An unusual thioredoxin program within the facultative parasite Acanthamoeba castellanii.

Differences in speakers' voice characteristics, such as mean fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), that primarily define speakers' so-called perceived voice gender facilitate the perception of speech in competing speech. Perceiving speech in competing speech is particularly challenging for children, which may relate to their lower sensitivity to differences in voice characteristics than adults. This study investigated the development of the benefit from F0 and VTL differences in school-age children (4-12 years) for separating two competing speakers while tasked with comprehending one of them and also the relationship between this benefit and their corresponding voice discrimination thresholds. Children benefited from differences in F0, VTL, or both cues at all ages tested. This benefit proportionally remained the same across age, although overall accuracy continued to differ from that of adults. Additionally, children's benefit from F0 and VTL differences and their overall accuracy were not related to their discrimination thresholds. Hence, although children's voice discrimination thresholds and speech in competing speech perception abilities develop throughout the school-age years, children already show a benefit from voice gender cue differences early on. Factors other than children's discrimination thresholds seem to relate more closely to their developing speech in competing speech perception abilities.1-3 piezocomposites are first choice materials for integration in ultrasonic transducers due to their high electromechanical performance, particularly, in their thickness mode. The determination of a complete set of effective electroelastic parameters through a homogenization scheme is of primary importance for their consideration as homogeneous. This allows for the simplification of the transducer design using numerical methods. The method proposed is based on acoustic wave propagation through an infinite piezocomposite, which is considered to be homogeneous material. Christoffel tensor components for the 2 mm symmetry were expressed to deduce slowness curves in several planes. Simultaneously, slowness curves of a numerical phantom were obtained using a finite element method (FEM). Dispersive curves were initially calculated in the corresponding heterogeneous structure. The subsequent identification of the effective parameters was based on a fitting process between the two sets of slowness curves. Then, homogenized coefficients were compared with reference results from a numerical method based on a fast Fourier transform for heterogeneous periodic piezoelectric materials in the quasi-static regime. A relative error of less than 2% for a very large majority of effective coefficients was obtained. As the aim of this paper is to implement an experimental procedure based on the proposed homogenization scheme to determine the effective parameters of the material in operating conditions, it is shown that simplifications to the procedure can be performed and a careful selection of only seven slowness directions is sufficient to obtain the complete database for a piezocomposite containing square-shaped fibers. Finally, further considerations to adapt the present work to a 1-3 piezocomposite with a fixed thickness are also presented.Passive acoustic monitoring has proven to be an indispensable tool for many aspects of baleen whale research. Manual detection of whale calls on these large data sets demands extensive manual labor. Automated whale call detectors offer a more efficient approach and have been developed for many species and call types. However, calls with a large level of variability such as fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) 40 Hz call and blue whale (B. musculus) D call have been challenging to detect automatically and hence no practical automated detector exists for these two call types. Using a modular approach consisting of faster region-based convolutional neural network followed by a convolutional neural network, we have created automated detectors for 40 Hz calls and D calls. Both detectors were tested on recordings with high- and low density of calls and, when selecting for detections with high classification scores, they were shown to have precision ranging from 54% to 57% with recall ranging from 72% to 78% for 40 Hz and precision ranging from 62% to 64% with recall ranging from 70 to 73% for D calls. As these two call types are produced by both sexes, using them in long-term studies would remove sex-bias in estimates of temporal presence and movement patterns.Mitigation of threats posed to marine mammals by human activities can be greatly improved with a better understanding of animal occurrence in real time. Recent advancements have enabled low-power passive acoustic systems to be integrated into long-endurance autonomous platforms for persistent near real-time monitoring of marine mammals via the sounds they produce. Here, the integration of a passive acoustic instrument capable of real-time detection and classification of low-frequency (LF) tonal sounds with a Liquid Robotics wave glider is reported. The goal of the integration was to enable monitoring of LF calls produced by baleen whales over periods of several months. Mechanical noises produced by the platform were significantly reduced by lubricating moving parts with polytetrafluoroethylene, incorporating rubber and springs to decelerate moving parts and shock mounting hydrophones. Flow noise was reduced with the development of a 21-element hydrophone array. Surface noise produced by breaking waves was not mitigated despite experimentation with baffles. Compared to a well-characterized moored passive acoustic monitoring buoy, the system greatly underestimated the occurrence of sei, fin, and North Atlantic right whales during a 37-d deployment, and therefore is not suitable in its current configuration for use in scientific or management applications for these species at this time.The modified rhyme test [MRT; House, Williams, Hecker, and Kryter. (1965). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 37, 158-166] is a widely used test for measuring the intelligibility of communication systems [ANSI (2009). S3.2 (American National Standards Institute, New York)] but has never gained widespread acceptance as a clinical test of speech intelligibility for listeners who are hearing impaired (HI). In this study, a clinical version of the MRT consisting of two 80-word lists was developed and tested on 2394 service members with varying levels of hearing loss. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/n-formyl-met-leu-phe-fmlp.html The test used a factorial design incorporating two speech levels [70 and 78 dB sound pressure level (SPL)], two signal-to-noise ratios (+4 and -4 dB), and two binaural conditions (diotic and binaural). High-frequency emphasis reduced the impact of audibility for HI listeners, focusing the test on the distortion component of hearing loss. The results show that listeners with normal hearing (NH) obtained an average score of 80% correct on the MRT80 test. Listeners with a moderate hearing impairment scored an average of 70% correct.https://www.selleckchem.com/products/n-formyl-met-leu-phe-fmlp.html