Using Crowd-Sourced Speech Data to Study Socially Constrained Variation in Nonmodal Phonation

This study examines the status of nonmodal phonation (e.g. breathy and creaky voice) in British English using smartphone recordings from over 2,500 speakers. With this novel data collection method, it uncovers effects that have not been reported in past work, such as a relationship between speakers’ education and their production of nonmodal phonation. The results also confirm that previous findings on nonmodal phonation, including the greater use of creaky voice by male speakers than female speakers, extend to a much larger and more diverse sample than has been considered previously. This confirmation supports the validity of using crowd-sourced data for phonetic analyses. The acoustic correlates that were examined include fundamental frequency, H1*-H2*, cepstral peak prominence, and harmonic-to-noise ratio.

Socially constrained variation in nonmodal phonation for more than 2,500 speakers of British English

This study examines the status of nonmodal phonation in British English using smartphone recordings from over 2,500 speakers. The acoustic correlates that were examined include fundamental frequency, H1*-H2*, cepstral peak prominence, and harmonic-to-noise ratio. The results confirm that existing findings on nonmodal phonation---such as greater use of creaky voice by male speakers than female speakers---hold for a much larger and more diverse sample than has been considered previously. The study also uncovers effects that have not been reported in past work, such as a relationship between speakers' education levels and their production of nonmodal phonation.

You Do Not Mess with the Glia

Vertebrate neurons are enormously variable in morphology and distribution. While different glial cell types do exist, they are much less diverse than neurons. Over the last decade, we have conducted quantitative studies of the absolute numbers, densities, and proportions at which non-neuronal cells occur in relation to neurons. These studies have advanced the notion that glial cells are much more constrained than neurons in how much they can vary in both development and evolution. Recent evidence from studies on gene expression profiles that characterize glial cells—in the context of progressive epigenetic changes in chromatin during morphogenesis—supports the notion of constrained variation of glial cells in development and evolution, and points to the possibility that this constraint is related to the late differentiation of the various glial cell types. Whether restricted variation is a biological given (a simple consequence of late glial cell differentiation) or a physiological constraint (because, well, you do not mess with the glia without consequences that compromise brain function to the point of rendering those changes unviable), we predict that the restricted variation in size and distribution of glial cells has important consequences for neural tissue function that is aligned with their many fundamental roles being uncovered.

Learning Non-Negativity Constrained Variation for Image Denoising and Deblurring

This paper presents a heuristic Learning-based Non-Negativity Constrained Variation (L-NNCV) aiming to search the coefficients of variational model automatically and make the variation adapt different images and problems by supervised-learning strategy. The model includes two terms: a problem-based term that is derived from the prior knowledge, and an image-driven regularization which is learned by some training samples. The model can be solved by classicalε-constraint method. Experimental results show that: the experimental effectiveness of each term in the regularization accords with the corresponding theoretical proof; the proposed method outperforms other PDE-based methods on image denoising and deblurring.

Evaluation of residual clearance after pre-joining and pre-joining scheme optimization in aircraft panel assembly

Purpose For the automatic drilling and riveting in panel assembly, gaps between the skin and strangers are inevitable and undesirable. At present, the determination of pre-joining schemes relies on workers’ experience, introducing excessive number and inappropriate locations of pre-joining. This paper aims to present a new method for the evaluation of residual clearances after pre-joining and the pre-joining scheme optimization, providing operation guidance for the workers in panel assembly workshop. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, an equivalent gap assembly model for pre-joining is proposed on the basis of the mechanism of variation. This model retains the essential elastic behavior of the key features during the pre-joining operation and calculates the residual clearances in the view of the potential energy. Subsequently, this method is embedded into a Pareto optimality-based genetic algorithm, and the optimal pre-joining schemes are achieved with the consideration of the total residual clearances and the permissive tolerances. Findings The equivalent gap assembly model has the capability to predict an acceptable degree of accuracy of the residual clearances and achieve the optimized pre-joining schemes with less number of pre-joining at the same level of residual clearances. Practical implications The optimized pre-joining schemes are given in the form of Pareto optimality set, and workers can select suitable results according to their inclination to the quality and efficiency. Originality/value The paper is the first to propose the equivalent gap assembly model for the pre-joining operation, which provides for the simplification of the calculation of residual clearances based on the constrained variation principles.

Variation in Faroese and the development of a spoken standard: In search of corpus evidence

Although Faroese exhibits extensive linguistic variation and rapid social change, the language is near-uncharted territory in variationist sociolinguistics. This article discusses some recent social changes in Faroese society in connection with language change, focusing in particular on the development of a de facto spoken standard, Central Faroese. Demographic mobility, media and education may be contributing to this development in different ways. Two linguistic variables are analysed as a first step towards uncovering the respective roles of standardisation, dialect levelling and dialect spread as contributing processes in the formation of Central Faroese: morphological variation in -st endings and phonological variation in -ir and -ur endings. The analysis confirms previously described patterns of geographically constrained variation, but no generational or stylistic differences indicative of language change are found, nor are there clear signs that informants use Central Faroese. The results may in part be due to the structure of the corpus used.

Universal Grammar, crosslinguistic variation and second language acquisition

According to generative linguistic theory, certain principles underlying language structure are innately given, accounting for how children are able to acquire their mother tongues (L1s) despite a mismatch between the linguistic input and the complex unconscious mental representation of language that children achieve. This innate structure is referred to as Universal Grammar (UG); it includes universal principles, as well as parameters which allow for constrained variation across languages.