Vocal Tract Configurations in Male Alto Register Functions

Purpose

Professional male altos (countertenors) mostly use a register function, which is considered to be derived from falsetto. However, the sound produced differs in professional altos compared with the modal register or falsetto of untrained voices. The aim of this study was to analyze differences of the vocal tract shapes in male alto register functions.

Material and Methods

Dynamic real-time magnetic resonance imaging of eight frames per second was used to analyze the vocal tract profile in seven professional male altos who sang on the vowel /a/, an ascending and descending scale from G3 (196 Hz) to E4 (330 Hz). The scale included their register transition from modal register to stage (counter) falsetto and naïve falsetto.

Results

Register transitions from modal register to stage falsetto were associated with increased lip opening, jaw retraction, elevation and back positioning of the tongue, pharynx narrowing, uvula elevation, drop of larynx height, and tilting of the larynx. Differences between stage and naïve falsetto were found mostly with regard to lip opening and pharynx width.

Conclusions

The differences between the vocal tract configurations might have an impact on the acoustic characteristics observed in professional male alto register functions.     

Crystalline Pr:SrAl12O19 waveguide laser in the visible spectral region

We fabricated waveguides in Pr:SrAl(12)O(19) crystals by direct femtosecond laser writing. The propagation losses were calculated to be as low as 0.16 dB/cm at a wavelength of 633 nm. Laser oscillation in a diode-pumped waveguide at a wavelength of 643.5 nm was realized. The output power of the waveguide laser was 28.1 mW at a slope efficiency of 8%.     

On the Photophysical Properties of New Luminol Derivatives and their Synthetic Phthalimide Precursors

The photophysical properties of a series of structurally related 4-aminophthalimides and the corresponding 5-aminophthalic hydrazides (luminols) are reported. Absorption, steady-state, and time-resolved fluorescence spectra of luminols exhibited substitution, solvent, and pH dependence. Singlet lifetimes have been determined by time-resolved laser flash spectroscopy. UV spectra in gas phase and DMSO solution were calculated by TD-DFT which revealed the existence of two low-energy excited singlet states with strong pH-sensitivity.     

Nonadiabatic two-parameter charge and spin pumping in a quantum dot

We study dc charge and spin transport through a weakly coupled quantum dot, driven by a nonadiabatic periodic change of system parameters. We generalize the model of Tien and Gordon to simultaneously oscillating voltages and tunnel couplings. When applying our general result to the two-parameter charge pumping in quantum dots, we find interference effects between the oscillations of the voltage and tunnel couplings. We show that these interference effects may explain recent measurements in metallic islands. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility to electrically pump a spin current in presence of a static magnetic field.     

An adaptive Lagrange‐Galerkin method for the shallow‐water equations on the sphere

The shallow‐water equations on the sphere are compressible Navier‐Stokes equations that describe hydrostatic atmospheric dynamics. An adaptive Lagrange‐Galerkin method is applied on the spherical domain to develop a simplified global atmospheric model. Computational results show the experimental convergence of this numerical method.     

Fractal wavelet dimensions and localization

In this paper we want to give a new definition of fractal dimensions as small scale behavior of theq-energy of wavelet transforms. This is a generalization of previous multi-fractal approaches. With this particular definition we will show that the 2-dimension (=correlation dimension) of the spectral measure determines the long time behavior of the time evolution generated by a bounded self-adjoint operator acting in some Hilbert space ?. It will be proved that for φ, ψ∈? we have $$\mathop {\lim \inf }\limits_{T \to \infty } \frac{{\log \int_0^T {d\omega \left| {\left\langle {\psi \left| {e^{ - iA\omega } } \right.\phi } \right\rangle } \right|^2 } }}{{\log T}} = - \kappa ^ + (2)$$ and that $$\mathop {\lim \sup }\limits_{T \to \infty } \frac{{\log \int_0^T {d\omega \left| {\left\langle {\psi \left| {e^{ - iA\omega } } \right.\phi } \right\rangle } \right|^2 } }}{{\log T}} = - \kappa ^ - (2),$$ wherek ^±(2) are the upper and lower correlation dimensions of the spectral measure associated with ψ and ?. A quantitative version of the RAGE theorem shall also be given.