Phonological words and stuttering on function words

Stuttering on function words was examined in 51 people who stutter. The people who stutter were subdivided into young (2 to 6 years), middle (6 to 9 years), and older (9 to 12 years) child groups; teenagers (13 to 18 years); and adults (20 to 40 years). As reported by previous researchers, children up to about age 9 stuttered more on function words (pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs), whereas older people tended to stutter more on content words (nouns, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives). Function words in early positions in utterances, again as reported elsewhere, were more likely to be stuttered than function words at later positions in an utterance. This was most apparent for the younger groups of speakers. For the remaining analyses, utterances were segmented into phonological words on the basis of Selkirk's work (1984). Stuttering rate was higher when function words occurred in early phonological word positions than other phonological word positions whether the phonological word appeared in initial position in an utterance or not. Stuttering rate was highly dependent on whether the function word occurred before or after the single content word allowed in Selkirk's (1984) phonological words. This applied, once again, whether the phonological word was utterance-initial or not. It is argued that stuttering of function words before their content word in phonological words in young speakers is used as a delaying tactic when the forthcoming content word is not prepared for articulation.     

Estimation of liquid film mass transfer coefficients for columns randomly packed with partially wetted rings

A semitheoretical correlation based on an extension of the random length, random angle statistical model of Davidson (1959) is developed which predicts liquid film mass transfer coefficients in a column packed with partially wetted Raschig rings. The method takes into account the ring size and the mixing which occurs at the packing junctions and allows an estimation of the effective length of a packing piece for a particular liquid viscosity. Predicted values of mass transfer coefficients are in good agreement with the experimental values obtained for the carbon dioxide-water and carbon dioxide-aqueous glycerol systems at 25°C reported by Mangers and Ponter (1980b) and other systems reported by Sherwood and Holloway (1940).     

On the performance of random vector quantization limited feedback beamforming in a MISO system

In multiple antenna wireless systems, beamforming is a simple technique for guarding against the negative effects of fading. Unfortunately, beamforming requires the transmitter to have knowledge of the forward-link channel which is often not available a priori. One way of overcoming this problem is to design the beamforming vector using a limited number of feedback bits sent from the receiver to the transmitter. In limited feedback beamforming, the beamforming vector is restricted to lie in a codebook that is known to both the transmitter and receiver. Random vector quantization (RVQ) is a simple approach to codebook design that generates the vectors independently from a uniform distribution on the complex unit sphere. This correspondence presents performance analysis results for RVQ limited feedback beamforming     

Quantitative determination of glucose in blood plasma and in fruit juices by combined WATR-CPMG 1H NMR spectroscopy.

The quantitative analysis of pure glucose solution < or = 225 mM (< or = 40.8 mg/mL) in 90/10 H2O/D2O was successfully completed in dilute aqueous solution by the WATR-CPMG method whereby the T2 of the water resonance is manipulated by the WATR method followed by elimination of the water peak by the CPMG pulse sequence. The method was applied to the quantitative analysis of total glucose in blood plasma from human subjects undergoing the oral glucose tolerance test in the teaching hospital, and the results were compared to those obtained using a standard glucose oxidase method in a hospital chemical pathology laboratory. The accuracy of the results obtained using the WATR-CPMG method were generally within 5% of the glucose oxidase method. The coefficient of variation was determined to be better than 4% using plasma samples of diabetic subjects. Application to the quantitative analysis of orange and guava juice was also successfully demonstrated.     

橡胶自粘防水卷材及其应用

介绍了自粘防水卷材的构造和自粘防水卷材应具备的性能特点,对自粘卷材在地下工程、柔性泛水、防潮、桥梁防水、绝缘、水湿气及化学气体保护、斜屋面垫层防水、空气及水蒸气屏障等方面的应用分别进行了阐述.     

Recursive likelihood evaluation and fast search algorithm for polynomial segment model with application to speech recognition

Polynomial segment models (PSMs), which are generalization of the hidden Markov models (HMMs), have opened an alternative research direction for speech recognition. However, they have been limited by their computational complexity. Traditionally, any change in PSM segment boundary requires likelihood recomputation of all the frames within the segment. This makes the PSM's segment likelihood evaluation an order of magnitude more expensive than the HMM's. Furthermore, because recognition using segment models needs to search over all possible segment boundaries, the PSM recognition is computationally unfeasible beyond N-best rescoring. By exploiting the properties of the time normalization in PSM, and by decomposing the PSM segment likelihood into a simple function of "sufficient statistics", in this paper, we show that segment likelihood can be evaluated efficiently in an order of computational complexity similar to HMM. In addition, by reformulating the PSM recognition as a search for the optimal path through a graph, this paper introduces a fast PSM search algorithm that intelligently prunes the number of hypothesized segment boundaries, such that PSM recognition can be performed in an order of complexity similar to HMM. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms with experiments using a PSM-based recognition system on two different recognition tasks: TIDIGIT digit recognition and the Wall Street Journal dictation task. In both tasks, PSM recognition is feasible and out-performed traditional HMM by more than 14%.     

FTIR determination of fluorocarbon lubricant film thickness on magnetic disk media

Fluorocarbon lubricants have been used extensively for Winchester-type media to minimize head disk interfacial wear and friction. The film thickness of these lubricants must be carefully controlled. This paper describes a non-destructive and cost-effective technique of measuring the average, relative thickness of lubricating films on rigid magnetic disks by using FTIR spectroscopy. Lubricant film thickness data obtained by FTIR correlated very well with those obtained by ESCA spectroscopy. The effect of surface roughness on lubricant retention during the lubrication process is also demonstrated.     

Novel difference-frequency dual-signal injection method for CMOS mixer linearization

This paper presents the application of dual-signal injection technique to the reduction of intermodulation distortion (IMD) level in double-balanced mixer. In this method, "difference-frequency" signal components are optimally fed to the mixer through the biasing circuitry for IMD cancellation. For comparison purposes, the measured performance of a 900-MHz complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) mixer based upon both single and dual injection approaches is shown.     

IMD reduction in CMOS double-balanced mixer using multibias dual-gate transistors

This paper presents a novel and simple linearization scheme for a CMOS double-balanced mixer based on the use of multibias dual-gate transistors. In this technique, intermodulation-distortion (IMD) components with proper phase relationship, generated by devices operating at different bias conditions, are combined together to improve the linearity of mixers. For experimental verification, the measured performance of a fabricated CMOS mixer is shown. Over 35 dB of IMD reduction is achieved by the proposed method under proper biasing condition.