F0 Variation Research Articles

An acoustic study on the voice of emotion in Beijing Chinese adults

Although Mandarin and Beijing Chinese are both tone language, Beijing Chinese, a dialect spoken in Beijing, is considered more colloquial. This study examines the acoustic properties of the vocal expression of emotions in Beijing Chinese. Using an emotional-stories elicitation method (Anolli etal., 2008), 30 native speakers of Beijing Chinese produced one target sentence in eight emotions, including anger, contempt, fear, guilt, joy, pride, sadness, and shame. The same sentence produced in a neutral condition was used as the baseline. The results showed that mean f0 values were high for shame and fear, while low for pride and anger. Pitch variation was high for shame and guilt, but low in sad and pride. Shame and sad also yielded high intensity variation. For speech rate, guilt was expressed with the fastest speech rate, while sad with the slowest. Longer pauses were found for sad, and shorter pauses for anger and guilt. Unlike Anolli et al. (2008), in which Mandarin speakers showed low f0 variation and slow speech rate for guilt, the current results showed that pitch variation was high for guilt, and it was characterized by the fastest speech rate in Beijing. It suggests that for tone language, regardless of the similar phonological systems, emotions were expressed differently in a more colloquial situation.

Acoustic features correlated to perceived urgency in evacuation announcements

To encourage prompt evacuation behavior during disasters, evacuation announcement systems are required to adjust the perceived urgency of announcements to the danger of a situation while maintaining voice clarity. In this study, we aimed to understand acoustic features correlated to the perceived urgency in speech when clarity is maintained. For this purpose, we used a speech synthesis tool to manipulate the key acoustic features: the time duration, F0 (instantaneous fundamental frequency), and spectrum. Specifically, we replaced these features in five real evacuation announcements that were spoken clearly by a TV announcer during an actual disaster and had different magnitudes of urgency. We found quantitatively and qualitatively that the perceived urgency was mostly influenced by the F0 of speech. Furthermore, by manipulating the F0 time average and variation, we compared the influence of the F0′s static constant feature and its dynamic fluctuation pattern on the magnitude of perceived urgency. The results indicated that both types of F0 information influenced the magnitude of perceived urgency in real Japanese speech. Our results suggest that the sense of urgency in evacuation announcements can be controlled by adjusting the F0 while maintaining voice clarity.

The genes for sensory perception of sound should be considered in gene diagnosis of congenital sensorineural hearing loss and microtia.

Congenital sensorineural hearing loss (CSHL) and microtia are development-related diseases, sharing some factors and affecting children's hearing. However, genetic tests only focus on CSHL. We try to identify the common molecular mechanism of CSHL and microtia as candidates combining gene diagnosis biomarkers. Whole-exon sequencing (WES), Sanger sequencing, qPCR, and bioinformatics analyses were performed in microtia family (F1), family two, whose proband suffered from microtia and CSHL (F2), five microtia, and four CSHL individuals, respectively. We found that 40% microtia and 40% CSHL relevant genes were detected in F1 and a sharing pathway: the sensory perception of sound was identified. Moreover, the copy number variation in proband F2 was identified in one gene of the sharing pathway: EYA1. Meanwhile, two variants of BUB3 were identified in F1 data. BUB3 is related to development, dog ear type, direct and indirect interaction with microtia, and CSHL relevant genes. Notably, although the allele frequency of two variants of BUB3 showed significant differences between microtia and CSHL, the special microtia-relevant genotype also could be detected in one CSHL sample. These results suggest that the sensory perception of sound and the development of relevant pathways may be the common pathways of microtia and CSHL. Genes of these pathways can be used as candidates combining gene diagnosis biomarkers.

Decomposing and analyzing contact resonance frequency in contact mode voltage modulated scanning probe microscopies.

Contact mode voltage modulated scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques, such as switching spectroscopy piezoresponse force microscopy (SS-PFM), are powerful tools for detecting local electromechanical behaviors. However, interpreting their signals, especially the contact resonance frequency (f0), is difficult due to the complexity of the tip-sample contact and the signal tracking system. In a previous study, an interesting phenomenon on the variation of f0 was observed, showing distinctions between ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric materials. Therefore, it is believed that f0 conveys important information about the tip-sample contact which is real-timely affected by charge accumulation or polarization switching. In this study, principal component analysis (PCA) and correlation analysis are applied to decompose the signal of f0. The first and second principal components successfully restore most information of the original data, and they describe different features which are related to the surface morphology and electromechanical behavior, respectively. In addition, a customized method based on the PCA and correlation analysis of f0 can well distinguish the responses from different materials of which the amplitude and phase signals show "ferroelectric like" phenomena during the SS-PFM measurements.

Neural Measures of Pitch Processing in EEG Responses to Running Speech.

Linearized encoding models are increasingly employed to model cortical responses to running speech. Recent extensions to subcortical responses suggest clinical perspectives, potentially complementing auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) or frequency-following responses (FFRs) that are current clinical standards. However, while it is well-known that the auditory brainstem responds both to transient amplitude variations and the stimulus periodicity that gives rise to pitch, these features co-vary in running speech. Here, we discuss challenges in disentangling the features that drive the subcortical response to running speech. Cortical and subcortical electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to running speech from 19 normal-hearing listeners (12 female) were analyzed. Using forward regression models, we confirm that responses to the rectified broadband speech signal yield temporal response functions consistent with wave V of the ABR, as shown in previous work. Peak latency and amplitude of the speech-evoked brainstem response were correlated with standard click-evoked ABRs recorded at the vertex electrode (Cz). Similar responses could be obtained using the fundamental frequency (F0) of the speech signal as model predictor. However, simulations indicated that dissociating responses to temporal fine structure at the F0 from broadband amplitude variations is not possible given the high co-variance of the features and the poor signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of subcortical EEG responses. In cortex, both simulations and data replicated previous findings indicating that envelope tracking on frontal electrodes can be dissociated from responses to slow variations in F0 (relative pitch). Yet, no association between subcortical F0-tracking and cortical responses to relative pitch could be detected. These results indicate that while subcortical speech responses are comparable to click-evoked ABRs, dissociating pitch-related processing in the auditory brainstem may be challenging with natural speech stimuli.

THE USE OF ARCHIVED GIEMSA-STAINED BLOOD SMEARS AND RDT FOR PCR-BASED GENOTYPING OF Plasmodium vivax MEROZOITE SURFACE PROTEIN-1 IN CENTRAL KALIMANTAN PROVINCE, INDONESIA.

Background:Plasmodium vivax is transmitted most across the country of Indonesia. The country has set out a malaria elimination program by 2030. The information on genetic diversity of malarial parasites relates to malaria transmission in an endemic area may provide the information that can help the malaria control program to achieve the target. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the genetic diversity of the Pvmsp-1 gene in Central Kalimantan Province.Materials and Methods:Samples were 140 of archived Giemsa-stained blood smear and rapid detection test. Samples were divided into the indigenous and migrant populations. After confirmation by single-step PCR, only P. vivax and mixed infection samples were amplified to nested PCR for genotyping of Pvmsp-1 allelic variation in segments F1, F2, and F3.Results:Genotyping of 23 PCR positive samples resulted in 13 genotypes. In segment F1, three allelic variants type A containing subtype A1 (1,050 bp), A2 (350 bp), A3 (150 bp), and type B (100 bp). In segment F2, mono genotypes were detected as variant type A (1,050 bp) and type B3 (150 bp), multiple genotypes were detected as type B containing subtype B1 (250 bp), B2 (200 bp), and B3 (150bp). In segment F3, three allelic variants generated from four mono genotypes were type A (350 bp), type B (300 bp), and two type C (250 bp).Conclusion:The low allelic variation of Pvmsp-1 gene may reflect the actual situation of the low malaria endemic status of the study sites.

Electrostatic force evolution during the tip-induced ferroelectric domain switching

Different from the signals of amplitude and phase lag in piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) and piezoresponse force spectroscopy (PFS), the signals of the contact resonance frequency (f0) have not been clearly interpreted. Due to the complexity of the tip–sample system at the nanoscale, the relevant models and mechanisms were continuously improved in the past decades. The variation of f0 has been reported in a few previous studies, but the physical meaning of the unique variation in ferroelectric materials still needs to be investigated. Due to the imperfect tip–sample contact, the existence of a dielectric gap and screening charges causes the discontinuity in the conduction band. The evolution of the electrostatic force during the PFS measurements is significantly affected by the tip-induced ferroelectric domain evolution, resulting in the variation of the effective contact stiffness (k*) and f0. By involving the screening effect and tunneling effect in this model, the anomalies of the on-field f0 and off-field f0 can be well explained, respectively.

Analysis and modeling of supply chain management of fresh products based on genetic algorithm

The important factor for the supply chain management of fresh products is partner selection. Environment protection is also an important factor, however the factor is not taken into account by the traditional supplier selection. Therefore, the supplier selection standard includes the green standard in this paper. Our work is to investigate an optimal mathematical modeling for green partner selection. The four targets of the proposed model are cost, product quality, green appraisal score and time. The proposed genetic algorithm with multi-targets are to search the set of optimum solutions using by weighted sum method. The proposed model introduces a supply chain network structure to analysis average number Pareto-optimal solutions with genetic algorithm for the four problems. It is pointed out that the variation of f2 and f3 with f1 and f4 is kept within obvious ranges. This practical result highlights the fact that the effects of the fact that effects of f2 and f3 are important factors affecting the performance supply chain network of fresh product.

Prosodic alignment toward emotionally expressive speech: Comparing human and Alexa model talkers

This study tests whether individuals vocally align toward emotionally expressive prosody produced by two types of interlocutors: a human and a voice-activated artificially intelligent (voice-AI) assistant. Participants completed a word shadowing experiment of interjections (e.g., “Awesome”) produced in emotionally neutral and expressive prosodies by both a human voice and a voice generated by a voice-AI system (Amazon's Alexa). Results show increases in participants’ word duration, mean f0, and f0 variation in response to emotional expressiveness, consistent with increased alignment toward a general ‘positive-emotional’ speech style. Small differences in emotional alignment by talker category (human vs. voice-AI) parallel the acoustic differences in the model talkers’ productions, suggesting that participants are mirroring the acoustics they hear. The similar responses to emotion in both a human and voice-AI talker support accounts of unmediated emotional alignment, as well as computer personification: people apply emotionally-mediated behaviors to both types of interlocutors. While there were small differences in magnitude by participant gender, the overall patterns were similar for women and men, supporting a nuanced picture of emotional vocal alignment.

Contextualising courtship: Exploring male body odour effects on vocal modulation

Voice characteristics are important to communicate socially relevant information. Recent research has shown that individuals alter their voices depending on the context of social interactions and perceived characteristics of the audience, and this affects how they are perceived. Numerous studies have also shown that the presence of bodily odours can elicit psychological changes in people. Here, we tested whether the presence of male axillary odour would influence vocal modulations in courtship contexts. We analysed differences in vocal parameters and attractiveness ratings across 950 recordings from 80 participants as they responded to opposite-sex target stimuli. Using these, we tested whether men’s and women’s vocal parameters and perceived stimuli attractiveness differed in the presence or absence of the odour. We expected women to speak with increased voice F0, and men to lower their pitch, when exposed to male body odour, especially if it were of high quality. However, neither the presence of male odour, its quality, nor the addition of androstadienone produced any consistent changes in vocal parameters. Nevertheless, rated stimulus attractiveness was predicted by F0 and especially F0 variability, suggesting that this is a key parameter in signalling attraction during human courtship, and supporting the idea that vocal modulations are context-sensitive.

Acoustic spaces for normal and pathological voices

What does it mean for a voice to sound normal? Our recent work comparing listener judgements of talkers with and without a diagnosed voice disorder showed that judgments of “normal” versus “not normal” and strategies for estimating how much a given voice deviates from normal depended on the listener, the context, the purpose of the judgement, and other factors as well as on the voice. F0, F1 and F2, and F0 variability were significant predictors of both categorical judgments and of scalar normalness ratings, but between-listener inconsistency in the perceptual models was observed. The present study examined acoustic spaces for the same normal and pathological voices by performing principal component analysis on scaled values of F0, formant frequencies, spectral noise, source spectral shape, and their variability. Acoustic spaces for normal and disordered talkers had similar structures, and included measures related to source spectral shape, F1, and higher formant frequencies. Overall, variability in noise was only important for pathological voices. The ways in which acoustic voice spaces are related to listener perceptions of a voice are discussed. [Work supported by NIH/NSF.]

The f0 distribution of Korean speakers in a spontaneous speech corpus*

The fundamental frequency, or f0, is an important acoustic measure in the prosody of human speech. The current study examined the f0 distribution of a corpus of spontaneous speech in order to provide normative data for Korean speakers. The corpus consists of 40 speakers talking freely about their daily activities and their personal views. Praat scripts were created to collect f0 values, and a majority of obvious errors were corrected manually by watching and listening to the f0 contour on a narrow-band spectrogram. Statistical analyses of the f0 distribution were conducted using R. The results showed that the f0 values of all the Korean speakers were right-skewed, with a pointy distribution. The speakers produced spontaneous speech within a frequency range of 274 Hz (from 65 Hz to 339 Hz), excluding statistical outliers. The mode of the total f0 data was 102 Hz. The female f0 range, with a bimodal distribution, appeared wider than that of the male group. Regression analyses based on age and f0 values yielded negligible R-squared values. As the mode of an individual speaker could be predicted from the median, either the median or mode could serve as a good reference for the individual f0 range. Finally, an analysis of the continuous f0 points of intonational phrases revealed that the initial and final segments of the phrases yielded several f0 measurement errors. From these results, we conclude that an examination of a spontaneous speech corpus can provide linguists with useful measures to generalize acoustic properties of f0 variability in a language by an individual or groups. Further studies would be desirable of the use of statistical measures to secure reliable f0 values of individual speakers.

Modelling microprosodic effects can lead to an audible improvement in articulatory synthesis.

When pitch is explicitly modelled for parametric speech synthesis, microprosodic variations of the fundamental frequency f0 are usually disregarded by current intonation models. While there are numerous studies dealing with the nature and the origin of microprosody, little research has been done on its audibility and its effect on the naturalness of synthetic speech. In this work, the influence of obstruent-related microprosodic variations on the perceived naturalness of articulatory speech synthesis was studied. A small corpus of 20 German words and sentences was re-synthesized using the state-of-the-art articulatory synthesizer VocalTractLab. The pitch contours of the real utterances were extracted and fitted with the Target-Approximation-Model. After the real microprosodic variations were removed from the obtained pitch contours, synthetic variations were applied based on a microprosody model. Subsequently, multiple stimuli with different microprosody amplitudes were synthesized and evaluated in a listening experiment. The results indicate that microprosodic variations are barely audible, but can lead to a greater perceived naturalness of the synthesized speech in certain cases.

Multiple prosodic meanings are conveyed through separate pitch ranges: Evidence from perception of focus and surprise in Mandarin Chinese.

F0 variation is a crucial feature in speech prosody, which can convey linguistic information such as focus and paralinguistic meanings such as surprise. How can multiple layers of information be represented with F0 in speech: are they divided into discrete layers of pitch or overlapped without clear divisions? We investigated this question by assessing pitch perception of focus and surprise in Mandarin Chinese. Seventeen native Mandarin listeners rated the strength of focus and surprise conveyed by the same set of synthetically manipulated sentences. An fMRI experiment was conducted to assess neural correlates of the listeners' perceptual response to the stimuli. The results showed that behaviourally, the perceptual threshold for focus was 3 semitones and that for surprise was 5 semitones above the baseline. Moreover, the pitch range of 5-12 semitones above the baseline signalled both focus and surprise, suggesting a considerable overlap between the two types of prosodic information within this range. The neuroimaging data positively correlated with the variations in behavioural data. Also, a ceiling effect was found as no significant behavioural differences or neural activities were shown after reaching a certain pitch level for the perception of focus and surprise respectively. Together, the results suggest that different layers of prosodic information are represented in F0 through different pitch ranges: paralinguistic information is represented at a pitch range beyond that used by linguistic information. Meanwhile, the representation of paralinguistic information is achieved without obscuring linguistic prosody, thus allowing F0 to represent the two layers of information in parallel.

Prosodic Differences in Human- and Alexa-Directed Speech, but Similar Local Intelligibility Adjustments

The current study tests whether individuals (n= 53) produce distinct speech adaptations during pre-scripted spoken interactions with a voice-AI assistant (Amazon’s Alexa) relative to those with a human interlocutor. Interactions crossed intelligibility pressures (staged word misrecognitions) and emotionality (hyper-expressive interjections) as conversation-internal factors that might influence participants’ intelligibility adjustments in Alexa- and human-directed speech (DS). Overall, we find speech style differences: Alexa-DS has a decreased speech rate, higher mean f0, and greater f0 variation than human-DS. In speech produced toward both interlocutors, adjustments in response to misrecognition were similar: participants produced more distinct vowel backing (enhancing the contrast between the target word and misrecognition) in target words and louder, slower, higher mean f0, and higher f0 variation at the sentence-level. No differences were observed in human- and Alexa-DS following displays of emotional expressiveness by the interlocutors. Expressiveness, furthermore, did not mediate intelligibility adjustments in response to a misrecognition. Taken together, these findings support proposals that speakers presume voice-AI has a “communicative barrier” (relative to human interlocutors), but that speakers adapt to conversational-internal factors of intelligibility similarly in human- and Alexa-DS. This work contributes to our understanding of human-computer interaction, as well as theories of speech style adaptation.

Effects of speaking style on the shape of fundamental frequency distributions

The present study has two main goals. The first is to describe the effects of three speaking styles (spontaneous interview, sentence reading and word list reading) on statistical estimators of fundamental frequency (f0) variability (mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis) in five female and five male speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Most f0 contours of word reading are bimodal. Analysis of their time-normalized contours suggests this is caused by the time-compressed realization of fast transitions from low to high or high to low tones aligned with stressed syllables. Considering only unimodal distributions, results show that there are no statistically significant effects in the male data for any of the four variability estimators. Effects show up in female data. Spontaneous style has statistically significant higher mean, SD and skewness than read speech. Findings in the previous literature indicate the reverse pattern, though, for languages other than BP. The second goal of the study is to characterize the statistical properties of f0 distributions beyond mean and SD. Results confirm previous observations that most f0 distributions have positive skewness, are left-tailed and have kurtosis values that deviate significantly from the normal because of large deviations from the central or modal value. A distribution fitting procedure tested six distributions. The asymmetric Burr type XII distribution emerges as the one that best fits the data in the corpus. Results show that two of the parameters that determine its shape correlate well with the empirical f0 distribution values of SD and skewness. Important effects of speaking style on f0 seen in female speakers can be reproduced by combinations of the Burr distributions’ parameters.

Prosodization of prepositional clitics and prosodic words in Brazilian Portuguese: Investigation of phonetic cues

In this paper, syllable duration (Vowel-to-Vowel unit) and F0 variation are analyzed as cues to distinguish the prosodization of prepositional clitic-host sequence from a syllable within a prosodic word in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). A production task was created to assess 1) whether the syllable production time helps to identify a clitic boundary and a word boundary and 2) whether the F0 configuration aligned to a clitic syllable differs from the F0 configuration aligned to a syllable in a word boundary. The results show that: 1) the syllable duration measurement supports the hypothesis that there is no distinction between prepositional clitics and a syllable which is part of a prosodic word (PW); 2) the pitch range of tonal events associated to the syllable that bears the PW boundary differs from that associated to the syllables that bear a clitic-host sequence boundary. Based on these results we argued that the prepositional clitics are prosodized as a syllable adjoined to its host. This interpretation leads us to suggest that the relevant domain for prepositional clitic prosodization is between PW and PPh (Phonological Phrase) in BP.

Nonlinear variation of resonant frequency with temperature and temperature-dependent τf in Al2O3–TiO2 microwave dielectric composites

The temperature coefficient of resonant frequency (τf) is a key parameter for microwave dielectric ceramics, and it is usually regarded as a temperature-independent constant over a wide temperature range. However, the present theoretical prediction shows that the resonant frequency (f0) first increases then decreases with temperature, and τf decreases monotonously in Al2O3–TiO2 composite with small τf, which fits the experimental data very well. The nonlinear variation of f0 with temperature and temperature-dependent τf are attributed to the temperature-sensitive permittivity (εr) and τf of the constituting phases and also dependent on the dielectric mixing rule that the composite obeys. Such temperature-dependent dielectric behaviors are predicted to be common in microwave dielectric composites with small τf, and the negligence of them probably conceals the real large variation of f0 with temperature and seriously misleads the practical applications. Therefore, it is strongly suggested to understand the real temperature dependence of f0 and τf in microwave dielectric composites by measuring f0 at more temperatures with a smaller interval, so that the central frequency shift can be correctly evaluated for the resonator units and devices where the microwave dielectric composites are utilized. Furthermore, the nonlinear variation of f0 with temperature and temperature dependence of τf are expected to be suppressed by microstructural engineering and adopting more suitable constituting phases.

A comparison of Laryngeal effect in the dialects of Punjabi language

Human beings have their own speaking style which helped them in depicting their native language. The major reason behind variability in some language is due to varying dialect of the speakers. In the field of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), key challenge is to recognize and to generate an acoustic model which represents differences of redundant acoustic features. In this paper, an issue of dialect classification is perform on the basis of tonal aspects of laryngeal phoneme [h]. This is an empirical study of [h] sound words in four major dialects of Indian Punjabi language with two key parameters, namely F0 variation, and acoustic space, which are calculated using two formant frequencies: F1, and F2. The results are based on four different dialects which provide us some interesting hypotheses and are explored with self-created dataset. The speech analysis tool PRAAT features have been extracted and correlations are studied using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Each variable has been compared with same variable of all other dialects. The results analysis showed that the fundamental frequency of these vowels are influenced distinctly in different dialectal conditions. Apart F1 and F2 have shown a significant correlation with each spoken dialect. Further work is extended through processing of acoustic information at feature level or by comparing the performance analysis using basic or hybrid Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficients feature extraction methods. The result shows that the hybrid LPCC + F0 system achieved a Relative Improvement (R.I.) of 6.94% on Subspace Gaussian Mixture Model model in comparison to that of basic LPCC approach respectively.

Uji Aktivitas Antioksidan Minyak Argan (Argania spinosa L.) Dalam Bentuk Sediaan Mikroemulsi

Argan oil (Argania spinosa L.) is an oil that has benefits as a natural antioxidant which is good for health. Microemulsion is a thermodynamically stable delivery system; transparent; has a small globule size and consists of a mixture of oil, water, surfactant and co-surfactant which has great potential in delivering dermal active substances by increasing transdermal permeability in topical drug delivery. This research aimed to formulate argan (Argania spinosa L.) oil into microemulsion dosage form and determine the antioxidant activity using DPPH method. The study began with the optimization of base into several concentration variations of surfactant and co-surfactant. The formula made into 7 namely F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6 and F7, evaluated using organoleptic test and centrifugation test. The results showed the base of F6 which had the clear, transparent physical appearance and no separation occured. The F6 base was then made into microemulsion dosage with 3 concentration variations of argan (Argania spinosa L.) oil, namely F1 (0.5%), F2 (1%) and F3 (1.5%). The 3 formulas were tested for the physical stability which included pH test, viscosity test, centrifugation test and freeze-thaw test. The testing of antioxidant activity carried out by in vitro using the DPPH method which then calculated for the IC50 value on t0 and t28. From the results of the physical stability test at room temperature and freeze-thaw, the 3 formulas met the organoleptic, pH and centrifugation tests. The antioxidant activity values of IC50 were F1 (t0 = 291.14 g/mL; t28 = 230.43 g/mL), F2 (t0 = 89.02 g/mL; t28 = 129.01 g/mL), F3 (t0 = 81.07 g/mL; t28 = 116.30 g/mL). The statistical test result of T test showed the p value = 0,896, (0.05), which indicated that there was no significance difference in the antioxidant activity result between the 3 formulas on t0and t28.