Spectral enhancement of Polish vowels to improve their identification by hearing impaired listeners

Abnormalities in the cochlear function usually cause broadening of the auditory filters which reduces the speech intelligibility. An attempt to apply a spectral enhancement algorithm has been undertaken to improve the identification of Polish vowels by subjects with cochlear-based hearing-impairment. The identification scores of natural (unprocessed) vowels and spectrally enhanced (processed) vowels has been measured for hearing-impaired subjects. It has been found that spectral enhancement improves vowel scores by about 10% for those subjects, however, a wide variation in individual performance among subjects has been observed. The overall vowels identification scores obtained were 85% for natural vowels and 96% for spectrally enhanced vowels.     

Synthesis and Photochemistry of Novel 3,5-Diacetyl-1,4-dihydropyridines. II [1]

In continuation of previous work some novel 3,5-diacetyl-1,4-dihydropyridine derivatives were synthesized and their photochemical behavior was studied under oxygen and argon atmosphere. Oxidation of the dihydropyridine ring and formation of pyridine derivatives was the result of the reaction. The presence of oxygen affects not only on the rate of oxidation, but also the formation of some unidentified by-products was observed on irradiation under this atmosphere.     

Practical algorithms for transposition-invariant string-matching

We consider the problems of (1) longest common subsequence (LCS) of two given strings in the case where the first may be shifted by some constant (that is, transposed) to match the second, and (2) transposition-invariant text searching using indel distance. These problems have applications in music comparison and retrieval. We introduce two novel techniques to solve these problems efficiently. The first is based on the branch and bound method, the second on bit-parallelism. Our branch and bound algorithm computes the longest common transposition-invariant subsequence (LCTS) in time O((m²+loglogσ)logσ) in the best case and O((m²+logσ)σ) in the worst case, where m and σ, respectively, are the length of the strings and the size of the alphabet. On the other hand, we show that the same problem can be solved by using bit-parallelism and thus obtain a speedup of O(w/logm) over the classical algorithms, where the computer word has w bits. The advantage of this latter algorithm over the present bit-parallel ones is that it allows the use of more complex distances, including general integer weights. Since our branch and bound method is very flexible, it can be further improved by combining it with other efficient algorithms such as our novel bit-parallel algorithm. We experiment on several combination possibilities and discuss which are the best settings for each of those combinations. Our algorithms are easily extended to other musically relevant cases, such as δ-matching and polyphony (where there are several parallel texts to be considered). We also show how our bit-parallel algorithm is adapted to text searching and illustrate its effectiveness in complex cases where the only known competing method is the use of brute force.     

Measurement of the K α to L α and K β to L β intensity ratios of seven elements in the atomic number range 52≤ Z ≤62 using photoionization at 59.5 keV1

The Kα to Lα and Kβ to Lβ intensity ratios of seven elements have been measured following photoionization at 59.5 keV by using a Si (Li) detector (FWHM=155 eV at 5.96 keV). The intensity ratios were determined by measuring K and L x-rays emitted from a standard target of a given element. The theoretical values of the Kα to Lα and Kβ to Lβ intensity ratios were calculated using theoretically tabulated values of shell/subshell photoionization cross sections, fluorescence yields, Coster-Kronig transition probabilities, and radiative decay rates for ηKLi≠ and ηKLi=0. The measured values are in good agreement with theoretical results. From Optika i Spektroskopiya, Vol. 97, No. 2, 2004, pp. 186–189. Original English Text Copyright ? 2004 by A. Kü?ük?nder, S?ğüt, E. Kü?ük?nder, Büyükkasap. This article was submitted by the authors in English.     

Combined intra-intermolecular criss-cross cycloaddition of a new fluorinated unsymmetrical allenylazine with alkynes

The reaction of a new fluorinated unsymmetrical allenylazine with dimethyl acetylenedicarboxylate and phenylacetylene affords the combined intra-intermolecular criss-cross cycloaddition products, 2,3-disubstituted-1,10-diazatricyclo[5.2.1.0^4,10]deca-2,6-diene derivatives. The products contain three fused five-membered rings with two nitrogen atoms within an unsaturated heterocyclic system. The structures were assigned using 2D NMR correlations and in the case of the phenylacetylene adduct by X-ray structure analysis.     

Orbital formal normal forms for general Bogdanov-Takens singularity

We solve completely the problem of classification of germs of complex planar vector fields with nilpotent singularity with respect to formal orbital equivalence.     

Asymptotic properties of computationally efficient alternative estimators for a class of multivariate normal models

Parameters of Gaussian multivariate models are often estimated using the maximum likelihood approach. In spite of its merits, this methodology is not practical when the sample size is very large, as, for example, in the case of massive georeferenced data sets. In this paper, we study the asymptotic properties of the estimators that minimize three alternatives to the likelihood function, designed to increase the computational efficiency. This is achieved by applying the information sandwich technique to expansions of the pseudo-likelihood functions as quadratic forms of independent normal random variables. Theoretical calculations are given for a first-order autoregressive time series and then extended to a two-dimensional autoregressive process on a lattice. We compare the efficiency of the three estimators to that of the maximum likelihood estimator as well as among themselves, using numerical calculations of the theoretical results and simulations.     

Lyapunov-type inequalities for nonlinear systems

In this paper, by using elementary analysis, we establish some new Lyapunov-type inequalities for nonlinear systems of differential equations, special cases of which contain the well-known equations such as Emden-Fowler-type and half-linear equations. The inequalities obtained here can be used as handy tools in the study of qualitative behaviour of solutions of the associated equations.     

Anodic stripping coulometry with collection for absolute trace analysis of lead, using flow-through electrochemical cells with porous working electrodes

Summary Flow-through electrochemical cells with porous working electrodes made of crushed reticulated vitreous carbon and plated with mercury were used for absolute analysis of trace amounts of lead by anodic stripping coulometry with collection (ASCWC) in a flow system. The role of mercury coating, flow rate and pH were investigated. The coulombic content of the collection peak corresponded to the theoretical values calculated by Faraday's law in a concentration range from about 10^–9 to 10^–6 mol/l. The relative error and the relative standard deviation was +0.15% and 0.8%, respectively for 2×10^–6 mol/l analyte concentration. The absolute detection limit (3 s) was 0.1 ng of Pb, the linear response range 7×10⁴. One leave from: Department of Analytical Chemistry, Slovak Technical University, CS-812 37 Bratislava, Czechoslovakia