The perception of concurrent sound objects in harmonic complexes impairs gap detection.

Since the introduction of the concept of auditory scene analysis, there has been a paucity of work focusing on the theoretical explanation of how attention is allocated within a complex auditory scene. Here we examined signal detection in situations that promote either the fusion of tonal elements into a single sound object or the segregation of a mistuned element (i.e., harmonic) that “popped out” as a separate individuated auditory object and yielded the perception of concurrent sound objects. On each trial, participants indicated whether the incoming complex sound contained a brief gap or not. The gap (i.e., signal) was always inserted in the middle of one of the tonal elements. Our findings were consistent with an object-based account in which perception of two simultaneous auditory objects interfered with signal detection. This effect was observed for a wide range of gap durations and was greater when the mistuned harmonic was perceived as a separate object. These results suggest that attention may be initially shared among concurrent sound objects thereby reducing listeners' ability to process acoustic details belonging to a particular sound object. These findings provide new theoretical insight for our understanding of auditory attention and auditory scene analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

STAIRS: Towards efficient full-text filtering and dissemination in DHT environments

Nowadays ??live?? content, such as weblog, wikipedia, and news, is ubiquitous in the Internet. Providing users with relevant content in a timely manner becomes a challenging problem. Differing from Web search technologies and RSS feeds/reader applications, this paper envisions a personalized full-text content filtering and dissemination system in a highly distributed environment such as a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Network. Users subscribe to their interested content by specifying input keywords and thresholds as filters. Then, content is disseminated to those users having interest in it. In the literature, full-text document publishing in DHTs has suffered for a long time from the high cost of forwarding a document to home nodes of all distinct terms. It is aggravated by the fact that a document contains a large number of distinct terms (typically tens or thousands of terms per document). In this paper, we propose a set of novel techniques to overcome such a high forwarding cost by carefully selecting a very small number of meaningful terms (or key features) among candidate terms inside each document. Next, to reduce the average hop count per forwarding, we further prune irrelevant documents during the forwarding path. Experiments based on two real query logs and two real data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution.     

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy as a tool for monitoring blueberry osmo-air dehydration process

Osmo-air dehydration treatments are widely applied to fruits in order to prolong shelf-life, reduce packaging and logistic costs, and improve both sensory and nutritional quality of the end products. In this work osmo-air dehydration was applied to blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum), a fruit that is gaining increasing attention due to its high content of dietary antioxidants. In particular, the aim of this study was to investigate the performance of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy as a tool for monitoring blueberry osmo and air dehydration processes.Blanched blueberries were dipped in sucrose and fructose + glucose osmotic solutions for 24 h, and the osmotic exchanges were determined by mass balances (water loss, solid gain, sugar intake, changes in total phenolics and anthocyanins); NIR spectra were collected in order to study modifications due to the osmotic treatments. Untreated and infused berries were subsequently air-dried at 70 °C to final moisture content of 10-14%. During drying chemical, nutritional and structural changes were monitored and NIR spectra were acquired on whole berries, using an optic probe working in diffuse reflectance. Spectral data were standardized, transformed into first derivative and processed by Principal Component Analysis. Results show that NIR spectroscopy was able to follow the osmotic and the air-drying processes and to discriminate untreated and osmo-dehydrated berries. Spectral differences reflect the main molecular modifications associated with water absorption bands due to OH stretch + OH bending and sugar absorption bands due to CH stretch + CH bending and OH stretch + OH bending. In order to investigate the variation of main constituents (sugars and water) involved in the osmo-dehydration process, two-dimensional correlation analysis of spectral data was also carried out.     

Canadian counselling psychologists' contributions to applied psychology.

The goal of this paper is to draw attention to the contributions of Canadian counselling psychologists in three key areas central to the discipline: (a) multiculturalism, social justice, and advocacy; (b) health, wellness, and prevention, and (c) career psychology. Accordingly, we have situated our discussion within a historical framework of the discipline followed by a discussion of the Canadian context, definitions, and specific contributions. Finally, we offer a summary of the strengths and current challenges faced by Canadian counselling psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Magnetic/Silica Nanocomposites as Dual‐Mode Contrast Agents for Combined Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Ultrasonography

A simple and efficient method for synthesizing a range of hybrid nanocomposites based on a core of silica nanospheres (160, 330, and 660 nm in diameter) covered by an outer shell of superparamagnetic nanoparticles, either iron oxide or heterodimeric FePt‐iron oxide nanocrystals, is presented. The magnetic and ultrasound characterization of the resulting nanocomposites shows that they have great potential as contrast agents for dual‐mode imaging purposes, combining magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasonography (US).     

Experimental studies on shear failure of freeze-bonds in saline ice:: Part II: Ice-ice friction after failure and failure energy

This paper is the second of two papers that present and discusses the results from experiments where artificially created freeze-bonds made from saline ice were tested on direct shear with the freeze-bond oriented horizontally. It discusses the friction forces after freeze-bond failure and the failure energy.The friction force showed increasing linear trends with a non-zero intercept when plotted against the normal force. It shows that for low confinements Amonton's law is insufficient. For larger confinements the values of friction coefficient were in the range of previously reported measurements in ice-ice friction. A slightly decreasing trend of the frictional forces was found when the initial ice temperature increased.A Mohr-Coulomb type of model was proposed to model the ice-ice frictional stresses as function of the normal stresses. An empirical model was obtained to describe freeze-bond failure and subsequent deformation by introducing softening of the cohesion and angle of internal friction.The failure energy had similar trends to those observed for the freeze-bond shear strength when plotted against normal confinement, initial ice temperature and submersion time. Quadratic fitting to the data of failure energy as a function of freeze-bond shear strength allowed the estimation of the elastic shear modulus of the freeze-bond by applying a simple rheological model. The values found were between 2 kPa and 6 kPa which are very low compared with the shear elastic modulus for the ice blocks.     

Workshop on in vitro neutralization of Chlamydia trachomatis: summary of proceedings

A task force evaluated an in vitro antibody-mediated chlamydial neutralization assay for its utility as a method to assess functional correlates of antibody responses to Chlamydia trachomatis. Two monoclonal antibodies that recognize different major outer membrane protein (MOMP) epitopes for a C. trachomatis serovar B strain exhibit good in vitro neutralizing activity, with a maximum of 90% neutralization. Calculations based on the 50% neutralization point indicated that 100% neutralization could theoretically be achieved when only 10% of the MOMP molecules bound antibody. Monoclonal antibodies that recognized either a heterologous MOMP or the genus-specific chlamydial lipopolysaccharide did not produce neutralizing activity. The standardized assay will be useful to establish if in vitro neutralizing antibody responses are predictive of protective immunity and will aid in defining chlamydial antigens and epitopes that may be attractive vaccine candidates.     

Managing HIV. Part 8: Controlling an epidemic. 8.3 Prospects for a preventive HIV vaccine

Immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization techniques were used to investigate the correlation between p53 gene mutation and the clinico-pathological status as well as prognosis of large cell carcinoma of the lung. p53 expression was found in 40% of the cases by immunohistochemistry and p53 gene mutation was found in 53.3% by in situ hybridization. The concordance ratio was 73.3% between gene mutation and protein expression. No statistically significant correlation was found between p53 gene mutation, its protein expression and sex, age, smoking, histological type, tumor size or lymph node involvement. A significant correlation was found between p53 gene mutation (or its protein expression) and mitotic index. The result of in situ hybridization demonstrated that there was a statistically significant correlation between p53 gene mutation and a poor prognosis. It was found that p53 gene mutation was associated with fast growth of the tumor. Therefore p53 gene mutation is probably an indicator of poor prognosis for large cell carcinoma of the lung.