Acoustic Analysis of Pathological Voices Compressedwith MPEG System

The MPEG-1 Layer 3 compression schema of audio signal, commonly known as mp3, has caused a great impact in recent years as it has reached high compression rates while conserving a high sound quality. Music and speech samples compressed at high bitrates are perceptually indistinguishable from the original samples, but very little was known about how compression acoustically affects the voice signal. A previous work with normal voices showed a high fidelity at high-bitrate compressions both in voice parameters and the amplitude-frequency spectrum. In the present work, dysphonic voices were tested through two studies. In the first study, spectrograms, long-term average spectra (LTAS), and fast Fourier transform (FFT) spectra of compressed and original samples of running speech were compared. In the second study, intensities, formant frequencies, formant bandwidths, and a multidimensional set of voice parameters were tested in a set of sustained phonations. Results showed that compression at high bitrates (96 and 128 kbps) preserved the relevant acoustic properties of the pathological voices. With compressions at lower bitrates, fidelity decreases, introducing some important alterations. Results from both works, Gonzalez and Cervera and this paper, open up the possibility of using MPEG-compression at high bitrates to store or transmit high-quality speech recordings, without altering their acoustic properties.     

Preparation of rhodium–phyllosilicate catalysts without leaching in liquid-phase 1-hexene hydrogenation

Rhodium catalysts have been prepared on palygorskite and montmorillonite (clay) supports by reduction with hydrogen (1 atmosphere) at room temperature of a cationic organometallic rhodium compound anchored to the support. The activity of these catalysts for the hydrogenation of liquid-phase 1-hexene remains constant with increase of prehydrogenation time and with re-use for several runs. No rhodium leaching is observed.     

New FIR laser lines and frequency measurements for optically pumped CD3OH

Twenty new cw FIR laser lines in CD₃OH, optically pumped by a CO₂ laser, are reported. The frequencies of 39 of the stronger laser lines were measured relative to stabilized CO₂ lasers with a fractional uncertainty, as determined by the reproducibility of the FIR frequency itself, of 2 parts in 10⁷.Contribution of the U.S. Government, not subject to copyright.     

T 1 theorem for Besov spaces on nonhomogeneous spaces

Suppose μ is a Radon measure on ℝ ^d , which may be non doubling. The only condition assumed on μ is a growth condition, namely, there is a constant C₀>0 such that for all x∈supp(μ) and r>0, μ(B(x, r))⪯C₀rⁿ, where 0<n⪯d. We prove T1 theorem for non doubling measures with weak kernel conditions. Our approach yields new results for kernels satisfying weakened regularity conditions, while recovering previously known Tolsa’s results. We also prove T1 theorem for Besov spaces on nonhomogeneous spaces with weak kernel conditions given in [7].     

Structure and electrochemical behaviour of 4,7-diazaheptyl-trimethoxy-silane and vinyl-trialkoxy-silane adsorbed at silver surface

Novel self-assembled monolayers were obtained on silver using 4,7-diazaheptyl-trimethoxy-silane (SiN) and vinyl-trialkoxy-silane (SiVA, where the alkyl group is 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30,33,36,39,42,45,48,51,54,57,60-eicozaoxa- hexaheptaconan). It was shown that thus modified metal surface was protected against electrooxidation. A densely packed monolayer remained stable and did not desorb from the Ag electrode on the potential cycling. The structure of SiN and SiVA as well as their complexes with Li⁺ cations were calculated and visualised by the AM1d and PM5 semi-empirical methods.     

Li3N、Mg3N2、Ca3N2催化作用的比较和分析

 Li₃N、Mg₃N₂和Ca₃N₂是高温高压下以hBN为原料合成cBN的催化剂。在实验中发现它们对常压高温下生成hBN的反应也表现出催化作用。对比了三种氮化物催化效果的差异，发现三种氮化物都只有在熔融状态下才能表现出催化效果，以及三种氮化物对生成hBN反应的催化效果与它们在高温高压下合成cBN反应的催化效果次序相似。提出了对合成hBN有催化作用的化合物也将对合成cBN表现出催化作用的观点。     

Local Feasible QP-Free Algorithms for the Constrained Minimization of SC1 Functions

We consider the problem of minimizing an SC¹ function subject to inequality constraints. We propose a local algorithm whose distinguishing features are that: (a) a fast convergence rate is achieved under reasonable assumptions that do not include strict complementarity at the solution; (b) the solution of only linear systems is required at each iteration; (c) all the points generated are feasible. After analyzing a basic Newton algorithm, we propose some variants aimed at reducing the computational costs and, in particular, we consider a quasi-Newton version of the algorithm.