Upward spread of masking, hearing loss, and speech recognition in young and elderly listeners

Upward spreading of masking, measured in terms of absolute masked threshold, is greater in hearing-impaired listeners than in listeners with normal hearing. The purpose of this study was to make further observations on upward-masked thresholds and speech recognition in noise in elderly listeners. Two age groups were used: One group consisted of listeners who were more than 60 years old, and the second group consisted of listeners who were less than 36 years old. Both groups had listeners with normal hearing as well as listeners with mild to moderate sensorineural loss. The masking paradigm consisted of a continuous low-pass-filtered (1000-Hz) noise, which was mixed with the output of a self-tracking, sweep-frequency Bekesy audiometer. Thresholds were measured in quiet and with maskers at 70 and 90 dB SPL. The upward-masked thresholds were similar for young and elderly hearing-impaired listeners. A few elderly listeners had lower upward-masked thresholds compared with the young control group; however, their on-frequency masked thresholds were nearly identical to the control group. A significant correlation was found between upward-masked thresholds and the Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test in elderly listeners.     

Coherent single pion production by antineutrino charged current interactions and test of PCAC

The cross section for coherent production of a single π^? meson in charged current antineutrino interactions on neon nuclei has been measured in BEBC to be (175±25) 10^?40 cm²/neon nucleus, averaged over the energy spectrum of the antineutrino wide band beam at the CERN SPS; this corresponds to (0.9±0.1) % of the total charged current \(\bar v_\mu \) cross section. The distributions of kinematical variables are in agreement with theoretical predictions based on the PCAC hypothesis and the meson dominance model; in particular, theQ ² dependence is well described by a propagator containing a massm=(1.35±0.18) GeV. The absolute value of the cross section is also in agreement with the model. This analysis thus provides a test of the PCAC hypothesis in the antineutrino energy range 5–150 GeV.     

The first,the biggest,and other such considerations

We investigate the relation between the underlying dynamics of randomly evolv ing systems and the extrema statistics for such systems. Independent processes, Fokker-Planck processes and Lévy processes are considered.     

Absolutely continuous spectrum for random Schrödinger operators on the Bethe strip

The Bethe strip of width m is the cartesian product $\mathbb {B}\times \lbrace 1,\ldots ,m\rbrace$, where $\mathbb {B}$ is the Bethe lattice (Cayley tree). We prove that Anderson models on the Bethe strip have “extended states” for small disorder. More precisely, we consider Anderson‐like Hamiltonians $H_\lambda =\frac{1}{2} \Delta \otimes 1 + 1 \otimes A\,+\,\lambda \mathcal {V}$ on a Bethe strip with connectivity K ≥ 2, where A is an m × m symmetric matrix, $\mathcal {V}$ is a random matrix potential, and λ is the disorder parameter. Given any closed interval $I\subset \big (\!-\!\sqrt{K}+a_{{\rm max}},\sqrt{K}+a_{\rm {min}}\big )$, where a_min and a_max are the smallest and largest eigenvalues of the matrix A, we prove that for λ small the random Schrödinger operator H_λ has purely absolutely continuous spectrum in I with probability one and its integrated density of states is continuously differentiable on the interval I.     

Generalized hydrodynamics of systems of Brownian particles

A generalized hydrodynamic theory is developed for systems of interacting Brownian particles on the basis of a Fokker-Planck equation. General results are derived for correlation functions, frequency- and wave-vector dependent transport coefficients. Explicit expressions for moments, cumulants and the hydrodynamic limits of the transport coefficients are given. For the special cases of overdamped systems with and without hydrodynamic interaction the general results are simplified. As an example for the application of this approach the system of charged spherical polystyrene spheres in aqueous solution is treated in detail. The generalized transport functions are evaluated in mode-mode coupling approximation and detailed numerical results are presented for various collective and single-particle properties. Finally, the relationship to a corresponding Smoluchowski approach is discussed.     

Semi-parametric estimation of covariate effects using the positive stable frailty model

Many biological and medical studies have as a response of interest the time to occurrence of some event, such as the occurrence of a particular symptom or disease, remission, relapse, death due to some specific disease, or simply death. In this paper we study the problem of assessing the effect of potential risk factors on the outcome event of interest through a parametric or semi-parametric frailty model where the lifetimes have a reason to be considered dependent. This dependence may arise because of multiple endpoints within the same individual or because, when studying a single endpoint, there are natural groupings between study subjects. The objective of this paper is to extend both parametric and semi-parametric approaches to regression analysis in which the lifetimes of individuals in a group are effected by the same random frailty which follows a positive stable distribution. Some comparisons of the properties of this frailty distribution with other frailty distributions are made and an example which assesses the effect of a treatment in a litter-matched tumorigenesis study is presented.