Anomalous Transfer of Syntax between Languages

Each human language possesses a set of distinctive syntactic rules. Here, we show that balanced Welsh-English bilinguals reading in English unconsciously apply a morphosyntactic rule that only exists in Welsh. The Welsh soft mutation rule determines whether the initial consonant of a noun changes based on the grammatical context (e.g., the feminine noun cath-"cat" mutates into gath in the phrase y gath-"the cat"). Using event-related brain potentials, we establish that English nouns artificially mutated according to the Welsh mutation rule (e.g., "goncert" instead of "concert") require significantly less processing effort than the same nouns implicitly violating Welsh syntax. Crucially, this effect is found whether or not the mutation affects the same initial consonant in English and Welsh, showing that Welsh syntax is applied to English regardless of phonological overlap between the two languages. Overall, these results demonstrate for the first time that abstract syntactic rules transfer anomalously from one language to the other, even when such rules exist only in one language

Episodic traces and statistical regularities: Paired associate learning in typical and dyslexic readers

Learning visual-phonological associations is a key skill underlying successful reading acquisition. However, we are yet to understand the cognitive mechanisms that enable efficient learning in good readers, and those which are aberrant in individuals with developmental dyslexia. Here, we use a repeated cued-recall task to examine how typical and reading-impaired adults acquire novel associations between visual and phonological stimuli, incorporating a looking-at-nothing paradigm to probe implicit memory for target locations. Cued recall accuracy revealed that typical readers’ recall of novel phonological associates was better than dyslexic readers’ recall, and it also improved more with repetition. Eye fixation-contingent error analyses suggest that typical readers’ greater improvement from repetition reflects their more robust encoding and/or retrieval of each instance in which a given pair was presented: whereas dyslexic readers tended to recall a phonological target better when fixating its most recent location, typical readers showed this pattern more strongly when the target location was consistent across multiple trials. Thus, typical readers’ greater success in reading acquisition may derive from their better use of statistical contingencies to identify consistent stimulus features across multiple exposures. We discuss these findings in relation to the role of implicit memory in forming new visual-phonological associations as a foundational skill in reading, and areas of weakness in developmental dyslexia

SUBTLEX-CY: A new word frequency database for Welsh

We present SUBTLEX-CY, a new word frequency database created from a 32 million word corpus of Welsh television subtitles. An experiment comprising of a lexical decision task examined SUBTLEX-CY frequency estimates against words with inconsistent frequencies in a much smaller Welsh corpus that is often used by researchers, the Cronfa Electroneg o’r Gymraeg (CEG; Ellis et al., 2001) as well as four other Welsh word frequency databases. Words were selected that were classified as low frequency (LF) in SUBTLEX-CY and high frequency (HF) in CEG and compared to words that were classified as medium frequency (MF) in both SUBTLEX-CY and CEG. Reaction time analyses showed that HF words in CEG were responded to more slowly compared to medium frequency (MF) words, suggesting that SUBTLEX-CY corpus provides a more reliable estimate of Welsh word frequencies. The new Welsh word frequency database that also includes part-of-speech, contextual diversity, and other lexical information is freely available for research purposes on the Open Science Framework repository at https://osf.io/9gkqm/

Measurement of the Bottom-Strange Meson Mixing Phase in the Full CDF Data Set

We report a measurement of the bottom-strange meson mixing phase \beta_s using the time evolution of B0_s -> J/\psi (->\mu+\mu-) \phi (-> K+ K-) decays in which the quark-flavor content of the bottom-strange meson is identified at production. This measurement uses the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s)= 1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to 9.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We report confidence regions in the two-dimensional space of \beta_s and the B0_s decay-width difference \Delta\Gamma_s, and measure \beta_s in [-\pi/2, -1.51] U [-0.06, 0.30] U [1.26, \pi/2] at the 68% confidence level, in agreement with the standard model expectation. Assuming the standard model value of \beta_s, we also determine \Delta\Gamma_s = 0.068 +- 0.026 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps-1 and the mean B0_s lifetime, \tau_s = 1.528 +- 0.019 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps, which are consistent and competitive with determinations by other experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett 109, 171802 (2012

Topical, immunomodulatory epoxy-tiglianes induce biofilm disruption and healing in acute and chronic skin wounds

Bacterial biofilms pose a therapeutic challenge to managing chronic wounds and contribute to antimicrobial resistance. Here, Powell et al. investigated the structure/activity relationships of epoxy-tigliane compounds derived from the blushwood tree with respect to their role in wound healing. The compounds interacted with the cell wall of bacteria but showed variable permeabilization in Gram-negative versus Gram-positive cultures. They disrupted established biofilms by interacting with the extracellular polymeric substance matrix, activated immune cells to induce reactive oxygen species, and promoted wound healing in infected thermal injuries in calves when applied topically. In chronic wounds in diabetic mice, the semisynthetic compound EBC-1013 up-regulated host-defense peptides, altered cytokine expression, activated immune cells, and led to greater wound closure. Results help uncover the mechanism by which epoxy-tiglianes promote wound healing and support further development of EBC-1013

Genetic architecture of subcortical brain structures in 38,851 individuals

Subcortical brain structures are integral to motion, consciousness, emotions and learning. We identified common genetic variation related to the volumes of the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, brainstem, caudate nucleus, globus pallidus, putamen and thalamus, using genome-wide association analyses in almost 40,000 individuals from CHARGE, ENIGMA and UK Biobank. We show that variability in subcortical volumes is heritable, and identify 48 significantly associated loci (40 novel at the time of analysis). Annotation of these loci by utilizing gene expression, methylation and neuropathological data identified 199 genes putatively implicated in neurodevelopment, synaptic signaling, axonal transport, apoptosis, inflammation/infection and susceptibility to neurological disorders. This set of genes is significantly enriched for Drosophila orthologs associated with neurodevelopmental phenotypes, suggesting evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. Our findings uncover novel biology and potential drug targets underlying brain development and disease

May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

Genetic architecture of subcortical brain structures in 38,851 individuals

Subcortical brain structures are integral to motion, consciousness, emotions and learning. We identified common genetic variation related to the volumes of the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, brainstem, caudate nucleus, globus pallidus, putamen and thalamus, using genome-wide association analyses in almost 40,000 individuals from CHARGE, ENIGMA and UK Biobank. We show that variability in subcortical volumes is heritable, and identify 48 significantly associated loci (40 novel at the time of analysis). Annotation of these loci by utilizing gene expression, methylation and neuropathological data identified 199 genes putatively implicated in neurodevelopment, synaptic signaling, axonal transport, apoptosis, inflammation/infection and susceptibility to neurological disorders. This set of genes is significantly enriched for Drosophila orthologs associated with neurodevelopmental phenotypes, suggesting evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. Our findings uncover novel biology and potential drug targets underlying brain development and disease