A temporal bottleneck in the language comprehension network.

Humans can understand spoken or written sentences presented at extremely fast rates of ∼400 wpm, far exceeding the normal speech rate (∼150 wpm). How does the brain cope with speeded language? And what processing bottlenecks eventually make language incomprehensible above a certain presentation rate? We used time-resolved fMRI to probe the brain responses to spoken and written sentences presented at five compression rates, ranging from intelligible (60-100% of the natural duration) to challenging (40%) and unintelligible (20%). The results show that cortical areas differ sharply in their activation speed and amplitude. In modality-specific sensory areas, activation varies linearly with stimulus duration. However, a large modality-independent left-hemispheric language network, including the inferior frontal gyrus (pars orbitalis and triangularis) and the superior temporal sulcus, shows a remarkably time-invariant response, followed by a sudden collapse for unintelligible stimuli. Finally, linear and nonlinear responses, reflecting a greater effort as compression increases, are seen at various prefrontal and parietal sites. We show that these profiles fit with a simple model according to which the higher stages of language processing operate at a fixed speed and thus impose a temporal bottleneck on sentence comprehension. At presentation rates faster than this internal processing speed, incoming words must be buffered, and intelligibility vanishes when buffer storage and retrieval operations are saturated. Based on their temporal and amplitude profiles, buffer regions can be identified with the left inferior frontal/anterior insula, precentral cortex, and mesial frontal cortex.

Capillary bridge formation and breakage: a test to characterize antiadhesive surfaces.

In order to characterize very weak adhesive surfaces, we have developed a quantitative test inspired by the Johnson, Kendall, and Roberts adhesion test for soft adhesives, which relies on the formation and then the rupture of a capillary bridge between the surface to be tested and a liquid bath. Both the shape and the kinetics of breakage of the capillary bridge for various coatings put into contact with liquids of various viscosities and surface tensions have been studied. Several pull off regimes can be distinguished. For low pull off velocities, a quasi-static regime is observed, well described by capillary equations and sensitive to the hysteresis of the contact angle of the fluid on the coating. Above a critical pull off velocity that depends on the fluid viscosity, a dynamic regime is observed, characterized by the formation of a flat pancake of fluid on the coating that recedes more slowly than the capillary bridge itself. After the breakage of the capillary bridge, a small drop can remain attached to the surface. The volume of this drop depends on the dynamical regime and is strongly affected by very small differences between the coatings. The aptitude of this test in characterizing very weakly adhesive surfaces is exemplified by a comparison between three different perfluorinated coatings.

Icon arrays help younger children's proportional reasoning.

We investigated the effects of two context variables, presentation format (icon arrays or numerical frequencies) and time limitation (limited or unlimited time), on the proportional reasoning abilities of children aged 7 and 10 years, as well as adults. Participants had to select, between two sets of tokens, the one that offered the highest likelihood of drawing a gold token, that is, the set of elements with the greater proportion of gold tokens. Results show that participants performed better in the unlimited time condition. Moreover, besides a general developmental improvement in accuracy, our results show that younger children performed better when proportions were presented as icon arrays, whereas older children and adults were similarly accurate in the two presentation format conditions. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? There is a developmental improvement in proportional reasoning accuracy. Icon arrays facilitate reasoning in adults with low numeracy. What does this study add? Participants were more accurate when they were given more time to make the proportional judgement. Younger children's proportional reasoning was more accurate when they were presented with icon arrays. Proportional reasoning abilities correlate with working memory, approximate number system, and subitizing skills.

Phase diagram for the adsorption of weak polyelectrolytes at a soft charged surface.

We have experimentally studied the adsorption of polyelectrolytes at oppositely charged surfaces. A weak flexible polyelectrolyte, poly(acrylic acid), was adsorbed from dilute solutions on a Langmuir film of a cationic amphiphile, dimethyldioctadecylammonium bromide. The polymer surface coverage, Gamma, at equilibrium was measured by two reflectivity techniques-ellipsometry and polarization modulated infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRRAS)-as a function of the surface charge density, sigma, and of the polymer ionization degree, alpha. Different adsorption regimes were evidenced. For weakly charged surfaces, sigma < sigma sat, Gamma increases with sigma and with 1/alpha, as expected for a neutralization of the surface by the adsorbed polymers. For highly charged surfaces, sigma > sigma sat, the adsorption of polyelectrolytes saturates. The mean orientation of the adsorbed chains also depends on the value of sigma: it is parallel to the surface for sigma < sigma (< sigma sat) and orthogonal to the surface for sigma > sigma. We have measured the values of sigma sat and sigma as a function of alpha and compared the results with existing theories.

Contact angle and contact angle hysteresis measurements using the capillary bridge technique.

A new experimental technique is proposed to easily measure both advancing and receding contact angles of a liquid on a solid surface, with unprecedented accuracy. The technique is based on the analysis of the evolution of a capillary bridge formed between a liquid bath and a solid surface (which needs to be spherical) when the distance between the surface and the liquid bath is slowly varied. The feasibility of the technique is demonstrated using a low-energy perfluorinated surface with two different test liquids (water and hexadecane). A detailed description of both experimental procedures and computational modeling are given, allowing one to determine contact angle values. It is shown that the origin of the high accuracy of this technique relies on the fact that the contact angles are automatically averaged over the whole periphery of the contact. This method appears to be particularly adapted to the characterization of surfaces with very low contact angle hysteresis.