Stress Versus Coarticulation: Toward an Integrated Approach to Explicit Speech Segmentation.

Although word stress has been hailed as a powerful speech-segmentation cue, the results of 5 cross-modal fragment priming experiments revealed limitations to stress-based segmentation. Specifically, the stress pattern of auditory primes failed to have any effect on the lexical decision latencies to related visual targets. A determining factor was whether the onset of the prime was coarticulated with the preceding speech fragment. Uncoarticulated (i.e., concatenated) primes facilitated priming. Coarticulated ones did not. However, when the primes were presented in a background of noise, the pattern of results reversed, and a strong stress effect emerged: Stress-initial primes caused more pruning than non-initial-stress primes, regardless of the coarticulatory cues. The results underscore the role of coarticulation in the segmentation of clear speech and that of stress in impoverished listening conditions. More generally, they call for an integrated and signal-contingent approach to speech segmentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Matisse: A System-on-Chip Design Methodology Emphasizing Dynamic Memory Management

MATISSE is a design environment intended for developing systems characterized by a tight interaction between control and data-flow behavior, intensive data storage and transfer, and stringent real-time requirements. Matisse bridges the gap from a system specification, using a concurrent object-oriented language, to an optimized embedded single-chip hardware/software implementation. Matisse supports stepwise exploration and refinement of dynamic memory management, memory architecture exploration, and gradual incorporation of timing constraints before going to traditional tools for hardware synthesis, software compilation, and inter-processor communication synthesis. With this approach, specifications of embedded systems can be written in a high-level programming language using data abstraction. Application of MATISSE on telecom protocol processing systems in the ATM area shows significant improvements in area usage and power consumption.     

Isolation of Decidual Macrophages and Hofbauer Cells from Term Placenta—Comparison of the Expression of CD163 and CD80

(1) Background: Placental immune cells are playing a very important role in a successful placentation and the prevention of pregnancy complications. Macrophages dominate in number and relevance in the maternal and the fetal part of the placenta. The evidence on the polarization state of fetal and maternal macrophages involved in both, healthy and pregnancy-associated diseases, is limited. There is no representative isolation method for the direct comparison of maternal and fetal macrophages so far. (2) Material and Methods: For the isolation of decidual macrophages and Hofbauer cells from term placenta, fresh tissue was mechanically dissected and digested with trypsin and collagenase A. Afterwards cell enrichment was increased by a Percoll gradient. CD68 is represented as pan-macrophage marker, the surface markers CD80 and CD163 were further investigated. (3) Results: The established method revealed a high cell yield and purity of the isolated macrophages and enabled the comparison between decidual macrophages and Hofbauer cells. No significant difference was observed in the percentage of single CD163⁺ cells in the distinct macrophage populations, by using FACS and immunofluorescence staining. A slight increase of CD80⁺ cells could be found in the decidual macrophages. Considering the percentage of CD80⁺CD163⁻ and CD80⁻CD163⁺ cells we could not find differences. Interestingly we found an increased number of double positive cells (CD80⁺CD163⁺) in the decidual macrophage population in comparison to Hofbauer cells. (4) Conclusion: In this study we demonstrate that our established isolation method enables the investigation of decidual macrophages and Hofbauer cells in the placenta. It represents a promising method for direct cell comparison, enzyme independently, and unaffected by magnetic beads, to understand the functional subsets of placental macrophages and to identify therapeutic targets of pregnancy associated diseases.     

Interdigitated back‐contact heterojunction solar cell concept for liquid phase crystallized thin‐film silicon on glass

We present an interdigitated back‐contact silicon heterojunction system designed for liquid‐phase crystallized thin‐film (~10 µm) silicon on glass. The preparation of the interdigitated emitter (a‐Si:H(p)) and absorber (a‐Si:H(n)) contact layers relies on the etch selectivity of doped amorphous silicon layers in alkaline solutions. The etch rates of a‐Si:H(n) and a‐Si:H(p) in 0.6% NaOH were determined and interdigitated back‐contact silicon heterojunction solar cells with two different metallizations, namely Al and ITO/Ag electrodes, were evaluated regarding electrical and optical properties. An additional random pyramid texture on the back side provides short‐circuit current density (j_SC) of up to 30.3 mA/cm² using the ITO/Ag metallization. The maximum efficiency of 10.5% is mainly limited by a low of fill factor of 57%. However, the high j_SC, as well as V_OC values of 633 mV and pseudo‐fill factors of 77%, underline the high potential of this approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating reliability and timing analysis of CAN-based systems

This paper presents and illustrates a reliability analysis method developed with a focus on controller-area-network-based automotive systems. The method considers the effect of faults on schedulability analysis and its impact on the reliability estimation of the system, and attempts to integrate both to aid system developers. The authors illustrate the method by modeling a simple distributed antilock braking system, and showing that even in cases where the worst case analysis deems the system unschedulable, it may be proven to satisfy its timing requirements with a sufficiently high probability. From a reliability and cost perspective, this paper underlines the tradeoffs between timing guarantees, the level of hardware and software faults, and per-unit cost.     

Direct View on Non-Equilibrium Heterogeneous Dynamics in Glassy Nanorods

Amorphous solids are potential candidates for room temperature applications, such as structural materials, due to their outstanding mechanical properties. For the first time, the local atomic dynamics of amorphous metallic nanorods are spatially resolved at room temperature using electron microscopy. Methodologically, quasi-equilibrium conditions are verified by two-time correlation functions. FeNiP is chosen as a suitable model system since a bamboo structure forms upon electrodeposition into nanotubular confinement, consisting of thin Fe-rich and Ni-rich amorphous layers. Therefore, the present nano-glassy structure allows studying the glass dynamics of two glassy phases at once, at the same time avoiding any preparation-related structural artifacts of the intrinsically electron-transparent samples. By comparing the local atomic mobility with the local composition and the local structural information of the glassy phases, correlations between medium-range order and time scales of heterogeneous glassy dynamics are consistently obtained.     

Silage fermentation of fish or fish waste products with lactic acid bacteria

Silage fermentation of minced fish and fish offal after inoculation with cereals prefermented with Pediococcus acidilactici and Lactobacillus plantarum initiates a rapid fall in pH to below 4.5 within 30 h, and the content of competing gram-negative fermenters and fish pathogens, such as Vibrio anguillarum and Aeromonas salmonicida, is eliminated. The addition of 0.1% sorbic acid inhibits the growth of yeasts during the initial fermentation period and during storage but does not affect the lactic acid fermentation. Degradation of nitrogen components proceeds during storage and is manifested as an increase in volatile basic nitrogen compounds, amino acids and peptides. These substances increase the pH and/or force the bacteria to produce more acid. The rate of production of these basic substances is mainly temperature-dependent and cannot be attributed to microbial activity. The proteolytic activity is mainly caused by tissue proteases (e.g., cathepsins) and, to a lower degree, by gut proteases. It is doubtful whether fish fermentation can be utilised on an industrial scale without improving the technique. Such improvements consist of the selection and use of psychotrophic lactic acid fermenters and commercially acceptable inhibitors of proteolytic activity and yeast growth.     

Experience with Widening Based Equivalence Checking in Realistic Multimedia Systems

The application of loop and data transformations to array and loop intensive programs is crucial to obtain a good performance. Designers often apply these transformations manually or semi-automatically. For the class of static affine programs, automatic methods exist for proving the correctness of these transformations. Realistic multimedia systems, however, often contain constructs that fall outside of this class. We present an extension of a widening based approach to handle the most relevant of these constructs, viz. accesses to array slices, data dependent accesses and data dependent assignments, and report on some experiments with non-trivial applications.