head-driven phrase structure: Topics by Science.gov

Sample records for head-driven phrase structure

Slavic in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borsley, Robert D., Ed.; Przepiorkowski, Adam, Ed.

The collection of essays on the properties of Slavic languages in the context of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) includes: "Typological Similarities in HPSG" (Tania Avgustinova, Wojciech Skut, Hans Uszkoreit); "Auxiliaries, Verbs and Complementizers in Polish" (Robert D. Borsley); "An Architecture…
The Dependency Structure of Coordinate Phrases: A Corpus Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Temperley, David

2005-01-01

Hudson (1990) proposes that each conjunct in a coordinate phrase forms dependency relations with heads or dependents outside the coordinate phrase (the "multi-head" view). This proposal is tested through corpus analysis of Wall Street Journal text. For right-branching constituents (such as direct-object NPs), a short-long preference for conjunct…
The dependency structure of coordinate phrases: a corpus approach.

PubMed

Temperley, David

2005-11-01

Hudson (1990) proposes that each conjunct in a coordinate phrase forms dependency relations with heads or dependents outside the coordinate phrase (the "multi-head" view). This proposal is tested through corpus analysis of Wall Street Journal text. For right-branching constituents (such as direct-object NPs), a short-long preference for conjunct ordering is observed; this is predicted by the multi-head view, under the assumption that structures resulting in shorter dependencies are preferred. A short-long preference is also observed for left-branching constituents (such as subject NPs), which is less obviously accommodated by the multi-head view but not incompatible with it. The repetition of determiners was also examined (the dog and cat versus the dog and the cat), and a stronger preference was found for repetition with singular count nouns as opposed to mass or plural nouns; this accords well with the multi-head view, under the reasoning that single-determiner constructions require crossing dependencies with count nouns but not with plural or mass nouns.
Misinterpretations in agreement and agreement attraction.

PubMed

Patson, Nikole D; Husband, E Matthew

2016-01-01

It has been well established that subject-verb number agreement can be disrupted by local noun phrases that differ in number from the subject head noun phrase. In sentence production, mismatches in the grammatical number of the head and local noun phrases lead to agreement errors on the verb as in: the key to the cabinets are. Similarly, although ungrammaticality typically causes disruption in measures of sentence comprehension, the disruption is reduced when the local noun phrase has a plural feature. Using a forced-choice comprehension question method, we report two experiments that provide evidence that comprehenders were likely to misinterpret the number information on the head noun phrase when morphosyntactic number markings on the local noun phrase and verb did not match the head. These results are consistent with a growing body of research that suggests that comprehenders often arrive at a final interpretation of a sentence that is not faithful to the linguistic input.
Symmetric and Asymmetric Patterns of Attraction Errors in Producing Subject-Predicate Agreement in Hebrew: An Issue of Morphological Structure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deutsch, Avital; Dank, Maya

2011-01-01

A common characteristic of subject-predicate agreement errors (usually termed attraction errors) in complex noun phrases is an asymmetrical pattern of error distribution, depending on the inflectional state of the nouns comprising the complex noun phrase. That is, attraction is most likely to occur when the head noun is the morphologically…
The Pistol that Injured the Cowboy: Difficulty with Inanimate Subject-Verb Integration Is Reduced by Structural Separation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lowder, Matthew W.; Gordon, Peter C.

2012-01-01

Previous work has suggested that the difficulty normally associated with processing an object-extracted relative clause (ORC) compared to a subject-extracted relative clause (SRC) is increased when the head noun phrase (NP1) is animate and the embedded noun phrase (NP2) is inanimate, compared to the reverse animacy configuration. Two eye-tracking…
Portmanteau Constructions, Phrase Structure, and Linearization.

PubMed

Chan, Brian Hok-Shing

2015-01-01

In bilingual code-switching which involves language-pairs with contrasting head-complement orders (i.e., head-initial vs. head-final), a head may be lexicalized from both languages with its complement sandwiched in the middle. These so-called "portmanteau" sentences (Nishimura, 1985, 1986; Sankoff et al., 1990, etc.) have been attested for decades, but they had never received a systematic, formal analysis in terms of current syntactic theory before a few recent attempts (Hicks, 2010, 2012). Notwithstanding this lack of attention, these structures are in fact highly relevant to theories of linearization and phrase structure. More specifically, they challenge binary-branching (Kayne, 1994, 2004, 2005) as well as the Antisymmetry hypothesis (ibid.). Not explained by current grammatical models of code-switching, including the Equivalence Constraint (Poplack, 1980), the Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993, 2002, etc.), and the Bilingual Speech Model (Muysken, 2000, 2013), the portmanteau construction indeed looks uncommon or abnormal, defying any systematic account. However, the recurrence of these structures in various datasets and constraints on them do call for an explanation. This paper suggests an account which lies with syntax and also with the psycholinguistics of bilingualism. Assuming that linearization is a process at the Sensori-Motor (SM) interface (Chomsky, 2005, 2013), this paper sees that word order is not fixed in a syntactic tree but it is set in the production process, and much information of word order rests in the processor, for instance, outputting a head before its complement (i.e., head-initial word order) or the reverse (i.e., head-final word order). As for the portmanteau construction, it is the output of bilingual speakers co-activating two sets of head-complement orders which summon the phonetic forms of the same word in both languages. Under this proposal, the underlying structure of a portmanteau construction is as simple as an XP in which a head X merges with its complement YP and projects an XP (i.e., X YP → [XP X YP]).
Portmanteau Constructions, Phrase Structure, and Linearization

PubMed Central

Chan, Brian Hok-Shing

2015-01-01

In bilingual code-switching which involves language-pairs with contrasting head-complement orders (i.e., head-initial vs. head-final), a head may be lexicalized from both languages with its complement sandwiched in the middle. These so-called “portmanteau” sentences (Nishimura, 1985, 1986; Sankoff et al., 1990, etc.) have been attested for decades, but they had never received a systematic, formal analysis in terms of current syntactic theory before a few recent attempts (Hicks, 2010, 2012). Notwithstanding this lack of attention, these structures are in fact highly relevant to theories of linearization and phrase structure. More specifically, they challenge binary-branching (Kayne, 1994, 2004, 2005) as well as the Antisymmetry hypothesis (ibid.). Not explained by current grammatical models of code-switching, including the Equivalence Constraint (Poplack, 1980), the Matrix Language Frame Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993, 2002, etc.), and the Bilingual Speech Model (Muysken, 2000, 2013), the portmanteau construction indeed looks uncommon or abnormal, defying any systematic account. However, the recurrence of these structures in various datasets and constraints on them do call for an explanation. This paper suggests an account which lies with syntax and also with the psycholinguistics of bilingualism. Assuming that linearization is a process at the Sensori-Motor (SM) interface (Chomsky, 2005, 2013), this paper sees that word order is not fixed in a syntactic tree but it is set in the production process, and much information of word order rests in the processor, for instance, outputting a head before its complement (i.e., head-initial word order) or the reverse (i.e., head-final word order). As for the portmanteau construction, it is the output of bilingual speakers co-activating two sets of head-complement orders which summon the phonetic forms of the same word in both languages. Under this proposal, the underlying structure of a portmanteau construction is as simple as an XP in which a head X merges with its complement YP and projects an XP (i.e., X YP → [XP X YP]). PMID:26733894
Resolving Conflicts in Natural and Grammatical Gender Agreement: Evidence from Eye Movements.

PubMed

Dank, Maya; Deutsch, Avital; Bock, Kathryn

2015-08-01

The present research investigated the attraction phenomenon, which commonly occurs in the domain of production but is also apparent in comprehension. It particularly focused on its accessibility to conceptual influence, in analogy to previous findings in production in Hebrew (Deutsch and Dank, J Mem Lang, 60:112-143, 2009). The experiments made use of the contrast between grammatical and natural gender in Hebrew, using complex subject noun phrases containing head nouns and prepositional phrases with local nouns. Noun phrases were manipulated to produce (a) matches and mismatches in grammatical gender between heads and local nouns; and (b) inanimate nouns and animate nouns with natural gender that served either as head or as local nouns. These noun phrases were the subjects of sentences that ended with predicates agreeing in gender with the head noun, with the local noun, or both. The ungrammatical sentences were those in which the gender of the predicate and the head noun did not match. To assess the impact of conflicts in grammatical and natural gender on the time course of reading, participants' eye movements were monitored. The results revealed clear disruptions in reading the predicate due to grammatical-gender mismatches with head and local nouns, in analogy to attraction in production. When the head nouns conveyed natural gender these effects were amplified, but variations in the natural gender of local nouns had negligible consequences. The results imply that comprehension and production are similarly sensitive to the control of grammatical agreement by grammatical and natural gender in subject noun phrases.
Pre- and post-head processing for single- and double-scrambled sentences of a head-final language as measured by the eye tracking method.

PubMed

Tamaoka, Katsuo; Asano, Michiko; Miyaoka, Yayoi; Yokosawa, Kazuhiko

2014-04-01

Using the eye-tracking method, the present study depicted pre- and post-head processing for simple scrambled sentences of head-final languages. Three versions of simple Japanese active sentences with ditransitive verbs were used: namely, (1) SO₁O₂V canonical, (2) SO₂O₁V single-scrambled, and (3) O₁O₂SV double-scrambled order. First pass reading times indicated that the third noun phrase just before the verb in both single- and double-scrambled sentences required longer reading times compared to canonical sentences. Re-reading times (the sum of all fixations minus the first pass reading) showed that all noun phrases including the crucial phrase before the verb in double-scrambled sentences required longer re-reading times than those required for single-scrambled sentences; single-scrambled sentences had no difference from canonical ones. Therefore, a single filler-gap dependency can be resolved in pre-head anticipatory processing whereas two filler-gap dependencies require much greater cognitive loading than a single case. These two dependencies can be resolved in post-head processing using verb agreement information.
Deriving the Distribution of Conjunctions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zoerner, Ed

1994-01-01

This paper proposes an explanation for the limited possibilities of realized conjunctions in multitermed coordinations. It argues that conjunction "&" heads a fully articulated phrase (&P), which can iterate &P shells, similar to "V" in Larson's (1988) VP-shell hypothesis. This structure enables a single & to unify any number of conjuncts, and…
Syntax-Prosody Interface: Evidence from wh-Movement in Jordanian Arabic and Egyptian Arabic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yasin, Ayman

2012-01-01

Richards (2006, 2010) suggests that wh-movement is prosodically driven. Based on the position of the Comp(lementizer) and the marking of prosodic phrase edges, he claims that if Comp is on one side and the language marks the opposite side of prosodic phrases, then the wh-phrase does not move since Comp and wh-phrase can create a prosodic wh-domain…
Predicting complex syntactic structure in real time: Processing of negative sentences in Russian.

PubMed

Kazanina, Nina

2017-11-01

In Russian negative sentences the verb's direct object may appear either in the accusative case, which is licensed by the verb (as is common cross-linguistically), or in the genitive case, which is licensed by the negation (Russian-specific "genitive-of-negation" phenomenon). Such sentences were used to investigate whether case marking is employed for anticipating syntactic structure, and whether lexical heads other than the verb can be predicted on the basis of a case-marked noun phrase. Experiment 1, a completion task, confirmed that genitive-of-negation is part of Russian speakers' active grammatical repertoire. In Experiments 2 and 3, the genitive/accusative case manipulation on the preverbal object led to shorter reading times at the negation and verb in the genitive versus accusative condition. Furthermore, Experiment 3 manipulated linear order of the direct object and the negated verb in order to distinguish whether the abovementioned facilitatory effect was predictive or integrative in nature, and concluded that the parser actively predicts a verb and (otherwise optional) negation on the basis of a preceding genitive-marked object. Similarly to a head-final language, case-marking information on preverbal noun phrases (NPs) is used by the parser to enable incremental structure building in a free-word-order language such as Russian.
Korean Phrase Book.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peace Corps, Washington, DC.

This is a brief guide to Korean pronunciation and phrases, prepared for U.S. Navy personnel. Expressions are grouped according to the following headings: (1) emergency expressions; (2) general expressions; (3) personal needs; (4) location and terrain; (5) roads and transportation; (6) communications; (7) letters, numbers, size, time, etc.; (8)…
Phonological Phrase Boundaries Constrain Lexical Access II. Infant Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gout, A.; Christophe, A.; Morgan, J. L.

2004-01-01

The location of phonological phrase boundaries was shown to affect lexical access by English-learning infants of 10 and 13 months of age. Experiments 1 and 2 used the head-turn preference procedure: infants were familiarized with two bisyllabic words, then presented with sentences that either contained the familiarized words or contained both…
Can Intonational Phrase Structure be Primed (like Syntactic Structure)?

PubMed Central

Tooley, Kristen M.; Konopka, Agnieszka E.; Watson, Duane G.

2013-01-01

In three experiments, we investigated whether intonational phrase structure can be primed. In all experiments, participants listened to sentences in which the presence and location of intonational phrase boundaries was manipulated such that the recording either included no intonational phrase boundaries, a boundary in a structurally dispreferred location, in a preferred location, or in both locations. In Experiment 1, participants repeated the sentences to test whether they would reproduce the prosodic structure they had just heard. Experiments 2 and 3 used a prime-target paradigm to evaluate whether the intonational phrase structure heard in the prime sentence might influence that of a novel target sentence. Experiment 1 showed that participants did repeat back sentences that they just heard with the original intonational phrase structure, yet Experiments 2 and 3 found that exposure to intonational phrase boundaries on prime trials did not influence how a novel target sentence was prosodically phrased. These results suggest that speakers may retain the intonational phrasing of a sentence, but this effect is not long-lived and does not generalize across unrelated sentences. Furthermore, these findings provide no evidence that intonational phrase structure is formulated during a planning stage that is separate from other sources of linguistic information. PMID:24188467
Data: Mining with a Mission- Data-Driven Decision Making Is the Buzz Phrase of Choice for the New Decade. but Once We've Got the Information, How Do We Use It to Yield Results?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salpeter, Judy

2004-01-01

For some districts, the current obsession with data grows out of the need to comply with No Child Left Behind and additional accountability-related mandates. For others, it dates way back before the phrase "data-driven decision making" rolled so frequently off the tongues of educators. In either case, there is no denying that an integral…
On the Screen, in the Mind: An ERP Investigation into the Interaction between Visuo-Spatial Information and Spatial Language during On-Line Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zane, Emily

2016-01-01

This project used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore neurophysiological brain responses to prepositional phrases involving concrete and abstract reference nouns (e.g., "plate" and "moment," respectively) after the presentation of objects with varying spatial features. Prepositional phrases were headed by "in"…
Keeping it simple: studying grammatical encoding with lexically reduced item sets

PubMed Central

Veenstra, Alma; Acheson, Daniel J.; Meyer, Antje S.

2014-01-01

Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1) speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match [e.g., the key to the cabinet(s)]; and (2) this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material. We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars) and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue) with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple materials. PMID:25101039
Keeping it simple: studying grammatical encoding with lexically reduced item sets.

PubMed

Veenstra, Alma; Acheson, Daniel J; Meyer, Antje S

2014-01-01

Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1) speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match [e.g., the key to the cabinet(s)]; and (2) this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material. We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars) and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue) with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple materials.

Characteristics of Syntactic Comprehension Deficits Following Closed Head Injury versus Left Cerebrovascular Accident.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler-Hinz, Susan; And Others

1990-01-01

Two studies examined the ability to assign thematic roles and to coindex referentially dependent noun phrases in closed head injured adults (N=20), adult stroke patients (N=20), and normal adults (N=20). Results suggested that syntactic comprehension disturbances are similar following left cerebral hemisphere infarction and closed head injury.…
Effects on Text Simplification: Evaluation of Splitting up Noun Phrases

PubMed Central

Leroy, Gondy; Kauchak, David; Hogue, Alan

2016-01-01

To help increase health literacy, we are developing a text simplification tool that creates more accessible patient education materials. Tool development is guided by data-driven feature analysis comparing simple and difficult text. In the present study, we focus on the common advice to split long noun phrases. Our previous corpus analysis showed that easier texts contained shorter noun phrases. Subsequently, we conduct a user study to measure the difficulty of sentences containing noun phrases of different lengths (2-gram, 3-gram and 4-gram), conditions (split or not) and, to simulate unknown terms, use of pseudowords (present or not). We gathered 35 evaluations for 30 sentences in each condition (3×2×2 conditions) on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N=12,600). We conducted a three-way ANOVA for perceived and actual difficulty. Splitting noun phrases had a positive effect on perceived difficulty but a negative effect on actual difficulty. The presence of pseudowords increased perceived and actual difficulty. Without pseudowords, longer noun phrase led to increased perceived and actual difficulty. A follow-up study using the phrases (N = 1,350) showed that measuring awkwardness may indicate when to split noun phrases. We conclude that splitting noun phrases benefits perceived difficulty, but hurts actual difficulty when the phrasing becomes less natural. PMID:27043754
Implicit Prosody and Cue-based Retrieval: L1 and L2 Agreement and Comprehension during Reading

PubMed Central

Pratt, Elizabeth; Fernández, Eva M.

2016-01-01

This project focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish–English bilingual (L2) speakers. We consolidate research from several distinct areas of inquiry—cognitive processing, reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing—in order to support the integration of prosody with a cue-based retrieval mechanism for subject-verb agreement. To explore this proposal, the experimental design manipulated text presentation to influence implicit prosody, using sentences designed to induce subject-verb agreement attraction errors. Materials included simple and complex relative clauses with head nouns and verbs that were either matched or mismatched for number. Participants read items in one of three presentation formats (whole sentence, word-by-word, or phrase-by-phrase), rated each item for grammaticality, and responded to a comprehension probe. Results indicated that while overall, message comprehension was prioritized over subject-verb agreement computation, presentation format differentially affected both measures in the L1 and L2 groups. For the L1 participants, facilitating the projection of phrasal prosody onto text (phrase-by-phrase presentation) enhanced performance in agreement processing, while disrupting prosodic projection via word-by-word presentation decreased comprehension accuracy. For the L2 participants, however, phrase-by-phrase presentation was not significantly beneficial for agreement processing, and additionally resulted in lower comprehension accuracy. These differences point to a significant role of prosodic phrasing during agreement processing in both L1 and L2 speakers, additionally suggesting that it may contribute to a cue-based retrieval agreement model, either acting as a cue directly, or otherwise scaffolding the retrieval process. The discussion and results presented provide support both for a cue-based retrieval mechanism in agreement, and the function of prosody within such a mechanism, adding further insight into the interaction of retrieval processes, cognitive task load, and the role of implicit prosody. PMID:28018264
Implicit Prosody and Cue-based Retrieval: L1 and L2 Agreement and Comprehension during Reading.

PubMed

Pratt, Elizabeth; Fernández, Eva M

2016-01-01

This project focuses on structural and prosodic effects during reading, examining their influence on agreement processing and comprehension in native English (L1) and Spanish-English bilingual (L2) speakers. We consolidate research from several distinct areas of inquiry-cognitive processing, reading fluency, and L1/L2 processing-in order to support the integration of prosody with a cue-based retrieval mechanism for subject-verb agreement. To explore this proposal, the experimental design manipulated text presentation to influence implicit prosody, using sentences designed to induce subject-verb agreement attraction errors. Materials included simple and complex relative clauses with head nouns and verbs that were either matched or mismatched for number. Participants read items in one of three presentation formats (whole sentence, word-by-word, or phrase-by-phrase), rated each item for grammaticality, and responded to a comprehension probe. Results indicated that while overall, message comprehension was prioritized over subject-verb agreement computation, presentation format differentially affected both measures in the L1 and L2 groups. For the L1 participants, facilitating the projection of phrasal prosody onto text (phrase-by-phrase presentation) enhanced performance in agreement processing, while disrupting prosodic projection via word-by-word presentation decreased comprehension accuracy. For the L2 participants, however, phrase-by-phrase presentation was not significantly beneficial for agreement processing, and additionally resulted in lower comprehension accuracy. These differences point to a significant role of prosodic phrasing during agreement processing in both L1 and L2 speakers, additionally suggesting that it may contribute to a cue-based retrieval agreement model, either acting as a cue directly, or otherwise scaffolding the retrieval process. The discussion and results presented provide support both for a cue-based retrieval mechanism in agreement, and the function of prosody within such a mechanism, adding further insight into the interaction of retrieval processes, cognitive task load, and the role of implicit prosody.
Discourse accessibility constraints in children’s processing of object relative clauses

PubMed Central

Haendler, Yair; Kliegl, Reinhold; Adani, Flavia

2015-01-01

Children’s poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children’s performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children’s language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases. PMID:26157410
Stereotypic and complex phrase types provide structural evidence for a multi-message display in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae).

PubMed

Murray, Anita; Dunlop, Rebecca A; Noad, Michael J; Goldizen, Anne W

2018-02-01

Male humpback whales produce a mating display called "song." Behavioral studies indicate song has inter- and/or intra-sexual functionality, suggesting song may be a multi-message display. Multi-message displays often include stereotypic components that convey group membership for mate attraction and/or male-male interactions, and complex components that convey individual quality for courtship. Humpback whale song contains sounds ("units") arranged into sequences ("phrases"). Repetitions of a specific phrase create a "theme." Within a theme, imperfect phrase repetitions ("phrase variants") create variability among phrases of the same type ("phrase type"). The hypothesis that song contains stereotypic and complex phrase types, structural characteristics consistent with a multi-message display, is investigated using recordings of 17 east Australian males (8:2004, 9:2011). Phrase types are categorized as stereotypic or complex using number of unit types, number of phrase variants, and the proportion of phrases that is unique to an individual versus shared amongst males. Unit types are determined using self-organizing maps. Phrase variants are determined by Levenshtein distances between phrases. Stereotypic phrase types have smaller numbers of unit types and shared phrase variants. Complex phrase types have larger numbers of unit types and unique phrase variants. This study supports the hypothesis that song could be a multi-message display.
Chinese lexical networks: The structure, function and formation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Jianyu; Zhou, Jie; Luo, Xiaoyue; Yang, Zhanxin

2012-11-01

In this paper Chinese phrases are modeled using complex networks theory. We analyze statistical properties of the networks and find that phrase networks display some important features: not only small world and the power-law distribution, but also hierarchical structure and disassortative mixing. These statistical traits display the global organization of Chinese phrases. The origin and formation of such traits are analyzed from a macroscopic Chinese culture and philosophy perspective. It is interesting to find that Chinese culture and philosophy may shape the formation and structure of Chinese phrases. To uncover the structural design principles of networks, network motif patterns are studied. It is shown that they serve as basic building blocks to form the whole phrase networks, especially triad 38 (feed forward loop) plays a more important role in forming most of the phrases and other motifs. The distinct structure may not only keep the networks stable and robust, but also be helpful for information processing. The results of the paper can give some insight into Chinese language learning and language acquisition. It strengthens the idea that learning the phrases helps to understand Chinese culture. On the other side, understanding Chinese culture and philosophy does help to learn Chinese phrases. The hub nodes in the networks show the close relationship with Chinese culture and philosophy. Learning or teaching the hub characters, hub-linking phrases and phrases which are meaning related based on motif feature should be very useful and important for Chinese learning and acquisition.
Association and Phrase Structure in Sentence Recall.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rosenberg, Sheldon

The effect of within- and between-phrase normative controlled association and phrase structure upon word integration in sentence recall was studied in two experiments. The two experiments differed only with respect to the type of two-phrase sentence used. In both experiments, one group of subjects was given four study-test trials on a list of four…
Phonological Planning during Sentence Production: Beyond the Verb.

PubMed

Schnur, Tatiana T

2011-01-01

The current study addresses the extent of phonological planning during spontaneous sentence production. Previous work shows that at articulation, phonological encoding occurs for entire phrases, but encoding beyond the initial phrase may be due to the syntactic relevance of the verb in planning the utterance. I conducted three experiments to investigate whether phonological planning crosses multiple grammatical phrase boundaries (as defined by the number of lexical heads of phrase) within a single phonological phrase. Using the picture-word interference paradigm, I found in two separate experiments a significant phonological facilitation effect to both the verb and noun of sentences like "He opens the gate." I also altered the frequency of the direct object and found longer utterance initiation times for sentences ending with a low-frequency vs. high-frequency object offering further support that the direct object was phonologically encoded at the time of utterance initiation. That phonological information for post-verbal elements was activated suggests that the grammatical importance of the verb does not restrict the extent of phonological planning. These results suggest that the phonological phrase is unit of planning, where all elements within a phonological phrase are encoded before articulation. Thus, consistent with other action sequencing behavior, there is significant phonological planning ahead in sentence production.
77 FR 17331 - Interest on Untimely Paid Vessel Repair Duties

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-03-26

... heading; 0 b. In paragraph (a): by adding, after the parenthetical phrase that ends with the word ``reliquidation'', the language ``, or vessel repair duties,''; and by removing the words ``shall be'' and adding in their place the word ``are''; 0 c. In the heading text to paragraph (b)(1), by adding after the...
Interface Problems: Structural Constraints on Interpretation?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frazier, Lyn; Clifton, Charles; Rayner, Keith; Deevy, Patricia; Koh, Sungryong; Bader, Markus

2005-01-01

Five experiments investigated the interpretation of quantified noun phrases in relation to discourse structure. They demonstrated, using questionnaire and on-line reading techniques, that readers in English prefer to give a quantified noun phrase in (VP-external) subject position a presuppositional interpretation, in which the noun phrase limits…
The phonetic rhythm/syntax headedness connection: Evidence from Tagalog

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bird, Sonya; Fais, Laurel; Werker, Janet

2005-04-01

Ramus, Nespor, and Mehler [Cognition (1999)] show that the rhythm of a language (broadly: stress- versus syllable- versus mora-timing) results from the proportion of vocalic material in an utterance (%V) and the standard deviation of consonantal intervals (delta-C). Based on 14 languages, Shukla, Nespor, and Mehler [submitted] further argue that rhythm is correlated with syntactic headedness: low %V is correlated with head-first languages (e.g., English); high %V is correlated with head-final languages (e.g., Japanese). Together, these proposals have important implications for language acquisition: infants can discriminate across rhythm classes [Nazzi, Bertoncini, and Mehler, J. Exp. Psych: Human Perception and Performance (1998)]. If rhythm, as defined by %V and delta-C, can predict headedness, then infants can potentially use rhythm information to bootstrap into their languages syntactic structure. This paper reports on a study analyzing rhythm in a language not yet considered: Tagalog. Results support the Shukla et al. proposal in an interesting way: based on its %V and delta-C, Tagalog falls between head-first and head-last languages, slighty closer to the head-first group. This placement correlates well with the fact that, although Tagalog is said to be primarily head-first syntactically, head-last phrases are permitted and common in the language.
Study on cold head structure of a 300 Hz thermoacoustically driven pulse tube cryocooler

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, G. Y.; Wang, X. T.; Dai, W.; Luo, E. C.

2012-04-01

High reliability, compact size and potentially high thermal efficiency make the high frequency thermoacoustically-driven pulse tube cryocooler quite promising for space use. With continuous efforts, the lowest temperature and the thermal efficiency of the coupled system have been greatly improved. So far, a cold head temperature below 60 K has been achieved on such kind of cryocooler with the operation frequency of around 300 Hz. To further improve the thermal efficiency and expedite its practical application, this work focuses on studying the influence of cold head structure on the system performance. Substantial numerical simulations were firstly carried out, which revealed that the cold head structure would greatly influence the cooling power and the thermal efficiency. To validate the predictions, a lot of experiments have been done. The experiments and calculations are in reasonable agreement. With 500 W heating power input into the engine, a no-load temperature of 63 K and a cooling power of 1.16 W at 80 K have been obtained with parallel-plate cold head, indicating encouraging improvement of the thermal efficiency.
Conceptual mapping of user's queries to medical subject headings.

PubMed Central

Zieman, Y. L.; Bleich, H. L.

1997-01-01

This paper describes a way to map users' queries to relevant Medical Subject Headings (MeSH terms) used by the National Library of Medicine to index the biomedical literature. The method, called SENSE (SEarch with New SEmantics), transforms words and phrases in the users' queries into primary conceptual components and compares these components with those of the MeSH vocabulary. Similar to the way in which most numbers can be split into numerical factors and expressed as their product--for example, 42 can be expressed as 2*21, 6*7, 3*14, 2*3*7,--so most medical concepts can be split into "semantic factors" and expressed as their juxtaposition. Note that if we split 42 into its primary factors, the breakdown is unique: 2*3*7. Similarly, when we split medical concepts into their "primary semantic factors" the breakdown is also unique. For example, the MeSH term 'renovascular hypertension' can be split morphologically into reno, vascular, hyper, and tension--morphemes that can then be translated into their primary semantic factors--kidney, blood vessel, high, and pressure. By "factoring" each MeSH term in this way, and by similarly factoring the user's query, we can match query to MeSH term by searching for combinations of common factors. Unlike UMLS and other methods that match at the level of words or phrases, SENSE matches at the level of concepts; in this way, a wide variety of words and phrases that have the same meaning produce the same match. Now used in PaperChase, the method is surprisingly powerful in matching users' queries to Medical Subject Headings. PMID:9357680
Future-oriented tweets predict lower county-level HIV prevalence in the United States.

PubMed

Ireland, Molly E; Schwartz, H Andrew; Chen, Qijia; Ungar, Lyle H; Albarracín, Dolores

2015-12-01

Future orientation promotes health and well-being at the individual level. Computerized text analysis of a dataset encompassing billions of words used across the United States on Twitter tested whether community-level rates of future-oriented messages correlated with lower human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) rates and moderated the association between behavioral risk indicators and HIV. Over 150 million tweets mapped to U.S. counties were analyzed using 2 methods of text analysis. First, county-level HIV rates (cases per 100,000) were regressed on aggregate usage of future-oriented language (e.g., will, gonna). A second data-driven method regressed HIV rates on individual words and phrases. Results showed that counties with higher rates of future tense on Twitter had fewer HIV cases, independent of strong structural predictors of HIV such as population density. Future-oriented messages also appeared to buffer health risk: Sexually transmitted infection rates and references to risky behavior on Twitter were associated with higher HIV prevalence in all counties except those with high rates of future orientation. Data-driven analyses likewise showed that words and phrases referencing the future (e.g., tomorrow, would be) correlated with lower HIV prevalence. Integrating big data approaches to text analysis and epidemiology with psychological theory may provide an inexpensive, real-time method of anticipating outbreaks of HIV and etiologically similar diseases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
Future-Oriented Tweets Predict Lower County-Level HIV Prevalence in the United States

PubMed Central

Ireland, Molly E.; Schwartz, Hansen A.; Chen, Qijia; Ungar, Lyle; Albarracín, Dolores

2016-01-01

Objective Future orientation promotes health and well-being at the individual level. Computerized text analysis of a dataset encompassing billions of words used across the United States on Twitter tested whether community-level rates of future-oriented messages correlated with lower HIV rates and moderated the association between behavioral risk indicators and HIV. Method Over 150 million Tweets mapped to US counties were analyzed using two methods of text analysis. First, county-level HIV rates (cases per 100,000) were regressed on aggregate usage of future-oriented language (e.g., will, gonna). A second data-driven method regressed HIV rates on individual words and phrases. Results Results showed that counties with higher rates of future tense on Twitter had fewer HIV cases, independent of strong structural predictors of HIV such as population density. Future-oriented messages also appeared to buffer health risk: Sexually transmitted infection rates and references to risky behavior on Twitter were associated with higher HIV prevalence in all counties except those with high rates of future orientation. Data-driven analyses likewise showed that words and phrases referencing the future (e.g., tomorrow, would be) correlated with lower HIV prevalence. Conclusion Integrating big data approaches to text analysis and epidemiology with psychological theory may provide an inexpensive, real-time method of anticipating outbreaks of HIV and etiologically similar diseases. PMID:26651466
Corpus-based Statistical Screening for Phrase Identification

PubMed Central

Kim, Won; Wilbur, W. John

2000-01-01

Purpose: The authors study the extraction of useful phrases from a natural language database by statistical methods. The aim is to leverage human effort by providing preprocessed phrase lists with a high percentage of useful material. Method: The approach is to develop six different scoring methods that are based on different aspects of phrase occurrence. The emphasis here is not on lexical information or syntactic structure but rather on the statistical properties of word pairs and triples that can be obtained from a large database. Measurements: The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) incorporates a large list of humanly acceptable phrases in the medical field as a part of its structure. The authors use this list of phrases as a gold standard for validating their methods. A good method is one that ranks the UMLS phrases high among all phrases studied. Measurements are 11-point average precision values and precision-recall curves based on the rankings. Result: The authors find of six different scoring methods that each proves effective in identifying UMLS quality phrases in a large subset of MEDLINE. These methods are applicable both to word pairs and word triples. All six methods are optimally combined to produce composite scoring methods that are more effective than any single method. The quality of the composite methods appears sufficient to support the automatic placement of hyperlinks in text at the site of highly ranked phrases. Conclusion: Statistical scoring methods provide a promising approach to the extraction of useful phrases from a natural language database for the purpose of indexing or providing hyperlinks in text. PMID:10984469
A Minimalist Analysis of English Topicalization: A Phase-Based Cartographic Complementizer Phrase (CP) Perspective.

PubMed

Tanaka, Hiroyoshi

Under the basic tenet that syntactic derivation offers an optimal solution to both phonological realization and semantic interpretation of linguistic expression, the recent minimalist framework of syntactic theory claims that the basic unit for the derivation is equivalent to a syntactic propositional element, which is called a phase. In this analysis, syntactic derivation is assumed to proceed at phasal projections that include Complementizer Phrases (CP). However, there have been pointed out some empirical problems with respect to the failure of multiple occurrences of discourse-related elements in the CP domain. This problem can be easily overcome if the alternative approach in the recent minimalist perspective, which is called Cartographic CP analysis, is adopted, but this may raise a theoretical issue about the tension between phasality and four kinds of functional projections assumed in this analysis (Force Phrase (ForceP), Finite Phrase (FinP), Topic Phrase (TopP) and Focus Phrase (FocP)). This paper argues that a hybrid analysis with these two influential approaches can be proposed by claiming a reasonable assumption that syntactically requisite projections (i.e., ForceP and FinP) are phases and independently constitute a phasehood with relevant heads in the derivation. This then enables us to capture various syntactic properties of the Topicalization construction in English. Our proposed analysis, coupled with some additional assumptions and observations in recent minimalist studies, can be extended to incorporate peculiar properties in temporal/conditional adverbials and imperatives.
Knowing too little or too much: the effects of familiarity with a co-performer's part on interpersonal coordination in musical ensembles

PubMed Central

Ragert, Marie; Schroeder, Tim; Keller, Peter E.

2013-01-01

Expert ensemble musicians produce exquisitely coordinated sounds, but rehearsal is typically required to do so. Ensemble coordination may thus be influenced by the degree to which individuals are familiar with each other's parts. Such familiarity may affect the ability to predict and synchronize with co-performers' actions. Internal models related to action simulation and anticipatory musical imagery may be affected by knowledge of (1) the musical structure of a co-performer's part (e.g., in terms of its rhythm and phrase structure) and/or (2) the co-performer's idiosyncratic playing style (e.g., expressive micro-timing variations). The current study investigated the effects of familiarity on interpersonal coordination in piano duos. Skilled pianists were required to play several duets with different partners. One condition included duets for which co-performers had previously practiced both parts, while another condition included duets for which each performer had practiced only their own part. Each piece was recorded six times without joint rehearsal or visual contact to examine the effects of increasing familiarity. Interpersonal coordination was quantified by measuring asynchronies between pianists' keystroke timing and the correlation of their body (head and torso) movements, which were recorded with a motion capture system. The results suggest that familiarity with a co-performer's part, in the absence of familiarity with their playing style, engenders predictions about micro-timing variations that are based instead upon one's own playing style, leading to a mismatch between predictions and actual events at short timescales. Predictions at longer timescales—that is, those related to musical measures and phrases, and reflected in head movements and body sway—are, however, facilitated by familiarity with the structure of a co-performer's part. These findings point to a dissociation between interpersonal coordination at the level of keystrokes and body movements. PMID:23805116
CONSTRAINTS ON VARIABLES IN SYNTAX.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ROSS, JOHN ROBERT

IN ATTEMPTING TO DEFINE "SYNTACTIC VARIABLE," THE AUTHOR BASES HIS DISCUSSION ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT SYNTACTIC FACTS ARE A COLLECTION OF TWO TYPES OF RULES--CONTEXT-FREE PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES (GENERATING UNDERLYING OR DEEP PHRASE MARKERS) AND GRAMMATICAL TRANSFORMATIONS, WHICH MAP UNDERLYING PHRASE MARKERS ONTO SUPERFICIAL (OR SURFACE) PHRASE…

Cable-driven elastic parallel humanoid head with face tracking for Autism Spectrum Disorder interventions.

PubMed

Su, Hao; Dickstein-Fischer, Laurie; Harrington, Kevin; Fu, Qiushi; Lu, Weina; Huang, Haibo; Cole, Gregory; Fischer, Gregory S

2010-01-01

This paper presents the development of new prismatic actuation approach and its application in human-safe humanoid head design. To reduce actuator output impedance and mitigate unexpected external shock, the prismatic actuation method uses cables to drive a piston with preloaded spring. By leveraging the advantages of parallel manipulator and cable-driven mechanism, the developed neck has a parallel manipulator embodiment with two cable-driven limbs embedded with preloaded springs and one passive limb. The eye mechanism is adapted for low-cost webcam with succinct "ball-in-socket" structure. Based on human head anatomy and biomimetics, the neck has 3 degree of freedom (DOF) motion: pan, tilt and one decoupled roll while each eye has independent pan and synchronous tilt motion (3 DOF eyes). A Kalman filter based face tracking algorithm is implemented to interact with the human. This neck and eye structure is translatable to other human-safe humanoid robots. The robot's appearance reflects a non-threatening image of a penguin, which can be translated into a possible therapeutic intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
The Structure of Jarai Clauses and Noun Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jensen, Joshua Martin

2013-01-01

This dissertation provides a syntactic account for the Jarai noun phrase and for the three regions of the Jarai clause: the operator domain, the inflectional domain, and the theta domain. Within the noun phrase, I argue that demonstrative-final word order involves phrasal movement of the demonstrative's complement into Spec,D, where it…
Proactive interference effects on sentence production

PubMed Central

FERREIRA, VICTOR S.; FIRATO, CARLA E.

2007-01-01

Proactive interference refers to recall difficulties caused by prior similar memory-related processing. Information-processing approaches to sentence production predict that retrievability affects sentence form: Speakers may word sentences so that material that is difficult to retrieve is spoken later. In this experiment, speakers produced sentence structures that could include an optional that, thereby delaying the mention of a subsequent noun phrase. This subsequent noun phrase was either (1) conceptually similar to three previous noun phrases in the same sentence, leading to greater proactive interference, or (2) conceptually dissimilar, leading to less proactive interference. Speakers produced more thats (and were more disfluencies) before conceptually similar noun phrases, suggesting that retrieval difficulties during sentence production affect the syntactic structures of sentences that speakers produce. PMID:12613685
Processing Coordination Ambiguity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engelhardt, Paul E.; Ferreira, Fernanda

2010-01-01

We examined temporarily ambiguous coordination structures such as "put the butter in the bowl and the pan on the towel." Minimal Attachment predicts that the ambiguous noun phrase "the pan" will be interpreted as a noun-phrase coordination structure because it is syntactically simpler than clausal coordination. Constraint-based…
On Directionality of Phrase Structure Building

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chesi, Cristiano

2015-01-01

Minimalism in grammatical theorizing (Chomsky in "The minimalist program." MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995) led to simpler linguistic devices and a better focalization of the core properties of the structure building engine: a lexicon and a free (recursive) phrase formation operation, dubbed Merge, are the basic components that serve in…
The online social self: an open vocabulary approach to personality.

PubMed

Kern, Margaret L; Eichstaedt, Johannes C; Schwartz, H Andrew; Dziurzynski, Lukasz; Ungar, Lyle H; Stillwell, David J; Kosinski, Michal; Ramones, Stephanie M; Seligman, Martin E P

2014-04-01

We present a new open language analysis approach that identifies and visually summarizes the dominant naturally occurring words and phrases that most distinguished each Big Five personality trait. Using millions of posts from 69,792 Facebook users, we examined the correlation of personality traits with online word usage. Our analysis method consists of feature extraction, correlational analysis, and visualization. The distinguishing words and phrases were face valid and provide insight into processes that underlie the Big Five traits. Open-ended data driven exploration of large datasets combined with established psychological theory and measures offers new tools to further understand the human psyche. © The Author(s) 2013.
Feature engineering for MEDLINE citation categorization with MeSH.

PubMed

Jimeno Yepes, Antonio Jose; Plaza, Laura; Carrillo-de-Albornoz, Jorge; Mork, James G; Aronson, Alan R

2015-04-08

Research in biomedical text categorization has mostly used the bag-of-words representation. Other more sophisticated representations of text based on syntactic, semantic and argumentative properties have been less studied. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of different text representations of biomedical texts as features for reproducing the MeSH annotations of some of the most frequent MeSH headings. In addition to unigrams and bigrams, these features include noun phrases, citation meta-data, citation structure, and semantic annotation of the citations. Traditional features like unigrams and bigrams exhibit strong performance compared to other feature sets. Little or no improvement is obtained when using meta-data or citation structure. Noun phrases are too sparse and thus have lower performance compared to more traditional features. Conceptual annotation of the texts by MetaMap shows similar performance compared to unigrams, but adding concepts from the UMLS taxonomy does not improve the performance of using only mapped concepts. The combination of all the features performs largely better than any individual feature set considered. In addition, this combination improves the performance of a state-of-the-art MeSH indexer. Concerning the machine learning algorithms, we find that those that are more resilient to class imbalance largely obtain better performance. We conclude that even though traditional features such as unigrams and bigrams have strong performance compared to other features, it is possible to combine them to effectively improve the performance of the bag-of-words representation. We have also found that the combination of the learning algorithm and feature sets has an influence in the overall performance of the system. Moreover, using learning algorithms resilient to class imbalance largely improves performance. However, when using a large set of features, consideration needs to be taken with algorithms due to the risk of over-fitting. Specific combinations of learning algorithms and features for individual MeSH headings could further increase the performance of an indexing system.
21 CFR 349.75 - Labeling of ophthalmic vasoconstrictor drug products.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... “redness reliever” or “vasoconstrictor (redness reliever)” (select one of the following: “eye” or... the heading “Indications,” the following phrase: “Relieves redness of the eye due to minor eye....18: (1) “If you experience eye pain, changes in vision, continued redness or irritation of the eye...
21 CFR 349.75 - Labeling of ophthalmic vasoconstrictor drug products.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... “redness reliever” or “vasoconstrictor (redness reliever)” (select one of the following: “eye” or... the heading “Indications,” the following phrase: “Relieves redness of the eye due to minor eye....18: (1) “If you experience eye pain, changes in vision, continued redness or irritation of the eye...
The "Ass" Camouflage Construction: Masks as Parasitic Heads

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Levine, Robert D.

2010-01-01

Collins et al. 2008 offers a principles-and-parameters-based analysis of an AAVE construction first described in Spears 1998, in which nominal phrases such as "John's ass" appear to have exactly the same denotation, and behavior with respect to familiar conditions on anaphora, as the possessor ["John," and similarly for pronominal possessors.…
Phase structure rewrite systems in information retrieval

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Klingbiel, P. H.

1985-01-01

Operational level automatic indexing requires an efficient means of normalizing natural language phrases. Subject switching requires an efficient means of translating one set of authorized terms to another. A phrase structure rewrite system called a Lexical Dictionary is explained that performs these functions. Background, operational use, other applications and ongoing research are explained.
The Latest Scams in Literacy Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berger, Alan

The claims for the huge numbers of students suffering from the "latest scams" in literacy education--learning disability, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, at risk, and hypoglycemia--are driven by political, economic, and social profits with minimal concern for children. While such problems exist, the phrases used to describe these…
Managing ambiguity in reference generation: the role of surface structure.

PubMed

Khan, Imtiaz H; van Deemter, Kees; Ritchie, Graeme

2012-04-01

This article explores the role of surface ambiguities in referring expressions, and how the risk of such ambiguities should be taken into account by an algorithm that generates referring expressions, if these expressions are to be optimally effective for a hearer. We focus on the ambiguities that arise when adjectives occur in coordinated structures. The central idea is to use statistical information about lexical co-occurrence to estimate which interpretation of a phrase is most likely for human readers, and to avoid generating phrases where misunderstandings are likely. Various aspects of the problem were explored in three experiments in which responses by human participants provided evidence about which reading was most likely for certain phrases, which phrases were deemed most suitable for particular referents, and the speed at which various phrases were read. We found a preference for ''clear'' expressions to ''unclear'' ones, but if several of the expressions are ''clear,'' then brief expressions are preferred over non-brief ones even though the brief ones are syntactically ambiguous and the non-brief ones are not; the notion of clarity was made precise using Kilgarriff's Word Sketches. We outline an implemented algorithm that generates noun phrases conforming to our hypotheses. Copyright © 2011 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.
Technical structure of the global nanoscience and nanotechnology literature

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kostoff, Ronald N.; Koytcheff, Raymond G.; Lau, Clifford G. Y.

2007-10-01

Text mining was used to extract technical intelligence from the open source global nanotechnology and nanoscience research literature. An extensive nanotechnology/nanoscience-focused query was applied to the Science Citation Index/Social Science Citation Index (SCI/SSCI) databases. The nanotechnology/nanoscience research literature technical structure (taxonomy) was obtained using computational linguistics/document clustering and factor analysis. The infrastructure (prolific authors, key journals/institutions/countries, most cited authors/journals/documents) for each of the clusters generated by the document clustering algorithm was obtained using bibliometrics. Another novel addition was the use of phrase auto-correlation maps to show technical thrust areas based on phrase co-occurrence in Abstracts, and the use of phrase-phrase cross-correlation maps to show technical thrust areas based on phrase relations due to the sharing of common co-occurring phrases. The ˜400 most cited nanotechnology papers since 1991 were grouped, and their characteristics generated. Whereas the main analysis provided technical thrusts of all nanotechnology papers retrieved, analysis of the most cited papers allowed their characteristics to be displayed. Finally, most cited papers from selected time periods were extracted, along with all publications from those time periods, and the institutions and countries were compared based on their representation in the most cited documents list relative to their representation in the most publications list.
Mental Representation of Prepositional Compounds: Evidence from Italian Agrammatic Patients

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mondini, S.; Luzzatti, C.; Saletta, P.; Allamano, N.; Semenza, C.

2005-01-01

The processing of Prepositional compounds (typical Neo-latin noun-noun modifications where a head noun is modified by a prepositional phrase, e.g., mulino a vento, windmill) was preliminarily studied with a group of six agrammatic aphasic patients, and, in more detail, with a further agrammatic patient (MB). Omission was the most frequent error…
Parallel functional category deficits in clauses and nominal phrases: The case of English agrammatism

PubMed Central

Wang, Honglei; Yoshida, Masaya; Thompson, Cynthia K.

2015-01-01

Individuals with agrammatic aphasia exhibit restricted patterns of impairment of functional morphemes, however, syntactic characterization of the impairment is controversial. Previous studies have focused on functional morphology in clauses only. This study extends the empirical domain by testing functional morphemes in English nominal phrases in aphasia and comparing patients’ impairment to their impairment of functional morphemes in English clauses. In the linguistics literature, it is assumed that clauses and nominal phrases are structurally parallel but exhibit inflectional differences. The results of the present study indicated that aphasic speakers evinced similar impairment patterns in clauses and nominal phrases. These findings are consistent with the Distributed Morphology Hypothesis (DMH), suggesting that the source of functional morphology deficits among agrammatics relates to difficulty implementing rules that convert inflectional features into morphemes. Our findings, however, are inconsistent with the Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH), which suggests that patients have difficulty building complex hierarchical structures. PMID:26379370
Neural correlates of prosodic boundary perception in German preschoolers: If pause is present, pitch can go.

PubMed

Männel, Claudia; Friederici, Angela D

2016-02-01

Children׳s perception of prosodic phrasing provides a head start into the discovery of speech structure. Based on the close prosody-syntax correspondence, children can infer the underlying syntactic structure from the acoustic modulations of prosodic boundaries, typically consisting of co-occurring pitch changes, preboundary lengthening, and pausing. Previous electrophysiological studies revealed that listeners are to some degree flexible in the detection of major prosodic boundaries that are not marked with all three of the suprasegmental cues. Adults and 6-year-olds still showed the brain response for prosodic boundary perception, the Closure Positive Shift (CPS), when pauses marking boundaries were deleted. In contrast, younger children at 3 years did not show this ability yet, but required pausing to complement the other boundary cues. Following the hypothesis that German weights duration cues more heavily than pitch cues, we here examined 3-year-olds׳ brain responses to prosodic phrasing, testing the role of boundary-related pitch changes. Results revealed that children at this age even showed the CPS in response to pitch-neutralized boundaries with only pausing and preboundary lengthening being present. These results indicate differential roles of acoustic cues in boundary perception, with a preferential reliance on duration cues over pitch changes in 3-year-olds. This preference likely results from the characteristics of the German intonation system and furthers the discussion of cross-linguistic differences in the weighting of prosodic boundary cues. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Mining Quality Phrases from Massive Text Corpora

PubMed Central

Liu, Jialu; Shang, Jingbo; Wang, Chi; Ren, Xiang; Han, Jiawei

2015-01-01

Text data are ubiquitous and play an essential role in big data applications. However, text data are mostly unstructured. Transforming unstructured text into structured units (e.g., semantically meaningful phrases) will substantially reduce semantic ambiguity and enhance the power and efficiency at manipulating such data using database technology. Thus mining quality phrases is a critical research problem in the field of databases. In this paper, we propose a new framework that extracts quality phrases from text corpora integrated with phrasal segmentation. The framework requires only limited training but the quality of phrases so generated is close to human judgment. Moreover, the method is scalable: both computation time and required space grow linearly as corpus size increases. Our experiments on large text corpora demonstrate the quality and efficiency of the new method. PMID:26705375
Effects of parallel planning on agreement production.

PubMed

Veenstra, Alma; Meyer, Antje S; Acheson, Daniel J

2015-11-01

An important issue in current psycholinguistics is how the time course of utterance planning affects the generation of grammatical structures. The current study investigated the influence of parallel activation of the components of complex noun phrases on the generation of subject-verb agreement. Specifically, the lexical interference account (Gillespie & Pearlmutter, 2011b; Solomon & Pearlmutter, 2004) predicts more agreement errors (i.e., attraction) for subject phrases in which the head and local noun mismatch in number (e.g., the apple next to the pears) when nouns are planned in parallel than when they are planned in sequence. We used a speeded picture description task that yielded sentences such as the apple next to the pears is red. The objects mentioned in the noun phrase were either semantically related or unrelated. To induce agreement errors, pictures sometimes mismatched in number. In order to manipulate the likelihood of parallel processing of the objects and to test the hypothesized relationship between parallel processing and the rate of agreement errors, the pictures were either placed close together or far apart. Analyses of the participants' eye movements and speech onset latencies indicated slower processing of the first object and stronger interference from the related (compared to the unrelated) second object in the close than in the far condition. Analyses of the agreement errors yielded an attraction effect, with more errors in mismatching than in matching conditions. However, the magnitude of the attraction effect did not differ across the close and far conditions. Thus, spatial proximity encouraged parallel processing of the pictures, which led to interference of the associated conceptual and/or lexical representation, but, contrary to the prediction, it did not lead to more attraction errors. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
An ERP study of regular and irregular English past tense inflection.

PubMed

Newman, Aaron J; Ullman, Michael T; Pancheva, Roumyana; Waligura, Diane L; Neville, Helen J

2007-01-01

Compositionality is a critical and universal characteristic of human language. It is found at numerous levels, including the combination of morphemes into words and of words into phrases and sentences. These compositional patterns can generally be characterized by rules. For example, the past tense of most English verbs ("regulars") is formed by adding an -ed suffix. However, many complex linguistic forms have rather idiosyncratic mappings. For example, "irregular" English verbs have past tense forms that cannot be derived from their stems in a consistent manner. Whether regular and irregular forms depend on fundamentally distinct neurocognitive processes (rule-governed combination vs. lexical memorization), or whether a single processing system is sufficient to explain the phenomena, has engendered considerable investigation and debate. We recorded event-related potentials while participants read English sentences that were either correct or had violations of regular past tense inflection, irregular past tense inflection, syntactic phrase structure, or lexical semantics. Violations of regular past tense and phrase structure, but not of irregular past tense or lexical semantics, elicited left-lateralized anterior negativities (LANs). These seem to reflect neurocognitive substrates that underlie compositional processes across linguistic domains, including morphology and syntax. Regular, irregular, and phrase structure violations all elicited later positivities that were maximal over midline parietal sites (P600s), and seem to index aspects of controlled syntactic processing of both phrase structure and morphosyntax. The results suggest distinct neurocognitive substrates for processing regular and irregular past tense forms: regulars depending on compositional processing, and irregulars stored in lexical memory.

Get Your Head into the Clouds: Using Word Clouds for Analyzing Qualitative Assessment Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DePaolo, Concetta A.; Wilkinson, Kelly

2014-01-01

Word clouds (or tag clouds) are popular, fun ways to display text data in graphical form; however, we contend that they can also be useful tools in assessment. Using word clouds, instructors can quickly and easily produce graphical depictions of text representing student knowledge. By investigating the patterns of words or phrases, or lack…
"Scrubbing" Data for D3M

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mercurius, Neil

2005-01-01

Data-driven decision-making (D3M) appears to be the new buzz phrase for this century, the information age. On the education front, teachers and administrators are engaging in data-centered dialog in grade-level meetings, lounges, hallways, and classrooms as they brainstorm toward closing the gap in student achievement. Clearly, such discussion…
Time-Driven Effects on Parsing during Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roll, Mikael; Lindgren, Magnus; Alter, Kai; Horne, Merle

2012-01-01

The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2-3 s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent…
Fullerene data mining using bibliometrics and database tomography

PubMed

Kostoff; Braun; Schubert; Toothman; Humenik

2000-01-01

Database tomography (DT) is a textual database analysis system consisting of two major components: (1) algorithms for extracting multiword phrase frequencies and phrase proximities (physical closeness of the multiword technical phrases) from any type of large textual database, to augment (2) interpretative capabilities of the expert human analyst. DT was used to derive technical intelligence from a fullerenes database derived from the Science Citation Index and the Engineering Compendex. Phrase frequency analysis by the technical domain experts provided the pervasive technical themes of the fullerenes database, and phrase proximity analysis provided the relationships among the pervasive technical themes. Bibliometric analysis of the fullerenes literature supplemented the DT results with author/journal/institution publication and citation data. Comparisons of fullerenes results with past analyses of similarly structured near-earth space, chemistry, hypersonic/supersonic flow, aircraft, and ship hydrodynamics databases are made. One important finding is that many of the normalized bibliometric distribution functions are extremely consistent across these diverse technical domains and could reasonably be expected to apply to broader chemical topics than fullerenes that span multiple structural classes. Finally, lessons learned about integrating the technical domain experts with the data mining tools are presented.
The Indris Have Got Rhythm! Timing and Pitch Variation of a Primate Song Examined between Sexes and Age Classes

PubMed Central

Gamba, Marco; Torti, Valeria; Estienne, Vittoria; Randrianarison, Rose M.; Valente, Daria; Rovara, Paolo; Bonadonna, Giovanna; Friard, Olivier; Giacoma, Cristina

2016-01-01

A crucial, common feature of speech and music is that they show non-random structures over time. It is an open question which of the other species share rhythmic abilities with humans, but in most cases the lack of knowledge about their behavioral displays prevents further studies. Indris are the only lemurs who sing. They produce loud howling cries that can be heard at several kilometers, in which all members of a group usually sing. We tested whether overlapping and turn-taking during the songs followed a precise pattern by analysing the temporal structure of the individuals' contribution to the song. We found that both dominants (males and females) and non-dominants influenced the onset timing one another. We have found that the dominant male and the dominant female in a group overlapped each other more frequently than they did with the non-dominants. We then focused on the temporal and frequency structure of particular phrases occurring during the song. Our results show that males and females have dimorphic inter-onset intervals during the phrases. Moreover, median frequencies of the unit emitted in the phrases also differ between the sexes, with males showing higher frequencies when compared to females. We have not found an effect of age on the temporal and spectral structure of the phrases. These results indicate that singing in indris has a high behavioral flexibility and varies according to social and individual factors. The flexible spectral structure of the phrases given during the song may underlie perceptual abilities that are relatively unknown in other non-human primates, such as the ability to recognize particular pitch patterns. PMID:27378834
AN ERP STUDY OF REGULAR AND IRREGULAR ENGLISH PAST TENSE INFLECTION

PubMed Central

Newman, Aaron J.; Ullman, Michael T.; Pancheva, Roumyana; Waligura, Diane L.; Neville, Helen J.

2006-01-01

Compositionality is a critical and universal characteristic of human language. It is found at numerous levels, including the combination of morphemes into words and of words into phrases and sentences. These compositional patterns can generally be characterized by rules. For example, the past tense of most English verbs (“regulars”) is formed by adding an -ed suffix. However, many complex linguistic forms have rather idiosyncratic mappings. For example, “irregular” English verbs have past tense forms that cannot be derived from their stems in a consistent manner. Whether regular and irregular forms depend on fundamentally distinct neurocognitive processes (rule-governed combination vs. lexical memorization), or whether a single processing system is sufficient to explain the phenomena, has engendered considerable investigation and debate. We recorded event-related potentials while participants read English sentences that were either correct or had violations of regular past tense inflection, irregular past tense inflection, syntactic phrase structure, or lexical semantics. Violations of regular past tense and phrase structure, but not of irregular past tense or lexical semantics, elicited left-lateralized anterior negativities (LANs). These seem to reflect neurocognitive substrates that underlie compositional processes across linguistic domains, including morphology and syntax. Regular, irregular, and phrase structure violations all elicited later positivities that were maximal over right parietal sites (P600s), and which seem to index aspects of controlled syntactic processing of both phrase structure and morphosyntax. The results suggest distinct neurocognitive substrates for processing regular and irregular past tense forms: regulars depending on compositional processing, and irregulars stored in lexical memory. PMID:17070703
A Phrase-Based Matching Function.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Galbiati, Giulia

1991-01-01

Describes the development of an information retrieval system designed for nonspecialist users that is based on the binary vector model. The syntactic structure of phrases used for indexing is examined, queries using an experimental collection of documents are described, and precision values are examined. (19 references) (LRW)
Parallel Architecture, Parallel Acquisition Cross-Linguistic Evidence from Nominal and Verbal Domains

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sutton, Brett R.

2017-01-01

This dissertation explores parallels between Complementizer Phrase (CP) and Determiner Phrase (DP) semantics, syntax, and morphology--including similarities in case-assignment, subject-verb and possessor-possessum agreement, subject and possessor semantics, and overall syntactic structure--in first language acquisition. Applying theoretical…
Memory Operations and Structures in Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Ellipsis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Andrea Eyleen

2010-01-01

Natural language often contains dependencies that span words, phrases, or even sentences. Thus, language comprehension relies on recovering recently processed information from memory for subsequent interpretation. This dissertation investigates the memory operations that subserve dependency resolution through the lens of "verb-phrase ellipsis"…
Response Time Distributional Evidence for Distinct Varieties of Number Attraction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Staub, Adrian

2010-01-01

Speakers are known to make subject-verb agreement errors both when a number-mismatching noun intervenes between the head of the subject phrase and the verb (e.g., "*The key to the cabinets are on the table") and in configurations in which there is a number-mismatching noun that does not intervene (e.g., "*The cabinets that the key open are on the…
Do 11-month-old French infants process articles?

PubMed

Hallé, Pierre A; Durand, Catherine; de Boysson-Bardies, Bénédicte

2008-01-01

The first part of this study examined (Parisian) French-learning 11-month-old infants' recognition of the six definite and indefinite French articles: le, la, les, un, une, and des. The six articles were compared with pseudoarticles in the context of disyllabic or monosyllabic nouns, using the Head-turn Preference Procedure. The pseudo articles were similar to real articles in terms of phonetic composition and phonotactic probability, and real and pseudo noun phrases were alike in terms of overall prosodic contour. In three experiments, 11-month-old infants showed preference for real over pseudo articles, suggesting they have the articles' word-forms stored in long-term memory. The second part of the study evaluates several hypotheses about the role of articles in 11-month-olds infants' word recognition. Evidence from three experiments supports the view that articles help infants to recognize the following words. We propose that 11-month-olds have the capacity to parse noun phrases into their constituents, which is consistent with the more general view that function words define a syntactic skeleton that serves as a basis for parsing spoken utterances. This proposition is compared to a competing account, which argues that 11-month-olds recognize noun-phrases as whole-words.
Effects of Noun Phrase Type on Sentence Complexity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gordon, Peter C.; Hendrick, Randall; Johnson, Marcus

2004-01-01

A series of self-paced reading time experiments was performed to assess how characteristics of noun phrases (NPs) contribute to the difference in processing difficulty between object- and subject-extracted relative clauses. Structural semantic characteristics of the NP in the embedded clause (definite vs. indefinite and definite vs. generic) did…
ULTRA: Universal Grammar as a Universal Parser

PubMed Central

Medeiros, David P.

2018-01-01

A central concern of generative grammar is the relationship between hierarchy and word order, traditionally understood as two dimensions of a single syntactic representation. A related concern is directionality in the grammar. Traditional approaches posit process-neutral grammars, embodying knowledge of language, put to use with infinite facility both for production and comprehension. This has crystallized in the view of Merge as the central property of syntax, perhaps its only novel feature. A growing number of approaches explore grammars with different directionalities, often with more direct connections to performance mechanisms. This paper describes a novel model of universal grammar as a one-directional, universal parser. Mismatch between word order and interpretation order is pervasive in comprehension; in the present model, word order is language-particular and interpretation order (i.e., hierarchy) is universal. These orders are not two dimensions of a unified abstract object (e.g., precedence and dominance in a single tree); rather, both are temporal sequences, and UG is an invariant real-time procedure (based on Knuth's stack-sorting algorithm) transforming word order into hierarchical order. This shift in perspective has several desirable consequences. It collapses linearization, displacement, and composition into a single performance process. The architecture provides a novel source of brackets (labeled unambiguously and without search), which are understood not as part-whole constituency relations, but as storage and retrieval routines in parsing. It also explains why neutral word order within single syntactic cycles avoids 213-like permutations. The model identifies cycles as extended projections of lexical heads, grounding the notion of phase. This is achieved with a universal processor, dispensing with parameters. The empirical focus is word order in noun phrases. This domain provides some of the clearest evidence for 213-avoidance as a cross-linguistic word order generalization. Importantly, recursive phrase structure “bottoms out” in noun phrases, which are typically a single cycle (though further cycles may be embedded, e.g., relative clauses). By contrast, a simple transitive clause plausibly involves two cycles (vP and CP), embedding further nominal cycles. In the present theory, recursion is fundamentally distinct from structure-building within a single cycle, and different word order restrictions might emerge in larger domains like clauses. PMID:29497394
The Interface of Syntax with Pragmatics and Prosody in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

PubMed

Terzi, Arhonto; Marinis, Theodoros; Francis, Kostantinos

2016-08-01

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with ASD fell behind typically developing children in comprehending and producing simple clitics and producing noun phrases in focus structures. The two groups performed similarly in comprehending and producing clitics in clitic left dislocation and in producing noun phrases in non-focus structures. We argue that children with ASD have difficulties at the interface of (morpho)syntax with pragmatics and prosody, namely, distinguishing a discourse prominent element, and considering intonation relevant for a particular interpretation that excludes clitics.
Calibrating Fundamental British Values: How Head Teachers Are Approaching Appraisal in the Light of the Teachers' Standards 2012, Prevent and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Revell, Lynn; Bryan, Hazel

2016-01-01

In requiring that teachers should "not undermine fundamental British values (FBV)," a phrase originally articulated in the Home Office counter-terrorism document, Prevent, the Teachers' Standards has brought into focus the nature of teacher professionalism. Teachers in England are now required to promote FBV within and outside school,…
Structural Influences on Initial Accent Placement in French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Astesano, Corine; Bard, Ellen Gurman; Turk, Alice

2007-01-01

In addition to the phrase-final accent (FA), the French phonological system includes a phonetically distinct Initial Accent (IA). The present study tested two proposals: that IA marks the onset of phonological phrases, and that it has an independent rhythmic function. Eight adult native speakers of French were instructed to read syntactically…
The Recipe for Success: Syntactic Features of "la chronique gastronomique."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engel, Dulcie M.

1997-01-01

Analyzes the syntactic structure of noun phrases and verb phrases in recipes and cookery articles in the French press and argues that the complexity of writing about cooking parallels the complexity of the cooking process itself, demonstrating how syntax can reflect function and meaning in a restricted text-type. (Author/MSE)
Are Subject Small Clauses Really Small Clauses?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kubo, Miori

1993-01-01

This paper discusses the ongoing debate over small clauses concerning the structure of the verb phrase in "I consider Bill smart." It is demonstrated that the subject constituent in question is not a small clause, but a Noun Phrase (NP), following Noun (N). It is shown that some peculiar phenomena under the small clause analysis are…
QR in Child Grammar: Evidence from Antecedent-Contained Deletion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Syrett, Kristen; Lidz, Jeffrey

2009-01-01

We show that 4-year-olds assign the correct interpretation to antecedent-contained deletion (ACD) sentences because they have the correct representation of these structures. This representation involves Quantifier Raising (QR) of a Quantificational Noun Phrase (QNP) that must move out of the site of the verb phrase in which it is contained to…
Terminology extraction from medical texts in Polish

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Hospital documents contain free text describing the most important facts relating to patients and their illnesses. These documents are written in specific language containing medical terminology related to hospital treatment. Their automatic processing can help in verifying the consistency of hospital documentation and obtaining statistical data. To perform this task we need information on the phrases we are looking for. At the moment, clinical Polish resources are sparse. The existing terminologies, such as Polish Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), do not provide sufficient coverage for clinical tasks. It would be helpful therefore if it were possible to automatically prepare, on the basis of a data sample, an initial set of terms which, after manual verification, could be used for the purpose of information extraction. Results Using a combination of linguistic and statistical methods for processing over 1200 children hospital discharge records, we obtained a list of single and multiword terms used in hospital discharge documents written in Polish. The phrases are ordered according to their presumed importance in domain texts measured by the frequency of use of a phrase and the variety of its contexts. The evaluation showed that the automatically identified phrases cover about 84% of terms in domain texts. At the top of the ranked list, only 4% out of 400 terms were incorrect while out of the final 200, 20% of expressions were either not domain related or syntactically incorrect. We also observed that 70% of the obtained terms are not included in the Polish MeSH. Conclusions Automatic terminology extraction can give results which are of a quality high enough to be taken as a starting point for building domain related terminological dictionaries or ontologies. This approach can be useful for preparing terminological resources for very specific subdomains for which no relevant terminologies already exist. The evaluation performed showed that none of the tested ranking procedures were able to filter out all improperly constructed noun phrases from the top of the list. Careful choice of noun phrases is crucial to the usefulness of the created terminological resource in applications such as lexicon construction or acquisition of semantic relations from texts. PMID:24976943

Terminology extraction from medical texts in Polish.

PubMed

Marciniak, Małgorzata; Mykowiecka, Agnieszka

2014-01-01

Hospital documents contain free text describing the most important facts relating to patients and their illnesses. These documents are written in specific language containing medical terminology related to hospital treatment. Their automatic processing can help in verifying the consistency of hospital documentation and obtaining statistical data. To perform this task we need information on the phrases we are looking for. At the moment, clinical Polish resources are sparse. The existing terminologies, such as Polish Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), do not provide sufficient coverage for clinical tasks. It would be helpful therefore if it were possible to automatically prepare, on the basis of a data sample, an initial set of terms which, after manual verification, could be used for the purpose of information extraction. Using a combination of linguistic and statistical methods for processing over 1200 children hospital discharge records, we obtained a list of single and multiword terms used in hospital discharge documents written in Polish. The phrases are ordered according to their presumed importance in domain texts measured by the frequency of use of a phrase and the variety of its contexts. The evaluation showed that the automatically identified phrases cover about 84% of terms in domain texts. At the top of the ranked list, only 4% out of 400 terms were incorrect while out of the final 200, 20% of expressions were either not domain related or syntactically incorrect. We also observed that 70% of the obtained terms are not included in the Polish MeSH. Automatic terminology extraction can give results which are of a quality high enough to be taken as a starting point for building domain related terminological dictionaries or ontologies. This approach can be useful for preparing terminological resources for very specific subdomains for which no relevant terminologies already exist. The evaluation performed showed that none of the tested ranking procedures were able to filter out all improperly constructed noun phrases from the top of the list. Careful choice of noun phrases is crucial to the usefulness of the created terminological resource in applications such as lexicon construction or acquisition of semantic relations from texts.
Cross-linguistic evidence for memory storage costs in filler-gap dependencies with wh-adjuncts

PubMed Central

Stepanov, Arthur; Stateva, Penka

2015-01-01

This study investigates processing of interrogative filler-gap dependencies in which the filler integration site or gap is not directly subcategorized by the verb. This is the case when the wh-filler is a structural adjunct such as how or when rather than subject or object. Two self-paced reading experiments in English and Slovenian provide converging cross-linguistic evidence that wh-adjuncts elicit a kind of memory storage cost similar to that previously shown in the literature for wh-arguments. Experiment 1 investigates the storage costs elicited by the adjunct when in Slovenian, and Experiment 2 the storage costs elicited by how quickly and why in English. The results support the class of theories of storage costs based on the metric in terms of incomplete phrase structure rules or incomplete syntactic head predictions. We also demonstrate that the endpoint of the storage cost for a wh-adjunct filler provides valuable processing evidence for its base structural position, the identification of which remains a rather murky issue in current grammatical research. PMID:26388806
Structured Head and Neck CT Angiography Reporting Reduces Resident Revision Rates.

PubMed

Johnson, Tucker F; Brinjikji, Waleed; Doolittle, Derrick A; Nagelschneider, Alex A; Welch, Brian T; Kotsenas, Amy L

2018-04-12

This resident-driven quality improvement project was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of structured reporting to reduce revision rates for afterhours reports dictated by residents. The first part of the study assessed baseline revision rates for head and neck CT angiography (CTA) examinations dictated by residents during afterhours call. A structured report was subsequently created based on templates on the RSNA informatics reporting website and critical findings that should be assessed for on all CTA examinations. The template was made available to residents through the speech recognition software for all head and neck CTA examinations for a duration of 2 months. Report revision rates were then compared with and without use of the structured template. The structured template was found to reduce revision rates by approximately 50% with 10/41 unstructured reports revised and 2/17 structured reports revised. We believe that structured reporting can help reduce reporting errors, particularly in term of typographical errors, train residents to evaluate complex examinations in a systematic fashion, and assist them in recalling critical findings on these examinations. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Using Wikipedia and Conceptual Graph Structures to Generate Questions for Academic Writing Support

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Ming; Calvo, R. A.; Aditomo, A.; Pizzato, L. A.

2012-01-01

In this paper, we present a novel approach for semiautomatic question generation to support academic writing. Our system first extracts key phrases from students' literature review papers. Each key phrase is matched with a Wikipedia article and classified into one of five abstract concept categories: Research Field, Technology, System, Term, and…
Phrase Units as Determinants of Visual Processing in Music Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sloboda, John A.

1977-01-01

Keyboard musicians sight-read passages of music in which the amount of information about the presence of phrase units was systematically varied. Results suggest a clear analogy between the cognition of music and language, in that knowledge of abstract structure is of importance in the organization of immediate visual processing of text. (Editor/RK)
The Processing and Interpretation of Verb Phrase Ellipsis Constructions by Children at Normal and Slowed Speech Rates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Callahan, Sarah M.; Walenski, Matthew; Love, Tracy

2012-01-01

Purpose: To examine children's comprehension of verb phrase (VP) ellipsis constructions in light of their automatic, online structural processing abilities and conscious, metalinguistic reflective skill. Method: Forty-two children ages 5 through 12 years listened to VP ellipsis constructions involving the strict/sloppy ambiguity (e.g., "The…
Leading the Development of Concepts of Operations for Next-Generation Remotely Piloted Aircraft

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-01-01

overarching CONOPS. RPAs must provide full motion video and signals intelli- gence (SIGINT) capabilities to fulfill their intelligence, surveillance, and...reached full capacity, combatant commanders had an insatiable demand for this new breed of capability, and phrases like Pred porn and drone strike...dimensional steering line on the video feed of the pilot’s head-up display (HUD) that would indicate turning cues and finite steering paths for optimal
Quantifying model-structure- and parameter-driven uncertainties in spring wheat phenology prediction with Bayesian analysis

DOE PAGES

Alderman, Phillip D.; Stanfill, Bryan

2016-10-06

Recent international efforts have brought renewed emphasis on the comparison of different agricultural systems models. Thus far, analysis of model-ensemble simulated results has not clearly differentiated between ensemble prediction uncertainties due to model structural differences per se and those due to parameter value uncertainties. Additionally, despite increasing use of Bayesian parameter estimation approaches with field-scale crop models, inadequate attention has been given to the full posterior distributions for estimated parameters. The objectives of this study were to quantify the impact of parameter value uncertainty on prediction uncertainty for modeling spring wheat phenology using Bayesian analysis and to assess the relativemore » contributions of model-structure-driven and parameter-value-driven uncertainty to overall prediction uncertainty. This study used a random walk Metropolis algorithm to estimate parameters for 30 spring wheat genotypes using nine phenology models based on multi-location trial data for days to heading and days to maturity. Across all cases, parameter-driven uncertainty accounted for between 19 and 52% of predictive uncertainty, while model-structure-driven uncertainty accounted for between 12 and 64%. Here, this study demonstrated the importance of quantifying both model-structure- and parameter-value-driven uncertainty when assessing overall prediction uncertainty in modeling spring wheat phenology. More generally, Bayesian parameter estimation provided a useful framework for quantifying and analyzing sources of prediction uncertainty.« less
Materials for a Stirling engine heater head

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Noble, J. E.; Lehmann, G. A.; Emigh, S. G.

1990-01-01

Work done on the 25-kW advanced Stirling conversion system (ASCS) terrestrial solar program in establishing criteria and selecting materials for the engine heater head and heater tubes is described. Various mechanisms contributing to incompatibility between materials are identified and discussed. Large thermal gradients, coupled with requirements for long life (60,000 h at temperature) and a large number of heatup and cooldown cycles (20,000) drive the design from a structural standpoint. The pressurized cylinder is checked for creep rupture, localized yielding, reverse plasticity, creep and fatigue damage, and creep ratcheting, in addition to the basic requirements for bust and proof pressure. In general, creep rupture and creep and fatigue interaction are the dominant factors in the design. A wide range of materials for the heater head and tubes was evaluated. Factors involved in the assessment were strength and effect on engine efficiency, reliability, and cost. A preliminary selection of Inconel 713LC for the heater head is based on acceptable structural properties but driven mainly by low cost. The criteria for failure, the structural analysis, and the material characteristics with basis for selection are discussed.
Auditory Temporal Structure Processing in Dyslexia: Processing of Prosodic Phrase Boundaries Is Not Impaired in Children with Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geiser, Eveline; Kjelgaard, Margaret; Christodoulou, Joanna A.; Cyr, Abigail; Gabrieli, John D. E.

2014-01-01

Reading disability in children with dyslexia has been proposed to reflect impairment in auditory timing perception. We investigated one aspect of timing perception--"temporal grouping"--as present in prosodic phrase boundaries of natural speech, in age-matched groups of children, ages 6-8 years, with and without dyslexia. Prosodic phrase…
Syntactic Complexity and Frequency in the Neurocognitive Language System.

PubMed

Yang, Yun-Hsuan; Marslen-Wilson, William D; Bozic, Mirjana

2017-09-01

Prominent neurobiological models of language follow the widely accepted assumption that language comprehension requires two principal mechanisms: a lexicon storing the sound-to-meaning mapping of words, primarily involving bilateral temporal regions, and a combinatorial processor for syntactically structured items, such as phrases and sentences, localized in a left-lateralized network linking left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and posterior temporal areas. However, recent research showing that the processing of simple phrasal sequences may engage only bilateral temporal areas, together with the claims of distributional approaches to grammar, raise the question of whether frequent phrases are stored alongside individual words in temporal areas. In this fMRI study, we varied the frequency of words and of short and long phrases in English. If frequent phrases are indeed stored, then only less frequent items should generate selective left frontotemporal activation, because memory traces for such items would be weaker or not available in temporal cortex. Complementary univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that, overall, simple words (verbs) and long phrases engaged LIFG and temporal areas, whereas short phrases engaged bilateral temporal areas, suggesting that syntactic complexity is a key factor for LIFG activation. Although we found a robust frequency effect for words in temporal areas, no frequency effects were found for the two phrasal conditions. These findings support the conclusion that long and short phrases are analyzed, respectively, in the left frontal network and in a bilateral temporal network but are not retrieved from memory in the same way as simple words during spoken language comprehension.
Information Density and Syntactic Repetition.

PubMed

Temperley, David; Gildea, Daniel

2015-11-01

In noun phrase (NP) coordinate constructions (e.g., NP and NP), there is a strong tendency for the syntactic structure of the second conjunct to match that of the first; the second conjunct in such constructions is therefore low in syntactic information. The theory of uniform information density predicts that low-information syntactic constructions will be counterbalanced by high information in other aspects of that part of the sentence, and high-information constructions will be counterbalanced by other low-information components. Three predictions follow: (a) lexical probabilities (measured by N-gram probabilities and head-dependent probabilities) will be lower in second conjuncts than first conjuncts; (b) lexical probabilities will be lower in matching second conjuncts (those whose syntactic expansions match the first conjunct) than nonmatching ones; and (c) syntactic repetition should be especially common for low-frequency NP expansions. Corpus analysis provides support for all three of these predictions. Copyright © 2015 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.
A comparative study of the origin, structure, and indexing language of the Persian and English keywords of articles indexed in the IranMedex database and their compliance with the Persian medical thesaurus and Medical Subject Headings

PubMed Central

Parsaei-Mohammadi, Parastoo; Ghasemi, Ali Hossein; Hassanzadeh-Beheshtabad, Raziyeh

2017-01-01

Introduction: In the present era, thesauri as tools in indexing play an effective role in integrating retrieval preventing fragmentation as well as a multiplicity of terminologies and also in providing information content of documents. Goals: This study aimed to investigate the keywords of articles indexed in IranMedex in terms of origin, structure and indexing situation and their Compliance with the Persian Medical Thesaurus and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Materials and Methods: This study is an applied research, and a survey has been conducted. Statistical population includes 32,850 Persian articles which are indexed in the IranMedex during the years 1385–1391. 379 cases were selected as sample of the study. Data collection was done using a checklist. In analyzing the findings, the SPSS Software were used. Findings: Although there was no significant difference in terms of indexing origin between the proportion of different types of the Persian and English keywords of articles indexed in the IranMedex, the compliance rates of the Persian and English keywords with the Persian medical thesaurus and MeSH were different in different years. In the meantime, the structure of keywords is leaning more towards phrase structure, and a single word structure and the majority of keywords are selected from the titles and abstracts. Conclusion: The authors’ familiarity with the thesauri and controlled tools causes homogeneity in assigning keywords and also provides more precise, faster, and easier retrieval of the keywords. It's suggested that a mixture of natural and control languages to be used in this database in order to reach more comprehensive results. PMID:28546967
A comparative study of the origin, structure, and indexing language of the Persian and English keywords of articles indexed in the IranMedex database and their compliance with the Persian medical thesaurus and Medical Subject Headings.

PubMed

Parsaei-Mohammadi, Parastoo; Ghasemi, Ali Hossein; Hassanzadeh-Beheshtabad, Raziyeh

2017-01-01

In the present era, thesauri as tools in indexing play an effective role in integrating retrieval preventing fragmentation as well as a multiplicity of terminologies and also in providing information content of documents. This study aimed to investigate the keywords of articles indexed in IranMedex in terms of origin, structure and indexing situation and their Compliance with the Persian Medical Thesaurus and Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). This study is an applied research, and a survey has been conducted. Statistical population includes 32,850 Persian articles which are indexed in the IranMedex during the years 1385-1391. 379 cases were selected as sample of the study. Data collection was done using a checklist. In analyzing the findings, the SPSS Software were used. Although there was no significant difference in terms of indexing origin between the proportion of different types of the Persian and English keywords of articles indexed in the IranMedex, the compliance rates of the Persian and English keywords with the Persian medical thesaurus and MeSH were different in different years. In the meantime, the structure of keywords is leaning more towards phrase structure, and a single word structure and the majority of keywords are selected from the titles and abstracts. The authors' familiarity with the thesauri and controlled tools causes homogeneity in assigning keywords and also provides more precise, faster, and easier retrieval of the keywords. It's suggested that a mixture of natural and control languages to be used in this database in order to reach more comprehensive results.
The role of prominence in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek.

PubMed

Katsika, Argyro

2016-03-01

This study aims at examining and accounting for the scope of the temporal effect of phrase boundaries. Previous research has indicated that there is an interaction between boundary-related lengthening and prominence such that the former extends towards the nearby prominent syllable. However, it is unclear whether this interaction is due to lexical stress and/or phrasal prominence (marked by pitch accent) and how far towards the prominent syllable the effect extends. Here, we use an electromagnetic articulography (EMA) study of Greek to examine the scope of boundary-related lengthening as a function of lexical stress and pitch accent separately. Boundaries are elicited by the means of a variety of syntactic constructions.. The results show an effect of lexical stress. Phrase-final lengthening affects the articulatory gestures of the phrase-final syllable that are immediately adjacent to the boundary in words with final stress, but is initiated earlier within phrase-final words with non-final stress. Similarly, the articulatory configurations during inter-phrasal pauses reach their point of achievement later in words with final stress than in words with non-final stress. These effects of stress hold regardless of whether the phrase-final word is accented or de-accented. Phrase-initial lengthening, on the other hand, is consistently detected on the phrase-initial constriction, independently of where the stress is within the preceding, phrase-final, word. These results indicate that the lexical aspect of prominence plays a role in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek. Based on these results, a gestural account of prosodic boundaries in Greek is proposed in which lexical and phrasal prosody interact in a systematic and coordinated fashion. The cross-linguistic dimensions of this account and its implications for prosodic structure are discussed.
Mapping of medical acronyms and initialisms to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) across selected systems

PubMed Central

Shultz, Mary

2006-01-01

Introduction: Given the common use of acronyms and initialisms in the health sciences, searchers may be entering these abbreviated terms rather than full phrases when searching online systems. The purpose of this study is to evaluate how various MEDLINE Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) interfaces map acronyms and initialisms to the MeSH vocabulary. Methods: The interfaces used in this study were: the PubMed MeSH database, the PubMed Automatic Term Mapping feature, the NLM Gateway Term Finder, and Ovid MEDLINE. Acronyms and initialisms were randomly selected from 2 print sources. The test data set included 415 randomly selected acronyms and initialisms whose related meanings were found to be MeSH terms. Each acronym and initialism was entered into each MEDLINE MeSH interface to determine if it mapped to the corresponding MeSH term. Separately, 46 commonly used acronyms and initialisms were tested. Results: While performance differed widely, the success rates were low across all interfaces for the randomly selected terms. The common acronyms and initialisms tested at higher success rates across the interfaces, but the differences between the interfaces remained. Conclusion: Online interfaces do not always map medical acronyms and initialisms to their corresponding MeSH phrases. This may lead to inaccurate results and missed information if acronyms and initialisms are used in search strategies. PMID:17082832
Lexical Noun Phrases in Texts Written by Deaf Children and Adults with Different Proficiency Levels in Sign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Beijsterveldt, Liesbeth Maria; van Hell, Janet

2010-01-01

We report an analysis of lexical noun phrases (NPs) in narrative and expository texts written by Dutch deaf individuals from a bimodal bilingual perspective. Texts written by Dutch deaf children and adults who are either proficient in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) or low-proficient in SLN were compared on structures that either overlap in…
Acoustic foundations of the speech-to-song illusion.

PubMed

Tierney, Adam; Patel, Aniruddh D; Breen, Mara

2018-06-01

In the "speech-to-song illusion," certain spoken phrases are heard as highly song-like when isolated from context and repeated. This phenomenon occurs to a greater degree for some stimuli than for others, suggesting that particular cues prompt listeners to perceive a spoken phrase as song. Here we investigated the nature of these cues across four experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate how song-like spoken phrases were after each of eight repetitions. Initial ratings were correlated with the consistency of an underlying beat and within-syllable pitch slope, while rating change was linked to beat consistency, within-syllable pitch slope, and melodic structure. In Experiment 2, the within-syllable pitch slope of the stimuli was manipulated, and this manipulation changed the extent to which participants heard certain stimuli as more musical than others. In Experiment 3, the extent to which the pitch sequences of a phrase fit a computational model of melodic structure was altered, but this manipulation did not have a significant effect on musicality ratings. In Experiment 4, the consistency of intersyllable timing was manipulated, but this manipulation did not have an effect on the change in perceived musicality after repetition. Our methods provide a new way of studying the causal role of specific acoustic features in the speech-to-song illusion via subtle acoustic manipulations of speech, and show that listeners can rapidly (and implicitly) assess the degree to which nonmusical stimuli contain musical structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Prosodic structure shapes the temporal realization of intonation and manual gesture movements.

PubMed

Esteve-Gibert, Núria; Prieto, Pilar

2013-06-01

Previous work on the temporal coordination between gesture and speech found that the prominence in gesture coordinates with speech prominence. In this study, the authors investigated the anchoring regions in speech and pointing gesture that align with each other. The authors hypothesized that (a) in contrastive focus conditions, the gesture apex is anchored in the intonation peak and (b) the upcoming prosodic boundary influences the timing of gesture and intonation movements. Fifteen Catalan speakers pointed at a screen while pronouncing a target word with different metrical patterns in a contrastive focus condition and followed by a phrase boundary. A total of 702 co-speech deictic gestures were acoustically and gesturally analyzed. Intonation peaks and gesture apexes showed parallel behavior with respect to their position within the accented syllable: They occurred at the end of the accented syllable in non-phrase-final position, whereas they occurred well before the end of the accented syllable in phrase-final position. Crucially, the position of intonation peaks and gesture apexes was correlated and was bound by prosodic structure. The results refine the phonological synchronization rule (McNeill, 1992), showing that gesture apexes are anchored in intonation peaks and that gesture and prosodic movements are bound by prosodic phrasing.
Searching the ASRS Database Using QUORUM Keyword Search, Phrase Search, Phrase Generation, and Phrase Discovery

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McGreevy, Michael W.; Connors, Mary M. (Technical Monitor)

2001-01-01

To support Search Requests and Quick Responses at the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), four new QUORUM methods have been developed: keyword search, phrase search, phrase generation, and phrase discovery. These methods build upon the core QUORUM methods of text analysis, modeling, and relevance-ranking. QUORUM keyword search retrieves ASRS incident narratives that contain one or more user-specified keywords in typical or selected contexts, and ranks the narratives on their relevance to the keywords in context. QUORUM phrase search retrieves narratives that contain one or more user-specified phrases, and ranks the narratives on their relevance to the phrases. QUORUM phrase generation produces a list of phrases from the ASRS database that contain a user-specified word or phrase. QUORUM phrase discovery finds phrases that are related to topics of interest. Phrase generation and phrase discovery are particularly useful for finding query phrases for input to QUORUM phrase search. The presentation of the new QUORUM methods includes: a brief review of the underlying core QUORUM methods; an overview of the new methods; numerous, concrete examples of ASRS database searches using the new methods; discussion of related methods; and, in the appendices, detailed descriptions of the new methods.

Chemistry-driven structural alterations in short-term retrieved ceramic-on-metal hip implants: Evidence for in vivo incompatibility between ceramic and metal counterparts.

PubMed

Zhu, Wenliang; Pezzotti, Giuseppe; Boffelli, Marco; Chotanaphuti, Thanainit; Khuangsirikul, Saradej; Sugano, Nobuhiko

2017-08-01

Ceramic-on-metal (CoM) hip implants were reported to experience lower wear rates in vitro as compared to metal-on-metal (MoM) bearings, thus hinting metal-ion release at lower levels in vivo. In this article, we show a spectroscopic study of two short-term retrieval cases of zirconia-toughened alumina (ZTA) femoral heads belonging to CoM hip prostheses, which instead showed poor wear performances in vivo. Metal contamination and abnormally high fractions of tetragonal-to-monoclinic (t→m) polymorphic transformation of the zirconia phase could be found on both ZTA heads, which contrasted with the optimistic predictions of in vitro experiments. At the molecular scale, incorporation of metal ions into the ceramic lattices could be recognized as due to frictionally assisted phenomena occurring at the ceramic surface. Driven by abnormal friction, diffusion of metal ions induced lattice shrinkage in the zirconia phases, while residual stress fields became stored at the surface of the femoral head. Diffusional alterations destabilized the chemistry of the ceramic surface and resulted in an abnormal increase in t→m phase transformation in vivo. Frictionally driven metal transfer to the ceramic lattice thus hinders the in vivo performance of CoM prostheses. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 105B: 1469-1480, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Real World Data Driven Evolution of Volvo Cars’ Side Impact Protection Systems and their Effectiveness

PubMed Central

Jakobsson, Lotta; Lindman, Magdalena; Svanberg, Bo; Carlsson, Henrik

2010-01-01

This study analyses the outcome of the continuous improved occupant protection over the last two decades for front seat near side occupants in side impacts based on a real world driven working process. The effectiveness of four generations of improved side impact protection are calculated based on data from Volvo’s statistical accident database of Volvo Cars in Sweden. Generation I includes vehicles with a new structural and interior concept (SIPS). Generation II includes vehicles with structural improvements and a new chest airbag (SIPSbag). Generation III includes vehicles with further improved SIPS and SIPSbag as well as the new concept with a head protecting Inflatable Curtain (IC). Generation IV includes the most recent vehicles with further improvements of all the systems plus advanced sensors and seat belt pretensioner activation. Compared to baseline vehicles, vehicles of generation I reduce MAIS2+ injuries by 54%, generation II by 61% and generation III by 72%. For generation IV effectiveness figures cannot be calculated because of the lack of MAIS2+ injuries. A continuous improved performance is also seen when studying the AIS2+ pelvis, abdomen, chest and head injuries separately. By using the same real world driven working process, future improvements and possibly new passive as well as active safety systems, will be developed with the aim of further improved protection to near side occupants in side impacts. PMID:21050597
Punctuation, Prosody, and Discourse: Afterthought Vs. Right Dislocation

PubMed Central

Kalbertodt, Janina; Primus, Beatrice; Schumacher, Petra B.

2015-01-01

In a reading production experiment we investigate the impact of punctuation and discourse structure on the prosodic differentiation of right dislocation (RD) and afterthought (AT). Both discourse structure and punctuation are likely to affect the prosodic marking of these right-peripheral constructions, as certain prosodic markings are appropriate only in certain discourse structures, and punctuation is said to correlate with prosodic phrasing. With RD and AT clearly differing in discourse function (comment-topic structuring vs. disambiguation) and punctuation (comma vs. full stop), critical items in this study were manipulated with regard to the (mis-)match of these parameters. Since RD and AT are said to prosodically differ in pitch range, phrasing, and accentuation patterns, we measured the reduction of pitch range, boundary strength and prominence level. Results show an effect of both punctuation and discourse context (mediated by syntax) on phrasing and accentuation. Interestingly, for pitch range reduction no difference between RDs and ATs could be observed. Our results corroborate a language architecture model in which punctuation, prosody, syntax, and discourse-semantics are independent but interacting domains with correspondence constraints between them. Our findings suggest there are tight correspondence constraints between (i) punctuation (full stop and comma in particular) and syntax, (ii) prosody and syntax as well as (iii) prosody and discourse-semantics. PMID:26648883
Centrifugal techniques for measuring saturated hydraulic conductivity

USGS Publications Warehouse

Nimmo, John R.; Mello, Karen A.

1991-01-01

Centrifugal force is an alternative to large pressure gradients for the measurement of low values of saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat). With a head of water above a porous medium in a centrifuge bucket, both constant-head and falling-head measurements are practical at forces up to at least 1800 times normal gravity. Darcy's law applied to the known centrifugal potential leads to simple formulas for Ksat that are analogous to those used in the standard gravity-driven constant- and falling-head methods. Both centrifugal methods were tested on several fine-textured samples of soil and ceramic with Ksat between about 10−10 and 10−9 m/s. The results were compared to falling-head gravity measurements. The comparison shows most measurements agreeing to within 20% for a given sample, much of the variation probably resulting from run-to-run changes in sample structure. The falling-head centrifuge method proved to be especially simple in design and operation and was more accurate than the constant-head method. With modified apparatus, Ksat measurements less than 10−10 m/s should be attainable.
Horizontal plane localization in single-sided deaf adults fitted with a bone-anchored hearing aid (Baha).

PubMed

Grantham, D Wesley; Ashmead, Daniel H; Haynes, David S; Hornsby, Benjamin W Y; Labadie, Robert F; Ricketts, Todd A

2012-01-01

: One purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of a unilateral bone-anchored hearing aid (Baha) on horizontal plane localization performance in single-sided deaf adults who had either a conductive or sensorineural hearing loss in their impaired ear. The use of a 33-loudspeaker array allowed for a finer response measure than has previously been used to investigate localization in this population. In addition, a detailed analysis of error patterns allowed an evaluation of the contribution of random error and bias error to the total rms error computed in the various conditions studied. A second purpose was to investigate the effect of stimulus duration and head-turning on localization performance. : Two groups of single-sided deaf adults were tested in a localization task in which they had to identify the direction of a spoken phrase on each trial. One group had a sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL group; N = 7), and the other group had a conductive hearing loss (CHL group; N = 5). In addition, a control group of four normal-hearing adults was tested. The spoken phrase was either 1250 msec in duration (a male saying "Where am I coming from now?") or 341 msec in duration (the same male saying "Where?"). For the longer-duration phrase, subjects were tested in conditions in which they either were or were not allowed to move their heads before the termination of the phrase. The source came from one of nine positions in the front horizontal plane (from -79° to +79°). The response range included 33 choices (from -90° to +90°, separated by 5.6°). Subjects were tested in all stimulus conditions, both with and without the Baha device. Overall rms error was computed for each condition. Contributions of random error and bias error to the overall error were also computed. : There was considerable intersubject variability in all conditions. However, for the CHL group, the average overall error was significantly smaller when the Baha was on than when it was off. Further analysis of error patterns indicated that this improvement was primarily based on reduced response bias when the device was on; that is, the average response azimuth was nearer to the source azimuth when the device was on than when it was off. The SNHL group, on the other hand, had significantly greater overall error when the Baha was on than when it was off. Collapsed across listening conditions and groups, localization performance was significantly better with the 1250 msec stimulus than with the 341 msec stimulus. However, for the longer-duration stimulus, there was no significant beneficial effect of head-turning. Error scores in all conditions for both groups were considerably larger than those in the normal-hearing control group. : On average, single-sided deaf adults with CHL showed improved localization ability when using the Baha, whereas single-sided deaf adults with SNHL showed a decrement in performance when using the device. These results may have implications for clinical counseling for patients with unilateral hearing impairment.
C-I···π Halogen Bonding Driven Supramolecular Helix of Bilateral N-Amidothioureas Bearing β-Turns.

PubMed

Cao, Jinlian; Yan, Xiaosheng; He, Wenbin; Li, Xiaorui; Li, Zhao; Mo, Yirong; Liu, Maili; Jiang, Yun-Bao

2017-05-17

We report the first example of C-I···π halogen bonding driven supramolecular helix in highly dilute solution of micromolar concentration, using alanine based bilateral I-substituted N-amidothioureas that contain helical fragments, the β-turn structures. The halogen bonding interactions afford head-to-tail linkages that help to propagate the helicity of the helical fragments. In support of this action of the halogen bonding, chiral amplification was observed in the supramolecular helix formed in acetonitrile solution. The present finding provides alternative tools in the design of self-assembling macromolecules.
Modeling eye-head gaze shifts in multiple contexts without motor planning

PubMed Central

Haji-Abolhassani, Iman; Guitton, Daniel

2016-01-01

During gaze shifts, the eyes and head collaborate to rapidly capture a target (saccade) and fixate it. Accordingly, models of gaze shift control should embed both saccadic and fixation modes and a mechanism for switching between them. We demonstrate a model in which the eye and head platforms are driven by a shared gaze error signal. To limit the number of free parameters, we implement a model reduction approach in which steady-state cerebellar effects at each of their projection sites are lumped with the parameter of that site. The model topology is consistent with anatomy and neurophysiology, and can replicate eye-head responses observed in multiple experimental contexts: 1) observed gaze characteristics across species and subjects can emerge from this structure with minor parametric changes; 2) gaze can move to a goal while in the fixation mode; 3) ocular compensation for head perturbations during saccades could rely on vestibular-only cells in the vestibular nuclei with postulated projections to burst neurons; 4) two nonlinearities suffice, i.e., the experimentally-determined mapping of tectoreticular cells onto brain stem targets and the increased recruitment of the head for larger target eccentricities; 5) the effects of initial conditions on eye/head trajectories are due to neural circuit dynamics, not planning; and 6) “compensatory” ocular slow phases exist even after semicircular canal plugging, because of interconnections linking eye-head circuits. Our model structure also simulates classical vestibulo-ocular reflex and pursuit nystagmus, and provides novel neural circuit and behavioral predictions, notably that both eye-head coordination and segmental limb coordination are possible without trajectory planning. PMID:27440248
The `Henry Problem' of `density-driven' groundwater flow versus Tothian `groundwater flow systems' with variable density: A review of the influential Biscayne aquifer data.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weyer, K. U.

2017-12-01

Coastal groundwater flow investigations at the Biscayne Bay, south of Miami, Florida, gave rise to the concept of density-driven flow of seawater into coastal aquifers creating a saltwater wedge. Within that wedge, convection-driven return flow of seawater and a dispersion zone were assumed by Cooper et al. (1964) to be the cause of the Biscayne aquifer `sea water wedge'. This conclusion was based on the chloride distribution within the aquifer and on an analytical model concept assuming convection flow within a confined aquifer without taking non-chemical field data into consideration. This concept was later labelled the `Henry Problem', which any numerical variable density flow program must be able to simulate to be considered acceptable. Both, `density-driven flow' and Tothian `groundwater flow systems' (with or without variable density conditions) are driven by gravitation. The difference between the two are the boundary conditions. 'Density-driven flow' occurs under hydrostatic boundary conditions while Tothian `groundwater flow systems' occur under hydrodynamic boundary conditions. Revisiting the Cooper et al. (1964) publication with its record of piezometric field data (heads) showed that the so-called sea water wedge has been caused by discharging deep saline groundwater driven by gravitational flow and not by denser sea water. Density driven flow of seawater into the aquifer was not found reflected in the head measurements for low and high tide conditions which had been taken contemporaneously with the chloride measurements. These head measurements had not been included in the flow interpretation. The very same head measurements indicated a clear dividing line between shallow local fresh groundwater flow and saline deep groundwater flow without the existence of a dispersion zone or a convection cell. The Biscayne situation emphasizes the need for any chemical interpretation of flow pattern to be supported by head data as energy indicators of flow fields. At the Biscayne site density-driven flow of seawater did and does not exist. Instead this site and the Florida coast line in general are the end points of local fresh and regional saline groundwater flow systems driven by gravity forces and not by density differences.
Indexing Anatomical Phrases in Neuro-Radiology Reports to the UMLS 2005AA

PubMed Central

Bashyam, Vijayaraghavan; Taira, Ricky K.

2005-01-01

This work describes a methodology to index anatomical phrases to the 2005AA release of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). A phrase chunking tool based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) was developed to identify semantically coherent phrases within medical reports. Using this phrase chunker, a set of 2,551 unique anatomical phrases was extracted from brain radiology reports. These phrases were mapped to the 2005AA release of the UMLS using a vector space model. Precision for the task of indexing unique phrases was 0.87. PMID:16778995
Antidepressant Use and Incident Urinary Incontinence: A Literature Review.

PubMed

Dane, Kathryn E; Gatewood, Sharon B S; Peron, Emily P

2016-03-01

To review available data examining antidepressant use and incident urinary incontinence (UI). PubMed was used to conduct the literature search for this review. In the primary search, the term "antidepressive agents" was searched as a medical subject heading, a pharmacological action, and a keyword phrase. This choice was made so that any relevant articles would include complete results for antidepressive agents. "Antidepressive agents" was combined with the key phrase "drug-induced urinary incontinence" to complete this primary search. Relevant articles published in English and examining human subjects were included. The study authors determined appropriateness of articles for inclusion, focusing on those examining antidepressant-associated UI. This literature review identified three cohort studies and 11 case reports examining various associations between antidepressant use and incident UI. All 11 case reports and 1 cohort study reviewed suggest an association between antidepressant use and incident UI. It remains unclear which drugs are most problematic and which patients are at greatest risk, and more data are needed to confirm an association, especially in older adults. Comprehensive medication reviews should be employed by pharmacists to identify potential medication-related causes of UI.
Head-Impact-Measurement Devices: A Systematic Review.

PubMed

O'Connor, Kathryn L; Rowson, Steven; Duma, Stefan M; Broglio, Steven P

2017-03-01

With an estimated 3.8 million sport- and recreation-related concussions occurring annually, targeted prevention and diagnostic methods are needed. Biomechanical analysis of head impacts may provide quantitative information that can inform both prevention and diagnostic strategies. To assess available head-impact devices and their clinical utility. We performed a systematic search of the electronic database PubMed for peer-reviewed publications, using the following phrases: accelerometer and concussion, head impact telemetry, head impacts and concussion and sensor, head impacts and sensor, impact sensor and concussion, linear acceleration and concussion, rotational acceleration and concussion, and xpatch concussion. In addition to the literature review, a Google search for head impact monitor and concussion monitor yielded 15 more devices. Included studies were performed in vivo, used commercially available devices, and focused on sport-related concussion. One author reviewed the title and abstract of each study for inclusion and exclusion criteria and then reviewed each full-text article to confirm inclusion criteria. Controversial articles were reviewed by all authors to reach consensus. In total, 61 peer-reviewed articles involving 4 head-impact devices were included. Participants in boxing, football, ice hockey, soccer, or snow sports ranged in age from 6 to 24 years; 18% (n = 11) of the studies included female athletes. The Head Impact Telemetry System was the most widely used device (n = 53). Fourteen additional commercially available devices were presented. Measurements collected by impact monitors provided real-time data to estimate player exposure but did not have the requisite sensitivity to concussion. Proper interpretation of previously reported head-impact kinematics across age, sport, and position may inform future research and enable staff clinicians working on the sidelines to monitor athletes. However, head-impact-monitoring systems have limited clinical utility due to error rates, designs, and low specificity in predicting concussive injury.
Looking forwards and backwards: The real-time processing of Strong and Weak Crossover

PubMed Central

Lidz, Jeffrey; Phillips, Colin

2017-01-01

We investigated the processing of pronouns in Strong and Weak Crossover constructions as a means of probing the extent to which the incremental parser can use syntactic information to guide antecedent retrieval. In Experiment 1 we show that the parser accesses a displaced wh-phrase as an antecedent for a pronoun when no grammatical constraints prohibit binding, but the parser ignores the same wh-phrase when it stands in a Strong Crossover relation to the pronoun. These results are consistent with two possibilities. First, the parser could apply Principle C at antecedent retrieval to exclude the wh-phrase on the basis of the c-command relation between its gap and the pronoun. Alternatively, retrieval might ignore any phrases that do not occupy an Argument position. Experiment 2 distinguished between these two possibilities by testing antecedent retrieval under Weak Crossover. In Weak Crossover binding of the pronoun is ruled out by the argument condition, but not Principle C. The results of Experiment 2 indicate that antecedent retrieval accesses matching wh-phrases in Weak Crossover configurations. On the basis of these findings we conclude that the parser can make rapid use of Principle C and c-command information to constrain retrieval. We discuss how our results support a view of antecedent retrieval that integrates inferences made over unseen syntactic structure into constraints on backward-looking processes like memory retrieval. PMID:28936483
Extracting noun phrases for all of MEDLINE.

PubMed Central

Bennett, N. A.; He, Q.; Powell, K.; Schatz, B. R.

1999-01-01

A natural language parser that could extract noun phrases for all medical texts would be of great utility in analyzing content for information retrieval. We discuss the extraction of noun phrases from MEDLINE, using a general parser not tuned specifically for any medical domain. The noun phrase extractor is made up of three modules: tokenization; part-of-speech tagging; noun phrase identification. Using our program, we extracted noun phrases from the entire MEDLINE collection, encompassing 9.3 million abstracts. Over 270 million noun phrases were generated, of which 45 million were unique. The quality of these phrases was evaluated by examining all phrases from a sample collection of abstracts. The precision and recall of the phrases from our general parser compared favorably with those from three other parsers we had previously evaluated. We are continuing to improve our parser and evaluate our claim that a generic parser can effectively extract all the different phrases across the entire medical literature. PMID:10566444
A general natural-language text processor for clinical radiology.

PubMed Central

Friedman, C; Alderson, P O; Austin, J H; Cimino, J J; Johnson, S B

1994-01-01

OBJECTIVE: Development of a general natural-language processor that identifies clinical information in narrative reports and maps that information into a structured representation containing clinical terms. DESIGN: The natural-language processor provides three phases of processing, all of which are driven by different knowledge sources. The first phase performs the parsing. It identifies the structure of the text through use of a grammar that defines semantic patterns and a target form. The second phase, regularization, standardizes the terms in the initial target structure via a compositional mapping of multi-word phrases. The third phase, encoding, maps the terms to a controlled vocabulary. Radiology is the test domain for the processor and the target structure is a formal model for representing clinical information in that domain. MEASUREMENTS: The impression sections of 230 radiology reports were encoded by the processor. Results of an automated query of the resultant database for the occurrences of four diseases were compared with the analysis of a panel of three physicians to determine recall and precision. RESULTS: Without training specific to the four diseases, recall and precision of the system (combined effect of the processor and query generator) were 70% and 87%. Training of the query component increased recall to 85% without changing precision. PMID:7719797
Coupling ontology driven semantic representation with multilingual natural language generation for tuning international terminologies.

PubMed

Rassinoux, Anne-Marie; Baud, Robert H; Rodrigues, Jean-Marie; Lovis, Christian; Geissbühler, Antoine

2007-01-01

The importance of clinical communication between providers, consumers and others, as well as the requisite for computer interoperability, strengthens the need for sharing common accepted terminologies. Under the directives of the World Health Organization (WHO), an approach is currently being conducted in Australia to adopt a standardized terminology for medical procedures that is intended to become an international reference. In order to achieve such a standard, a collaborative approach is adopted, in line with the successful experiment conducted for the development of the new French coding system CCAM. Different coding centres are involved in setting up a semantic representation of each term using a formal ontological structure expressed through a logic-based representation language. From this language-independent representation, multilingual natural language generation (NLG) is performed to produce noun phrases in various languages that are further compared for consistency with the original terms. Outcomes are presented for the assessment of the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI) and its translation into Portuguese. The initial results clearly emphasize the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the proposed method for handling both a different classification and an additional language. NLG tools, based on ontology driven semantic representation, facilitate the discovery of ambiguous and inconsistent terms, and, as such, should be promoted for establishing coherent international terminologies.
Syntactic priming in American Sign Language.

PubMed

Hall, Matthew L; Ferreira, Victor S; Mayberry, Rachel I

2015-01-01

Psycholinguistic studies of sign language processing provide valuable opportunities to assess whether language phenomena, which are primarily studied in spoken language, are fundamentally shaped by peripheral biology. For example, we know that when given a choice between two syntactically permissible ways to express the same proposition, speakers tend to choose structures that were recently used, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming. Here, we report two experiments testing syntactic priming of a noun phrase construction in American Sign Language (ASL). Experiment 1 shows that second language (L2) signers with normal hearing exhibit syntactic priming in ASL and that priming is stronger when the head noun is repeated between prime and target (the lexical boost effect). Experiment 2 shows that syntactic priming is equally strong among deaf native L1 signers, deaf late L1 learners, and hearing L2 signers. Experiment 2 also tested for, but did not find evidence of, phonological or semantic boosts to syntactic priming in ASL. These results show that despite the profound differences between spoken and signed languages in terms of how they are produced and perceived, the psychological representation of sentence structure (as assessed by syntactic priming) operates similarly in sign and speech.
Improved identification of noun phrases in clinical radiology reports using a high-performance statistical natural language parser augmented with the UMLS specialist lexicon.

PubMed

Huang, Yang; Lowe, Henry J; Klein, Dan; Cucina, Russell J

2005-01-01

The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a method of extracting noun phrases with full phrase structures from a set of clinical radiology reports using natural language processing (NLP) and to investigate the effects of using the UMLS(R) Specialist Lexicon to improve noun phrase identification within clinical radiology documents. The noun phrase identification (NPI) module is composed of a sentence boundary detector, a statistical natural language parser trained on a nonmedical domain, and a noun phrase (NP) tagger. The NPI module processed a set of 100 XML-represented clinical radiology reports in Health Level 7 (HL7)(R) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)-compatible format. Computed output was compared with manual markups made by four physicians and one author for maximal (longest) NP and those made by one author for base (simple) NP, respectively. An extended lexicon of biomedical terms was created from the UMLS Specialist Lexicon and used to improve NPI performance. The test set was 50 randomly selected reports. The sentence boundary detector achieved 99.0% precision and 98.6% recall. The overall maximal NPI precision and recall were 78.9% and 81.5% before using the UMLS Specialist Lexicon and 82.1% and 84.6% after. The overall base NPI precision and recall were 88.2% and 86.8% before using the UMLS Specialist Lexicon and 93.1% and 92.6% after, reducing false-positives by 31.1% and false-negatives by 34.3%. The sentence boundary detector performs excellently. After the adaptation using the UMLS Specialist Lexicon, the statistical parser's NPI performance on radiology reports increased to levels comparable to the parser's native performance in its newswire training domain and to that reported by other researchers in the general nonmedical domain.
A genetically mediated bias in decision making driven by failure of amygdala control.

PubMed

Roiser, Jonathan P; de Martino, Benedetto; Tan, Geoffrey C Y; Kumaran, Dharshan; Seymour, Ben; Wood, Nicholas W; Dolan, Raymond J

2009-05-06

Genetic variation at the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) is associated with altered amygdala reactivity and lack of prefrontal regulatory control. Similar regions mediate decision-making biases driven by contextual cues and ambiguity, for example the "framing effect." We hypothesized that individuals hemozygous for the short (s) allele at the 5-HTTLPR would be more susceptible to framing. Participants, selected as homozygous for either the long (la) or s allele, performed a decision-making task where they made choices between receiving an amount of money for certain and taking a gamble. A strong bias was evident toward choosing the certain option when the option was phrased in terms of gains and toward gambling when the decision was phrased in terms of losses (the frame effect). Critically, this bias was significantly greater in the ss group compared with the lala group. In simultaneously acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data, the ss group showed greater amygdala during choices made in accord, compared with those made counter to the frame, an effect not seen in the lala group. These differences were also mirrored by differences in anterior cingulate-amygdala coupling between the genotype groups during decision making. Specifically, lala participants showed increased coupling during choices made counter to, relative to those made in accord with, the frame, with no such effect evident in ss participants. These data suggest that genetically mediated differences in prefrontal-amygdala interactions underpin interindividual differences in economic decision making.
The concomitant effects of phrase length and informational content in sentence comprehension.

PubMed

Thornton, R; MacDonald, M C; Arnold, J E

2000-03-01

Recent evidence suggests that phrase length plays a crucial role in modification ambiguities. Using a self-paced reading task, we extended these results by examining the additional pragmatic effects that length manipulations may exert. The results demonstrate that length not only modulates modification preferences directly, but that it also necessarily changes the informational content of a sentence, which itself affects modification preferences. Our findings suggest that the same length manipulation affects multiple sources of constraints, both structural and pragmatic, which can each exert differing effects on processing.
A Comparative Study on the Effectiveness of Two Song-Teaching Methods: Holistic vs. Phrase-by-Phrase

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Persellin, Diane; Bateman, Laura

2009-01-01

The purpose of our study was to compare the effectiveness of two song-teaching methods: holistic and phrase-by-phrase. Thirty-two first-grade children (n = 32) from two music classes in an urban elementary school were taught two folksongs. The first class (n = 16) was taught one song through the phrase-by-phrase method and another song through the…

ChemicalTagger: A tool for semantic text-mining in chemistry.

PubMed

Hawizy, Lezan; Jessop, David M; Adams, Nico; Murray-Rust, Peter

2011-05-16

The primary method for scientific communication is in the form of published scientific articles and theses which use natural language combined with domain-specific terminology. As such, they contain free owing unstructured text. Given the usefulness of data extraction from unstructured literature, we aim to show how this can be achieved for the discipline of chemistry. The highly formulaic style of writing most chemists adopt make their contributions well suited to high-throughput Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches. We have developed the ChemicalTagger parser as a medium-depth, phrase-based semantic NLP tool for the language of chemical experiments. Tagging is based on a modular architecture and uses a combination of OSCAR, domain-specific regex and English taggers to identify parts-of-speech. The ANTLR grammar is used to structure this into tree-based phrases. Using a metric that allows for overlapping annotations, we achieved machine-annotator agreements of 88.9% for phrase recognition and 91.9% for phrase-type identification (Action names). It is possible parse to chemical experimental text using rule-based techniques in conjunction with a formal grammar parser. ChemicalTagger has been deployed for over 10,000 patents and has identified solvents from their linguistic context with >99.5% precision.
78 FR 13544 - Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Acquisition of Tents and Other Temporary...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-02-28

... acquisition of domestic tents to include the structural components of tents, applicable to acquisitions that... rule. A. Tents and Structural Components of Tents Question: Does the term ``structural components... 225.7002-1(a)(3) and 252.225-7012(b)(3) ensures clarity that the phrase ``structural components'' only...
Structured Natural-Language Descriptions for Semantic Content Retrieval of Visual Materials.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tam, A. M.; Leung, C. H. C.

2001-01-01

Proposes a structure for natural language descriptions of the semantic content of visual materials that requires descriptions to be (modified) keywords, phrases, or simple sentences, with components that are grammatical relations common to many languages. This structure makes it easy to implement a collection's descriptions as a relational…
Analysis of humpback whale sounds in shallow waters of the Southeastern Arabian Sea: An indication of breeding habitat.

PubMed

Mahanty, Madan M; Latha, G; Thirunavukkarasu, A

2015-06-01

The primary objective of this work was to present the acoustical identification of humpback whales, detected by using an autonomous ambient noise measurement system, deployed in the shallow waters of the Southeastern Arabian Sea (SEAS) during the period January to May 2011. Seven types of sounds were detected. These were characteristically upsweeps and downsweeps along with harmonics. Sounds produced repeatedly in a specific pattern were referred to as phrases (PQRS and ABC). Repeated phrases in a particular pattern were referred to as themes, and from the spectrographic analysis, two themes (I and II) were identified. The variation in the acoustic characteristics such as fundamental frequency, range, duration of the sound unit, and the structure of the phrases and themes are discussed. Sound units were recorded from mid-January to mid-March, with a peak in February, when the mean SST is approx. 28 degree C, and no presence was recorded after mid-March. The temporal and thematic structures strongly determine the functions of the humpback whale song form. Given the use of song in the SEAS, this area is possibly used as an active breeding habitat by humpback whales during the winter season.
Identifying well-formed biomedical phrases in MEDLINE® text.

PubMed

Kim, Won; Yeganova, Lana; Comeau, Donald C; Wilbur, W John

2012-12-01

In the modern world people frequently interact with retrieval systems to satisfy their information needs. Humanly understandable well-formed phrases represent a crucial interface between humans and the web, and the ability to index and search with such phrases is beneficial for human-web interactions. In this paper we consider the problem of identifying humanly understandable, well formed, and high quality biomedical phrases in MEDLINE documents. The main approaches used previously for detecting such phrases are syntactic, statistical, and a hybrid approach combining these two. In this paper we propose a supervised learning approach for identifying high quality phrases. First we obtain a set of known well-formed useful phrases from an existing source and label these phrases as positive. We then extract from MEDLINE a large set of multiword strings that do not contain stop words or punctuation. We believe this unlabeled set contains many well-formed phrases. Our goal is to identify these additional high quality phrases. We examine various feature combinations and several machine learning strategies designed to solve this problem. A proper choice of machine learning methods and features identifies in the large collection strings that are likely to be high quality phrases. We evaluate our approach by making human judgments on multiword strings extracted from MEDLINE using our methods. We find that over 85% of such extracted phrase candidates are humanly judged to be of high quality. Published by Elsevier Inc.
A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Generic Noun Phrases in English and Mandarin.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gelman, Susan A.; Tardif, Twila

1998-01-01

Three studies examined adults' generic noun phrases in English and Mandarin Chinese from child-directed speech of caregivers interacting with their toddlers. Found that generic noun phrases were reliably identified in both languages. Generic noun phrases most frequently referred to animals. Non-generic noun phrases were used most frequently for…
Song hybridization events during revolutionary song change provide insights into cultural transmission in humpback whales

PubMed Central

Garland, Ellen C.; Rendell, Luke; Lamoni, Luca; Poole, M. Michael; Noad, Michael J.

2017-01-01

Cultural processes occur in a wide variety of animal taxa, from insects to cetaceans. The songs of humpback whales are one of the most striking examples of the transmission of a cultural trait and social learning in any nonhuman animal. To understand how songs are learned, we investigate rare cases of song hybridization, where parts of an existing song are spliced with a new one, likely before an individual totally adopts the new song. Song unit sequences were extracted from over 9,300 phrases recorded during two song revolutions across the South Pacific Ocean, allowing fine-scale analysis of composition and sequencing. In hybrid songs the current and new songs were spliced together in two specific ways: (i) singers placed a single hybrid phrase, in which content from both songs were combined, between the two song types when transitioning from one to the other, and/or (ii) singers spliced complete themes from the revolutionary song into the current song. Sequence analysis indicated that both processes were governed by structural similarity rules. Hybrid phrases or theme substitutions occurred at points in the songs where both songs contained “similar sounds arranged in a similar pattern.” Songs appear to be learned as segments (themes/phrase types), akin to birdsong and human language acquisition, and these can be combined in predictable ways if the underlying structural pattern is similar. These snapshots of song change provide insights into the mechanisms underlying song learning in humpback whales, and comparative perspectives on the evolution of human language and culture. PMID:28739940
Song hybridization events during revolutionary song change provide insights into cultural transmission in humpback whales.

PubMed

Garland, Ellen C; Rendell, Luke; Lamoni, Luca; Poole, M Michael; Noad, Michael J

2017-07-24

Cultural processes occur in a wide variety of animal taxa, from insects to cetaceans. The songs of humpback whales are one of the most striking examples of the transmission of a cultural trait and social learning in any nonhuman animal. To understand how songs are learned, we investigate rare cases of song hybridization, where parts of an existing song are spliced with a new one, likely before an individual totally adopts the new song. Song unit sequences were extracted from over 9,300 phrases recorded during two song revolutions across the South Pacific Ocean, allowing fine-scale analysis of composition and sequencing. In hybrid songs the current and new songs were spliced together in two specific ways: ( i ) singers placed a single hybrid phrase, in which content from both songs were combined, between the two song types when transitioning from one to the other, and/or ( ii ) singers spliced complete themes from the revolutionary song into the current song. Sequence analysis indicated that both processes were governed by structural similarity rules. Hybrid phrases or theme substitutions occurred at points in the songs where both songs contained "similar sounds arranged in a similar pattern." Songs appear to be learned as segments (themes/phrase types), akin to birdsong and human language acquisition, and these can be combined in predictable ways if the underlying structural pattern is similar. These snapshots of song change provide insights into the mechanisms underlying song learning in humpback whales, and comparative perspectives on the evolution of human language and culture.
Neural Correlates of Phrase Rhythm: An EEG Study of Bipartite vs. Rondo Sonata Form.

PubMed

Martínez-Rodrigo, Arturo; Fernández-Sotos, Alicia; Latorre, José Miguel; Moncho-Bogani, José; Fernández-Caballero, Antonio

2017-01-01

This paper introduces the neural correlates of phrase rhythm. In short, phrase rhythm is the rhythmic aspect of phrase construction and the relationships between phrases. For the sake of establishing the neural correlates, a musical experiment has been designed to induce music-evoked stimuli related to phrase rhythm. Brain activity is monitored through electroencephalography (EEG) by using a brain-computer interface. The power spectral value of each EEG channel is estimated to obtain how power variance distributes as a function of frequency. Our experiment shows statistical differences in theta and alpha bands in the phrase rhythm variations of two classical sonatas, one in bipartite form and the other in rondo form.
Neural Correlates of Phrase Rhythm: An EEG Study of Bipartite vs. Rondo Sonata Form

PubMed Central

Martínez-Rodrigo, Arturo; Fernández-Sotos, Alicia; Latorre, José Miguel; Moncho-Bogani, José; Fernández-Caballero, Antonio

2017-01-01

This paper introduces the neural correlates of phrase rhythm. In short, phrase rhythm is the rhythmic aspect of phrase construction and the relationships between phrases. For the sake of establishing the neural correlates, a musical experiment has been designed to induce music-evoked stimuli related to phrase rhythm. Brain activity is monitored through electroencephalography (EEG) by using a brain–computer interface. The power spectral value of each EEG channel is estimated to obtain how power variance distributes as a function of frequency. Our experiment shows statistical differences in theta and alpha bands in the phrase rhythm variations of two classical sonatas, one in bipartite form and the other in rondo form. PMID:28496406
All Together Now: Concurrent Learning of Multiple Structures in an Artificial Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Romberg, Alexa R.; Saffran, Jenny R.

2013-01-01

Natural languages contain many layers of sequential structure, from the distribution of phonemes within words to the distribution of phrases within utterances. However, most research modeling language acquisition using artificial languages has focused on only one type of distributional structure at a time. In two experiments, we investigated adult…
Should Textbooks Be Politically Correct?...and Several Other Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mader, Diane Castellano

By getting hold of the dominating verbal structures, political correctness has tried (according to Paul Berman) to "get everyone to abandon certain previously unanalyzed phrases that contain the entire structure of oppressive social domination." Unfortunately, "political correctness" has become a pejorative term used to…
ADJECTIVES AS NOUN PHRASES.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ROSS, JOHN ROBERT

THIS ANALYSIS OF UNDERLYING SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE IS BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE PARTS OF SPEECH CALLED "VERBS" AND "ADJECTIVES" ARE TWO SUBCATEGORIES OF ONE MAJOR LEXICAL CATEGORY, "PREDICATE." FROM THIS ASSUMPTION, THE HYPOTHESIS IS ADVANCED THAT, IN LANGUAGES EXHIBITING THE COPULA, THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF SENTENCES CONTAINING PREDICATE…
Effective Web and Desktop Retrieval with Enhanced Semantic Spaces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Daoud, Amjad M.

We describe the design and implementation of the NETBOOK prototype system for collecting, structuring and efficiently creating semantic vectors for concepts, noun phrases, and documents from a corpus of free full text ebooks available on the World Wide Web. Automatic generation of concept maps from correlated index terms and extracted noun phrases are used to build a powerful conceptual index of individual pages. To ensure scalabilty of our system, dimension reduction is performed using Random Projection [13]. Furthermore, we present a complete evaluation of the relative effectiveness of the NETBOOK system versus the Google Desktop [8].
Live Speech Driven Head-and-Eye Motion Generators.

PubMed

Le, Binh H; Ma, Xiaohan; Deng, Zhigang

2012-11-01

This paper describes a fully automated framework to generate realistic head motion, eye gaze, and eyelid motion simultaneously based on live (or recorded) speech input. Its central idea is to learn separate yet interrelated statistical models for each component (head motion, gaze, or eyelid motion) from a prerecorded facial motion data set: 1) Gaussian Mixture Models and gradient descent optimization algorithm are employed to generate head motion from speech features; 2) Nonlinear Dynamic Canonical Correlation Analysis model is used to synthesize eye gaze from head motion and speech features, and 3) nonnegative linear regression is used to model voluntary eye lid motion and log-normal distribution is used to describe involuntary eye blinks. Several user studies are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed speech-driven head and eye motion generator using the well-established paired comparison methodology. Our evaluation results clearly show that this approach can significantly outperform the state-of-the-art head and eye motion generation algorithms. In addition, a novel mocap+video hybrid data acquisition technique is introduced to record high-fidelity head movement, eye gaze, and eyelid motion simultaneously.
The pressure is all in your head: A cilia-driven high-pressure pump in the head of a deep-sea animal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nawroth, Janna; Katija, Kakani; Shelley, Michael; Kanso, Eva

2017-11-01

Motile cilia are microscopic, hair-like structures on the cell surface that can sense and propel the extracellular fluid environment. In many ciliated systems found in nature, such as the mammalian airways and marine sponges, the organization and collective behavior of the cilia favors the pumping of fluids at low pressures and high volumes. We recently discovered an alternate design located in the head of a deep-sea animal called Larvacean. Here, cilia morphology, kinematics and flow indicate a role in maintaining the hydrostatic skeleton of the animal by generating a high-pressure flow. We describe our empirical and computational approaches toward understanding the design principles and dynamic range of this newly discovered pumping mechanism. In ongoing work, we further explore the fluid dynamic constraints on the morphological diversity of cilia and the resulting categories of fluid transport functions.
Revising the `Henry Problem' of density-driven groundwater flow: A review of historic Biscayne aquifer data.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weyer, K. U.

2016-12-01

Coastal groundwater flow investigations at the Cutler site of the Biscayne Bay south of Miami, Florida, gave rise to the dominating concept of density-driven flow of sea water into coastal aquifers indicated as a saltwater wedge. Within that wedge convection type return flow of seawater and a dispersion zone were concluded by Cooper et al. (1964, USGS Water Supply Paper 1613-C) to be the cause of the Biscayne aquifer `sea water wedge'. This conclusion was merely based on the chloride distribution within the aquifer and on an analytical model concept assuming convection flow within a confined aquifer without taking non-chemical field data into consideration. This concept was later labelled the `Henry Problem', which any numerical variable density flow program has to be able to simulate to be considered acceptable. Revisiting the above summarizing publication with its record of piezometric field data (heads) showed that the so-called sea water wedge was actually caused by discharging deep saline groundwater driven by gravitational flow and not by denser sea water. Density driven flow of seawater into the aquifer was not found reflected in the head measurements for low and high tide conditions which had been taken contemporaneously with the chloride measurements. These head measurements had not been included in the flow interpretation. The very same head measurements indicated a clear dividing line between shallow local fresh groundwater flow and saline deep groundwater flow without the existence of a dispersion zone or a convection cell. The Biscayne situation emphasizes the need for any chemical interpretation of flow pattern to be backed up by head data as energy indicators of flow fields. At the Biscayne site density driven flow of seawater did and does not exist. Instead this site and the Florida coast line in general are the end points of local fresh and regional saline groundwater flow systems driven by gravity forces and not by density differences.
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Aimthikul, Y.

This thesis reviews the essential aspects of speech synthesis and distinguishes between the two prevailing techniques: compressed digital speech and phonemic synthesis. It then presents the hardware details of the five speech modules evaluated. FORTRAN programs were written to facilitate message creation and retrieval with four of the modules driven by a PDP-11 minicomputer. The fifth module was driven directly by a computer terminal. The compressed digital speech modules (T.I. 990/306, T.S.I. Series 3D and N.S. Digitalker) each contain a limited vocabulary produced by the manufacturers while both the phonemic synthesizers made by Votrax permit an almost unlimited set ofmore » sounds and words. A text-to-phoneme rules program was adapted for the PDP-11 (running under the RSX-11M operating system) to drive the Votrax Speech Pac module. However, the Votrax Type'N Talk unit has its own built-in translator. Comparison of these modules revealed that the compressed digital speech modules were superior in pronouncing words on an individual basis but lacked the inflection capability that permitted the phonemic synthesizers to generate more coherent phrases. These findings were necessarily highly subjective and dependent on the specific words and phrases studied. In addition, the rapid introduction of new modules by manufacturers will necessitate new comparisons. However, the results of this research verified that all of the modules studied do possess reasonable quality of speech that is suitable for man-machine applications. Furthermore, the development tools are now in place to permit the addition of computer speech output in such applications.« less
ChemicalTagger: A tool for semantic text-mining in chemistry

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background The primary method for scientific communication is in the form of published scientific articles and theses which use natural language combined with domain-specific terminology. As such, they contain free owing unstructured text. Given the usefulness of data extraction from unstructured literature, we aim to show how this can be achieved for the discipline of chemistry. The highly formulaic style of writing most chemists adopt make their contributions well suited to high-throughput Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches. Results We have developed the ChemicalTagger parser as a medium-depth, phrase-based semantic NLP tool for the language of chemical experiments. Tagging is based on a modular architecture and uses a combination of OSCAR, domain-specific regex and English taggers to identify parts-of-speech. The ANTLR grammar is used to structure this into tree-based phrases. Using a metric that allows for overlapping annotations, we achieved machine-annotator agreements of 88.9% for phrase recognition and 91.9% for phrase-type identification (Action names). Conclusions It is possible parse to chemical experimental text using rule-based techniques in conjunction with a formal grammar parser. ChemicalTagger has been deployed for over 10,000 patents and has identified solvents from their linguistic context with >99.5% precision. PMID:21575201
Head-Impact–Measurement Devices: A Systematic Review

PubMed Central

O'Connor, Kathryn L.; Rowson, Steven; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven P.

2017-01-01

Context: With an estimated 3.8 million sport- and recreation-related concussions occurring annually, targeted prevention and diagnostic methods are needed. Biomechanical analysis of head impacts may provide quantitative information that can inform both prevention and diagnostic strategies. Objective: To assess available head-impact devices and their clinical utility. Data Sources: We performed a systematic search of the electronic database PubMed for peer-reviewed publications, using the following phrases: accelerometer and concussion, head impact telemetry, head impacts and concussion and sensor, head impacts and sensor, impact sensor and concussion, linear acceleration and concussion, rotational acceleration and concussion, and xpatch concussion. In addition to the literature review, a Google search for head impact monitor and concussion monitor yielded 15 more devices. Study Selection: Included studies were performed in vivo, used commercially available devices, and focused on sport-related concussion. Data Extraction: One author reviewed the title and abstract of each study for inclusion and exclusion criteria and then reviewed each full-text article to confirm inclusion criteria. Controversial articles were reviewed by all authors to reach consensus. Data Synthesis: In total, 61 peer-reviewed articles involving 4 head-impact devices were included. Participants in boxing, football, ice hockey, soccer, or snow sports ranged in age from 6 to 24 years; 18% (n = 11) of the studies included female athletes. The Head Impact Telemetry System was the most widely used device (n = 53). Fourteen additional commercially available devices were presented. Conclusions: Measurements collected by impact monitors provided real-time data to estimate player exposure but did not have the requisite sensitivity to concussion. Proper interpretation of previously reported head-impact kinematics across age, sport, and position may inform future research and enable staff clinicians working on the sidelines to monitor athletes. However, head-impact–monitoring systems have limited clinical utility due to error rates, designs, and low specificity in predicting concussive injury. PMID:28387553

Menopause and big data: Word Adjacency Graph modeling of menopause-related ChaCha data.

PubMed

Carpenter, Janet S; Groves, Doyle; Chen, Chen X; Otte, Julie L; Miller, Wendy R

2017-07-01

To detect and visualize salient queries about menopause using Big Data from ChaCha. We used Word Adjacency Graph (WAG) modeling to detect clusters and visualize the range of menopause-related topics and their mutual proximity. The subset of relevant queries was fully modeled. We split each query into token words (ie, meaningful words and phrases) and removed stopwords (ie, not meaningful functional words). The remaining words were considered in sequence to build summary tables of words and two and three-word phrases. Phrases occurring at least 10 times were used to build a network graph model that was iteratively refined by observing and removing clusters of unrelated content. We identified two menopause-related subsets of queries by searching for questions containing menopause and menopause-related terms (eg, climacteric, hot flashes, night sweats, hormone replacement). The first contained 263,363 queries from individuals aged 13 and older and the second contained 5,892 queries from women aged 40 to 62 years. In the first set, we identified 12 topic clusters: 6 relevant to menopause and 6 less relevant. In the second set, we identified 15 topic clusters: 11 relevant to menopause and 4 less relevant. Queries about hormones were pervasive within both WAG models. Many of the queries reflected low literacy levels and/or feelings of embarrassment. We modeled menopause-related queries posed by ChaCha users between 2009 and 2012. ChaCha data may be used on its own or in combination with other Big Data sources to identify patient-driven educational needs and create patient-centered interventions.
Immediate use of prosody and context in predicting a syntactic structure.

PubMed

Nakamura, Chie; Arai, Manabu; Mazuka, Reiko

2012-11-01

Numerous studies have reported an effect of prosodic information on parsing but whether prosody can impact even the initial parsing decision is still not evident. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated the influence of contrastive intonation and visual context on processing temporarily ambiguous relative clause sentences in Japanese. Our results showed that listeners used the prosodic cue to make a structural prediction before hearing disambiguating information. Importantly, the effect was limited to cases where the visual scene provided an appropriate context for the prosodic cue, thus eliminating the explanation that listeners have simply associated marked prosodic information with a less frequent structure. Furthermore, the influence of the prosodic information was also evident following disambiguating information, in a way that reflected the initial analysis. The current study demonstrates that prosody, when provided with an appropriate context, influences the initial syntactic analysis and also the subsequent cost at disambiguating information. The results also provide first evidence for pre-head structural prediction driven by prosodic and contextual information with a head-final construction. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Limits on the role of retrieval cues in memory for actions: enactment effects in the absence of object cues in the environment.

PubMed

Steffens, Melanie C; Buchner, Axel; Wender, Karl F; Decker, Claudia

2007-12-01

Verb-object phrases (open the umbrella, knock on the table) are usually remembered better if they have been enacted during study (also called subject-performed tasks) than if they have merely been learned verbally (verbal tasks). This enactment effect is particularly pronounced for phrases for which the objects (table) are present as cues in the study and test contexts. In previous studies with retrieval cues for some phrases, the enactment effect in free recall for the other phrases has been surprisingly small or even nonexistent. The present study tested whether the often replicated enactment effect in free recall can be found if none of the phrases contains context cues. In Experiment 1, we tested, and corroborated, the suppression hypothesis: The enactment effect for a given type of phrase (marker phrases) is modified by the presence or absence of cues for the other phrases in the list (experimental phrases). Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the enactment effect for phrases without cues. Experiment 2 also showed that the presence of cues either at study or at test is sufficient for obtaining a suppression effect, and Experiment 3 showed that the enactment effect may disappear altogether if retrieval cues are very salient.
Improved Identification of Noun Phrases in Clinical Radiology Reports Using a High-Performance Statistical Natural Language Parser Augmented with the UMLS Specialist Lexicon

PubMed Central

Huang, Yang; Lowe, Henry J.; Klein, Dan; Cucina, Russell J.

2005-01-01

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a method of extracting noun phrases with full phrase structures from a set of clinical radiology reports using natural language processing (NLP) and to investigate the effects of using the UMLS® Specialist Lexicon to improve noun phrase identification within clinical radiology documents. Design: The noun phrase identification (NPI) module is composed of a sentence boundary detector, a statistical natural language parser trained on a nonmedical domain, and a noun phrase (NP) tagger. The NPI module processed a set of 100 XML-represented clinical radiology reports in Health Level 7 (HL7)® Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)–compatible format. Computed output was compared with manual markups made by four physicians and one author for maximal (longest) NP and those made by one author for base (simple) NP, respectively. An extended lexicon of biomedical terms was created from the UMLS Specialist Lexicon and used to improve NPI performance. Results: The test set was 50 randomly selected reports. The sentence boundary detector achieved 99.0% precision and 98.6% recall. The overall maximal NPI precision and recall were 78.9% and 81.5% before using the UMLS Specialist Lexicon and 82.1% and 84.6% after. The overall base NPI precision and recall were 88.2% and 86.8% before using the UMLS Specialist Lexicon and 93.1% and 92.6% after, reducing false-positives by 31.1% and false-negatives by 34.3%. Conclusion: The sentence boundary detector performs excellently. After the adaptation using the UMLS Specialist Lexicon, the statistical parser's NPI performance on radiology reports increased to levels comparable to the parser's native performance in its newswire training domain and to that reported by other researchers in the general nonmedical domain. PMID:15684131
The Poetics of Argumentation: The Relevance of Conversational Repetition for Two Theories of Emergent Mathematical Reasoning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Staats, Susan

2017-01-01

Poetic structures emerge in spoken language when speakers repeat grammatical phrases that were spoken before. They create the potential to amend or comment on previous speech, and to convey meaning through the structure of discourse. This paper considers the ways in which poetic structure analysis contributes to two perspectives on emergent…
Capturing the complexity of uncertainty language to maximise its use.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Juanchich, Marie; Sirota, Miroslav

2016-04-01

Uncertainty is often communicated verbally, using uncertainty phrases such as 'there is a small risk of earthquake', 'flooding is possible' or 'it is very likely the sea level will rise'. Prior research has only examined a limited number of properties of uncertainty phrases: mainly the probability conveyed (e.g., 'a small chance' convey a small probability whereas 'it is likely' convey a high probability). We propose a new analytical framework that captures more of the complexity of uncertainty phrases by studying their semantic, pragmatic and syntactic properties. Further, we argue that the complexity of uncertainty phrases is functional and can be leveraged to best describe uncertain outcomes and achieve the goals of speakers. We will present findings from a corpus study and an experiment where we assessed the following properties of uncertainty phrases: probability conveyed, subjectivity, valence, nature of the subject, grammatical category of the uncertainty quantifier and whether the quantifier elicits a positive or a negative framing. Natural language processing techniques applied to corpus data showed that people use a very large variety of uncertainty phrases representing different configurations of the properties of uncertainty phrases (e.g., phrases that convey different levels of subjectivity, phrases with different grammatical construction). In addition, the corpus analysis uncovered that uncertainty phrases commonly studied in psychology are not the most commonly used in real life. In the experiment we manipulated the amount of evidence indicating that a fact was true and whether the participant was required to prove the fact was true or that it was false. Participants produced a phrase to communicate the likelihood that the fact was true (e.g., 'it is not sure…', 'I am convinced that…'). The analyses of the uncertainty phrases produced showed that participants leveraged the properties of uncertainty phrases to reflect the strength of evidence but also to achieve their personal goals. For example, participants aiming to prove that the fact was true chose words that conveyed a more positive polarity and a higher probability than participants aiming to prove that the fact was false. We discuss the utility of the framework for harnessing the properties of uncertainty phrases in geosciences.
Harmonic biases in child learners: In support of language universals

PubMed Central

Culbertson, Jennifer; Newport, Elissa L.

2015-01-01

A fundamental question for cognitive science concerns the ways in which languages are shaped by the biases of language learners. Recent research using laboratory language learning paradigms, primarily with adults, has shown that structures or rules that are common in the languages of the world are learned or processed more easily than patterns that are rare or unattested. Here we target child learners, investigating a set of biases for word order learning in the noun phrase studied by Culbertson, Smolensky & Legendre (2012) in college-age adults. We provide the first evidence that child learners exhibit a preference for typologically common harmonic word order patterns—those which preserve the order of the head with respect to its complements—validating the psychological reality of a principle formalized in many different linguistic theories. We also discuss important differences between child and adult learners in terms of both the strength and content of the biases at play during language learning. In particular, the bias favoring harmonic patterns is markedly stronger in children than adults, and children (unlike adults) acquire adjective ordering more readily than numeral ordering. The results point to the importance of investigating learning biases across development in order to understand how these biases may shape the history and structure of natural languages. PMID:25800352
Prosody Production and Perception with Conversational Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mo, Yoonsook

2010-01-01

Speech utterances are more than the linear concatenation of individual phonemes or words. They are organized by prosodic structures comprising phonological units of different sizes (e.g., syllable, foot, word, and phrase) and the prominence relations among them. As the linguistic structure of spoken languages, prosody serves an important function…
Nominal and Verbal Semantic Structure: Analogies and Interactions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Filip, Hanna

2001-01-01

Examines parallels in semantic structure between noun phrases and verbal predicates in constructions in which they are mutually constraining and contribute to the expression of lexical aspect and grammatical aspect. Data are drawn mainly from English and Slavic languages, which are compared to German and Finnish. (Author/VWL)
The role of parallelism in the real-time processing of anaphora.

PubMed

Poirier, Josée; Walenski, Matthew; Shapiro, Lewis P

2012-06-01

Parallelism effects refer to the facilitated processing of a target structure when it follows a similar, parallel structure. In coordination, a parallelism-related conjunction triggers the expectation that a second conjunct with the same structure as the first conjunct should occur. It has been proposed that parallelism effects reflect the use of the first structure as a template that guides the processing of the second. In this study, we examined the role of parallelism in real-time anaphora resolution by charting activation patterns in coordinated constructions containing anaphora, Verb-Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) and Noun-Phrase Traces (NP-traces). Specifically, we hypothesised that an expectation of parallelism would incite the parser to assume a structure similar to the first conjunct in the second, anaphora-containing conjunct. The speculation of a similar structure would result in early postulation of covert anaphora. Experiment 1 confirms that following a parallelism-related conjunction, first-conjunct material is activated in the second conjunct. Experiment 2 reveals that an NP-trace in the second conjunct is posited immediately where licensed, which is earlier than previously reported in the literature. In light of our findings, we propose an intricate relation between structural expectations and anaphor resolution.
The role of parallelism in the real-time processing of anaphora

PubMed Central

Poirier, Josée; Walenski, Matthew; Shapiro, Lewis P.

2012-01-01

Parallelism effects refer to the facilitated processing of a target structure when it follows a similar, parallel structure. In coordination, a parallelism-related conjunction triggers the expectation that a second conjunct with the same structure as the first conjunct should occur. It has been proposed that parallelism effects reflect the use of the first structure as a template that guides the processing of the second. In this study, we examined the role of parallelism in real-time anaphora resolution by charting activation patterns in coordinated constructions containing anaphora, Verb-Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) and Noun-Phrase Traces (NP-traces). Specifically, we hypothesised that an expectation of parallelism would incite the parser to assume a structure similar to the first conjunct in the second, anaphora-containing conjunct. The speculation of a similar structure would result in early postulation of covert anaphora. Experiment 1 confirms that following a parallelism-related conjunction, first-conjunct material is activated in the second conjunct. Experiment 2 reveals that an NP-trace in the second conjunct is posited immediately where licensed, which is earlier than previously reported in the literature. In light of our findings, we propose an intricate relation between structural expectations and anaphor resolution. PMID:23741080
Laser-Driven Fusion.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibson, A. F.

1980-01-01

Discusses the present status and future prospects of laser-driven fusion. Current research (which is classified under three main headings: laser-matter interaction processes, compression, and laser development) is also presented. (HM)
Head position of helicopter pilots during slalom maneuvers.

PubMed

Temme, Leonard A; Still, David L

2007-01-01

Pilots typically tilt their heads when executing coordinated banking turns, a phenomenon commonly attributed to the putative opto-kinetic cervical reflex (OKCR). The OKCR is usually described as a reflex, primarily driven by stimuli in the visual periphery, and is important to a pilot's spatial orientation by providing a relatively stabilized horizontal frame of reference. The present paper presents an alternative hypothesis for the observed head tilting seen in pilots. An archived data set, originally collected for other purposes, contained the head turn, pitch, and tilt of 4 helicopter pilots recorded at 10 Hz as the pilots executed 42 slalom maneuvers in an AH Mk 7 Lynx helicopter under visual flight conditions. The analytic method was a correlational analysis of head turn, pitch, and tilt. As expected, pilots routinely tilted their heads during the slaloms in a fashion typically attributed to the OKCR. Correlations among head turn, tilt, and pitch showed that when the helicopter turned left, the head, presumably to look into the turn, turned left and also pitched up and tilted right. Similarly, when the helicopter turned right, the head, presumably to look into the turn, turned right, pitched up, and tilted left. The head tilting usually attributed to a neuromuscular reflex driven by visual stimuli may be a biomechanical consequence of the head posture pilots assume when they simply look where they are going, eliminating the need to postulate the existence of a novel neuromuscular reflex.
The difficult mountain: enriched composition in adjective–noun phrases

PubMed Central

Pickering, Martin J.; McElree, Brian

2012-01-01

When readers need to go beyond the straightforward compositional meaning of a sentence (i.e., when enriched composition is required), costly additional processing is the norm. However, this conclusion is based entirely on research that has looked at enriched composition between two phrases or within the verb phrase (e.g., the verb and its complement in … started the book …) where there is a discrepancy between the semantic expectations of the verb and the semantics of the noun. We carried out an eye-tracking experiment investigating enriched composition within a single noun phrase, as in the difficult mountain. As compared with adjective–noun phrases that allow a straightforward compositional interpretation (the difficult exercise), the coerced phrases were more difficult to process. These results indicate that coercion effects can be found in the absence of a typing violation and within a single noun phrase. PMID:21826403
Comparing Noun Phrasing Techniques for Use with Medical Digital Library Tools.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tolle, Kristin M.; Chen, Hsinchun

2000-01-01

Describes a study that investigated the use of a natural language processing technique called noun phrasing to determine whether it is a viable technique for medical information retrieval. Evaluates four noun phrase generation tools for their ability to isolate noun phrases from medical journal abstracts, focusing on precision and recall.…
PubMed Phrases, an open set of coherent phrases for searching biomedical literature

PubMed Central

Kim, Sun; Yeganova, Lana; Comeau, Donald C.; Wilbur, W. John; Lu, Zhiyong

2018-01-01

In biomedicine, key concepts are often expressed by multiple words (e.g., ‘zinc finger protein’). Previous work has shown treating a sequence of words as a meaningful unit, where applicable, is not only important for human understanding but also beneficial for automatic information seeking. Here we present a collection of PubMed® Phrases that are beneficial for information retrieval and human comprehension. We define these phrases as coherent chunks that are logically connected. To collect the phrase set, we apply the hypergeometric test to detect segments of consecutive terms that are likely to appear together in PubMed. These text segments are then filtered using the BM25 ranking function to ensure that they are beneficial from an information retrieval perspective. Thus, we obtain a set of 705,915 PubMed Phrases. We evaluate the quality of the set by investigating PubMed user click data and manually annotating a sample of 500 randomly selected noun phrases. We also analyze and discuss the usage of these PubMed Phrases in literature search. PMID:29893755
Pressure-Induced Changes in the Structure and Function of the Kinesin-Microtubule Complex

PubMed Central

Nishiyama, Masayoshi; Kimura, Yoshifumi; Nishiyama, Yoshio; Terazima, Masahide

2009-01-01

Kinesin-1 is an ATP-driven molecular motor that “walks” along a microtubule by working two heads in a “hand-over-hand” fashion. The stepping motion is well-coordinated by intermolecular interactions between the kinesin head and microtubule, and is sensitively changed by applied forces. We demonstrate that hydrostatic pressure works as an inhibitory action on kinesin motility. We developed a high-pressure microscope that enables the application of hydrostatic pressures of up to 200 MPa (2000 bar). Under high-pressure conditions, taxol-stabilized microtubules were shortened from both ends at the same speed. The sliding velocity of kinesin motors was reversibly changed by pressure, and reached half-maximal value at ∼100 MPa. The pressure-velocity relationship was very close to the force-velocity relationship of single kinesin molecules, suggesting a similar inhibitory mechanism on kinesin motility. Further analysis showed that the pressure mainly affects the stepping motion, but not the ATP binding reaction. The application of pressure is thought to enhance the structural fluctuation and/or association of water molecules with the exposed regions of the kinesin head and microtubule. These pressure-induced effects could prevent kinesin motors from completing the stepping motion. PMID:19186149
Young children pause on phrase boundaries in self-paced music listening: The role of harmonic cues.

PubMed

Kragness, Haley E; Trainor, Laurel J

2018-05-01

Proper segmentation of auditory streams is essential for understanding music. Many cues, including meter, melodic contour, and harmony, influence adults' perception of musical phrase boundaries. To date, no studies have examined young children's musical grouping in a production task. We used a musical self-pacing method to investigate (1) whether dwell times index young children's musical phrase grouping and, if so, (2) whether children dwell longer on phrase boundaries defined by harmonic cues specifically. In Experiment 1, we asked 3-year-old children to self-pace through chord progressions from Bach chorales (sequences in which metrical, harmonic, and melodic contour grouping cues aligned) by pressing a computer key to present each chord in the sequence. Participants dwelled longer on chords in the 8th position, which corresponded to phrase endings. In Experiment 2, we tested 3-, 4-, and 7-year-old children's sensitivity to harmonic cues to phrase grouping when metrical regularity cues and melodic contour cues were misaligned with the harmonic phrase boundaries. In this case, 7 and 4 year olds but not 3 year olds dwelled longer on harmonic phrase boundaries, suggesting that the influence of harmonic cues on phrase boundary perception develops substantially between 3 and 4 years of age in Western children. Overall, we show that the musical dwell time method is child-friendly and can be used to investigate various aspects of young children's musical understanding, including phrase grouping and harmonic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
What Constitutes a Phrase in Sound-Based Music? A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Perception and Acoustics.

PubMed

Olsen, Kirk N; Dean, Roger T; Leung, Yvonne

2016-01-01

Phrasing facilitates the organization of auditory information and is central to speech and music. Not surprisingly, aspects of changing intensity, rhythm, and pitch are key determinants of musical phrases and their boundaries in instrumental note-based music. Different kinds of speech (such as tone- vs. stress-languages) share these features in different proportions and form an instructive comparison. However, little is known about whether or how musical phrasing is perceived in sound-based music, where the basic musical unit from which a piece is created is commonly non-instrumental continuous sounds, rather than instrumental discontinuous notes. This issue forms the target of the present paper. Twenty participants (17 untrained in music) were presented with six stimuli derived from sound-based music, note-based music, and environmental sound. Their task was to indicate each occurrence of a perceived phrase and qualitatively describe key characteristics of the stimulus associated with each phrase response. It was hypothesized that sound-based music does elicit phrase perception, and that this is primarily associated with temporal changes in intensity and timbre, rather than rhythm and pitch. Results supported this hypothesis. Qualitative analysis of participant descriptions showed that for sound-based music, the majority of perceived phrases were associated with intensity or timbral change. For the note-based piano piece, rhythm was the main theme associated with perceived musical phrasing. We modeled the occurrence in time of perceived musical phrases with recurrent event 'hazard' analyses using time-series data representing acoustic predictors associated with intensity, spectral flatness, and rhythmic density. Acoustic intensity and timbre (represented here by spectral flatness) were strong predictors of perceived musical phrasing in sound-based music, and rhythm was only predictive for the piano piece. A further analysis including five additional spectral measures linked to timbre strengthened the models. Overall, results show that even when little of the pitch and rhythm information important for phrasing in note-based music is available, phrasing is still perceived, primarily in response to changes of intensity and timbre. Implications for electroacoustic music composition and music recommender systems are discussed.
What Constitutes a Phrase in Sound-Based Music? A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Perception and Acoustics

PubMed Central

Olsen, Kirk N.; Dean, Roger T.; Leung, Yvonne

2016-01-01

Phrasing facilitates the organization of auditory information and is central to speech and music. Not surprisingly, aspects of changing intensity, rhythm, and pitch are key determinants of musical phrases and their boundaries in instrumental note-based music. Different kinds of speech (such as tone- vs. stress-languages) share these features in different proportions and form an instructive comparison. However, little is known about whether or how musical phrasing is perceived in sound-based music, where the basic musical unit from which a piece is created is commonly non-instrumental continuous sounds, rather than instrumental discontinuous notes. This issue forms the target of the present paper. Twenty participants (17 untrained in music) were presented with six stimuli derived from sound-based music, note-based music, and environmental sound. Their task was to indicate each occurrence of a perceived phrase and qualitatively describe key characteristics of the stimulus associated with each phrase response. It was hypothesized that sound-based music does elicit phrase perception, and that this is primarily associated with temporal changes in intensity and timbre, rather than rhythm and pitch. Results supported this hypothesis. Qualitative analysis of participant descriptions showed that for sound-based music, the majority of perceived phrases were associated with intensity or timbral change. For the note-based piano piece, rhythm was the main theme associated with perceived musical phrasing. We modeled the occurrence in time of perceived musical phrases with recurrent event ‘hazard’ analyses using time-series data representing acoustic predictors associated with intensity, spectral flatness, and rhythmic density. Acoustic intensity and timbre (represented here by spectral flatness) were strong predictors of perceived musical phrasing in sound-based music, and rhythm was only predictive for the piano piece. A further analysis including five additional spectral measures linked to timbre strengthened the models. Overall, results show that even when little of the pitch and rhythm information important for phrasing in note-based music is available, phrasing is still perceived, primarily in response to changes of intensity and timbre. Implications for electroacoustic music composition and music recommender systems are discussed. PMID:27997625

The Application of Morpho-Syntactic Language Processing to Effective Phrase Matching.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sheridan, Paraic; Smeaton, Alan F.

1992-01-01

Describes a process of morpho-syntactic language analysis for information retrieval. Tree Structured Analytics (TSA) used for text representation is summarized; the matching process developed for such structures is outlined with an example appended; and experiments carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of TSA matching are discussed. (26…
Symbols, Relations, and Structural Complexity.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reich, Peter A.

This paper discusses an alternate formalism for context-free phrase structure grammar. The author feels that if a grammar is stated completely explicitly it can be represented in the form of a relational network of the type proposed by Lamb. He discusses some formal properties of such networks and makes some revisions to Lamb's formulation which…
The Sentence-Composition Effect: Processing of Complex Sentences Depends on the Configuration of Common Noun Phrases versus Unusual Noun Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Marcus L.; Lowder, Matthew W.; Gordon, Peter C.

2011-01-01

In 2 experiments, the authors used an eye tracking while reading methodology to examine how different configurations of common noun phrases versus unusual noun phrases (NPs) influenced the difference in processing difficulty between sentences containing object- and subject-extracted relative clauses. Results showed that processing difficulty was…
Essie: A Concept-based Search Engine for Structured Biomedical Text

PubMed Central

Ide, Nicholas C.; Loane, Russell F.; Demner-Fushman, Dina

2007-01-01

This article describes the algorithms implemented in the Essie search engine that is currently serving several Web sites at the National Library of Medicine. Essie is a phrase-based search engine with term and concept query expansion and probabilistic relevancy ranking. Essie’s design is motivated by an observation that query terms are often conceptually related to terms in a document, without actually occurring in the document text. Essie’s performance was evaluated using data and standard evaluation methods from the 2003 and 2006 Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) Genomics track. Essie was the best-performing search engine in the 2003 TREC Genomics track and achieved results comparable to those of the highest-ranking systems on the 2006 TREC Genomics track task. Essie shows that a judicious combination of exploiting document structure, phrase searching, and concept based query expansion is a useful approach for information retrieval in the biomedical domain. PMID:17329729
Analysis of prosody in finger braille using electromyography.

PubMed

Miyagi, Manabi; Nishida, Masafumi; Horiuchi, Yasuo; Ichikawa, Akira

2006-01-01

Finger braille is one of the communication methods for the deaf blind. The interpreter types braille codes on the fingers of deaf blind. Finger braille seems to be the most suitable medium for real-time communication by its speed and accuracy of transmitting characters. We hypothesize that the prosody information exists in the time structure and strength of finger braille typing. Prosody is the paralinguistic information that has functions to transmit the sentence structure, prominence, emotions and other form of information in real time communication. In this study, we measured the surface electromyography (sEMG) of finger movement to analyze the typing strength of finger braille. We found that the typing strength increases at the beginning of a phrase and a prominent phrase. The result shows the possibility that the prosody in the typing strength of finger braille can be applied to create an interpreter system for the deafblind.
Neurophysiological Correlates of Musical and Prosodic Phrasing: Shared Processing Mechanisms and Effects of Musical Expertise

PubMed Central

Steinhauer, Karsten; DePriest, John; Koelsch, Stefan

2016-01-01

The processing of prosodic phrase boundaries in language is immediately reflected by a specific event-related potential component called the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). A component somewhat reminiscent of the CPS in language has also been reported for musical phrases (i.e., the so-called ‘music CPS’). However, in previous studies the quantification of the music-CPS as well as its morphology and timing differed substantially from the characteristics of the language-CPS. Therefore, the degree of correspondence between cognitive mechanisms of phrasing in music and in language has remained questionable. Here, we probed the shared nature of mechanisms underlying musical and prosodic phrasing by (1) investigating whether the music-CPS is present at phrase boundary positions where the language-CPS has been originally reported (i.e., at the onset of the pause between phrases), and (2) comparing the CPS in music and in language in non-musicians and professional musicians. For the first time, we report a positive shift at the onset of musical phrase boundaries that strongly resembles the language-CPS and argue that the post-boundary ‘music-CPS’ of previous studies may be an entirely distinct ERP component. Moreover, the language-CPS in musicians was found to be less prominent than in non-musicians, suggesting more efficient processing of prosodic phrases in language as a result of higher musical expertise. PMID:27192560
Neurophysiological Correlates of Musical and Prosodic Phrasing: Shared Processing Mechanisms and Effects of Musical Expertise.

PubMed

Glushko, Anastasia; Steinhauer, Karsten; DePriest, John; Koelsch, Stefan

2016-01-01

The processing of prosodic phrase boundaries in language is immediately reflected by a specific event-related potential component called the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). A component somewhat reminiscent of the CPS in language has also been reported for musical phrases (i.e., the so-called 'music CPS'). However, in previous studies the quantification of the music-CPS as well as its morphology and timing differed substantially from the characteristics of the language-CPS. Therefore, the degree of correspondence between cognitive mechanisms of phrasing in music and in language has remained questionable. Here, we probed the shared nature of mechanisms underlying musical and prosodic phrasing by (1) investigating whether the music-CPS is present at phrase boundary positions where the language-CPS has been originally reported (i.e., at the onset of the pause between phrases), and (2) comparing the CPS in music and in language in non-musicians and professional musicians. For the first time, we report a positive shift at the onset of musical phrase boundaries that strongly resembles the language-CPS and argue that the post-boundary 'music-CPS' of previous studies may be an entirely distinct ERP component. Moreover, the language-CPS in musicians was found to be less prominent than in non-musicians, suggesting more efficient processing of prosodic phrases in language as a result of higher musical expertise.
The Missing Link: The Use of Link Words and Phrases as a Link to Manuscript Quality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J.

2016-01-01

In this article, I provide a typology of transition words/phrases. This typology comprises 12 dimensions of link words/phrases that capture 277 link words/phrases. Using QDA Miner, WordStat, and SPSS--a computer-assisted mixed methods data analysis software, content analysis software, and statistical software, respectively--I analyzed 74…
On search guide phrase compilation for recommending home medical products.

PubMed

Luo, Gang

2010-01-01

To help people find desired home medical products (HMPs), we developed an intelligent personal health record (iPHR) system that can automatically recommend HMPs based on users' health issues. Using nursing knowledge, we pre-compile a set of "search guide" phrases that provides semantic translation from words describing health issues to their underlying medical meanings. Then iPHR automatically generates queries from those phrases and uses them and a search engine to retrieve HMPs. To avoid missing relevant HMPs during retrieval, the compiled search guide phrases need to be comprehensive. Such compilation is a challenging task because nursing knowledge updates frequently and contains numerous details scattered in many sources. This paper presents a semi-automatic tool facilitating such compilation. Our idea is to formulate the phrase compilation task as a multi-label classification problem. For each newly obtained search guide phrase, we first use nursing knowledge and information retrieval techniques to identify a small set of potentially relevant classes with corresponding hints. Then a nurse makes the final decision on assigning this phrase to proper classes based on those hints. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our techniques by compiling search guide phrases from an occupational therapy textbook.
Complexity Matters: On Gender Agreement in Heritage Scandinavian

PubMed Central

Johannessen, Janne Bondi; Larsson, Ida

2015-01-01

This paper investigates aspects of the noun phrase from a Scandinavian heritage language perspective, with an emphasis on noun phrase-internal gender agreement and noun declension. Our results are somewhat surprising compared with earlier research: We find that noun phrase-internal agreement for the most part is rather stable. To the extent that we find attrition, it affects agreement in the noun phrase, but not the declension of the noun. We discuss whether this means that gender is lost and has been reduced to a pure declension class, or whether gender is retained. We argue that gender is actually retained in these heritage speakers. One argument for this is that the speakers who lack agreement in complex noun phrases, have agreement intact in simpler phrases. We have thus found that the complexity of the noun phrase is crucial for some speakers. However, among the heritage speakers we also find considerable inter-individual variation, and different speakers can have partly different systems. PMID:26733114
Magnetically Driven Swimming of Nanoscale Colloidal Assemblies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Breidenich, Jennifer; Benkoski, Jason; Baird, Lance; Deacon, Ryan; Land, H. Bruce; Hayes, Allen; Keng, Pei; Pyun, Jeffrey

2009-03-01

At microscopic length scales, locomotion can only be generated through asymmetric conformation changes, such as the undulating flagellum employed by protozoa. This simple yet elegant design is optimized according to the dueling needs of miniaturization and the fluid dynamics of the low Reynolds number environment. In this study, we fabricate nanoscale colloidal assemblies that mimic the head + tail structure of flagellates. The assemblies consist of two types of magnetic colloids: 25 nm polystyrene-coated Co nanoparticles, and 250 nm polyethylene glycol coated magnetite nanoparticles. When mixed together in N-dimethylformamide, the Co nanoparticles assemble into flexible, segmented chains ranging in length from 1 - 5 μm. These chains then attach at one end to the larger magnetic beads due to magnetic attraction. This head + tail structure aligns with an external uniform magnetic field and is actuated by an oscillating transverse field. We examine the effects of Co nanoparticle concentration, magnetite bead concentration, magnetic field strength, and oscillation frequency on the formation of swimmers and the speed of locomotion.
Kinematic parameters of signed verbs.

PubMed

Malaia, Evie; Wilbur, Ronnie B; Milkovic, Marina

2013-10-01

Sign language users recruit physical properties of visual motion to convey linguistic information. Research on American Sign Language (ASL) indicates that signers systematically use kinematic features (e.g., velocity, deceleration) of dominant hand motion for distinguishing specific semantic properties of verb classes in production ( Malaia & Wilbur, 2012a) and process these distinctions as part of the phonological structure of these verb classes in comprehension ( Malaia, Ranaweera, Wilbur, & Talavage, 2012). These studies are driven by the event visibility hypothesis by Wilbur (2003), who proposed that such use of kinematic features should be universal to sign language (SL) by the grammaticalization of physics and geometry for linguistic purposes. In a prior motion capture study, Malaia and Wilbur (2012a) lent support for the event visibility hypothesis in ASL, but there has not been quantitative data from other SLs to test the generalization to other languages. The authors investigated the kinematic parameters of predicates in Croatian Sign Language ( Hrvatskom Znakovnom Jeziku [HZJ]). Kinematic features of verb signs were affected both by event structure of the predicate (semantics) and phrase position within the sentence (prosody). The data demonstrate that kinematic features of motion in HZJ verb signs are recruited to convey morphological and prosodic information. This is the first crosslinguistic motion capture confirmation that specific kinematic properties of articulator motion are grammaticalized in other SLs to express linguistic features.
Heat driven pulse pump

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Benner, Steve M (Inventor); Martins, Mario S. (Inventor)

2000-01-01

A heat driven pulse pump includes a chamber having an inlet port, an outlet port, two check valves, a wick, and a heater. The chamber may include a plurality of grooves inside wall of the chamber. When heated within the chamber, a liquid to be pumped vaporizes and creates pressure head that expels the liquid through the outlet port. As liquid separating means, the wick, disposed within the chamber, is to allow, when saturated with the liquid, the passage of only liquid being forced by the pressure head in the chamber, preventing the vapor from exiting from the chamber through the outlet port. A plurality of grooves along the inside surface wall of the chamber can sustain the liquid, which is amount enough to produce vapor for the pressure head in the chamber. With only two simple moving parts, two check valves, the heat driven pulse pump can effectively function over the long lifetimes without maintenance or replacement. For continuous flow of the liquid to be pumped a plurality of pumps may be connected in parallel.
Verb Biases Are Shaped through Lifelong Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ryskin, Rachel A.; Qi, Zhenghan; Duff, Melissa C.; Brown-Schmidt, Sarah

2017-01-01

Verbs often participate in more than 1 syntactic structure, but individual verbs can be biased in terms of whether they are used more often with 1 structure or the other. For instance, in a sentence such as "Bop the bunny with the flower," the phrase "with the flower" is more likely to indicate an instrument with which to…
It's Not Just the "Heavy NP": Relative Phrase Length Modulates the Production of Heavy-NP Shift

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stallings, Lynne M.; MacDonald, Maryellen C.

2011-01-01

Heavy-NP shift is the tendency for speakers to place long direct object phrases at the end of a clause rather than next to the verb. Though some analyses have focused on length of the direct object phrase alone, results from two experiments demonstrate that the length of the direct object relative to that of other phrases, and not the length of…
Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

PubMed Central

Napoli, Donna Jo; Sutton-Spence, Rachel

2014-01-01

A survey of reports of sign order from 42 sign languages leads to a handful of generalizations. Two accounts emerge, one amodal and the other modal. We argue that universal pressures are at work with respect to some generalizations, but that pressure from the visual modality is at work with respect to others. Together, these pressures conspire to make all sign languages order their major constituents SOV or SVO. This study leads us to the conclusion that the order of S with regard to verb phrase (VP) may be driven by sensorimotor system concerns that feed universal grammar. PMID:24860523
Building Fluency through the Phrased Text Lesson

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rasinski, Timothy; Yildirim, Kasim; Nageldinger, James

2012-01-01

This Teaching Tip article explores the importance of phrasing while reading. It also presents an instructional intervention strategy for helping students develop greater proficiency in reading with phrases that reflect the meaning of the text.
Generics license 30-month-olds’ inferences about the atypical properties of novel kinds

PubMed Central

Graham, Susan A.; Gelman, Susan A.; Clarke, Jessica

2016-01-01

We examined whether the distinction between generic and nongeneric language provides toddlers with a rapid and efficient means to learn about kinds. In Experiment 1, we examined 30-month-olds’ willingness to extend atypical properties to members of an unfamiliar category when the properties were introduced in one of three ways: a) using a generic noun phrase (“Blicks drink ketchup”); b) using a nongeneric noun phrase (“These blicks drink ketchup”); and c) using an attentional phrase (“Look at this”). Hearing a generic noun phrase boosted toddlers’ extension of properties to both the model exemplars and to novel members of the same category, relative to when a property had been introduced with a nongeneric noun phrase or an attentional phrase. In Experiment 2, properties were introduced with a generic noun phrase and toddlers extended novel properties to members of the same-category, but not to an out-of-category object. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that generics highlight the stability of a feature and foster generalization of the property to novel within-category exemplars. PMID:27505699
Processing Elided Verb Phrases with Flawed Antecedents: the Recycling Hypothesis

PubMed Central

Arregui, Ana; Clifton, Charles; Frazier, Lyn; Moulton, Keir

2006-01-01

Traditional syntactic accounts of verb phrase ellipsis (e.g. “Jason laughed. Sam did [ ] too.”) categorize as ungrammatical many sentences that language users find acceptable (they “undergenerate”); semantic accounts overgenerate. We propose that a processing theory, together with a syntactic account, does a better job of describing and explaining the data on verb phrase-ellipsis. Five acceptability judgment experiments supported a “VP recycling hypothesis,” which claims that when a syntactically-matching antecedent is not available, the listener/reader creates one using the materials at hand. Experiments 1 and 2 used verb phrase ellipsis sentences with antecedents ranging from perfect (a verb phrase in matrix verb phrase position) to impossible (a verb phrase containing only a deverbal word). Experiments 3 and 4 contrasted antecedents in verbal versus nominal gerund subjects. Experiment 5 explored the possibility that speakers are particularly likely to go beyond the grammar and produce elided constituents without perfect matching antecedents when the antecedent needed is less marked than the antecedent actually produced. This experiment contrasted active (unmarked) and passive antecedents to show that readers seem to honor such a tendency. PMID:17710192
TOWARD A MODERN THEORY OF CASE.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

FILLMORE, CHARLES J.

THE PAPER QUESTIONS THE ADEQUACY OF CHOMSKY'S PROPOSALS FOR FORMALLY RECONSTRUCTING THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES AND GRAMMATICAL FUNCTIONS. THE DEEP STRUCTURE VALIDITY OF THE NOTIONS "SUBJECT" AND "OBJECT" IS ALSO QUESTIONED. THE WRITER PROPOSES TO RECOGNIZE, INSTEAD, VARIOUS INTRODUCED NOUN PHRASES SUGGESTIVE…

Gender subordination in the vulnerability of women to domestic violence.

PubMed

Macedo Piosiadlo, Laura Christina; Godoy Serpa da Fonseca, Rosa Maria

2016-06-01

To create and validate an instrument that identifies women's vulnerability to domestic violence through gender subordination indicators in the family. An instrument consisting on 61 phrases was created, that indicates gender subordination in the family. After the assessment from ten judges, 34 phrases were validated. The approved version was administered to 321 health service users of São José dos Pinhais (Estado de Paraná, Brasil), along with the validated Portuguese version of the Abuse Assessment Screen (AAS) (for purposes of separating the sample group - the ''YES'' group was composed of women who have suffered violence and the ''NO'' group consisted of women who had not suffered violence). Data were transferred into the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 22, and quantitatively analyzed using exploratory and factor analysis, and tests for internal consistency. After analysis (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) statistics, Monte Carlo Principal Components Analysis (PCA, and diagram segmentation), two factors were identified: F1 - consisting of phrases related to home maintenance and family structure; F2 - phrases intrinsic to the couple's relationship. For the statements that reinforce gender subordination, the mean of the factors were higher for the group that answered YES to one of the violence identifying issues. The created instrument was able to identify women who were vulnerable to domestic violence using gender subordination indicators. This could be an important tool for nurses and other professionals in multidisciplinary teams, in order to organize and plan actions to prevent violence against women.
Human Papillomavirus Drives Tumor Development Throughout the Head and Neck: Improved Prognosis Is Associated With an Immune Response Largely Restricted to the Oropharynx

PubMed Central

Chakravarthy, Ankur; Henderson, Stephen; Thirdborough, Stephen M.; Ottensmeier, Christian H.; Su, Xiaoping; Lechner, Matt; Feber, Andrew; Thomas, Gareth J.

2016-01-01

Purpose In squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (HNSCC), the increasing incidence of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (OPSCCs) is attributable to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Despite commonly presenting at late stage, HPV-driven OPSCCs are associated with improved prognosis compared with HPV-negative disease. HPV DNA is also detectable in nonoropharyngeal (non-OPSCC), but its pathogenic role and clinical significance are unclear. The objectives of this study were to determine whether HPV plays a causal role in non-OPSCC and to investigate whether HPV confers a survival benefit in these tumors. Methods Meta-analysis was used to build a cross-tissue gene-expression signature for HPV-driven cancer. Classifiers trained by machine-learning approaches were used to predict the HPV status of 520 HNSCCs profiled by The Cancer Genome Atlas project. DNA methylation data were similarly used to classify 464 HNSCCs and these analyses were integrated with genomic, histopathology, and survival data to permit a comprehensive comparison of HPV transcript-positive OPSCC and non-OPSCC. Results HPV-driven tumors accounted for 4.1% of non-OPSCCs. Regardless of anatomic site, HPV+ HNSCCs shared highly similar gene expression and DNA methylation profiles; nonkeratinizing, basaloid histopathological features; and lack of TP53 or CDKN2A alterations. Improved overall survival, however, was largely restricted to HPV-driven OPSCCs, which were associated with increased levels of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes compared with HPV-driven non-OPSCCs. Conclusion Our analysis identified a causal role for HPV in transcript-positive non-OPSCCs throughout the head and neck. Notably, however, HPV-driven non-OPSCCs display a distinct immune microenvironment and clinical behavior compared with HPV-driven OPSCCs. PMID:27863190
Installing the ARL Phrase Book Android Application and Configuring its Dependencies

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-02-01

device and configuring several additional applications required by the Phrase Book. 15. SUBJECT TERMS Android, Phrase Book, Domain Translator, Festival ...CMU] Festival Light Dari Text-to-Speech [TTS] Engine, the Dari/Pashto soft keyboard2) were integrated into the Phrase Book for additional capability...apps (as APK files): • Dari and Pashto AnySoftKeyboards. Delivered as a 94-KB AnySoftKeyboardLanguagePackPashto.apk. • Festival Lite (Flite) TTS
Proverb and idiom comprehension in Alzheimer disease.

PubMed

Kempler, D; Van Lancker, D; Read, S

1988-01-01

Twenty-nine patients diagnosed with Probable Alzheimer Disease were administered tests of word, familiar phrases (idioms and proverbs), and novel phrase comprehension. From the early stage of the disease, patients performed worse at understanding familiar phrases than single words or novel phrases. The results uphold common observations that AD patients have difficulty interpreting abstract meanings. Cognitive variables responsible for poor idiom/proverb comprehension and the clinical implications of this new protocol are discussed.
Functional outcomes after organ preservation treatment in head and neck cancer: a critical review of the literature.

PubMed

Rieger, J M; Zalmanowitz, J G; Wolfaardt, J F

2006-07-01

The use of radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy in advanced head and neck cancer is increasing in popularity, driven by the notion that sparing the organs of speech and swallowing from surgical resection will also spare function. This critical review of the literature considered functional outcomes after organ preservation to assess the impact of such treatment on speech, swallowing and quality of life in patients with head and neck cancer. Literature searches were conducted on several library databases. A total of 50 relevant articles were identified and found to meet the inclusion criteria specified a priori. The majority of reports suggested that organ preservation techniques have the potential to result in swallowing disorders, often related to dysmotility of the oropharyngeal and laryngeal structures, and resulting in frequent episodes of aspiration. This may lead to the need for enteral feeding in the short term for some patients while, in others, this need is life long. Speech does not appear to be affected to the same degree as swallowing. These results suggest that organ preservation does not translate into function preservation for all patients with head and neck cancer.
Novel figurative phrases and idioms: phrase characteristics over multiple presentations.

PubMed

Schweigert, Wendy A; Cintron, Jennifer; Sullivan, Karin; Ilic, Emily; Ellis, Shannon; Dobrowits, Carrie; Roberts, Crystal

2003-07-01

In a series of three studies, characteristics of novel figurative phrases were compared with those of established idioms. Studies 1 and 2 found that certain correlations were found to be strong and in one direction for familiar idioms and comparably strong but in the opposite direction for novel figurative phrases, with the correlations for less familiar idioms usually falling partway between these extremes. Study 2 also noted that written or auditory presentation had minimal effects on characteristic ratings. In Study 3 the correlations among characteristics stayed relatively constant for familiar idioms after one, three, or six presentations, but for the novel figurative phrases, after multiple presentations the correlations changed in the direction of the established idioms.
Increases in individualistic words and phrases in American books, 1960-2008.

PubMed

Twenge, Jean M; Campbell, W Keith; Gentile, Brittany

2012-01-01

Cultural products such as song lyrics, television shows, and books reveal cultural differences, including cultural change over time. Two studies examine changes in the use of individualistic words (Study 1) and phrases (Study 2) in the Google Books Ngram corpus of millions of books in American English. Current samples from the general population generated and rated lists of individualistic words and phrases (e.g., "unique," "personalize," "self," "all about me," "I am special," "I'm the best"). Individualistic words and phrases increased in use between 1960 and 2008, even when controlling for changes in communal words and phrases. Language in American books has become increasingly focused on the self and uniqueness in the decades since 1960.
40 CFR 63.1434 - Equipment leak provisions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... applicable compliance date. (h) The phrase “the provisions of subparts F, I, or PPP of this part” shall apply.... In addition, the phrase “subparts F, I, and PPP” shall apply instead of the phrase “subparts F and I...
Assessing Emotional Suffering in Palliative Care: Use of a Structured Note Template to Improve Documentation.

PubMed

Lamba, Sangeeta; Berlin, Ana; Goett, Rebecca; Ponce, Christopher B; Holland, Bart; Walther, Susanne

2016-07-01

Documentation of the emotional or psychological needs of seriously ill patients receiving specialty palliative care is endorsed by the "Measuring What Matters" project as a quality performance metric and recommended for use by hospice and palliative care programs for program improvement. The aim of this study was to increase the proportion of inpatient palliative care team encounters in which emotional or psychological needs of patients and family members were documented and to qualitatively enrich the nature of this documentation. This is a mixed-methods retrospective study of 200 patient charts reviewed before and after implementation of a structured note template (SmartPhrase) for palliative care encounters. Patterns of documentation of emotional needs pre- and post-implementation were assessed quantitatively and qualitatively using thematic analysis. A total of 158 of 200 pre-intervention charts and 185 of 200 post-intervention charts included at least one note from the palliative care team. Documentation of emotional assessment increased after SmartPhrase implementation (63.9% [101 of 158] vs. 74.6% [138 of 185]; P < 0.03). Qualitative analysis revealed a post-intervention reduction in the use of generic phrases ("emotional support provided") and an increase in the breadth and depth of emotion-related documentation. A structured note template with a prompt for emotional assessment increases the overall quantity and richness of documentation related to patient and family emotions. However, this documentation remains mostly descriptive. Additional prompting for documentation of recommendations to address identified emotional needs, and the use of screening tools for depression and anxiety, when appropriate, may be necessary for clinically meaningful quality improvements in patient care. Copyright © 2016 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
High-resolution Near-infrared Observations of a Small Cluster Associated with a Bright-rimmed Cloud in W5

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Imai, Rieko; Sugitani, Koji; Miao, Jingqi; Fukuda, Naoya; Watanabe, Makoto; Kusune, Takayoshi; Pickles, Andrew J.

2017-08-01

We carried out near-infrared (IR) observations to examine star formation toward the bright-rimmed cloud SFO 12, of which the main exciting star is O7V star in W5-W. We found a small young stellar object (YSO) cluster of six members embedded in the head of SFO 12 facing its exciting star, aligned along the UV radiation incident direction from the exciting star. We carried out high-resolution near-IR observations with the Subaru adaptive optics (AO) system and revealed that three of the cluster members appear to have circumstellar envelopes, one of which shows an arm-like structure in its envelope. Our near-IR and {L}\\prime -band photometry and Spitzer IRAC data suggest that formation of two members at the tip side occurred in advance of other members toward the central part, under our adopted assumptions. Our near-IR data and previous studies imply that more YSOs are distributed in the region just outside the cloud head on the side of the main exciting star, but there is little sign of star formation toward the opposite side. We infer that star formation has been sequentially occurring from the exciting star side to the central part. We examined archival data of far-infrared and CO (J=3-2) which reveals that, unlike in the optical image, SFO 12 has a head-tail structure that is along the UV incident direction. This suggests that SFO 12 is affected by strong UV from the main exciting star. We discuss the formation of this head-tail structure and star formation there by comparing with a radiation-driven implosion (RDI) model.
Speech Inconsistency in Children With Childhood Apraxia of Speech, Language Impairment, and Speech Delay: Depends on the Stimuli.

PubMed

Iuzzini-Seigel, Jenya; Hogan, Tiffany P; Green, Jordan R

2017-05-24

The current research sought to determine (a) if speech inconsistency is a core feature of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) or if it is driven by comorbid language impairment that affects a large subset of children with CAS and (b) if speech inconsistency is a sensitive and specific diagnostic marker that can differentiate between CAS and speech delay. Participants included 48 children ranging between 4;7 to 17;8 (years;months) with CAS (n = 10), CAS + language impairment (n = 10), speech delay (n = 10), language impairment (n = 9), or typical development (n = 9). Speech inconsistency was assessed at phonemic and token-to-token levels using a variety of stimuli. Children with CAS and CAS + language impairment performed equivalently on all inconsistency assessments. Children with language impairment evidenced high levels of speech inconsistency on the phrase "buy Bobby a puppy." Token-to-token inconsistency of monosyllabic words and the phrase "buy Bobby a puppy" was sensitive and specific in differentiating children with CAS and speech delay, whereas inconsistency calculated on other stimuli (e.g., multisyllabic words) was less efficacious in differentiating between these disorders. Speech inconsistency is a core feature of CAS and is efficacious in differentiating between children with CAS and speech delay; however, sensitivity and specificity are stimuli dependent.
Grammatical analysis as a distributed neurobiological function.

PubMed

Bozic, Mirjana; Fonteneau, Elisabeth; Su, Li; Marslen-Wilson, William D

2015-03-01

Language processing engages large-scale functional networks in both hemispheres. Although it is widely accepted that left perisylvian regions have a key role in supporting complex grammatical computations, patient data suggest that some aspects of grammatical processing could be supported bilaterally. We investigated the distribution and the nature of grammatical computations across language processing networks by comparing two types of combinatorial grammatical sequences--inflectionally complex words and minimal phrases--and contrasting them with grammatically simple words. Novel multivariate analyses revealed that they engage a coalition of separable subsystems: inflected forms triggered left-lateralized activation, dissociable into dorsal processes supporting morphophonological parsing and ventral, lexically driven morphosyntactic processes. In contrast, simple phrases activated a consistently bilateral pattern of temporal regions, overlapping with inflectional activations in L middle temporal gyrus. These data confirm the role of the left-lateralized frontotemporal network in supporting complex grammatical computations. Critically, they also point to the capacity of bilateral temporal regions to support simple, linear grammatical computations. This is consistent with a dual neurobiological framework where phylogenetically older bihemispheric systems form part of the network that supports language function in the modern human, and where significant capacities for language comprehension remain intact even following severe left hemisphere damage. Copyright © 2014 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Computer-Based Linguistic Analysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, James R.

Noam Chomsky's transformational-generative grammar model may effectively be translated into an equivalent computer model. Phrase-structure rules and transformations are tested as to their validity and ordering by the computer via the process of random lexical substitution. Errors appearing in the grammar are detected and rectified, and formal…
Sentential Negation in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mowarin, Macaulay

2009-01-01

This paper undertakes a detailed analysis of sentential negation in the English language with Chomsky's Government-Binding theory of Transformational Grammar as theoretical model. It distinguishes between constituent and sentential negation in English. The essay identifies the exact position of Negation phrase in an English clause structure. It…
Interrogation: General vs. Local.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Jeannette

This paper proposes a set of hypotheses on the nature of interrogration as a possible language universal. Examples and phrase structure rules and diagrams are given. Examining Tamazight and English, genetically unrelated languages with almost no contact, the author distinguishes two types of interrogation: (1) general, querying acceptability to…
Presentation of Repeated Phrases in a Computer-Assisted Abstracting Tool Kit.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Craven, Timothy C.

2001-01-01

Discusses automatic indexing methods and describes the development of a prototype computerized abstractor's assistant. Highlights include the text network management system, TEXNET; phrase selection that follows indexing; phrase display, including Boolean capabilities; results of preliminary testing; and availability of TEXNET software. (LRW)
Evaluation of Future Fuels in a High Pressure Common Rail System - Part 1 Cummins XPI

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-10-01

compressed against the underside of the pump head to maintain contact with the pump camshaft. The underside of the pump head is shown in Figure 5...Figure 5. High Pressure Pump Head Unclassified 8 The two barrel retainers located on the underside of the pump head hold the ceramic plungers...which develop the high pressures within the pump. The plungers are driven into the barrels by the tappets as the shaft turns. They are forced back out
Population Size and Structure of Melon-Headed Whales (Peponocephala Electra) Around the Main Hawaiian Islands: Evidence of Multiple Populations Based on Photographic Data

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-05-14

approximately 60 animals were driven ashore and harvested for their meat and oil (Wilkes 1845). According to Wilkes, “the moment a school of porpoises...Beach, Bahia, Brazil were examined for food remains. Contents were found in 18 of these, with squid from eight families represented, and a myctophid...Kiszka et al. 2008), Palmyra Atoll (Pitman pers comm.), and Hawai‘i (Chapter 2). While vessel collisions pose serious risks for some marine mammal
Ambiguity's aftermath: how age differences in resolving lexical ambiguity affect subsequent comprehension.

PubMed

Lee, Chia-lin; Federmeier, Kara D

2012-04-01

When ambiguity resolution is difficult, younger adults recruit selection-related neural resources that older adults do not. To elucidate the nature of those resources and the consequences of their recruitment for subsequent comprehension, we embedded noun/verb homographs and matched unambiguous words in syntactically well-specified but semantically neutral sentences. Target words were followed by a prepositional phrase whose head noun was plausible for only one meaning of the homograph. Replicating past findings, younger but not older adults elicited sustained frontal negativity to homographs compared to unambiguous words. On the subsequent head nouns, younger adults showed plausibility effects in all conditions, attesting to successful meaning selection through suppression. In contrast, older adults showed smaller plausibility effects following ambiguous words and failed to show plausibility effects when the context picked out the homograph's non-dominant meaning (i.e., they did not suppress the contextually-irrelevant dominant meaning). Meaning suppression processes, reflected in the frontal negativity, thus become less available with age, with consequences for subsequent comprehension. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Cat got your tongue? Using the tip-of-the-tongue state to investigate fixed expressions.

PubMed

Nordmann, Emily; Cleland, Alexandra A; Bull, Rebecca

2013-01-01

Despite the fact that they play a prominent role in everyday speech, the representation and processing of fixed expressions during language production is poorly understood. Here, we report a study investigating the processes underlying fixed expression production. "Tip-of-the-tongue" (TOT) states were elicited for well-known idioms (e.g., hit the nail on the head) and participants were asked to report any information they could regarding the content of the phrase. Participants were able to correctly report individual words for idioms that they could not produce. In addition, participants produced both figurative (e.g., pretty for easy on the eye) and literal errors (e.g., hammer for hit the nail on the head) when in a TOT state, suggesting that both figurative and literal meanings are active during production. There was no effect of semantic decomposability on overall TOT incidence; however, participants recalled a greater proportion of words for decomposable rather than non-decomposable idioms. This finding suggests there may be differences in how decomposable and non-decomposable idioms are retrieved during production. Copyright © 2013 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Stem cells: roadmap to the clinic

PubMed Central

Daley, George Q.

2010-01-01

Over the last decade, a remarkable number of papers have been published in which the biology of stem cells is introduced with words and phrases such as “promise,” “rapid progress,” and “future therapies.” To separate myth and hype from reality, the articles in this Stem Cells Review series comprise a rich resource on the state of this fast-paced field and provide a balanced perspective on some of the major advances. They recount what the field has achieved over the past decade and where the field is headed. They also highlight the challenges to be faced in translating what is indeed highly promising science into proven therapies that will regenerate and repair diseased tissues. PMID:20051631
Motor-driven screwing and transporting tool for reactor pressure vessel head retaining fastenings

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Scholz, M.

1977-09-13

The invention concerns a motor-driven screwing and transporting tool for tightening or loosening the threaded studs and associated tightening nuts of the head bolting of pressure vessels. After the tightening nuts are loosened or before they are tightened, the weight of the studs is taken over by rotating bearings that can be lifted, so that the studs with their tightening nuts can be screwed in or out, the screw threads of the studs being thus weight-relieved. The invention is intended primarily for nuclear reactor pressure vessels. 21 claims, 6 figures.
Real and Imagined Body Movement Primes Metaphor Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, Nicole L.; Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr.

2007-01-01

We demonstrate in two experiments that real and imagined body movements appropriate to metaphorical phrases facilitate people's immediate comprehension of these phrases. Participants first learned to make different body movements given specific cues. In two reading time studies, people were faster to understand a metaphorical phrase, such as push…
Ethnic and Nationality Stereotypes in Everyday Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kite, Mary E.; Whitley, Bernard E., Jr.

2012-01-01

The authors describe a demonstration of stereotype use in everyday language that focuses on common phrases reflecting stereotypic beliefs about ethnic groups or nationalities. The exercise encourages students' discussion of stereotype use. Students read 13 common phrases from the English language and stated whether they had used each phrase and…
Identifying synonymy between relational phrases using word embeddings.

PubMed

Nguyen, Nhung T H; Miwa, Makoto; Tsuruoka, Yoshimasa; Tojo, Satoshi

2015-08-01

Many text mining applications in the biomedical domain benefit from automatic clustering of relational phrases into synonymous groups, since it alleviates the problem of spurious mismatches caused by the diversity of natural language expressions. Most of the previous work that has addressed this task of synonymy resolution uses similarity metrics between relational phrases based on textual strings or dependency paths, which, for the most part, ignore the context around the relations. To overcome this shortcoming, we employ a word embedding technique to encode relational phrases. We then apply the k-means algorithm on top of the distributional representations to cluster the phrases. Our experimental results show that this approach outperforms state-of-the-art statistical models including latent Dirichlet allocation and Markov logic networks. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Increases in Individualistic Words and Phrases in American Books, 1960–2008

PubMed Central

Twenge, Jean M.; Campbell, W. Keith; Gentile, Brittany

2012-01-01

Cultural products such as song lyrics, television shows, and books reveal cultural differences, including cultural change over time. Two studies examine changes in the use of individualistic words (Study 1) and phrases (Study 2) in the Google Books Ngram corpus of millions of books in American English. Current samples from the general population generated and rated lists of individualistic words and phrases (e.g., “unique,” “personalize,” “self,” “all about me,” “I am special,” “I’m the best”). Individualistic words and phrases increased in use between 1960 and 2008, even when controlling for changes in communal words and phrases. Language in American books has become increasingly focused on the self and uniqueness in the decades since 1960. PMID:22808113
Influencing feelings of cancer risk: direct and moderator effects of affectively laden phrases in risk communication.

PubMed

Janssen, Eva; van Osch, Liesbeth; Lechner, Lilian; de Vries, Hein

2015-01-01

Evidence is accumulating for the importance of feelings of risk in explaining cancer preventive behaviors, but best practices for influencing these feelings are limited. This study investigated the direct and moderational influence of affectively laden phrases in cancer risk messages. Two experimental studies were conducted in relation to different cancer-related behaviors--sunbed use (n = 112) and red meat consumption (n = 447)--among student and nonstudent samples. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (a) a cognitive message using cognitively laden phrases or (b) an affective message using affectively laden phrases. The results revealed that affective phrases did not directly influence feelings of risk in both studies. Evidence for a moderational influence was found in Study 2, suggesting that affective information strengthened the relation between feelings of risk and intention (i.e., participants relied more on their feelings in the decision-making process after exposure to affective information). These findings suggest that solely using affective phrases in risk communication may not be sufficient to directly influence feelings of risk and other methods need to be explored in future research. Moreover, research is needed to replicate our preliminary indications for a moderational influence of affective phrases to advance theory and practice.
The Role of Sustained Attention in the Production of Conjoined Noun Phrases: An Individual Differences Study.

PubMed

Jongman, Suzanne R; Meyer, Antje S; Roelofs, Ardi

2015-01-01

It has previously been shown that language production, performed simultaneously with a nonlinguistic task, involves sustained attention. Sustained attention concerns the ability to maintain alertness over time. Here, we aimed to replicate the previous finding by showing that individuals call upon sustained attention when they plan single noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot") and perform a manual arrow categorization task. In addition, we investigated whether speakers also recruit sustained attention when they produce conjoined noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot and the bucket") describing two pictures, that is, when both the first and second task are linguistic. We found that sustained attention correlated with the proportion of abnormally slow phrase-production responses. Individuals with poor sustained attention displayed a greater number of very slow responses than individuals with better sustained attention. Importantly, this relationship was obtained both for the production of single phrases while performing a nonlinguistic manual task, and the production of noun phrase conjunctions in referring to two spatially separated objects. Inhibition and updating abilities were also measured. These scores did not correlate with our measure of sustained attention, suggesting that sustained attention and executive control are distinct. Overall, the results suggest that planning conjoined noun phrases involves sustained attention, and that language production happens less automatically than has often been assumed.
Design and Operation of a 4kW Linear Motor Driven Pulse Tube Cryocooler

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zia, J. H.

2004-06-01

A 4 kW electrical input Linear Motor driven pulse tube cryocooler has successfully been designed, built and tested. The optimum operation frequency is 60 Hz with a design refrigeration of >200 W at 80 K. The design exercise involved modeling and optimization in DeltaE software. Load matching between the cold head and linear motor was achieved by careful sizing of the transfer tube. The cryocooler makes use of a dual orifice inertance network and a single compliance tank for phase optimization and streaming suppression in the pulse tube. The in-line cold head design is modular in structure for convenient change-out and re-assembly of various components. The Regenerator consists of layers of two different grades of wire-mesh. The Linear motor is a clearance seal, dual opposed piston design from CFIC Inc. Initial results have demonstrated the refrigeration target of 200 W by liquefying Nitrogen from an ambient temperature and pressure. Overall Carnot efficiencies of 13% have been achieved and efforts to further improve efficiencies are underway. Linear motor efficiencies up to 84% have been observed. Experimental results have shown satisfactory compliance with model predictions, although the effects of streaming were not part of the model. Refrigeration loss due to streaming was minimal at the design operating conditions of 80 K.
Touch-screen tablet user configurations and case-supported tilt affect head and neck flexion angles.

PubMed

Young, Justin G; Trudeau, Matthieu; Odell, Dan; Marinelli, Kim; Dennerlein, Jack T

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine how head and neck postures vary when using two media tablet (slate) computers in four common user configurations. Fifteen experienced media tablet users completed a set of simulated tasks with two media tablets in four typical user configurations. The four configurations were: on the lap and held with the user's hands, on the lap and in a case, on a table and in a case, and on a table and in a case set at a high angle for watching movies. An infra-red LED marker based motion analysis system measured head/neck postures. Head and neck flexion significantly varied across the four configurations and across the two tablets tested. Head and neck flexion angles during tablet use were greater, in general, than angles previously reported for desktop and notebook computing. Postural differences between tablets were driven by case designs, which provided significantly different tilt angles, while postural differences between configurations were driven by gaze and viewing angles. Head and neck posture during tablet computing can be improved by placing the tablet higher to avoid low gaze angles (i.e. on a table rather than on the lap) and through the use of a case that provides optimal viewing angles.
Interactive Context Integration in Children? Evidence from an Action Memory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mecklenbrauker, Silvia; Steffens, Melanie C.; Jelenec, Petra; Goergens, N. Kristine

2011-01-01

Action-object phrases (e.g., "lift the bottle") are remembered better if they have been enacted rather than learned verbally. This enactment effect is largest in free recall for phrases with objects (e.g., "bottle") present because these phrases can be interactively encoded with those context objects ("interactive context integration") that serve…
Planning in Sentence Production: Evidence for the Phrase as a Default Planning Scope

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Randi C.; Crowther, Jason E.; Knight, Meredith; Tamborello, Franklin P., II; Yang, Chin-Lung

2010-01-01

Controversy remains as to the scope of advanced planning in language production. Smith and Wheeldon (1999) found significantly longer onset latencies when subjects described moving-picture displays by producing sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase than for matched sentences beginning with a simple noun phrase. While these findings are…
Processing Coordinated Verb Phrases: The Relevance of Lexical-Semantic, Conceptual, and Contextual Information towards Establishing Verbal Parallelism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tutunjian, Damon A.

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the influence of lexical-semantic representations, conceptual similarity, and contextual fit on the processing of coordinated verb phrases. The study integrates information gleaned from current linguistic theory with current psycholinguistic approaches to examining the processing of coordinated verb phrases. It has…
Planning in sentence production: Evidence for the phrase as a default planning scope

PubMed Central

Martin, Randi C.; Crowther, Jason E.; Knight, Meredith; Tamborello, Franklin P.; Yang, Chin-Lung

2010-01-01

Controversy remains as to the scope of advanced planning in language production. Smith and Wheeldon (1999) found significantly longer onset latencies when subjects described moving picture displays by producing sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase than for matched sentences beginning with a simple noun phrase. While these findings are consistent with a phrasal scope of planning, they might also be explained on the basis of: 1) greater retrieval fluency for the second content word in the simple initial noun phrase sentences and 2) visual grouping factors. In Experiments 1 and 2, retrieval fluency for the second content word was equated for the complex and simple initial noun phrase conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 addressed the visual grouping hypothesis by using stationary displays and by comparing onset latencies for the same display for sentence and list productions. Longer onset latencies for the sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase were obtained in all experiments, supporting the phrasal scope of planning hypothesis. The results indicate that in speech, as in other motor production domains, planning occurs beyond the minimal production unit. PMID:20501338
Similarity of wh-Phrases and Acceptability Variation in wh-Islands

PubMed Central

Atkinson, Emily; Apple, Aaron; Rawlins, Kyle; Omaki, Akira

2016-01-01

In wh-questions that form a syntactic dependency between the fronted wh-phrase and its thematic position, acceptability is severely degraded when the dependency crosses another wh-phrase. It is well known that the acceptability degradation in wh-island violation ameliorates in certain contexts, but the source of this variation remains poorly understood. In the syntax literature, an influential theory – Featural Relativized Minimality – has argued that the wh-island effect is modulated exclusively by the distinctness of morpho-syntactic features in the two wh-phrases, but psycholinguistic theories of memory encoding and retrieval mechanisms predict that semantic properties of wh-phrases should also contribute to wh-island amelioration. We report four acceptability judgment experiments that systematically investigate the role of morpho-syntactic and semantic features in wh-island violations. The results indicate that the distribution of wh-island amelioration is best explained by an account that incorporates the distinctness of morpho-syntactic features as well as the semantic denotation of the wh-phrases. We argue that an integration of syntactic theories and perspectives from psycholinguistics can enrich our understanding of acceptability variation in wh-dependencies. PMID:26793156
Optic Nerve Head Biomechanics in Aging and Disease

PubMed Central

Downs, J. Crawford

2015-01-01

This nontechnical review is focused upon educating the reader on optic nerve head biomechanics in both aging and disease along two main themes: what is known about how mechanical forces and the resulting deformations are distributed in the posterior pole and ONH (biomechanics) and what is known about how the living system responds to those deformations (mechanobiology). We focus on how ONH responds to IOP elevations as a structural system, insofar as the acute mechanical response of the lamina cribrosa is confounded with the responses of the peripapillary sclera, prelaminar neural tissues, and retrolaminar optic nerve. We discuss the biomechanical basis for IOP-driven changes in connective tissues, blood flow, and cellular responses. We use glaucoma as the primary framework to present the important aspects of ONH biomechanics in aging and disease, as ONH biomechanics, aging, and the posterior pole extracellular matrix (ECM) are thought to be centrally involved in glaucoma susceptibility, onset and progression. PMID:25819451
Experimental characterization of a transition from collisionless to collisional interaction between head-on-merging supersonic plasma jets

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Moser, Auna L., E-mail: mosera@fusion.gat.com; Hsu, Scott C., E-mail: scotthsu@lanl.gov

We present results from experiments on the head-on merging of two supersonic plasma jets in an initially collisionless regime for the counter-streaming ions. The plasma jets are of either an argon/impurity or hydrogen/impurity mixture and are produced by pulsed-power-driven railguns. Based on time- and space-resolved fast-imaging, multi-chord interferometry, and survey-spectroscopy measurements of the overlapping region between the merging jets, we observe that the jets initially interpenetrate, consistent with calculated inter-jet ion collision lengths, which are long. As the jets interpenetrate, a rising mean-charge state causes a rapid decrease in the inter-jet ion collision length. Finally, the interaction becomes collisional andmore » the jets stagnate, eventually producing structures consistent with collisional shocks. These experimental observations can aid in the validation of plasma collisionality and ionization models for plasmas with complex equations of state.« less
Building Phrase Structure from Items and Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKinney-Bock, Katherine S.

2013-01-01

This dissertation aims to revisit foundational issues in syntactic theory regarding cyclicity and displacement. I take narrow syntax to operate over domains ("phases") more local than in current Minimalism. To do this, I define a notion of "phase overlap" which involves the sharing of grammatical features across two independent…
Taxonomies, Folksonomies, and Semantics: Establishing Functional Meaning in Navigational Structures

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bacha, Jeffrey A.

2012-01-01

This article argues for the establishment of a usability process that incorporates the study of "words" and "word phrases." It demonstrates how semantically mapping a navigational taxonomy can help the developers of digital environments establish a more focused sense of functional meaning for the users of their digital designs.
Information Density and Syntactic Repetition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Temperley, David; Gildea, Daniel

2015-01-01

In noun phrase (NP) coordinate constructions (e.g., NP and NP), there is a strong tendency for the syntactic structure of the second conjunct to match that of the first; the second conjunct in such constructions is therefore low in syntactic information. The theory of uniform information density predicts that low-information syntactic…

Language Switching in the Production of Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tarlowski, Andrzej; Wodniecka, Zofia; Marzecova, Anna

2013-01-01

The language switching task has provided a useful insight into how bilinguals produce language. So far, however, the studies using this method have been limited to lexical access. The present study provides empirical evidence on language switching in the production of simple grammar structures. In the reported experiment, Polish-English unbalanced…
More than Words: Frequency Effects for Multi-Word Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arnon, Inbal; Snider, Neal

2010-01-01

There is mounting evidence that language users are sensitive to distributional information at many grain-sizes. Much of this research has focused on the distributional properties of words, the units they consist of (morphemes, phonemes), and the syntactic structures they appear in (verb-categorization frames, syntactic constructions). In a series…
Bootstrapping the Syntactic Bootstrapper: Probabilistic Labeling of Prosodic Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gutman, Ariel; Dautriche, Isabelle; Crabbé, Benoît; Christophe, Anne

2015-01-01

The "syntactic bootstrapping" hypothesis proposes that syntactic structure provides children with cues for learning the meaning of novel words. In this article, we address the question of how children might start acquiring some aspects of syntax before they possess a sizeable lexicon. The study presents two models of early syntax…
Hydro-dynamic damping theory in flowing water

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Monette, C.; Nennemann, B.; Seeley, C.; Coutu, A.; Marmont, H.

2014-03-01

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) has a major impact on the dynamic response of the structural components of hydroelectric turbines. On mid-head to high-head Francis runners, the rotor-stator interaction (RSI) phenomenon always has to be considered carefully during the design phase to avoid operational issues later on. The RSI dynamic response amplitudes are driven by three main factors: (1) pressure forcing amplitudes, (2) excitation frequencies in relation to natural frequencies and (3) damping. The prediction of the two first factors has been largely documented in the literature. However, the prediction of fluid damping has received less attention in spite of being critical when the runner is close to resonance. Experimental damping measurements in flowing water on hydrofoils were presented previously. Those results showed that the hydro-dynamic damping increased linearly with the flow. This paper presents development and validation of a mathematical model, based on momentum exchange, to predict damping due to fluid structure interaction in flowing water. The model is implemented as an analytical procedure for simple structures, such as cantilever beams, but is also implemented in more general ways using three different approaches for more complex structures such as runner blades: a finite element procedure, a CFD modal work based approach and a CFD 1DOF approach. The mathematical model and all three implementation approaches are shown to agree well with experimental results.
Head and neck second primary cancer rates in the human papillomavirus era: A population-based analysis.

PubMed

Diaz, Dayssy Alexandra; Reis, Isildinha M; Weed, Donald T; Elsayyad, Nagy; Samuels, Michael; Abramowitz, Matthew C

2016-04-01

Patients with head and neck cancer are at high risk for second primary malignancies. Human papillomavirus (HPV)-driven tumors are generally high-grade oropharyngeal cancers. We analyzed the incidence of second primary malignancy of the head and neck in patients with primary squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the head and neck and temporal trends in the HPV era. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database was queried for patients with SCC of the head and neck (range, 1973-2008). Cumulative incidence rates of second primary malignancy of the head and neck were compared based on competing risk analysis. A total of 104,639 cases were included in this study, of which 4616 patients had second primary malignancy of the head and neck. Oropharyngeal cancer incidence increased over time. Estimated incidence rate/10,000 person-years (105.5, 80.6, and 50.2 for 1973-1989, 1990-1999, and 2000-2008, respectively) and cumulative incidence rates (10-year rates of 6.68%, 5.72%, and 4.59% for 1973-1989, 1990-1999, and 2000-2008, respectively) of second primary malignancies of the head and neck for patients with oropharyngeal cancer decreased over time (p < .001). The second primary malignancy of the head and neck incidence rate was significantly lower in patients with high-grade oropharyngeal cancer from 2000 to 2008 (30.3 vs 65.5 and 54.6 from 1973-1989 and 1990-1999, respectively; p < .001). The incidence of second primary malignancy of the head and neck in patients with head and neck cancer has decreased over time. This is driven by lower rates in patients with high-grade oropharyngeal cancer, is temporally related with increases in HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer, and suggests that incidence rates of second primary malignancy of the head and neck may be lower for HPV-associated cancer. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 38: E873-E883, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Role of Sustained Attention in the Production of Conjoined Noun Phrases: An Individual Differences Study

PubMed Central

Jongman, Suzanne R.; Meyer, Antje S.; Roelofs, Ardi

2015-01-01

It has previously been shown that language production, performed simultaneously with a nonlinguistic task, involves sustained attention. Sustained attention concerns the ability to maintain alertness over time. Here, we aimed to replicate the previous finding by showing that individuals call upon sustained attention when they plan single noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot") and perform a manual arrow categorization task. In addition, we investigated whether speakers also recruit sustained attention when they produce conjoined noun phrases (e.g., "the carrot and the bucket") describing two pictures, that is, when both the first and second task are linguistic. We found that sustained attention correlated with the proportion of abnormally slow phrase-production responses. Individuals with poor sustained attention displayed a greater number of very slow responses than individuals with better sustained attention. Importantly, this relationship was obtained both for the production of single phrases while performing a nonlinguistic manual task, and the production of noun phrase conjunctions in referring to two spatially separated objects. Inhibition and updating abilities were also measured. These scores did not correlate with our measure of sustained attention, suggesting that sustained attention and executive control are distinct. Overall, the results suggest that planning conjoined noun phrases involves sustained attention, and that language production happens less automatically than has often been assumed. PMID:26335441
Blue Car, Red Car: Developing Efficiency in Online Interpretation of Adjective-Noun Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fernald, Anne; Thorpe, Kirsten; Marchman, Virginia A.

2010-01-01

Two experiments investigated the development of fluency in interpreting adjective-noun phrases in 30- and 36-month-old English-learning children. Using online processing measures, children's gaze patterns were monitored as they heard the familiar adjective-noun phrases (e.g. "blue car") in visual contexts where the adjective was either informative…
Distinct ERP Signatures of Word Frequency, Phrase Frequency, and Prototypicality in Speech Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hendrix, Peter; Bolger, Patrick; Baayen, Harald

2017-01-01

Recent studies have documented frequency effects for word n-grams, independently of word unigram frequency. Further studies have revealed constructional prototype effects, both at the word level as well as for phrases. The present speech production study investigates the time course of these effects for the production of prepositional phrases in…
Phrase Length Matters: The Interplay between Implicit Prosody and Syntax in Korean "Garden Path" Sentences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hwang, Hyekyung; Steinhauer, Karsten

2011-01-01

In spoken language comprehension, syntactic parsing decisions interact with prosodic phrasing, which is directly affected by phrase length. Here we used ERPs to examine whether a similar effect holds for the on-line processing of written sentences during silent reading, as suggested by theories of "implicit prosody." Ambiguous Korean sentence…
Facilitating Lecture Recall: The Effects of Embedded Imagery-Evoking Phrases.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thrailkill, Nancy J.; Ormrod, Jeanne Ellis

Three experiments describe the effects of imagery on learning a large and integrated body of information from a college lecture. It was hypothesized that high-imagery phrases would be more easily recalled and would promote recall of abstract verbal phrases in close temporal proximity to them. In experiment 1, 22 undergraduates attended a lecture…
Doing the Best You Can: A Study of Values in a Group of Nun Educators

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hogard, Elaine

2004-01-01

A group of experienced and well-qualified nun educators were interviewed regarding their experiences and values. A recurrent phrase occurring in the interviews was "Doing the best you can". This phrase served to both justify and anticipate statements. A questionnaire was constructed to encourage elaboration of the phrase and to detect…
A Bidirectional Study on the Acquisition of Plural Noun Phrase Interpretation in English and Spanish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ionin, Tania; Montrul, Silvina; Crivos, Monica

2013-01-01

This paper investigates how learners interpret definite plural noun phrases (e.g., "the tigers") and bare (article-less) plural noun phrases (e.g., "tigers") in their second language. Whereas Spanish allows definite plurals to have both generic and specific readings, English requires definite plurals to have specific, nongeneric readings. Generic…
An "Alms-Basket" of "Bric-a-Brac": "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable".

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bunge, Charles A.

1999-01-01

Describes the development and history of "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," a reference source first published in 1870 that includes the etymology of phrases, allusions and words. Discusses reviews that reflected and shaped its status as a standard reference book, describes the current edition, and considers its enduring value.…
77 FR 24462 - Certain Steel Nails From the People's Republic of China: Amended Final Results of the Second...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-04-24

... steel nails: (1) Non-collated (i.e., hand-driven or bulk), two-piece steel nails having plastic or steel...-collated (i.e., hand-driven or bulk), steel nails having a bright or galvanized finish, a smooth, barbed or... actual head diameter of 0.3375'' to 0.500'', inclusive; and (4) Non-collated (i.e., hand-driven or bulk...
The intonation of gapping and coordination in Japanese: evidence for intonational phrase and utterance.

PubMed

Kawahara, Shigeto; Shinya, Takahito

2008-01-01

In previous studies of Japanese intonational phonology, levels of prosodic constituents above the Major Phrase have not received much attention. This paper argues that at least two prosodic levels exist above the Major Phrase in Japanese. Through a detailed investigation of the intonation of gapping and coordination in Japanese, we argue that each syntactic clause projects its own Intonational Phrase, while an entire sentence constitutes one Utterance. We show that the Intonational Phrase is characterized by tonal lowering, creakiness and a pause in final position, as well as a distinctive large initial rise and pitch reset at its beginning. The Utterance defines a domain of declination, and it is signaled by an even larger initial rise, as well as a phrasal H tone at its right edge. Building on our empirical findings, we discuss several implications for the theory of intonational phonology. (c) 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel.
NASA automatic subject analysis technique for extracting retrievable multi-terms (NASA TERM) system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kirschbaum, J.; Williamson, R. E.

1978-01-01

Current methods for information processing and retrieval used at the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Facility are reviewed. A more cost effective computer aided indexing system is proposed which automatically generates print terms (phrases) from the natural text. Satisfactory print terms can be generated in a primarily automatic manner to produce a thesaurus (NASA TERMS) which extends all the mappings presently applied by indexers, specifies the worth of each posting term in the thesaurus, and indicates the areas of use of the thesaurus entry phrase. These print terms enable the computer to determine which of several terms in a hierarchy is desirable and to differentiate ambiguous terms. Steps in the NASA TERMS algorithm are discussed and the processing of surrogate entry phrases is demonstrated using four previously manually indexed STAR abstracts for comparison. The simulation shows phrase isolation, text phrase reduction, NASA terms selection, and RECON display.
Evaluation of respondent-driven sampling.

PubMed

McCreesh, Nicky; Frost, Simon D W; Seeley, Janet; Katongole, Joseph; Tarsh, Matilda N; Ndunguse, Richard; Jichi, Fatima; Lunel, Natasha L; Maher, Dermot; Johnston, Lisa G; Sonnenberg, Pam; Copas, Andrew J; Hayes, Richard J; White, Richard G

2012-01-01

Respondent-driven sampling is a novel variant of link-tracing sampling for estimating the characteristics of hard-to-reach groups, such as HIV prevalence in sex workers. Despite its use by leading health organizations, the performance of this method in realistic situations is still largely unknown. We evaluated respondent-driven sampling by comparing estimates from a respondent-driven sampling survey with total population data. Total population data on age, tribe, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual activity, and HIV status were available on a population of 2402 male household heads from an open cohort in rural Uganda. A respondent-driven sampling (RDS) survey was carried out in this population, using current methods of sampling (RDS sample) and statistical inference (RDS estimates). Analyses were carried out for the full RDS sample and then repeated for the first 250 recruits (small sample). We recruited 927 household heads. Full and small RDS samples were largely representative of the total population, but both samples underrepresented men who were younger, of higher socioeconomic status, and with unknown sexual activity and HIV status. Respondent-driven sampling statistical inference methods failed to reduce these biases. Only 31%-37% (depending on method and sample size) of RDS estimates were closer to the true population proportions than the RDS sample proportions. Only 50%-74% of respondent-driven sampling bootstrap 95% confidence intervals included the population proportion. Respondent-driven sampling produced a generally representative sample of this well-connected nonhidden population. However, current respondent-driven sampling inference methods failed to reduce bias when it occurred. Whether the data required to remove bias and measure precision can be collected in a respondent-driven sampling survey is unresolved. Respondent-driven sampling should be regarded as a (potentially superior) form of convenience sampling method, and caution is required when interpreting findings based on the sampling method.
Tailored hierarchical micelle architectures using living crystallization-driven self-assembly in two dimensions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hudson, Zachary M.; Boott, Charlotte E.; Robinson, Matthew E.; Rupar, Paul A.; Winnik, Mitchell A.; Manners, Ian

2014-10-01

Recent advances in the self-assembly of block copolymers have enabled the precise fabrication of hierarchical nanostructures using low-cost solution-phase protocols. However, the preparation of well-defined and complex planar nanostructures in which the size is controlled in two dimensions (2D) has remained a challenge. Using a series of platelet-forming block copolymers, we have demonstrated through quantitative experiments that the living crystallization-driven self-assembly (CDSA) approach can be extended to growth in 2D. We used 2D CDSA to prepare uniform lenticular platelet micelles of controlled size and to construct precisely concentric lenticular micelles composed of spatially distinct functional regions, as well as complex structures analogous to nanoscale single- and double-headed arrows and spears. These methods represent a route to hierarchical nanostructures that can be tailored in 2D, with potential applications as diverse as liquid crystals, diagnostic technology and composite reinforcement.
Evidence of Cognitive Dysfunction after Soccer Playing with Ball Heading Using a Novel Tablet-Based Approach

PubMed Central

Lin, Angela H.; Patel, Saumil S.; Sereno, Anne B.

2013-01-01

Does frequent head-to-ball contact cause cognitive dysfunctions and brain injury to soccer players? An iPad-based experiment was designed to examine the impact of ball-heading among high school female soccer players. We examined both direct, stimulus-driven, or reflexive point responses (Pro-Point) as well as indirect, goal-driven, or voluntary point responses (Anti-Point), thought to require cognitive functions in the frontal lobe. The results show that soccer players were significantly slower than controls in the Anti-Point task but displayed no difference in Pro-Point latencies, indicating a disruption specific to voluntary responses. These findings suggest that even subconcussive blows in soccer can result in cognitive function changes that are consistent with mild traumatic brain injury of the frontal lobes. There is great clinical and practical potential of a tablet-based application for quick detection and monitoring of cognitive dysfunction. PMID:23460843
Composition of complex numbers: Delineating the computational role of the left anterior temporal lobe.

PubMed

Blanco-Elorrieta, Esti; Pylkkänen, Liina

2016-01-01

What is the neurobiological basis of our ability to create complex messages with language? Results from multiple methodologies have converged on a set of brain regions as relevant for this general process, but the computational details of these areas remain to be characterized. The left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) has been a consistent node within this network, with results suggesting that although it rather systematically shows increased activation for semantically complex structured stimuli, this effect does not extend to number phrases such as 'three books.' In the present work we used magnetoencephalography to investigate whether numbers in general are an invalid input to the combinatory operations housed in the LATL or whether the lack of LATL engagement for stimuli such as 'three books' is due to the quantificational nature of such phrases. As a relevant test case, we employed complex number terms such as 'twenty-three', where one number term is not a quantifier of the other but rather, the two terms form a type of complex concept. In a number naming paradigm, participants viewed rows of numbers and depending on task instruction, named them as complex number terms ('twenty-three'), numerical quantifications ('two threes'), adjectival modifications ('blue threes') or non-combinatory lists (e.g., 'two, three'). While quantificational phrases failed to engage the LATL as compared to non-combinatory controls, both complex number terms and adjectival modifications elicited a reliable activity increase in the LATL. Our results show that while the LATL does not participate in the enumeration of tokens within a set, exemplified by the quantificational phrases, it does support conceptual combination, including the composition of complex number concepts. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

V-type multicylinder internal combustion engine

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tsuboi, M.

1986-05-20

A V-type multicylinder internal combustion engine is described for vehicles comprising front and rear cylinder blocks arrayed in V shape longitudinally of a vehicle body, front and rear cylinder heads fixed on each cylinder block, pistons sliding in the cylinder blocks, a crank and transmission case formed uniformly on the cylinder blocks, a crankshaft extending transversely of the vehicle body borne rotatably on both side walls of the crank and transmission case at journals on both sides, the crankshaft being coupled to the pistons at a crank pin through connecting rods and provided with front and rear driving sprockets, frontmore » and rear cam shafts mounted rotatably on the cylinder heads with driven sprockets fixed thereon, a front timing chain laid between the front driving sprocket and the front driven sprocket and constituting together with the front driving and driven sprockets a front cam driving means, a rear timing chain laid between the rear driving sprocket and the rear driven sprocket and constituting together with the rear driving and driven sprockets a rear cam driving means, and a speed change gear coupled to the crankshaft by way of a primary reduction gear and a clutch.« less
Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Head Teachers: Their Changing Role

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rice, Ann

2005-01-01

Change in Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Australia is being driven by government initiatives that must be operationalised at the college level. Head teachers are the frontline managers in these colleges, who have to ensure their sections are responsive to the changes while also meeting the educational requirements of their traditional…
Resilient Partners: The Development of a University-Community Collaboration to Promote Wellness for Head Start Children and Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mendez, Julia L.; Lloyd, Blake Te'Neil

2005-01-01

This paper describes a theoretically driven approach uniquely suited for the development of research partnerships between university teams and local communities serving children enrolled in Head Start programs. A literature review on dimensions of successful research partnerships provides a backdrop for presenting the Resilience…
Case Markers in Mongolian: A Means for Encoding Null Constituents in Noun Phrase and Relative Clause

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Otgonsuren, Tseden

2017-01-01

This paper focuses on the capacity of the case markers in the Mongolian language, as a relative element, to generate any finite noun phrase or relative clause based on their syntactic function or relationship. In Mongolian, there are two different approaches to generate noun phrases: parataxis and hypotaxis. According to my early observation, if…
7 CFR 15f.4 - What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... 7 Agriculture 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean? 15f.4 Section 15f.4 Agriculture Office of the Secretary of Agriculture ADJUDICATIONS UNDER....4 What do certain words and phrases in these regulations mean? Agency means the USDA agency, office...
Metaphorical Salience in Artistic Text Processing: Evidence From Eye Movement.

PubMed

Novikova, Eleonora G; Janyan, Armina; Tsaregorodtseva, Oksana V

2015-01-01

The study aimed to explore processing difference between a literal phrase and a metaphoric one. Unlike artificially created stimuli in most experimental research, an artistic text with an ambiguous binary metaphoric phrase was used. Eye tracking methodology was applied. Results suggested difference between the two types of phrases in both early and late processing measures. © The Author(s) 2015.
Fluent aphasia in children: definition and natural history.

PubMed

Klein, S K; Masur, D; Farber, K; Shinnar, S; Rapin, I

1992-01-01

We compared the course of a preschool child we followed for 4 years with published reports of 24 children with fluent aphasia. Our patient spoke fluently within 3 weeks of the injury. She was severely anomic and made many semantic paraphasic errors. Unlike other children with fluent aphasia, her prosody of speech was impaired initially, and her spontaneous language was dominated by stock phrases. Residual deficits include chronic impairment of auditory comprehension, repetition, and word retrieval. She has more disfluencies in spontaneous speech 4 years after her head injury than acutely. School achievement in reading and mathematics remains below age level. Attention to the timing of recovery of fluent speech and to the characteristics of receptive and expressive language over time will permit more accurate description of fluent aphasia in childhood.
Planning in sentence production: evidence for the phrase as a default planning scope.

PubMed

Martin, Randi C; Crowther, Jason E; Knight, Meredith; Tamborello, Franklin P; Yang, Chin-Lung

2010-08-01

Controversy remains as to the scope of advanced planning in language production. Smith and Wheeldon (1999) found significantly longer onset latencies when subjects described moving-picture displays by producing sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase than for matched sentences beginning with a simple noun phrase. While these findings are consistent with a phrasal scope of planning, they might also be explained on the basis of: (1) greater retrieval fluency for the second content word in the simple initial noun phrase sentences and (2) visual grouping factors. In Experiments 1 and 2, retrieval fluency for the second content word was equated for the complex and simple initial noun phrase conditions. Experiments 3 and 4 addressed the visual grouping hypothesis by using stationary displays and by comparing onset latencies for the same display for sentence and list productions. Longer onset latencies for the sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase were obtained in all experiments, supporting the phrasal scope of planning hypothesis. The results indicate that in speech, as in other motor production domains, planning occurs beyond the minimal production unit. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Phrasing in the speech and reading of the hearing impaired.

PubMed

Gregory, J F

1986-08-01

The study reported here explored a partial explanation for the fourth-grade "bottleneck" in literacy advancement by hearing-impaired students. Speech samples from 21 deaf subjects were rated for degree of evident phrasal quality. Likewise, reading comprehension scores for each student were obtained under four reading conditions: reading in whole sentences, in phrases, in fragmented word groups, and in single words. Degree of rated speech phrasality was found to relate significantly and positively to correct recall answers to questions based upon silent reading of passages typed in meaningful word groups (but not when the passages were typed in whole sentences, fragmented word groups, or in single words). The results were taken to suggest that--whereas staccato-speaking deaf students may lack a sense of the phrase altogether--phrasal-speaking deaf youngsters fail to independently apply their phrase sense in the normal reading situation. Thus, both types of deaf youngsters have difficulty affecting the transition to phrase reading that is common for hearing students at or about the fourth-grade level. Finally, I argue that this phrase sense can be instilled in hearing-impaired students and that they can be trained to use it in reading.
From Acoustic Segmentation to Language Processing: Evidence from Optical Imaging

PubMed Central

Obrig, Hellmuth; Rossi, Sonja; Telkemeyer, Silke; Wartenburger, Isabell

2010-01-01

During language acquisition in infancy and when learning a foreign language, the segmentation of the auditory stream into words and phrases is a complex process. Intuitively, learners use “anchors” to segment the acoustic speech stream into meaningful units like words and phrases. Regularities on a segmental (e.g., phonological) or suprasegmental (e.g., prosodic) level can provide such anchors. Regarding the neuronal processing of these two kinds of linguistic cues a left-hemispheric dominance for segmental and a right-hemispheric bias for suprasegmental information has been reported in adults. Though lateralization is common in a number of higher cognitive functions, its prominence in language may also be a key to understanding the rapid emergence of the language network in infants and the ease at which we master our language in adulthood. One question here is whether the hemispheric lateralization is driven by linguistic input per se or whether non-linguistic, especially acoustic factors, “guide” the lateralization process. Methodologically, functional magnetic resonance imaging provides unsurpassed anatomical detail for such an enquiry. However, instrumental noise, experimental constraints and interference with EEG assessment limit its applicability, pointedly in infants and also when investigating the link between auditory and linguistic processing. Optical methods have the potential to fill this gap. Here we review a number of recent studies using optical imaging to investigate hemispheric differences during segmentation and basic auditory feature analysis in language development. PMID:20725516
On the efficiency of the golf swing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

White, Rod

2006-12-01

A non-driven double pendulum model is used to explain the principle underlying the surprising efficiency of the golf swing. The principle can be described as a parametric energy transfer between the arms and the club head due to the changing moment of inertia of the club. The transfer is a consequence of conservation of energy and angular momentum. Because the pendulum is not driven by an external force, it shows that the golfer need do little more than accelerate the arms with the wrists cocked and let the double pendulum transfer kinetic energy to the club head. A driven double pendulum model is used to study factors affecting the efficiency of a real golf swing. It is concluded that the wrist-cock angle is the most significant efficiency-determining parameter under the golfer's control and that improvements in golf technology have had a significant impact on driving distance.
Children’s Relative Clause Markers in Two Nonmainstream Dialects of English

PubMed Central

Oetting, Janna B.; Newkirk, Brandi L.

2013-01-01

Purpose We examined children’s productions of mainstream and nonmainstream relative clause markers (e.g., that, who, which, what, where, Ø) in African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) as a function of three linguistic variables (syntactic role of the marker, humanness of the antecedent, and adjacency of the noun phrase head). Method The data were language samples from 99 typically developing four- to six-year-olds; 61 spoke AAE and 38 spoke SWE. Results The majority of the children’s relative clauses included mainstream markers. Nonmainstream markers were rare, with 3-6% involving Ø subjects and 2% involving what. The children produced who exclusively as subjects and with human antecedents, where exclusively as locatives and with nonhuman antecedents, and Ø and what primarily as direct objects or objects of prepositions and with nonhuman antecedents. Conclusions Although AAE- and SWE-speaking children produce some nonmainstream relative markers, the majority of their markers are mainstream. Their use of relative markers is also influenced by linguistic variables in ways that are consistent with a wide range of mainstream and nonmainstream English dialects. These findings show across-dialect similarity in children’s relative clauses, even though characterization of relative clauses as a contrastive dialect structure remains justified. PMID:21453062
The Reed & Kellogg System of Sentence Diagramming and Its Implementation in Higher Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coats, Judith Ruth

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to research whether or not the intervention of the Reed & Kellogg System of sentence diagramming would make a significant difference in the acquisition, retention, and comprehension of the basic grammatical skills, including parts of speech, complements, phrases, clauses, and sentence structures, on the higher…
Pedagogical Materials 2. The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Filipovic, Rudolf, Ed.

The second volume in this series on Serbo-Croatian-English contrastive analysis contains seven articles. They are: "The Use of Contrastive and Error Analysis to Practicing Teachers," by Rudolf Filipovic; "Some Problems in Teaching English Noun Phrases as Subject to Serbo-Croatian Speakers,""Problems in Teaching the Structure of Some English Noun…
Similarities and Differences between Phrase Structure and Morphosyntactic Violations in Spanish: An Event-Related Potentials Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinojosa, Jose A.; Martin-Loeches, Manuel; Casado, Pilar; Munoz, Francisco; Rubia, Francisco J.

2003-01-01

Event-related potentials (EPRs) were employed to compare word category and verb inflection violations in Spanish. A similar frontal negativity was found between 250-400 ms for both violation types, suggesting that they equally disrupt initial syntactic analyses. These and other findings are discussed in detail. (VWL)
Education, Post-Structuralism and the Politics of Difference

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peters, Michael A.

2005-01-01

This article examines the "politics of difference," a phrase now almost synonymous with postmodernism and the critique of the Enlightenment. The article provides a post-structuralist take on this critique arguing that a critique of Enlightenment values can lead to a deepening of democracy and using Foucault's notion of governmentality to elucidate…
Syntactic Priming in Comprehension: Parallelism Effects with and without Coordination

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sturt, Patrick; Keller, Frank; Dubey, Amit

2010-01-01

Although previous research has shown a processing facilitation for conjoined phrases that share the same structure, it is currently not clear whether this parallelism advantage is specific to particular syntactic environments such as coordination, or whether it is an example of more general effect in sentence comprehension. Here, we report three…
Without Specifiers: Phrase Structure and Events

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lohndal, Terje

2012-01-01

This dissertation attempts to unify two reductionist hypotheses: that there is no relational difference between specifiers and complements, and that verbs do not have thematic arguments. I argue that these two hypotheses actually bear on each other and that we get a better theory if we pursue both of them. The thesis is centered around the…
Can Individuals with Down Syndrome Improve Their Grammar?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sepulveda, Esther Moraleda; Lopez-Villasenor, Miguel Lazaro; Heinze, Elena Garayzabal

2013-01-01

Morphosyntax constitutes one of the most complex areas of language. It takes into account the structure of the word and that of the sentence, and its development allows one to establish adequately agreements both within the nominal phrase and in the rest of the sentence. Morphosyntax is particularly impaired in individuals with Down syndrome. To…
Nominal Modifiers in Mandarin Chinese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hou, John Y.

In the surface structure of Chinese nominal modifiers (quantifiers, determiners, adjectives, measure phrase, relative clause, etc.) may occur either before or after a modified noun. In most of the transformational studies of Chinese syntax (e.g. Cheng 1966; Hashimoto 1966; Mei 1972; Tai 1973; Teng 1974), it has been assumed that such NP's have the…

Functional Sentence Perspective and Composition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vande Kopple, William J.

Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) is a theory that predicts how units of information should be distributed in a sentence and how sentences should be related in a discourse. A binary topic-comment structure is assigned to each FSP sentence. For most English sentences, the topic is associated with the subject or the left-most noun phrase, and…
On the Early Left-Anterior Negativity (ELAN) in Syntax Studies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steinhauer, Karsten; Drury, John E.

2012-01-01

Within the framework of Friederici's (2002) neurocognitive model of sentence processing, the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) in event-related potentials (ERPs) has been claimed to be a brain marker of syntactic first-pass parsing. As ELAN components seem to be exclusively elicited by word category violations (phrase structure violations),…
Exploiting Acoustic and Syntactic Features for Automatic Prosody Labeling in a Maximum Entropy Framework

PubMed Central

Sridhar, Vivek Kumar Rangarajan; Bangalore, Srinivas; Narayanan, Shrikanth S.

2009-01-01

In this paper, we describe a maximum entropy-based automatic prosody labeling framework that exploits both language and speech information. We apply the proposed framework to both prominence and phrase structure detection within the Tones and Break Indices (ToBI) annotation scheme. Our framework utilizes novel syntactic features in the form of supertags and a quantized acoustic–prosodic feature representation that is similar to linear parameterizations of the prosodic contour. The proposed model is trained discriminatively and is robust in the selection of appropriate features for the task of prosody detection. The proposed maximum entropy acoustic–syntactic model achieves pitch accent and boundary tone detection accuracies of 86.0% and 93.1% on the Boston University Radio News corpus, and, 79.8% and 90.3% on the Boston Directions corpus. The phrase structure detection through prosodic break index labeling provides accuracies of 84% and 87% on the two corpora, respectively. The reported results are significantly better than previously reported results and demonstrate the strength of maximum entropy model in jointly modeling simple lexical, syntactic, and acoustic features for automatic prosody labeling. PMID:19603083
Self-organization of progress across the century of physics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Perc, Matjaž

2013-04-01

We make use of information provided in the titles and abstracts of over half a million publications that were published by the American Physical Society during the past 119 years. By identifying all unique words and phrases and determining their monthly usage patterns, we obtain quantifiable insights into the trends of physics discovery from the end of the 19th century to today. We show that the magnitudes of upward and downward trends yield heavy-tailed distributions, and that their emergence is due to the Matthew effect. This indicates that both the rise and fall of scientific paradigms is driven by robust principles of self-organization. Data also confirm that periods of war decelerate scientific progress, and that the later is very much subject to globalisation.
13 CFR 142.6 - What does the phrase “know or have reason to know” mean?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... 13 Business Credit and Assistance 1 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false What does the phrase âknow or have reason to knowâ mean? 142.6 Section 142.6 Business Credit and Assistance SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM FRAUD CIVIL REMEDIES ACT REGULATIONS Overview and Definitions § 142.6 What does the phrase “know...
Just Education: The Right to Education in Context and Conversation. Values and Ethics Series, Volume 3.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stengel, Barbara Senkowski

This book takes an interpretative look at a common phrase in American educational equity lexicon, "the right to education." It addresses the educational disputes and issues of policy, procedure, and popular will that are associated with this phrase. Interpretation of the phrase is based on a focus on the everyday situations in which a right to…
Searching PubMed for studies on bacteremia, bloodstream infection, septicemia, or whatever the best term is: a note of caution.

PubMed

Søgaard, Mette; Andersen, Jens P; Schønheyder, Henrik C

2012-04-01

There is inconsistency in the terminology used to describe bacteremia. To demonstrate the impact on information retrieval, we compared the yield of articles from PubMed MEDLINE using the terms "bacteremia," "bloodstream infection," and "septicemia." We searched for articles published between 1966 and 2009, and depicted the relationships among queries graphically. To examine the content of the retrieved articles, we extracted all Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and compared topic similarity using a cosine measure. The recovered articles differed greatly by term, and only 53 articles were captured by all terms. Of the articles retrieved by the "bacteremia" query, 21,438 (84.1%) were not captured when searching for "bloodstream infection" or "septicemia." Likewise, only 2,243 of the 11,796 articles recovered by free-text query for "bloodstream infection" were retrieved by the "bacteremia" query (19%). Entering "bloodstream infection" as a phrase, 46.1% of the records overlapped with the "bacteremia" query. Similarity measures ranged from 0.52 to 0.78 and were lowest for "bloodstream infection" as a phrase compared with "septicemia." Inconsistent terminology has a major impact on the yield of queries. Agreement on terminology should be sought and promoted by scientific journals. An immediate solution is to add "bloodstream infection" as entry term for bacteremia in the MeSH vocabulary. Copyright © 2012 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.
Zipf's law holds for phrases, not words.

PubMed

Williams, Jake Ryland; Lessard, Paul R; Desu, Suma; Clark, Eric M; Bagrow, James P; Danforth, Christopher M; Dodds, Peter Sheridan

2015-08-11

With Zipf's law being originally and most famously observed for word frequency, it is surprisingly limited in its applicability to human language, holding over no more than three to four orders of magnitude before hitting a clear break in scaling. Here, building on the simple observation that phrases of one or more words comprise the most coherent units of meaning in language, we show empirically that Zipf's law for phrases extends over as many as nine orders of rank magnitude. In doing so, we develop a principled and scalable statistical mechanical method of random text partitioning, which opens up a rich frontier of rigorous text analysis via a rank ordering of mixed length phrases.
Lasers for industrial production processing: tailored tools with increasing flexibility

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rath, Wolfram

2012-03-01

High-power fiber lasers are the newest generation of diode-pumped solid-state lasers. Due to their all-fiber design they are compact, efficient and robust. Rofin's Fiber lasers are available with highest beam qualities but the use of different process fiber core sizes enables the user additionally to adapt the beam quality, focus size and Rayleigh length to his requirements for best processing results. Multi-mode fibers from 50μm to 600μm with corresponding beam qualities of 2.5 mm.mrad to 25 mm.mrad are typically used. The integrated beam switching modules can make the laser power available to 4 different manufacturing systems or can share the power to two processing heads for parallel processing. Also CO2 Slab lasers combine high power with either "single-mode" beam quality or higher order modes. The wellestablished technique is in use for a large number of industrial applications, processing either metals or non-metallic materials. For many of these applications CO2 lasers remain the best choice of possible laser sources either driven by the specific requirements of the application or because of the cost structure of the application. The actual technical properties of these lasers will be presented including an overview over the wavelength driven differences of application results, examples of current industrial practice as cutting, welding, surface processing including the flexible use of scanners and classical optics processing heads.
Reorganized text.

PubMed

2015-05-01

Reorganized Text: In the Original Investigation titled “Patterns of Hospital Utilization for Head and Neck Cancer Care: Changing Demographics” posted online in the January 29, 2015, issue of JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery (doi:10.1001 /jamaoto.2014.3603), information was copied within sections and text rearranged to accommodate Continuing Medical Education quiz formatting. The information from the topic statements of each paragraph in the Hypothesis Testing subsection of the Methods section was collected in a new first paragraph for that subsection, which reads as follows: “Several hypotheses regarding the causes of regionalization of HNCA care were tested using the NIS data: (1) increasing patient comorbidities over time, causing a shift in care to teaching institutions that would theoretically be better equipped to handle such increased comorbidities; (2) shifting of payer status; (3) increased proportion of prior radiation therapy; and (4) a higher fraction of more complex procedures being referred and performed at teaching institutions.” In addition, the phrase "As summarized in Table3," was added to the beginning of paragraph 6 of the Discussion section, and the call-out to Table 3 in the middle of that paragraph was deleted. Finally, paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Discussion section were combined.
[Remarks on Leon Popielski's manuscript of his review of January Zubrzycki's qualifying thesis for professorship dating from 1915].

PubMed

Heimrath, T

1994-01-01

A review written by professor Leon Popielski from Lvov of the qualifying thesis for professorship of January Zubrzycki from Cracow is presented. The manuscript has been kept by professor Popielski's family. Zubrzycki finished his medical studies in Cracow in 1909. While writing his qualifying thesis entitled Placental Albumin Derivatives and their Toxic Properties in 1915 he was an assistant of Aleksander Rosner in the department of maternity and gynaecology of Jagiellonian University. In 1931 as a professor he became the head of the clinic and following the Second World War he was a professor at several faculties of medicine in Poland. He was an outstanding gynaecological surgeon, an author of a five volume atlas of gynaecological surgery. Professor Leon Popielski studied in S. Petersburg. He specialized in physiology. Since 1904 he was the head of the Chair of Pharmacologoy and Pharmacognosy at the Universitiy of Lvov. Popielski's intrest in Zubrzycki's work ensued his research on albumin metabolite effect. His appreciation of the work is expressed by the phrase "I read it with satisfaction". The review was written in 1919, belated by the war.
Disclosure Control of Natural Language Information to Enable Secure and Enjoyable Communication over the Internet

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kataoka, Haruno; Utsumi, Akira; Hirose, Yuki; Yoshiura, Hiroshi

Disclosure control of natural language information (DCNL), which we are trying to realize, is described. DCNL will be used for securing human communications over the internet, such as through blogs and social network services. Before sentences in the communications are disclosed, they are checked by DCNL and any phrases that could reveal sensitive information are transformed or omitted so that they are no longer revealing. DCNL checks not only phrases that directly represent sensitive information but also those that indirectly suggest it. Combinations of phrases are also checked. DCNL automatically learns the knowledge of sensitive phrases and the suggestive relations between phrases by using co-occurrence analysis and Web retrieval. The users' burden is therefore minimized, i.e., they do not need to define many disclosure control rules. DCNL complements the traditional access control in the fields where reliability needs to be balanced with enjoyment and objects classes for the access control cannot be predefined.
Code of Best Practice: Experimentation

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-07-01

verb phrases , and are connected via arrows, named as nouns or noun phrases , which define inputs (from the left), controls (from the top), outputs (to the...Mark Mandeles, Telyvin Murphy, Dan Oertel, Dr. Walter Perry, John Poirier , Dennis Popiela, Steve Shaker, Dr. David Signori, Dr. Ed Smith, Marcy Stahl...inevitably include the unhappy phrase , “it depends.” In other words, context matters. Hence, individual experiments, which can only look at a small
21 CFR 4.2 - How does FDA define key terms and phrases in this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false How does FDA define key terms and phrases in this subpart? 4.2 Section 4.2 Food and Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN... Combination Products § 4.2 How does FDA define key terms and phrases in this subpart? The terms listed in this...
21 CFR 4.2 - How does FDA define key terms and phrases in this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false How does FDA define key terms and phrases in this subpart? 4.2 Section 4.2 Food and Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN... Combination Products § 4.2 How does FDA define key terms and phrases in this subpart? The terms listed in this...
The use of phrase-level prosodic information in lexical segmentation: evidence from word-spotting experiments in Korean.

PubMed

Kim, Sahyang; Cho, Taehong

2009-05-01

This study investigated the role of phrase-level prosodic boundary information in word segmentation in Korean with two word-spotting experiments. In experiment 1, it was found that intonational cues alone helped listeners with lexical segmentation. Listeners paid more attention to local intonational cues (...H#L...) across the prosodic boundary than the intonational information within a prosodic phrase. The results imply that intonation patterns with high frequency are used, though not exclusively, in lexical segmentation. In experiment 2, final lengthening was added to see how multiple prosodic cues influence lexical segmentation. The results showed that listeners did not necessarily benefit from the presence of both intonational and final lengthening cues: Their performance was improved only when intonational information contained infrequent tonal patterns for boundary marking, showing only partially cumulative effects of prosodic cues. When the intonational information was optimal (frequent) for boundary marking, however, poorer performance was observed with final lengthening. This is arguably because the phrase-initial segmental allophonic cues for the accentual phrase were not matched with the prosodic cues for the intonational phrase. It is proposed that the asymmetrical use of multiple cues was due to interaction between prosodic and segmental information that are computed in parallel in lexical segmentation.
Study on a high capacity two-stage free piston Stirling cryocooler working around 30 K

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Xiaotao; Zhu, Jian; Chen, Shuai; Dai, Wei; Li, Ke; Pang, Xiaomin; Yu, Guoyao; Luo, Ercang

2016-12-01

This paper presents a two-stage high-capacity free-piston Stirling cryocooler driven by a linear compressor to meet the requirement of the high temperature superconductor (HTS) motor applications. The cryocooler system comprises a single piston linear compressor, a two-stage free piston Stirling cryocooler and a passive oscillator. A single stepped displacer configuration was adopted. A numerical model based on the thermoacoustic theory was used to optimize the system operating and structure parameters. Distributions of pressure wave, phase differences between the pressure wave and the volume flow rate and different energy flows are presented for a better understanding of the system. Some characterizing experimental results are presented. Thus far, the cryocooler has reached a lowest cold-head temperature of 27.6 K and achieved a cooling power of 78 W at 40 K with an input electric power of 3.2 kW, which indicates a relative Carnot efficiency of 14.8%. When the cold-head temperature increased to 77 K, the cooling power reached 284 W with a relative Carnot efficiency of 25.9%. The influences of different parameters such as mean pressure, input electric power and cold-head temperature are also investigated.
Proceedings of the NASA/DOD Control/Structures Interaction Technology Conference (4th) Held in Orlando, Florida on 5-7 November 1990

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-01-15

Orlando, Florida, 5-7 November 1990. The conference was cosponsored by the Wright Laboratory and the NASA Langley Research Center. The Conference...Subiect Terms. Keywords or phrases responsible for writing the report, performing identifying major subjects in the repc.,t. the research , or...Laboratory and the NASA Langley Research Center have agreed to sponsor alternately a series of annual control/structures interaction technology
Formal Semantics in the Neurology Clinic: Atypical Understanding of Aspectual Coercion in ALS Patients

PubMed Central

Baggio, Giosuè; Granello, Giulia; Verriello, Lorenzo; Eleopra, Roberto

2016-01-01

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease of the motor system with subtle adverse effects on cognition. It is still unclear whether ALS also affects language and semantics, and if so, what aspects and processes exactly. We investigated how ALS patients understand verb phrases modified by temporal preposition phrases, e.g., “To watch TV for half an hour.” Interpretation here requires operations such as aspectual coercion that add or delete elements from event structures, depending on temporal modifiers, and constraints on coercion, which make combinations with certain modifiers not viable. Using a theoretically-motivated experimental design, we observed that acceptance rates for aspectual coercion were abnormally high in ALS patients. The effect was largest for the more complex cases of coercion: not those that involve enrichment of event structures (“To switch on the TV in half an hour,” where a number of failed attempts must be included in the interpretation) but those that, if applied, would result in deletion of event structure elements (“To repair the TV for half an hour”). Our experimental results are consistent with a deficit of constraints on coercion, and not with impaired semantic processes or representations, in line with recent studies suggesting that verb semantics is largely spared in ALS. PMID:27867369
Music Structure Analysis from Acoustic Signals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dannenberg, Roger B.; Goto, Masataka

Music is full of structure, including sections, sequences of distinct musical textures, and the repetition of phrases or entire sections. The analysis of music audio relies upon feature vectors that convey information about music texture or pitch content. Texture generally refers to the average spectral shape and statistical fluctuation, often reflecting the set of sounding instruments, e.g., strings, vocal, or drums. Pitch content reflects melody and harmony, which is often independent of texture. Structure is found in several ways. Segment boundaries can be detected by observing marked changes in locally averaged texture.

Creation Myths of Generative Grammar and the Mathematics of Syntactic Structures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pullum, Geoffrey K.

Syntactic Structures (Chomsky [6]) is widely believed to have laid the foundations of a cognitive revolution in linguistic science, and to have presented (i) the first use in linguistics of powerful new ideas regarding grammars as generative systems, (ii) a proof that English was not a regular language, (iii) decisive syntactic arguments against context-free phrase structure grammar description, and (iv) a demonstration of how transformational rules could provide a formal solution to those problems. None of these things are true. This paper offers a retrospective analysis and evaluation.
Development and Validation of a Diagnostic Grammar Test for Japanese Learners of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koizumi, Rie; Sakai, Hideki; Ido, Takahiro; Ota, Hiroshi; Hayama, Megumi; Sato, Masatoshi; Nemoto, Akiko

2011-01-01

This article reports on the development and validation of the English Diagnostic Test of Grammar (EDiT Grammar) for Japanese learners of English. From among the many aspects of grammar, this test focuses on the knowledge of basic English noun phrases (NPs), especially their internal structures, because previous research has indicated the…
The Acquisition of Prosodic Word Structures in Spanish by Monolingual and Spanish-German Bilingual Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lleo, Conxita

2006-01-01

This article examines the constraints on Prosodic Word production in Spanish by three monolingual and three Spanish-German bilingual children from the beginning of word production until 2;2. It also considers the relationship between Prosodic Words and Phonological Phrases, and in the case of monosyllabic words, it takes into consideration…
DAGUR MONGOLIAN GRAMMAR, TEXTS, AND LEXICON. URALIC AND ALTAIC SERIES, VOLUME 4.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MARTIN, SAMUEL E.

THIS DESCRIPTION OF DAGUR, A MONGOLIAN LANGUAGE, IS BASED ON THE DIALECT OF A SPEAKER BORN IN INNER MONGOLIA IN NORTHWEST MANCHURIA. SECTION I OF THIS MANUAL DESCRIBES OTHER WORKS PUBLISHED IN MONGOLIAN LINGUISTICS WHICH HAVE USED THE SAME INFORMANT, AND PRESENTS THE AUTHOR'S APPROACH, IN TERMS OF A PHRASE-STRUCTURE GRAMMAR. SECTION II PRESENTS…
Effects of Weight and Syntactic Priming on the Production of Cantonese Verb-Doubling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Francis, Elaine J.; Matthews, Stephen; Wong, Reace Wing Yan; Kwan, Stella Wing Man

2011-01-01

Verb-doubling, where a copy of the main verb occurs both before and after the direct object, is a structure commonly used in Chinese in sentences containing a frequency or duration phrase. In Cantonese, verb-doubling is highly optional and therefore problematic for existing syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic accounts of its distribution in…
Stimulus-Response Theory of Finite Automata, Technical Report No. 133.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suppes, Patrick

The central aim of this paper and its projected successors is to prove in detail that stimulus-response theory, or at least a mathematically precise version, can give an account of the learning of many phrase-structure grammars. Section 2 is concerned with standard notions of finite and probabilistic automata. An automaton is defined as a device…
The Interaction of Eye-Voice Span with Syntactic Chunking and Predictability in Right- and Left-Embedded Sentences.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Balajthy, Ernest P., Jr.

Sixty tenth graders participated in this study of relationships between eye/voice span, phrase and clause boundaries, reading ability, and sentence structure. Results indicated that sentences apparently are "chunked" into surface constituents during processing. Better tenth grade readers had longer eye/voice spans than did poorer readers and…
"Blame" Concept in Phraseology: Cognitive-Semantic Aspect (Based on the French Language)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zalavina, Tatyana Y.; Kisel, Olesya V.

2016-01-01

Phraseology is one of the basic and most important objects of study in cognitive linguistics. The article deals with verbal fixed phrases in their correlation with the cognitive structure of knowledge--a concept. The used definitional analysis method to identify the basic notions of the conceptual content of the concept of blame and basic…
A Formal Criterion for Identifying Lexical Phrases: Implication from a Classroom Experiment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yu, Xia

2009-01-01

This study investigates whether two different means of learning the word sequence "despite the fact (that)" lead to differential outcomes of the acquisition of the grammatical structure imbedded in the word string which is, due to L1 transfer, especially problematic for Chinese learners of English. The participants of the study were randomly…
Acquisition of Structure and Interpretation: Cases from Mandarin Bare and Non-Bare Noun Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Hsiang-Hua

2011-01-01

Children's production of bare nominals is universal. When acquiring languages disallowing bare nominals, children will develop from the bare to the non-bare stage. However, Mandarin nominals may appear bare or non-bare in various positions with all kinds of interpretations. This dissertation conducts two acquisition studies to examine the…
Phrase-Meaning Relationship According to Situational and Incidental Texts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coskun, Mustafa Volkan; Ozkaya, Perihan Gulce; Uysal, Zeynep Ezgi

2017-01-01

The purpose of the current study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the situational story of Sait Faik Abasiyanik entitled as "Alemdag'da Var Bir Yilan" and the incidental story of Refik Halid Karay entitled as "Boz Esek" in terms of syntax on the basis of their deep structures. The current study employed case study, one…
Making a Minimalist Approach to Codeswitching Work: Adding the Matrix Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jake, Janice L.; Myers-Scotton, Carol; Gross, Steven

2002-01-01

Discusses the Matrix Language Frame model. Analysis of noun phrases in a Spanish-English corpus illustrates this compatibility and shows how recent minimalist proposals can explain the distribution of nouns and determiners in the data if they adopt the notion of matrix language as bilingual instantiation of structural uniformity in a CP.…
System, method and apparatus for generating phrases from a database

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McGreevy, Michael W. (Inventor)

2004-01-01

A phrase generation is a method of generating sequences of terms, such as phrases, that may occur within a database of subsets containing sequences of terms, such as text. A database is provided and a relational model of the database is created. A query is then input. The query includes a term or a sequence of terms or multiple individual terms or multiple sequences of terms or combinations thereof. Next, several sequences of terms that are contextually related to the query are assembled from contextual relations in the model of the database. The sequences of terms are then sorted and output. Phrase generation can also be an iterative process used to produce sequences of terms from a relational model of a database.
[Effects of sustained and stopped hand actions on sensible/nonsensible judgments of verbal phrase of action: comparison between actual action and viewing a movie].

PubMed

Yamamoto, Yukiko; Hakoda, Yuji

2002-04-01

The present study investigated how an actual action or viewing a movie of an action influences the subsequent semantic processing of a verbal phrase concerning the action (e.g., holding a bag with a hand). Forty participants made sensible/nonsensible judgments about the target phrase which were preceded by one of the four prime conditions: sustained action, stopped action, sustained viewing movie, and stopped viewing movie. A facilitatory priming effect was observed in the sustained action condition. Whereas an inhibitory effect was observed in the stopped action condition. These results suggest that the kinetic information affects on the semantic processing of a verbal phrase of action.
Prototypicality in Sentence Production

PubMed Central

Onishi, Kristine H.; Murphy, Gregory L.; Bock, Kathryn

2008-01-01

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase—a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable. Experiment 1 revealed that an appropriate conceptual framework was necessary to yield the typicality effect. Experiment 2 tested ad-hoc categories that do not have prior representations in long-term memory and yielded no typicality effect. Experiment 3 used carefully matched sentences in which two category members appeared in the same or in different phrases. Typicality affected word order only when the two words appeared in the same phrase. These results are consistent with an account in which typicality has its origin in conceptual structure, which leads to differences in lexical accessibility in appropriate contexts. PMID:17631877
Is the fluency of language outputs related to individual differences in intelligence and executive function?

PubMed

Engelhardt, Paul E; Nigg, Joel T; Ferreira, Fernanda

2013-10-01

There has been little research on the fluency of language production and individual difference variables, such as intelligence and executive function. In this study, we report data from 106 participants who completed a battery of standardized cognitive tasks and a sentence production task. For the sentence production task, participants were presented with two objects and a verb and their task was to formulate a sentence. Four types of disfluency were examined: filled pauses (e.g. uh, um), unfilled pauses, repetitions, and repairs. Repetitions occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then repeats the previous word/phrase, and repairs occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then starts over with a different word/phrase. Hierarchical structural equation modeling revealed a significant relationship between repair disfluencies and inhibition. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their role in models and theories of language production. © 2013.
Is the fluency of language outputs related to individual differences in intelligence and executive function?

PubMed Central

Engelhardt, Paul E.; Nigg, Joel T.; Ferreira, Fernanda

2013-01-01

There has been little research on the fluency of language production and individual differences variables, such as intelligence and executive function. In this study, we report data from 106 participants who completed a battery of standardized cognitive tasks and a sentence production task. For the sentence production task, participants were presented with two objects and a verb and their task was to formulate a sentence. Four types of disfluency were examined: filled pauses (e.g. uh, um), unfilled pauses, repetitions, and repairs. Repetitions occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then repeats the previous word/phrase, and repairs occur when the speaker suspends articulation and then starts over with a different word/phrase. Hierarchical structural equation modeling revealed a significant relationship between repair disfluencies and inhibition. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their role in models and theories of language production. PMID:24018099
Infants can use distributional cues to form syntactic categories.

PubMed

Gerken, LouAnn; Wilson, Rachel; Lewis, William

2005-05-01

Nearly all theories of language development emphasize the importance of distributional cues for segregating words and phrases into syntactic categories like noun, feminine or verb phrase. However, questions concerning whether such cues can be used to the exclusion of referential cues have been debated. Using the headturn preference procedure, American children aged 1;5 were briefly familiarized with a partial Russian gender paradigm, with a subset of the paradigm members withheld. During test, infants listened on alternate trials to previously withheld grammatical items and ungrammatical items with incorrect gender markings on previously heard stems. Across three experiments, infants discriminated new grammatical from ungrammatical items, but like adults in previous studies, were only able to do so when a subset of familiarization items was double marked for gender category. The results suggest that learners can use distributional cues to category structure, to the exclusion of referential cues, from relatively early in the language learning process.
Head First into the Patron-Driven Acquisition Pool: A Comparison of Librarian Selections versus Patron Purchases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shen, Lisa; Cassidy, Erin Dorris; Elmore, Eric; Griffin, Glenda; Manolovitz, Tyler; Martinez, Michelle; Turney, Linda M.

2011-01-01

Although many recent studies have been conducted on the implementation and results of patron-driven acquisition (PDA) initiatives at academic libraries, very few have focused on whether, or how, patrons' selections vary from selection choices librarians would have made. This study compares titles selected by patrons during a PDA pilot program…
Arroyo channel head evolution in a flash-flood-dominated discontinuous ephemeral stream system

USGS Publications Warehouse

DeLong, Stephen B.; Johnson, Joel P.L.; Whipple, Kelin X.

2014-01-01

We study whether arroyo channel head retreat in dryland discontinuous ephemeral streams is driven by surface runoff, seepage erosion, mass wasting, or some combination of these hydrogeomorphic processes. We monitored precipitation, overland flow, soil moisture, and headcut migration over several seasonal cycles at two adjacent rangeland channel heads in southern Arizona. Erosion occurred by headward retreat of vertical to overhanging faces, driven dominantly by surface runoff. No evidence exists for erosion caused by shallow-groundwater–related processes, even though similar theater-headed morphologies are sometimes attributed to seepage erosion by emerging groundwater. At our field site, vertical variation in soil shear strength influenced the persistence of the characteristic theater-head form. The dominant processes of erosion included removal of grains and soil aggregates during even very shallow (1–3 cm) overland flow events by runoff on vertical to overhanging channel headwalls, plunge-pool erosion during higher-discharge runoff events, immediate postrunoff wet mass wasting, and minor intra-event dry mass wasting on soil tension fractures developing subparallel to the headwall. Multiple stepwise linear regression indicates that the migration rate is most strongly correlated with flow duration and total precipitation and is poorly correlated with peak flow depth or time-integrated flow depth. The studied channel heads migrated upslope with a self-similar morphologic form under a wide range of hydrological conditions, and the most powerful flash floods were not always responsible for the largest changes in landscape form in this environment.

[Stimuli phrases of adductor spasmodic dysphonia phonatory break in mandarin Chinese].

PubMed

Ge, Pingjiang; Ren, Qingyi; Chen, Zhipeng; Cheng, Qiuhui; Sheng, Xiaoli; Wang, Ling; Chen, Shaohua; Zhang, Siyi

2015-12-01

To investigate the characteristics of adductor spasmodic dysphonia phonatory break in mandarin Chinese and select the stimuli phrases. Thirty-eight patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia were involved in this study. Standard phrase " fù mŭ xīn" and a speech corpus in mandarin Chinese with 229 syllables covering all vowel and constant of mandarin Chinese were selected. Every patient read the phrases above twice in normal speed and comfortable voice. Two auditory perpetual speech pathologists marked phonatory break syllables respectively. The frequency of phonatory break syllables and their located phrases were calculated, rated and described. The phrases including the most phonatory break syllables were selected as stimuli phrases, the phonatory break frequency of which was also higher than that of standard phrase "fù mŭ xīn". Phonatory break happened in the reading of all patients. The average number of phonatory break syllables was 14 (3-33). Phonatroy break occurred when saying 177 (77.3%) syllables in the speech corpus. The syllables "guŏ, rén, zāng, diàn, chē, gè, guăn, a, bā, ne, de" broke in 23.1%-41.0% patients. These syllables belonged to the phrases "pĭng guŏ, huŏ chē, shì de, nĭ shì gè hăo rén, wŏ mén shì yŏu zŏng shì bă qĭn shì nong dé hĕn zāng, wŏ mén nà biān yŏu wăng qiú yùn dong chăng, cān gŭan, jiŭ bā hé yī gè miàn bāo dìan, tā shì duō me kāng kăi a,wŏ yīng gāi zài xìn lĭ xiĕ yī xiē shén mē ne?". Thirty-seven patients (97.3%) had phonatory break in above mentioned words. Ratios of these words phonatory break also were more than "fù mŭ xīn". Adductor spasmodic dysphonic patients exhibited different degrees of phonatory break in mandarine Chinese. The phrases" shì de, pĭng guŏ, huŏ chē, nĭ shì gè hăo rén, wŏ mén nà biān yŏu wăng qiú yùn dong chăng, cān gŭan, jiŭ bā hé yī gè miàn bāo dìan, tā shì duō me kāng kăi a" were recommended as stimuli phrases for adductor spasmodic dysphonia evaluation.
Performance of a vane driven-gear pump

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Heald, R H

1921-01-01

Given here are the results of a test conducted in a wind tunnel on the performance of a vane-driven gear pump used to pump gasoline upward into a small tank located within the upper wing from which it flows by gravity to the engine carburetor. Information is given on the efficiency of the pump, the head resistance of the vanes, the performance and characteristics of the unit with and without housing about the vanes, the pump performance when motor driven, and resistance and power characteristics.
An evaluation of a hubless inducer and a full flow hydraulic turbine driven inducer boost pump

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lindley, B. K.; Martinson, A. R.

1971-01-01

The purpose of the study was to compare the performance of several configurations of hubless inducers with a hydrodynamically similar conventional inducer and to demonstrate the performance of a full flow hydraulic turbine driven inducer boost pump using these inducers. A boost pump of this type consists of an inducer connected to a hydraulic turbine with a high speed rotor located in between. All the flow passes through the inducer, rotor, and hydraulic turbine, then into the main pump. The rotor, which is attached to the main pump shaft, provides the input power to drive the hydraulic turbine which, in turn, drives the inducer. The inducer, rotating at a lower speed, develops the necessary head to prevent rotor cavitation. The rotor speed is consistent with present main engine liquid hydrogen pump designs and the overall boost pump head rise is sufficient to provide adequate main pump suction head. This system would have the potential for operating at lower liquid hydrogen tank pressures.
Edge-closed laminated structures for thin-film heads

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Herman, D. A.; Argyle, B. E.; Lee, H.-P.; Trouilloud, P. O.; Petek, B.

1991-04-01

Magnetic film laminations containing nonmagnetic spacers have been explored with the hope of eliminating domain walls to diminish Barkhausen instabilities. Such laminates have limitations however, which originate in their ``edge-curling walls'' (ECWs).1 We have developed a new structure, free of ECWs, in which flux closure at opposing edges occurs via edge-shorting material added to circulate the easy-axis flux of the flat layers. We show experimentally with Kerr-effect imaging that (1) this edge-closed laminated (ECL) structure can support an (ECW-free) ``easy-axis'' (EA) magnetic state under conditions as modeled recently by Slonczewski,2 and (2) that this EA state is quite robust in the face of imperfect structure fabrication. This is, if the imperfections are not too severe, the resultant states depart minimally from the pure EA state and conduct hard-axis-driven flux nearly as well. Flat-film ECL elements in diamond, stripe, and recording-head-yoke shapes, plus experimental heads with ECL top yokes, were fabricated. Our domain images verify some key predictions from Slonczewski's static equilibrium modeling; additional results taken in applied magnetic fields extend the micromagnetic understanding. The sketch shows a typical domain pattem for a yoke-shaped element. The most stable state in the open portion of the yoke is the single domain shown. This remanent pattern was stable in the face of (slowly varying) external fields up to the 150 Oe that could be applied. The pole tip region contained a few 180° walls as indicated. On close inspection, these walls were seen to end in vestigial, nontouching, closure domains as predicted by the model when only partial flux closure occurs via the edge shorting material. The wall spacing in the tip varied somewhat following saturation-demagnetization cycles. The dynamic stability of this EA state was investigated in the experimental heads having ECL top yokes. The pseudodynamic LAMOM technique3 was applied using ``write'' pulsations. The EA state was stable up to twice typical write currents. A movie of dynamic results will be shown.
Compensating for Language Deficits in Amnesia I: H.M.'s Spared Retrieval Categories.

PubMed

MacKay, Donald G; Johnson, Laura W; Fazel, Vedad; James, Lori E

2013-03-14

Three studies examined amnesic H.M.'s use of words, phrases, and propositions on the Test of Language Competence (TLC). In Study 1, H.M. used 19 lexical categories (e.g., common nouns, verbs) and one syntactic category (noun phrases) with the same relative frequency as memory-normal controls, he used no lexical or syntactic category with less-than-normal frequency, and he used proper names (e.g., Melanie) and coordinative conjunctions (e.g., and) with reliably greater-than-normal frequency. In Study 2, H.M. overused proper names relative to controls when answering episodic memory questions about childhood experiences in speech and writing, replicating and extending Study 1 results for proper names. Based on detailed analyses of the use (and misuse) of coordinating conjunctions on the TLC, Study 3 developed a syntax-level "compensation hypothesis" for explaining why H.M. overused coordinating conjunctions relative to controls in Study 1. Present results suggested that (a) frontal mechanisms for retrieving word-, phrase-, and propositional-categories are intact in H.M., unlike in category-specific aphasia, (b) using his intact retrieval mechanisms, H.M. has developed a never-previously-observed proposition-level free association strategy to compensate for the hippocampal region damage that has impaired his mechanisms for encoding novel linguistic structures, and (c) H.M.'s overuse of proper names warrants further research.
Compensating for Language Deficits in Amnesia I: H.M.’s Spared Retrieval Categories

PubMed Central

MacKay, Donald G.; Johnson, Laura W.; Fazel, Vedad; James, Lori E.

2013-01-01

Three studies examined amnesic H.M.’s use of words, phrases, and propositions on the Test of Language Competence (TLC). In Study 1, H.M. used 19 lexical categories (e.g., common nouns, verbs) and one syntactic category (noun phrases) with the same relative frequency as memory-normal controls, he used no lexical or syntactic category with less-than-normal frequency, and he used proper names (e.g., Melanie) and coordinative conjunctions (e.g., and) with reliably greater-than-normal frequency. In Study 2, H.M. overused proper names relative to controls when answering episodic memory questions about childhood experiences in speech and writing, replicating and extending Study 1 results for proper names. Based on detailed analyses of the use (and misuse) of coordinating conjunctions on the TLC, Study 3 developed a syntax-level “compensation hypothesis” for explaining why H.M. overused coordinating conjunctions relative to controls in Study 1. Present results suggested that (a) frontal mechanisms for retrieving word-, phrase-, and propositional-categories are intact in H.M., unlike in category-specific aphasia, (b) using his intact retrieval mechanisms, H.M. has developed a never-previously-observed proposition-level free association strategy to compensate for the hippocampal region damage that has impaired his mechanisms for encoding novel linguistic structures, and (c) H.M.’s overuse of proper names warrants further research. PMID:24961315
Are individuals with Parkinson's disease capable of speech-motor learning? - A preliminary evaluation.

PubMed

Kaipa, Ramesh; Jones, Richard D; Robb, Michael P

2016-07-01

The benefits of different practice conditions in limb-based rehabilitation of motor disorders are well documented. Conversely, the role of practice structure in the treatment of motor-based speech disorders has only been minimally investigated. Considering this limitation, the current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of selected practice conditions in spatial and temporal learning of novel speech utterances in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Participants included 16 individuals with PD who were randomly and equally assigned to constant, variable, random, and blocked practice conditions. Participants in all four groups practiced a speech phrase for two consecutive days, and reproduced the speech phrase on the third day without further practice or feedback. There were no significant differences (p > 0.05) between participants across the four practice conditions with respect to either spatial or temporal learning of the speech phrase. Overall, PD participants demonstrated diminished spatial and temporal learning in comparison to healthy controls. Tests of strength of association between participants' demographic/clinical characteristics and speech-motor learning outcomes did not reveal any significant correlations. The findings from the current study suggest that repeated practice facilitates speech-motor learning in individuals with PD irrespective of the type of practice. Clinicians need to be cautious in applying practice conditions to treat speech deficits associated with PD based on the findings of non-speech-motor learning tasks. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Spicy Adjectives and Nominal Donkeys: Capturing Semantic Deviance Using Compositionality in Distributional Spaces.

PubMed

Vecchi, Eva M; Marelli, Marco; Zamparelli, Roberto; Baroni, Marco

2017-01-01

Sophisticated senator and legislative onion. Whether or not you have ever heard of these things, we all have some intuition that one of them makes much less sense than the other. In this paper, we introduce a large dataset of human judgments about novel adjective-noun phrases. We use these data to test an approach to semantic deviance based on phrase representations derived with compositional distributional semantic methods, that is, methods that derive word meanings from contextual information, and approximate phrase meanings by combining word meanings. We present several simple measures extracted from distributional representations of words and phrases, and we show that they have a significant impact on predicting the acceptability of novel adjective-noun phrases even when a number of alternative measures classically employed in studies of compound processing and bigram plausibility are taken into account. Our results show that the extent to which an attributive adjective alters the distributional representation of the noun is the most significant factor in modeling the distinction between acceptable and deviant phrases. Our study extends current applications of compositional distributional semantic methods to linguistically and cognitively interesting problems, and it offers a new, quantitatively precise approach to the challenge of predicting when humans will find novel linguistic expressions acceptable and when they will not. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.
Optic nerve head biomechanics in aging and disease.

PubMed

Downs, J Crawford

2015-04-01

This nontechnical review is focused upon educating the reader on optic nerve head biomechanics in both aging and disease along two main themes: what is known about how mechanical forces and the resulting deformations are distributed in the posterior pole and ONH (biomechanics) and what is known about how the living system responds to those deformations (mechanobiology). We focus on how ONH responds to IOP elevations as a structural system, insofar as the acute mechanical response of the lamina cribrosa is confounded with the responses of the peripapillary sclera, prelaminar neural tissues, and retrolaminar optic nerve. We discuss the biomechanical basis for IOP-driven changes in connective tissues, blood flow, and cellular responses. We use glaucoma as the primary framework to present the important aspects of ONH biomechanics in aging and disease, as ONH biomechanics, aging, and the posterior pole extracellular matrix (ECM) are thought to be centrally involved in glaucoma susceptibility, onset and progression. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Experimental characterization of a transition from collisionless to collisional interaction between head-on-merging supersonic plasma jets a)

DOE PAGES

Moser, Auna L.; Hsu, Scott C.

2015-05-01

We present results from experiments on the head-on merging of two supersonic plasma jets in an initially collisionless regime for the counter-streaming ions [A. L. Moser & S. C. Hsu, Phys. Plasmas, submitted (2014)]. The plasma jets are of either an argon/impurity or hydrogen/impurity mixture and are produced by pulsed-power-driven railguns. Based on time- and space-resolved fast-imaging, multi-chord interferometry, and survey-spectroscopy measurements of the overlapping region between the merging jets, we observe that the jets initially interpenetrate, consistent with calculated inter-jet ion collision lengths, which are long. As the jets interpenetrate, a rising mean-charge state causes a rapid decrease inmore » the inter-jet ion collision length. Finally, the interaction becomes collisional and the jets stagnate, eventually producing structures consistent with collisional shocks. These experimental observations can aid in the validation of plasma collisionality and ionization models for plasmas with complex equations of state.« less
Migration, Household Configurations, and the Well-Being of Adolescent Orphans in Rwanda

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

This study uses data from the 2002 Rwandan census to situate the discourse on migration and orphan well-being within the context of the household. According to its findings, migrant orphans are less likely than non-migrant orphans to live in households with less favorable structural characteristics such as single-parent households. Significant differences are also found in the implied gains to living standards and schooling associated with migration among paternal, maternal, and double-orphans. However, the higher living standards and schooling attainment of orphan migrants relative to their non-migrant counterparts disappear within child-headed household contexts. More generally, the results indicate that the higher living standards of migrant orphans are in part driven by the fact that they mostly live in households with migrant household-heads or migrant spouses. Yet the analysis also suggests that orphans living within these contexts experience higher levels of intra-household discrimination in investments in their schooling, relative to their orphan counterparts who live in non-migrant households. PMID:25009364
Experimental characterization of a transition from collisionless to collisional interaction between head-on-merging supersonic plasma jets a)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Moser, Auna L.; Hsu, Scott C.

We present results from experiments on the head-on merging of two supersonic plasma jets in an initially collisionless regime for the counter-streaming ions [A. L. Moser & S. C. Hsu, Phys. Plasmas, submitted (2014)]. The plasma jets are of either an argon/impurity or hydrogen/impurity mixture and are produced by pulsed-power-driven railguns. Based on time- and space-resolved fast-imaging, multi-chord interferometry, and survey-spectroscopy measurements of the overlapping region between the merging jets, we observe that the jets initially interpenetrate, consistent with calculated inter-jet ion collision lengths, which are long. As the jets interpenetrate, a rising mean-charge state causes a rapid decrease inmore » the inter-jet ion collision length. Finally, the interaction becomes collisional and the jets stagnate, eventually producing structures consistent with collisional shocks. These experimental observations can aid in the validation of plasma collisionality and ionization models for plasmas with complex equations of state.« less
Evaluation of Respondent-Driven Sampling

PubMed Central

McCreesh, Nicky; Frost, Simon; Seeley, Janet; Katongole, Joseph; Tarsh, Matilda Ndagire; Ndunguse, Richard; Jichi, Fatima; Lunel, Natasha L; Maher, Dermot; Johnston, Lisa G; Sonnenberg, Pam; Copas, Andrew J; Hayes, Richard J; White, Richard G

2012-01-01

Background Respondent-driven sampling is a novel variant of link-tracing sampling for estimating the characteristics of hard-to-reach groups, such as HIV prevalence in sex-workers. Despite its use by leading health organizations, the performance of this method in realistic situations is still largely unknown. We evaluated respondent-driven sampling by comparing estimates from a respondent-driven sampling survey with total-population data. Methods Total-population data on age, tribe, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual activity and HIV status were available on a population of 2402 male household-heads from an open cohort in rural Uganda. A respondent-driven sampling (RDS) survey was carried out in this population, employing current methods of sampling (RDS sample) and statistical inference (RDS estimates). Analyses were carried out for the full RDS sample and then repeated for the first 250 recruits (small sample). Results We recruited 927 household-heads. Full and small RDS samples were largely representative of the total population, but both samples under-represented men who were younger, of higher socioeconomic status, and with unknown sexual activity and HIV status. Respondent-driven-sampling statistical-inference methods failed to reduce these biases. Only 31%-37% (depending on method and sample size) of RDS estimates were closer to the true population proportions than the RDS sample proportions. Only 50%-74% of respondent-driven-sampling bootstrap 95% confidence intervals included the population proportion. Conclusions Respondent-driven sampling produced a generally representative sample of this well-connected non-hidden population. However, current respondent-driven-sampling inference methods failed to reduce bias when it occurred. Whether the data required to remove bias and measure precision can be collected in a respondent-driven sampling survey is unresolved. Respondent-driven sampling should be regarded as a (potentially superior) form of convenience-sampling method, and caution is required when interpreting findings based on the sampling method. PMID:22157309
Sensing of minute airflow motions near walls using pappus-type nature-inspired sensors

PubMed Central

Mikulich, Vladimir

2017-01-01

This work describes the development and use of pappus-like structures as sensitive sensors to detect minute air-flow motions. We made such sensors from pappi taken from nature-grown seed, whose filiform hairs’ length-scale is suitable for the study of large-scale turbulent convection flows. The stem with the pappus on top is fixated on an elastic membrane on the wall and tilts under wind-load proportional to the velocity magnitude in direction of the wind, similar as the biological sensory hairs found in spiders, however herein the sensory hair has multiple filiform protrusions at the tip. As the sensor response is proportional to the drag on the tip and a low mass ensures a larger bandwidth, lightweight pappus structures similar as those found in nature with documented large drag are useful to improve the response of artificial sensors. The pappus of a Dandelion represents such a structure which has evolved to maximize wind-driven dispersion, therefore it is used herein as the head of our sensor. Because of its multiple hairs arranged radially around the stem it generates uniform drag for all wind directions. While still being permeable to the flow, the hundreds of individual hairs on the tip of the sensor head maximize the drag and minimize influence of pressure gradients or shear-induced lift forces on the sensor response as they occur in non-permeable protrusions. In addition, the flow disturbance by the sensor itself is limited. The optical recording of the head-motion allows continuously remote-distance monitoring of the flow fluctuations in direction and magnitude. Application is shown for the measurement of a reference flow under isothermal conditions to detect the early occurrence of instabilities. PMID:28658272
Pressure Profiles in a Loop Heat Pipe Under Gravity Influence

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ku, Jentung

2015-01-01

During the operation of a loop heat pipe (LHP), the viscous flow induces pressure drops in various elements of the loop. The total pressure drop is equal to the sum of pressure drops in vapor grooves, vapor line, condenser, liquid line and primary wick, and is sustained by menisci at liquid and vapor interfaces on the outer surface of the primary wick in the evaporator. The menisci will curve naturally so that the resulting capillary pressure matches the total pressure drop. In ground testing, an additional gravitational pressure head may be present and must be included in the total pressure drop when LHP components are placed in a non-planar configuration. Under gravity-neutral and anti-gravity conditions, the fluid circulation in the LHP is driven solely by the capillary force. With gravity assist, however, the flow circulation can be driven by the combination of capillary and gravitational forces, or by the gravitational force alone. For a gravity-assist LHP at a given elevation between the horizontal condenser and evaporator, there exists a threshold heat load below which the LHP operation is gravity driven and above which the LHP operation is capillary force and gravity co-driven. The gravitational pressure head can have profound effects on the LHP operation, and such effects depend on the elevation, evaporator heat load, and condenser sink temperature. This paper presents a theoretical study on LHP operations under gravity neutral, anti-gravity, and gravity-assist modes using pressure diagrams to help understand the underlying physical processes. Effects of the condenser configuration on the gravitational pressure head and LHP operation are also discussed.
Pressure Profiles in a Loop Heat Pipe under Gravity Influence

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ku, Jentung

2015-01-01

During the operation of a loop heat pipe (LHP), the viscous flow induces pressure drops in various elements of the loop. The total pressure drop is equal to the sum of pressure drops in vapor grooves, vapor line, condenser, liquid line and primary wick, and is sustained by menisci at liquid and vapor interfaces on the outer surface of the primary wick in the evaporator. The menisci will curve naturally so that the resulting capillary pressure matches the total pressure drop. In ground testing, an additional gravitational pressure head may be present and must be included in the total pressure drop when LHP components are placed in a non-planar configuration. Under gravity-neutral and anti-gravity conditions, the fluid circulation in the LHP is driven solely by the capillary force. With gravity assist, however, the flow circulation can be driven by the combination of capillary and gravitational forces, or by the gravitational force alone. For a gravity-assist LHP at a given elevation between the horizontal condenser and evaporator, there exists a threshold heat load below which the LHP operation is gravity driven and above which the LHP operation is capillary force and gravity co-driven. The gravitational pressure head can have profound effects on the LHP operation, and such effects depend on the elevation, evaporator heat load, and condenser sink temperature. This paper presents a theoretical study on LHP operations under gravity-neutral, anti-gravity, and gravity-assist modes using pressure diagrams to help understand the underlying physical processes. Effects of the condenser configuration on the gravitational pressure head and LHP operation are also discussed.
Neural Correlates of Phrase Quadrature Perception in Harmonic Rhythm: An EEG Study Using a Brain-Computer Interface.

PubMed

Fernández-Soto, Alicia; Martínez-Rodrigo, Arturo; Moncho-Bogani, José; Latorre, José Miguel; Fernández-Caballero, Antonio

2018-06-01

For the sake of establishing the neural correlates of phrase quadrature perception in harmonic rhythm, a musical experiment has been designed to induce music-evoked stimuli related to one important aspect of harmonic rhythm, namely the phrase quadrature. Brain activity is translated to action through electroencephalography (EEG) by using a brain-computer interface. The power spectral value of each EEG channel is estimated to obtain how power variance distributes as a function of frequency. The results of processing the acquired signals are in line with previous studies that use different musical parameters to induce emotions. Indeed, our experiment shows statistical differences in theta and alpha bands between the fulfillment and break of phrase quadrature, an important cue of harmonic rhythm, in two classical sonatas.
Multiple independent autonomous hydraulic oscillators driven by a common gravity head.

PubMed

Kim, Sung-Jin; Yokokawa, Ryuji; Lesher-Perez, Sasha Cai; Takayama, Shuichi

2015-06-15

Self-switching microfluidic circuits that are able to perform biochemical experiments in a parallel and autonomous manner, similar to instruction-embedded electronics, are rarely implemented. Here, we present design principles and demonstrations for gravity-driven, integrated, microfluidic pulsatile flow circuits. With a common gravity head as the only driving force, these fluidic oscillator arrays realize a wide range of periods (0.4 s-2 h) and flow rates (0.10-63 μl min(-1)) with completely independent timing between the multiple oscillator sub-circuits connected in parallel. As a model application, we perform systematic, parallel analysis of endothelial cell elongation response to different fluidic shearing patterns generated by the autonomous microfluidic pulsed flow generation system.
A video, text, and speech-driven realistic 3-d virtual head for human-machine interface.

PubMed

Yu, Jun; Wang, Zeng-Fu

2015-05-01

A multiple inputs-driven realistic facial animation system based on 3-D virtual head for human-machine interface is proposed. The system can be driven independently by video, text, and speech, thus can interact with humans through diverse interfaces. The combination of parameterized model and muscular model is used to obtain a tradeoff between computational efficiency and high realism of 3-D facial animation. The online appearance model is used to track 3-D facial motion from video in the framework of particle filtering, and multiple measurements, i.e., pixel color value of input image and Gabor wavelet coefficient of illumination ratio image, are infused to reduce the influence of lighting and person dependence for the construction of online appearance model. The tri-phone model is used to reduce the computational consumption of visual co-articulation in speech synchronized viseme synthesis without sacrificing any performance. The objective and subjective experiments show that the system is suitable for human-machine interaction.
The neural processing of hierarchical structure in music and speech at different timescales.

PubMed

Farbood, Morwaread M; Heeger, David J; Marcus, Gary; Hasson, Uri; Lerner, Yulia

2015-01-01

Music, like speech, is a complex auditory signal that contains structures at multiple timescales, and as such is a potentially powerful entry point into the question of how the brain integrates complex streams of information. Using an experimental design modeled after previous studies that used scrambled versions of a spoken story (Lerner et al., 2011) and a silent movie (Hasson et al., 2008), we investigate whether listeners perceive hierarchical structure in music beyond short (~6 s) time windows and whether there is cortical overlap between music and language processing at multiple timescales. Experienced pianists were presented with an extended musical excerpt scrambled at multiple timescales-by measure, phrase, and section-while measuring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The reliability of evoked activity, as quantified by inter-subject correlation of the fMRI responses, was measured. We found that response reliability depended systematically on musical structure coherence, revealing a topographically organized hierarchy of processing timescales. Early auditory areas (at the bottom of the hierarchy) responded reliably in all conditions. For brain areas at the top of the hierarchy, the original (unscrambled) excerpt evoked more reliable responses than any of the scrambled excerpts, indicating that these brain areas process long-timescale musical structures, on the order of minutes. The topography of processing timescales was analogous with that reported previously for speech, but the timescale gradients for music and speech overlapped with one another only partially, suggesting that temporally analogous structures-words/measures, sentences/musical phrases, paragraph/sections-are processed separately.

Food Product Dating

MedlinePlus

... the product will be of best quality. For example, sausage formulated with certain ingredients used to preserve ... phrases used on labels to describe quality dates. Examples of commonly used phrases: A "Best if Used ...
Implicit Acquisition of Grammars with Crossed and Nested Non-Adjacent Dependencies: Investigating the Push-Down Stack Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Udden, Julia; Ingvar, Martin; Hagoort, Peter; Petersson, Karl M.

2012-01-01

A recent hypothesis in empirical brain research on language is that the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between finite-state and more complex phrase-structure grammars, such as context-free and context-sensitive grammars. However, the relevance of this distinction for the study…
The Morphosyntactic Structure of the Noun and Verb Phrases in Dholuo/Kiswahili Code Switching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ojanga, Jael Anyango; Chai, Furaha; Mutiti, James

2015-01-01

Code switching, the use of any two or more languages or dialects interchangeably in a single communication context, is a common linguistic practice owing to the trend of multilingualism in the world today. In many situations of language in contact, constituents of one language can be found within the constituents of another language in a number of…
The Phonology of Capanahua and Its Grammatical Basis. Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics and Related Fields.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loos, Eugene Emil

This generative-transformational model of Capanahua phonology aims (1) to make available to linguistic science data analyzed from the point of view of an explanatory, unified theory of language; and (2) to test some conclusions suggested by those data, with respect to language universals. Chapters treat phrase structure rules, transformational…
Generic Language Use Reveals Domain Differences in Young Children's Expectations about Animal and Artifact Categories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brandone, Amanda C.; Gelman, Susan A.

2013-01-01

The goal of the present study was to explore domain differences in young children's expectations about the structure of animal and artifact categories. We examined 5-year-olds' and adults' use of category-referring generic noun phrases (e.g., "Birds fly") about novel animals and artifacts. The same stimuli served as both animals and artifacts;…
The Use of Articles in Indian English: Errors and Pedagogical Implications.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agnihotri, R. K.; And Others

1984-01-01

Studies patterns of frequent mistakes in the use of articles in English by speakers of Hindi/Punjabi. The control over the definite and indefinite article is examined in relation to their forms and functions. The use of articles is also considered in complex noun phrases and different syntactic structures, and an attempt is made to establish a…
Perception of hierarchical boundaries in music and its modulation by expertise.

PubMed

Zhang, Jingjing; Jiang, Cunmei; Zhou, Linshu; Yang, Yufang

2016-10-01

Hierarchical structure with units of different timescales is a key feature of music. For the perception of such structures, the detection of each boundary is crucial. Here, using electroencephalography (EEG), we explore the perception of hierarchical boundaries in music, and test whether musical expertise modifies such processing. Musicians and non-musicians were presented with musical excerpts containing boundaries at three hierarchical levels, including section, phrase and period boundaries. Non-boundary was chosen as a baseline condition. Recordings from musicians showed CPS (closure positive shift) was evoked at all the three boundaries, and their amplitude increased as the hierarchical level became higher, which suggest that musicians could represent music events at different timescales in a hierarchical way. For non-musicians, the CPS was only elicited at the period boundary and undistinguishable negativities were induced at all the three boundaries. The results indicate that a different and less clear way was used by non-musicians in boundary perception. Our findings reveal, for the first time, an ERP correlate of perceiving hierarchical boundaries in music, and show that the phrasing ability could be enhanced by musical expertise. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
MCORES: a system for noun phrase coreference resolution for clinical records.

PubMed

Bodnari, Andreea; Szolovits, Peter; Uzuner, Özlem

2012-01-01

Narratives of electronic medical records contain information that can be useful for clinical practice and multi-purpose research. This information needs to be put into a structured form before it can be used by automated systems. Coreference resolution is a step in the transformation of narratives into a structured form. This study presents a medical coreference resolution system (MCORES) for noun phrases in four frequently used clinical semantic categories: persons, problems, treatments, and tests. MCORES treats coreference resolution as a binary classification task. Given a pair of concepts from a semantic category, it determines coreferent pairs and clusters them into chains. MCORES uses an enhanced set of lexical, syntactic, and semantic features. Some MCORES features measure the distance between various representations of the concepts in a pair and can be asymmetric. MCORES was compared with an in-house baseline that uses only single-perspective 'token overlap' and 'number agreement' features. MCORES was shown to outperform the baseline; its enhanced features contribute significantly to performance. In addition to the baseline, MCORES was compared against two available third-party, open-domain systems, RECONCILE(ACL09) and the Beautiful Anaphora Resolution Toolkit (BART). MCORES was shown to outperform both of these systems on clinical records.
Gravity-Driven Hydraulic Fractures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Germanovich, L. N.; Garagash, D.; Murdoch, L. C.; Robinowitz, M.

2014-12-01

This study is motived by a new method for disposing of nuclear waste by injecting it as a dense slurry into a hydraulic fracture that grows downward to great enough depth to permanently isolate the waste. Disposing of nuclear waste using gravity-driven hydraulic fractures is mechanically similar to the upward growth of dikes filled with low density magma. A fundamental question in both applications is how the injected fluid controls the propagation dynamics and fracture geometry (depth and breadth) in three dimensions. Analog experiments in gelatin [e.g., Heimpel and Olson, 1994; Taisne and Tait, 2009] show that fracture breadth (the short horizontal dimension) remains nearly stationary when the process in the fracture "head" (where breadth is controlled) is dominated by solid toughness, whereas viscous fluid dissipation is dominant in the fracture tail. We model propagation of the resulting gravity-driven (buoyant or sinking), finger-like fracture of stationary breadth with slowly varying opening along the crack length. The elastic response to fluid loading in a horizontal cross-section is local and can be treated similar to the classical Perkins-Kern-Nordgren (PKN) model of hydraulic fracturing. The propagation condition for a finger-like crack is based on balancing the global energy release rate due to a unit crack extension with the rock fracture toughness. It allows us to relate the net fluid pressure at the tip to the fracture breadth and rock toughness. Unlike the PKN fracture, where breadth is known a priori, the final breadth of a finger-like fracture is a result of processes in the fracture head. Because the head is much more open than the tail, viscous pressure drop in the head can be neglected leading to a 3D analog of Weertman's hydrostatic pulse. This requires relaxing the local elasticity assumption of the PKN model in the fracture head. As a result, we resolve the breadth, and then match the viscosity-dominated tail with the 3-D, toughness-dominated head to obtain a complete closed-form solution. We then analyze the gravity fracture propagation in conditions of either continuous injection or finite volume release for sets of parameters representative of dense waste injection technique and low viscosity magma diking.
Contour-Driven Atlas-Based Segmentation

PubMed Central

Wachinger, Christian; Fritscher, Karl; Sharp, Greg; Golland, Polina

2016-01-01

We propose new methods for automatic segmentation of images based on an atlas of manually labeled scans and contours in the image. First, we introduce a Bayesian framework for creating initial label maps from manually annotated training images. Within this framework, we model various registration- and patch-based segmentation techniques by changing the deformation field prior. Second, we perform contour-driven regression on the created label maps to refine the segmentation. Image contours and image parcellations give rise to non-stationary kernel functions that model the relationship between image locations. Setting the kernel to the covariance function in a Gaussian process establishes a distribution over label maps supported by image structures. Maximum a posteriori estimation of the distribution over label maps conditioned on the outcome of the atlas-based segmentation yields the refined segmentation. We evaluate the segmentation in two clinical applications: the segmentation of parotid glands in head and neck CT scans and the segmentation of the left atrium in cardiac MR angiography images. PMID:26068202
The NASTRAN user's manual

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1983-01-01

All information directly associated with problem solving using the NASTRAN program is presented. This structural analysis program uses the finite element approach to structural modeling wherein the distributed finite properties of a structure are represented by a finite element of structural elements which are interconnected at a finite number of grid points, to which loads are applied and for which displacements are calculated. Procedures are described for defining and loading a structural model. Functional references for every card used for structural modeling, the NASTRAN data deck and control cards, problem solution sequences (rigid formats), using the plotting capability, writing a direct matrix abstraction program, and diagnostic messages are explained. A dictionary of mnemonics, acronyms, phrases, and other commonly used NASTRAN terms is included.
External morphology and calling song characteristics in Tibicen plebejus (Hemiptera: Cicadidae).

PubMed

Mehdipour, Maedeh; Sendi, Jalal Jalali; Zamanian, Hossein

2015-02-01

Tibicen plebejus is the largest cicada native to the ecosystem in northern Iran. The male cicada produces a loud calling song for attracting females from a long distance. It is presumed that the female selects a mate based on a combination of passive and active mechanisms, but it is not known if she selects for size, nor if the male's size correlates with any characteristic of the advertisement call. In this study, we report the relationship between calling song features and morphological characters in the male of T. plebejus. Research was conducted in northern Iran during the summer of 2010. Seventeen males were collected and their calling songs were recorded in a natural environment. Two morphological characters were measured: length and weight. Maximum, minimum and average of values of 10 key acoustic variables of the calling song were analyzed: phrase duration, phrase part 1, phrase part 2, number of phrases per minute, echeme duration, echeme period, interecheme interval, number of echeme per second, echeme/intereheme ratio, and dominant frequency. The data were tested for the level of association between morphology and acoustic variables using simple linear regression. In conclusion, in terms of song structure, three significant positive correlations existed between length and (1) mean echeme duration, (2) mean echeme/interecheme ratio, (3) maximum echeme/interecheme ratio. We found out also four significant negative correlations between both length and weight with (1) minimum interecheme intervals, (2) mean dominant frequency, (3) minimum dominant frequency, (4) maximum dominant frequency, and between weight and (1) minimum interecheme intervals, (2) mean dominant frequency, (3) minimum dominant frequency, (4) maximum dominant frequency. It can be found that larger males of T. plebejus produce songs of lower frequency and are less silent between echemes. Copyright © 2014 Académie des sciences. Published by Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.
Interpreting Conjoined Noun Phrases and Conjoined Clauses: Collective vs. Distributive Preferences

PubMed Central

Clifton, Charles; Frazier, Lyn

2012-01-01

Two experiments are reported that show that introducing event participants in a conjoined noun phrase (NP) favors a single event (collective) interpretation while introducing them in separate clauses favors a separate events (distributive) interpretation. In Experiment 1, acceptability judgments were speeded when the bias of a predicate toward separate events vs. a single event matched the presumed bias of how the subjects’ referents were introduced (as conjoined noun phrases or in conjoined clauses). In Experiment 2, reading of a phrase containing an anaphor following conjoined noun phrases was facilitated when the anaphor was they, relative to when it was neither/each of them; the opposite pattern was found when the anaphor followed conjoined clauses. We argue that comprehension was facilitated when the form of an anaphor was appropriate for how its antecedents were introduced. These results address the very general problem of how we individuate entities and events when presented with a complex situation, and show that different linguistic forms can guide how we construe a situation.. The results also indicate that there is no general penalty for introducing the entities or events separately – in distinct clauses as ‘split’ antecedents. PMID:22512324
Diagnostic flexible pharyngo-laryngoscopy: development of a procedure specific assessment tool using a Delphi methodology.

PubMed

Melchiors, Jacob; Henriksen, Mikael Johannes Vuokko; Dikkers, Frederik G; Gavilán, Javier; Noordzij, J Pieter; Fried, Marvin P; Novakovic, Daniel; Fagan, Johannes; Charabi, Birgitte W; Konge, Lars; von Buchwald, Christian

2018-05-01

Proper training and assessment of skill in flexible pharyngo-laryngoscopy are central in the education of otorhinolaryngologists. To facilitate an evidence-based approach to curriculum development in this field, a structured analysis of what constitutes flexible pharyngo-laryngoscopy is necessary. Our aim was to develop an assessment tool based on this analysis. We conducted an international Delphi study involving experts from twelve countries in five continents. Utilizing reiterative assessment, the panel defined the procedure and reached consensus (defined as 80% agreement) on the phrasing of an assessment tool. FIFTY PANELISTS COMPLETED THE DELPHI PROCESS. THE MEDIAN AGE OF THE PANELISTS WAS 44 YEARS (RANGE 33-64 YEARS). MEDIAN EXPERIENCE IN OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGY WAS 15 YEARS (RANGE 6-35 YEARS). TWENTY-FIVE WERE SPECIALIZED IN LARYNGOLOGY, 16 WERE HEAD AND NECK SURGEONS, AND NINE WERE GENERAL OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGISTS. AN ASSESSMENT TOOL WAS CREATED CONSISTING OF TWELVE DISTINCT ITEMS.: Conclusion The gathering of validity evidence for assessment of core procedural skills within Otorhinolaryngology is central to the development of a competence-based education. The use of an international Delphi panel allows for the creation of an assessment tool which is widely applicable and valid. This work allows for an informed approach to technical skills training for flexible pharyngo-laryngoscopy and as further validity evidence is gathered allows for a valid assessment of clinical performance within this important skillset.
The motor origins of human and avian song structure

PubMed Central

Tierney, Adam T.; Russo, Frank A.; Patel, Aniruddh D.

2011-01-01

Human song exhibits great structural diversity, yet certain aspects of melodic shape (how pitch is patterned over time) are widespread. These include a predominance of arch-shaped and descending melodic contours in musical phrases, a tendency for phrase-final notes to be relatively long, and a bias toward small pitch movements between adjacent notes in a melody [Huron D (2006) Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)]. What is the origin of these features? We hypothesize that they stem from motor constraints on song production (i.e., the energetic efficiency of their underlying motor actions) rather than being innately specified. One prediction of this hypothesis is that any animals subject to similar motor constraints on song will exhibit similar melodic shapes, no matter how distantly related those animals are to humans. Conversely, animals who do not share similar motor constraints on song will not exhibit convergent melodic shapes. Birds provide an ideal case for testing these predictions, because their peripheral mechanisms of song production have both notable similarities and differences from human vocal mechanisms [Riede T, Goller F (2010) Brain Lang 115:69–80]. We use these similarities and differences to make specific predictions about shared and distinct features of human and avian song structure and find that these predictions are confirmed by empirical analysis of diverse human and avian song samples. PMID:21876156
Hierarchical temporal structure in music, speech and animal vocalizations: jazz is like a conversation, humpbacks sing like hermit thrushes.

PubMed

Kello, Christopher T; Bella, Simone Dalla; Médé, Butovens; Balasubramaniam, Ramesh

2017-10-01

Humans talk, sing and play music. Some species of birds and whales sing long and complex songs. All these behaviours and sounds exhibit hierarchical structure-syllables and notes are positioned within words and musical phrases, words and motives in sentences and musical phrases, and so on. We developed a new method to measure and compare hierarchical temporal structures in speech, song and music. The method identifies temporal events as peaks in the sound amplitude envelope, and quantifies event clustering across a range of timescales using Allan factor (AF) variance. AF variances were analysed and compared for over 200 different recordings from more than 16 different categories of signals, including recordings of speech in different contexts and languages, musical compositions and performances from different genres. Non-human vocalizations from two bird species and two types of marine mammals were also analysed for comparison. The resulting patterns of AF variance across timescales were distinct to each of four natural categories of complex sound: speech, popular music, classical music and complex animal vocalizations. Comparisons within and across categories indicated that nested clustering in longer timescales was more prominent when prosodic variation was greater, and when sounds came from interactions among individuals, including interactions between speakers, musicians, and even killer whales. Nested clustering also was more prominent for music compared with speech, and reflected beat structure for popular music and self-similarity across timescales for classical music. In summary, hierarchical temporal structures reflect the behavioural and social processes underlying complex vocalizations and musical performances. © 2017 The Author(s).
The neural processing of hierarchical structure in music and speech at different timescales

PubMed Central

Farbood, Morwaread M.; Heeger, David J.; Marcus, Gary; Hasson, Uri; Lerner, Yulia

2015-01-01

Music, like speech, is a complex auditory signal that contains structures at multiple timescales, and as such is a potentially powerful entry point into the question of how the brain integrates complex streams of information. Using an experimental design modeled after previous studies that used scrambled versions of a spoken story (Lerner et al., 2011) and a silent movie (Hasson et al., 2008), we investigate whether listeners perceive hierarchical structure in music beyond short (~6 s) time windows and whether there is cortical overlap between music and language processing at multiple timescales. Experienced pianists were presented with an extended musical excerpt scrambled at multiple timescales—by measure, phrase, and section—while measuring brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The reliability of evoked activity, as quantified by inter-subject correlation of the fMRI responses, was measured. We found that response reliability depended systematically on musical structure coherence, revealing a topographically organized hierarchy of processing timescales. Early auditory areas (at the bottom of the hierarchy) responded reliably in all conditions. For brain areas at the top of the hierarchy, the original (unscrambled) excerpt evoked more reliable responses than any of the scrambled excerpts, indicating that these brain areas process long-timescale musical structures, on the order of minutes. The topography of processing timescales was analogous with that reported previously for speech, but the timescale gradients for music and speech overlapped with one another only partially, suggesting that temporally analogous structures—words/measures, sentences/musical phrases, paragraph/sections—are processed separately. PMID:26029037
PSEMA: An Algorithm for Pattern Stimulated Evolution of Music

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mavrogianni, A. N.; Vlachos, D. S.; Harvalias, G.

2008-11-01

An algorithm for pattern stimulating evolution of music is presented in this work (PSEMA). The system combines a pattern with a genetic algorithm for automatic music composition in order to create a musical phrase uniquely characterizing the pattern. As an example a musical portrait is presented. The initialization of the musical phrases is done with a Markov Chain process. The evolution is dominated by an arbitrary correspondence between the pattern (feature extraction of the pattern may be used in this step) and the esthetic result of the musical phrase.
Ground Controlled Approach Controller Training System (GCA-CTS) System Documentation.

DTIC Science & Technology

1980-06-01

064010 OVER 72 Al NAVTRAEQUIPCEN 77-C-0162-3 TABLE 8. GCA-CTS PHRASES (CONT) Number Phrase of Identi- Number Repeats fier Phrase 90) 4 170040 THIS WILL...radians/second)( Becomes 0.0 degrees/second. 121 F-. 0 .,- NAVTRAEQUIPCE.: 77-C-nfi2-3 ?.1-t Ac7uires Vi5: al Contac- "’ith Runwav. If the current...variables: ITMP : temporary for source of speech output Files created/changed: None Files referenced: None Notes: None 388 I I4; r I’, Al ൐a7 190
Dissociation of eye and head components of gaze shifts by stimulation of the omnipause neuron region.

PubMed

Gandhi, Neeraj J; Sparks, David L

2007-07-01

Natural movements often include actions integrated across multiple effectors. Coordinated eye-head movements are driven by a command to shift the line of sight by a desired displacement vector. Yet because extraocular and neck motoneurons are separate entities, the gaze shift command must be separated into independent signals for eye and head movement control. We report that this separation occurs, at least partially, at or before the level of pontine omnipause neurons (OPNs). Stimulation of the OPNs prior to and during gaze shifts temporally decoupled the eye and head components by inhibiting gaze and eye saccades. In contrast, head movements were consistently initiated before gaze onset, and ongoing head movements continued along their trajectories, albeit with some characteristic modulations. After stimulation offset, a gaze shift composed of an eye saccade, and a reaccelerated head movement was produced to preserve gaze accuracy. We conclude that signals subject to OPN inhibition produce the eye-movement component of a coordinated eye-head gaze shift and are not the only signals involved in the generation of the head component of the gaze shift.

Experimental studies on twin PTCs driven by dual piston head linear compressor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gour, Abhay S.; Joy, Joewin; Sagar, Pankaj; Sudharshan, H.; Mallappa, A.; Karunanithi, R.; Jacob, S.

2017-02-01

An experimental study on pulse tube cryocooler is presented with a twin pulse tube configuration. The study is conducted with a dual piston head linear compressor design which is developed indigenously. The two identical pulse tube cryocoolers are operated by a single linear motor which generates 1800 out of phase dual pressure waves. The advantages of the configuration being the reduction in fabrication cost and the increased cooling power. The compressor is driven at a frequency of 48 Hz using indigenously developed PWM based power supply. The CFD study of pulse tube cryocooler is discussed along with the experimental cool down results. A detailed experimental and FEM based studies on the fabrication procedure of heat exchangers is conducted to ensure better heat transfer in the same.
Quantifying Head Impacts in Collegiate Lacrosse.

PubMed

Reynolds, Bryson B; Patrie, James; Henry, Erich J; Goodkin, Howard P; Broshek, Donna K; Wintermark, Max; Druzgal, T Jason

2016-11-01

Concussion and repetitive head impact in sports has increased interest and concern for clinicians, scientists, and athletes. Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the United States, but the burden of head impact in lacrosse is unknown. The goal of this pilot study was to quantify head impact associated with practicing and playing collegiate lacrosse while subjects were fitted with wearable accelerometers. Descriptive epidemiology study. In a single year, a collegiate cohort of 14 women's and 15 men's lacrosse players wore mastoid-patch accelerometers to measure the frequency and severity of head impacts during official practices and games. Average impact severity, mean number of impacts, and cumulative acceleration were evaluated, stratified by sport and event type. Men's and women's collegiate lacrosse players did not significantly differ in the number of head impacts received during games (11.5 for men vs 9.2 for women) or practices (3.1 vs 3.1). Men's lacrosse players had significantly higher average head acceleration per impact during games compared with women (21.1g vs 14.7g) but not during practices (21.3g vs 18.1g). For both men and women, more impacts occurred during games than during practices (men, 11.5 vs 3.1; women, 9.2 vs 3.1), but impact severity did not significantly differ between events for either sport (men, 21.1g vs 21.3g; women, 14.7g vs 18.1g). The study data suggest a higher impact burden during games compared with practices, but this effect is driven by the quantity rather than severity of impacts. In contrast, sex-based effects in impact burden are driven by average impact severity rather than quantity. Data collected from larger multisite trials and/or different age groups could be used to inform ongoing debates, including headgear and practice regulations, that might appreciably affect the burden of head impacts in lacrosse. While most head impacts do not result in a clinical diagnosis of concussion, evidence indicates that subconcussive head impacts may increase susceptibility to concussion and contribute to long-term neurodegeneration. © 2016 The Author(s).
Variations in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) mapping: from the natural language of patron terms to the controlled vocabulary of mapped lists*

PubMed Central

Gault, Lora V.; Shultz, Mary; Davies, Kathy J.

2002-01-01

Objectives: This study compared the mapping of natural language patron terms to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) across six MeSH interfaces for the MEDLINE database. Methods: Test data were obtained from search requests submitted by patrons to the Library of the Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, over a nine-month period. Search request statements were parsed into separate terms or phrases. Using print sources from the National Library of Medicine, Each parsed patron term was assigned corresponding MeSH terms. Each patron term was entered into each of the selected interfaces to determine how effectively they mapped to MeSH. Data were collected for mapping success, accessibility of MeSH term within mapped list, and total number of MeSH choices within each list. Results: The selected MEDLINE interfaces do not map the same patron term in the same way, nor do they consistently lead to what is considered the appropriate MeSH term. Conclusions: If searchers utilize the MEDLINE database to its fullest potential by mapping to MeSH, the results of the mapping will vary between interfaces. This variance may ultimately impact the search results. These differences should be considered when choosing a MEDLINE interface and when instructing end users. PMID:11999175
Variations in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) mapping: from the natural language of patron terms to the controlled vocabulary of mapped lists.

PubMed

Gault, Lora V; Shultz, Mary; Davies, Kathy J

2002-04-01

This study compared the mapping of natural language patron terms to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) across six MeSH interfaces for the MEDLINE database. Test data were obtained from search requests submitted by patrons to the Library of the Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, over a nine-month period. Search request statements were parsed into separate terms or phrases. Using print sources from the National Library of Medicine, Each parsed patron term was assigned corresponding MeSH terms. Each patron term was entered into each of the selected interfaces to determine how effectively they mapped to MeSH. Data were collected for mapping success, accessibility of MeSH term within mapped list, and total number of MeSH choices within each list. The selected MEDLINE interfaces do not map the same patron term in the same way, nor do they consistently lead to what is considered the appropriate MeSH term. If searchers utilize the MEDLINE database to its fullest potential by mapping to MeSH, the results of the mapping will vary between interfaces. This variance may ultimately impact the search results. These differences should be considered when choosing a MEDLINE interface and when instructing end users.
Design and Diagnosis Problem Solving with Multifunctional Technical Knowledge Bases

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-09-29

STRUCTURE METHODOLOGY Design problem solving is a complex activity involving a number of subtasks. and a number of alternative methods potentially available...Conference on Artificial Intelligence. London: The British Computer Society, pp. 621-633. Friedland, P. (1979). Knowledge-based experimental design ...Computing Milieuxl: Management of Computing and Information Systems- -ty,*m man- agement General Terms: Design . Methodology Additional Key Words and Phrases
WORDGRAPH: Keyword-in-Context Visualization for NETSPEAK's Wildcard Search.

PubMed

Riehmann, Patrick; Gruendl, Henning; Potthast, Martin; Trenkmann, Martin; Stein, Benno; Froehlich, Benno

2012-09-01

The WORDGRAPH helps writers in visually choosing phrases while writing a text. It checks for the commonness of phrases and allows for the retrieval of alternatives by means of wildcard queries. To support such queries, we implement a scalable retrieval engine, which returns high-quality results within milliseconds using a probabilistic retrieval strategy. The results are displayed as WORDGRAPH visualization or as a textual list. The graphical interface provides an effective means for interactive exploration of search results using filter techniques, query expansion, and navigation. Our observations indicate that, of three investigated retrieval tasks, the textual interface is sufficient for the phrase verification task, wherein both interfaces support context-sensitive word choice, and the WORDGRAPH best supports the exploration of a phrase's context or the underlying corpus. Our user study confirms these observations and shows that WORDGRAPH is generally the preferred interface over the textual result list for queries containing multiple wildcards.
Two-year-olds use the generic/non-generic distinction to guide their inferences about novel kinds

PubMed Central

Graham, Susan A.; Nayer, Samantha L.; Gelman, Susan A.

2011-01-01

These studies investigated 24- and 30-month-olds’ sensitivity to generic versus nongeneric language when acquiring knowledge about novel kinds. Toddlers were administered an inductive inference task, during which they heard a generic noun-phrase (e.g., “Blicks drink milk”) or a non-generic noun-phrase (e.g., “This blick drinks milk”) paired with an action (e.g., drinking) modeled on an object. They were then provided with the model and a non-model exemplar and asked to imitate the action. After hearing non-generic phrases, 30-month-olds, but not 24-month-olds, imitated more often with the model than with the non-model exemplar. In contrast, after hearing generic phrases, 30-month-olds imitated equally often with both exemplars. These results suggest that 30-month-olds use the generic/non-generic distinction to guide their inferences about novel kinds. PMID:21410928
A Battle of Words: "Dignity" and "Peace" in the Writings of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

PubMed

Burnier, Daniel

2017-04-01

This article analyzes the writings of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross through the discursive lens of the phrase "dying with dignity." For her, the phrase meant allowing someone to die comfortably his/her own death. This phrase has to be understood in relationship with the final "stage of acceptance" of her model. Describing this key part of her well-known scientific output, she often used, in the early 1970s, the phrase "dying in peace and dignity." An evaluation of the evidence suggests that because the concept of dignity was co-opted by the pro-euthanasia movement during this decade, the language of dignity was little by little abandoned by her. In later years, only "peace" survived from her favorite expression. Although this concept of peace remains present to the end in all Kübler-Ross writings, the pro-euthanasia movement has also started to speak the language of peace.
Phrase frequency effects in language production.

PubMed

Janssen, Niels; Barber, Horacio A

2012-01-01

A classic debate in the psychology of language concerns the question of the grain-size of the linguistic information that is stored in memory. One view is that only morphologically simple forms are stored (e.g., 'car', 'red'), and that more complex forms of language such as multi-word phrases (e.g., 'red car') are generated on-line from the simple forms. In two experiments we tested this view. In Experiment 1, participants produced noun+adjective and noun+noun phrases that were elicited by experimental displays consisting of colored line drawings and two superimposed line drawings. In Experiment 2, participants produced noun+adjective and determiner+noun+adjective utterances elicited by colored line drawings. In both experiments, naming latencies decreased with increasing frequency of the multi-word phrase, and were unaffected by the frequency of the object name in the utterance. These results suggest that the language system is sensitive to the distribution of linguistic information at grain-sizes beyond individual words.
Use of machine learning methods to reduce predictive error of groundwater models.

PubMed

Xu, Tianfang; Valocchi, Albert J; Choi, Jaesik; Amir, Eyal

2014-01-01

Quantitative analyses of groundwater flow and transport typically rely on a physically-based model, which is inherently subject to error. Errors in model structure, parameter and data lead to both random and systematic error even in the output of a calibrated model. We develop complementary data-driven models (DDMs) to reduce the predictive error of physically-based groundwater models. Two machine learning techniques, the instance-based weighting and support vector regression, are used to build the DDMs. This approach is illustrated using two real-world case studies of the Republican River Compact Administration model and the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie model. The two groundwater models have different hydrogeologic settings, parameterization, and calibration methods. In the first case study, cluster analysis is introduced for data preprocessing to make the DDMs more robust and computationally efficient. The DDMs reduce the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the temporal, spatial, and spatiotemporal prediction of piezometric head of the groundwater model by 82%, 60%, and 48%, respectively. In the second case study, the DDMs reduce the RMSE of the temporal prediction of piezometric head of the groundwater model by 77%. It is further demonstrated that the effectiveness of the DDMs depends on the existence and extent of the structure in the error of the physically-based model. © 2013, National GroundWater Association.
Information Extraction from Unstructured Text for the Biodefense Knowledge Center

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Samatova, N F; Park, B; Krishnamurthy, R

2005-04-29

The Bio-Encyclopedia at the Biodefense Knowledge Center (BKC) is being constructed to allow an early detection of emerging biological threats to homeland security. It requires highly structured information extracted from variety of data sources. However, the quantity of new and vital information available from every day sources cannot be assimilated by hand, and therefore reliable high-throughput information extraction techniques are much anticipated. In support of the BKC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, together with the University of Utah, are developing an information extraction system built around the bioterrorism domain. This paper reports two important pieces ofmore » our effort integrated in the system: key phrase extraction and semantic tagging. Whereas two key phrase extraction technologies developed during the course of project help identify relevant texts, our state-of-the-art semantic tagging system can pinpoint phrases related to emerging biological threats. Also we are enhancing and tailoring the Bio-Encyclopedia by augmenting semantic dictionaries and extracting details of important events, such as suspected disease outbreaks. Some of these technologies have already been applied to large corpora of free text sources vital to the BKC mission, including ProMED-mail, PubMed abstracts, and the DHS's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection (IAIP) news clippings. In order to address the challenges involved in incorporating such large amounts of unstructured text, the overall system is focused on precise extraction of the most relevant information for inclusion in the BKC.« less
The Processing and Interpretation of Verb Phrase Ellipsis Constructions by Children at Normal and Slowed Speech Rates

PubMed Central

Callahan, Sarah M.; Walenski, Matthew; Love, Tracy

2013-01-01

Purpose To examine children’s comprehension of verb phrase (VP) ellipsis constructions in light of their automatic, online structural processing abilities and conscious, metalinguistic reflective skill. Method Forty-two children ages 5 through 12 years listened to VP ellipsis constructions involving the strict/sloppy ambiguity (e.g., “The janitor untangled himself from the rope and the fireman in the elementary school did too after the accident.”) in which the ellipsis phrase (“did too”) had 2 interpretations: (a) strict (“untangled the janitor”) and (b) sloppy (“untangled the fireman”). We examined these sentences at a normal speech rate with an online cross-modal picture priming task (n = 14) and an offline sentence–picture matching task (n = 11). Both tasks were also given with slowed speech input (n = 17). Results Children showed priming for both the strict and sloppy interpretations at a normal speech rate but only for the strict interpretation with slowed input. Offline, children displayed an adultlike preference for the sloppy interpretation with normal-rate input but a divergent pattern with slowed speech. Conclusions Our results suggest that children and adults rely on a hybrid syntax-discourse model for the online comprehension and offline interpretation of VP ellipsis constructions. This model incorporates a temporally sensitive syntactic process of VP reconstruction (disrupted with slow input) and a temporally protracted discourse effect attributed to parallelism (preserved with slow input). PMID:22223886
Phrase boundary effects on the temporal kinematics of sequential tongue tip consonants1

PubMed Central

Byrd, Dani; Lee, Sungbok; Campos-Astorkiza, Rebeka

2008-01-01

This study evaluates the effects of phrase boundaries on the intra- and intergestural kinematic characteristics of blended gestures, i.e., overlapping gestures produced with a single articulator. The sequences examined are the juncture geminate [d(#)d], the sequence [d(#)z], and, for comparison, the singleton tongue tip gesture in [d(#)b]. This allows the investigation of the process of gestural aggregation [Munhall, K. G., and Löfqvist, A. (1992). “Gestural aggregation in speech: laryngeal gestures,” J. Phonetics 20, 93–110] and the manner in which it is affected by prosodic structure. Juncture geminates are predicted to be affected by prosodic boundaries in the same way as other gestures; that is, they should display prosodic lengthening and lesser overlap across a boundary. Articulatory prosodic lengthening is also investigated using a signal alignment method of the functional data analysis framework [Ramsay, J. O., and Silverman, B. W. (2005). Functional Data Analysis, 2nd ed. (Springer-Verlag, New York)]. This provides the ability to examine a time warping function that characterizes relative timing difference (i.e., lagging or advancing) of a test signal with respect to a given reference, thus offering a way of illuminating local nonlinear deformations at work in prosodic lengthening. These findings are discussed in light of the π-gesture framework of Byrd and Saltzman [(2003) “The elastic phrase: Modeling the dynamics of boundary-adjacent lengthening,” J. Phonetics 31, 149–180]. PMID:18537396
The Two Sides of Sensory-Cognitive Interactions: Effects of Age, Hearing Acuity, and Working Memory Span on Sentence Comprehension.

PubMed

DeCaro, Renee; Peelle, Jonathan E; Grossman, Murray; Wingfield, Arthur

2016-01-01

Reduced hearing acuity is among the most prevalent of chronic medical conditions among older adults. An experiment is reported in which comprehension of spoken sentences was tested for older adults with good hearing acuity or with a mild-to-moderate hearing loss, and young adults with age-normal hearing. Comprehension was measured by participants' ability to determine the agent of an action in sentences that expressed this relation with a syntactically less complex subject-relative construction or a syntactically more complex object-relative construction. Agency determination was further challenged by inserting a prepositional phrase into sentences between the person performing an action and the action being performed. As a control, prepositional phrases of equivalent length were also inserted into sentences in a non-disruptive position. Effects on sentence comprehension of age, hearing acuity, prepositional phrase placement and sound level of stimulus presentations appeared only for comprehension of sentences with the more syntactically complex object-relative structures. Working memory as tested by reading span scores accounted for a significant amount of the variance in comprehension accuracy. Once working memory capacity and hearing acuity were taken into account, chronological age among the older adults contributed no further variance to comprehension accuracy. Results are discussed in terms of the positive and negative effects of sensory-cognitive interactions in comprehension of spoken sentences and lend support to a framework in which domain-general executive resources, notably verbal working memory, play a role in both linguistic and perceptual processing.
Indian and African plate motions driven by the push force of the Réunion plume head.

PubMed

Cande, Steven C; Stegman, Dave R

2011-07-06

Mantle plumes are thought to play an important part in the Earth's tectonics, yet it has been difficult to isolate the effect that plumes have on plate motions. Here we analyse the plate motions involved in two apparently disparate events--the unusually rapid motion of India between 67 and 52 million years ago and a contemporaneous, transitory slowing of Africa's motion--and show that the events are coupled, with the common element being the position of the Indian and African plates relative to the location of the Réunion plume head. The synchroneity of these events suggests that they were both driven by the force of the Réunion plume head. The recognition of this plume force has substantial tectonic implications: the speed-up and slowdown of India, the possible cessation of convergence between Africa and Eurasia in the Palaeocene epoch and the enigmatic bends of the fracture zones on the Southwest Indian Ridge can all be attributed to the Réunion plume. ©2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
Aphorisms and Short Phrases as Pieces of Knowledge in the Pedagogical Framework of the Andalusian School of Public Health

PubMed Central

González-García, Lorena; Chemello, Clarice; García-Sánchez, Filomena; Serpa-Anaya, Delia C.; Gómez-González, Carmen; Soriano-Carrascosa, Leticia; Muñoz-de Rueda, Paloma; Moya-Molina, Miguel; Sánchez-García, Fernando; Ortega-Calvo, Manuel

2012-01-01

Background: Bearing in mind the philosophical pedagogical significance of short phrases for the training of researchers in the health care ambit, we hence have studied the aphorisms and striking phrases expressed during the epidemiology course at the Andalusian School of Public Health. Methods: Belonging to the qualitative type and applied through the establishment of a multidisciplinary focus group made up of ten post-graduated students, where one of them acted as a moderator. The collection of information lasted four months. Information was classified in two ways: Firstly, aphorisms and short phrases with a pedagogical impact; and secondly, data with statistical, epidemiological, epistemological, pragmatic, or heuristic component, and for scientific diffusion. It was decided to perform a triangulation that included a descriptive presentation and a basic categorical analysis. The two teachers with a highest interpretative load have been identified . Results: A total of 127 elements, regarded as of interest by the focus group, were collected. Forty-four of them (34.6%) were aphorisms, and 83 were short phrases with a pedagogical load (65.3%). Most of all them were classified as statistical elements (35.4%) followed by epistemological (21.3%) and epidemiological (15.7%) elements. There was no tendency towards aphorisms or short phrases (P > 0.05) among the teachers with more informative representation. Conclusion: There has been a tilt in the contents towards the statistical area to the detriment of the epidemiological one. Concept maps have visualized classifications. This sort of qualitative analysis helps the researcher review contents acquired during his/her training process. PMID:22448313
On directionality of phrase structure building.

PubMed

Chesi, Cristiano

2015-02-01

Minimalism in grammatical theorizing (Chomsky in The minimalist program. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995) led to simpler linguistic devices and a better focalization of the core properties of the structure building engine: a lexicon and a free (recursive) phrase formation operation, dubbed Merge, are the basic components that serve in building syntactic structures. Here I suggest that by looking at the elementary restrictions that apply to Merge (i.e., selection and licensing of functional features), we could conclude that a re-orientation of the syntactic derivation (from bottom-up/right-left to top-down/left-right) is necessary to make the theory simpler, especially for long-distance (filler-gap) dependencies, and is also empirically more adequate. If the structure building operations would assemble lexical items in the order they are pronounced (Phillips in Order and structure. PhD thesis, MIT, 1996; Chesi in Phases and cartography in linguistic computation: Toward a cognitively motivated computational model of linguistic competence. PhD thesis, Università di Siena, 2004; Chesi in Competence and computation: Toward a processing friendly minimalist grammar. Unipress, Padova, 2012), on-line performance data could better fit the grammatical model, without resorting to external "performance factors." The phase-based, top-down (and, as a consequence, left-right) Minimalist Grammar here discussed goes in this direction, ultimately showing how strong Islands (Huang in Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. PhD thesis, MIT, 1982) and intervention effects (Gordon et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 27:1411-1423, 2001, Gordon et al. in J Mem Lang 51:97-114, 2004) could be better explained in structural terms assuming this unconventional derivational direction.
Identifying Key Words in 9-1-1 Calls for Stroke: A Mixed Methods Approach.

PubMed

Richards, Christopher T; Wang, Baiyang; Markul, Eddie; Albarran, Frank; Rottman, Doreen; Aggarwal, Neelum T; Lindeman, Patricia; Stein-Spencer, Leslee; Weber, Joseph M; Pearlman, Kenneth S; Tataris, Katie L; Holl, Jane L; Klabjan, Diego; Prabhakaran, Shyam

2017-01-01

Identifying stroke during a 9-1-1 call is critical to timely prehospital care. However, emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs) recognize stroke in less than half of 9-1-1 calls, potentially due to the words used by callers to communicate stroke signs and symptoms. We hypothesized that callers do not typically use words and phrases considered to be classical descriptors of stroke, such as focal neurologic deficits, but that a mixed-methods approach can identify words and phrases commonly used by 9-1-1 callers to describe acute stroke victims. We performed a mixed-method, retrospective study of 9-1-1 call audio recordings for adult patients with confirmed stroke who were transported by ambulance in a large urban city. Content analysis, a qualitative methodology, and computational linguistics, a quantitative methodology, were used to identify key words and phrases used by 9-1-1 callers to describe acute stroke victims. Because a caller's level of emotional distress contributes to the communication during a 9-1-1 call, the Emotional Content and Cooperation Score was scored by a multidisciplinary team. A total of 110 9-1-1 calls, received between June and September 2013, were analyzed. EMDs recognized stroke in 48% of calls, and the emotional state of most callers (95%) was calm. In 77% of calls in which EMDs recognized stroke, callers specifically used the word "stroke"; however, the word "stroke" was used in only 38% of calls. Vague, non-specific words and phrases were used to describe stroke victims' symptoms in 55% of calls, and 45% of callers used distractor words and phrases suggestive of non-stroke emergencies. Focal neurologic symptoms were described in 39% of calls. Computational linguistics identified 9 key words that were more commonly used in calls where the EMD identified stroke. These words were concordant with terms identified through qualitative content analysis. Most 9-1-1 callers used vague, non-specific, or distractor words and phrases and infrequently provide classic stroke descriptions during 9-1-1 calls for stroke. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies identified similar key words and phrases associated with accurate EMD stroke recognition. This study suggests that tools incorporating commonly used words and phrases could potentially improve EMD stroke recognition.
Interaction Between Syntactic Structure and Information Structure in the Processing of a Head-Final Language.

PubMed

Koizumi, Masatoshi; Imamura, Satoshi

2017-02-01

The effects of syntactic and information structures on sentence processing load were investigated using two reading comprehension experiments in Japanese, a head-final SOV language. In the first experiment, we discovered the main effects of syntactic and information structures, as well as their interaction, showing that interaction of these two factors is not restricted to head-initial languages. The second experiment revealed that the interaction between syntactic structure and information structure occurs at the second NP (O of SOV and S of OSV), which, crucially, is a pre-head position, suggesting the incremental nature of the processing of both syntactic structure and information structure in head-final languages.
Computerized system for translating a torch head

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wall, W. A., Jr.; Ives, R. E.; Bruce, M. M., Jr.; Pryor, P. P., Jr.; Gard, L. H. (Inventor)

1978-01-01

The system provides a constant travel speed along a contoured workpiece. It has a driven skate characterized by an elongated bed, with a pair of independently pivoted trucks connected to the bed for support. The trucks are mounted on a contoured track of arbitrary configuration in a mutually spaced relation. An axially extensible torch head manipulator arm is mounted on the bed of the carriage and projects perpendicular from the midportion. The torch head is mounted at its distal end. A real-time computerized control drive subsystem is used to advance the skate along the track of a variable rate for maintaining a constant speed for the torch head tip, and to position the torch axis relative to a preset angle to the workpiece.

Segmentation of organs at risk in CT volumes of head, thorax, abdomen, and pelvis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Miaofei; Ma, Jinfeng; Li, Yan; Li, Meiling; Song, Yanli; Li, Qiang

2015-03-01

Accurate segmentation of organs at risk (OARs) is a key step in treatment planning system (TPS) of image guided radiation therapy. We are developing three classes of methods to segment 17 organs at risk throughout the whole body, including brain, brain stem, eyes, mandible, temporomandibular joints, parotid glands, spinal cord, lungs, trachea, heart, livers, kidneys, spleen, prostate, rectum, femoral heads, and skin. The three classes of segmentation methods include (1) threshold-based methods for organs of large contrast with adjacent structures such as lungs, trachea, and skin; (2) context-driven Generalized Hough Transform-based methods combined with graph cut algorithm for robust localization and segmentation of liver, kidneys and spleen; and (3) atlas and registration-based methods for segmentation of heart and all organs in CT volumes of head and pelvis. The segmentation accuracy for the seventeen organs was subjectively evaluated by two medical experts in three levels of score: 0, poor (unusable in clinical practice); 1, acceptable (minor revision needed); and 2, good (nearly no revision needed). A database was collected from Ruijin Hospital, Huashan Hospital, and Xuhui Central Hospital in Shanghai, China, including 127 head scans, 203 thoracic scans, 154 abdominal scans, and 73 pelvic scans. The percentages of "good" segmentation results were 97.6%, 92.9%, 81.1%, 87.4%, 85.0%, 78.7%, 94.1%, 91.1%, 81.3%, 86.7%, 82.5%, 86.4%, 79.9%, 72.6%, 68.5%, 93.2%, 96.9% for brain, brain stem, eyes, mandible, temporomandibular joints, parotid glands, spinal cord, lungs, trachea, heart, livers, kidneys, spleen, prostate, rectum, femoral heads, and skin, respectively. Various organs at risk can be reliably segmented from CT scans by use of the three classes of segmentation methods.
Event-related brain potentials index cue-based retrieval interference during sentence comprehension.

PubMed

Martin, Andrea E; Nieuwland, Mante S; Carreiras, Manuel

2012-01-16

Successful language use requires access to products of past processing within an evolving discourse. A central issue for any neurocognitive theory of language then concerns the role of memory variables during language processing. Under a cue-based retrieval account of language comprehension, linguistic dependency resolution (e.g., retrieving antecedents) is subject to interference from other information in the sentence, especially information that occurs between the words that form the dependency (e.g., between the antecedent and the retrieval site). Retrieval interference may then shape processing complexity as a function of the match of the information at retrieval with the antecedent versus other recent or similar items in memory. To address these issues, we studied the online processing of ellipsis in Castilian Spanish, a language with morphological gender agreement. We recorded event-related brain potentials while participants read sentences containing noun-phrase ellipsis indicated by the determiner otro/a ('another'). These determiners had a grammatically correct or incorrect gender with respect to their antecedent nouns that occurred earlier in the sentence. Moreover, between each antecedent and determiner, another noun phrase occurred that was structurally unavailable as an antecedent and that matched or mismatched the gender of the antecedent (i.e., a local agreement attractor). In contrast to extant P600 results on agreement violation processing, and inconsistent with predictions from neurocognitive models of sentence processing, grammatically incorrect determiners evoked a sustained, broadly distributed negativity compared to correct ones between 400 and 1000ms after word onset, possibly related to sustained negativities as observed for referential processing difficulties. Crucially, this effect was modulated by the attractor: an increased negativity was observed for grammatically correct determiners that did not match the gender of the attractor, suggesting that structurally unavailable noun phrases were at least temporarily considered for grammatically correct ellipsis. These results constitute the first ERP evidence for cue-based retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Divided listening in noise in a mock-up of a military command post.

PubMed

Abel, Sharon M; Nakashima, Ann; Smith, Ingrid

2012-04-01

This study investigated divided listening in noise in a mock-up of a vehicular command post. The effects of background noise from the vehicle, unattended speech of coworkers on speech understanding, and a visual cue that directed attention to the message source were examined. Sixteen normal-hearing males participated in sixteen listening conditions, defined by combinations of the absence/presence of vehicle and speech babble noises, availability of a vision cue, and number of channels (2 or 3, diotic or dichotic, and loudspeakers) over which concurrent series of call sign, color, and number phrases were presented. All wore a communications headset with integrated hearing protection. A computer keyboard was used to encode phrases beginning with an assigned call sign. Subjects achieved close to 100% correct phrase identification when presented over the headset (with or without vehicle noise) or over the loudspeakers, without vehicle noise. In contrast, the percentage correct phrase identification was significantly less by 30 to 35% when presented over loudspeakers with vehicle noise. Vehicle noise combined with babble noise decreased the accuracy by an additional 12% for dichotic listening. Vision cues increased phrase identification accuracy by 7% for diotic listening. Outcomes could be explained by the at-ear energy spectra of the speech and noise.
Language for Winning Hearts and Minds: Verb Aspect in U.S. Presidential Campaign Speeches for Engaging Emotion.

PubMed

Havas, David A; Chapp, Christopher B

2016-01-01

How does language influence the emotions and actions of large audiences? Functionally, emotions help address environmental uncertainty by constraining the body to support adaptive responses and social coordination. We propose emotions provide a similar function in language processing by constraining the mental simulation of language content to facilitate comprehension, and to foster alignment of mental states in message recipients. Consequently, we predicted that emotion-inducing language should be found in speeches specifically designed to create audience alignment - stump speeches of United States presidential candidates. We focused on phrases in the past imperfective verb aspect ("a bad economy was burdening us") that leave a mental simulation of the language content open-ended, and thus unconstrained, relative to past perfective sentences ("we were burdened by a bad economy"). As predicted, imperfective phrases appeared more frequently in stump versus comparison speeches, relative to perfective phrases. In a subsequent experiment, participants rated phrases from presidential speeches as more emotionally intense when written in the imperfective aspect compared to the same phrases written in the perfective aspect, particularly for sentences perceived as negative in valence. These findings are consistent with the notion that emotions have a role in constraining the comprehension of language, a role that may be used in communication with large audiences.
Language and music phrase boundary processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An ERP study.

PubMed

DePriest, John; Glushko, Anastasia; Steinhauer, Karsten; Koelsch, Stefan

2017-10-31

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is frequently associated with communicative impairment, regardless of intelligence level or mental age. Impairment of prosodic processing in particular is a common feature of ASD. Despite extensive overlap in neural resources involved in prosody and music processing, music perception seems to be spared in this population. The present study is the first to investigate prosodic phrasing in ASD in both language and music, combining event-related brain potential (ERP) and behavioral methods. We tested phrase boundary processing in language and music in neuro-typical adults and high-functioning individuals with ASD. We targeted an ERP response associated with phrase boundary processing in both language and music - i.e., the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). While a language-CPS was observed in the neuro-typical group, for ASD participants a smaller response failed to reach statistical significance. In music, we found a boundary-onset music-CPS for both groups during pauses between musical phrases. Our results support the view of preserved processing of musical cues in ASD individuals, with a corresponding prosodic impairment. This suggests that, despite the existence of a domain-general processing mechanism (the CPS), key differences in the integration of features of language and music may lead to the prosodic impairment in ASD.
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tribble, G.W.; Sansone, F.J.; Li, Yuan-Hui

Hydraulic exchange between overlying sea water and the internal structure of a patch reef in Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Hawaii, was studied with an array of wells, 1, 2, and 4 m deep. Two natural chemical tracers, radon, and salinity, were used to calculate the exchange rate between surface sea water and reef interstitial waters. Dissolved radon concentrations are substantially higher in interstitial waters than is surface water. The degree of radon enrichment is quantitatively related to the time elapsed since interstitial water had equilibrated with the atmosphere. Residence time estimates are 1-40 days, with deeper wells having slower exchange. Themore » average residence time for 1-m-deep wells was 2.1 days. A rainstorm-induced dilution of the salinity of Kaneohe Bay provides the second tracer. Samples of surface and reef interstitial waters following this salinity perturbation are used to calculate an average residence time of 2.6 days at a depth of 1 m and 42 days at a depth of 2 m. Three types of physical forces thought to cause exchange between surface and interstitial water are considered by measurement of the forcing functions and reef permeability. Hydraulic conductivities are about 50 m/d, with lower values near the seaward side of the reef. Most exchange seems to be caused by high-frequency, wave-driven oscillatory pumping and by unidirectional hydraulic head gradients (of uncertain origin) that are stable for at least 3-4 days. Wave-driven mixing is probably more important shallower in the reef, whereas head-driven flow may dominate deeper in the reef. Tidal pumping does not seem to contribute to exchange. All methods indicate that exchange in the upper part of Checker Reef is primarily through vertical exchange. The best estimate for the residence time of water at a depth of 1 m is 2 days. Water at depths of 204 m probably has a residence time of weeks to months. 49 refs., 8 figs., 6 tabs.« less
Information content in Medline record fields.

PubMed

Kostoff, Ronald N; Block, Joel A; Stump, Jesse A; Pfeil, Kirstin M

2004-06-30

The authors have been conducting text mining analyses (extraction of useful information from text) of Medline records, using Abstracts as the main data source. For literature-based discovery, and other text mining applications as well, all records in a discipline need to be evaluated for determining prior art. Many Medline records do not contain Abstracts, but typically contain Titles and Mesh terms. Substitution of these fields for Abstracts in the non-Abstract records would restore the missing literature to some degree. Determine how well the information content of Title and Mesh fields approximates that of Abstracts in Medline records. Select historical Medline records related to Raynaud's Phenomenon that contain Abstracts. Determine the information content in the Abstract fields through text mining. Then, determine the information content in the Title fields, the Mesh fields, and the combined Title-Mesh fields, and compare with the information content in the Abstracts. Four metrics were used to compare the information content related to Raynaud's Phenomenon in the different fields: total number of phrases; number of unique phrases; content of factors from factor analyses; content of clusters from multi-link clustering. The Abstract field contains almost an order of magnitude more phrases than the other fields, and slightly more than an order of magnitude more unique phrases than the other fields. Each field used a factor matrix with 14 factors, and the combination of all 56 factors for the four fields represented 27 separate, but not unique, themes. These themes could be placed in two major categories, with two sub-categories per major category: Auto-immunity (antibodies, inflammation) and circulation (peripheral vessel circulation, coronary vessel circulation). All four sub-categories included representation from each field. Thus, while the focus of the representation of each field in each sub-category was moderately different, the four sub-category structure could be identified by analyzing the total factors in each field. In the cluster comparison phase of the study, the phrases used to create the clusters were the most important phrases identified for each factor. Thus, the factor matrix served as a filter for words used for clustering. While clusters were generated for all four fields, the Title hierarchy tended to be fragmented due to sparsity of the co-occurrence matrix that underlies the clusters. Therefore, the Title clusters were examined at only the lower levels of aggregation. The Abstract, Mesh, and Mesh + Title fields had the same first level taxonomy categories, auto-immunity and circulation. At the second level, the Abstract, Mesh, and Mesh + Title fields had the autoimmune diseases and antibodies sub-category in common. The Abstract and Mesh fields shared fascia inflammation as the other auto-immunity sub-category, while the other Mesh + Title sub-category focuses on vinyl chloride poisoning from industrial contact, and consequences of antineoplastic agents. However, in both cases, even though the words may be different, inflammation may be the common theme. For taxonomy generation, especially at the higher levels, each of the four fields has a similar thematic structure. At very detailed levels, the Mesh and Title fields run out of phrases relative to the Abstract field. Therefore, selection of field (s) to be employed for taxonomy generation depends on the objectives of the study, particularly the level of categorization required for the taxonomy. For information retrieval, or literature-based discovery, selection of the appropriate field again depends on the study objectives. If large queries, or large numbers of concepts or themes are desired, then the field with the largest number of technical phrases would be desirable. If queries or concepts represented by the more accepted popular terminology is adequate, then the smaller fields may be sufficient. Because of its established and controlled vocabulary, the Mesh field lags the Title or Abss the Title or Abstract fields in currency. Thus, the Title or Abstract fields would retrieve records with the most explicitly stated current concepts, but the Mesh field would capture a larger swath of fields that contained a concept of interest but perhaps had a wider range of specific terminology in the Abstract or Title text. In addition, this study provides the first validated estimate of the disparity in information retrieved through text mining limited to Titles and Mesh terms relative to entire Abstracts. As much of the older biomedical literature was entered into electronic databases without associated Abstracts, literature-based discovery exercises that search the older medical literature may miss a substantial proportion of relevant information. On the basis of this study, it may be estimated that up to a log order more information may be retrieved when complete Abstracts are searched.
Propagation of a laser-driven relativistic electron beam inside a solid dielectric.

PubMed

Sarkisov, G S; Ivanov, V V; Leblanc, P; Sentoku, Y; Yates, K; Wiewior, P; Chalyy, O; Astanovitskiy, A; Bychenkov, V Yu; Jobe, D; Spielman, R B

2012-09-01

Laser probe diagnostics: shadowgraphy, interferometry, and polarimetry were used for a comprehensive characterization of ionization wave dynamics inside a glass target induced by a laser-driven, relativistic electron beam. Experiments were done using the 50-TW Leopard laser at the University of Nevada, Reno. We show that for a laser flux of ∼2 × 10(18) W/cm2 a hemispherical ionization wave propagates at c/3 for 10 ps and has a smooth electron-density distribution. The maximum free-electron density inside the glass target is ∼2 × 10(19) cm-3, which corresponds to an ionization level of ∼0.1%. Magnetic fields and electric fields do not exceed ∼15 kG and ∼1 MV/cm, respectively. The electron temperature has a hot, ringlike structure with a maximum of ∼0.7 eV. The topology of the interference phase shift shows the signature of the "fountain effect", a narrow electron beam that fans out from the propagation axis and heads back to the target surface. Two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) computer simulations demonstrate radial spreading of fast electrons by self-consistent electrostatic fields driven by laser. The very low ionization observed after the laser heating pulse suggests a fast recombination on the sub-ps time scale.
40 CFR 63.1434 - Equipment leak provisions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... provisions of subparts F, I, or PPP of this part” shall apply instead of the phrase “the provisions of..., and PPP” shall apply instead of the phrase “subparts F and I” in § 63.174(c)(2)(iii), for the purposes...
40 CFR 63.1434 - Equipment leak provisions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... subparts F, I, or PPP of this part” shall apply instead of the phrase “the provisions of subparts F or I of....163 and 63.168, for the purposes of this subpart. In addition, the phrase “subparts F, I, and PPP...
40 CFR 63.1434 - Equipment leak provisions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... subparts F, I, or PPP of this part” shall apply instead of the phrase “the provisions of subparts F or I of....163 and 63.168, for the purposes of this subpart. In addition, the phrase “subparts F, I, and PPP...
40 CFR 63.1434 - Equipment leak provisions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... subparts F, I, or PPP of this part” shall apply instead of the phrase “the provisions of subparts F or I of....163 and 63.168, for the purposes of this subpart. In addition, the phrase “subparts F, I, and PPP...
On the Application of Syntactic Methodologies in Automatic Text Analysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salton, Gerard; And Others

1990-01-01

Summarizes various linguistic approaches proposed for document analysis in information retrieval environments. Topics discussed include syntactic analysis; use of machine-readable dictionary information; knowledge base construction; the PLNLP English Grammar (PEG) system; phrase normalization; and statistical and syntactic phrase evaluation used…
morphogen: Translation into Morphologically Rich Languages with Synthetic Phrases

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-10-01

specific trans - lation phrases. These “synthetic phrases” augment the standard translation grammars and decoding proceeds normally with a standard...Genitive case grandparent(poss) Hebrew Suffix ים ( masculine plural) parent=NNS after=NNS Prefix א (first person sing. + future) child(nsubj)=I child(aux
A W-Grammar Description for ADA.

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-12-01

7 2. A Type 2 Grammar for Ada Identifiers . . . . . . .... 8 3. The Chomsky erarchy......... ...... 10 4. Some Hypernotions Used in...Ada Language Reference Manual. The Chomsky Hierarchy (4:9-20, 7:217-232). In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky defined five classes of phrase structure grammars ...describing valid language tokens. For example a Type 3 grammar for Ada identifiers is shown in Figure 1. Type 2 Chomsky Languages are the Context-free
Association and dissociation of an aqueous amphiphile at elevated temperatures.

PubMed

Bowron, D T; Finney, J L

2007-08-23

The hydrophobic interaction is often thought to increase with increasing temperature. Although there is good experimental evidence for decreased aqueous solubility and increased clustering of both nonpolar and amphiphilic molecules as temperature is increased, the detailed nature of the changes in intermolecular interactions with temperature remain unknown. By use of isotope substitution neutron scattering difference measurements on a 0.04 mole fraction solution of tert-butanol in water as the solute clustering passes through a temperature maximum, the changes in local intermolecular structures are examined. Although, as expected, the solute molecules cluster through increased contact between their nonpolar head groups with the exclusion of water, the detailed geometry of the mutual interactions changes as temperature increases. As the clustering breaks up with further temperature increase, the local structures formed do not mirror those that were found in the low-temperature dispersed system: the disassembly process is not the reverse of assembly. The clusters formed by the solute head groups are reminiscent of structures that are found in systems of spherical molecules, modulated by the additional constraint of near-maximal hydrogen bonding between the polar tails of the alcohol and the solvent water. Although the overall temperature behavior is qualitatively what would be expected of a hydrophobically driven system, the way the system resolves the competing interactions and their different temperature dependencies is complex, suggesting it could be misleading to think of the aggregation of aqueous amphiphiles solely in terms of a hydrophobic driving force.
Inverse Modelling to Obtain Head Movement Controller Signal

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kim, W. S.; Lee, S. H.; Hannaford, B.; Stark, L.

1984-01-01

Experimentally obtained dynamics of time-optimal, horizontal head rotations have previously been simulated by a sixth order, nonlinear model driven by rectangular control signals. Electromyography (EMG) recordings have spects which differ in detail from the theoretical rectangular pulsed control signal. Control signals for time-optimal as well as sub-optimal horizontal head rotations were obtained by means of an inverse modelling procedures. With experimentally measured dynamical data serving as the input, this procedure inverts the model to produce the neurological control signals driving muscles and plant. The relationships between these controller signals, and EMG records should contribute to the understanding of the neurological control of movements.
Direct observation of the myosin Va recovery stroke that contributes to unidirectional stepping along actin.

PubMed

Shiroguchi, Katsuyuki; Chin, Harvey F; Hannemann, Diane E; Muneyuki, Eiro; De La Cruz, Enrique M; Kinosita, Kazuhiko

2011-04-01

Myosins are ATP-driven linear molecular motors that work as cellular force generators, transporters, and force sensors. These functions are driven by large-scale nucleotide-dependent conformational changes, termed "strokes"; the "power stroke" is the force-generating swinging of the myosin light chain-binding "neck" domain relative to the motor domain "head" while bound to actin; the "recovery stroke" is the necessary initial motion that primes, or "cocks," myosin while detached from actin. Myosin Va is a processive dimer that steps unidirectionally along actin following a "hand over hand" mechanism in which the trailing head detaches and steps forward ∼72 nm. Despite large rotational Brownian motion of the detached head about a free joint adjoining the two necks, unidirectional stepping is achieved, in part by the power stroke of the attached head that moves the joint forward. However, the power stroke alone cannot fully account for preferential forward site binding since the orientation and angle stability of the detached head, which is determined by the properties of the recovery stroke, dictate actin binding site accessibility. Here, we directly observe the recovery stroke dynamics and fluctuations of myosin Va using a novel, transient caged ATP-controlling system that maintains constant ATP levels through stepwise UV-pulse sequences of varying intensity. We immobilized the neck of monomeric myosin Va on a surface and observed real time motions of bead(s) attached site-specifically to the head. ATP induces a transient swing of the neck to the post-recovery stroke conformation, where it remains for ∼40 s, until ATP hydrolysis products are released. Angle distributions indicate that the post-recovery stroke conformation is stabilized by ≥ 5 k(B)T of energy. The high kinetic and energetic stability of the post-recovery stroke conformation favors preferential binding of the detached head to a forward site 72 nm away. Thus, the recovery stroke contributes to unidirectional stepping of myosin Va.
Determiners, Entities, and Contexts

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-10-01

understanding of this noun phrase must capture this relationship. The new noun phrase is imp] ielt [¥ associated with the local/oeus as described in...New York, August 1986. ~rince1981] Ellen F. Prince, Toward a Taxonomy of Given-New Information. In Radical Pragmat- ies, Peter Cole (ed.), Academic
Chinese-English Sourcebook of Classified Educational Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chinese Education, 1976

1976-01-01

Official translation from Chinese to English of words and phrases commonly used in education and library work. Classifications include sayings of Chairman Mao, revolutionary mass criticism, revolution in education, "May 7" cadre schools, teaching methods and materials, disciplines and curricula, school names and terms, and library…

Working memory and planning during sentence production.

PubMed

Martin, Randi C; Yan, Hao; Schnur, Tatiana T

2014-10-01

Speakers retrieve conceptual, syntactic and lexical information in advance of articulation during sentence production. What type of working memory (WM) store is used to hold the planned information before speaking? To address this question, we measured onset latencies when subjects produced sentences that began with either a complex or a simple initial noun phrase, while holding semantic, phonological or spatial information in WM. Although we found that subjects had longer onset latencies for sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase, showing a phrasal scope of planning, the magnitude of this complexity effect was not affected by any type of WM load. However, subjects made more syntactic errors (but not lexical errors) for sentences beginning with a complex noun phrase, suggesting that advance planning for these phrases occurs at a syntactic rather than lexical-semantic level, which may account for the lack of effect with various types of WM load in the current study. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Automatic Identification & Classification of Surgical Margin Status from Pathology Reports Following Prostate Cancer Surgery

PubMed Central

D’Avolio, Leonard W.; Litwin, Mark S.; Rogers, Selwyn O.; Bui, Alex A. T.

2007-01-01

Prostate cancer removal surgeries that result in tumor found at the surgical margin, otherwise known as a positive surgical margin, have a significantly higher chance of biochemical recurrence and clinical progression. To support clinical outcomes assessment a system was designed to automatically identify, extract, and classify key phrases from pathology reports describing this outcome. Heuristics and boundary detection were used to extract phrases. Phrases were then classified using support vector machines into one of three classes: ‘positive (involved) margins,’ ‘negative (uninvolved) margins,’ and ‘not-applicable or definitive.’ A total of 851 key phrases were extracted from a sample of 782 reports produced between 1996 and 2006 from two major hospitals. Despite differences in reporting style, at least 1 sentence containing a diagnosis was extracted from 780 of the 782 reports (99.74%). Of the 851 sentences extracted, 97.3% contained diagnoses. Overall accuracy of automated classification of extracted sentences into the three categories was 97.18%. PMID:18693818
Phrase Frequency Effects in Language Production

PubMed Central

Janssen, Niels; Barber, Horacio A.

2012-01-01

A classic debate in the psychology of language concerns the question of the grain-size of the linguistic information that is stored in memory. One view is that only morphologically simple forms are stored (e.g., ‘car’, ‘red’), and that more complex forms of language such as multi-word phrases (e.g., ‘red car’) are generated on-line from the simple forms. In two experiments we tested this view. In Experiment 1, participants produced noun+adjective and noun+noun phrases that were elicited by experimental displays consisting of colored line drawings and two superimposed line drawings. In Experiment 2, participants produced noun+adjective and determiner+noun+adjective utterances elicited by colored line drawings. In both experiments, naming latencies decreased with increasing frequency of the multi-word phrase, and were unaffected by the frequency of the object name in the utterance. These results suggest that the language system is sensitive to the distribution of linguistic information at grain-sizes beyond individual words. PMID:22479370
Modulation of WNT signaling activity is key to the formation of the embryonic head.

PubMed

Fossat, Nicolas; Jones, Vanessa; Garcia-Garcia, Maria J; Tam, Patrick P L

2012-01-01

The formation of the embryonic head begins with the assembly of the progenitor tissues of the brain, the head and face primordia and the foregut that are derived from the primary germ layers during gastrulation. Specification of the anterior-posterior polarity of major body parts and the morphogenesis of the head and brain specifically is driven by inductive signals including those mediated by BMP, Nodal, FGF and WNT. A critical role of β-catenin dependent WNT signalling activity for head morphogenesis has been revealed through the analysis of the phenotypic impact of loss of function mutation of an antagonist: DKK1, a transcriptional repressor: GSC; and the outcome of interaction of Dkk1 with genes coding three components of the canonical signalling pathway: the ligand WNT3, the co-receptor LRP6 and the transcriptional co-factor, β-catenin. The findings highlight the requirement of a stringent control of the timing, domain and level of canonical WNT signalling activity for the formation of the embryonic head.
Scenario analysis for techno-economic model development of U.S. offshore wind support structures

DOE PAGES

Damiani, Rick; Ning, Andrew; Maples, Ben; ...

2016-09-22

Challenging bathymetry and soil conditions of future US offshore wind power plants might promote the use of multimember, fixed-bottom structures (or 'jackets') in place of monopiles. Support structures affect costs associated with the balance of system and operation and maintenance. Understanding the link between these costs and the main environmental design drivers is crucial in the quest for a lower levelized cost of energy, and it is the main rationale for this work. Actual cost and engineering data are still scarce; hence, we evaluated a simplified engineering approach to tie key site and turbine parameters (e.g. water depth, wave height,more » tower-head mass, hub height and generator rating) to the overall support weight. A jacket-and-tower sizing tool, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's system engineering software suite, was utilized to achieve mass-optimized support structures for 81 different configurations. This tool set provides preliminary sizing of all jacket components. Results showed reasonable agreement with the available industry data, and that the jacket mass is mainly driven by water depth, but hub height and tower-head mass become more influential at greater turbine ratings. A larger sensitivity of the structural mass to wave height and target eigenfrequency was observed for the deepest water conditions (>40 m). Thus, techno-economic analyses using this model should be based on accurate estimates of actual metocean conditions and turbine parameters especially for deep waters. Finally, the relationships derived from this study will inform National Renewable Energy Laboratory's offshore balance of system cost model, and they will be used to evaluate the impact of changes in technology on offshore wind lower levelized cost of energy.« less
Benchmarking natural-language parsers for biological applications using dependency graphs.

PubMed

Clegg, Andrew B; Shepherd, Adrian J

2007-01-25

Interest is growing in the application of syntactic parsers to natural language processing problems in biology, but assessing their performance is difficult because differences in linguistic convention can falsely appear to be errors. We present a method for evaluating their accuracy using an intermediate representation based on dependency graphs, in which the semantic relationships important in most information extraction tasks are closer to the surface. We also demonstrate how this method can be easily tailored to various application-driven criteria. Using the GENIA corpus as a gold standard, we tested four open-source parsers which have been used in bioinformatics projects. We first present overall performance measures, and test the two leading tools, the Charniak-Lease and Bikel parsers, on subtasks tailored to reflect the requirements of a system for extracting gene expression relationships. These two tools clearly outperform the other parsers in the evaluation, and achieve accuracy levels comparable to or exceeding native dependency parsers on similar tasks in previous biological evaluations. Evaluating using dependency graphs allows parsers to be tested easily on criteria chosen according to the semantics of particular biological applications, drawing attention to important mistakes and soaking up many insignificant differences that would otherwise be reported as errors. Generating high-accuracy dependency graphs from the output of phrase-structure parsers also provides access to the more detailed syntax trees that are used in several natural-language processing techniques.
Benchmarking natural-language parsers for biological applications using dependency graphs

PubMed Central

Clegg, Andrew B; Shepherd, Adrian J

2007-01-01

Background Interest is growing in the application of syntactic parsers to natural language processing problems in biology, but assessing their performance is difficult because differences in linguistic convention can falsely appear to be errors. We present a method for evaluating their accuracy using an intermediate representation based on dependency graphs, in which the semantic relationships important in most information extraction tasks are closer to the surface. We also demonstrate how this method can be easily tailored to various application-driven criteria. Results Using the GENIA corpus as a gold standard, we tested four open-source parsers which have been used in bioinformatics projects. We first present overall performance measures, and test the two leading tools, the Charniak-Lease and Bikel parsers, on subtasks tailored to reflect the requirements of a system for extracting gene expression relationships. These two tools clearly outperform the other parsers in the evaluation, and achieve accuracy levels comparable to or exceeding native dependency parsers on similar tasks in previous biological evaluations. Conclusion Evaluating using dependency graphs allows parsers to be tested easily on criteria chosen according to the semantics of particular biological applications, drawing attention to important mistakes and soaking up many insignificant differences that would otherwise be reported as errors. Generating high-accuracy dependency graphs from the output of phrase-structure parsers also provides access to the more detailed syntax trees that are used in several natural-language processing techniques. PMID:17254351
Tongue-driven sonar beam steering by a lingual-echolocating fruit bat

PubMed Central

Falk, Benjamin; Chiu, Chen; Krishnan, Anand; Arbour, Jessica H.; Moss, Cynthia F.

2017-01-01

Animals enhance sensory acquisition from a specific direction by movements of head, ears, or eyes. As active sensing animals, echolocating bats also aim their directional sonar beam to selectively “illuminate” a confined volume of space, facilitating efficient information processing by reducing echo interference and clutter. Such sonar beam control is generally achieved by head movements or shape changes of the sound-emitting mouth or nose. However, lingual-echolocating Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, which produce sound by clicking their tongue, can dramatically change beam direction at very short temporal intervals without visible morphological changes. The mechanism supporting this capability has remained a mystery. Here, we measured signals from free-flying Egyptian fruit bats and discovered a systematic angular sweep of beam focus across increasing frequency. This unusual signal structure has not been observed in other animals and cannot be explained by the conventional and widely-used “piston model” that describes the emission pattern of other bat species. Through modeling, we show that the observed beam features can be captured by an array of tongue-driven sound sources located along the side of the mouth, and that the sonar beam direction can be steered parsimoniously by inducing changes to the pattern of phase differences through moving tongue location. The effects are broadly similar to those found in a phased array—an engineering design widely found in human-made sonar systems that enables beam direction changes without changes in the physical transducer assembly. Our study reveals an intriguing parallel between biology and human engineering in solving problems in fundamentally similar ways. PMID:29244805
Tongue-driven sonar beam steering by a lingual-echolocating fruit bat.

PubMed

Lee, Wu-Jung; Falk, Benjamin; Chiu, Chen; Krishnan, Anand; Arbour, Jessica H; Moss, Cynthia F

2017-12-01

Animals enhance sensory acquisition from a specific direction by movements of head, ears, or eyes. As active sensing animals, echolocating bats also aim their directional sonar beam to selectively "illuminate" a confined volume of space, facilitating efficient information processing by reducing echo interference and clutter. Such sonar beam control is generally achieved by head movements or shape changes of the sound-emitting mouth or nose. However, lingual-echolocating Egyptian fruit bats, Rousettus aegyptiacus, which produce sound by clicking their tongue, can dramatically change beam direction at very short temporal intervals without visible morphological changes. The mechanism supporting this capability has remained a mystery. Here, we measured signals from free-flying Egyptian fruit bats and discovered a systematic angular sweep of beam focus across increasing frequency. This unusual signal structure has not been observed in other animals and cannot be explained by the conventional and widely-used "piston model" that describes the emission pattern of other bat species. Through modeling, we show that the observed beam features can be captured by an array of tongue-driven sound sources located along the side of the mouth, and that the sonar beam direction can be steered parsimoniously by inducing changes to the pattern of phase differences through moving tongue location. The effects are broadly similar to those found in a phased array-an engineering design widely found in human-made sonar systems that enables beam direction changes without changes in the physical transducer assembly. Our study reveals an intriguing parallel between biology and human engineering in solving problems in fundamentally similar ways.
78 FR 52832 - Catastrophic Risk Protection Endorsement

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-08-27

... comments are as follows: General Comment: A commenter stated there should be zero catastrophic risk which... ``price election'' to determine the loss. Response: The Special Provisions were not removed from the order... phrase ``price election'' creates uniformity since the phrase has already been replaced in the Common...
75 FR 80678 - Conversions of Insured Credit Unions

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-23

... Conversions of Insured Credit Unions AGENCY: National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). ACTION: Interim... of the phrase ``Regional Director'' in NCUA's rule on credit union to mutual savings bank conversions and to add the same revised definition of that phrase to NCUA's rule on conversions to nonfederal...
Echolalic and Spontaneous Phrase Speech in Autistic Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howlin, Patricia

1982-01-01

Investigates the syntactical level of spontaneous and echolalic utterances of 26 autistic boys at different stages of phrase speech development. Speech samples were collected over a 90-minute period in unstructured settings in participants' homes. Imitations were not deliberately elicited, and only unprompted, noncommunicative echoes were…
Ilokano Language Packet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peace Corps, Manila (Philippines).

The workbook for Ilokano was designed for language training of Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines. It consists of: a list of commonly-used phrases for greetings, leavetaking, shopping, asking for directions, managing a conversation, and introducing oneself; a more extensive vocabulary/phrase book of words and expressions used in everyday…
20 CFR 300.1 - Words and phrases.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Words and phrases. 300.1 Section 300.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT... language or context indicates otherwise: (a) The term “act” means the Railroad Unemployment Insurance act...
20 CFR 300.1 - Words and phrases.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Words and phrases. 300.1 Section 300.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT... language or context indicates otherwise: (a) The term “act” means the Railroad Unemployment Insurance act...
20 CFR 300.1 - Words and phrases.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2013-04-01 2012-04-01 true Words and phrases. 300.1 Section 300.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT... language or context indicates otherwise: (a) The term “act” means the Railroad Unemployment Insurance act...
20 CFR 300.1 - Words and phrases.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Words and phrases. 300.1 Section 300.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT... language or context indicates otherwise: (a) The term “act” means the Railroad Unemployment Insurance act...
20 CFR 300.1 - Words and phrases.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2014-04-01 2012-04-01 true Words and phrases. 300.1 Section 300.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT... language or context indicates otherwise: (a) The term “act” means the Railroad Unemployment Insurance act...
Phrase versus Phase: Family Engagement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferrara, Margaret M.

2011-01-01

Parents and their roles in schools, public or private, often become the bed of heated discussions. "Parent involvement" is yesterday's buzz word; today, it is "family involvement." The phrase "parent involvement" connotes an image of parents being involved in their children's education. Family involvement is a more encompassing concept, embracing…
Flexibility of Expressive Timing in Repeated Musical Performances

PubMed Central

Demos, Alexander P.; Lisboa, Tânia; Chaffin, Roger

2016-01-01

Performances by soloists in the Western classical tradition are normally highly prepared, yet must sound fresh and spontaneous. How do musicians manage this? We tested the hypothesis that they achieve the necessary spontaneity by varying the musical gestures that express their interpretation of a piece. We examined the tempo arches produced by final slowing at the ends of phrases in performances of J. S. Bach’s No. 6 (Prelude) for solo cello (12 performances) and the Italian Concerto (Presto) for solo piano (eight performances). The performances were given by two experienced concert soloists during a short time period (3½ months for the Prelude, 2 weeks for the Presto) after completing their preparations for public performance. We measured the tempo of each bar or half-bar, and the stability of tempo across performances (difference of the tempo of each bar/half bar from each of the other performances). There were phrase arches for both tempo and stability with slower, less stable tempi at beginnings and ends of phrases and faster, more stable tempi mid-phrase. The effects of practice were complex. Tempo decreased overall with practice, while stability increased in some bars and decreased in others. One effect of practice may be to imbue well-learned, automatic motor sequences with freshness and spontaneity through cognitive control at phrase boundaries where slower tempi and decreased stability provide opportunities for slower cognitive processes to modulate rapid automatic motor sequences. PMID:27757089

The Two Sides of Sensory–Cognitive Interactions: Effects of Age, Hearing Acuity, and Working Memory Span on Sentence Comprehension

PubMed Central

DeCaro, Renee; Peelle, Jonathan E.; Grossman, Murray; Wingfield, Arthur

2016-01-01

Reduced hearing acuity is among the most prevalent of chronic medical conditions among older adults. An experiment is reported in which comprehension of spoken sentences was tested for older adults with good hearing acuity or with a mild-to-moderate hearing loss, and young adults with age-normal hearing. Comprehension was measured by participants’ ability to determine the agent of an action in sentences that expressed this relation with a syntactically less complex subject-relative construction or a syntactically more complex object-relative construction. Agency determination was further challenged by inserting a prepositional phrase into sentences between the person performing an action and the action being performed. As a control, prepositional phrases of equivalent length were also inserted into sentences in a non-disruptive position. Effects on sentence comprehension of age, hearing acuity, prepositional phrase placement and sound level of stimulus presentations appeared only for comprehension of sentences with the more syntactically complex object-relative structures. Working memory as tested by reading span scores accounted for a significant amount of the variance in comprehension accuracy. Once working memory capacity and hearing acuity were taken into account, chronological age among the older adults contributed no further variance to comprehension accuracy. Results are discussed in terms of the positive and negative effects of sensory–cognitive interactions in comprehension of spoken sentences and lend support to a framework in which domain-general executive resources, notably verbal working memory, play a role in both linguistic and perceptual processing. PMID:26973557
The Association of Myosin IB with Actin Waves in Dictyostelium Requires Both the Plasma Membrane-Binding Site and Actin-Binding Region in the Myosin Tail

PubMed Central

Brzeska, Hanna; Pridham, Kevin; Chery, Godefroy; Titus, Margaret A.; Korn, Edward D.

2014-01-01

F-actin structures and their distribution are important determinants of the dynamic shapes and functions of eukaryotic cells. Actin waves are F-actin formations that move along the ventral cell membrane driven by actin polymerization. Dictyostelium myosin IB is associated with actin waves but its role in the wave is unknown. Myosin IB is a monomeric, non-filamentous myosin with a globular head that binds to F-actin and has motor activity, and a non-helical tail comprising a basic region, a glycine-proline-glutamine-rich region and an SH3-domain. The basic region binds to acidic phospholipids in the plasma membrane through a short basic-hydrophobic site and the Gly-Pro-Gln region binds F-actin. In the current work we found that both the basic-hydrophobic site in the basic region and the Gly-Pro-Gln region of the tail are required for the association of myosin IB with actin waves. This is the first evidence that the Gly-Pro-Gln region is required for localization of myosin IB to a specific actin structure in situ. The head is not required for myosin IB association with actin waves but binding of the head to F-actin strengthens the association of myosin IB with waves and stabilizes waves. Neither the SH3-domain nor motor activity is required for association of myosin IB with actin waves. We conclude that myosin IB contributes to anchoring actin waves to the plasma membranes by binding of the basic-hydrophobic site to acidic phospholipids in the plasma membrane and binding of the Gly-Pro-Gln region to F-actin in the wave. PMID:24747353
77 FR 6138 - Draft Policy on Interpretation of the Phrase “Significant Portion of Its Range” in the Endangered...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-02-07

... Portion of Its Range'' in the Endangered Species Act's Definitions of ``Endangered Species'' and... interpreting the phrase ``significant portion of its range'' in the Endangered Species Act's (Act's...'' in the Act's definitions of ``endangered species'' and ``threatened species'' will consider...
An Individualized Problem-Solving Approach for Teaching Choral Phrase Shaping: An Experimental Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Broomhead, Paul

2009-01-01

This experiment tested a treatment designed to improve choral students' expressiveness regarding keyword emphasis and phrase shaping. The treatment was founded upon the constructivist belief that students actively construct conceptual knowledge through problem solving. Participants were 46 university students randomly selected from a nonauditioned…
15 CFR 995.12 - Certification designation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... REQUIREMENTS FOR NOAA HYDROGRAPHIC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS FOR DISTRIBUTORS OF NOAA... been certified by NOAA as a CED may use the phrase “Certified NOAA ENC Distributor” on products and marketing materials. An Applicant that has been certified by NOAA as a CEVAD may use the phrase “Certified...
15 CFR 995.12 - Certification designation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... REQUIREMENTS FOR NOAA HYDROGRAPHIC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS FOR DISTRIBUTORS OF NOAA... been certified by NOAA as a CED may use the phrase “Certified NOAA ENC Distributor” on products and marketing materials. An Applicant that has been certified by NOAA as a CEVAD may use the phrase “Certified...
15 CFR 995.12 - Certification designation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... REQUIREMENTS FOR NOAA HYDROGRAPHIC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS FOR DISTRIBUTORS OF NOAA... been certified by NOAA as a CED may use the phrase “Certified NOAA ENC Distributor” on products and marketing materials. An Applicant that has been certified by NOAA as a CEVAD may use the phrase “Certified...
15 CFR 995.12 - Certification designation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... REQUIREMENTS FOR NOAA HYDROGRAPHIC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS FOR DISTRIBUTORS OF NOAA... been certified by NOAA as a CED may use the phrase “Certified NOAA ENC Distributor” on products and marketing materials. An Applicant that has been certified by NOAA as a CEVAD may use the phrase “Certified...
76 FR 57940 - Revision of Department of Justice Freedom of Information Act Regulations

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-09-19

... posted online, you must include the phrase ``CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION'' in the first paragraph... comments received are considered part of the public record and made available for public inspection online... posted online, you must include the phrase ``PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION'' in the first paragraph of...
Investigating the Usefulness of Lexical Phrases in Contemporary Coursebooks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koprowski, Mark

2005-01-01

Over the past decade, lexical theory, corpus statistics, and psycholinguistic research have pointed to the pedagogical value of lexical phrases. In response, commercial publishers have been quick to import these insights into their materials in a bid to accommodate consumers and to profit from the "lexical chunk" phenomenon. Contemporary British…
20 CFR 201.1 - Words and phrases.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Words and phrases. 201.1 Section 201.1 Employees' Benefits RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD REGULATIONS UNDER THE RAILROAD RETIREMENT ACT DEFINITIONS... as defined in the act and part 220 of this chapter. (e) Compensation. The term “compensation” means...
Computational Support for Early Elicitation and Classification of Tone

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bird, Steven; Lee, Haejoong

2014-01-01

Investigating a tone language involves careful transcription of tone on words and phrases. This is challenging when the phonological categories--the tones or melodies--have not been identified. Effects such as coarticulation, sandhi, and phrase-level prosody appear as obstacles to early elicitation and classification of tone. This article presents…
Laughter among Deaf Signers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Provine, Robert R.; Emmorey, Karen

2006-01-01

The placement of laughter in the speech of hearing individuals is not random but "punctuates" speech, occurring during pauses and at phrase boundaries where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. For speakers, language is dominant in the competition for the vocal tract since laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. For…
Phonological Phrase Boundaries Constrain the Online Syntactic Analysis of Spoken Sentences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Millotte, Severine; Rene, Alice; Wales, Roger; Christophe, Anne

2008-01-01

Two experiments tested whether phonological phrase boundaries constrain online syntactic analysis in French. Pairs of homophones belonging to different syntactic categories (verb and adjective) were used to create sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity (e.g., [le petit chien "mort"], in English, the "dead" little dog, vs.…
A Self-Organizing Approach to Subject-Verb Number Agreement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Garrett; Franck, Julie; Tabor, Whitney

2018-01-01

We present a self-organizing approach to sentence processing that sheds new light on notional plurality effects in agreement attraction, using pseudopartitive subject noun phrases (e.g., "a bottle of pills"). We first show that notional plurality ratings (numerosity judgments for subject noun phrases) predict verb agreement choices in…
Memory Operations that Support Language Comprehension: Evidence from Verb-Phrase Ellipsis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martin, Andrea E.; McElree, Brian

2009-01-01

Comprehension of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) requires reevaluation of recently processed constituents, which often necessitates retrieval of information about the elided constituent from memory. A. E. Martin and B. McElree (2008) argued that representations formed during comprehension are content addressable and that VPE antecedents are retrieved…
Stories from Hopescapes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harris, Violet J.

2011-01-01

Author Virginia Hamilton had the gift of creating lyrical phrases that captured the complexities of life. Among her most notable phrase is the idea of the "hopescape," the metaphoric description of the pains and joys, triumphs and defeats, longing, and dreams that make us human. The publication of an edited volume that compiles a sampling of…
Phonological Phrase Boundaries Constrain Lexical Access I. Adult Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Christophe, A.; Peperkamp, S.; Pallier, C.; Block, E.; Mehler, J.

2004-01-01

We tested the effect of local lexical ambiguities while manipulating the type of prosodic boundary at which the ambiguity occurred, using French sentences and participants. We observed delayed lexical access when a local lexical ambiguity occurred within a phonological phrase (consistent with previous research; e.g., '[un chat grincheux],'…
English Code Switching in Indonesian Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Setiawan, Dedy

2016-01-01

There is a growing phenomenon, worldwide, of inserting English words, phrases or expressions, into the local language: this is part of the acceptance of English as current world language. Indonesia is experiencing the use of this mixture of language when using either their own Indonesian or local language; English words, phrases and expressions…
Lexical Entrainment and Lexical Differentiation in Reference Phrase Choice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Der Wege, Mija M.

2009-01-01

Speakers reuse prior references to objects when choosing reference phrases, a phenomenon known as lexical entrainment. One explanation is that speakers want to maintain a set of previously established referential precedents. Speakers may also contrast any new referents against this previously established set, thereby avoiding applying the same…

15 CFR 995.12 - Certification designation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... REQUIREMENTS FOR NOAA HYDROGRAPHIC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS FOR DISTRIBUTORS OF NOAA... been certified by NOAA as a CED may use the phrase “Certified NOAA ENC Distributor” on products and marketing materials. An Applicant that has been certified by NOAA as a CEVAD may use the phrase “Certified...
Survival Words and Phrases for Professionals Who Work with Students Who Are Bilingual and Severely/Multiply Handicapped, and with Their Families.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Silberman, Rosanne K.; Correa, Vivian I.

1989-01-01

The paper offers a rationale for bilingual special education, provides suggestions for developing bilingual lessons for severely/multiply handicapped students, and includes a list of Spanish words and phrases used most frequently by students and their parents. (JDD)
Bilingual Medical Phrase Book (In English and Laotian).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thuy, Vuong G.

This phrase book offers Laotian refugees and immigrants with limited English proficiency a short-cut, word-for-word bilingual reference tool for dealing with medical problems and situations in English-language environments. Seven chapters deal with different issues of the medical encounter and five appendixes present specialized terms and…
Learn Locally, Act Globally: Learning Language from Variation Set Cues

PubMed Central

Onnis, Luca; Waterfall, Heidi R.; Edelman, Shimon

2011-01-01

Variation set structure — partial overlap of successive utterances in child-directed speech — has been shown to correlate with progress in children’s acquisition of syntax. We demonstrate the benefits of variation set structure directly: in miniature artificial languages, arranging a certain proportion of utterances in a training corpus in variation sets facilitated word and phrase constituent learning in adults. Our findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms of L1 acquisition by children, and for the development of more efficient algorithms for automatic language acquisition, as well as better methods for L2 instruction. PMID:19019350
Task-driven imaging in cone-beam computed tomography.

PubMed

Gang, G J; Stayman, J W; Ouadah, S; Ehtiati, T; Siewerdsen, J H

Conventional workflow in interventional imaging often ignores a wealth of prior information of the patient anatomy and the imaging task. This work introduces a task-driven imaging framework that utilizes such information to prospectively design acquisition and reconstruction techniques for cone-beam CT (CBCT) in a manner that maximizes task-based performance in subsequent imaging procedures. The framework is employed in jointly optimizing tube current modulation, orbital tilt, and reconstruction parameters in filtered backprojection reconstruction for interventional imaging. Theoretical predictors of noise and resolution relates acquisition and reconstruction parameters to task-based detectability. Given a patient-specific prior image and specification of the imaging task, an optimization algorithm prospectively identifies the combination of imaging parameters that maximizes task-based detectability. Initial investigations were performed for a variety of imaging tasks in an elliptical phantom and an anthropomorphic head phantom. Optimization of tube current modulation and view-dependent reconstruction kernel was shown to have greatest benefits for a directional task (e.g., identification of device or tissue orientation). The task-driven approach yielded techniques in which the dose and sharp kernels were concentrated in views contributing the most to the signal power associated with the imaging task. For example, detectability of a line pair detection task was improved by at least three fold compared to conventional approaches. For radially symmetric tasks, the task-driven strategy yielded results similar to a minimum variance strategy in the absence of kernel modulation. Optimization of the orbital tilt successfully avoided highly attenuating structures that can confound the imaging task by introducing noise correlations masquerading at spatial frequencies of interest. This work demonstrated the potential of a task-driven imaging framework to improve image quality and reduce dose beyond that achievable with conventional imaging approaches.
Restrictive vs. non-restrictive composition: a magnetoencephalography study

PubMed Central

Leffel, Timothy; Lauter, Miriam; Westerlund, Masha; Pylkkänen, Liina

2014-01-01

Recent research on the brain mechanisms underlying language processing has implicated the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) as a central region for the composition of simple phrases. Because these studies typically present their critical stimuli without contextual information, the sensitivity of LATL responses to contextual factors is unknown. In this magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, we employed a simple question-answer paradigm to manipulate whether a prenominal adjective or determiner is interpreted restrictively, i.e., as limiting the set of entities under discussion. Our results show that the LATL is sensitive to restriction, with restrictive composition eliciting higher responses than non-restrictive composition. However, this effect was only observed when the restricting element was a determiner, adjectival stimuli showing the opposite pattern, which we hypothesise to be driven by the special pragmatic properties of non-restrictive adjectives. Overall, our results demonstrate a robust sensitivity of the LATL to high level contextual and potentially also pragmatic factors. PMID:25379512
Experiencing patient death in clinical practice: nurses' recollections of their earliest memorable patient death.

PubMed

Anderson, Natalie Elizabeth; Kent, Bridie; Owens, R Glynn

2015-03-01

Death and dying are inevitable life encounters, but a nurse's first experience with patient death may pose considerable cognitive, emotional and clinical challenges. This paper reports the findings of the second phase of a study; the first has been reported elsewhere. This phase explored the earliest memorable patient death experiences of New Zealand registered nurses. A purposeful, self-selected sub-sample of a larger study of New Zealand registered nurses, took part in individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was utilised to seek to understand participants' experiences. Thematic analysis was undertaken to identify emerging themes, with participants' own words used as theme headings, where their phrases provided succinct or powerful descriptors. A diverse participant group of twenty, currently practising, New Zealand registered nurses provided rich and detailed descriptions of their earliest memorable experience with patient death. Participants from a variety of training backgrounds described patient deaths, which occurred in a range of settings - some only a few months prior, others - more than thirty years ago. Seven emergent themes, and features of more positive, or negative experiences were identified: Event Significance; Emotional Challenges; Sharing the Experience; Learning; Feeling Unprepared, Responses to Death and Finding Benefits. For participants in this study, there was considerable evidence that their earliest memorable patient death was a significant event. Furthermore, although most participants' experiences were characterised by emphatic or poignant description, there was most often a balance of challenges and rewards. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Learning Cue Phrase Patterns from Radiology Reports Using a Genetic Algorithm

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Patton, Robert M; Beckerman, Barbara G; Potok, Thomas E

2009-01-01

Various computer-assisted technologies have been developed to assist radiologists in detecting cancer; however, the algorithms still lack high degrees of sensitivity and specificity, and must undergo machine learning against a training set with known pathologies in order to further refine the algorithms with higher validity of truth. This work describes an approach to learning cue phrase patterns in radiology reports that utilizes a genetic algorithm (GA) as the learning method. The approach described here successfully learned cue phrase patterns for two distinct classes of radiology reports. These patterns can then be used as a basis for automatically categorizing, clustering, ormore » retrieving relevant data for the user.« less
ERP Evidence for the Activation of Syntactic Structure During Comprehension of Lexical Idiom.

PubMed

Zhang, Meichao; Lu, Aitao; Song, Pingfang

2017-10-01

The present study used event-related potentials to investigate whether the syntactic structure was activated in the comprehension of lexical idioms, and if so, whether it varied as a function of familiarity and semantic transparency. Participants were asked to passively read the "1+2" structural Chinese lexical idioms with each being presented following 3-5 contextual "1+2" (congruent-structure condition) or "2+1" structural Chinese phrases (incongruent-structure condition). The N400 ERP responses showed more positivity in congruent-structure condition relative to incongruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity and high semantic transparency, but less positivity in congruent-structure condition in idioms with high familiarity but low semantic transparency, idioms with low familiarity but high semantic transparency, and idioms with low familiarity and low semantic transparency. Our results suggest that syntactic structure, as the unnecessarity of lexical idiomatic words, was nevertheless activated, independent of familiarity and semantic transparency.
The coordination of boundary tones and its interaction with prominence.

PubMed

Katsika, Argyro; Krivokapić, Jelena; Mooshammer, Christine; Tiede, Mark; Goldstein, Louis

2014-05-01

This study investigates the coordination of boundary tones as a function of stress and pitch accent. Boundary tone coordination has not been experimentally investigated previously, and the effect of prominence on this coordination, and whether it is lexical (stress-driven) or phrasal (pitch accent-driven) in nature is unclear. We assess these issues using a variety of syntactic constructions to elicit different boundary tones in an Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) study of Greek. The results indicate that the onset of boundary tones co-occurs with the articulatory target of the final vowel. This timing is further modified by stress, but not by pitch accent: boundary tones are initiated earlier in words with non-final stress than in words with final stress regardless of accentual status. Visual data inspection reveals that phrase-final words are followed by acoustic pauses during which specific articulatory postures occur. Additional analyses show that these postures reach their achievement point at a stable temporal distance from boundary tone onsets regardless of stress position. Based on these results and parallel findings on boundary lengthening reported elsewhere, a novel approach to prosody is proposed within the context of Articulatory Phonology: rather than seeing prosodic (lexical and phrasal) events as independent entities, a set of coordination relations between them is suggested. The implications of this account for prosodic architecture are discussed.
Using English Language Arts to Teach a Song

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cardany, Audrey Berger

2017-01-01

Music and reading domains require similar auditory processing skills. Students employ these skills when learning a new song through an oral/aural or rote-teaching approach. In this article, I review literature on the effectiveness of immersion and phrase-by-phrase approaches for teaching a song with or without words. Then, using an amusing…
Driving: English-Spanish. Enlarged and Revised Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grosse, Philip

The bilingual glossary, in English-to-Spanish, defines words and phrases related to driving and traffic safety. It is intended for individuals driving in Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries. A second section lists the vocabulary used in common road signs, and the third section lists useful phrases for communicating about car repair needs.…
Intonation Miscues and Apprehension of Text.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flippo, Rona F.

Working on the theory that intonation miscues caused by confusion over punctuation and other phrase boundaries will make the apprehension of text more difficult than necessary for young developing readers, a study reviewed the research and literature relevant to the effects of location of punctuation, phrasing, and line breaks in text and on the…
Processing of Written Irony: An Eye Movement Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaakinen, Johanna K.; Olkoniemi, Henri; Kinnari, Taina; Hyönä, Jukka

2014-01-01

We examined processing of written irony by recording readers' eye movements while they read target phrases embedded either in ironic or non-ironic story context. After reading each story, participants responded to a text memory question and an inference question tapping into the understanding of the meaning of the target phrase. The results of…
The Development and Validation of a Behaviorally Defined Interest Instrument for Science.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butzow, John W., Jr.

A semantic differential (SD) instrument, modified by replacing words or noun phrases with phrases describing a behavior, was administered to male freshmen students. Six items discriminated between two groups, 97 science majors and 161 non-science majors, on three axes, labelled as evaluation, potency, and activity. To test whether the instrument…
A Different Vision in eLearning: Metaphors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tuncay, Nazime; Stanescu, Ioana Andreea; Tuncay, Mustafa

2011-01-01

Metaphors are figures of speech in which a word or phrase that denotes a certain object or idea is applied to another word or phrase to imply some similarity between them. Due to their ability to make speaking and writing more lively and interesting, metaphors have always been popular among students. While metaphors provide significant enhancement…
Lexical Access during the Production of Idiomatic Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sprenger, Simone A.; Levelt, Willem J. M.; Kempen, Gerard

2006-01-01

In three experiments we test the assumption that idioms have their own lexical entry, which is linked to its constituent lemmas (Cutting & Bock, 1997). Speakers produced idioms or literal phrases (Experiment 1), completed idioms (Experiment 2), or switched between idiom completion and naming (Experiment 3). The results of Experiment 1 show that…
Response to Biber, Gray, and Poonpon (2011)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, WeiWei

2013-01-01

The recent "TESOL Quarterly" article by Biber, Gray, and Poonpon (2011) raises important considerations with respect to the use of syntactic complexity (SC) measures in second language (L2) studies. The article draws the field's attention to one particular measure--complexity of noun phrases (NP) (i.e., noun phrases with modifiers, such as…
Testing for a Signal with Unknown Location and Scale in a Stationary Gaussian Random Field

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-01-07

Secondary 60D05, 52A22. Key words and phrases. Euler characteristic, integral geometry, image analysis , Gaussian fields, volume of tubes. SUMMARY We...words and phrases. Euler characteristic, integral geometry. image analysis . Gaussian fields. volume of tubes. 20. AMST RACT (Coith..o an revmreo ef* It
Russian-English Glossary of International Maritime Law Terms (and Selected Terms in Related Disciplines.)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naval Intelligence Support Center, Washington, DC.

This glossary contains over 750 terms encountered in international maritime law texts. It includes terms of the art, fairly common abbreviations, geographic names, and prepositional phrases routinely encountered in international treaties, conventions, and agreements. The prepositional phrases are recorded exactly as they appear in formal texts.…

Absolute Interrogative Intonation Patterns in Buenos Aires Spanish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Su Ar

2010-01-01

In Spanish, each uttered phrase, depending on its use, has one of a variety of intonation patterns. For example, a phrase such as "Maria viene manana" "Mary is coming tomorrow" can be used as a declarative or as an absolute interrogative (a yes/no question) depending on the intonation pattern that a speaker produces. …
Constituent Length Affects Prosody and Processing for a Dative NP Ambiguity in Korean

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hwang, Hyekyung; Schafer, Amy J.

2009-01-01

Two sentence processing experiments on a dative NP ambiguity in Korean demonstrate effects of phrase length on overt and implicit prosody. Both experiments controlled non-prosodic length factors by using long versus short proper names that occurred before the syntactically critical material. Experiment 1 found that long phrases induce different…
Understanding Old Words with New Meanings.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clark, Herbert H.; Gerrig, Richard J.

1983-01-01

Assumptions about comprehension of utterances are challenged in two experiments using as an example the verb phrase "to do a Richard Nixon on a tape" (i.e., erase it). It is argued that creating meanings, as with this phrase, works differently from selecting senses for utterances and that many require a mixture of the two. (MSE)
You Say "Probable" and I Say "Likely": Improving Interpersonal Communication With Verbal Probability Phrases

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karelitz, Tzur M.; Budescu, David V.

2004-01-01

When forecasters and decision makers describe uncertain events using verbal probability terms, there is a risk of miscommunication because people use different probability phrases and interpret them in different ways. In an effort to facilitate the communication process, the authors investigated various ways of converting the forecasters' verbal…
Corpus Study of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Diglossic Speech in Cairene Arabic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moshref, Ola Ahmed

2012-01-01

Morpho-syntactic features of Modern Standard Arabic mix intricately with those of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in ordinary speech. I study the lexical, phonological and syntactic features of verb phrase morphemes and constituents in different tenses, aspects, moods. A corpus of over 3000 phrases was collected from religious, political/economic and…
On "Yes, We Can": Linguistics Power and Possibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bista, Krishna K.

2009-01-01

In this article I address a hitherto used buzz phrase in English, "Yes, we can." This phrase represents various forms of meanings--challenge, possibility, ability, permission and opportunity in social, political and linguistics domains. I consider the syntactic and the semantic properties of "Yes, we can." I also compare its conventional usages…
The Language of Energy: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Used in the Energy Industry.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

American Petroleum Inst., Washington, DC.

Provided is an alphabetical list or words and phrases commonly used in the energy industry. Entries range from such general terms as biomass, fossil fuels, and wetlands to such highly specific terms as Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and Exxon Donor Solvent (EDS) Process. (JN)
Between Anaphora and Deixis ... The Resolution of the Demonstrative Noun Phrase "That N"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fossard, Marion; Garnham, Alan; Cowles, H. Wind

2012-01-01

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that the demonstrative noun phrase (NP) that N, as an anadeictic expression, preferentially refers to the less salient referent in a discourse representation when used anaphorically, whereas the anaphoric pronoun he or she preferentially refers to the highly-focused referent. The findings, from a sentence…
Hyphens for Disambiguating Phrases: Effectiveness for Young and Older Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anema, Inge; Obler, Loraine K.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether hyphens that disambiguate phrasing in ambiguous sentences influence reading rate and reading comprehension for younger and older adults. Moreover, as working memory (WM) has been implicated in age-related changes in sentence comprehension for both auditory and written materials, we asked if it…
Early Acquisition of Gender Agreement in the Spanish Noun Phrase: Starting Small

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mariscal, Sonia

2009-01-01

Nativist and constructivist accounts differ in their characterization of children's knowledge of grammatical categories. In this paper we present research on the process of acquisition of a particular grammatical system, gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase, in children under three years of age. The design of the longitudinal study employed…
Verbs and Noun Phrases--Two Tendencies in Philosophical Essays.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koskela, Merja

Noun phrases are often used in academic writing to express the abstract character of the topics discussed. Nouns, especially nominalizations, make it possible to express complicated ideas in a condensed and compact manner, whereas the corresponding verbs make texts easier to understand and more dynamic. In this paper, a case study is presented…
GhostWriter-2.0: Product Reviews with Case-Based Support

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bridge, Derek; Healy, Paul

A lot of user-generated content on the Web takes the form of records of personal experiences. Case-Based Reasoning offers a way of helping one user to reuse another's experiences from the Web. In this paper, we present GhostWriter-2.0, a Case-Based Reasoning system that supports a user who is writing a product review. GhostWriter-2.0 makes suggestions to the user, in the form of short phrases that are mined from other reviews. The purpose of the suggestions is to prompt the user to write a more comprehensive and helpful review than she might otherwise have done. We explain how GhostWriter-2.0's case base is populated with relevant and helpful reviews from Amazon. We show how it extracts and scores phrases in these reviews to decide which to suggest to the user.We report a trial with real users, in which users made greater use of GhostWriter-2.0's suggested phrases than they did of phrases suggested by a system that used a more random form of selection.
Semantic analyzability in children's understanding of idioms.

PubMed

Gibbs, R W

1991-06-01

This study investigated the role of semantic analyzability in children's understanding of idioms. Kindergartners and first, third, and fourth graders listened to idiomatic expressions either alone or at the end of short story contexts. Their task was to explain verbally the intended meanings of these phrases and then to choose their correct idiomatic interpretations. The idioms presented to the children differed in their degree of analyzability. Some idioms were highly analyzable or decomposable, with the meanings of their parts contributing independently to their overall figurative meanings. Other idioms were nondecomposable because it was difficult to see any relation between a phrase's individual components and the idiom's figurative meaning. The results showed that younger children (kindergartners and first graders) understood decomposable idioms better than they did nondecomposable phrases. Older children (third and fourth graders) understood both kinds of idioms equally well in supporting contexts, but were better at interpreting decomposable idioms than they were at understanding nondecomposable idioms without contextual information. These findings demonstrate that young children better understand idiomatic phrases whose individual parts independently contribute to their overall figurative meanings.
Conceptual plural information is used to guide early parsing decisions: Evidence from garden-path sentences with reciprocal verbs.

PubMed

Patson, Nikole D; Ferreira, Fernanda

2009-05-01

In three eyetracking studies, we investigated the role of conceptual plurality in initial parsing decisions in temporarily ambiguous sentences with reciprocal verbs (e.g., While the lovers kissed the baby played alone). We varied the subject of the first clause using three types of plural noun phrases: conjoined noun phrases (the bride and the groom), plural definite descriptions (the lovers), and numerically quantified noun phrases (the two lovers). We found no evidence for garden-path effects when the subject was conjoined (Ferreira & McClure, 1997), but traditional garden-path effects were found with the other plural noun phrases. In addition, we tested plural anaphors that had a plural antecedent present in the discourse. We found that when the antecedent was conjoined, garden-path effects were absent compared to cases in which the antecedent was a plural definite description. Our results indicate that the parser is sensitive to the conceptual representation of a plural constituent. In particular, it appears that a Complex Reference Object (Moxey et al., 2004) automatically activates a reciprocal reading of a reciprocal verb.
Tracking the time course of multi-word noun phrase production with ERPs or on when (and why) cat is faster than the big cat.

PubMed

Bürki, Audrey; Laganaro, Marina

2014-01-01

Words are rarely produced in isolation. Yet, our understanding of multi-word production, and especially its time course, is still rather poor. In this research, we use event-related potentials to examine the production of multi-word noun phrases in the context of overt picture naming. We track the processing costs associated with the production of these noun phrases as compared with the production of bare nouns, from picture onset to articulation. Behavioral results revealed longer naming latencies for French noun phrases with determiners and pre-nominal adjectives (D-A-N, the big cat) than for noun phrases with a determiner (D-N, the cat), or bare nouns (N, cat). The spatio-temporal analysis of the ERPs revealed differences in the duration of stable global electrophysiological patterns as a function of utterance format in two time windows, from ~190 to 300 ms after picture onset, and from ~530 ms after picture onset to 100 ms before articulation. These findings can be accommodated in the following model. During grammatical encoding (here from ~190 to 300 ms), the noun and adjective lemmas are accessed in parallel, followed by the selection of the gender-agreeing determiner. Phonological encoding (after ~530 ms) operates sequentially. As a consequence, the phonological encoding process is longer for longer utterances. In addition, when determiners are repeated across trials, their phonological encoding can be anticipated or primed, resulting in a shortened encoding process.
Dynamic interactions between musical, cardiovascular, and cerebral rhythms in humans.

PubMed

Bernardi, Luciano; Porta, Cesare; Casucci, Gaia; Balsamo, Rossella; Bernardi, Nicolò F; Fogari, Roberto; Sleight, Peter

2009-06-30

Reactions to music are considered subjective, but previous studies suggested that cardiorespiratory variables increase with faster tempo independent of individual preference. We tested whether compositions characterized by variable emphasis could produce parallel instantaneous cardiovascular/respiratory responses and whether these changes mirrored music profiles. Twenty-four young healthy subjects, 12 musicians (choristers) and 12 nonmusician control subjects, listened (in random order) to music with vocal (Puccini's "Turandot") or orchestral (Beethoven's 9th Symphony adagio) progressive crescendos, more uniform emphasis (Bach cantata), 10-second period (ie, similar to Mayer waves) rhythmic phrases (Giuseppe Verdi's arias "Va pensiero" and "Libiam nei lieti calici"), or silence while heart rate, respiration, blood pressures, middle cerebral artery flow velocity, and skin vasomotion were recorded.Common responses were recognized by averaging instantaneous cardiorespiratory responses regressed against changes in music profiles and by coherence analysis during rhythmic phrases. Vocal and orchestral crescendos produced significant (P=0.05 or better) correlations between cardiovascular or respiratory signals and music profile, particularly skin vasoconstriction and blood pressures, proportional to crescendo, in contrast to uniform emphasis, which induced skin vasodilation and reduction in blood pressures. Correlations were significant both in individual and group-averaged signals. Phrases at 10-second periods by Verdi entrained the cardiovascular autonomic variables. No qualitative differences in recorded measurements were seen between musicians and nonmusicians. Music emphasis and rhythmic phrases are tracked consistently by physiological variables. Autonomic responses are synchronized with music, which might therefore convey emotions through autonomic arousal during crescendos or rhythmic phrases.
Integrated head package for top mounted nuclear instrumentation

DOEpatents

Malandra, Louis J.; Hornak, Leonard P.; Meuschke, Robert E.

1993-01-01

A nuclear reactor such as a pressurized water reactor has an integrated head package providing structural support and increasing shielding leading toward the vessel head. A reactor vessel head engages the reactor vessel, and a control rod guide mechanism over the vessel head raises and lowers control rods in certain of the thimble tubes, traversing penetrations in the reactor vessel head, and being coupled to the control rods. An instrumentation tube structure includes instrumentation tubes with sensors movable into certain thimble tubes disposed in the fuel assemblies. Couplings for the sensors also traverse penetrations in the reactor vessel head. A shroud is attached over the reactor vessel head and encloses the control rod guide mechanism and at least a portion of the instrumentation tubes when retracted. The shroud forms a structural element of sufficient strength to support the vessel head, the control rod guide mechanism and the instrumentation tube structure, and includes radiation shielding material for limiting passage of radiation from retracted instrumentation tubes. The shroud is thicker at the bottom adjacent the vessel head, where the more irradiated lower ends of retracted sensors reside. The vessel head, shroud and contents thus can be removed from the reactor as a unit and rested safely and securely on a support.
Coupling between myosin head conformation and the thick filament backbone structure.

PubMed

Hu, Zhongjun; Taylor, Dianne W; Edwards, Robert J; Taylor, Kenneth A

2017-12-01

The recent high-resolution structure of the thick filament from Lethocerus asynchronous flight muscle shows aspects of thick filament structure never before revealed that may shed some light on how striated muscles function. The phenomenon of stretch activation underlies the function of asynchronous flight muscle. It is most highly developed in flight muscle, but is also observed in other striated muscles such as cardiac muscle. Although stretch activation is likely to be complex, involving more than a single structural aspect of striated muscle, the thick filament itself, would be a prime site for regulatory function because it must bear all of the tension produced by both its associated myosin motors and any externally applied force. Here we show the first structural evidence that the arrangement of myosin heads within the interacting heads motif is coupled to the structure of the thick filament backbone. We find that a change in helical angle of 0.16° disorders the blocked head preferentially within the Lethocerus interacting heads motif. This observation suggests a mechanism for how tension affects the dynamics of the myosin heads leading to a detailed hypothesis for stretch activation and shortening deactivation, in which the blocked head preferentially binds the thin filament followed by the free head when force production occurs. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Fan-structure wave as a source of earthquake instability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tarasov, Boris

2015-04-01

Today frictional shear resistance along pre-existing faults is considered to be the lower limit on rock shear strength at confined compression corresponding to the seismogenic layer. This determines the lithospheric strength and the primary earthquake mechanism associated with frictional stick-slip instability on pre-existing faults. This paper introduces a recently identified shear rupture mechanism providing a paradoxical feature of hard rocks - the possibility of shear rupture propagation through the highly confined intact rock mass at shear stress levels significantly less than frictional strength. In the new mechanism the rock failure, associated with consecutive creation of small slabs (known as 'domino-blocks') from the intact rock in the rupture tip, is driven by a fan-shaped domino structure representing the rupture head. The fan-head combines such unique features as: extremely low shear resistance (below the frictional strength), self-sustaining stress intensification in the rupture tip (providing easy formation of new domino-blocks), and self-unbalancing conditions in the fan-head (making the failure process inevitably spontaneous and violent). An important feature of the fan-mechanism is the fact that for the initial formation of the fan-structure an enhanced local shear stress is required, however, after completion of the fan-structure it can propagate as a dynamic wave through intact rock mass at shear stresses below the frictional strength. Paradoxically low shear strength of pristine rocks provided by the fan-mechanism determines the lower limit of the lithospheric strength and favours the generation of new faults in pristine rocks in preference to frictional stick-slip instability along pre-existing faults. The new approach reveals an alternative role of pre-existing faults in earthquake activity: they represent local stress concentrates in pristine rock adjoining the fault where special conditions for the fan-mechanism nucleation are created, while further dynamic propagation of the new fault (earthquake) occurs at low field stresses even below the frictional strength. However, the proximity of the pre-existing discontinuities to the area of instability caused by the fan mechanism creates the illusion of stick-slip instability on the pre-existing faults, thus concealing the real situation.
Computational principles of syntax in the regions specialized for language: integrating theoretical linguistics and functional neuroimaging

PubMed Central

Ohta, Shinri; Fukui, Naoki; Sakai, Kuniyoshi L.

2013-01-01

The nature of computational principles of syntax remains to be elucidated. One promising approach to this problem would be to construct formal and abstract linguistic models that parametrically predict the activation modulations in the regions specialized for linguistic processes. In this article, we review recent advances in theoretical linguistics and functional neuroimaging in the following respects. First, we introduce the two fundamental linguistic operations: Merge (which combines two words or phrases to form a larger structure) and Search (which searches and establishes a syntactic relation of two words or phrases). We also illustrate certain universal properties of human language, and present hypotheses regarding how sentence structures are processed in the brain. Hypothesis I is that the Degree of Merger (DoM), i.e., the maximum depth of merged subtrees within a given domain, is a key computational concept to properly measure the complexity of tree structures. Hypothesis II is that the basic frame of the syntactic structure of a given linguistic expression is determined essentially by functional elements, which trigger Merge and Search. We then present our recent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, demonstrating that the DoM is indeed a key syntactic factor that accounts for syntax-selective activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Hypothesis III is that the DoM domain changes dynamically in accordance with iterative Merge applications, the Search distances, and/or task requirements. We confirm that the DoM accounts for activations in various sentence types. Hypothesis III successfully explains activation differences between object- and subject-relative clauses, as well as activations during explicit syntactic judgment tasks. A future research on the computational principles of syntax will further deepen our understanding of uniquely human mental faculties. PMID:24385957

Computational principles of syntax in the regions specialized for language: integrating theoretical linguistics and functional neuroimaging.

PubMed

Ohta, Shinri; Fukui, Naoki; Sakai, Kuniyoshi L

2013-01-01

The nature of computational principles of syntax remains to be elucidated. One promising approach to this problem would be to construct formal and abstract linguistic models that parametrically predict the activation modulations in the regions specialized for linguistic processes. In this article, we review recent advances in theoretical linguistics and functional neuroimaging in the following respects. First, we introduce the two fundamental linguistic operations: Merge (which combines two words or phrases to form a larger structure) and Search (which searches and establishes a syntactic relation of two words or phrases). We also illustrate certain universal properties of human language, and present hypotheses regarding how sentence structures are processed in the brain. Hypothesis I is that the Degree of Merger (DoM), i.e., the maximum depth of merged subtrees within a given domain, is a key computational concept to properly measure the complexity of tree structures. Hypothesis II is that the basic frame of the syntactic structure of a given linguistic expression is determined essentially by functional elements, which trigger Merge and Search. We then present our recent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, demonstrating that the DoM is indeed a key syntactic factor that accounts for syntax-selective activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus. Hypothesis III is that the DoM domain changes dynamically in accordance with iterative Merge applications, the Search distances, and/or task requirements. We confirm that the DoM accounts for activations in various sentence types. Hypothesis III successfully explains activation differences between object- and subject-relative clauses, as well as activations during explicit syntactic judgment tasks. A future research on the computational principles of syntax will further deepen our understanding of uniquely human mental faculties.
Rotation of the stalk/neck and one head in a new crystal structure of the kinesin motor protein, Ncd

PubMed Central

Yun, Mikyung; Bronner, C.Eric; Park, Cheon-Gil; Cha, Sun-Shin; Park, Hee-Won; Endow, Sharyn A.

2003-01-01

Molecular motors undergo conformational changes to produce force and move along cytoskeletal filaments. Structural changes have been detected in kinesin motors; however, further changes are expected because previous crystal structures are in the same or closely related conformations. We report here a 2.5 Å crystal structure of the minus-end kinesin, Ncd, with the coiled-coil stalk/neck and one head rotated by ∼75° relative to the other head. The two heads are asymmetrically positioned with respect to the stalk and show asymmetry of nucleotide state: one head is fully occupied, but the other is unstably bound to ADP. Unlike previous structures, our new atomic model can be fit into cryoelectron microscopy density maps of the motor attached to microtubules, where it appears to resemble a one-head-bound motor with the stalk rotated towards the minus end. Interactions between neck and motor core residues, observed in the head that moves with the stalk, are disrupted in the other head, permitting rotation of the stalk/neck. The rotation could represent a force-producing stroke that directs the motor to the minus end. PMID:14532111
Phrase Lengths and the Perceived Informativeness of Prosodic Cues in Turkish.

PubMed

Dinçtopal Deniz, Nazik; Fodor, Janet Dean

2017-12-01

It is known from previous studies that in many cases (though not all) the prosodic properties of a spoken utterance reflect aspects of its syntactic structure, and also that in many cases (though not all) listeners can benefit from these prosodic cues. A novel contribution to this literature is the Rational Speaker Hypothesis (RSH), proposed by Clifton, Carlson and Frazier. The RSH maintains that listeners are sensitive to possible reasons for why a speaker might introduce a prosodic break: "listeners treat a prosodic boundary as more informative about the syntax when it flanks short constituents than when it flanks longer constituents," because in the latter case the speaker might have been motivated solely by consideration of optimal phrase lengths. This would effectively reduce the cue value of an appropriately placed prosodic boundary. We present additional evidence for the RSH from Turkish, a language typologically different from English. In addition, our study shows for the first time that the RSH also applies to a prosodic break which conflicts with the syntactic structure, reducing its perceived cue strength if it might have been motivated by length considerations. In this case, the RSH effect is beneficial. Finally, the Turkish data show that prosody-based explanations for parsing preferences such as the RSH do not take the place of traditional syntax-sensitive parsing strategies such as Late Closure. The two sources of guidance co-exist; both are used when available.
Effects of Soccer Heading on Brain Structure and Function

PubMed Central

Rodrigues, Ana Carolina; Lasmar, Rodrigo Pace; Caramelli, Paulo

2016-01-01

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, with more than 265 million players worldwide, including professional and amateur ones. Soccer is unique in comparison to other sports, as it is the only sport in which participants purposely use their head to hit the ball. Heading is considered as an offensive or defensive move whereby the player’s unprotected head is used to deliberately impact the ball and direct it during play. A soccer player can be subjected to an average of 6–12 incidents of heading the ball per competitive game, where the ball reaches high velocities. Moreover, in practice sessions, heading training, which involves heading the ball repeatedly at low velocities, is common. Although the scientific community, as well as the media, has focused on the effects of concussions in contact sports, the role of subconcussive impacts, as it can occur during heading, has recently gained attention, considering that it may represent an additional mechanism of cumulative brain injury. The purpose of this study is to review the existing literature regarding the effects of soccer heading on brain structure and function. Only in the last years, some investigations have addressed the impact of heading on brain structure, by using neuroimaging techniques. Similarly, there have been some recent studies investigating biochemical markers of brain injury in soccer players. There is evidence of association between heading and abnormal brain structure, but the data are still preliminary. Also, some studies have suggested that subconcussive head impacts, as heading, could cause cognitive impairment, whereas others have not corroborated this finding. Questions persist as to whether or not heading is deleterious to cognitive functioning. Further studies, especially with longitudinal designs, are needed to clarify the clinical significance of heading as a cause of brain injury and to identify risk factors. Such investigations might contribute to the establishment of safety guidelines that could help to minimize the risk of possible adverse effects of soccer on brain structure and function. PMID:27047444
Development of an Easy-to-Use Tool for the Assessment of Emergency Department Physical Design.

PubMed

Majidi, Alireza; Tabatabaey, Ali; Motamed, Hassan; Motamedi, Maryam; Forouzanfar, Mohammad Mehdi

2014-01-01

Physical design of the emergency department (ED) has an important effect on its role and function. To date, no guidelines have been introduced to set the standards for the construction of EDs in Iran. In this study, we aim to devise an easy-to-use tool based on the available literature and expert opinion for the quick and effective assessment of EDs in regards to their physical design. For this purpose, based on current literature on emergency design, a comprehensive checklist was developed. Then, this checklist was analyzed by a panel consisting of heads of three major EDs and contradicting items were decided. 178 crude items were derived from available literature. The Items were categorized in to three major domains of Physical space, Equipment, and Accessibility. The final checklist approved by the panel consisted of 163 items categorized into six domains. Each item was phrased as a "Yes or No" question for ease of analysis, meaning that the criterion is either met or not.
MATline: a job-exposure matrix for carcinogenic chemicals.

PubMed

Gilardi, Luisella; Falcone, Umberto; Santoro, Silvano; Coffano, Elena

2008-01-01

MATline is a tool that can be used to predict which industrial processes can be expected to involve the use of a substance that is considered carcinogenic as documented in the literature. The database includes agents carrying risk phrases R45, R49 and R40 according to the method of classification adopted by the EU and/or agents in categories 1, 2A and 2B as classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Each agent is associated with a list of industrial processes coded according to the tariff headings used by the National Institute of Insurance against Occupational Injuries and Diseases (Istituto Nazionale per l'Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro, INAIL). The main sources of information are the IARC Monographs and databases available through the National Library of Medicine's TOXNET portal. The matrix currently includes 600 carcinogenic agents, 23 classes of agents and some 7000 links between agents and industrial processes. MATline can be viewed on the www.dors.it website.
Seeing a Phrase "Time and Again" Matters: The Role of Phrasal Frequency in the Processing of Multiword Sequences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siyanova-Chanturia, Anna; Conklin, Kathy; van Heuven, Walter J. B.

2011-01-01

Are speakers sensitive to the frequency with which phrases occur in language? The authors report an eye-tracking study that investigates this by examining the processing of multiword sequences that differ in phrasal frequency by native and proficient nonnative English speakers. Participants read sentences containing 3-word binomial phrases…
Think outside the Box: A Logic-Defying "Impossible" Solution

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Raje, Sonali

2012-01-01

"Think outside the box" is a very common phrase, routinely used to convey the idea of finding creative and unconventional solutions to problems. Although widely used as a cliche in the business world, this phrase is significantly applicable to people who do science for a living, because scientists are constantly developing and testing new ideas.…
Dictogloss or Dicto-Phrase: Which Works Better for Listening Comprehension?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marashi, Hamid; Khaksar, Mojgan

2013-01-01

This research compared the effect of using dictogloss and dicto-phrase tasks on EFL learners' listening comprehension. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a piloted sample Key English Test (KET) was administered to a total number of 90 Iranian female teenage EFL learners at Kish Language School, Tehran, and then 60 were selected based on their…
"Forty Acres and a Mule" as a Pedagogical Motif

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burch, Kerry

2008-01-01

This essay revisits an iconic yet now languishing phrase in United States political culture--"Forty Acres and a Mule"--to clarify the meaning of freedom and to assess the contemporary meaning of its betrayal by the U.S. government immediately after the Civil War. Among the few citizens for whom the phrase still retains a semblance of…
Russian: A Guide to the Spoken Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Department of Defense, Washington, DC.

This Russian language guide is of assistance in carrying on simple conversations in Russian and is used in conjunction with records. Russian ranks after Chinese and English as the third most widespread language in the world. All the words and phrases are written in a simplified spelling which is read like English. Useful words and phrases include…
48 CFR 970.2904-1 - Management and operating contracts.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... contracts. (a) Pursuant to 48 CFR 29.401-4(b), the clause at 48 CFR 52.229-10, State of New Mexico Gross... conditions stated. The contracting officer shall modify paragraph (b) of the clause to replace the phrase “Allowable Cost and Payment” with the phrase “Payments and Advances.” (b) Contracting officers shall include...
76 FR 40237 - Approval and Disapproval and Promulgation of Air Quality Implementation Plans; Montana; Revisions...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-07-08

... before permit issuance. The rule only allows installing concrete foundations work, below ground plumbing...)), submitted on May 28, 2003; 17.8.743 (except the phrases ``asphalt concrete plants, mineral crushers'' in 17... following provisions in Subchapter 7: ARM 17.8.743(1)(c) and ARM 17.8.770, the phrase ``asphalt concrete...
Developmental Relationships between Speech and Writing: Is Verb-Phrase Anaphora Production a Special Case?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Donaldson, Morag L.; Cooper, Lynn S. M.

2013-01-01

Background: Young children's speech is typically more linguistically sophisticated than their writing. However, there are grounds for asking whether production of cohesive devices, such as verb-phrase anaphora (VPA), might represent an exception to this developmental pattern, as cohesive devices are generally more important in writing than in…
20 CFR 345.302 - Definition of terms and phrases used in experience-rating.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... for the current calendar year. This ratio is computed to four decimal places. (k) Pooled credit ratio... employer for the calendar year involved in the computation. This ratio is computed to four decimal places... 20 Employees' Benefits 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Definition of terms and phrases used in...
"Picture Bride" as a Definition of "Third World" Poetry.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fujita, Gayle K.

This conference paper describes how the phrase "picture bride" is used as a metaphor in ethnic poetry. It is used in poems which concern female creativity in the areas of art and housekeeping. The phrase represents the fusion of concepts and ideas which are usually thought of in juxtaposition with each other. These concepts and ideas are…
Acquisition of Generic Noun Phrases in Chinese: Learning about Lions without an '-S'

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tardif, Twila; Gelman, Susan A.; Fu, Xiaolan; Zhu, Liqi

2012-01-01

English-speaking children understand and produce generic expressions in the preschool years, but there are cross-linguistic differences in how generics are expressed. Three studies examined interpretation of generic noun phrases in three- to seven-year-old child (N=192) and adult speakers (N=163) of Mandarin Chinese. Contrary to suggestions by…
Idiom Comprehension Deficits in Relation to Corpus Callosum Agenesis and Hypoplasia in Children with Spina Bifida Meningomyelocele

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huber-Okrainec, J.; Blaser, S.E.; Dennis, M.

2005-01-01

Idioms are phrases with figurative meanings that are not directly derived from the literal meanings of the words in the phrase. Idiom comprehension varies with: literality, whether the idiom is literally plausible; compositionality, whether individual words contribute to a figurative meaning; and contextual bias. We studied idiom comprehension in…
Moral and Ethical Dimensions of Socioscientific Decision-Making as Integral Components of Scientific Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sadler, Troy D.

2004-01-01

Science educators have appropriated many meanings for the phrase "scientific literacy" (Champagne & Lovitts, 1989). This paper advances an argument that in order to maintain the usefulness of such a malleable phrase, its users must explicitly address the context of its use. Based on the vision of science education articulated in standards…
To What Extent Do Native and Non-Native Writers Make Use of Collocations?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Durrant, Philip; Schmitt, Norbert

2009-01-01

Usage-based models claim that first language learning is based on the frequency-based analysis of memorised phrases. It is not clear though, whether adult second language learning works in the same way. It has been claimed that non-native language lacks idiomatic formulas, suggesting that learners neglect phrases, focusing instead on orthographic…

What Business Students Should Know about Attorney-Client Privilege

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Draba, Robert; Marshall, Brent

2012-01-01

The case law on attorney-client privilege is extensive and can be somewhat complex. Over seven hundred articles in Westlaw, for example, have the phrase "attorney-client privilege" in the title; in the last three years alone, there have been over 3700 federal cases in which the phrase "attorney-client privilege" appears at least once. However,…
The On-Line Processing of Verb-Phrase Ellipsis in Aphasia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Poirier, Josee; Shapiro, Lewis P.; Love, Tracy; Grodzinsky, Yosef

2009-01-01

We investigate the on-line processing of verb-phrase ellipsis (VPE) constructions in two brain injured populations: Broca's and Anomic aphasics. VPE constructions are built from two simple clauses; the first is the antecedent clause and the second is the ellipsis clause. The ellipsis clause is missing its verb and object (i.e., its verb phrase…
Phrase Length and Prosody in On-Line Ambiguity Resolution

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Webman-Shafran, Ronit; Fodor, Janet Dean

2016-01-01

We investigated the processing of ambiguous double-PP constructions in Hebrew. Selection restrictions forced the first prepositional phrase (PP1) to attach low, but PP2 could attach maximally high to VP or maximally low to the NP inside PP1. A length contrast in PP2 was also examined. This construction affords more potential locations for prosodic…
Phrase Frequency, Proficiency and Grammaticality Interact in Non-Native Processing: Implications for Theories of SLA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shantz, Kailen

2017-01-01

This study reports on a self-paced reading experiment in which native and non-native speakers of English read sentences designed to evaluate the predictions of usage-based and rule-based approaches to second language acquisition (SLA). Critical stimuli were four-word sequences embedded into sentences in which phrase frequency and grammaticality…
Sub-Audible Speech Recognition Based upon Electromyographic Signals

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Jorgensen, Charles C. (Inventor); Agabon, Shane T. (Inventor); Lee, Diana D. (Inventor)

2012-01-01

Method and system for processing and identifying a sub-audible signal formed by a source of sub-audible sounds. Sequences of samples of sub-audible sound patterns ("SASPs") for known words/phrases in a selected database are received for overlapping time intervals, and Signal Processing Transforms ("SPTs") are formed for each sample, as part of a matrix of entry values. The matrix is decomposed into contiguous, non-overlapping two-dimensional cells of entries, and neural net analysis is applied to estimate reference sets of weight coefficients that provide sums with optimal matches to reference sets of values. The reference sets of weight coefficients are used to determine a correspondence between a new (unknown) word/phrase and a word/phrase in the database.
Female Autism Phenotypes Investigated at Different Levels of Language and Developmental Abilities.

PubMed

Howe, Yamini J; O'Rourke, Julia A; Yatchmink, Yvette; Viscidi, Emma W; Jones, Richard N; Morrow, Eric M

2015-11-01

This study investigated the differences in clinical symptoms between females and males with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) across three verbal ability groups (nonverbal, phrase and fluent speech), based on which Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule module was administered to 5723 individuals in four research datasets. In the Simons Simplex Collection and Autism Treatment Network, females with ASD and phrase or fluent speech had lower cognitive, adaptive, and social abilities than males. In the Autism Genetics Resource Exchange and the Autism Consortium, females with phrase or fluent speech had similar or better adaptive and social abilities than males. Females who were nonverbal had similar cognitive, adaptive, and social abilities as males. Population-based longitudinal studies of verbally fluent females with ASD are needed.
Effect of crystallographical and geometrical changes of a ferrite head on magnetic signals during the sliding process with magnetic tape

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Miyoshi, K.; Buckley, D. H.; Tanaka, K.

1986-01-01

This paper reviews changes in the crystalline structure and geometry of lapped Mn-Zn ferrite heads in sliding contact with magnetic tape and the effects of these changes on magnetic signals. A highly textured, polycrystalline structure was produced on the surface of a single-crystal Mn-Zn ferrite head when it was finished with an aluminum oxide lapping tape. Sliding this lapped surface against a magnetic tape produced a nearly amorphous structure. The sliding process led to a degradation in readback signal of 1 to 2 dB (short-wavelength recording). Furthermore, wear of the magnetic head caused geometrical changes in the head surface. The signal read back with the worn magnetic head was sensitive to operating parameters such as head displacement and tape tension. A change in operating parameters created head-to-tape spacings and, consequently, excessive gains or losses in the readback signal.
The neurophysiology of language processing shapes the evolution of grammar: evidence from case marking.

PubMed

Bickel, Balthasar; Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena; Choudhary, Kamal K; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina

2015-01-01

Do principles of language processing in the brain affect the way grammar evolves over time or is language change just a matter of socio-historical contingency? While the balance of evidence has been ambiguous and controversial, we identify here a neurophysiological constraint on the processing of language that has a systematic effect on the evolution of how noun phrases are marked by case (i.e. by such contrasts as between the English base form she and the object form her). In neurophysiological experiments across diverse languages we found that during processing, participants initially interpret the first base-form noun phrase they hear (e.g. she…) as an agent (which would fit a continuation like … greeted him), even when the sentence later requires the interpretation of a patient role (as in … was greeted). We show that this processing principle is also operative in Hindi, a language where initial base-form noun phrases most commonly denote patients because many agents receive a special case marker ("ergative") and are often left out in discourse. This finding suggests that the principle is species-wide and independent of the structural affordances of specific languages. As such, the principle favors the development and maintenance of case-marking systems that equate base-form cases with agents rather than with patients. We confirm this evolutionary bias by statistical analyses of phylogenetic signals in over 600 languages worldwide, controlling for confounding effects from language contact. Our findings suggest that at least one core property of grammar systematically adapts in its evolution to the neurophysiological conditions of the brain, independently of socio-historical factors. This opens up new avenues for understanding how specific properties of grammar have developed in tight interaction with the biological evolution of our species.
Characterizing CH4 and N2O emissions from an intensive dairy operation in summer and fall in China

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Gaodi; Ma, Xiaoyuan; Gao, Zhiling; Ma, Wenqi; Li, Jianguo; Cai, Zhenjiang

2014-02-01

Evaluation of the global warming potential of the dairy industry both in China and globally necessitates reliable characterization of CH4 and N2O emissions. However, CH4 and N2O emissions from dairy operations differ with feeds, herd structures and manure management practices, and the lack of N2O and CH4 emission measurements for China, especially for intensive dairy operations, causes substantial uncertainty in accounting for GHGs from dairy operation both in China and globally. In this study, CH4 and N2O emissions during summer to fall period from an intensive feedlot in China were characterized to fill the data gap. The diurnal CH4 emission patterns for milking cows and heifers were driven by the feeding activities and the diurnal N2O patterns by the diurnal changes in temperature. The CH4 emission rates of 397 g head-1 d-1 (23.63 L CH4 kg-1 milk) (in summer) and 279 g head-1 d-1 (in fall) for milking cows and heifers accounted for 5.17% and 7.68% of their daily gross energy intakes, whereas the N2O emission rates of 36.7 g head-1 d-1 (0.85 L N2O kg-1 milk) for milking cows and 24.2 g head-1 d-1 for heifers accounted for 4.25% and 6.86% of the daily feed N intake. The CH4 conversion factor and CH4 emission intensity in the measurement season for intensive dairy operations in China are lower than those for collective operations in China, and the CH4 emission intensity is similar to those in developed countries.
Intrinsic Constraints on the Diversification of Neotropical Cichlid Adductor Mandibulae Size.

PubMed

Arbour, Jessica; López-Fernández, Hernán

2018-02-01

The diversification of functional traits may be constrained by intrinsic factors, such as structural, mechanical, developmental, or physiological limitations. We explored the biomechanical and constructional constraints on the size of the major jaw closing muscles, the adductor mandibulae complex (AM), in a diverse clade of freshwater fish - the Neotropical cichlids. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we contrasted patterns of size variation and diversification rates of three AM divisions with variables describing head size and biomechanical coefficients describing force and velocity transmission. We found that all three AM muscles examined were impacted by constructional constraints, namely, (1) the space available in the head (head length and width-all AMs), (2) competition with the eye (AM1 and AM2), (3) competition for space among the three major AM divisions (e.g., AM1 vs. AM3), and (4) potentially the shape of the lower jaw (AM2). Only AM2 size was significantly associated with lower jaw biomechanical coefficients, but opposite predictions based on force transmission (i.e., no compensation for low mechanical advantage). Diversification rates of the mass of the divisions of the AM were also not connected to the diversification rates of their biomechanical coefficients. Previously suggested compensation in AM mass for reduced force transmission among ram-feeding predators appears to be driven by overall body plan changes (lengthening of the head in elongate bodies) and only indirectly to biomechanical trade-offs. Strong constructional constraints on AM size likely limit potentially functional morphospace occupation, and highlight the highly integrated nature of ram-suction feeding functional adaptations in Neotropical cichlids. Anat Rec, 301:216-226, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Economic burden of non-cervical cancers attributable to human papillomavirus: a European scoping review.

PubMed

Préaud, Emmanuelle; Largeron, Nathalie

2013-01-01

Human papillomavirus (HPV) has an important role in the aetiology of a range of diseases, including cervical, other anogenital, and head and neck cancers, genital warts and recurrent respiratory papillomatosis. This literature review was conducted to identify the available cost data for non-cervical HPV-related cancers (anal, penile, vulvar, vaginal, head and neck) in Europe and to inform discussion of methodological challenges for future economic research. The literature search was conducted using Medline and key words to identify papers published in English or French between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2011. Abstracts of major conferences were searched to identify relevant information. Structured methods were used to select references that focused on overall disease management for inclusion in the review. A total of 21 references from seven countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Portugal, and the UK) were selected, including 11 references relating to head and neck cancers, five to anogenital cancers, and five to more than one HPV-related disease. Non-cervical cancers accounted for a substantial proportion of the economic burden of HPV-related cancers, and this burden was mainly driven by men (∼70%). A wide range of costs were reported for each disease, particularly head and neck cancers, predominantly due to disease complexity and variation in study design. The main limitation of this study was in the search strategy, which was constrained by the key words, the database searched, and the restriction on language (English/French). Non-cervical cancers attributable to HPV impose a substantial economic burden in Europe, and the burden is greater in men than in women. This review provides useful information for future health-economic studies assessing the impact of HPV vaccination on all HPV-related diseases.
A "good practice" approach to the quality and consistency of morphological examination of the internal head structures of the term rabbit fetus.

PubMed

French, Julian M

2014-07-01

Variation in the interpretation of the regulatory guidelines has resulted in a diversity of techniques employed to examine the internal structures of the foetal rabbit head. Examination of the foetal rabbit brain, using a single transverse section as the sole technique, is considered not to be sufficiently thorough to be regarded as an adequate examination method. It is not compliant with published EPA and OECD guidelines covering required examination of the internal head structures, nor is it considered to conform to the spirit of the safety assessment required by the ICH guideline. Fixation of approximately half of the heads in each litter to allow the examination of multiple transverse sections enables the major structures within the head to be assessed effectively. This method is compliant with current guidelines, represents "good practice" and should be consistently adopted for the examination of the internal head structures of the term rabbit foetus. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Modeling and Experiments with a High-Performance Flexible Swimming Robot

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wiens, Alexander; Hosoi, Anette

2017-11-01

Conventionally, fish-like swimming robots consist of a chain of rigid links connected by a series of rigid actuators. Devices of this nature have demonstrated impressive speeds and maneuverability, but from a practical perspective, their mechanical complexity makes them expensive to build and prone to failure. To address this problem, we present an alternative design approach which employs a single actuator to generate undulatory waves along a passive flexible structure. Through simulations and experiments we find that our robot can match the speed and agility of its rigid counterparts, while being simple, robust, and significantly less expensive. Physically, our robot consists of a small ellipsoidal head connected to a long flexible beam. Actuation is provided by a motor-driven flywheel within the head, which oscillates to produce a periodic torque. This torque propagates along the beam to generate an undulatory wave and propel the robot forwards. We construct a numerical model of the system using Lighthill's large-amplitude elongated-body theory coupled with a nonlinear model of elastic beam deformation. We then use this simulation to optimize the velocity and efficiency of the robot. The optimized design is validated through experiments with a prototype device. NSF DMS-1517842.
Buzzwords and newspeak

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Swartz, Clifford E.

2000-03-01

You have to read beneath the lines in this business. Every week I get manuscripts filled with words and phrases fraught with cabalistic meaning. Would you believe, for instance, that in using the modeling method of teaching that the carefully structured development and concept flow would lead through Socratic dialogue to a rich classroom discourse? Perhaps it would help if I reminded you that a model is a primary unit of coherently structured knowledge. Of course, I am speaking only of the essence of models that are at the heart of modeling theory. These depend on student-centered teaching that is research-informed, leading to interactive engagement methods and cooperative learning.
Implicit memory in music and language.

PubMed

Ettlinger, Marc; Margulis, Elizabeth H; Wong, Patrick C M

2011-01-01

Research on music and language in recent decades has focused on their overlapping neurophysiological, perceptual, and cognitive underpinnings, ranging from the mechanism for encoding basic auditory cues to the mechanism for detecting violations in phrase structure. These overlaps have most often been identified in musicians with musical knowledge that was acquired explicitly, through formal training. In this paper, we review independent bodies of work in music and language that suggest an important role for implicitly acquired knowledge, implicit memory, and their associated neural structures in the acquisition of linguistic or musical grammar. These findings motivate potential new work that examines music and language comparatively in the context of the implicit memory system.
High incidence of HPV-associated head and neck cancers in FA deficient mice is associated with E7's induction of DNA damage through its inactivation of pocket proteins.

PubMed

Park, Jung Wook; Shin, Myeong-Kyun; Pitot, Henry C; Lambert, Paul F

2013-01-01

Fanconi anemia (FA) patients are highly susceptible to solid tumors at multiple anatomical sites including head and neck region. A subset of head and neck cancers (HNCs) is associated with 'high-risk' HPVs, particularly HPV16. However, the correlation between HPV oncogenes and cancers in FA patients is still unclear. We previously learned that FA deficiency in mice predisposes HPV16 E7 transgenic mice to HNCs. To address HPV16 E6's oncogenic potential under FA deficiency in HNCs, we utilized HPV16 E6-transgenic mice (K14E6) and HPV16 E6/E7-bi-transgenic mice (K14E6E7) on genetic backgrounds sufficient or deficient for one of the fanc genes, fancD2 and monitored their susceptibility to HNCs. K14E6 mice failed to develop tumor. However, E6 and fancD2-deficiency accelerated E7-driven tumor development in K14E6E7 mice. The increased tumor incidence was more correlated with E7-driven DNA damage than proliferation. We also found that deficiency of pocket proteins, pRb, p107, and p130 that are well-established targets of E7, could recapitulate E7's induction of DNA damage. Our findings support the hypothesis that E7 induces HPV-associated HNCs by promoting DNA damage through the inactivation of pocket proteins, which explains why a deficiency in DNA damage repair would increase susceptibility to E7-driven cancer. Our results further demonstrate the unexpected finding that FA deficiency does not predispose E6 transgenic mice to HNCs, indicating a specificity in the synergy between FA deficiency and HPV oncogenes in causing HNCs.
Gender and Heritage Spanish Bilingual Grammars: A Study of Code-Mixed Determiner Phrases and Copula Constructions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valenzuela, Elena; Faure, Ana; Ramirez-Trujillo, Alma P.; Barski, Ewelina; Pangtay, Yolanda; Diez, Adriana

2012-01-01

The study examined heritage speaker grammars and to what extent they diverge with respect to grammatical gender from adult L2 learners. Results from a preference task involving code-mixed Determiner Phrases (DPs) and code-mixed copula constructions show a difference between these two types of operations. Heritage speakers patterned with the…
40 CFR 75.13 - Specific provisions for monitoring CO 2 emissions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... the general operating requirements in § 75.10 for a CO2 continuous emission monitoring system and flow... specified in §§ 75.11(a) through (e) or § 75.16, except that the phrase “CO2 continuous emission monitoring system” shall apply rather than “SO2 continuous emission monitoring system,” the phrase “CO2...
40 CFR 75.13 - Specific provisions for monitoring CO 2 emissions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... the general operating requirements in § 75.10 for a CO2 continuous emission monitoring system and flow... specified in §§ 75.11(a) through (e) or § 75.16, except that the phrase “CO2 continuous emission monitoring system” shall apply rather than “SO2 continuous emission monitoring system,” the phrase “CO2...
Does the Advanced Proficiency Evaluated in Oral-Like Written Text Support Syntactic Parsing in a Written Academic Text among L2 Japanese Learners?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kitajima, Ryu

2016-01-01

Corpus linguistics identifies the qualitative difference in the characteristics of spoken discourse vs. written academic discourse. Whereas spoken discourse makes greater use of finite dependent clauses functioning as constituents in other clauses, written academic discourse incorporates noun phrase constituents and complex phrases. This claim can…

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