Cognitive and Linguistic Time Constructs in English Written Language of High School Students

This qualitative study examines the cognitive and linguistic time constructs found within thirty written language samples collected from general education students at a technical high school in the Pacific Northwest. The students’ written language samples responded to the question, “What do you do on a typical day?” These written language samples were collected as part of the high school’s intake process. Using four main rounds of analysis, the researcher examined the written language samples for: the surface structures of time such as tense, time words, modals, and conditionals; temporal propositions as defined by Arwood and Beggs (1992); speech acts, semantic roles and semantic relationships; and cognitive constructs of time such as the moving time, moving ego and succession of events conceptual metaphors. The findings of the study indicate that the students are not writing using grammatically correct surface structures of time, nor are they making temporal propositions. Instead, the students are using mostly base form verbs in either present or ambiguous tense constructions. Most, but not all, of the students used the agent role in their writing, and more students used the locative role than used the time role. All the students expressed actions, but not all students used the agent action semantic relationship. All the students were able to express the speech act of responding, and two thirds of the students used what may be a new type of primitive speech act, listing of actions. All of the students used the succession of events conceptual metaphor for time, while one student used the moving ego metaphor and another used the moving iv time metaphor. These findings indicate that this group of students is functioning at the restricted pre-language function level of language function (ages 3-7 years), and at the preoperational level of development for temporal cognition (ages 3-7 years). These finding suggest that this group of students may have difficulty performing temporal tasks such as: arriving to class on time, planning and executing assignments and projects, turning in homework on time, expressing their ideas in a way that is meaningful to others, and participating in higher order thinking for diverse subjects including science, mathematics, English language, and history

Development of the MediBeacon transdermal GFR measurement system

Current methods of kidney function monitoring, based on plasma creatinine concentration, suffer from poor accuracy, lack of sensitivity, and potentially long delay times (24-72 hrs) before detecting acute kidney injury. A kidney function monitor is being developed by MediBeacon, based on transdermally measured fluorescence clearance of the novel fluorescent tracer agent, MB-102. After vascular injection, the agent equilibrates into the extracellular spaces of the body and is cleared exclusively by the kidneys, without being metabolized. Plasma pharmacokinetic (PK) analysis of MB-102 compared to the known GFR agent, iohexol, across subjects with a wide range of chronic kidney disease states, has demonstrated the close equivalence (R2=0.99) of the GFR derived by the two methods. Transdermal monitoring is accomplished using blue (peak ~450 nm) LED excitation to induce green (peak ~560 nm) fluorescence of MB-102. In a pilot study, the full day fluorescent decay kinetics of MB-102 were shown to be directly related to body-size normalized GFR (tGFR). Achieving accurate GFR assessment from shorter time segments is a primary goal, in order to provide near real-time monitoring of kidney function, for example in hospital intensive care units (ICU). The primary interferents to the tGFR measurement are hemoglobin, melanin, and tissue autofluorescence. The focus of the talk will be on the development of several generations of instruments designed to address these challenges, and their performance during clinical studies to date. Business and regulatory challenges faced along the path toward commercialization of this combination device and agent, will also be briefly described. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

SVD-clustering, a general image-analyzing method explained and demonstrated on model and Raman micro-spectroscopic maps

An image analyzing method (SVD-clustering) is presented. Amplitude vectors of SVD factorization (V1…Vi) were introduced into the imaging of the distribution of the corresponding Ui basis-spectra. Since each Vi vector contains each point of the map, plotting them along the X, Y, Z dimensions of the map reconstructs the spatial distribution of the corresponding Ui basis-spectrum. This gives valuable information about the first, second, etc. higher-order deviations present in the map. We extended SVD with a clustering method, using the significant Vi vectors from the VT matrix as coordinates of image points in a ne-dimensional space (ne is the effective rank of the data matrix). This way every image point had a corresponding coordinate in the ne-dimensional space and formed a point set. Clustering was applied to this point set. SVD-clustering is universal; it is applicable to any measurement where data are recorded as a function of an external parameter (time, space, temperature, concentration, species, etc.). Consequently, our method is not restricted to spectral imaging, it can find application in many different 2D and 3D image analyses. Using SVD-clustering, we have shown on models the theoretical possibilities and limitations of the method, especially in the context of creating, meaning/interpreting of cluster spectra. Then for real-world samples, two examples are presented, where we were able to reveal minute alterations in the samples (changing cation ratios in minerals, differently structured cellulose domains in plant root) with spatial resolution. © 2020, The Author(s)