Early Phonological Systematization in Children with Williams Syndrome: A Longitudinal Study

This longitudinal study looks at the systematic phonological development of children with Williams syndrome during the first three years of life. Williams syndrome is a genetic condition that impairs both cognitive and language abilities in those affected. It is commonly researched by linguists and speech pathologists alike because its phenotype provides a unique example of the interaction between cognitive impairment and language development. In this case study, four children’s first words were examined through the transcription of 30-minute-long play sessions to gain a better understanding of how children with Williams syndrome acquire phonological patterns. These transcripts were then analyzed using a customized battery of routines created and calculated in the Phon acoustic analysis software. It was found that some of these children did appear to be using patterned structures or ‘templates’ (Vihman, 2016) to produce their initial words. However, idiosyncrasies of language acquisition also were present in the data, as it was also found that not all participants appeared to be using defined templatic structures when vocalizing early word forms. By discussing how these children were or were not evidencing phonological systematization, these case studies can be added to the current literature to further understand not only how phonology is acquired, but how linguistic skills emerge in children with Williams syndrome

Scale on Wire Rod and its Removal by Mechanical Means

The rod from Which plain carbon steel wire is produced is normally supplied in the original rolled condition with its scale attached. As a preliminary to the succ-essful drawing of the rod down to wire, it is essential to remove this scale. The traditional method of removal has been to pickle the rod coils by submerging them in solutions of dilute acid. In recent years one has seen developments introduced to achieve mechanical scale removal

The Apparent Madness of Crowds: Irrational collective behavior emerging from interactions among rational agents

Standard economic theory assumes that agents in markets behave rationally. However, the observation of extremely large fluctuations in the price of financial assets that are not correlated to changes in their fundamental value, as well as the extreme instance of financial bubbles and crashes, imply that markets (at least occasionally) do display irrational behavior. In this paper, we briefly outline our recent work demonstrating that a market with interacting agents having bounded rationality can display price fluctuations that are {\em quantitatively} similar to those seen in real markets.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Proceedings of International Workshop on "Econophysics of Stock Markets and Minority Games" (Econophys-Kolkata II), Feb 14-17, 200

Experiential Learning in Industrial/Organizational Psychology: A Case Study

Experiential learning is considered a powerful tool for learning in college. Community-based research is one type of experiential learning that has been used to learn research skills in a variety of social science disciplines. The current case study was conducted as an experiential learning research project. A team of six students and a professor from a small Midwestern college conducted community-based research with a large agribusiness company headquartered near the college. The goal of the project was to create an effective employee-selection process for this firm and to provide an effective learning experience for students. This included development of a situational judgment test, cognitive ability testing, and personality assessment. The article focuses on steps taken to organize a community- based research project, the steps required to develop an effective selection process, and an evaluation of the experience from students, the community partners, and faculty

Seismic performance of reinforced concrete tall buildings with conventional and non-conventional construction systems

Currently in the city of Lima there is a limited number of high-rise buildings. Therefore, there is not much literature on this type of building in Peru. Peruvian codes focus on medium and low-rise buildings. For this reason, studies are required to analyze and design these tall buildings more appropriately according to the reality of the country. In this article, a pushover modal analysis of 6 types of 35-Story reinforced concrete buildings in the city of Lima will be developed. Three building models with different structural systems and square and rectangular plan are proposed, being the areas of 29m × 29m and 52m × 26m respectively. These structural systems are rigid core and frames with an energy dissipation system (fluid viscous dampers and shear-link-bozzo dissipators SLB) in order to study their behavior against seismic stresses. These buildings were based on the criteria and requirements of the current codes in the country as well as the distribution of the floor plan of buildings commonly used for offices and homes. Natural periods (T) were found to range from 2.6 to 3.3 seconds for rigid core buildings. There is an increase for viscous damping buildings from 4.2 to 5.4 seconds and also for SLB devices to range from 3.7 to 4.6 seconds. In turn, modal static nonlinear analysis was performed to obtain the capacity curves for each type of building, which were compared with the seismic demands according to the design provisions of the Peruvian seismic standard E.030 and an average of design spectra. of acceleration records of severe seismic events in Peru and scaled in a range of 0.2T to 1.5T. The performance points for each building case were determined following the ATC-40 methodologies, finding that tall buildings with a rigid core have approximately twice the stiffness of buildings with SLB dampers, as well as low ductility, unlike buildings with dissipators, that have a high ductility

Computational methods for transcriptome annotation and quantification using RNA-seq

High-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) promises a comprehensive picture of the transcriptome, allowing for the complete annotation and quantification of all genes and their isoforms across samples. Realizing this promise requires increasingly complex computational methods. These computational challenges fall into three main categories: (i) read mapping, (ii) transcriptome reconstruction and (iii) expression quantification. Here we explain the major conceptual and practical challenges, and the general classes of solutions for each category. Finally, we highlight the interdependence between these categories and discuss the benefits for different biological applications