Vowel spaces in Swedish adolescents with cochlear implants

This paper examines vowel production in Swedish adolescents with cochlear implants. Twelve adolescents with cochlear implants and 11 adolescents with normal hearing participated. Measurements were made of the first and second formants in all the nine long Swedish vowels. The values in hertz were bark-transformed, and two measures of the size of the vowel space were obtained. The first of them was the average Euclidean distance in the F1-F2 plane between the nine vowels and the mean F1 and F2 values of all the vowels. The second was the mean Euclidean distance in the F1-F2 plane between all the vowels. The results showed a significant difference for both vowel space measures between the two groups of adolescents. The cochlear implant users had a smaller space than the adolescents with normal hearing. In general, the size of the vowel space showed no correlations with measures of receptive and productive linguistic abilities. However, the results of an identification test showed that the listeners made more confusions of the vowels produced by speakers who had a small mean distance in the F1-F2 plane between all the vowels.     

The number of pancyclic arcs in a k‐strong tournament

A tournament is a digraph, where there is precisely one arc between every pair of distinct vertices. An arc is pancyclic in a digraph D, if it belongs to a cycle of length l, for all 3 ≤ l ≤ |V (D) |. Let p(D) denote the number of pancyclic arcs in a digraph D and let h(D) denote the maximum number of pancyclic arcs belonging to the same Hamilton cycle of D. Note that p(D) ≥ h(D). Moon showed that h(T) ≥ 3 for all strong non‐trivial tournaments, T, and Havet showed that h(T) ≥ 5 for all 2‐strong tournaments T. We will show that if T is a k‐strong tournament, with k ≥ 2, then p(T) ≥ 1/2, nk and h(T) ≥ (k + 5)/2. This solves a conjecture by Havet, stating that there exists a constant α_k, such that p(T) ≥ α_k n, for all k‐strong tournaments, T, with k ≥ 2. Furthermore, the second results gives support for the conjecture h(T) ≥ 2k + 1, which was also stated by Havet. The previously best‐known bounds when k ≥ 2 were p(T) ≥ 2k + 3 and h(T) ≥ 5. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory     

Liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry sensitivity enhancement via online sample dilution and trapping: applications in microdosing and dried blood spot (DBS) bioanalysis

A simple online sample dilution, enrichment, and cleanup technique was developed for sensitive microdosing and dried blood spot (DBS) liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometric (LC/MS/MS) bioanalysis. Samples are diluted online with water and enriched in a trap column which is subsequently switched inline with the analytical column. Excellent lansoprazole (in acetonitrile) peak shape is maintained even with an 80‐µL injection. In comparison, similar chromatographic peaks were observed only when a small volume of the same solution, i.e., 1 µL, was injected on a regular high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system, where an injection of 5 µL resulted in severe peak fronting. A substantial enhancement in sensitivity is realized in the trapping mode using large injection volumes. The trap column is washed at the beginning and at the end of each injection with aqueous and organic solvent respectively to remove matrix components. This ultimately leads to reduction of matrix effects and mass spectrometer noise, thus facilitating the utilization of protein precipitation as the sample preparation for plasma samples. A lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) of 0.5 pg/mL was demonstrated for lansoprazole in human plasma with a signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratio of 13 using a 100 µL injection. Excellent intra‐day precision and accuracy were established for lansoprazole in human plasma with good linearity (R² > 0.999) from 0.5 to 500 pg/mL. This level of LLOQ makes LC/MS/MS a practical alternative for microdosing bioanalysis, where the dose is typically 100 times lower than the therapeutic dose. The same technique was applied to quantitate lansoprazole in human whole blood employing DBS technology. With a single 3‐mm punch, i.e. ～2 µL of whole blood or ～1 µL plasma, a LLOQ of 0.1 ng/mL showed sufficient S/N ratio (40) for lansoprazole when 75 µL of extract was injected. In all, the online sample dilution, cleanup, and enrichment technique demonstrated the practical utility of LC/MS/MS in microdosing and DBS bioanalysis. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finding cheapest cycles in vertex-weighted quasi-transitive and extended semicomplete digraphs

We consider the problem of finding a minimum cost cycle in a digraph with real-valued costs on the vertices. This problem generalizes the problem of finding a longest cycle and hence is NP-hard for general digraphs. We prove that the problem is solvable in polynomial time for extended semicomplete digraphs and for quasi-transitive digraphs, thereby generalizing a number of previous results on these classes. As a byproduct of our method we develop polynomial algorithms for the following problem: Given a quasi-transitive digraph D with real-valued vertex costs, find, for each j=1,2,…,|V(D)|, j disjoint paths P₁,P₂,…,P_j such that the total cost of these paths is minimum among all collections of j disjoint paths in D.     

On conditions for regularity of solutions for a piecewise linear system

We study a piecewise linear system approximating the behaviour of a switched DC/DC converter. We give conditions for a unique limit cycle in our different cases and give examples of complicated phenomena that might occur. The stability of a state space trajectory controlled converter is addressed.     

Deformation of slow liquid and solid clusters upon deposition: A molecular-dynamics study of Al cluster impact on an Al surface

Using molecular-dynamics simulation, we investigate the self-deposition of Al_n clusters (n < 4000) on an Al substrate at velocities below the velocity of sound. Both cold crystalline and hot liquid clusters are studied. We examine the cluster deformation after impact on the surface, which we quantify by its height and base radius. At a given cluster velocity, the shape of deposited crystalline clusters is rather independent of the cluster size; only at small cluster sizes, n ? 40, the clusters are less strongly deformed. With increasing cluster size, liquid clusters are more strongly deformed than crystalline clusters. Faster projectiles become more strongly flattened by the deposition process. Even clusters depositing with vanishing velocity show a finite deformation, which is considerable for smaller clusters. At large cluster speed, clusters penetrate deeper into the (1 0 0) surface than into the (1 1 1) surface and also deform more strongly.     

When the greedy algorithm fails

We provide a characterization of the cases when the greedy algorithm may produce the unique worst possible solution for the problem of finding a minimum weight base in an independence system when the weights are taken from a finite range. We apply this theorem to TSP and the minimum bisection problem. The practical message of this paper is that the greedy algorithm should be used with great care, since for many optimization problems its usage seems impractical even for generating a starting solution (that will be improved by a local search or another heuristic).     

A Monte Carlo Sampling Scheme for the Ising Model

In this paper we describe a Monte Carlo sampling scheme for the Ising model and similar discrete-state models. The scheme does not involve any particular method of state generation but rather focuses on a new way of measuring and using the Monte Carlo data. We show how to reconstruct the entropy S of the model, from which, e.g., the free energy can be obtained. Furthermore we discuss how this scheme allows us to more or less completely remove the effects of critical fluctuations near the critical temperature and likewise how it reduces critical slowing down. This makes it possible to use simple state generation methods like the Metropolis algorithm also for large lattices.