Comparative sociolinguistic insights in the evolution of negation

There are three ways of expressing negation on indefinites in English: any-negation (I didn’t have any money), no-negation (I had no money) and negative concord (I didn’t have no money). These variants have been competing diachronically in a change in progress, where the newest variant any-negation is increasing at the expense of the oldest variant no-negation (Tottie 1991a, 1999b, Varela Pérez 2014). This raises the questions: What is the current state of this variability? Is the variation socially evaluated? What does this reveal about linguistic change? Our comparative quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of vernacular speech corpora from Northern England and Ontario, Canada reveals that no-negation is stoutly retained in Britain but is less frequent in Canada. Linguistic constraints on the variation hold cross-dialectally: functional verbs retain no-negation, while lexical verbs favour any. However, the social embedding of the variation is community-specific. Where the change to any-negation is more advanced, i.e., Canada, there are no significant social effects: the variation between any-negation and no-negation appears stable. In England, where no-negation is conserved to a greater extent, there are effects of speaker sex and education, with men and less-educated speakers favouring no-negation. Furthermore, both of the UK communities (North East England and York) display age-grading trends which suggest that the prestige associated with any-negation historically has persisted over time. While the communities share a common variable grammar, the social value in choosing a variant is localised and reflects the status of the change

Cardiomyopathy in Offspring of Pregestational Diabetic Mouse Pregnancy

Purpose. To investigate cardiomyopathy in offspring in a mouse model of pregestational type 1 diabetic pregnancy. Methods. Pregestational diabetes was induced with STZ administration in female C57BL6/J mice that were subsequently mated with healthy C57BL6/J males. Offspring were sacrificed at embryonic day 18.5 and 6-week adolescent and 12-week adult stages. The size and number of cardiomyocyte nuclei and also the extent of collagen deposition within the hearts of diabetic and control offspring were assessed following cardiac tissue staining with either haematoxylin and eosin or Picrosirius red and subsequently quantified using automated digital image analysis. Results. Offspring from diabetic mice at embryonic day 18.5 had a significantly higher number of cardiomyocyte nuclei present compared to controls. These nuclei were also significantly smaller than controls. Collagen deposition was shown to be significantly increased in the hearts of diabetic offspring at the same age. No significant differences were found between the groups at 6 and 12 weeks. Conclusions. Our results from offspring of type 1 diabetic mice show increased myocardial collagen deposition in late gestation and have increased myocardial nuclear counts (hyperplasia) as opposed to increased myocardial nuclear size (hypertrophy) in late gestation. These changes normalize postpartum after removal from the maternal intrauterine environment

Transatlantic perspectives on variation in negative expressions

Negation with indefinite items in English can be expressed in three ways: any-negation (I didn't have any money), no-negation (I had no money) and negative concord (I didn't have no money). These variants have persisted over time, with some studies suggesting that the newest variant, any-negation, is increasing at the expense of no-negation (Tottie 1991a, 1991b). Others suggest that although this variable was undergoing change in earlier centuries, it is stable in Modern English (Wallage 2017). This article examines the current state of the variability in four communities within two distinctive English-speaking regions: Toronto and Belleville in Ontario, Canada, and Tyneside and York in Northern England. Our comparative quantitative analysis of speech corpora from these communities shows that the rates of no-negation vary between Northern England and Ontario, but the variation is largely stable and primarily conditioned by verb type in a robust effect that holds cross-dialectally: functional verbs retain no-negation, while lexical verbs favour any. The social embedding of the variability varies between the communities, but they share a common variable grammar

Transient Plasma Ignition for Delay Reduction in Pulse Detonation Engines

45th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit 8 - 11 January 2007, Reno, NevadaThis paper reviews the testing and evaluation of transient plasma for pulse detonation engine (PDE) ignition conducted at five laboratories. It also presents data showing significant reductions in times required for detonation. Critical to achieving functional levels of thrust are increased repetition rates, thus minimal delay to detonation times are an important parameter. Experiments have been conducted at the University of Southern California and in collaboration with researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School, Wright Patterson Air Force Research Laboratory, Stanford University, Ohio State University and the University of Cincinnati. In these studies it was observed that TPI significantly reduces delay times (factor of 2 to 9) in both static and flowing systems

Local Clonal Diversification and Dissemination of B Lymphocytes in the Human Bronchial Mucosa

The efficacy of the adaptive humoral immune response likely requires diverse, yet focused regional B cell antibody production throughout the body. Here we address, in the first study of its kind, the B cell repertoire in the bronchial mucosa, an important barrier to antigens inhaled from the atmosphere. To accomplish this, we have applied high-throughput Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire Sequencing (AIRR-Seq) to 10 bronchial biopsies from altogether four different sites in the right lungs from an asthmatic patient and a healthy subject. While the majority of identified B cell clones were restricted to a single site, many were disseminated in multiple sites. Members of a clone were shared more between adjacent biopsies than between distal biopsies, suggesting local mucosal migration and/or a homing mechanism for B cells through the blood or lymph. A smaller fraction of clones spanned the bronchial mucosa and peripheral blood, suggesting ongoing trafficking between these compartments. The bronchial mucosal B cell repertoire in the asthmatic patient was geographically more variable but less diverse compared to that of the healthy subject, suggesting an ongoing, antigen-driven humoral immune response in atopic asthma. Whether this is a feature of atopy or disease status remains to be clarified in future studies. We observed a subset of highly mutated and antigen-selected IgD-only cells in the bronchial mucosa. These cells were found in relative high abundance in the asthmatic individual but also, albeit at lower abundance, in the healthy subject. This novel finding merits further exploration using a larger cohort of subjects