University of West Bohemia

About: University of West Bohemia is a education organization based out in Pilsen, Czechia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Sputter deposition & Band gap. The organization has 2587 authors who have published 7207 publications receiving 78537 citations. The organization is also known as: Západočeská Univerzita v Plzni & ZČU.

Quality of life of patients after total laryngectomy: the struggle against stigmatization and social exclusion using speech synthesis.

Abstract: In this article, we deal with the problem of potential stigmatization and social exclusion of people that have voice/speech problems due to neck cancer, especially those who have lost their voice because of total laryngectomy, and we analyze how this potential stigmatization could be alleviated by personalized speech synthesis. We used a mixed-method approach, consisting of quality of life questionnaires and in-depth semi-structured interviews, in order to provide more generalizable as well as rich information. We found out that people with speech problems feel depressed because of their health status and anxiety during social interactions, as they think that other people perceive them as abnormal, or they directly experience symbolic violence. For overcoming these negative feelings, the crucial factors are family relationships and maintaining employment. In both factors, speech synthesis can help significantly. Implications for rehabilitation Personalized speech synthesis can help considerably to people with severe voice impairment in their (re)integration into society. Where possible and appropriate, personalized speech synthesis should be offered as an option to "traditional" voice substitutions.

A combined experimental and theoretical study on the complexation of the ammonium cation with valinomycin

Abstract: From extraction experiments in the two-phase water/nitrobenzene system and γ-activity measurements, the stability constant of the valinomycin-ammonium complex in nitrobenzene saturated with water was determined. Further, the structure of the resulting complex was derived by means of density functional theory (DFT) calculations.Graphical abstract[IMAGE]

Numerical modelling and homogenized constitutive law of large deforming fluid saturated heterogeneous solids

Abstract: In this paper we treat interactions between large deforming solid and fluid media at the microscopic level. This phenomenon is responsible for viscoelastic behaviour observed as the hereditary creep at the macroscopic scale where the material model is described in terms of the homogenized (effective) parameters. The local microscopic and the upscaled global macroscopic problems are derived for the locally periodic porous microstructure with several inclusions. The parallel computational strategy is proposed to solve the local problems associated with specific microstructures evolving in time. On numerical examples using various geometries of the microstructures we demonstrate how the homogenized properties depend on deformation-diffusion processes undergoing in a particular micro-configuration.