On-line nuclear orientation and relaxation studies of Cs isotopes

The hyperfine field of CsFe has been measured to be (+)40.8(0.7)T, using the technique of on-line low temperature nuclear orientation. The time dependent relaxation of¹²¹Cs^m Fe has also been investigated using a new technique, giving a Korringa constant C_k of 0.059 (15) sK. From this, an effective relaxation time of 3.0 (0.8)s can be deduced for the short lived¹¹⁸Cs^m(T_1/2=17s). This value has then been used to extract the magnetic moment of¹¹⁸Cs^m to be |μ|=5.4 (1.1) nm.     

Untersuchung von Fetten und ?len.

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

CHAOS IN AN INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL PREDATOR-PREY MODEL

A deterministic predator-prey model describing populations as collections of autonomous individuals was used to investigate population dynamics as an emergent property of individual behaviors and actions in a simulated environment. The model's behavior was clearly chaotic for both the two species interaction and for the prey population alone. Furthermore, estimated parameters from a simple difference equation model fitted to the single-species simulation were nowhere near the chaotic region for the equation. Findings indicate that chaos may very well be characteristic of biological populations despite the findings of several empirical studies in the past, and that chaotic models can be constructed from direct observation of, and experimentation with, biological populations by focusing on individuals and their behaviors, rather than on population parameters.     

Nuclear orientation below 1 mK: Development and applications

The Oxford top-loading PrNi₅ nuclear demagnetisation stage /1/ has been further developed to reach temperatures below 1 mK. The hyperfine field for⁷¹As in nickel has been measured by low temperature nuclear orientation as 14.61(36)T. Measurements on transitions in⁷¹Ge yield spin values 3/2 (1299 kev and 1139 kev) and 5/2 (1027 kev) and 5 E2/M1 mixing ratios are given.     

Evaluation of Raman probe for oesophageal cancer diagnostics

Early detection of (pre-)cancerous changes improves prognosis, therefore in the UK patients at high risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers are enrolled on endoscopic surveillance programmes or the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme. The current gold standard technique for the detection of pre-cancerous changes in the gastrointestinal tract is histopathological analysis of biopsy tissue collected at endoscopy. This relies upon subjective assessment of morphological changes within the excised tissue samples and poor targeting of pre-malignant lesions. Raman spectroscopy offers a number of potential advantages for in vivo assessment of tissue at endoscopy. The performance of a custom built Raman probe as a biopsy targeting tool has been evaluated using excised biopsy material. Multivariate classification models have been used to demonstrate the likely ability of a miniature, confocal, fibre optic Raman probe to be used as an optical biopsy tool at endoscopy to provide spectral information in clinically practicable timescales. This technique could facilitate improved targeting of excisional biopsy with associated clinical benefits.     

Raman spectroscopy--a new method for the intra-operative assessment of axillary lymph nodes

Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy has become the standard surgical procedure for the sampling of axillary lymph nodes in breast cancer. Intra operative node assessment is currently not offered to the majority of patients but would allow definitive axillary surgery to take place immediately. This would confer benefits both to the patient and to the healthcare system. Our experimental study aims to demonstrate that a Raman spectroscopy probe device could overcome many of the disadvantages of current intra-operative analysis techniques. 38 axillary lymph nodes, 25 negative and 13 positive from 20 patients undergoing breast surgery for invasive breast cancer were assessed using a commercially available Raman spectroscopy probe. Spectra were assessed using principal component fed linear discriminant analysis trained by the histopathology results. Leave one node out cross validation achieved a sensitivity of up to 92% and a specificity of up to 100% in differentiating between normal and metastatic lymph nodes.     

The dynamic range of useful temporal fine structure cues for speech in the presence of a competing talker

Within an auditory channel, the speech waveform contains both temporal envelope (E(O)) and temporal fine structure (TFS) information. Vocoder processing extracts a modified version of the temporal envelope (E') within each channel and uses it to modulate a channel carrier. The resulting signal, E'(Carr), has reduced information content compared to the original "E(O)?+ TFS" signal. The dynamic range over which listeners make additional use of E(O)?+ TFS over E'(Carr) cues was investigated in a competing-speech task. The target-and-background mixture was processed using a 30-channel vocoder. In each channel, E(O)?+ TFS replaced E'(Carr) at either the peaks or the valleys of the signal. The replacement decision was based on comparing the short-term channel level to a parametrically varied "switching threshold," expressed relative to the long-term channel level. Intelligibility was measured as a function of switching threshold, carrier type, target-to-background ratio, and replacement method. Scores showed a dependence on all four parameters. Derived intensity-importance functions (IIFs) showed that E(O)?+ TFS information from 8-13 dB below to 10 dB above the channel long-term level was important. When E(O)?+ TFS information was added at the peaks, IIFs peaked around -2 dB, but when E(O)?+ TFS information was added at the valleys, the peaks lay around +1 dB.     

The importance for speech intelligibility of random fluctuations in "steady" background noise

Spectrally shaped steady noise is commonly used as a masker of speech. The effects of inherent random fluctuations in amplitude of such a noise are typically ignored. Here, the importance of these random fluctuations was assessed by comparing two cases. For one, speech was mixed with steady speech-shaped noise and N-channel tone vocoded, a process referred to as signal-domain mixing (SDM); this preserved the random fluctuations of the noise. For the second, the envelope of speech alone was extracted for each vocoder channel and a constant was added corresponding to the root-mean-square value of the noise envelope for that channel. This is referred to as envelope-domain mixing (EDM); it removed the random fluctuations of the noise. Sinusoidally modulated noise and a single talker were also used as backgrounds, with both SDM and EDM. Speech intelligibility was measured for N?=?12, 19, and 30, with the target-to-background ratio fixed at -7 dB. For SDM, performance was best for the speech background and worst for the steady noise. For EDM, this pattern was reversed. Intelligibility with steady noise was consistently very poor for SDM, but near-ceiling for EDM, demonstrating that the random fluctuations in steady noise have a large effect.