15 research outputs found
Visual coherence of moving and stationary image changes
AbstractDetection thresholds were compared for moving and stationary oscillations with equivalent contrast changes. Motion was more detectable than stationary oscillation, and the difference increased with size of the feature (a Gaussian blob). Phase discriminations between a center and two flanking features were much better for motion than for stationary oscillation. Motion phase discriminations were similar to motion detection and were robust over increases in spatial separation and temporal frequency, but not so for stationary oscillations. Separate visual motion signals were positively correlated, but visual signals for stationary oscillation were negatively correlated. Evidently, motion produces visually coherent changes in image structure, but stationary contrast oscillation does not
Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats
In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security
Bone Microarchitecture Phenotypes Identified in Older Adults Are Associated With Different Levels of Osteoporotic Fracture Risk
Prevalence of osteoporosis is more than 50% in older adults, yet current clinical methods for diagnosis that rely on areal bone mineral density (aBMD) fail to detect most individuals who have a fragility fracture. Bone fragility can manifest in different forms, and a "one-size-fits-all" approach to diagnosis and management of osteoporosis may not be suitable. High-resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT) provides additive information by capturing information about volumetric density and microarchitecture, but interpretation is challenging because of the complex interactions between the numerous properties measured. In this study, we propose that there are common combinations of bone properties, referred to as phenotypes, that are predisposed to different levels of fracture risk. Using HR-pQCT data from a multinational cohort (n = 5873, 71% female) between 40 and 96 years of age, we employed fuzzy c-means clustering, an unsupervised machine-learning method, to identify phenotypes of bone microarchitecture. Three clusters were identified, and using partial correlation analysis of HR-pQCT parameters, we characterized the clusters as low density, low volume, and healthy bone phenotypes. Most males were associated with the healthy bone phenotype, whereas females were more often associated with the low volume or low density bone phenotypes. Each phenotype had a significantly different cumulative hazard of major osteoporotic fracture (MOF) and of any incident osteoporotic fracture (p < 0.05). After adjustment for covariates (cohort, sex, and age), the low density followed by the low volume phenotype had the highest association with MOF (hazard ratio = 2.96 and 2.35, respectively), and significant associations were maintained when additionally adjusted for femoral neck aBMD (hazard ratio = 1.69 and 1.90, respectively). Further, within each phenotype, different imaging biomarkers of fracture were identified. These findings suggest that osteoporotic fracture risk is associated with bone phenotypes that capture key features of bone deterioration that are not distinguishable by aBMD
A Fracture Risk Assessment Tool for High Resolution Peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography
Most fracture risk assessment tools use clinical risk factors combined with bone mineral density (BMD) to improve assessment of osteoporosis; however, stratifying fracture risk remains challenging. This study developed a fracture risk assessment tool that uses information about volumetric bone density and three-dimensional structure, obtained using high-resolution peripheral quantitative compute tomography (HR-pQCT), to provide an alternative approach for patient-specific assessment of fracture risk. Using an international prospective cohort of older adults (n = 6802) we developed a tool to predict osteoporotic fracture risk, called μFRAC. The model was constructed using random survival forests, and input predictors included HR-pQCT parameters summarizing BMD and microarchitecture alongside clinical risk factors (sex, age, height, weight, and prior adulthood fracture) and femoral neck areal BMD (FN aBMD). The performance of μFRAC was compared to the Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX) and a reference model built using FN aBMD and clinical covariates. μFRAC was predictive of osteoporotic fracture (c-index = 0.673, p < 0.001), modestly outperforming FRAX and FN aBMD models (c-index = 0.617 and 0.636, respectively). Removal of FN aBMD and all clinical risk factors, except age, from μFRAC did not significantly impact its performance when estimating 5-year and 10-year fracture risk. The performance of μFRAC improved when only major osteoporotic fractures were considered (c-index = 0.733, p < 0.001). We developed a personalized fracture risk assessment tool based on HR-pQCT that may provide an alternative approach to current clinical methods by leveraging direct measures of bone density and structure. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR)
A new 2CTAB/PCI method improves DNA amplification success from faeces of Mediterranean (Barbary macaques) and tropical (lowland gorillas) primates
Reengineering Rate-Limiting, Millisecond Enzyme Motions by Introduction of an Unnatural Amino Acid
Rate-limiting millisecond motions in wild-type (WT) Ribonuclease A (RNase A) are modulated by histidine 48. Here, we incorporate an unnatural amino acid, thia-methylimidazole, at this site (H48C-4MI) to investigate the effects of a single residue on protein motions over multiple timescales and on enzyme catalytic turnover. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that H48C-4MI retains some crucial WT-like hydrogen bonding interactions but the extent of protein-wide correlated motions in the nanosecond regime is decreased relative to WT. NMR Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill relaxation dispersion experiments demonstrate that millisecond conformational motions in H48C-4MI are present over a similar pH range compared to WT. Furthermore, incorporation of this nonnatural amino acid allows retention of WT-like catalytic activity over the full pH range. These studies demonstrate that the complexity of the protein energy landscape during the catalytic cycle can be maintained using unnatural amino acids, which may prove useful in enzyme design efforts
Spelling Progress Bulletin 2. Spelling Irregularity, Spelling Reform, and Learning to Read Meaningfully, a Commentary
Purposes: 1. To promote continued research on the writing system (orthography) and word perception in reading. 2. To translate research for effective instruction in classroom situations. Topics include: perceptual learning, factors in word perception; relationships between intonation and perception, between phonic rules and word perception, between perception and other facets of reading; phonemic and morphemic bases of spellings; methodology. Dr. John Downing (Editor) announces a new national bilingual journal devoted to reading. It is called Reading-CanadaLecture, and is a refereed quarterly journal which aims to improve communication between educators within Canada and between Canadians and colleagues in other countries. R-C-L also will provide a forum between English speaking and French speaking educators whose mutual concern is the improvement of reading instruction in these two languages. We envisage that R-C-L will be read mainly by classroom teachers, but that there will be other readers such as school administrators, consultants, parents, university faculty members, etc. R-C-L will be open to all points of view regarding reading theory and practice. Articles will relate to all levels: pre-school, elementary, secondary, college and adult. We are currently particularly interested in receiving manuscripts on themes of practical concern to classroom teachers and clinicians. Articles will be published in full in the original language of the author, either English or French. In addition there will be a summary in the other language. R-C-L welcomes articles in either English or French from authors in any country in the world. The fluent reading process, according to current psycholinguistic theory (Goodman 1967, Smith 1973, involves less emphasis on graphic-visual characteristics and more emphasis on semantics and text structure. Furthermore, much research is currently being generated to demonstrate that reading involves an interaction of the various levels of language and the background knowledge of the reader in constructing meaning (Center for the Study of Reading [1]). Thus, the focus of reading instruction must be on comprehension. However, the beginning reader must learn to crack the orthographic code as part of (but not as the essence of) learning to read. [2] Yet, beginning reading would involve more spelling-sound relationships than would fluent reading (Shuy 1977). In considering spelling reform, two questions need to be answered: (1) Is the English spelling system the most "optimal" for learning to read? (2) Is spelling reform the only step toward literacy improvement? In other words, until spelling reform is achieved, how can teachers facilitate reading of traditional orthography? Chomsky (1973) claimed that the English writing system is predictable because it captures the abstract underlying phonological structure of words as well as the meaningful relationships among related words: Thus, the silent g of malign is related to the pronounced g in malignant. Likewise, the schwa sound of o in composition is related to the o in compose. The orthography preserves the meaningful relationships of these words as an assistance to the fluent reader who focuses on meaning rather than on phonetic details: While many sets of words follow predictable phonological alternations, some experimental evidence has questioned the psychological reality of some of the phonological processes claimed by Chomsky and Halle (1968). (See Steinberg (1973) and Ohala (1974).) Furthermore, many of the elements of traditional orthography have little psychological basis, as they were the result of linguistic and cultural history (Barnitz 1980). [3] Thus, English spelling is certainly not as optimal as originally claimed in Chomsky and Halle (1968). Would a more direct phonemic alphabet facilitate learning to read? Cross-cultural and crosslinguistic research suggests that the regularity of fit between phonological systems and writing systems facilitates, learning to decode spelling into sound as part of beginning reading (Downing 1973, Barnitz 1978. Furthermore, evidence from research on transitional writing systems suggests the role of regularity in learning to read (Downing 1965, Gleitman and Rozin 1973) However, an overemphasis on decoding is not the essence of reading (Goodman 1967). Yet, regularity of writing systems does greatly help the reading learning process. The second major question will be answered briefly. Until total spelling reform occurs -despite the many resistances (c.f. Stubbs 1980) -children still need to be taught the meaningful reading process, regardless of the orthography. For decoding is only a small part of the learning to read process. Goodman 1967, Shafer 1979. As traditional orthography still survives, how can teachers circumvent the problems of "irregularity." Here are only a few suggestions: (1) Emphasize the total language-meaning relationships in reading instruction. This can be done, for example, by using the Language Experience Approach (Stouffer 1980, Veatch et al. 1979. (See also the many reports from the Center for the Study of Reading). (2) Develop word attack skills within the context of meaningful comprehension. (3) Using natural language, provide as much regularity as possible in teaching beginning reading. Begin with regularities, then move to irregularities (Bloomfield 1942), but emphasize the total reading process. (4) As the meaningful relationships among many words are preserved in traditional orthography (malign-malignant), some aspects of these may be introduced for older readers. However, not all relationships have psychological reality. Instructional research is needed here. These suggestions alone will not solve all the literacy problems. Of course, spelling reform will be of assistance. However, until and even after spelling reform does occur, teachers must emphasize meaning in reading instruction. Footnotes Justification There appear to be two justifications of this study. First, studies of the phonetic pronunciation of word elements at each reader level provide the basis for determining the point at which certain phonetic elements may be introduced for systematic study. Second, studies of phonetic structure may provide s basis for deriving readability formulae. Two current reviews of readability studies indicate that this element is not a part of any such formula now available [9; 14]. Limitations The words analyzed were taken from a single vocabulary study [8]. These appeared in at least ten of the fourteen different aeries of basal readers. Only base forms and compound words were selected for analysis [8]. Reader levels studies ranged from primer through third. The syllable was the unit used for analysis. Both initial and final consonant phonograms were analyzed and tabulated. Syllabication and respellings for pronunciation were based on Webster's New International Dictionary Definitions Terminology used in this study is defined as follows: In 1950, Oaks reported "A Study of the Vowel Situations in a Primary (1) "short" vowel principle in closed syllables (2) "long" vowel principle in syllables ending with a final e (3) "long" (single) vowel principle in open accented syllables Oaks concluded that the recognition of vowel digraphs should be systematically taught at the primary level for two reasons: (1) there are several types of digraphs, and (2) two letters frequently represent diphthongs. Among the indirectly related studies are those of Spache [28], Dolch [16; Summary: The studies reviewed emphasized the unphonetic character of our language. Many different sounds were found for one phonogram. Some were found to have as many as eleven pronunciations Procedure The vocabulary used for this study was taken from the Betts' Primary Reading Vocabulary Studies [9], used also by Oaks in A Study of the Vowel Situation in a Primary Reading Vocabulary The analysis of the vocabulary entailed the following steps. First, words were listed by reader level, and the pronunciation of each consonant phonogram was recorded. Second, the position of the consonant phonogram in the syllable, whether initial or final, was then tabulated. All tabulations were made in terms of the syllable in the word. Third, from these data were obtained the incidence of consonant letters, digraphs, trigraphs, blends, and other consonant situations. (1) A total of 1,573 single letter consonants, 38.7% of the consonant situations, appeared in the initial parts of the syllables. (2) A total of 1,203 single letter consonants, 29.6% of the consonant situations, appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (3) Single letter consonants appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final parts of the syllables. b. Of the consonant situations in the study, 396, or 9.8% of all consonant situations, were consonant digraphs. Summary of Results (1) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the initial parts of the syllables was 122, or 3% of the consonant situations. (2) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the final parts of the syllables was 274, or 68% of the consonant situations. (3) Consonant digraphs appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final positions in the syllables, c. There were twenty-six consonant trigraphs, comprising .6% of the consonant situations, identified in the vocabulary. (1) All trigraphs appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (2) Trigraphs were introduced at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. d. Consonant blends were classified as two and three-letter blends. There were 613 two-letter blends, comprising 15% of the consonant situations, in the study. Totalling 53, the three-letter blends accounted for only 1.3% of the consonant situations. (1) A total of 336 two-letter blends, 8.2% of the consonant situations, was used in the initial parts of the syllables. Only thirty-two three-letter blends, comprising .8% of the total consonant situations, were used in initial positions. (2) There were 277 two-letter blends, or 6.8% of all consonant situations in the study, in the final parts of the syllables. Twenty-one three-letter blends were tabulated in the final parts of the syllables. This was only .5% of all consonant situations. (3) Two-letter blends were identified at all reader levels, three-letter blends appeared at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. e. In this study, 130 syllabic consonants and 16 syllabic blends were identified. The syllabic consonants comprised 3.3%, and the syllabic blends .4% of the total consonant situations. (1) Syllabic consonants and syllabic blends s appeared only in final syllables of words. (2) Syllabic consonants appeared at all levels; syllabic blends were introduced at firstreader level and used at all succeeding levels, f. In the "miscellaneous" situations classification, there were 52 consonant situations. (1) One "miscellaneous" phonogram, ear [3] as in earth, appeared three times in the initial syllable or parts of syllables. This total comprised .1% of the total situations. (2) Thirty, .8% of the total consonant situations, appeared in the medial parts of syllables. (3) Nineteen, .5% of the total consonant situations, appeared in final positions in the syllables. (4) "Miscellaneous" phonograms appeared in initial positions at second-reader level, and in medial and final positions at all reader levels. 2. Of the consonant and vowel-colored r situations analyzed in this study, 606 involved letter r. These accounted for 14.9% of all consonant situations tabulated. a. A total of 264 letter r phonograms, 6.5% of all consonant situations, appeared in initial syllabic positions. b. Thirty vowel-colored r [3] situations (e.g., bird), comprising .7% of the total consonant situations, appeared in medial positions. c. There were 310 letter r situations, 7.7% of all consonant situations in the vocabulary, identified in final parts of syllables. d. Letter r situations appeared at all reader levels encompassed by this study. 3. There were 281 consonant phonograms, 6.9% of the total consonant situations, containing silent letters. a. A total of 74 consonant situations, appearing in the initial parts of the syllables, contained silent letters. This was 1.9% of the total consonant situations. b. There were 207 consonant phonograms, 5% of all consonant situations appearing in the study, involving silent-letter situations which appeared in final positions
Spelling Progress Bulletin Spelling Irregularity, Spelling Reform, and Learning to Read Meaningfully, a Commentary
Purposes: 1. To promote continued research on the writing system (orthography) and word perception in reading. 2. To translate research for effective instruction in classroom situations. Topics include: perceptual learning, factors in word perception; relationships between intonation and perception, between phonic rules and word perception, between perception and other facets of reading; phonemic and morphemic bases of spellings; methodology. Dr. John Downing (Editor) announces a new national bilingual journal devoted to reading. It is called Reading-CanadaLecture, and is a refereed quarterly journal which aims to improve communication between educators within Canada and between Canadians and colleagues in other countries. R-C-L also will provide a forum between English speaking and French speaking educators whose mutual concern is the improvement of reading instruction in these two languages. We envisage that R-C-L will be read mainly by classroom teachers, but that there will be other readers such as school administrators, consultants, parents, university faculty members, etc. R-C-L will be open to all points of view regarding reading theory and practice. Articles will relate to all levels: pre-school, elementary, secondary, college and adult. We are currently particularly interested in receiving manuscripts on themes of practical concern to classroom teachers and clinicians. Articles will be published in full in the original language of the author, either English or French. In addition there will be a summary in the other language. R-C-L welcomes articles in either English or French from authors in any country in the world. The fluent reading process, according to current psycholinguistic theory (Goodman 1967, Smith 1973, involves less emphasis on graphic-visual characteristics and more emphasis on semantics and text structure. Furthermore, much research is currently being generated to demonstrate that reading involves an interaction of the various levels of language and the background knowledge of the reader in constructing meaning (Center for the Study of Reading [1]). Thus, the focus of reading instruction must be on comprehension. However, the beginning reader must learn to crack the orthographic code as part of (but not as the essence of) learning to read. [2] Yet, beginning reading would involve more spelling-sound relationships than would fluent reading (Shuy 1977). In considering spelling reform, two questions need to be answered: (1) Is the English spelling system the most "optimal" for learning to read? (2) Is spelling reform the only step toward literacy improvement? In other words, until spelling reform is achieved, how can teachers facilitate reading of traditional orthography? Chomsky (1973) claimed that the English writing system is predictable because it captures the abstract underlying phonological structure of words as well as the meaningful relationships among related words: Thus, the silent g of malign is related to the pronounced g in malignant. Likewise, the schwa sound of o in composition is related to the o in compose. The orthography preserves the meaningful relationships of these words as an assistance to the fluent reader who focuses on meaning rather than on phonetic details: While many sets of words follow predictable phonological alternations, some experimental evidence has questioned the psychological reality of some of the phonological processes claimed by Chomsky and Halle (1968). (See Steinberg (1973) and Ohala (1974).) Furthermore, many of the elements of traditional orthography have little psychological basis, as they were the result of linguistic and cultural history (Barnitz 1980). [3] Thus, English spelling is certainly not as optimal as originally claimed in Chomsky and Halle (1968). Would a more direct phonemic alphabet facilitate learning to read? Cross-cultural and crosslinguistic research suggests that the regularity of fit between phonological systems and writing systems facilitates, learning to decode spelling into sound as part of beginning reading (Downing 1973, Barnitz 1978. Furthermore, evidence from research on transitional writing systems suggests the role of regularity in learning to read (Downing 1965, Gleitman and Rozin 1973) However, an overemphasis on decoding is not the essence of reading (Goodman 1967). Yet, regularity of writing systems does greatly help the reading learning process. The second major question will be answered briefly. Until total spelling reform occurs -despite the many resistances (c.f. Stubbs 1980) -children still need to be taught the meaningful reading process, regardless of the orthography. For decoding is only a small part of the learning to read process. Goodman 1967, Shafer 1979. As traditional orthography still survives, how can teachers circumvent the problems of "irregularity." Here are only a few suggestions: (1) Emphasize the total language-meaning relationships in reading instruction. This can be done, for example, by using the Language Experience Approach (Stouffer 1980, Veatch et al. 1979. (See also the many reports from the Center for the Study of Reading). (2) Develop word attack skills within the context of meaningful comprehension. (3) Using natural language, provide as much regularity as possible in teaching beginning reading. Begin with regularities, then move to irregularities (Bloomfield 1942), but emphasize the total reading process. (4) As the meaningful relationships among many words are preserved in traditional orthography (malign-malignant), some aspects of these may be introduced for older readers. However, not all relationships have psychological reality. Instructional research is needed here. These suggestions alone will not solve all the literacy problems. Of course, spelling reform will be of assistance. However, until and even after spelling reform does occur, teachers must emphasize meaning in reading instruction. Footnotes Justification There appear to be two justifications of this study. First, studies of the phonetic pronunciation of word elements at each reader level provide the basis for determining the point at which certain phonetic elements may be introduced for systematic study. Second, studies of phonetic structure may provide s basis for deriving readability formulae. Two current reviews of readability studies indicate that this element is not a part of any such formula now available [9; 14]. Limitations The words analyzed were taken from a single vocabulary study The syllable was the unit used for analysis. Both initial and final consonant phonograms were analyzed and tabulated. Syllabication and respellings for pronunciation were based on Webster's New International Dictionary Definitions Terminology used in this study is defined as follows: In 1950, Oaks reported "A Study of the Vowel Situations in a Primary (1) "short" vowel principle in closed syllables (2) "long" vowel principle in syllables ending with a final e (3) "long" (single) vowel principle in open accented syllables Oaks concluded that the recognition of vowel digraphs should be systematically taught at the primary level for two reasons: (1) there are several types of digraphs, and (2) two letters frequently represent diphthongs. Among the indirectly related studies are those of Spache [28], Dolch [16; Summary: The studies reviewed emphasized the unphonetic character of our language. Many different sounds were found for one phonogram. Some were found to have as many as eleven pronunciations Procedure The vocabulary used for this study was taken from the Betts' Primary Reading Vocabulary Studies The analysis of the vocabulary entailed the following steps. First, words were listed by reader level, and the pronunciation of each consonant phonogram was recorded. Second, the position of the consonant phonogram in the syllable, whether initial or final, was then tabulated. All tabulations were made in terms of the syllable in the word. Third, from these data were obtained the incidence of consonant letters, digraphs, trigraphs, blends, and other consonant situations. (1) A total of 1,573 single letter consonants, 38.7% of the consonant situations, appeared in the initial parts of the syllables. (2) A total of 1,203 single letter consonants, 29.6% of the consonant situations, appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (3) Single letter consonants appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final parts of the syllables. b. Of the consonant situations in the study, 396, or 9.8% of all consonant situations, were consonant digraphs. Summary of Results (1) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the initial parts of the syllables was 122, or 3% of the consonant situations. (2) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the final parts of the syllables was 274, or 68% of the consonant situations. (3) Consonant digraphs appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final positions in the syllables, c. There were twenty-six consonant trigraphs, comprising .6% of the consonant situations, identified in the vocabulary. (1) All trigraphs appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (2) Trigraphs were introduced at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. d. Consonant blends were classified as two and three-letter blends. There were 613 two-letter blends, comprising 15% of the consonant situations, in the study. Totalling 53, the three-letter blends accounted for only 1.3% of the consonant situations. (1) A total of 336 two-letter blends, 8.2% of the consonant situations, was used in the initial parts of the syllables. Only thirty-two three-letter blends, comprising .8% of the total consonant situations, were used in initial positions. (2) There were 277 two-letter blends, or 6.8% of all consonant situations in the study, in the final parts of the syllables. Twenty-one three-letter blends were tabulated in the final parts of the syllables. This was only .5% of all consonant situations. (3) Two-letter blends were identified at all reader levels, three-letter blends appeared at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. e. In this study, 130 syllabic consonants and 16 syllabic blends were identified. The syllabic consonants comprised 3.3%, and the syllabic blends .4% of the total consonant situations. (1) Syllabic consonants and syllabic blends s appeared only in final syllables of words. (2) Syllabic consonants appeared at all levels; syllabic blends were introduced at firstreader level and used at all succeeding levels, f. In the "miscellaneous" situations classification, there were 52 consonant situations. (1) One "miscellaneous" phonogram, ear [3] as in earth, appeared three times in the initial syllable or parts of syllables. This total comprised .1% of the total situations. (2) Thirty, .8% of the total consonant situations, appeared in the medial parts of syllables. (3) Nineteen, .5% of the total consonant situations, appeared in final positions in the syllables. (4) "Miscellaneous" phonograms appeared in initial positions at second-reader level, and in medial and final positions at all reader levels. 2. Of the consonant and vowel-colored r situations analyzed in this study, 606 involved letter r. These accounted for 14.9% of all consonant situations tabulated. a. A total of 264 letter r phonograms, 6.5% of all consonant situations, appeared in initial syllabic positions. b. Thirty vowel-colored r [3] situations (e.g., bird), comprising .7% of the total consonant situations, appeared in medial positions. c. There were 310 letter r situations, 7.7% of all consonant situations in the vocabulary, identified in final parts of syllables. d. Letter r situations appeared at all reader levels encompassed by this study. 3. There were 281 consonant phonograms, 6.9% of the total consonant situations, containing silent letters. a. A total of 74 consonant situations, appearing in the initial parts of the syllables, contained silent letters. This was 1.9% of the total consonant situations. b. There were 207 consonant phonograms, 5% of all consonant situations appearing in the study, involving silent-letter situations which appeared in final positions