Breaking the Mold : a corpus study of numeral+noun phrases in Scottish Gaelic

This project is a corpus-based study on numeral + noun phrases in Scottish Gaelic. The typical pattern in Scottish Gaelic is to use a singular noun after numerals one and two and a plural noun after numerals three through ten. However, there are some nouns that do not follow this expected pattern. These exceptions are called numeratives and there are three different categories of numeratives in Scottish Gaelic: duals, numeratives identical in form to a singular, and numeratives with a form that differs from singular and plural and only used with numerals. This study aims to find which nouns have numerative forms and how their use varies diachronically and between dialects. While numeratives have been more researched in Welsh and Irish, there is not much research on numeratives in Scottish Gaelic. Ò Maolalaigh (2013) did a more restricted corpus study to find what nouns use singular after numerals three through ten. The past research provides a good comparison for my results and gives me a good foundation to expand on. From the past research, there seems to be a semantic relationship between the kinds of nouns that have numerative forms, so I sort my results into semantic categories as well. I also look at numeratives from the perspective of linguistic complexity since Scottish Gaelic is a minority language with a large proportion of L2 speakers. This project uses Corpas na Gàidhlig (the Corpus of Scottish Gaelic), which is part of the University of Glasgow’s Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic. I search the corpus for numerals two through four to see which nouns use numeratives and how consistently they use them. I also look at how frequently numeratives are used diachronically and how usage varies across dialects. I focus especially on nouns that have a high number of numerative tokens to see if there is a pattern in their usage. In my results, I found 47 nouns that use a dual form and 105 nouns that use a numerative identical in form to a singular. The overall findings for numerative use are that dual use is decreasing, while use of numeratives identical in form to singular has been increasing since 1900-1949. The semantic category with the most dual tokens is natural pairs. The nouns with numeratives identical in form to singular tend to be nouns frequently used with numerals, such as measurement words

Care staff intentions to support adults with an intellectual disability to engage in physical activity: An application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

Researchers suggest that people with an intellectual disability (ID) undertake less physical activity than the general population and many rely, to some extent, on others to help them to access activities. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) model was previously found to significantly predict the intention of care staff to facilitate a healthy diet in those they supported. The present study examined whether the TPB was useful in predicting the intentions of 78 Scottish care staff to support people with ID to engage in physical activity. Regression analyses indicated that perceived behavioural control was the most significant predictor of both care staff intention to facilitate physical activity and reported physical activity levels of the people they supported. Attitudes significantly predicted care staff intention to support physical activity, but this intention was not itself significantly predictive of reported activity levels. Increasing carers' sense of control over their ability to support clients' physical activity may be more effective in increasing physical activity than changing their attitudes towards promoting activit

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Waste and where it ends up is not a common discussion topic; in fact, it is often treated as a taboo subject. However, it has become necessary to examine this topic due to the growing ecological problems caused by the collection of garbage within our oceans. The Great Pacific Garbage patch, in particular, has grown quite large, and it is now affecting the health of people. This poster explores the ramifications of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It discusses the background of the garbage patches and the impact of the issue. It also mentions the different determinants of health that are affected by such a form of pollution and the impact that it is having on pharmacy. Furthermore, the poster explains some ways to reduce this incident, both on a personal and a worldwide scale. Overall, this poster investigates the relationship between the Great Pacific Garbage patch and public health.https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/public_health_posters/1018/thumbnail.jp

Advancing Open Access in Australia: To Be Inspired by the Dutch?

Information is power, which in today's digital society, can be, and should be, freely and openly shared. This proposition is supported by the concept of Open Access ("OA"), an international movement seeking to grant open online access to academic information, without financial, legal or technical barriers. There exist multiple types of OA. Those relevant to this article are green and gold. Green OA refers to a process whereby authors publish their work openly, by depositing an accepted version into a repository or freely accessible database, after a specific period of time, referred to as an "embargo period". Meanwhile, gold OA consists of making works immediately freely accessible online, through the websites of publishers

The recovery of semen from bathwater using the Evidence Recovery System (ERS)

Sexual offences are under-reported and ascertaining accurate offence numbers is difficult. Any methods which could increase the ability to obtain biological evidence or reduce the additional distress associated with reporting a sexual offence may result in an increase in reporting this crime type. The Evidence Recovery System (ERS) is designed to collect trace evidence, including hairs, fibres and biological evidence, from bath or shower water in a non-invasive manner. Initially, samples of semen were placed in baths filled with water, and washing was simulated using a range of body wash products. The water was then drained through the ERS before its filters were subjected to acid phosphatase testing and haematoxylin and eosin staining of spermatozoa. Recovered spermatozoa were then graded accordingly. Following this, the experiment was repeated with the addition of dirt/dust particulates during the washing stage, to simulate recovery of biological evidence in a more realistic environment. The results showed that spermatozoa considered ‘easy to find’ could regularly be obtained from bathwater using the ERS. It appeared that this recovery was not affected by the presence of different body wash products. When dust/dirt particles were added, the number of spermatozoa recovered increased at two of the evidence collection stages. The difference in recovery was considered to be statistically significant. This study provides evidence to suggest the feasibility of use of the ERS as a method to collect semen evidence from individuals subjected to sexual offences. The recovery of spermatozoa does not appear to be affected by the presence of a body wash, but does appear to be improved when skin cells, hair and other debris are transferred into the water, as would be likely during a bath/shower. Further to this, the possibility of obtaining spermatozoa from the home bath or shower of a victim following a post-offence bathing experience is implied

Academic Integrity Policy Analysis of Publicly-Funded Universities in Ontario, Canada: A Focus on Contract Cheating

In this article we report findings from a review of universities’ academic integrity policies in Ontario, Canada. The research team systematically extracted, reviewed, and evaluated information from policy documents in an effort to understand how these documents described contract cheating in Ontario universities (n = 21). In all, 23 policies were examined for contract cheating language. The elements of access, approach, responsibility, detail, and support were examined and critiqued. Additionally, document type, document title and concept(s), specific contract cheating language, presence of contract cheating definitions and policy principles were reviewed. Findings revealed that none of the universities’ policies met all of the core elements of exemplary policy, were reviewed and revised with less frequency than their college counterparts, lacked language specific to contract cheating, and were more frequently focused on punitive rather than educative approaches. These findings confirm that there is further opportunity for policy development related to the promotion of academic integrity and the prevention of contract cheating.

Semi-automatic segmentation of the fetal brain from magnetic resonance imaging

Background: Volumetric measurements of fetal brain maturation in the third trimester of pregnancy are key predictors of developmental outcomes. Improved understanding of fetal brain development trajectories may aid in identifying and clinically managing at-risk fetuses. Currently, fetal brain structures in magnetic resonance images (MRI) are often manually segmented, which requires both time and expertise. To facilitate the targeting and measurement of brain structures in the fetus, we compared the results of five segmentation methods applied to fetal brain MRI data to gold-standard manual tracings. Methods: Adult women with singleton pregnancies (n = 21), of whom five were scanned twice, approximately 3 weeks apart, were recruited [26 total datasets, median gestational age (GA) = 34.8, IQR = 30.9–36.6]. T2-weighted single-shot fast spin echo images of the fetal brain were acquired on 1.5T and 3T MRI scanners. Images were first combined into a single 3D anatomical volume. Next, a trained tracer manually segmented the thalamus, cerebellum, and total cerebral volumes. The manual segmentations were compared with five automatic methods of segmentation available within Advanced Normalization Tools (ANTs) and FMRIB’s Linear Image Registration Tool (FLIRT) toolboxes. The manual and automatic labels were compared using Dice similarity coefficients (DSCs). The DSC values were compared using Friedman’s test for repeated measures. Results: Comparing cerebellum and thalamus masks against the manually segmented masks, the median DSC values for ANTs and FLIRT were 0.72 [interquartile range (IQR) = 0.6–0.8] and 0.54 (IQR = 0.4–0.6), respectively. A Friedman’s test indicated that the ANTs registration methods, primarily nonlinear methods, performed better than FLIRT (p \u3c 0.001). Conclusion: Deformable registration methods provided the most accurate results relative to manual segmentation. Overall, this semi-automatic subcortical segmentation method provides reliable performance to segment subcortical volumes in fetal MR images. This method reduces the costs of manual segmentation, facilitating the measurement of typical and atypical fetal brain development

Predatory ability and abundance forecast the ecological impacts of two aquatic invasive species

Characterising interspecific interaction strengths, combined with population abundances of prey and their novel predators, is critical to develop predictive invasion ecology. This is especially true of aquatic invasive species, which can pose a significant threat to the structure and stability of the ecosystems to which they are introduced. Here, we investigated consumer-resource dynamics of two globally-established aquatic invasive species, European green crab (Carcinus maenas) and brown trout (Salmo trutta). We explored the mediating effect of prey density on predatory impact in these invaders relative to functionally analogous native rock crab (Cancer irroratus) and Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), respectively, feeding on shared prey (Mytilus sp. and Tenebrio molitor, respectively). We subsequently combined feeding rates with each predator's regional abundance to forecast relative ecological impacts. All predators demonstrated potentially destabilising Type II functional responses towards prey, with native rock crab and invasive brown trout exhibiting greater per capita impacts relative to their trophic analogues. Functional Response Ratios (attack rates divided by handling times) were higher for both invasive species, reflecting greater overall per capita effects compared to natives. Impact projections that incorporated predator abundances with per capita effects predicted severe impacts by European green crabs. However, brown trout, despite possessing higher per capita effects than Atlantic salmon, are projected to have low impact owing to currently low abundances in the sampled watershed. Should brown trout density increase sixfold, we predict it would exert higher impact than Atlantic salmon. Such impact-forecasting metrics and methods are thus vital tools to assist in the determination of current and future adverse impacts associated with aquatic invasive species