Segmentation of Spoken Overlapping Ambiguity Strings in Chinese: An Eye-Tracking Study.

PURPOSE: Using the printed-word paradigm with eye tracking, this study conducted three experiments to examine (a) how multiple words in spoken overlapping ambiguity strings (OASs) are activated, (b) how word frequency influences the word segmentation of spoken OASs, and (c) whether the multiple words in spoken OASs are activated competitively or independently. METHOD: In this study, participants listened to a four-character spoken OAS (ABCD) and were presented with a visual display composed of a semantic associate of the "middle word" (BC; Experiments 1 and 2) or the "left word" (AB; Experiment 3) and two distractors. In Experiment 1, the word frequency of the middle words was manipulated to be higher than that of the neighbor words. In Experiment 2, the word frequency of the middle words was manipulated to be either higher or lower than that of the neighbor words. In Experiment 3, participants listened to either spoken OASs (ABCD) or spoken unambiguous strings (ABEF). RESULTS: In Experiment 1, we observed a significant semantic competition effect; that is, more fixations fell on the semantic competitors than on distractors, suggesting that the semantic information of the middle words in the spoken OASs was activated. In Experiment 2, the semantic competition effect was only observed in the high-frequency condition and was absent in the low-frequency condition. In Experiment 3, the results showed significant semantic competition effects for the left words under both conditions, and the observed effect was similar between the ambiguity condition and the control condition. CONCLUSIONS: These findings show that multiple words in spoken OASs are all activated and the activation level is modulated by word frequency. In addition, multiple words in the spoken OASs may be processed independently during spoken comprehension.

A cost-effective, ionically conductive and compressible oxychloride solid-state electrolyte for stable all-solid-state lithium-based batteries.

To enable the development of all-solid-state batteries, an inorganic solid-state electrolyte should demonstrate high ionic conductivity (i.e., > 1 mS cm-1 at 25 °C), compressibility (e.g., > 90% density under 250-350 MPa), and cost-effectiveness (e.g., < $50/kg). Here we report the development and preparation of Li1.75ZrCl4.75O0.5 oxychloride solid-state electrolyte that demonstrates an ionic conductivity of 2.42 mS cm-1 at 25 °C, a compressibility enabling 94.2% density under 300 MPa and an estimated raw materials cost of $11.60/kg. As proof of concept, the Li1.75ZrCl4.75O0.5 is tested in combination with a LiNi0.8Mn0.1Co0.1O2-based positive electrode and a Li6PS5Cl-coated Li-In negative electrode in lab-scale cell configuration. This all-solid-state cell delivers a discharge capacity retention of 70.34% (final discharge capacity of 70.2 mAh g-1) after 2082 cycles at 1 A g-1, 25 °C and 1.5 tons of stacking pressure.

Increasing the Efficiency of Photocatalytic Water Splitting via Introducing Intermediate Bands.

Photocatalytic water splitting is a potential way to utilize solar energy. To be practically useful, it is important to have a high solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency. In this study, we propose a conceptually new photocatalytic water splitting model based on intermediate bands (IBs). In this new model, introducing IBs within the band gap can significantly increase the STH efficiency limit (from 30.7% to 48.1% without an overpotential and from 13.4% to 36.2% with overpotentials) compared to that in conventional single-band gap photocatalytic water splitting. First-principles calculations indicate that N-doped TiO2, Bi-doped TiO2, and P-doped ZnO have suitable IBs that can be used to construct IB photocatalytic water splitting systems. The STH efficiency limits of these three doped systems are 10.0%, 12.0%, and 19.0%, respectively, while those of pristine TiO2 and ZnO without IB are only 0.9% and 1.6%, respectively. The IB photocatalytic water splitting model proposed in this study opens a new avenue for photocatalytic water splitting design.

The Processing of the Second Syllable in Recognizing Chinese Disyllabic Spoken Words: Evidence From Eye Tracking.

In the current study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of the second syllable (which was considered as the rhyme at the word level) during Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition using a printed-word paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants heard a spoken target word and were simultaneously presented with a visual display of four printed words: a target word, a phonological competitor, and two unrelated distractors. The phonological competitors were manipulated to share either full phonemic overlap of the second syllable with targets (the syllabic overlap condition; e.g., , xiao3zhuan4, "calligraphy" vs. , gong1zhuan4, "revolution") or the initial phonemic overlap of the second syllable (the sub-syllabic overlap condition; e.g., , yuan2zhu4, "cylinder" vs. , gong1zhuan4, "revolution") with targets. Participants were asked to select the target words and their eye movements were simultaneously recorded. The results did not show any phonological competition effect in either the syllabic overlap condition or the sub-syllabic overlap condition. In Experiment 2, to maximize the likelihood of observing the phonological competition effect, a target-absent version of the printed-word paradigm was adopted, in which target words were removed from the visual display. The results of Experiment 2 showed significant phonological competition effects in both conditions, i.e., more fixations were made to the phonological competitors than to the distractors. Moreover, the phonological competition effect was found to be larger in the syllabic overlap condition than in the sub-syllabic overlap condition. These findings shed light on the effect of the second syllable competition at the word level during spoken word recognition and, more importantly, showed that the initial phonemes of the second syllable at the syllabic level are also accessed during Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition.

The role of tonal information during spoken-word recognition in Chinese: Evidence from a printed-word eye-tracking study.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the extent to which the lexical tone can affect spoken-word recognition in Chinese using a printed-word paradigm. Participants were presented with a visual display of four words-namely, a target word (e.g., , xiang4xian4, "quadrant"), a tone-consistent phonological competitor (e.g., , xiang4ce4, "photo album"), or a tone-inconsistent phonological competitor (e.g., , xiang1cai4, "coriander"), and two unrelated distractors. Simultaneously, they were asked to listen to a spoken target word presented in isolation (Experiment 1) or embedded in neutral/predictive sentence contexts (Experiment 2), and then click on the target word on the screen. Results showed significant phonological competitor effects (i.e., the fixation proportion on the phonological competitor was higher than that on the distractors) under both tone conditions. Specifically, a larger phonological competitor effect was observed in the tone-consistent condition than in the tone-inconsistent condition when the spoken word was presented in isolation and the neutral sentence contexts. This finding suggests a partial role of lexical tone in constraining spoken-word recognition. However, when embedded in a predictive sentence context, the phonological competitor effect was only observed in the tone-consistent condition and absent in the tone-inconsistent condition. This result indicates that the predictive sentence context can strengthen the role of lexical tone.

The Structural, Electronic, and Optical Properties of Ge/Si Quantum Wells: Lasing at a Wavelength of 1550 nm.

The realization of a fully integrated group IV electrically driven laser at room temperature is an essential issue to be solved. We introduced a novel group IV side-emitting laser at a wavelength of 1550 nm based on a 3-layer Ge/Si quantum well (QW). By designing this scheme, we showed that the structural, electronic, and optical properties are excited for lasing at 1550 nm. The preliminary results show that the device can produce a good light spot shape convenient for direct coupling with the waveguide and single-mode light emission. The laser luminous power can reach up to 2.32 mW at a wavelength of 1550 nm with a 300-mA current. Moreover, at room temperature (300 K), the laser can maintain maximum light power and an ideal wavelength (1550 nm). Thus, this study provides a novel approach to reliable, efficient electrically pumped silicon-based lasers.

Elizabethkingia anophelis Isolated from Patients with Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome and Lower Respiratory Tract Infection: Report of Two Cases and Literature Review.

Elizabethkingia anophelis, originally discovered from Anopheles mosquito gut, is an emerging pathogen, especially in immunocompromised patients. We isolated two strains of E. anophelis from two separate patients with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome and lower respiratory tract infection. In this paper, we reviewed the status of E. anophelis infection and its antibiotics resistance from reported cases.

Arrhythmia Classification Based on Multi-Domain Feature Extraction for an ECG Recognition System.

Automatic recognition of arrhythmias is particularly important in the diagnosis of heart diseases. This study presents an electrocardiogram (ECG) recognition system based on multi-domain feature extraction to classify ECG beats. An improved wavelet threshold method for ECG signal pre-processing is applied to remove noise interference. A novel multi-domain feature extraction method is proposed; this method employs kernel-independent component analysis in nonlinear feature extraction and uses discrete wavelet transform to extract frequency domain features. The proposed system utilises a support vector machine classifier optimized with a genetic algorithm to recognize different types of heartbeats. An ECG acquisition experimental platform, in which ECG beats are collected as ECG data for classification, is constructed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system in ECG beat classification. The presented system, when applied to the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database, achieves a high classification accuracy of 98.8%. Experimental results based on the ECG acquisition experimental platform show that the system obtains a satisfactory classification accuracy of 97.3% and is able to classify ECG beats efficiently for the automatic identification of cardiac arrhythmias.