Post-focus compression (PFC), the lowering of fundamental frequency and intensity after focus, is previously found in English but not in Cantonese. This study examines the possible transfer of PFC between these two languages through bilingualism. It is found that out of ten bilingual EnglishCantonese speakers, eight have PFC in their English, but none has PFC in their Cantonese. This finding su...

For a nonsymm etri c threshold network equippe d with an asynchronous dynamics, we show that if the product of weights in any cycle of units is nonnegative, then each tr ajectory converges to a stable state with probability one. We also show that such networks have a natural feed-forward layer struc ture and stabilit y is achieved in a hierarchical order due to this struct ure. It follows then ...

In the last ten years, field and object models have emerged as two opposing approaches for conceptualizing and modeling geographic phenomena. In the context of a field perspective, each point in space is mapped to a value selected from an attribute domain. In this way, geographic space is perceived as 'full', as every location is occupied by a value. In the context of an object perspective, spa...

Schema Modification Management is the ability to perform changes to a database schema when the database may already be populated, and is particularly concerned about how schema changes propagate to instances to retain compatibility objects and their specification. In this paper we argue that the schema versioning approach, which allows for multiple versions of the schema to coexist, is preferab...

In this paper we present an ontological perspective on ongoing work in histological and histopathological imaging involving the quantitative and algorithmic analysis of digitised images of cells and tissues. We present the derivation of consistent histological models from initially captured images of prepared tissue samples as a progression through a number of ontological levels, each populated...

A transiting planet exhibits sinusoidal transit-time-variations (TTVs) if perturbed by a companion near a mean-motion-resonance (MMR). We search for sinusoidal TTVs in more than 2600 Kepler candidates, using the publicly available Kepler light-curves (Q0-Q12). We find that the TTV fractions rise strikingly with the transit multiplicity. Systems where four or more planets transit enjoy four roug...

Usually, higher education teachers have to deal with highly populated classes and low levels of motivation. Making more entertaining courses is a good way to overcome these limitations. But, how can fun and entertainment be introduced in a course which is mainly based on a final exam evaluation? We propose a new methodology based on two key ideas: (i) replacing the final exam with a series of a...

The largely computerised nature of critical infrastructures and the pervasive interconnection of systems all over the world have generated the problem of achieving resilience of critical information infrastructures, namely against computer-borne attacks and severe faults. We believe the complexity of the problem prevents it from being solved using classical security methods. The paper focuses o...

Regarding mobility, health conditions and personal preferences, evacuees can be categorized into different classes in realistic environments. Previous emergency navigation algorithms that direct evacuees with a single decision rule cannot fulfil civilians’ distinct service requirements and increase the likelihood of inducing destructive crowd behaviours, such as clogging, pushing and trampling,...