Expanding the MOS: Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the MOS-R and MOS-X

The Mean Opinion Scale (MOS) is a questionnaire used to obtain listeners' subjective assessments of synthetic speech. This paper documents the motivation, method, and results of six experiments conducted from 1999 to 2002 that investigated the psychometric properties of the MOS and expanded the range of speech characteristics it evaluates. Our initial experiments documented the reliability, validity, sensitivity, and factor structure of the P.L. Salza et al. (Acta Acustica, Vol. 82, pp. 650–656, 1996) MOS and used psychometric principles to revise and improve the scale. This work resulted in the MOS-Revised (MOS-R). Four subsequent experiments expanded the MOS-R beyond its previous focus on Intelligibility and Naturalness, to include measurement of the Prosody and Social Impression of synthetic voices. As a result of this work, we created the MOS-Expanded (MOS-X), a rating scale shown to be reliable, valid, and sensitive for high-quality evaluation of synthetic speech in applied industrial settings.     

Solar building—European Union Research and Development Programmes

The European Commission's (EC) energy R&D programmes have completed two decades of progress. In the building sector special attention has been given to technology transfer and research dissemination, because of the particular problems which arise given the characteristics of the European construction industry, its diversity and fractured structure, and rather conservative nature.Projects such as the earlier Project MONITOR and BUILDING 2000, and the more recent INNOBUILD and SOLINFO projects and the Solar House programme together represent an unusual, if not unparalleled, effort aimed at bringing about technical change in building design and providing the necessary design and evaluation support and tools to professional architects and students and, to a lesser extent, to engineers. These projects are complemented by (and draw heavily from) an ambitious but clearly-targeted series of research projects investigating major energy-related issues concerning the heating, cooling and daylighting of buildings and deficiencies in knowledge of climate and human comfort, and building performance; activities such as the construction of passive solar test centres in ten EU Member States, each typically with four identical test cells equipped with interchangeable south walls, identical heating and cooling systems, sensors, and data acquisition systems. There is now in Europe considerable emphasis on the challenges of building in warmer climates, and on advancing daylighting design and performance and developing new materials.     

Effect of prenatal alcohol and cigarette exposure on two- and six-month-old infants'' adrenocortical reactivity to stress

Biologic data on benzene metabolite doses, cytotoxicity, and genotoxicity often show that these effects do not vary directly with cumulative benzene exposure (i.e., concentration times time, or c x t). To examine the effect of an alternate exposure metric, we analyzed cell-type specific leukemia mortality in Pliofilm workers. The work history of each Pliofilm worker was used to define each worker's maximally exposed job/department combination over time and the associated long-term average concentration associated with the maximally exposed job (LTA-MEJ). Using this measure, in conjunction with four job exposure estimates, we calculated SMRs for groups of workers with increasing LTA-MEJs. The analyses suggest that a critical concentration of benzene exposure must be reached in order for the risk of leukemia or, more specifically, AMML to be expressed. The minimum concentration is between 20 and 60 ppm depending on the exposure estimate and endpoint (all leukemias or AMMLs only). We believe these analyses are a useful adjunct to previous analyses of the Pliofilm data. They suggests that (a) AMML risk is shown only above a critical concentration of benzene exposure, measured as a long-term average and experienced for years, (b) the critical concentration is between 50 and 60 ppm when using a median exposure estimate derived from three previous exposure assessments, and is between 20 and 25 ppm using the lowest exposure estimates, and (c) risks for total leukemia are driven by risks for AMML, suggesting that AMML is the cell type related to benzene exposure.     

Dyspnea resulting from phrenic nerve paralysis after interscalene brachial plexus block in an obese male--a case report

While current psychiatric taxonomies recognise a classification of amphetamine dependence, derived from the notion of an alcohol dependence syndrome, little research has validated that such a condition exists for this drug. Current amphetamine users (N = 331), were interviewed using the World Health Organization operationalisation of DSM-III-R substance dependence criteria, and a measure of the psychological components of dependence. Structural analyses indicated that a unidimensional dependence syndrome as assessed by DSM-III-R and DSM-IV criteria exists for amphetamine, and that physiological, psychological and behavioural indicators were all important in accounting for the variance in responses. It was demonstrated that the concept of a dependence syndrome is applicable to amphetamine, and that the inclusion of the amphetamine dependence syndrome in DSM-III-R and DSM-IV is valid.     

Importance of the Arg-Gly-Asp triplet in human thrombin for maintenance of structure and function

Site-directed mutagenesis was employed to assess the importance of the Arg-Gly-Asp triplet that comprises residues 197 to 199 in the B-chain of thrombin. Properties of the R197E and the D199E variants were compared with those of zeta-thrombin and the inactive S205A variant wherein the active site Ser is replaced by Ala. Relative to zeta-thrombin, the R197E thrombin variant under the assay conditions used exhibits 26% activity toward a small chromogenic substrate, 13% activity in the activation of protein C in the presence of thrombomodulin, < 3% activity in processing fibrinogen, and 1% activity in inducing platelet activation. Thus, the substrate specificity of thrombin was altered by the R197-->E replacement. The D199E variant was essentially inactive. It exhibited only 0.02% of the activity of thrombin toward the chromogenic substrate and its reactivity toward the active site-directed alkylating agent D-Phe-Pro-Arg-CH2Cl was 10,000-fold lower than that of thrombin. Like the inactive S205A thrombin variant, the D199E variant antagonized the interactions of thrombin with hirudin and thrombomodulin, but was a less effective antagonist. The dependence of the antagonism of the thrombin-thrombomodulin interaction on the concentration of D199E thrombin variant provided evidence suggesting the presence of two or more domains in thrombin that independently interact with their counterparts in thrombomodulin. Although the S205A thrombin variant antagonized the action of thrombin on platelets no such activity could be demonstrated for the D199E variant in the concentration range studied (< 800 nm). Comparison of the circular dichroism spectra of zeta-thrombin, the D199E, R197E, and S205A variants indicated that subtle differences in conformation exist between the D199E variant and the other thrombins. These differences in conformation might well account for the altered behavior of the D199E variant with respect to its interactions toward thrombomodulin, hirudin, and platelets.