Presupposition failure — A comedy of errors

Presuppositions of utterances are the pieces of information you convey with an utterance no matter whether your utterance is true or not. We first study presupposition in a very simple framework of updating propositional information, with examples of how presuppositions of complex propositional updates can be calculated. Next we move on to presuppositions and quantification, in the context of a dynamic version of predicate logic, suitably modified to allow for presupposition failure. In both the propositional and the quantificational case, presupposition failure can be viewed as error abortion of procedures. Thus, a dynamic assertion logic which describes the preconditions for error abortion is the suitable tool for analysing presupposition.     

Low temperature wafer direct bonding

A pronounced increase of interface energy of room temperature bonded hydrophilic Si/Si, Si/SiO₂, and SiO₂/SiO ₂ wafers after storage in air at room temperature, 150°C for 10-400 h has been observed. The increased number of OH groups due to a reaction between water and the strained oxide and/or silicon at the interface at temperatures below 110°C and the formation of stronger siloxane bonds above 110°C appear to be the main mechanisms responsible for the increase in the interface energy. After prolonged storage, interface bubbles are detectable by an infrared camera at the Si/Si bonding seam. Desorbed hydrocarbons as well as hydrogen generated by a reaction of water with silicon appear to be the major contents in the bubbles. Design guidelines for low temperature wafer direct bonding technology are proposed     

聚氧乙烯油酸酯的合成与物性

论述了合成聚氧乙烯油酸酯的较佳反应条件,探讨了不同EO加成数的聚氧乙烯油酸脂的表面物性规律。     

高质量ZnO薄膜的退火性质研究

在LP－MOCVD中，我们利用Zn(C2H5)2作Zn源，CO2作氧源，在（0002）蓝宝石衬底上成功制备出皮c轴取向高度一致的ZnO薄膜，并对其进行500℃-800℃四个不同温度的退火。利用XRD、吸收谱、光致发光谱和AFM等手段研究了退火对ZnO晶体质量和光学性质的影响。退火后，（0002）ZnO的XRD衍射峰强度显著增强，c轴晶格常数变小，同时（0002）ZnOX射红衍射峰半高宽不断减小表明晶粒逐渐增大，这与AFM观察结果较一致。由透射谱拟合得到的光学带隙退火后变小，PL谱的带边发射则加强，并出现红移，蓝带发光被有效抑制，表明ZnO薄膜的质量得到提高。     

Replacement of beef fat in Frankfurters by interesterified palm,cottonseed and olive oils

Three interesterified vegetable oils (IVOs) prepared from palm, cottonseed, and olive oil, respectively, have been studied for application to Frankfurters. Beef fat (10%) was replaced by one of the IVOs at 20, 60 or 100%. Fatty acid composition of the lipid fraction in the Frankfurters and saturated/unsaturated ratios were established for all batches. We found that total or partial replacement of beef fat by IVOs did not lead to significant changes in appearance, colour, texture, flavour or sensory score. We conclude that IVOs may be successfully applied as beef fat substitutes in Frankfurters.     

The organisational learning effects of management accounting information under advanced manufacturing technology

This study empirically examined the organisational learning effects of the nonfinancial performance information provided by management accounting information systems (MAISs) under advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). In this study, a target costing system and the frequent and quick reporting of information were considered the facilitators of learning. First, we examined the relationships between AMT level and the amount of nonfinancial performance information produced by MAISs. The empirical results showed that there are significant positive relationships between the level of AMT and nonfinancial performance information. With a systems approach, we also proved the impact of the relationships among AMT levels, nonfinancial performance information and learning facilitators on the organisational performance of a firm. The results of our research suggest that under a high level of AMT, for the provision of information to result in an increase of performance through organisational learning, a target costing system must be introduced and a large amount of information should be provided frequently and quickly. The results of this study also showed that although AMT level may be low, fairly well-arranged facilitators and a moderately large amount of information may be necessary for the improvement of performance. In conclusion, effective organisational learning depends on the provision of relevant information as well as efficient learning support mechanisms.     

Automatic conversion from lexical words to prosodic words for mandarin text-to-speech system

In real speech, not like lexical words (LWs), prosodic words (PWs) are basic rhythmic units. The naturalness of a Text-to-Speech (TTS) system is directly influenced by the segmentation of the PWs. Most of the PWs are the combination of several LWs. In this paper, three Lexical Combination Models are proposed to combine LWs into PWs, including a Directed Acyclic Graph Model, a Segmentation Model and a Markov Model (MM). To cope with the situation where some long LWs should be segmented into two or more PWs, a Lexical Split Model (LSM) is applied to the long LWs. Experimental results prove that relatively constant results with various training data can be obtained from a MM. The Transformation-Based Error Driven Learning (TBED) algorithm, for its high performance of individual property, is applied in combination with the MM to improve the precision of PW segmentation. Experiments show that among the three proposed models, the MM combined with TBED and LSM, leads to the best performance, in which a precision of 93.00% and a recall of 93.23% are achieved. The perception test indicates that by using PWs as the lowest prosodic units a speech sounds more natural and acceptable than by using LWs. This paper is supported by NSFC Project (60503071); 973 Natural Basic Research Program of China (2004CB318102); Postdoctor Science Foundation of P. R. China (20070420275).