• Cross-Cultural Studies
• /
• v.28
• /
• pp.115-139
• /
• 2012

Interval or duration of segments, syllables, words and phrases is an important acoustic feature which influences the naturalness of speech. A number of cross-sectional studies regarding acoustic characteristics of children's speech development found that intervals of segments, syllables, words and phrases tend to change with the growing age. One hypothesis assumed that decreases in intervals would be greater when children were younger and smaller decreases in intervals when older (Thelen,1991), it has been supported by quite a number of researches on the basis of cross-sectional studies (Tingley & Allen,1975; Kent & Forner,1980; Chermak & Schneiderman, 1986), but the other hypothesis predicted that decreases in intervals would be smaller when children were younger and greater decreases in intervals when older (Smith, Kenney & Hussain, 1996). Researchers seem to come up with conflicting postulations and inconsistent results about the change trends concerning intervals of segments, syllables, words and phrases, leaving it as an issue unresolved. Most acoustic investigations of children's speech production have been conducted via cross-sectional designs, which involves studying several groups of children. So far, there are only a few longitudinal studies. This issue needs more longitudinal investigations; moreover, the acoustic measures of the intervals of child speech are hardly available. All former studies focus on word stages excluding the babbling stages especially the canonical babbling stage, but we need to find out when concrete changes of intervals begin to occur and what causes the changes. Therefore, we conducted an acoustic study of interval characteristics of segments and words concerning Canonical Babble ( CB) and early speech in an infant aged from 0;9 to 2;4 acquiring Mandarin Chinese. The current research addresses the following two questions: 1. Whether decreases in interval would be greater when children were younger and smaller when they were older or vice versa? 2. Whether the child speech concerning the acoustic features of interval drifts in the direction of the language they are exposed to? The female infant whose L1 was Southern Mandarin living in Changsha was audio- and video-taped at her home for about one hour almost on a weekly basis during her age range from 0;9 to 2;4 under natural observation by us investigators. The recordings were digitized. Parts of the digitized material were labeled. All the repetitions were excluded. The utterances were extracted from 44 sessions ranging from 30 minutes to one hour. The utterances were divided into segments as well as syllable-sized units. Age stages are 0;9-1;0,1;1-1;5, 1;6-2;0, 2;1-2;4. The subject was a monolingual normal child from parents with a good education. The infant was audio-and video-taped in her home almost every week. The data were digitized, segments and syllables from 44 sessions spanning the transition from babble to speech were transcribed in narrow IPA and coded for analysis. Babble was coded from age 0;9-1;0, and words were coded from 1;0 to 2;4, the data has been checked by two professionally trained persons who majored in phonetics. The present investigation is a longitudinal analysis of some temporal characteristics of the child speech during the age periods of 0;9-1;0, 1;1-1;5, 1;6-2;0, 2;1-2;4. The answer to Research Question 1 is that our results are in agreement with neither of the hypotheses. One hypothesis assumed that decreases in intervals would be greater when children were younger and smaller decreases in intervals when older (Thelen,1991); but the other hypothesis predicted that decreases in intervals would be smaller when children were younger and greater decreases in intervals when older (Smith, Kenney & Hussain, 1996). On the whole, there is a tendency of decrease in segmental and syllabic duration with the growing age, but the changes are not drastic and abrupt. For example, /a/ after /k/ in Table 1 has greater decrease during 1;1-1;5, while /a/ after /p/, /t/ and /w/ has greater decrease during 2;1-2;4. /ka/ has greater decrease during 1;1-1;5, while /ta/ and /na/ has greater decrease during 2;1-2;4.Across the age periods, interval change experiences lots of fluctuation all the time. The answer to Research Question 2 is yes. Babbling stage is a period in which the children's acoustic features of intervals of segments, syllables, words and phrases is shifted in the direction of the language to be learned, babbling and children's speech emergence is greatly influenced by ambient language. The phonetic changes in terms of duration would go on until as late as 10-12 years of age before reaching adult-like levels. Definitely, with the increase of exposure to ambient language, the variation would be less and less until they attain the adult-like competence. Via the analysis of the SPSS 15.0, the decrease of segmental and syllabic intervals across the four age periods proves to be of no significant difference (p>0.05). It means that the change of segmental and syllabic intervals is continuous. It reveals that the process of child speech development is gradual and cumulative.

• Journal of the Korean Society of International Agriculture
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.520-530
• /
• 2011

This study was carried out to evaluate the possibility of rice double cropping in Korea by assessing the growth and yield performance of rice cultivars transplanted at the extremely-early date. When the transplanted rice seedling was exposed to low temperature below 0℃, the survival rate decreased drastically. However, short exposure to below 0℃ one or two times did not damage transplanted rice seedling so severely. Thus, the earliest transplanting in spring would be possible when minimum temperature rises above 0℃. Compared with the conventional seedling nursery tray (CSNT), seedling rearing with the potted nursery tray was more effective for increasing leaf age and seedling dry weight during nursery period. In the first rice cropping, rice cultivation with seedlings reared in PSNT showed shorter growth duration and cumulative temperature from transplanting to heading than that with seedlings reared in CSNT. The earliest heading date on July 4 in Jinbuolbyeo was earlier by two to three days than that of Dunaebyeo. If rice has not exposed to cold damage, the earliest heading date of Jinbujolbyeo can advance to June 30 or July 1. In this case, rice harvest would be possible on August 5, enabling the rice transplanting of the second rice cropping before August 10. At transplanting time with low temperature damage rice yield were less than 400 kg/10a while rice yield exceeded 400 kg/10a at transplanting time without low temperature damage.

• The Journal of Korean Society for Radiation Therapy
• /
• v.34
• /
• pp.73-82
• /
• 2022

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of reducing the absorbed dose to the ovaries and the quality of the CBCT image when using the Halcyon^TM Fast kV CBCT of cervical cancer patients of child-bearing age who performed ovarian transposition Materials and Methods : Contouring of the cervix and ovaries required for measurement was performed on the computed tomography images of the human phantom (Alderson Rando Phantom, USA), and three Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dosimeter(OSLD) were attached to the selected organ cross-section, respectively. In order to measure the absorbed dose to the cervix and ovaries in the Truebeam^TM pelvis mode (Hereinafter referred to as TP), The Halcyon^TM Pelvis mode (Hereinafter referred to as HP) and The Halcyon^TM Pelvis Fast mode (Hereinafter referred to as HPF), An image was taken with a scan range of 17.5 cm and also taken an image that reduced the Scan range to 12.5cm. A total of 10 cumulative doses were summed, It was replaced with a value of 23 Fx, the number of cervical cancer treatments, and compared In additon, uniformity, low contrast visibility, spatial resolution, and geometric distortion were compared and analyzed using Catphan 504 phantom to compare CBCT image quality between equipment. Each factor was repeatedly measured three times, and the average value was obtained by analysing with the Doselab (Mobius Medical Systems, LP. Versions: 6.8) program. Results: As a result of measuring absorbed dose by CBCT with OSLD, TP and HP did not obtain significant results under the same conditions. The mode showing the greatest reduction value was HPF versus TP. In HPF, the absorbed dose was reduced by 39.8% in the cervix and 19.8% in the ovary compared to the TP in the scan range of 17.5 cm. the scan range was reduced to 12.5 cm, absorbed dose was reduced by 34.2% in the cervix and 50.5% in the ovary. In addition, result of evaluating the quality of the image used in the above experiment, it complied with the equipment manufacturer's standards with Geometric Distortion within 1mm (SBRT standard), Uniformity HU, LCV within 2.0%, Spatial Resolution more than 3 lp/mm. Conclusion: According to the results of this experiment, Halcyon^TM can select more various conditions than Truebeam^TM in treatment of fertility woman who have undergone ovarian Transposition , because it is important to reduce the radiation dose by CBCT during radiation therapy. So finally we recommend Halcyon^TM Fast kV CBCT which maintains image quality even at low mAs. However, it is consider that the additional exposure to low doses can be reduced by controlling the imaging range for patients who have undergone ovarian transposition in other treatment machines.