Unfolding of phonetic information over time: a database of Dutch diphone perception

We present the results of a large-scale study on speech perception, assessing the number and type of perceptual hypotheses which listeners entertain about possible phoneme sequences in their language. Dutch listeners were asked to identify gated fragments of all 1179 diphones of Dutch, providing a total of 488,520 phoneme categorizations. The results manifest orderly uptake of acoustic information in the signal. Differences across phonemes in the rate at which fully correct recognition was achieved arose as a result of whether or not potential confusions could occur with other phonemes of the language (long with short vowels, affricates with their initial components, etc.). These data can be used to improve models of how acoustic-phonetic information is mapped onto the mental lexicon during speech comprehension.     

Champion data comparison in nuclear research institutes in Europe,the U. S., and Japan

Bibliometric analysis was carried out for champion data comparisons among prestigious nuclear research institutes (PNRI) existed in Japan, the U. S., France, and Germany. The analysis was relied on database INIS (IAEA), ECD (DOE), WOS (Thomson), and SCOPUS (Elsevier). INIS is advanced, key ex-post evaluating tool for determining general research paper-based champion. Over the 30-year time span of research paper publication, the world champion among 11 PNRI is JAERI confirmed by INIS but ORNL confirmed by ECD, WOS, and SCOPUS, the latter two collected journal submitted research paper. Five years ago JAERI is the 3rd ranked institutes following ORNL and ANL. INIS database results revealed that CEA/Grenoble is the French domestic champion regarding research paper publication. Five years ago it was CEA/Saclay. Results from analytical tools used in bibliometric studies should be viewed with careful consideration to learn of any influencing factors because different characteristics exhibited by individual databases can sometimes generate conflicting bibliometric results. This was true among INIS, ECD, WOS, and SCOPUS when looking at trends especially between 5-year periods.     

Doppler effects due to thermal macromotion of ions in an rf quadrupole trap

The second-order Doppler shift is an important source of systematic error in rf quadrupole trapped ion frequency standards. This shift can be reduced by cooling the secular motion of the ion cloud with a light background gas at low pressure. Using a thermalized ion cloud model, it is possible to relate the Doppler shift to the temperature of the ion cloud. It is shown that, in practice, the measured frequency of the first-order Doppler sidebands can be used to determine the ion cloud temperature.     

Untersuchung von Mehl- und Backwaren

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Perception of intrusive /r/ in English by native, cross-language and cross-dialect listeners

In sequences such as law and order, speakers of British English often insert /r/ between law and and. Acoustic analyses revealed such "intrusive" /r/ to be significantly shorter than canonical /r/. In a 2AFC experiment, native listeners heard British English sentences in which /r/ duration was manipulated across a word boundary [e.g., saw (r)ice], and orthographic and semantic factors were varied. These listeners responded categorically on the basis of acoustic evidence for /r/ alone, reporting ice after short /r/s, rice after long /r/s; orthographic and semantic factors had no effect. Dutch listeners proficient in English who heard the same materials relied less on durational cues than the native listeners, and were affected by both orthography and semantic bias. American English listeners produced intermediate responses to the same materials, being sensitive to duration (less so than native, more so than Dutch listeners), and to orthography (less so than the Dutch), but insensitive to the semantic manipulation. Listeners from language communities without common use of intrusive /r/ may thus interpret intrusive /r/ as canonical /r/, with a language difference increasing this propensity more than a dialect difference. Native listeners, however, efficiently distinguish intrusive from canonical /r/ by exploiting the relevant acoustic variation.     

Conical parametric scattering of a single extraordinary beam in BaTiO3 crystal

In this paper, the parametric scattering of a single extraordinary polarized beam of laser in BaTiO₃ photorefractive crystal has been investigated experimentally and theoretically. The resulting pattern consists of beam fanning, isotropic ring, and anisotropic one. Among all parts of scattering pattern, isotropic ring has not been studied as much as beam fanning and anisotropic ring, and there still are some differences in reports about it. Therefore, the study has mainly focused on this part. In this experimental configuration, isotropic ring is just visible in positive angles although the other parts of parametric scattering pattern can be visible from behind and in front of the crystal. In addition to steady state pattern in forward and backward directions, its transient behavior with the rotation of crystal has been studied. The results of experiments have been analyzed carefully, and their theoretical explanations have been presented based on the standard theory of parametric scattering in photorefractive crystals. It has been shown that this configuration corresponds to the so called parametric B-process scattering.     

Sortin1-hypersensitive mutants link vacuolar-trafficking defects and flavonoid metabolism in Arabidopsis vegetative tissues

Sortin1 is a chemical genetic-hit molecule that causes specific mislocalization of plant and yeast-soluble and membrane vacuolar markers. To better understand its mode of action, we designed a Sortin1-hypersensitive screen and identified several Sortin1-hypersensitive and flavonoid-defective mutants. Mechanistically, Sortin1 mimics the effect of the glutathione inhibitor buthionine sulfoximine and alters the vacuolar accumulation of flavonoids, likely blocking their transport through vacuole-localized ABC transporters. Structure-activity relationship studies conducted in Arabidopsis revealed the structural requirements for Sortin1 bioactivity and demonstrated that overlapping Sortin1 substructures can be used to discriminate between vacuolar-flavonoid accumulations and vacuolar-biogenesis defects. We conclude that Sortin1 is a valuable probe for dissecting novel links among flavonoid transport, vacuolar integrity, and the trafficking of vacuolar targeted cargoes in Arabidopsis.     

Hybrid gold nanoparticles in molecular imaging and radiotherapy

Metallic nanoparticles, because of their size, chemical and physical properties, are particularly attractive as therapeutic probes in treating cancer. Central to any clinical advances in nanoparticulate based therapy will be to produce hybrid nanoparticles that can be targeted to vascular, extracellular or cell surface receptors. Development of hybrid nanoparticles that specifically target cancer vasculature has received considerable attention. Most cancers have leaky vasculature and the defective vascular architecture, created due to the rapid vascularization necessary to serve fast growing cancers, in combination with poor lymphatic drainage allows increased permeation and retention effects. The leaky vasculature, because of higher porosity and permeability, serve as natural high affinity targets to metallic nanoparticles. Another attractive approach toward the application of nanotechnology to nanomedicine is the utility of nanoparticles that display inherent therapeutic properties. For example radioactive gold nanoparticles present attractive prospects in therapy of cancer. The radioactive properties of Au-198 (β_max = 0.96 MeV; t_1/2 = 2.7 d) and Au-199 (β_max = 0.46 MeV; t_1/2 = 3.14 d) make them ideal candidates for use in radiotherapeutic applications. In addition, they both have imageable gamma emissions for dosimetry and pharmacokinetic studies and Au-199 can be made carrier-free by indirect methods. Gold nanoparticles are of interest for treatment of disease as they can deliver agents directly into cells and cellular components with a higher concentration of radioactivity, e.g. higher dose of radioactivity, to cancerous tumor cells.     

Variational formulation for the equilibrium condition of a conducting fluid in an electric field

In this paper the variational formalism is used to derive a set of equations describing the equilibrium configuration of a conducting fluid in an applied electric field. The validity of the variational equations is confirmed by application to the well-defined problem of concentric spherical electrodes. It is further shown that a cone, including the so-called Taylor cone used to model the equilibrium configuration of liquid metal ion sources, is inconsistent with the general equations. An analysis of the Taylor derivation suggests that reasons for the disagreement are the omission of the pressure difference term in the Laplace formula and use of only an approximate solution to the electrostatic cone problem. Finally a quasi-empirical method is suggested for the self-consistent solution of the variational equations.