bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Native listeners' perceptual assessments of native and non-native speech and their associations with various speech properties
Authors: Lee Jieun , Kim Dong Jin , Park Hanyong
Published: December 2020

Listeners can evaluate different aspects of speech, but do they make judgments based on the same speech properties for native and non-native speech? We investigated this question by examining the contribution of various speech properties to American-English speaking listeners' ratings on fluency, comprehensibility, accentedness, and pleasantness of relatively short, spontaneous English utterances produced by American-English native speakers (i.e., native speech) and Korean native speakers (i.e., accented speech). The results showed that the four perceptual dimensions in both native and accented speech were distinctive regarding the contribution of different speech measurements in ratings, albeit some overlapped. In general, the normalized Pairwise Variability Index (the metrics measuring speech rhythm) was salient in native speech evaluations, whereas repair fluency measurement, which includes the instances of repetitions, replacements, reformations, hesitations, and false starts, was in accented speech evaluations. This repair fluency also influenced pleasantness evaluations of native speech but not the evaluations of the other dimensions in native speech. In addition, speech measurements affecting pleasantness evaluations of accented speech are also involved in the evaluations of fluency and comprehensibility of accented speech. In sum, this study suggests that listeners process the same perceptual dimensions in somewhat different manners in native and accented speech.
Faking It: How performed versus authentic southern accents impact word recognition
Authors: Walker Abby , DeFoor Nicole
Published: December 2020

While listeners are not necessarily good at distinguishing performed versus real regional dialects (e.g., Heaton, 2019), there is also evidence that performed dialects can be inaccurate, limited to salient variables, and/or phonetically exaggerated (e.g., Schilling-Estes, 1998; Zetterholm, 2003; Bell & Gibson, 2011). In this study we investigate how performed speech impacts word recognition, comparing listener responses to performed Southern dialects in one auditory lexical decision study versus native Southern dialects in another. In both studies, stimuli included monosyllabic words with vowels from the PRIZE, KIT, DRESS, THOUGHT, STRUT and FACE lexical sets, which have been shown to be strong markers of Southern US English (e.g., Gunter et al., 2017). 123 native speakers of US English (46 Southern) heard Southern tokens from 4 women from Southwest Virginia, and 32 (15 Southern) heard Southern tokens from 6 actresses who did not identify as Southern. Interactions between the dialect of the speaker (real, performed), the dialect of the listener (Southern, Not-Southern), and the vowel in the word will be analyzed in terms of both accuracy and responses times.
Varying intelligibility and linguistic complexity in sentence recognition in noise: Insights from older listeners
Authors: Strori Dorina , Souza Pamela E. , Bradlow Ann
Published: December 2020

Recognition of foreign-accented speech by older listeners with hearing loss has typically been examined with linguistically simple materials (words and short sentences), which may not capture the complexity of realistic speech experiences. In this study, older listeners with varying degrees of hearing acuity recognized simple (i.e., short, mono-clausal, canonical declarative syntax) and complex (i.e., longer, multi-clausal, non-canonical syntax, and/or passive voice) sentences in broadband noise at a signal-to-noise ratio of 5 decibels. Three talkers produced the sentences: one L1-English, one high-intelligibility and one low-intelligibility L2 English talkers (based on prior intelligibility testing with young, normal hearing listeners). As anticipated, sentence recognition accuracy dropped with decreasing talker intelligibility and increasing sentence complexity. However, the effect of linguistic complexity on recognition accuracy was modulated by talker intelligibility, as reflected in a robust interaction between the two variables. Namely, accuracy dropped with increasing linguistic complexity only for the native and high intelligibility talkers. This pattern persisted after accounting for the effects of working memory and degree of hearing acuity. These findings suggest that older listeners exhibit different listening strategies for low versus high intelligibility talkers, wherein recognition benefits attributable to linguistic simplicity only emerge for speech over a threshold of intelligibility.
Multimodal emotion perception: Influences of autism spectrum disorder and autism-like traits
Authors: Hancock Megan R. , Bent Tessa
Published: December 2020

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder may exhibit impaired production and perception of facial and vocal affect cues. For example, both neurotypical and autistic adults tend to interpret affect less accurately from autistic faces and voices, with autistic listeners displaying overall lower identification accuracy. However, earlier studies compared neurotypical and autistic emotion perception under exclusively unimodal conditions (facial or verbal cues alone) or exclusively multimodal conditions in which utterances and static faces were presented sequentially. This study assesses neurotypical adults' accuracy and response time in a forced-choice emotion identification task with video-only, audio-only, and audiovisual recordings of neurotypical and autistic talkers. The study also investigates the relation between listeners' task performance and Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores (degree of autism-like traits). Preliminary results show listeners are less accurate when identifying autistic emotional expressions, compared to neurotypical expressions, while talker type has no main effect on response time. Results also suggest a relation between AQ score and emotion-perception ability (accuracy and response time) in neurotypical respondents. This research will provide insight into emotion perception and production differences, along with implications for interpersonal functioning, in autism and under the broader autism phenotype within the neurotypical population. [Work supported by the Indiana University Hutton Honors College.]
Investigating speaker authentication system vulnerability to the limited duration of speech excerpts and voice cloning
Authors: Zaporowski Szymon , Czyzewski Andrzej
Published: December 2020

The impact of the length of the reference sample and the authentication sample to the accuracy of the speaker authentication employing deep learning architecture is tested in bank branches and discussed in the paper. The presented work focuses on testing different approaches to parameterizing voice credentials employing: MFCC, LPC, and GFCC as extracted features. Also, a mixed approach with the use of supervector containing the most important coefficients for each parameterization method was examined. For the purpose of this work, standard corpora for the authentication of speakers like VoxCeleb2 and Librispeech were used along with our own recordings. Another subject of the work was to investigate the immunity of the speaker verification system based on machine learning to attack attempts using the method of voice cloning. The impact of the duration of speech excerpts on the vulnerability to this type of attack was examined. The influence of quality and length of the generated recordings used for the attack was studied. It turned out that the results obtained depend on the acoustic conditions in bank branches, where there is quite a lot of noise coming from the work of banknote counters, the clatter of stamping documents, and conversations. [Project No. POIR.01.01.01-0092/19 entitled: “BIOPUAP—a biometric cloud authentication system” is currently financed by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) from the European Regional Development Fund.]
Research on spatiotemporal fluctuation characteristics of underwater acoustic communication signals
Authors: Lv Zhichao , Wang Haozhong , Bai Yiqi
Published: December 2020

In underwater acoustic communication systems, channel characteristics are mainly affected by changes in space and time. The changes embody the random fluctuations of the seabed and sea surface, and the effects of refraction and scattering caused by seawater layered media on the sound field. As the channel is time-varying and space-varying, the rapid fluctuation of communication signals, which is shown in the frequency selective fading in frequency-domain and the signal waveform distortion in the time domain, leads to a bad effect on the performance of the underwater acoustic communication system. The techniques to compensate or offset the effects of deep fading such as coding error correction and spatial diversity are widely used in underwater acoustic communication systems, which may cause a significant waste of limited communication efficiency. This paper analyzes the spatiotemporal fluctuation characteristics of both signal field and noise field, and summarizes the temporal and spatial variation rules. The effects of signal spatiotemporal fluctuation on communication systems are significantly reduced by reasonably selecting the communication signal parameters, equipment deployment depth and horizontal distance, which will guide the parameter configuration and network protocol optimization of communication systems.
The just noticeable difference of early decay time (EDT)
Authors: del Solar Dorrego Fernando M. , Vigeant Michelle C.
Published: December 2020

The purpose of this study was to determine the just noticeable difference (JND) of early decay time (EDT) for broadband conditions and individual frequency bands. JNDs of room acoustic parameters are important for assessing if changes in geometry or materials in a room will have a discernible impact in the listener’s perception. The EDT JND has been reported to be 5% in the ISO 3382-1:2009 standard, which is the same value usually quoted for the JND of classical reverberation time (T30). No formal studies have been undertaken so far to validate if this JND value is appropriate for EDT, or to determine its dependency on frequency. Measured spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs) from three concert halls were used as base cases, which were then modified with a computer algorithm to attain specified values of EDT. All stimuli were reproduced in an anechoic chamber with an array of 30 loudspeakers using third-order ambisonics. The method of constant stimuli, in which a psychometric function is fitted to the measured data, was used to determine the JND. Thirty subjects with musical backgrounds participated in the study. The obtained broadband JND was 26%, while individual frequency band JNDs were higher.
Tracking fin whales in a coastal fjord using passive acoustics
Authors: Hendricks Benjamin , Keen Eric , Wray Janie , Shine Chenoah , Alidina Hussein M , Picard Chris
Published: December 2020

In the north-eastern Pacific, fin whales (Balaenoptara physalus) are typically found and studied in open waters near or seaward of the continental shelf. The Kitimat fjord system is a network of sounds and channels along the coast of British Columbia, Canada, and is one of only a few known fin whale habitats within confined coastal waters. In 2018, we deployed a network of hydrophones in Squally Channel, a proposed shipping lane located at the center of the fjord system, to monitor and track fin whales for a period of 2 years. The work is part of an effort to mitigate anthropogenic stressors on whales in the traditional territory of the Gitga'at First Nation. Here, we present spatial-temporal habitat use by fin whales in this confined inshore ecosystem based on more than 30 000 call detections and 7000 source localizations. Two distinct call types were recorded, a 20 Hz and a 40 Hz pulse, with distinctly different seasonal and diel trends. About 100 individual tracks were reconstructed from 20 Hz call sequences and analyzed for calling characteristics and movement patterns. A better understanding of fin whale habitat in the north-east Pacific is of special importance in light of an active discussion about the conservation status of this large baleen whale in Canadian waters.
Detection probability and density estimation of fin whales by a seaglider
Authors: Fregosi Selene , Harris Danielle V. , Matsumoto Haruyoshi , Mellinger David K. , Martin Stephen W. , Matsuyama Brian , Barlow Jay , Klinck Holger
Published: December 2020

The effectiveness of gliders is evaluated for passive acoustic density estimation of fin whales. An estimate of the probability of detection as a function of range (or, equivalently, effective survey area) is required to estimate density from acoustic data collected by a single-hydrophone glider platform. A cabled hydrophone array was used to estimate fin whale localizations and tracks concurrently with a glider survey. Fin whale tracks were used as detection trials and a detection function for snapshots containing fin whale 20 Hz pulses recorded by the glider was modeled using a generalized additive model. Detection probability was strongly dependent on 40 Hz noise levels recorded on the glider. At the median noise level of 97 dB re 1μPa2/Hz, detection probability was near one at zero horizontal distance, and maximum detection range was near 40 km. The estimated effective survey area at this noise level was 870 km2. Using estimates of vocal rates and group size from tagged and tracked fin whales, respectively, the density was estimated as 2.4 fin whales per 1000 km2 (coefficient of variation 0.55). The framework presented here could be applied to other baleen whale species to advance the use of gliders for density estimation of cetaceans.
Towards a metatheory explaining hearing protection device use among workers
Authors: Doutres Olivier , Terroir Jonathan , Jolly Caroline , Gauvin Chantal , Martin Laurence , Negrini Alessia
Published: December 2020

Offering hearing protection devices (HPDs) to workers exposed to hazardous noise is a common noise control strategy for preventing noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). However, HPDs are not always worn, or are used incorrectly and inconsistently by workers, which explains their limited efficiency. Numerous models based on social cognition theories aim to improve hearing protection training programs and to increase HPD use. They identify significant factors associated with worker’s behaviors regarding HPD use (e.g., perceived barriers and benefits to HPD use, perceived self-efficacy). However, these models do not detail (dis)comfort aspects originating from complex interactions between physical characteristics of the triad “user/HPD/work environment” while these aspects are known to largely influence HPD (mis)use. The objective of this communication is to propose a metatheory explaining HPD (mis)use and based on the integration of an HPD comfort model into an existing social cognition model already developed for HPDs. This holistic description of the HPD use, involving both physical and psychosocial characteristics of the triad, could be used as a tool for the stakeholders (e.g., researchers, manufacturers, preventers) involved in the protection of workers from NIHL.
Earcanal anthropometry analysis for the design of realistic artificial ears
Authors: Poissenot-Arrigoni Bastien , Law Chun Hong , Sgard Franck , Doutres Olivier
Published: December 2020

How in-ear devices fit in the ear strongly influences the acoustical and mechanical (dis)comforts induced to the wearer. As important variations in the ear geometry exist based on gender, age and ethnicity, several studies collected ear anthropometric data as a basis for designing ear-mounted products. However, most of these studies focused on the ergonomic design of earbuds, and are thus limited to the geometry of the pinna, and concha (where earbuds fit). Few studies explored geometrical earcanal data for the design of intra-auricular hearing protectors that fit up to the earcanal second bend. The design of earplugs that fit to the widest range of earcanals requires realistic acoustical test fixtures representative of the population. This study uses statistical analysis and artificial intelligence based algorithms to cluster 32 Canadian workers pairs of earmolds scans as a function of earcanal curvilinear axis length, entrance, first and second bend cross sections area and circumference, but also earcanal tortuosity and cross sections aspect ratios. Dimensions relevant to cluster earcanals will be collected on a hundred of ears in a future study to design artificial ears which capture the inter-individual variability in mechanical and acoustical objective indicators related to the most important earplugs (dis)comfort attributes.
An acousto-gravitational balance in climbing films of water and oil for separating liquid mixtures
Authors: Horesh Amihai , Zigelman Anna , Khaikin Daniel , Karnilaw Mackenzi , Manor Ofer
Published: December 2020

We present the climb of water menisci and silicon oil films up a vertical acoustic actuator. The experimental system is comprised of a vertical 20MHz-frequency surface acoustic wave (SAW) device whose edge is submerged in a reservoir of liquid. Upon the application of power, the SAW propagates down the device toward the liquid reservoir. We monitor the response of the liquid to the SAW. Partially wetting water and surfactant solutions naturally satisfy a finite three phase contact angle between the liquid, vapor, and the solid substrate of the device, which gives rise to curved liquid menisci in the absence of SAW excitation. In the presence of the SAW, the menisci rise up the device to obtain steady state heights above the level of liquid in the reservoir. In contrast, silicon oil supports a vanishing contact angle with the SAW device, which gives rise to flat films of oil. In the presence of the SAW, silicon oil films are found to continuously climb up the device at a constant velocity, which is similar to the corresponding velocity on a horizontal SAW device. We use the difference in the response of oil and water to separate liquid mixtures.
Linearity, orthogonality, and resolution of psychoacoustic sonification for multidimensional data
Authors: Ziemer Tim , Schultheis Holger
Published: December 2020

Sonification is the use of sound to communicate data to a listener. In sonification designs that lack psychoacoustic considerations, dimensions tends to be perceived as nonlinear, interfering, and as having a low resolution. As a solution to these issues, we developed a “psychoacoustic sonification,” in which single dimensions or variables of multidimensional or multivariate data are mapped to independent psychoacoustic quantities instead of orthogonal physical quantities. Distances along different direction are mapped to the speed of cyclicchroma change, the beat frequency, the degree of roughness, brightness and fullness. In this paper we present results of 3experiments that evaluate the linearity, orthogonality, and resolution of the dimensions. In experiment 1, participants identify a sonified target field in multiple two-dimensional spaces. Results indicate the orthogonality of the dimensions. In experiment 2, the sonification guides the participants through a two-dimensional space to find an invisible target. The results verify the linearity and orthogonality of the dimensions and indicate a high resolution. Experiment 3 is a JND experiment according to the transformed up-down method, which demonstrated the high resolution of the dimensions. We conclude that applying psychoacoustic knowledge in the signal processing of sonification is a powerful tool for multidimensional data sonification.
Developing and maintaining the Phonological CorpusTools software
Authors: Hall Kathleen C. , Lo Roger Y. , Nam Stanley
Published: December 2020

Phonological CorpusTools (http://phonologicalcorpustools.github.io/CorpusTools/) is a free, open-source, cross-platform software written in Python 3 that comes with a graphical user interface. It is designed to facilitate the analysis of phonological patterns in transcribed data, calculating characteristics such as phonotactic probability, functional load, neighbourhood density, informativity, and degree of complementary distribution. Having such a tool helps increase the reproducibility of quantitative phonological corpus analysis. We discuss some of the challenges we have encountered in developing this software (and its companion, Sign Language Phonetic Annotator & Analyzer(SLP-AA)), including (1) the difficulty of providing long-term, ongoing development and support in a world of changing technologies and (2) the difficulty of making a software tool that is easily accessible to users with a wide variety of starting data types. Having centralized, staffed, and funded repositories (cf. Alveo: http://alveo.edu.au/) would help mitigate some of the practical difficulties of sharing, distributing, and maintaining such resources. We also suggest that when developing specific tools, it is important to invest considerable time and resources in the input/output interface, which in turn facilitates both the uploading of data by disparate users and the workflow of transferring data from one application to another.
Modeling and measurement of relative intensity of acoustic arrivals within the beaufort duct
Authors: Desrochers Jessica , Van Uffelen Lora , Webster Sarah E. , Dzieciuch Matthew A. , Worcester Peter F.
Published: December 2020

The Beaufort Duct, located at approximately 175 m depth in the Canada Basin, allows for long-range acoustic propagation from sources moored within the duct. As part of the Canada Basin Acoustic Propagation/Glider Experiment (CANAPE/CABAGE), LFM sweeps with frequencies around 250 Hz were transmitted by broadband moored sources and received by two Seagliders traversing between them. In addition to receiving acoustic data, these Seagliders measured temperature, pressure, and salinity, providing measurements of the sound speed profile throughout the CANAPE study region. These profiles were used as inputs for broadband acoustic parabolic equation predictions. Measured data receptions within the duct show intense peak arrivals prior to the final cutoff that are higher in relative intensity than predicted. The duct properties of the measured sound speed profiles are parameterized and acoustic predictions using actual profiles as well as idealized profiles are used to study the predictability of these intense peaks within the duct.
Non-cuboid iterative room optimizer
Authors: D'Antonio Peter , Petrolli Renaldi , Storyk John
Published: December 2020

In past years, various iterative optimization programs emerged to separately determine optimal room ratios, sources and listening positions in perfectly reflective cuboid rooms, using the image source model. This approach fails to account for scattering, phase change at the boundary and cannot be extended to non-cuboid rooms. The present work presents a solution, using the boundary element method (BEM) to compute the frequency response at low frequencies, considering the effects of the complex admittances of the boundaries and all acoustical elements inside the room. With BEM as its engine, a genetic algorithm was developed to optimize source and receiver positions simultaneously with the room geometry, within architectural restraints. Given real-world limitations, optimizing source and listener positioning and room geometry is not always an option. Therefore, a damper module was added, which addresses low frequency acoustic treatment. By using different transfer matrix models, the acoustical behavior of different low-frequency pressure absorbers can be modeled and inserted into the BEM simulation, to evaluate the change in the room's acoustic field and frequency response at the receiving positions of interest. 3-D waterfalls are used to illustrate the modal decay following optimization. Examples will be presented.
Effect of sonication parameters on the efficacy of focused ultrasound and microbubble-mediated blood-spinal cord barrier opening using short-burst, phase keying exposures
Authors: Fletcher Stecia-Marie P. , Choi Min , Ramesh Ranjith , O'Reilly Meaghan
Published: December 2020

Focused ultrasound (FUS) and microbubbles can open the blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCB) and enhance therapeutic delivery. Short-burst phase keying (SBPK) exposures (pulse-train of closely timed short bursts) have been developed to address clinical-scale, spine specific targeting challenges in a dual-aperture configuration, and have led to successful BSCB opening (BSCBO) in animal models. Here we study the effect of varying sonication parameters in vivo. The effect of varying acoustic pressure (P, n = 4), burst length (BL, n = 3), burst repetition frequency (BRF, n = 4), pulse-train length(PL, n = 4), and total treatment duration (τ, n = 4), compared with a control sonication (P = 0.28 MPa, BL = 2 cycles, BRF = 20 kHz, PL = 10 ms, τ = 120 s, frequency = 514 kHz, PRF = 1 Hz), was investigated in Sprague Dawley rats (3-4 locations/spinal cord). BSCBO was assessed using T1-weighted contrast-enhanced MRI. Statistical significance was assessed using a paired t-test (p < 0.05). Increased P led to increased MRI enhancement (0.23 MPa: 17.8 ± 4.9%, 0.28 MPa: 25.9 ± 8.0%, 0.33 MPa: 33.9 ± 8.8%). τ = 300 s showed increased enhancement compared with the control (29.5 ± 8.7 vs 22.2 ± 2.8%, p = 0.03), while BL = 5 showed a trend towards increasing enhancement, although without significance (36.6 ± 7.2% vs. 31.2 ± 3.0%, p = 0.17). Varying PL or BRF did not impact mean enhancement. Preliminary results show that increasing treatment duration improves the efficacy of SBPK FUS-induced BSCBO and increasing burst length may have some benefit. Future work will include histological assessment of tissue damage.
Effects of shell chemistry on acoustic response and dissolution behavior of lipid-coated microbubbles
Authors: Hassanzadeh Azami Roozbeh , Aliabouzar Mitra , Osborn Jenna , Sarkar Kausik
Published: December 2020

Microbubbles have been widely used as contrast agents for ultrasound imaging. They are also being investigated for therapeutic applications including as a vehicle for ultrasound activated targeted drug delivery. Here the effects of the shell chemistry on the acoustic response and dissolution behavior of microbubbles have been investigated. Microbubbles encapsulated by a lipid shell (DPPC and DPPE-PEG2000) were prepared with different PEG molar ratios (0% to 20%) investigating their concentration, size distribution, stability and material properties. Note that different PEG concentrations were previously shown to result in different PEG surface configuration: mushroom for lower PEG concentrations and brush for higher ones. The microbubbles in the brush regime seem to generate higher fundamental and subharmonic scattering components at 2.25 MHz excitation, while the higher harmonics seems unaffected. Microbubbles in the mushroom regime showed different dissolution behavior with longer growth period before dissolution. This is believed to be resulted from a less permeable shell in comparison to shells in brush regime. The relation between acoustic response, dissolution behavior and material properties of the shell will be discussed.
Chu limit and non-Foster radiation for sound
Authors: Rasmussen Curtis , Alù Andrea
Published: December 2020

We show that the quality factor of a small passive acoustic radiator is fundamentally limited by its volume normalized to the emitted wavelength, imposing important constraints on the bandwidth and efficiency of compact acoustic sources. We overcome this bound, known in electromagnetics as Chu’s limit, by realizing a piezoelectric transducer loaded with a non-Foster circuit, showing that its radiation bandwidth is fundamentally limited only by stability considerations. Based on these principles, we experimentally observe over a threefold bandwidth enhancement compared to its passive counterpart, paving the way towards non-Foster acoustic elements and metamaterials that overcome the bandwidth constraints of passive systems.
Broadband phononic frequency comb generation in a parametrically excited capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer
Authors: Surappa Sushruta , Degertekin F. Levent
Published: December 2020

Optical frequency combs consisting of evenly spaced discrete frequencies have been used for a number of applications such as frequency metrology, range finding and molecular fingerprinting. Recently, the acoustic equivalent of these frequency combs, known as phononic frequency combs (PFCs), have been demonstrated in micro and nanoscale resonators. However, such demonstrations are restricted to PFC generation in high-Q mechanical resonators under carefully controlled operating conditions with limited practical applications. In this work, we demonstrate a novel method of generating PFCs with a parametrically driven capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) operating in a fluid medium. The proposed system consists of an electrically driven CMUT array that forms part of a resonant RLC circuit of frequency w0. By applying two drive tones of frequency w0 and w0+Δ, we are able to generate broadband acoustic frequency combs via a parametric four-wave mixing process. The intensity and number of combs generated is strongly dependent on the relative strength of the two driving tones whereas the comb spacing is determined by the frequency difference Δ between the drive signals. We also briefly discuss a potential application of PFCs in extended non-ambiguous range (NAR) distance metrology with interferometric resolution.
Re-testing theories of vowel inherent spectral change
Authors: Jibson Jonathan
Published: December 2020

Three basic models of vowel inherent spectral change have been proposed: onset + offset, onset + direction, and onset + slope (or spectral rate of change). Morrison (2013) presents three theoretical stimuli whose identification rates relative to each other should lend weight to one of these hypotheses: (i) canonical duration and canonical onset-to-offset trajectory, (ii) canonical duration with double trajectory length, and (iii) canonical trajectory with half duration. The bulk of previous work supports onset + offset. In the present study, eight English monophthongs were synthesized with the Klatt synthesizer of the Berkeley Phonetics Machine. Three versions of each vowel were synthesized, corresponding to the theoretical stimuli of Morrison (2013). These 24 stimuli were used in two studies (n = 18 for each). First was a vowel identification task, where the choices were [hVd] words with the chosen vowels (heed, hid, etc.). Second was a goodness rating task with a 7-point Likert scale, where participants were played a vowel stimulus while being shown the orthographic [hVd] word containing that vowel. The results align most closely with the onset + slope hypothesis, though not as neatly as predicted.
Automatic detection of t/d deletion using forced alignment
Authors: Lipani Lisa
Published: December 2020

In phonetic research, the time needed to manually annotate large-scale data is often prohibitive, and computer-assisted alignment is needed. Forced alignment, an offshoot of automatic speech recognition, is a technique that provides word and phone boundaries of use to linguists. However, this forced alignment systems rely on a dictionary that typically gives canonical pronunciations of words. This study investigates the efficacy of modifying the dictionary of the Montreal Forced Aligner (McAuliffe et al., 2017) to account for a well-attested sociophonetic variation phenomenon, t/d deletion. This is done by aligning the Buckeye Corpus (Kiesling et al., 2006), chosen as it allows comparison of forced alignment results to human transcriber results. Overall, 23 522 words that canonically feature word-final t/d in a consonant cluster were examined. Forced alignment results from this modification were in agreement with human transcribers approximately 71% of the time, close to the 76% agreement of human transcribers (Raymond et al., 2002). These results are promising for future large-scale sociophonetic research in which dictionary modifications can be made to better force align data containing sociophonetic variation.
Word-final incomplete neutralization in Afrikaans: Differences in perception and production
Authors: Pfiffner Alexandra M.
Published: December 2020

This study examines incomplete neutralization in word-final plosive voicing in Afrikaans. Perception and production data were collected from 34 native speakers, divided into two gender-balanced age groups (20–24, 60–83). Perception task stimuli were artificially manipulated continua (/stat/-/stad/ “township,” “city” and /raat/-/raad/ “folk medicine,” “advice”) varying in preceding vowel length, closure duration, burst duration, or a combination of cues. Participants underwent a two-alternative forced-choice task, where they heard a stimulus word and identified if they heard stat or stad, or raat or raad. Results show that only preceding vowel length was a significant factor across all participant groups: longer vowel lengths were associated with word-final underlying voicing, and shorter vowel lengths with underlying voicelessness. In the production task, participants read a randomized word list. Results show that all age and gender groups have systematic differences in preceding vowel length and burst duration. A distinction in closure duration in the predicted direction was maintained only by younger participants. The comparison of perception and production results have implications for the relative weighting of cues, and further suggest that word-final incomplete neutralization may not be a stable phenomenon in Afrikaans.
Individual differences in the production and perception of prosodic boundaries in American English
Authors: Kim Jiseung
Published: December 2020

The goal of the current study is to investigate whether the acoustic properties that speakers use to encode prosodic contrasts in their production of Intonational Phrase (IP) boundaries are closely related to the properties they used to perceive those contrasts. The focus is on pause, phrase-final lengthening, and pitch reset. Thirty-two participants read sentence pairs differing in the type of boundary—word versus IP boundary. Results show that participants differed in both the combination of the acoustic properties used and the degree to which they used them to mark IP boundaries. For the perception study, the same stimuli were recorded by a model talker and the three acoustic characteristics were manipulated to systematically vary the presence and degree of the IP boundary cues in the auditory stimuli. Twenty participants from the production study participated in an eye-tracking experiment. Results of the Generalized Additive Mixed Model analyses showed limited evidence that the perception of IP boundaries was influenced by how the participants modulated the acoustic properties in production. [Work supported by NSF.]
Stabilizing variability in the auditory feedback of speech
Authors: Nault Daniel , Purcell David , Munhall Kevin
Published: December 2020

Auditory feedback is an essential part of speech motor control and speech learning. When feedback is perturbed in laboratory settings (e.g., Houde and Jourdan, 1998), speakers, on average, compensate for the perceived error. There is, however, considerable individual variability observed in natural speech and in speakers’ responses to auditory feedback manipulations (e.g., Purcell and Munhall, 2006). Here, we introduce a novel manipulation that stabilized the predictability of auditory feedback of 20 female speakers. Participants produced the English word “head” 95 times in two different conditions. In the Control condition, subjects produced all utterances with unaltered auditory feedback. In the Stabilization condition, subjects were presented with a recording of one of their own utterances of “head” synchronized with their speech on some trials. Auditory feedback was thus made constant by playing the same recording for a set of 30 trials. Trial-to-trial variability of the talkers’ speech did not change as a result of this constant feedback. Time-series analyses were performed to examine whether production variability differed among speakers in the two conditions. Results will be discussed regarding the possible role of variability in speech motor control and the importance of developing methods to detect state-change in individual time-series data.
Perception and lexical representation of Mandarin tones by nonnative listeners
Authors: Sun Kuo-Chan
Published: December 2020

Previous studies have shown that adult second language (L2) listeners often experience difficulty encoding language-specific phonological contrasts in word recognition. However, most research on L2 lexical representations has focused on consonants and vowels, and much remains unknown on how lexical tones are encoded in L2 phonological lexicon. In the current study, two experiments were conducted with twenty English learners of Mandarin and 20 Mandarin native speakers. In an ABX task, native speakers outperformed L2 listeners with higher accuracy rate and shorter response latencies. However, both groups showed poor discrimination sensitivity for pairs sharing similar tone contours (i.e., T2-T3). In a medium-lag repetition priming task, listeners were presented with a prime followed by a target that is either the same as the prime (e.g., ni2-ni2) or the other member of a minimal tone pair (e.g., ni2-ni3), eight to 20 items further down in the list. Results show that while significant facilitations in the repetition condition were observed in both groups, in the minimal-tone-pair condition (i.e., T2-T3), positive priming was observed only in the L2 group. The results of the two experiments provide insight into the interface between phonological and lexical levels in L2 spoken word recognition.
The relationship between native English-speaking learners’ perception and lexical representation of Hindi affricates
Authors: Barrios Shannon , Hayes-Harb Rachel
Published: December 2020

Research often demonstrates discrepancies between learners’ perception and encoding of novel lexical contrasts. In some cases, L2 learners appear to establish contrastive lexical representations that are undermined by online perceptual neutralization (e.g., Cutler and Weber, 2006). In others, L2 learners’ target-like online perceptual representations access non-target-like lexical representations (e.g., Darcy et al., 2013). Here we further investigate the relationship between learners’ perceptual and lexical representation of novel contrasts in order to better understand the source of the difficulty that they face. Two groups of naive English speakers learned 5 minimal pairs distinguished by the notoriously difficult [tΠ]-[tʃʰ] aspiration or [tʃʰ]-[dʒh] voicing contrast among Hindi affricates. Following a word learning phase, participants were tested on their perception and lexical representation of the novel contrasts. We observed that while listeners generally demonstrated perceptual sensitivity to the two affricate contrasts, they failed to encode the novel contrast lexically. Interestingly, there was a significant positive correlation between participants’ perceptual acuity and their ability to contrast newly learned minimal pairs, suggesting that learner’s ability to encode a novel segmental contrast may be predicted by their pre-existing perceptual sensitivity, as has been reported for lexical tone contrasts (e.g., Perrachione et al., 2011).
The bilingual advantage in learning a novel accent: does specific language background modulate phonetic and phonological learning?
Authors: Vasilita Mariana , Wallace Julia , Spinu Laura
Published: December 2020

Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in phonetic and phonological learning tasks (Tremblay and Sabourin, 2012; Antoniou et al., 2015; Spinu et al., 2018). Spinu et al. (2020) presented monolingual and bilingual participants (n = 36) with an artificial accent of English differing in four distinct ways from Standard American English: a vocalic change (diphthongization of a monophthong), consonantal change (tapping of intervocalic liquids), syllable structure change (epenthesis in s-clusters) and suprasegmental change (a novel intonation pattern in tag questions). Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals across the board but the differences were more pronounced with tapping and tag questions. Because the bilinguals’ other languages were diverse (Arabic, Cantonese, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Urdu, Thai, and Haitian/Jamaican/St. Lucian Creole), the authors concluded that the specific languages spoken by the participants did not greatly affect the outcome, and the observed advantage correlates with the state of being bilingual. In the current study, we explore the connection between specific language background and performance with each of the four novel features. We evaluate our findings against previous claims that phonetic learning is modulated by the degree of similarity between the phonologies existent in the bilinguals’ repertoire and the universal difficulty of the phonetic features learnt (Kopeckova, 2016).
Clinical Validity of the Test of Gross Motor Development-3 in Children With Disabilities from the U.S. National Normative Sample
Authors: Pitchford E. Andrew , Webster E. Kipling
Published: December 2020

The Test of Gross Motor Development (TGMD) measures fundamental motor skills competency and is frequently used for eligibility determination of adapted physical education services in children with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to determine if the TGMD-3 is clinically sensitive to detect deficits in the fundamental motor skills of children with disabilities (i.e., intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, language and articulation disorders). Eighty-five children with disabilities and 85 matched controls (i.e., typically developing, individually matched on age, sex, ethnicity, and race) completed the TGMD-3. Mann–Whitney U tests identified significant differences in the total TGMD-3 scores for children with intellectual disability (p < .001), autism spectrum disorder (p < .001), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (p = .032). No differences were identified for children with language and articulation disorders. Comparisons of subscales (i.e., locomotor and ball skills) differed across disability groups. This study provides evidence that the TGMD-3 is clinically sensitive to identify deficits in fundamental motor skills competency.
Can Genetic Testing Predict Talent? A Case Study of 5 Elite Athletes
Authors: Pickering Craig , Kiely John
Published: December 2020

Purpose: The genetic influence on the attainment of elite athlete status is well established, with a number of polymorphisms found to be more common in elite athletes than in the general population. As such, there is considerable interest in understanding whether this information can be utilized to identify future elite athletes. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to compare the total genotype scores of 5 elite athletes to those of nonathletic controls, to subsequently determine whether genetic information could discriminate between these groups, and, finally, to suggest how these findings may inform debates relating to the potential for genotyping to be used as a talent-identification tool. Methods: The authors compared the total genotype scores for both endurance (68 genetic variants) and speed-power (48 genetic variants) elite athlete status of 5 elite track-and-field athletes, including an Olympic champion, to those of 503 White European nonathletic controls. Results: Using the speed-power total genotype score, the elite speed-power athletes scored higher than the elite endurance athletes; however, using this speed-power score, 68 nonathletic controls registered higher scores than the elite power athletes. Surprisingly, using the endurance total genotype score, the elite speed-power athletes again scored higher than the elite endurance athletes. Conclusions: These results suggest that genetic information is not capable of accurately discriminating between elite athletes and nonathletic controls, illustrating that the use of such information as a talent-identification tool is currently unwarranted and ineffective.
Metachronal patterns in artificial cilia for low Reynolds number fluid propulsion
Authors: Milana Edoardo , Zhang Rongjing , Vetrano Maria Rosaria , Peerlinck Sam , De Volder Michael , Onck Patrick R. , Reynaerts Dominiek , Gorissen Benjamin
Published: December 2020

The influence of metachronal patterns on ciliary fluid flow has been studied using a soft robotic cilia array and simulations.
Glycine-based treatment ameliorates NAFLD by modulating fatty acid oxidation, glutathione synthesis, and the gut microbiome
Authors: Rom Oren , Liu Yuhao , Liu Zhipeng , Zhao Ying , Wu Jianfeng , Ghrayeb Alia , Villacorta Luis , Fan Yanbo , Chang Lin , Wang Lu , Liu Cai , Yang Dongshan , Song Jun , Rech Jason C. , Guo Yanhong , Wang Huilun , Zhao Guizhen , Liang Wenying , Koike Yui , Lu Haocheng , Koike Tomonari , Hayek Tony , Pennathur Subramaniam , Xi Chuanwu , Wen Bo , Sun Duxin , Garcia-Barrio Minerva T. , Aviram Michael , Gottlieb Eyal , Mor Inbal , Liu Wanqing , Zhang Jifeng , Chen Y. Eugene
Published: December 2020

A glycine- and leucine-based tripeptide improves symptoms in a mouse model of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which lacks approved treatments.
A charged NET accelerates atherosclerosis in acute infections
Authors: Giannarelli Chiara
Published: December 2020

Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) accelerate vascular inflammation in a model of endotoxinemia.
Regulation of VP30-Dependent Transcription by RNA Sequence and Structure in the Genomic Ebola Virus Promoter
Authors: Bach Simone , Demper Jana-Christin , Grünweller Arnold , Becker Stephan , Biedenkopf Nadine , Hartmann Roland K.
Published: December 2020

A detailed understanding of how the Ebola virus (EBOV) protein VP30 regulates activity of the viral polymerase complex is lacking. Here, we studied how RNA sequence, length, and structure at the transcription start site (TSS) in the 3′-leader promoter influence the impact of VP30 on viral polymerase activity.
Alerting on mortality among patients discharged from the emergency department: a machine learning model
Authors: Barash Yiftach , Soffer Shelly , Grossman Ehud , Tau Noam , Sorin Vera , BenDavid Eyal , Irony Avinoah , Konen Eli , Zimlichman Eyal , Klang Eyal
Published: December 2020

Objectives

Physicians continuously make tough decisions when discharging patients. Alerting on poor outcomes may help in this decision. This study evaluates a machine learning model for predicting 30-day mortality in emergency department (ED) discharged patients.

Methods

We retrospectively analysed visits of adult patients discharged from a single ED (1/2014–12/2018). Data included demographics, evaluation and treatment in the ED, and discharge diagnosis. The data comprised of both structured and free-text fields. A gradient boosting model was trained to predict mortality within 30 days of release from the ED. The model was trained on data from the years 2014–2017 and validated on data from the year 2018. In order to reduce potential end-of-life bias, a subgroup analysis was performed for non-oncological patients.

Results

Overall, 363 635 ED visits of discharged patients were analysed. The 30-day mortality rate was 0.8%. A majority of the mortality cases (65.3%) had a known oncological disease. The model yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.97 (95% CI 0.96 to 0.97) for predicting 30-day mortality. For a sensitivity of 84% (95% CI 0.81 to 0.86), this model had a false positive rate of 1:20. For patients without a known malignancy, the model yielded an AUC of 0.94 (95% CI 0.92 to 0.95).

Conclusions

Although not frequent, patients may die following ED discharge. Machine learning-based tools may help ED physicians identify patients at risk. An optimised decision for hospitalisation or palliative management may improve patient care and system resource allocation.