Room reflections and constancy in speech-like sounds: within-band effects

The experiment asks whether constancy in hearing precedes or follows grouping. Listeners heard speech-like sounds comprising 8 auditory-filter shaped noise-bands that had temporal envelopes corresponding to those arising in these filters when a speech message is played. The „context‟ words in the message were “next you‟ll get _to click on”, into which a “sir” or “stir” test word was inserted. These test words were from an 11-step continuum that was formed by amplitude modulation. Listeners identified the test words appropriately and quite consistently, even though they had the „robotic‟ quality typical of this type of 8-band speech. The speech-like effects of these sounds appears to be a consequence of auditory grouping. Constancy was assessed by comparing the influence of room reflections on the test word across conditions where the context had either the same level of reflections, or where it had a much lower level. Constancy effects were obtained with these 8-band sounds, but only in „matched‟ conditions, where the room reflections were in the same bands in both the context and the test word. This was not the case in a comparison „mismatched‟ condition, and here, no constancy effects were found. It would appear that this type of constancy in hearing precedes the across-channel grouping whose effects are so apparent in these sounds. This result is discussed in terms of the ubiquity of grouping across different levels of representation

Investigations into vocal doses and parameters pertaining to primary school teachers in classrooms

Investigations into vocal doses and parameters were carried out on 40 primary school teachers (36 females and 4 males) in six schools in Italy, divided into two groups of three, A and B, on the basis of the type of building and the mid-frequency reverberation time in the classrooms, which was 1.13 s and 0.79 s, respectively. A total of 73 working-day samples were collected (66 for females and 7 for males), from which 54 traditional lessons were analyzed separately. The average value over the working days of the mean sound pressure level of the voiced speech at 1 m from the teacher's mouth was 62.1 dB for the females and 57.7 dB for the males, while the voicing time percentage was 25.9% and 25.1%, respectively. Even though the vocal doses and parameters did not differ for the two school groups, the differences in the subjective scores were significant, with enhanced scores in group B. A 0.72 dB increase in speech level per 1 dB increase in background noise level, LA90, was found during traditional lessons, as well as an increase in the mean value of the fundamental frequency with an increase in LA90, at a rate of 1.0 Hz/dB

活性化マクロファージの形態と膜抗原表現型の特性に関する研究

浜松医科大学医学博士学位論文の内容の要旨及び論文審査の結果の要旨doctoral医学研究科thesi

STAKEHOLDERS’RISK PERCEPTION OF SUSTAINABLE BIOMASS POWER PLANT DEVELOPMENT ---A CASE STUDY OF WANGKUI COUNT, CHINA

Global warming and climate change are putting enormous pressure on governments and industry to rethink their attitudes towards sustainability issues. Since China is facing a number of energy challenges，especially shortage of energy supply and environmental pollution, the use of renewable energy is being encouraged and is playing an ever more increasing role in energy supply in China. Agricultural residual, such as crop straw, is a main form of biomass and a significant energy resource in China at present, particularly in rural areas. However, currently, most agricultural residual is used as cooking fuel, livestock feed, and household heating fuel, or is burned directly in the field in rural areas. These activities not only waste energy but also cause environmental problems. In rural China in 2011, the burning of 802 million tons of crop straw produced 4.2 million MWh/a electricity. The construction of a biomass power generation plant in a rural area, using rich local biomass resources, could significantly increase the standard of living and employment in that area, and would reduce environmental pollution. Biomass power plant (BmPP) has developed rapidly in the past decade in China; however, the biomass power industry, still in the process of development, offers both opportunities and challenges. This paper presents a sustainable BmPP development strategy reflecting various stakeholders’ perspectives, based on the findings of a case study of Wangkui County in China. A multi stakeholder survey was conducted to identify and analyze stakeholders’ potential risks regarding a proposed BmPP in Wangkui County. In this paper, controlled perception risks are ranked though quality approaches to identify main risks of each stakeholder. The results of the paper indicate that the establishment of “farmer-based system”, agreement between agents and BmPP, and government policies are essential for the sustainable development of the biomass power generation industry. These results also provide valuable stakeholder information relevant to sustainable development of the industry. Policy requirements and outreach strategies for encouragement of people’s acceptation of BmPP are suggested.conference pape

田中正造研究（上）-自治観の変遷を通して-

Articledepartmental bulletin pape

伝統行事を通した地域コミュニティの形成 : 諏訪御柱祭の一事例

departmental bulletin pape

発言Ⅲ

Articledepartmental bulletin pape

第一回知事公選と内務省-旧官選知事大量当選の背景-

Articledepartmental bulletin pape