Objective Vocal Quality in Children Using Cochlear Implants: A Multiparameter Approach

Objectives

The purpose of this study was to determine the objective vocal quality in 36 prelingually deaf children using cochlear implant (CI) with a mean age of 9 years. An additional purpose was to compare the objective vocal quality of these 36 CI users with 25 age-matched children with prelingual severe hearing loss using conventional hearing aids (HAs) and 25 normal hearing (NH) children.

Study Design

The design for this cross-sectional study was a multigroup posttest-only design.

Methods

The objective vocal quality was measured by means of the dysphonia severity index (DSI). Moreover, perceptual voice assessment using the GRBASI scale was performed.

Results

CI children have a vocal quality by means of the DSI of +1.8, corresponding with a DSI% of 68%, indicating a borderline vocal quality situated 2% above the limit of normality. The voice was perceptually characterized by the presence of a very slight grade of hoarseness, roughness, strained phonation, and higher pitch and intensity levels. No significant objective vocal quality differences were measured between the voices of the CI children, HA users, and NH children.

Conclusions

According to the results, one aspect of the vocal approach in children with CI and using HAs must be focused on the improvement of the strained vocal characteristic and the use of a lower pitch and intensity level.     

Comparing the validity of numerical judgements elicited by direct rating and point allocation: Insights from objectively verifiable perceptual tasks

Two popular methods for assigning numerical values to a set of to-be-judged objects in order to capture their relative standing are Direct Rating (DR) and Point Allocation (PA). People using PA distribute a fixed sum of 100 points among the objects, while people using DR rate each object on a fixed scale, typically 0–10, later rescaled to sum to 100. Prior research shows that these methods exhibit distinct profiles when values are ranked from largest to smallest, with DR being more test–retest reliable. But which method best translates people’s inner judgments into outer numerical values (is more valid)? Instead of examining subjective or abstract stimuli, we use objectively verifiable perceptual tasks, namely judgments of line length presented using bar charts. We show that (i) DR is more inter-rater reliable than PA; (ii) DR is more accurate than PA at the individual level; (iii) but there is no difference in accuracy when individual judgments are combined to form group-level estimates; and (iv) DR judgments were improved by using prior knowledge of method bias, whereas PA judgments were not.     

中国公司债券评级方法应用研究

在国内外债券评级的研究基础之上,选用MDA、Logistic模型、Probit模型以及神经网络四种债券评级方法,结合中国上市公司的风险特征,从变量甄选的角度对债券评级方法进行优化,同时采用中国上市公司数据进行实证分析.实证结论表明:甄选出的评级变量较国外常用的评级指标更好的刻画了中国上市公司的风险特征;Logistic模型、Probit模型和神经网络方法都对中国上市公司的债券有较高的评级分类能力,尤其是Probit模型和神经网络方法对中国公司债券的评级非常准确,误判率接近于0.     

基于信息增益的小型工业企业信用评级模型

信用评级就是衡量一笔债务违约的可能性,评价债务违约风险的大小。本文利用信息增益方法建立了信用评级模型,并以小型工业企业贷款数据为对象进行了实证分析。本文的创新与特色:一是按照指标的信息增益越大、越能将违约与非违约企业区分出来的思路,筛选出对违约状态有较大影响的指标。改变了现有研究不以违约鉴别力作为指标遴选标准的不足。二是在相关程度高的一对冗余指标中,删除信息增益小、即违约鉴别能力差的指标,既避免指标间反映信息重复,又避免误删违约鉴别能力强的指标。三是利用信息增益值对指标进行赋权,保证违约鉴别能力越大的指标赋予的权重越大。改变了现有研究赋权不反映指标的违约鉴别能力大小的弊端。实证结果表明:本文遴选的包括资产负债率、行业景气指数、抵质押担保等31个指标对违约状态有显著的鉴别能力,且反映信息不重复。偿债能力是影响小型工业企业信用评级的关键要素。     

Modeling frequency and severity of claims with the zero-inflated generalized cluster-weighted models

To facilitate applications in general insurance, some extensions are proposed to cluster-weighted models (CWMs). First, we extend CWMs to have generalized cluster-weighted models (GCWMs) by allowing modeling of non-Gaussian distribution of the continuous covariates, as they frequently occur in insurance practice. Secondly, we introduce a zero-inflated extension of GCWM (ZI-GCWM) for modeling insurance claims data with excess zeros coming from heterogeneous sources. Additionally, we give two expectation–optimization (EM) algorithms for parameter estimation given in the proposed models. An appropriate simulation study shows that, for various settings and in contrast to the existing mixture-based approaches, both extended models perform well. Finally, a real data set based on French auto-mobile policies is used to illustrate the application of the proposed extensions.     

基于投影寻踪和最优分割的企业信用评级模型

提出一种基于投影寻踪和最优分割的企业信用评级模型。该模型运用投影寻踪对样本企业进行信用综合评分,将信用综合得分由大到小排序,生成有序样品序列;利用最优分割法对有序样品进行聚类,得出明确的聚类结果;将最优分割点对应的信用综合得分作为划分信用等级的阈值,从而实现对样本企业的信用评级。应用实例证明了该模型的可行性和有效性。     

增信措施对城投债评级和定价的影响

本文以2010~2018年城投债数据,研究增信措施对城投债的发行评级和融资成本的作用,以及43号文前后增信效果的差异。实证发现,增信措施可提高债项评级,降低主体融资成本,同时这种增信效果对信用资质较弱的城投债作用更显著。进一步地研究发现,2015年前发行的城投债的发行成本基本不受增信措施的影响,投资者更看重城投债发行主体所在区域的经济发展水平,体现了城投平台背后隐含地方政府信用;而在2015年之后,新增城投债的担保比例增加,各种增信措施均能显著降低融资成本。上述结果间接证明了43号文之后,增信措施给城投公司带来了融资便利。     

Comparison of two posthydrolysis processes of Brewery's spent grain autohydrolysis liquor to produce a pentose-containing culture medium

A readily fermentable pentose-containing hydrolysate was obtained from Brewery's spent grain by a two-step process consisting of an auto-hydrolysis (converting the hemicelluloses into oligosaccharides) followed by an enzymatic or sulfuric acid-catalyzed posthydrolysis (converting the oligosaccharides into monosaccharides). Enzymatic hydrolyses were performed with several commercial enzymes with xylanolytic and cellulolytic activities. Acid-catalyzed hydrolyses were carried out at 121°C under various sulfuric acid concentrations and reaction times, and the effects of treatments were interpreted by means of a corrected combined severity factor (CS ¹), which varied in the range of 0.80–2.01. Under the tested conditions, chemicalhydrolysis allowed higher pentose yields than enzymatic hydrolysis. Optimized conditions (defined by CS ¹=1.10) allowed both complete monosaccharide recovery and low content of inhibitors. Liquors subjected to posthydrolysis under optimal conditions were easily fermented by Debaryomyces hansenii CCMI 941 in semiaerobic shake-flask experiments, leading to xylitol and arabitol as major fermentation products. The bioconversion process was improved by hydrolysate concentration and supplementation of fermentation media with casamino acids. The authors wish it to be known that the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors.     

A methodology for quantitatively assessing vehicular rutting on terrains

This paper presents a quantitative method for assessing the environmental impact of terrain/vehicle interactions during tactical missions. Area wide mobility analyses were conducted using three standard US military tracked and wheeled vehicles over terrain regions representing both fine-grained and course-grained soils. The NATO reference mobility model, Version 2, was used to perform the on- and off-road mobility analysis. Vehicle and terrain characterizations along with different climate scenarios were used as input parameters to predict vehicle rut depth performance for the different vehicles and terrain conditions. The vehicles’ performance was statistically mapped over these terrain regions for percent area traveled and the resulting rut depth created by each vehicle. A selection of tactical scenarios for each vehicle was used to determine rut depth for a range of vehicle missions. A vehicle mission severity rating method, developed at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, was used to rate the selected missions and resulting rut depths.