An unusual preparation of an eighteenth-century spider and its consequences

Investigation into an eighteenth-century spider in the collection of The Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, revealed an unusual and intriguing mounting method for a natural history specimen. This article discusses research into how and why the spider had been mounted using such a method, including attempts to replicate it to test the theories developed. The specimen exhibits interesting aspects of preservation linked to historical collecting practices of the period

Evolutionary Responses to Invasion: Cane Toad Sympatric Fish Show Enhanced Avoidance Learning

The introduced cane toad (Bufo marinus) poses a major threat to biodiversity due to its lifelong toxicity. Several terrestrial native Australian vertebrates are adapting to the cane toad’s presence and lab trials have demonstrated that repeated exposure to B. marinus can result in learnt avoidance behaviour. Here we investigated whether aversion learning is occurring in aquatic ecosystems by comparing cane toad naı¨ve and sympatric populations of crimson spotted rainbow fish (Melanotaenia duboulayi). The first experiment indicated that fish from the sympatric population had pre-existing aversion to attacking cane toad tadpoles but also showed reduced attacks on native tadpoles. The second experiment revealed that fish from both naı¨ve and sympatric populations learned to avoid cane toad tadpoles following repeated, direct exposure. Allopatric fish also developed a general aversion to tadpoles. The aversion learning abilities of both groups was examined using an experiment involving novel distasteful prey items. While both populations developed a general avoidance of edible pellets in the presence of distasteful pellets, only the sympatric population significantly reduced the number of attacks on the novel distasteful prey item. These results indicate that experience with toxic prey items over multiple generations can enhance avoidance leaning capabilities via natural selection

Innovation and Productivity Across Mexican Manufacturing Firms

Following the Crépon-Duguet-Mairesse Model (1998), using a database with 2,078 Mexican manufacturing establishments from 2004 to 2006, adapting available proxy variables and proposing a different productivity estimation, this article sets out: Which is their innovation propensity? Which factors push on their innovation efforts? Are these efforts and the innovation favoring labor productivity? The main findings are: Mexican manufacturing establishments with a higher innovation propensity are the largest, with high technological intensity and market share. Advertising, knowledge appropriability, FDI, TT and access to credit have a positive effect on innovation efforts. Moreover, the innovation effort, together with export levels, FDI and access to technology have influenced the innovation of new processes and/or designs, particularly in local firms as compared to foreign firms. Finally, the variables: innovation, labour remunerations and capital intensity have a substantial effect on labor productivity and at a lower level market share, FDI and total quality control

Postpartum anxiety, depression and social health: findings from a population-based survey of Australian women

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Whilst the prevalence and correlates of postpartum depression are well established, far less is known about postpartum anxiety. Studies have described the association between socio-demographic factors and postpartum depression, yet few have explored the association between stressors in women's lives around the time of having a baby and maternal psychological morbidity. This study aimed to describe the population prevalence of postpartum depression, anxiety, co-morbid anxiety and depression and social health issues; and to examine the association between postpartum psychological and social health issues experienced in the six months following birth.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Population-based survey of all women who gave birth in Victoria and South Australia in September/October 2007. Women were mailed the survey questionnaire six months following birth. Anxiety and depression were measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Questionnaires were completed by 4,366 women. At six months postpartum the proportion of women scoring above the 'normal' range on the DASS-21 was 12.7% for anxiety,17.4% for depression, and 8.1% for co-morbid depression and anxiety. Nearly half the sample reported experiencing stressful life events or social health issues in the six months following birth, with 38.3% reporting one to two and 8.8% reporting three or more social health issues. Women reporting three or more social health issues were significantly more likely to experience postnatal anxiety (Adj OR = 4.12, 95% CI 3.0-5.5) or depression (Adj OR = 5.11, 95% CI = 3.9-6.7) and co-morbid anxiety <it>and </it>depression (Adj OR = 5.41, 95% CI 3.8-7.6) than women who did not report social health issues.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Health care providers including midwives, nurses, medical practitioners and community health workers need to be alert to women's social circumstances and life events experienced in the perinatal period and the interplay between social and emotional health. Usual management for postpartum mental health issues including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and pharmacological approaches may not be effective if social health issues are not addressed. Coordinated and integrated perinatal care that is responsive to women's social health may lead to improvements in women's emotional wellbeing following birth.</p

Automatic Accent Recognition Systems and the Effects of Data on Performance

This paper considers automatic accent recognition system performance in relation to the specific nature of the accent data. This is of relevance to the forensic application, where an accent recogniser may have a place in casework involving various accent classification tasks with different challenges attached. The study presented here is composed of two main parts. Firstly, it examines the performance of five different automatic accent recognition systems when distinguishing between geographically-proximate accents. Using geographically-proximate accents is expected to challenge the systems by increasing the degree of similarity between the varieties we are trying to distinguish between. The second part of the study is concerned with identifying the specific phonemes which are important in a given accent recognition task, and eliminating those which are not. Depending on the varieties we are classifying, the phonemes which are most useful to the task will vary. This study therefore integrates feature selection methods into the accent recognition system shown to be the highest performer, the Y-ACCDIST-SVM system, to help to identify the most valuable speech segments and to increase accent recognition rates

Segmental Content Effects on Text-dependent Automatic Accent Recognition

This paper investigates the effects of an unknown speech sample’s segmental content (the specific vowels and consonants it contains) on its chances of being successfully classified by an automatic accent recognition system. While there has been some work to investigate this effect in automatic speaker recognition, it has not been explored in relation to automatic accent recognition. This is a task where we would hypothesise that segmental content has a particularly large effect on the likelihood of a successful classification, especially for shorter speech samples. By focussing on one particular text-dependent automatic accent recognition system, the Y-ACCDIST system, we uncover the phonemes that appear to contribute more or less to successful classifications using a corpus of Northern English accents. We also relate these findings to the sociophonetic literature on these specific spoken varieties to attempt to account for the patterns that we see and to consider other factors that might contribute to a sample’s successful classification

The working alliance in online counselling for crisis intervention and youth

x, 135 leaves ; 29 cmThe Internet is becoming a more realistic means of accessing support, especially for those who are unable to or are uncomfortable with accessing supports in person. One population that experiences barriers to accessing face-to-face support is youth, and online counselling is an option available for youth to overcome these barriers (King, Bambling, Lloyd, et al., 2006). Online counselling can occur through e-mail and chat services; however, due to the text-based nature of these services, their effectiveness is criticized for having a lack of verbal and nonverbal communication (Cook & Doyle, 2002). Research, however, has suggested that it is possibly this lack of verbal and nonverbal cues that make online counselling effective. Research has also suggested that the effectiveness of counselling can be measured by the working alliance (Fletcher-Tomenius & Vossler, 2009; Hanley, 2009). This study explored if an effective working alliance can be established in online counselling mediums with youth who are in crisis. A quantitative research approach was taken, in which 91 youth completed an online survey that asked how they felt towards online support services. The results of this study suggest that youth respond positively to the lack of verbal and nonverbal cues; youth appear to enjoy an increase sense of anonymity that is created within online support services, which can contribute to open communication. In addition, the results suggest that an effective working alliance is established in online counselling services, as it was found that youth typical felt happy and satisfied with the services they received

Exploring Forensic Accent Recognition using the Y-ACCDIST System

Forensic speech scientists may sometimes be faced with the task of extracting information about an unknown speaker in a recording. It is proposed here that accent recognition technology could assist analysts in such cases and we begin to explore the Y-ACCDIST system’s potential for this purpose. Research on Y-ACCDIST so far has largely focussed on its ability to distinguish between varieties which are much more similar to one another than previous automatic accent recognition research [1]. The experiments presented here build on this and challenge YACCDIST in other ways relevant to forensic applications: spontaneous speech data and degraded dat

Structural and stratigraphic study of the Keewatin-type and Shebandowan-type rocks west of Thunder Bay, Ontario

Detailed mapping was carried out in the Shebandowan Lakes area and eastward to the Kaministiquia River to study the structural and stratigraphic relationships between the Keewatin and Timiskaming rocks (herein referred to as Keewatin-type and Shebandowan-type, respectively, to avoid connotations of time-stratigraphic equivalence with type areas) of the region. It is believed that the Shebandowan-type rocks are younger than the Keewatin-type rocks. Although no actual contact between the two has been seen in outcrop in the study area, the trend of their contact is discordant with the trend of cleavage in the Shebandowan-type rocks. This, along with the less recrystallized appearance of the Shebandowan-type rocks, and the presence of clasts of jasper in conglomerates of the Shebandowan-type sequence similar in appearance to the jaspilitic iron formation interbedded with the Keewatin-type mafic volcanics, leads to the conclusion that an unconformity separates the two groups of rocks. Recent geochronological work on some of the rocks in the region, carried out by the Ontario Geological Survey, supports this theory. The macroscopic, microscopic and sub-microscopic structure of both groups of rocks was examined in detail. The minor structures seen in outcrop, the examination of thin sections, scanning electron microscope work, and the determination of the magnetic fabric of the rocks all show that the rocks in the present study area contain a single, penetrative, primary cleavage, which has a consistent trend across the whole area. The regional structural picture which emerges from the data is characterized by close-spaced, isoclinal folding with sub-vertical fold axial traces trending roughly east-west. Local variations exist in the eastern portion of the study area where more widely-spaced and open folding is more common. No evidence of a second, significant period of deformation in the present study area has been found

Automatic Sociophonetics:Exploring corpora using a forensic accent recognition system

This paper demonstrates how the Y-ACCDIST system, the York ACCDIST-based automatic accent recognition system [Brown (2015). Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Glasgow, UK], can be used to inspect sociophonetic corpora as a preliminary “screening” tool. Although Y-ACCDIST's intended application is to assist with forensic casework, the system can also be exploited in sociophonetic research to begin unpacking variation. Using a subset of the PEBL (Panjabi-English in Bradford and Leicester) corpus, the outputs of Y-ACCDIST are explored, which, it is argued, efficiently and objectively assess speaker similarities across different linguistic varieties. The ways these outputs corroborate with a phonetic analysis of the data are also discovered. First, Y-ACCDIST is used to classify speakers from the corpus based on language background and region. A Y-ACCDIST cluster analysis is then implemented, which groups speakers in ways consistent with more localised networks, providing a means of identifying potential communities of practice. Additionally, the results of a Y-ACCDIST feature selection task that indicates which specific phonemes are most valuable in distinguishing between speaker groups are presented. How Y-ACCDIST outputs can be used to reinforce more traditional sociophonetic analyses and support qualitative interpretations of the data is demonstrated