Tourette syndrome (TS) is characterized by multiple motor tics plus one or more vocal (phonic) tics, which characteristically wax and wane. It can no longer be considered the rare and bizarre syndrome that it was once thought to be. The concepts surrounding TS, and our understanding of it, are also becoming increasingly complex and, in some individuals, TS is now recognized to be associated wit...

This paper presents a user authentication scheme which takes advantage of the uniqueness of prover’s auditory characteristics. In this scheme, several audio stimuli are presented at the same time by headphone. The stimuli include a special audio stimulus that only the genuine prover can easily distinguishes from other stimuli because of the uniqueness of auditory characteristics. The prover is ...

In this contribution we propose a hierarchical intonation model for synthesising f0 contours with application to text-to-speech synthesis in Galician language. This model makes use of the implicit knowledge that resides in a database of natural f0 contours obtained from a read corpus. The novelty of this method lies on the way the f0 contour is generated. First, no phonological description in t...

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a particular psychological stress, exposure to an open-field, on plasma IL-6 activity in rats. Plasma IL-6 activity was 40.6 +/- 7.2 units/ml in control rats, 105 +/- 6.8 units/ml after 30 minutes exposure to an open-field, and 221 +/- 17 units/ml after 60 minutes of exposure (p = 0.0003). There was a positive correlation (r = .71, p = 0...

OBJECTIVES Many analytical methods are not very sensitive to change because of the difficulty of distinguishing short-term fluctuation from the developmental change of primary interest. The current project investigated one possible solution to this problem in the form of a measurement-burst design in which research participants perform several versions of each test at each measurement occasion....

General lifestyle activities were examined as a predictor of current cognition and cognitive change over a 6-year interval in older adults. Participants were drawn from a population-based longitudinal study, and they completed the Adelaide Activities Profile and a battery of tests measuring cognition and sensory functioning. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, after sensory function...

A moisture- electrical - temperature (MET) test is proposed to evaluate the outdoor reliability of high power blue LEDs, with and without phosphor, and to understand the degradation physics of LEDs under the environment of combined humidity, temperature and electrical stresses. The blue LEDs with phosphor will be the high power white LEDs. Scanning acoustic microscopy is used to examine the res...

It has been suggested that work characteristics, such as mental demands, job control, and occupational complexity, are prospectively related to cognitive function. However, current evidence on links between psychosocial working conditions and cognitive change over time is inconsistent. In this study, we applied the effort-reward imbalance model that allows to build on previous research on menta...

It is proposed that personality (conceptualized in terms of motives and psychological resources) changes normatively not only from young adulthood to middle age but also within middle age and that these changes take place in relation to social and biosocial change over the same period. Data from 123 women studied at ages 27, 43, 52, and 61 largely supported hypotheses about change in social rol...

BACKGROUND A Vygotskian framework links cognitive change to collaborative interaction with a more competent partner whereas a Piagetian perspective supports the view that cognitive conflict arising from peer interaction leads to cognitive change. AIMS The study investigated the effect of collaborative learning on children's problem-solving ability and whether differences in knowledge status o...