2,275 research outputs found
Assessing direct contributions of morphological awareness and prosodic sensitivity to childrenâs word reading and reading comprehension
We examined the independent contributions of prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness to word reading, text reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. We did so in a longitudinal study of English-speaking children (N = 70). At 5 to 7 years of age, children completed the metalinguistic measures along with control measures of phonological awareness and vocabulary. Children completed the reading measures two years later. Morphological awareness, but not prosodic sensitivity made a significant independent contribution to word reading, text reading accuracy and reading comprehension. The effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension remained after controls for word reading. These results suggest that morphological awareness needs to be considered seriously in models of reading development and that prosodic sensitivity might have primarily indirect relations to reading outcomes.
Keywords: Morphological Awareness; Prosody; Word Reading; Reading Comprehension
Spectroscopy of the odd-odd fp-shell nucleus 52Sc from secondary fragmentation
The odd-odd fp-shell nucleus 52Sc was investigated using in-beam gamma-ray
spectroscopy following secondary fragmentation of a 55V and 57Cr cocktail beam.
Aside from the known gamma-ray transition at 674(5)keV, a new decay at
E_gamma=212(3) keV was observed. It is attributed to the depopulation of a
low-lying excited level. This new state is discussed in the framework of
shell-model calculations with the GXPF1, GXPF1A, and KB3G effective
interactions. These calculations are found to be fairly robust for the
low-lying level scheme of 52Sc irrespective of the choice of the effective
interaction. In addition, the frequency of spin values predicted by the shell
model is successfully modeled by a spin distribution formulated in a
statistical approach with an empirical, energy-independent spin-cutoff
parameter.Comment: accepted for publication in PR
One-neutron knockout in the vicinity of the N=32 sub-shell closure: 9Be(57Cr,56Cr+ gamma)X
The one-neutron knockout reaction 9Be(57Cr,56Cr + gamma)X has been measured
in inverse kinematics with an intermediate-energy beam. Cross sections to
individual states in 56Cr were partially untangled through the detection of the
characteristic gamma-ray transitions in coincidence with the reaction residues.
The experimental inclusive longitudinal momentum distribution and the yields to
individual states are compared to calculations that combine spectroscopic
factors from the full fp shell model and nucleon-removal cross sections
computed in a few-body eikonal approach.Comment: PRC, in pres
The role of the g9/2 orbital in the development of collectivity in the A = 60 region: The case of 61Co
An extensive study of the level structure of 61Co has been performed
following the complex 26Mg(48Ca, 2a4npg)61Co reaction at beam energies of 275,
290 and 320 MeV using Gammasphere and the Fragment Mass Analyzer (FMA). The
low-spin structure is discussed within the framework of shell-model
calculations using the GXPF1A effective interaction. Two quasi-rotational bands
consisting of stretched-E2 transitions have been established up to spins I =
41/2 and (43/2), and excitation energies of 17 and 20 MeV, respectively. These
are interpreted as signature partners built on a neutron {\nu}(g9/2)2
configuration coupled to a proton {\pi}p3/2 state, based on Cranked Shell Model
(CSM) calculations and comparisons with observations in neighboring nuclei. In
addition, four I = 1 bands were populated to high spin, with the yrast dipole
band interpreted as a possible candidate for the shears mechanism, a process
seldom observed thus far in this mass region
The sub-stellar birth rate from UKIDSS
We present a new sample of mid-L to mid-T dwarfs with effective temperatures of 11001700 K selected from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey (LAS) and confirmed with infrared spectra from X-shooter/Very Large Telescope. This effective temperature range is especially sensitive to the formation history of Galactic brown dwarfs and allows us to constrain the form of the sub-stellar birth rate, with sensitivity to differentiate between a flat (stellar like) birth rate and an exponentially declining form. We present the discovery of 63 new L and T dwarfs from the UKIDSS LAS DR7, including the identification of 12 likely unresolved binaries, which form the first complete sub-set from our programme, covering 495 square degrees of sky, complete to J = 18.1. We compare our results for this sub-sample with simulations of differing birth rates for objects of masses 0.10-0.03 M-circle dot and ages 1-10 Gyr. We find that the more extreme birth rates (e. g. a halo type form) can likely be excluded as the true form of the birth rate. In addition, we find that although there is substantial scatter we find a preference for a mass function, with a power-law index a in the range -1 <alpha <0 that is consistent (within the errors) with the studies of late T dwarfs.Peer reviewe
Cross-shell excitation in two-proton knockout: Structure of Ca
The two-proton knockout reaction Be(Ti,Ca) has
been studied at 72 MeV/nucleon. Besides the strong feeding of the Ca
ground state, the only other sizeable cross section proceeds to a 3 level
at 3.9 MeV. There is no measurable direct yield to the first excited 2
state at 2.6 MeV. The results illustrate the potential of such direct reactions
for exploring cross-shell proton excitations in neutron-rich nuclei and
confirms the doubly-magic nature of Ca
Mapping SERS in CB:Au Plasmonic Nanoaggregates
In order to optimize surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of noble metal nanostructures for enabling chemical identification of analyte molecules, careful design of nanoparticle structures must be considered. We spatially map the local SERS enhancements across individual micro-aggregates comprised of monodisperse nanoparticles separated by rigid monodisperse 0.9 nm gaps and show the influence of depositing these onto different underlying substrates. Experiments and simulations show that the gaps between neighbouring nanoparticles dominate the SERS enhancement far more than the gaps between nanoparticles and substrate
Affective iconic words benefit from additional soundâmeaning integration in the left amygdala
Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their nonâiconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language
Revealing the electronic structure of a carbon nanotube carrying a supercurrent
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are not intrinsically superconducting but they can
carry a supercurrent when connected to superconducting electrodes. This
supercurrent is mainly transmitted by discrete entangled electron-hole states
confined to the nanotube, called Andreev Bound States (ABS). These states are a
key concept in mesoscopic superconductivity as they provide a universal
description of Josephson-like effects in quantum-coherent nanostructures (e.g.
molecules, nanowires, magnetic or normal metallic layers) connected to
superconducting leads. We report here the first tunneling spectroscopy of
individually resolved ABS, in a nanotube-superconductor device. Analyzing the
evolution of the ABS spectrum with a gate voltage, we show that the ABS arise
from the discrete electronic levels of the molecule and that they reveal
detailed information about the energies of these levels, their relative spin
orientation and the coupling to the leads. Such measurements hence constitute a
powerful new spectroscopic technique capable of elucidating the electronic
structure of CNT-based devices, including those with well-coupled leads. This
is relevant for conventional applications (e.g. superconducting or normal
transistors, SQUIDs) and quantum information processing (e.g. entangled
electron pairs generation, ABS-based qubits). Finally, our device is a new type
of dc-measurable SQUID
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