Morphological paradigms in language processing and language disorders

We present results from two cross‐modal morphological priming experiments investigating regular person and number inflection on finite verbs in German. We found asymmetries in the priming patterns between different affixes that can be predicted from the structure of the paradigm. We also report data from language disorders which indicate that inflectional errors produced by language‐impaired adults and children tend to occur within a given paradigm dimension, rather than randomly across the paradigm. We conclude that morphological paradigms are used by the human language processor and can be systematically affected in language disorders

The Shifting, Whispering Sands

Photograph of Billy Vaughn; Illustration of shovel, pick, and cow skull below cactus; Shining sun in backgroundhttps://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/cht-sheet-music/11195/thumbnail.jp

Geoarchaeological evidence of Ostia’s river harbour operating until the fourth century AD

Ancient Ostia at the mouth of the River Tiber into the Tyrrhenian Sea was largely significant for the economic supply of Rome. Ostia itself experienced an extraordinary period of prosperity in the second century AD. Starting in AD 42, a first new harbour at Portus was built by Emperor Claudius close to Ostia. It reached its full functionality under Emperor Trajan in the early second century AD, only. At Ostia itself, previous archaeological and geoarchaeological studies have brought to light a lagoon-type harbour at the western fringe of the city operating between the fourth and the second century BC in an artificially excavated harbour basin. From the second century BC onwards, a considerably smaller and shallower part of this western harbour basin was still in function as a fluvial harbour. So far, it was unclear whether Ostia’s western harbour was still in use when the harbour at Portus was set into function in the first to second century AD, or if the latter partially replaced Ostia’s harbour infrastructure. According to archaeological evidence, Ostia’s navalia-temple-complex, the main building at the eastern fringe of the western river harbour basin, was built in the second quarter of the first century AD. Was this prestigious harbour building erected although the associated harbour seemed to have been already given up before? We conducted detailed geoarchaeological investigations at the immediate western front of the navalia-temple complex. Results were compared with archaeological data obtained from excavations carried out in 2000/2001. A multi-proxy approach was used to reconstruct the history and evolution of the harbour. It was possible to identify subsurface structures and evaluate the local stratigraphy. Vibracoring brought to light a more than 1 m thick section of an opus reticulatum wall with parts of the original opus latericium on top. Such walls originally separated vaulted shipshed chambers of the navalia-temple complex at Ostia, which in turn formed the substructure of a temple complex located above it. Another core revealed the sedimentary infill of a former chamber of the building. Based on radiocarbon dating, the navalia was in use between the first and the fourth centuries AD with a water depth of maximum ca. 1.2 m at the immediate western front. This is in agreement with the date of construction of the navalia-temple complex in the second quarter of the first century AD. The relative sea level at that time was around 0.64 m below the present sea level. The harbour and the navalia were obviously accessible only for flat-keeled lighters and cargo boats. Larger cargo ships were either unloaded along the riverbank to the north of ancient Ostia (Hadler et al. 2019) or moored offshore, their freight being reloaded to smaller lighters. Chronostratigraphic data further show that the navalia-temple complex was in use until the second half of the fourth century AD. It was not before AD 355–363 or shortly afterwards, that the harbour site was abandoned. Ostia’s western river harbour was neither abandoned nor completely silted up before the harbour at Portus was established as previously assumed by other authors. Actually, the western front of the navalia-temple complex was hit by an extreme wave event, leaving a sand layer approx. 0.5 m thick, at or shortly after AD 355–363 which led to the final abandonment of Ostia’s western river harbour. This event is interpreted as a tsunami that may have hit the wider coastal region

Gram-positive Rod Surveillance for Early Anthrax Detection

Connecticut established telephone-based gram-positive rod (GPR) reporting primarily to detect inhalational anthrax cases more quickly. From March to December 2003, annualized incidence of blood isolates was 21.3/100,000 persons; reports included 293 Corynebacterium spp., 193 Bacillus spp., 73 Clostridium spp., 26 Lactobacillus spp., and 49 other genera. Around-the-clock GPR reporting has described GPR epidemiology and enhanced rapid communication with clinical laboratories

Characterisation of solid hydrodynamics in a three-phase stirred tank reactor with positron emission particle tracking (PEPT)

It is challenging to measure the hydrodynamics of stirred tank reactors when they contain multiphase flows comprising liquid, gas bubbles and particles. Radioactive particle tracking techniques such as positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) are the only established techniques to determine internal flow behaviour due to the inherent opacity and density of fluid and the vessel walls. The profiles of solids flow are an important tool for robust reactor design and optimisation and offer insight into underlying transport processes and particle–fluid–bubble interactions for applications such as froth flotation. In this work, measurements with PEPT were performed with two tracer particles differing in surface hydrophobicity to characterise the solids hydrodynamics in a baffled vessel agitated with a Rushton turbine. The location data from PEPT were averaged with time to estimate the probability density function (PDF) of particle velocity in individual voxels. The peaks of these voxel distributions were used to produce profiles of solids flow in different azimuthal and horizontal slices. Bimodal vertical velocity distributions were observed in the impeller radial jet which suggest the particles experienced trajectory crossing effects due to inertia. Statistical tests were performed to compare the velocity distributions of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic tracer particles, which indicated similar average flow behaviour in the liquid or pulp phase of the vessel and differences near the air inlet, in the impeller discharge stream and pulp–froth interface. With tracers designed to represent gangue and valuable mineral species, the differences in velocity reveal interactions such as bubble–particle attachment and entrainment

Ultrastructure of a hyaluronic acid matrix

Freeze-etch replicas of a hylauronic acid matrix were visualized by electron microscopy. In water a coarse branching fibrillar network of hyaluronic acid aggregates was seen. The high solvent permeability of this matrix suggests that the spaces observed are relatively devoid of unaggregated polymer. Addition of calcium disordered the matrix, resulting in a more dispersed felt of polymer

Corvidae Feather Pulp and West Nile Virus Detection

We evaluated cloacal swab, vascular pulp of flight feather, and kidney and spleen pool samples from carcasses of members of the family Corvidae as sources of West Nile virus (WNV). The cloacal swab, kidney and spleen pool, and feather pulp, respectively, were the source of WNV in 38%, 43%, and 77% of the carcasses

Electrochemical titrations and reaction time courses monitored in situ by magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy

Magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectra, at ultraviolet–visible or near-infrared wavelengths (185–2000 nm), contain the same transitions observed in conventional absorbance spectroscopy, but their bisignate nature and more stringent selection rules provide greatly enhanced resolution. Thus, they have proved to be invaluable in the study of many transition metal-containing proteins. For mainly technical reasons, MCD has been limited almost exclusively to the measurement of static samples. But the ability to employ the resolving power of MCD to follow changes at transition metal sites would be a potentially significant advance. We describe here the development of a cuvette holder that allows reagent injection and sample mixing within the 50-mm-diameter ambient temperature bore of an energized superconducting solenoid. This has allowed us, for the first time, to monitor time-resolved MCD resulting from in situ chemical manipulation of a metalloprotein sample. Furthermore, we report the parallel development of an electrochemical cell using a three-electrode configuration with physically separated working and counter electrodes, allowing true potentiometric titration to be performed within the bore of the MCD solenoid