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- Luts, Heleen, et al.
(författare)
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Multicenter evaluation of signal enhancement algorithms for hearing aids
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. - : Acoustical Society of America (ASA). - 0001-4966 .- 1520-8524. ; 127:3, s. 1491-1505
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the framework of the European HearCom project, promising signal enhancement algorithms were developed and evaluated for future use in hearing instruments. To assess the algorithms' performance, five of the algorithms were selected and implemented on a common real-time hardware/software platform. Four test centers in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland perceptually evaluated the algorithms. Listening tests were performed with large numbers of normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects. Three perceptual measures were used: speech reception threshold (SRT), listening effort scaling, and preference rating. Tests were carried out in two types of rooms. Speech was presented in multitalker babble arriving from one or three loudspeakers. In a pseudo-diffuse noise scenario, only one algorithm, the spatially preprocessed speech-distortion-weighted multi-channel Wiener filtering, provided a SRT improvement relative to the unprocessed condition. Despite the general lack of improvement in SRT, some algorithms were preferred over the unprocessed condition at all tested signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). These effects were found across different subject groups and test sites. The listening effort scores were less consistent over test sites. For the algorithms that did not affect speech intelligibility, a reduction in listening effort was observed at 0 dB SNR. (C) 2010 Acoustical Society of America. [DOI: 10.1121/1.3299168]
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| 2. |
- Parameswaran, Poornima, et al.
(författare)
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Six RNA Viruses and Forty-One Hosts : Viral Small RNAs and Modulation of Small RNA Repertoires in Vertebrate and Invertebrate Systems
- 2010
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Ingår i: PLoS Pathogens. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1553-7366 .- 1553-7374. ; 6:2, s. e1000764-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have used multiplexed high-throughput sequencing to characterize changes in small RNA populations that occur during viral infection in animal cells. Small RNA-based mechanisms such as RNA interference (RNAi) have been shown in plant and invertebrate systems to play a key role in host responses to viral infection. Although homologs of the key RNAi effector pathways are present in mammalian cells, and can launch an RNAi-mediated degradation of experimentally targeted mRNAs, any role for such responses in mammalian host-virus interactions remains to be characterized. Six different viruses were examined in 41 experimentally susceptible and resistant host systems. We identified virus-derived small RNAs (vsRNAs) from all six viruses, with total abundance varying from "vanishingly rare'' (less than 0.1% of cellular small RNA) to highly abundant (comparable to abundant micro-RNAs "miRNAs''). In addition to the appearance of vsRNAs during infection, we saw a number of specific changes in host miRNA profiles. For several infection models investigated in more detail, the RNAi and Interferon pathways modulated the abundance of vsRNAs. We also found evidence for populations of vsRNAs that exist as duplexed siRNAs with zero to three nucleotide 39 overhangs. Using populations of cells carrying a Hepatitis C replicon, we observed strand-selective loading of siRNAs onto Argonaute complexes. These experiments define vsRNAs as one possible component of the interplay between animal viruses and their hosts.
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