Acoustic Effects of Speaker Sex, Speech Sample, and Mandarin Tone on Vowel Production of Poststroke Spastic Dysarthria.

Introduction: Vowel production in dysarthria tends to be centralized, which is affected by many factors. This study examined the acoustic effects of speaker sex, tones, and speech samples (including sustained vowels, syllables, and sentences) and their interactions on vowel production in Mandarin speakers with poststroke spastic dysarthria.

Methods: Twenty-eight patients with poststroke spastic dysarthria (18 males, 10 females) and 21 healthy speakers (11 males, 10 females) with no significant difference in sex and age with dysarthria were recruited.

The combination of accent method and phonemic contrast: an innovative strategy to improve speech production on post-stroke dysarthria.

Introduction: Speech production includes segmental and suprasegmental features, which interact and cooperate with each other. Impaired speech production is common in individuals with post-stroke dysarthria. The commonly used phonemic contrast therapy and Accent Method in clinical practice can improve the segmental and suprasegmental aspects, respectively.

Involvement of Phospholipase C in Photosynthesis and Growth of Maize Seedlings.

Phospholipase C is an enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of glycerophospholipids and can be classified as phosphoinositide-specific PLC (PI-PLC) and non-specific PLC (NPC), depending on its hydrolytic substrate. In maize, the function of phospholipase C has not been well characterized. In this study, the phospholipase C inhibitor neomycin sulfate (NS, 100 mM) was applied to maize seedlings to investigate the function of maize PLC.

Catalytic conversion of rape straw into biofuels by direct non-thermal plasma modified HZSM-5.

Fresh HZSM-5 catalyst modification experiment was carried out on the direct non-thermal plasma (DNTP) reactor. The aim of this work was to study the effects of modified voltages on the physicochemical properties of HZSM-5 and its enhancement in biomass catalytic pyrolysis. The results showed that DNTP modification was performed at different voltages of 20 kV, 22 kV, 24 kV, compared with fresh HZSM-5, the effect of 22 kV voltage was preferably.

The Adjustment of Membrane Lipid Metabolism Pathways in Maize Roots Under Saline-Alkaline Stress.

Plants are frequently confronted by diverse environmental stress, and the membrane lipids remodeling and signaling are essential for modulating the stress responses. Saline-alkaline stress is a major osmotic stress affecting the growth and development of crops. In this study, an integrated transcriptomic and lipidomic analysis was performed, and the metabolic changes of membrane lipid metabolism in maize () roots under saline-alkaline stress were investigated.

Quantitative acoustic metrics of vowel production in mandarin-speakers with post-stroke spastic dysarthria.

Impairment of vowel production in dysarthria has been highly valued. This study aimed to explore the vowel production of Mandarin-speakers with post-stroke spastic dysarthria in connected speech and to explore the influence of gender and tone on the vowel production. Multiple vowel acoustic metrics, including F1 range, F2 range, vowel space area (VSA), vowel articulation index (VAI) and formant centralization ratio (FCR), were analyzed from vowel tokens embedded in connected speech produced.

Identification of Fatty Acid Desaturases in Maize and Their Differential Responses to Low and High Temperature.

Plant fatty acid desaturases (FADs) catalyze the desaturation of fatty acids in various forms and play important roles in regulating fatty acid composition and maintaining membrane fluidity under temperature stress. A total of 30 FADs were identified from a maize genome, including 13 soluble and 17 membrane-bound FADs, which were further classified into two and five sub-groups, respectively, via phylogenetic analysis. Although there is no evolutionary relationship between the soluble and the membrane-bound FADs, they all harbor a highly conserved FA_desaturase domain, and the types and the distributions of conserved motifs are similar within each sub-group.

[The effect of immobilized laminin on titanium-oxide films to the behavior of human umbilical vein endothelial cells].

In this study, Ti-O films were synthesized using magnetron sputtering, and were pretreated using NaOH solution for improving surface activity from hydroxyl. The laminin(LN) biomacromolecule was further immobilized to the surface through an anminosilane linker. The surface characteristics of these samples were analyzed by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy and the contact angle method.