals or of a group of localised orbitals. The method of increments is applied to a great variety of materials, from covalent semiconductors to ionic insulators, from large band-gap materials like diamond to the half-metal α$\alpha$-tin, from large molecules like fullerenes over polymers, graphite to three-dimensional solids. Rare-gas crystals where the binding is van der Waals like are treated as well as solid mercury, where the metallic binding is entirely due to correlation. Strongly correlated systems are examined and the correlation driven metal–insulator transition is described at an ab initio level.     

Photoinduced deformations of beams, plates, and films

Photoresponsive solids such as nematic photoelastomers can undergo large deformations induced by light absorbed into rodlike molecules which bend and disrupt liquid crystal order. Significant variation of photoabsorption through the solid leads to nonuniform elastic deformations such as bending of beams and plates and pitting of layers. Such effects are also found in the presence of inhomogeneous thermal or swelling fields in solids or gels. We analyze the small deflection limit of these problems and show that beams made of these materials can have two elastically neutral planes, and that plates of these materials have a typical saddle shape. We also give a scaling analysis of the elasticity of photoinduced mounds and pits and speculate on their applications.     

Morphological Characterization of Flowing Particles by Image Analysis Techniques

The guidelines which are at the base of the definition of a system capable of operating on a slurry containing the solid particulate for its characterization are described. All the considerations have been developed with particular reference to the case of a granular heterogeneous material in particular, the different research problems, making a comparison with the case of static images, acquired under laboratory conditions, are pointed out. Attention was focused on problems of acquisition and digital image processing to obtain information which is clean from noise and errors. The considerations and procedures analysed show general validity and can be applied to a large number of problems linked to the “on-line” morphological characterization of particulate solids materials. Some results for morphological characteristics of lead sulphide (PbS) samples are reported.     

Imaging properties of uniaxially anisotropic negative refractive index materials

The imaging properties of uniaxially anisotropic negative refractive index materials have been investigated theoretically. Based on an accurate theoretical formulation, we have discussed in detail whether and under what conditions the slabs of uniaxially anisotropic negative refractive index materials will have the power to focus perfectly all Fourier components of an image. It was shown that if the effects of absorption and dispersion can be neglected, under some particular conditions the slabs of uniaxially anisotropic negative refractive index materials will have the power to focus perfectly all E-mode or all H-mode or both E- and H-mode Fourier components of an image. It was also shown that perfect focus cannot occur in the presence of absorption and dispersion, but if the effects of absorption and dispersion are rather small, excellent focus can still occur.     

固体物理学发展简史

固体物理学研究多体问题,是物理学的重要分支,涉及面极其广泛,也是包括材料科学等在内的多个技术学科的基础。本文论述了固体物理学的发展简史,包括初期发展史、对热性质研 究、魏德曼–弗兰兹定律、晶体微观几何结构的研究历程、自由电子气体模型、固体能带论、对固 体磁性的研究、信息时代、中国固体物理学的发展、固体物理学教材等多个部分,简述了固体物 理学发展中的大事件和具有较大影响力的科学家及其贡献。     

Cracks and pores – Their roles in the transmission of water confined in cementitious materials

Cement paste is formed through a process called hydration by combining water with a cementitious material. Concrete, the worlds most versatile and most widely used material, can then be obtained when aggregates (sand, gravel, crushed stone) are added to the paste. The quality of hardened concrete is greatly influenced by the water confined in the cementitious materials and how it is transmitted through cracks and pores. Here we demonstrate that the water transport in cracks and capillary pores of hardened cement pastes can be approximately modeled by simple equations. Our findings highlight the significance of arresting the development of cracks in cementitious materials used in repository barriers. We also show that neutron scattering is an advantageous technique for understanding how water transmission is effected by gel pore structures. Defining measurable differences in gel pores may hold a key to prediction of the reduction of water transport through cement barriers.     

Deviatoric stress: a nuisance or a gold mine?

Both synchrotron radiation and deviatoric stress were once considered to be nuisances. Now synchrotron radiation is one of the most important tools available to scientists of all disciplines and deviatoric stress is one of the most useful aspects of x-ray diffraction at extreme conditions. Samples in high-pressure devices are under true hydrostatic pressure only when surrounded by a fluid, thus limiting true hydrostatic pressure studies at ambient temperatures to pressures below about 11?GPa. Elevated temperature is able to extend this limit but has rarely been used for this purpose. Instead, noble gases have been used as pressure media as their solids are especially soft. Deviatoric stress and resultant anisotropic elastic strain in solid samples and solid media have led to many subtle errors in determinations of elastic properties and crystal structures, especially in the days before it was realized that they could be measured and were potentially a valuable source of information. In recent years, measuring anisotropic elastic strain by x-ray diffraction has provided new insights into materials strength, elastic properties, crystal structures, mechanisms of phase transitions, slip systems, lattice preferred orientation, and, of course, ways to make corrections when deviatoric stress is indeed a nuisance.     

Plasticity and strength of solids

This article reviews research conducted over the past 15 years at the intersection of the physics and mechanics of a deformable solid on the basis of the concept that plastic deformation and failure represent the evolution of shear-stability loss of a loaded material at various scale levels. This research has led to the founding of a new scientific discipline: the physical mesomechanics of materials, in which a deformable solid is regarded as a multilevel self-organizing system. The development of mechanisms and stages of plastic deformation at different scale levels conforms to the principle of scale invariance. This qualitatively changes the methods of describing the plastic deformation and failure of solids. The most pressing areas of research in the physical mesomechanics of materials are noted; these will determine the basic trends in research on the strength of solids in the next decade. Institute of Strength Physics and Materials Science, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences. Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 1, pp. 7–34, January, 1998.