Cognitive Rhythms Reluctantly Revisited

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.In response to the Power (1983) - Beattie (1984) controversy, a more general critique of the construct of cognitive rhythms is presented. It is argued that the term itself is a misnomer, that the relevance of articulation rate has been neglected, that fluent and hesitant phases of cognitive rhythms have been assessed both subjectively and intuitively, that the speech-production model underlying the concept is simplistic, and that the empirical evidence is based on an extraordinarily small corpus which has been described inadequately in the research literature

Florida Charter Schools: Hot and Humid with Passing Storms

This report examines the history of Florida's charter school initiative, results to date, and areas where the state can improve

Autonomous, but Shackled: A Community Model of Slave Life and its Archaeological Testing

Kowal\u27s dissertation, entitled The Affinities and Disparities within: Community and Status of the African American Slave Population at Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (Department of Anthropology, Florida State University) investigates how patterns of consumption reflect internal patterns of social hierarchy among the enslaved plantation community and what were the degrees of resistance and accommodation of those enslaved and their structure in relation to white plantation owners. Family, community, customs and practices, religion, and settlement patterns are the factors used to interpret the African American presence at Charles Pinckney’s Snee Farm in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina and to perform a regional comparison with similar plantations of the period. This study utilizes ethnological, archaeological, historical, and physical resources to determine status differences within this slave community. Its strength is the use of a holistic and interdisciplinary approach along with the integration of anthropological and archaeological theories of agency and consumption. To determine how enslaved Africans defined their community and daily lives utilizing a comprehensive, multidisciplinary method is necessary. Analysis of consumption patterns through archaeological evidence reveals interactions between slaves and other peoples defining the ranges and boundaries of the enslaved community and its elements of resistance. Agency and consumer theories provide an explanation of how individuals possess the ownership of choice and the ability of anthropologists to characterize populations in terms of their own community through the factors deemed most important by the members’ own standards in the face of outside pressures

Dominant gain-of-function mutations in Hsp104p reveal crucial roles for the middle region

Heat-shock protein 104 (Hsp104p) is a protein-remodeling factor that promotes survival after extreme stress by disassembling aggregated proteins and can either promote or prevent the propagation of prions (protein-based genetic elements). Hsp104p can be greatly overexpressed without slowing growth, suggesting tight control of its powerful protein-remodeling activities. We isolated point mutations in Hsp104p that interfere with this control and block cell growth. Each mutant contained alterations in the middle region (MR). Each of the three MR point mutations analyzed in detail had distinct phenotypes. In combination with nucleotide binding site mutations, Hsp104p(T499I) altered bud morphology and caused septin mislocalization, colocalizing with the misplaced septins. Point mutations in the septin Cdc12p suppressed this phenotype, suggesting that it is due to direct Hsp104p–septin interactions. Hsp104p(A503V) did not perturb morphology but stopped cell growth. Remarkably, when expressed transiently, the mutant protein promoted survival after extreme stress as effectively as did wild-type Hsp104p. Hsp104p(A509D) had no deleterious effects on growth or morphology but had a greatly reduced ability to promote thermotolerance. That mutations in an 11-amino acid stretch of the MR have such profound and diverse effects suggests the MR plays a central role in regulating Hsp104p function

The Use of Time in Storytelling

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.A total of 18 experimental corpora of spontaneous speech in five languages (English, Finnish, French, German, and Spanish) were examined under the hypothesis that they are characterized by commonalities in the use of time. Each study was based on the same speech type, story telling elicited by pictorial materials. The temporal measures were speech and articulation rates, pause duration, phrase length, and percentage of pause time/total time. The hypothesis was confirmed except for studies carried out with identifiably variant methodologies. Further support for the hypothesis was found by contrasting the use of time characteristic of interviewees' speech

The Trouble with "Articulatory" Pauses

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.The historical provenance of a minimum cut-off point (of about 0.25 sec) for pauses in temporal analyses of speech production is associated with Goldman-Eisler's usage. Her rationale was the predominance of articulatory pauses at lengths shorter than 0.25 sec. Both phonotactic facts and empirical analysis of several corpora of readings disconfirm this predominance with respect to pauses 0.13-0.25 sec in length. The vast majority of these pauses are found to be psychological; they are determined by syntax, punctuation, rhetorical and expressive emphasis, poetic format, and stylistic pecularities

Accuracy of computerized tomography in determining hepatic tumor size in patients receiving liver transplantation or resection

Computerized tomography (CT) of liver is used in oncologic practice for staging tumors, evaluating response to treatment, and screening patients for hepatic resection. Because of the impact of CT liver scan on major treatment decisions, it is important to assess its accuracy. Patients undergoing liver transplantation or resection provide a unique opportunity to test the accuracy of hepatic-imaging techniques by comparison of finding of preoperative CT scan with those at gross pathologic examination of resected specimens. Forty-one patients who had partial hepatic resection (34 patients) or liver transplantation (eight patients) for malignant (30 patients) or benign (11 patients) tumors were evaluable. Eight (47%) of 17 patients with primary malignant liver tumors, four (31%) of 13 patients with metastatic liver tumors, and two (20%) of 10 patients with benign liver tumors had tumor nodules in resected specimens that were not apparent on preoperative CT studies. These nodules varied in size from 0.1 to 1.6 cm. While 11 of 14 of these nodules were 1.0 cm. These results suggest that conventional CT alone may be insufficient to accurately determine the presence or absence of liver metastases, extent of liver involvement, or response of hepatic metastases to treatment