Icelandic declarative V1 : a brief overview

This squib is a brief state of the art overview of declarative V1 in Icelandic, old and modern. Three(relevant) types of such clauses are discussed: Narrative Inversion, with an overt topical subjectdirectly after the verb, Presentational V1, with an overt non-topical subject, and Null-subject V1.Narrative Inversion is a robust main clause phenomenon, whereas Presentational V1 and Null-subjectV1 are found in subordinate clauses, albeit less frequently than in main clauses. Therestrictions on declarative V1 have remained largely stable throughout the history of Icelandic. Allthree types are continuity/linking orders, hence typical of narrative and other cohesive texts, but veryrare, almost nonexistent, in common discourse types in spoken language. Overall, declarative V1 ismore characteristic of and common in Old Icelandic texts than in Modern Icelandic texts, presumablyas the bulk of the preserved Old Icelandic texts are narrative texts, while such texts are only afraction of accessible Modern Icelandic texts

Topics in emerging technologies:Cost optimization methods in the design of next generation networks

A key development of telecommunication systems during the past two decades has been the evolution from the circuit-switched network toward the packet-switched network paradigm. Many operators are now migrating their PSTNs from circuit switched into multipurpose packet switched networks. This new approach is often called the next-generation network (NGN). NGN enables network operators to run all services (i.e., voice, data and video) on one network. In this article the migration of Iceland Telecom's circuit-switched PSTN toward NGN will be described. A cost model of the telecommunications system has been developed to enable cost and benefits analysis of transforming the network to NGN. Methods of optimization and their application to determine the optimal number and position of nodes in the future network will be described. The optimization produces a network structure with the lowest possible total cost of ownership, and the model can also indicate how deviations from the optimum affect cost. The feasibility of NGN can be assessed by comparing the cost of NGN migration to that of maintaining the current circuitswitched network

Fast and Robust Femur Segmentation from Computed Tomography Images for Patient-Specific Hip Fracture Risk Screening

Osteoporosis is a common bone disease that increases the risk of bone fracture. Hip-fracture risk screening methods based on finite element analysis depend on segmented computed tomography (CT) images; however, current femur segmentation methods require manual delineations of large data sets. Here we propose a deep neural network for fully automated, accurate, and fast segmentation of the proximal femur from CT. Evaluation on a set of 1147 proximal femurs with ground truth segmentations demonstrates that our method is apt for hip-fracture risk screening, bringing us one step closer to a clinically viable option for screening at-risk patients for hip-fracture susceptibility.Comment: This article has been accepted for publication in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization, published by Taylor & Franci

The Scandinavian Sarcoma Group Central Register : 6,000 patients after 25 years of monitoring of referral and treatment of extremity and trunk wall soft-tissue sarcoma

Purpose - We wanted to examine the potential of the Scandinavian Sarcoma Group (SSG) Central Register, and evaluate referral and treatment practice for soft-tissue sarcomas in the extremities and trunk wall (STS) in the Nordic countries. Background - Based on incidence rates from the literature, 8,150 (7,000-9,300) cases of STS of the extremity and trunk wall should have been diagnosed in Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden from 1987 through 2011. The SSG Register has 6,027 cases registered from this period, with 5,837 having complete registration of key variables. 10 centers have been reporting to the Register. The 5 centers that consistently report treat approximately 90% of the cases in their respective regions. The remaining centers have reported all the patients who were treated during certain time periods, but not for the entire 25-year period. Results - 59% of patients were referred to a sarcoma center untouched, i.e. before any attempt at open biopsy. There was an improvement from 52% during the first 5 years to 70% during the last 5 years. 50% had wide or better margins at surgery. Wide margins are now achieved less often than 20 years ago, in parallel with an increase in the use of radiotherapy. For the centers that consistently report, 97% of surviving patients are followed for more than 4 years. Metastasis-free survival (MFS) increased from 67% to 73% during the 25-year period. Interpretation - The Register is considered to be representative of extremity and trunk wall sarcoma disease in the population of Scandinavia, treated at the reporting centers. There were no clinically significant differences in treatment results at these centers.Peer reviewe

Subject Float, Low Subject Trapping, and Case in Icelandic

This article describes and discusses two peculiar sets of (in)defi nitenessfacts applying to subjects in Icelandic, here referred to as Subject Floatand Low Subject Trapping. Indefi nite subjects (commonly quantifi ed) inpresentational sentences and related clause types may either occupy thecomplement position within the predicate phrase or “fl oat” into variouspositions in the middle fi eld. This is Subject Float, yielding variation suchas “There would (many farmers) then (many farmers) probably (manyfarmers) be (?*many farmers) elected (many farmers)”. Conversely, andunexpectedly, defi nite NP subjects of some adjectival and verbal predicatesmust stay in the complement position. This is Low Subject Trapping,yielding orders such as “there is cold radiator-the” and “there cooledradiator-the”. It is shown that the licensing of subject NPs in the variouspositions in Subject Float and in the complement position in Low SubjectTrapping is unrelated to specifi c grammatical cases, thus refuting the widelyadopted case approach to NP licensing. Although Icelandic case markinghas been widely discussed, Subject Float and Low Subject Trapping havenot previously received a detailed scrutiny; these phenomena provideadditional and partly new knockout arguments against the case approach toNP licensing and NP movement. While high NP raising to subject (Spec,IP)is unaffected by case, it seems to involve both Person and Topic matching

Gender at the edge

This article develops an analysis of Gender whereby D-gender entersgrammar as a feature variable (edge linker), without a fixed value,either probing n or scanning the context for a value. Only the latterstrategy is available in pronominal gender languages such as English,as they lack n-gender, whereas both strategies are applicable in ngenderlanguages, variably so for variable DPs, depending on their nPcontent and on context. The article adopts the idea that context linkingdoes not merely involve pragmatic context scanning but also has asyntactic side to it, edge computation, whereby context-scanned andrecycled features are computed at the phase edge in relation to CPinternalelements, via edge linkers. The context-linking approach hasbeen previously launched for Tense and Person. This article extendsit to Gender, thereby generalizing over context-sensitive grammaticalcategories and developing a novel view of the overall architecture ofgrammar

Topicality in Icelandic : Null arguments and Narrative Inversion

This paper discusses topicality in Icelandic grammar as realized in several phenomena: referential third person pro drop in Old Icelandic, diverse types of topic drop in Old and Modern Icelandic, and Narrative Inversion (declarative VS clauses), also in both Old and Modern Icelandic. These phenomena all involve aboutness topics, given topics or both, thus showing that distinct types of topicality are active in Icelandic. However, in contrast to Italian, Icelandic does not provide evidence that different topic types have different structural correlates, a fact that suggests that topicality types are not generally structuralized in language (while not excluding that a topicality hierarchy may be PF-licensed by externalization properties specific to languages like Italian). Topicality is presumably a universally available category or phenomenon, but it is plausibly an interface third factor phenomenon (in the sense of Chomsky 2005), not provided by Universal Grammar but interacting with it in the shaping of externalized grammar, differently so in different languages

Potentials and Challenges of Peer-to-Peer Based Content Distribution

Abstract—Multimedia content currently accounts for over three quarters of all Internet traffic. This increase in traffic volume and content availability derives from a paradigm shift from the traditional text and picture based Web, to more resource demanding audio and video content. A controversial driver for this development is content distribution systems based on peer-to-peer overlay networks. Flooding the Internet with often illegal content, these networks now pose challenges to all actors in the value chain. However, if viewed as surmountable challenges in an evolutionary path, peer-to-peer technology has the potential of increasing efficiency in content distribution and unleashing resources to form scalable and resilient overlay networks of unprecedented dimensions. In this paper we apply economic analysis to examine the challenges and potentials of peer-topeer technology in content distribution, and how, and in which circumstances, peer-to-peer technology can be used to increase the efficiency of multimedia services. The paper provides an up-todate overview of the development of peer-to-peer overlay networks as well as describing the economics laws governing their use. To conclude the study, the paper analysis Skype, a well known telecommunications service utilizing the peer-topeer technology, as well as demonstrating a novel content distribution service using empirical data from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Keywords-component; Content Distribution, Peer-to-Peer