Background babble in open-plan offices: A natural masker of disruptive speech?

Numerous studies have shown that task-irrelevant background speech impairs performance of verbal short-term memory. This well-established effect is related to practice in open-plan offices, where employees are potentially disturbed by the speech of their colleagues. One option to reduce the disruptive effect is by masking the speech, for example, using random noise. Based on past research by Jones and Macken (1995), the ISO Standard 3382-3 (2012) assumes that multiple background speakers in open-plan offices may mask each other in a natural way, consequently reducing the disruptive effect of speech. The aim of this study was to check this assumption using a realistic acoustical simulation of an open-plan office situation. A combination of a nearby speaker and a varying number of background speakers was played to 26 participants while they performed on a verbal short-term memory task. Additionally, the intelligibility of the presented speaker sentences, levels of annoyance, and workload were checked. The results show a significant trend towards an improvement of short-term memory performance when the number of babble voices grows from one to six. However, performance levels are far from those reached under silent conditions. Moreover, annoyance and measures of subjective workload did not diminish due to babble masking.     

M~2<1激光束的产生过程及其初步评估

本文概述了 M2 <1激光束的发射过程、传输变换特性和按 ISO测试结果 ,并作了初步的机理分析和评估 .     

New ISO Guide 34 – How is the change affecting practice in the Czech Republic?

 The positive contribution of the ISO Guide 34 review is the idea of increasing responsibility of reference materials producers. The change of the main intention introduces some problems related to national legislation. There is a very important discussion going on about these problems among metrological bodies, accreditation institutes, reference material producers and laboratories.     

Effects of central tire inflation systems on ride quality of agricultural vehicles

Instrumentation to collect ISO2631 ride data was installed on a CaseIH 8950 tractor equipped with a central tire inflation system (CTIS). Data were collected at two speeds on three courses representing degraded secondary roads, moderately rough fields, and the toughest of farming conditions. Reductions in tire pressures available with central tire inflation resulted in greater tire deflections and, consequently, a smoother ride. The CTIS improved the ride of the vehicle by 99% over properly inflated tires on average, and by 177% when not in resonance.     

Capability of detection and three-way data

Due to the possibility of making analytical determinations in the presence of non-modelled interferents and to identify the analyte of interest, calibrations based on scores of PARAFAC decomposition of three-way data are becoming increasingly important in routine analysis.Furthermore, the IUPAC and EU (European Decision 2002/657/EC) have accepted the definition given by the ISO 11843 for the capability of detection as the minimum net quantity detectable with a pre-set probability of false positive and false negative. What is more, recently our research group has generalised this definition of capability of detection, CCβ, to multivariate calibrations. In practice, CCβ is a good measure of the quality of the calibration because in its definition it brings together analytical sensitivity with precision in analytical determinations.This paper studies the effect of the pre-treatment of the sample, the signal/noise ratio and the second-order advantage on CCβ when using second-order signals modelled by PARAFAC. All of them are experimental factors which influence the quality of the calibration. Analytical pre-treatment is habitual in the analysis of real samples. Specifically, we analyse the effect of the extraction phase and the clean-up of milk samples on the determination of chlortetracycline by HPLC-DAD. It is shown that it is more efficient to do the joint PARAFAC decomposition of the pure standards with the milk samples.Secondly, the effect of asymmetry on CCβ, according to the path of the noise of the signals, is studied. Specifically, in the determination of naphthalene by excitation-emission spectroscopy, EEM, it is the emission spectrum which limits the capability of detection. It is shown that by eliminating the spectra with the poorest signal/noise ratio in this path, the capability of detection can be substantially improved.Thirdly, the impact on CCβ when the second-order advantage is used, that is when PARAFAC calibration is used over samples with an unknown interference not modelled in the calibration step. This is important to apply a PARAFAC calibration to routine analysis in the IUPAC and European Decision framework. Specifically, in the determination of enrofloxacine in poultry feeding water through excitation-emission fluorescence CCβ is evaluated when the PARAFAC is built only with calibration samples or with the calibration samples plus the test samples with uncalibrated and unknown interferent.     

X-ray tube spectra measurement and correction using a CdTe detector and an analytic response matrix for photon energies up to 160 keV

The aims of our work were: i) to measure selected normalized X-ray beam spectra with the commercially available cadmium telluride detector based spectrometry system; ii) to construct the approximate response matrix of the detector using a simple algebraic model approach; iii) to reconstruct the physical energy spectra from the measured instrumental spectra using the detector response matrix; iv) to compare the obtained spectra parameters with the published and reference data in order to verify the model and to optimize the measurement setup if necessary. In particular, the spectra of five “narrow-spectrum series” beams, namely N60 to N150, were measured with a spectrometry system consisting of the Amptek XR-100T X-ray semiconductor detector and the PX5 multichannel analyser. Two different measuring geometries were used. The response matrix R(E, E′) of the detector was constructed which quantifies the energy dependence of the relative detection efficiency of the detector, the probabilities of the escape effects, and the probability of the Compton effect. A single matrix operation was applied to recover the physical energy spectra from the measured instrumental ones. The parameters of the corrected spectra were compared with the published and reference data. Despite the fact that the effect of incomplete charge collection was not implemented in the detector model, a fully satisfying quantitative correspondence was observed between the measured corrected spectra and the available reference data.     

构建基于ISO 9000的大学物理实验教学质量管理体系

为了能够控制、保证和提高大学物理实验教学质量,引入ISO 9000族标准,以顾客的满意为目标,以江苏大学物理实验中心为例提出了一个以过程为基础的大学物理教学质量管理体系,并进一步阐述了体系的建立思路.     

The uncertainty of UV–Vis spectrophotometric and FAAS analysis for the determination of iron in pharmaceutical products

UV–Vis spectrophotometric (UV–Vis) and flame atomic absorption spectrometric (FAAS) analysis for iron determination in a pharmaceutical product were compared in terms of uncertainty budgets. Both methods are selective for iron; no interference due to other components present in the matrix was found. The results for the UV–Vis and FAAS methods were 11.4 ± 0.5 mg and 11.9 ± 0.8 mg, respectively, of iron per tablet (at a 95% confidence level). In both methods, the main uncertainty contribution is that due to the calibration function’s non-linearity (0.32 mg and 0.46 mg or 42% and 31% of the standard uncertainty in the case of UV–Vis and FAAS, respectively). This finding encourages us to take uncertainty due to non-linearity into account in uncertainty estimations, even for highly linear methods like UV–Vis. In the ranking of uncertainty contributors, non-linearity is followed by instrument drift in the FAAS method and the uncertainty of volumetric measurements in UV–Vis. In particular, pipetting contributes about 16% of the uncertainty for UV–Vis spectrometry and 10% for FAAS, which is somewhat larger than that usually assumed. The uncertainty contributions of the two methods are compared and discussed in terms of experimental conditions. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Development and accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025 calibration status of a melting point measurement facility for the UK

A melting point measurement facility for the UK has been developed and accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 Calibration status for the determination of the liquefaction temperature of pure substances from 35 to 250°C. The facility is based upon a commercial instrument, i.e. an oil bath fitted with an aluminium block (Isotech, model 798 EHT), a precision multimeter (Isotech TTI-7), a thermocouple directly inserted in the sample under investigation and a platinum resistance thermometer (PRT) tracking the block temperature. The homogeneity of temperature bath/block was investigated and the PRT used for the traceability of the measurements was calibrated by NPL and traceable to ITS-90. The process was validated using four current LGC Certified Reference Materials (CRMs):