Input and Processing Factors Affecting Infants’ Vocabulary Size at 19 and 25 Months

This study examined the relative contributions of three factors to individual differences in vocabulary development: the acoustic quality of mothers’ speech, the quantity of mothers’ speech, and infants’ ability to recognize words. To examine the quality and quantity of mothers’ speech, recordings were collected from 48 mothers when their infants were 17 months old. Infants’ ability to recognize words was gauged by their performance in a perception experiment at 19 months. We examined the relationship between these measures and infants’ vocabulary size at 19 and 25 months. The quantity of mothers’ speech accounted for the greatest amount of variance in infants’ vocabulary size at 19 months; infants’ ability to recognize words followed next. At 25 months, when mothers’ speech alone is presumably no longer the primary input for infants, infants’ ability to recognize words at 19 months was a better predictor of vocabulary size. The acoustic quality of mothers’ speech was not correlated with infants’ vocabulary size at either age. The findings highlight the importance of considering multiple factors that contribute to early word learning, providing a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the facilitation process

英語学習者モデルとしてのScrabble®競技者 : 日本の大学における定期・長期競技者の自立した学習習慣に関する考察

本論文は，日本の大学における英語教室外の自主的な定期的・長期的競技者グループが示したScrabble®の有用性について報告するものである。この語彙ゲームは必須の正規英語授業科目に加えて，学生の英語能力を維持・伸長するための自立的な努力を促す多くの可能性を有している。言語学習に必要な持続可能な関心と努力のために内面点的関与や学習者の自立性についての重要性は多くの報告がなされている。これらの重要性は，とりわけ教室外での目標言語との接触が限られているEFL（English as a foreign language）の状況下においては言うまでもない。これまでの自国及び外国での目標言語使用のコミュニティにおける英語学習者に関する研究では，学習環境に対する現実的な制限に関して自律した行動をとることが，学習者としての成功の可否を左右すると報告されている。本調査において，定期的・長期的競技者は徐々に「成功する」また「自立した」英語学習者となる姿を示した。彼らは大学在学中に教室外での英語能力を磨く機会を有益だと捉え，前向きにそのような機会を求めたのである。第二言語あるいは外国語学習の高い目標を達成しようとする際に確かな拠り所となる考えられ，自律した学習行動のこのような具体的事例は，経験が少なくまだ成果の出ていない学習者にとって良きロールモデルとなり得ると考える。This exploratory case study looks at a small group of Scrabble® gameplay enthusiasts at a Japanese university, whose regular and long-term engagement in the informal outside-of-class activity has demonstrated various ways the game can support their autonomous efforts to maintain and/or develop their English language skills beyond their compulsory English language courses. Much has been published on the importance of affective engagement and learner autonomy for the sustained interest and effort crucial for language learning, particularly in EFL contexts with limited contact opportunities with the target language outside of the classroom. Studies of English learners within their home countries or abroad in target language communities have revealed learners’ self-directed action toward the perceived and actual limitations of their learning context to be another important difference between successful and unsuccessful learners. In this study, the regular and long-term players have over time have revealed themselves to be successful and autonomous learners of English, who during their university years valued and proactively sought out outside-of-class English practice opportunities. Concrete examples of their self-directed actions, shown to be reliable indicators of second and foreign language learners’ high level of achievement in their target languages, should serve as models for less experienced and/or effective learners within their learning context

日本語話者の英語コミュニケーションにおける日本語使用と会話スタイルの考察

日本語は，外国語を積極的に取り入れ，そしてそれらを日本語母語話者が普段に使用できるように変容してきた長い歴史を持っている。近年の最も影響力を持つ言語接触は，第二次世界大戦後の米国占領軍のアメリカ英語であり，昨今ではICT（情報通信技術）とポップ・カルチャーの普及である。2007年時点での推定では，日本語辞書の掲載語彙の約10%が外国語に語源を持つ「外来語」であり，その内の9割が英語に語源をもつとされている（Daulton, 2011）。このように標準日本語や借用語辞典に確固たる位置を占める外来語に加えて，「造語」や新たな「疑似英語」あるいは「和製英語」や「和製外来語」も多く見られる。それらの造語が英語に基づいていなかったり，あるいは英語母語話者には認知されないような変化をしたりしていても，日本人英語話者は異なる文化背景を持つ話者との英語コミュニケーションにおいてこのような造語を用いることは頻繁にある。本研究の目的は，英語コミュニケーションにおける日本人英語話者の日本語使用と日本語化された外来語に関する報告であるが，日本人大学4年生とインドネシア研究者の初対面における相互作用を詳細に考察することにより，日本人話者と非日本人話者の会話スタイルの違いに気付くことの重要性についても指摘をする。The Japanese language has an extensive history of adopting words from foreign languages and adapting them substantially for easy use by its native speakers. The most recent and extensively influential contact language has been American-English from the post-World War II US occupation and currently due to the popularity of information and communication technology and pop-culture. A 2007 estimate has approximately 10% of the Japanese lexicon being of foreign origin or ‘gairaigo’ and of the 10% of gairaigo in Japanese dictionaries, up to 90% is reported to be of English origin (Daulton, 2011). In addition to these many established gairaigo entries in standard Japanese and/or specialized loanword dictionaries, there is frequent coining and usage of new ‘pseudo’ or ‘made-in-Japan’ English, ‘wasei-eigo’, and foreign language ‘waseigaikokugo’. Even when the coinages are not based on English words or undergo mutations that render them unrecognizable to native speakers of English, Japanese speakers of English can regularly be heard using such coinages in English-language discourse with speakers from other cultures. Though the initial focus of the study was Japanese speakers’ use of Japanese or Japanized foreign terms in English language discourse, a close look at a first time interaction between a fourth-year Japanese university student and an Indonesian researcher points to the value of also raising Japanese speakers’ awareness of different conversation styles of non-Japanese speakers of English

Repression of the Glucocorticoid Receptor Aggravates Acute Ischemic Brain Injuries in Adult Mice.

Strokes are one of the leading causes of mortality and chronic morbidity in the world, yet with only limited successful interventions available at present. Our previous studies revealed the potential role of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) in the pathogenesis of neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). In the present study, we investigate the effect of GR knockdown on acute ischemic brain injuries in a model of focal cerebral ischemia induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in adult male CD1 mice. GR siRNAs and the negative control were administered via intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection 48 h prior to MCAO. The cerebral infarction volume and neurobehavioral deficits were determined 48 h after MCAO. RT-qPCR was employed to assess the inflammation-related gene expression profiles in the brain before and after MCAO. Western Blotting was used to evaluate the expression levels of GR, the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) and the brain-derived neurotrophic factor/tropomyosin receptor kinase B (BDNF/TrkB) signaling. The siRNAs treatment decreased GR, but not MR, protein expression, and significantly enhanced expression levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-1β, and TNF-α) in the brain. Of interest, GR knockdown suppressed BDNF/TrkB signaling in adult mice brains. Importantly, GR siRNA pretreatment significantly increased the infarction size and exacerbated the neurobehavioral deficits induced by MCAO in comparison to the control group. Thus, the present study demonstrates the important role of GR in the regulation of the inflammatory responses and neurotrophic BDNF/TrkB signaling pathway in acute ischemic brain injuries in adult mice, revealing a new insight into the pathogenesis and therapeutic potential in acute ischemic strokes

Preservation Methods Differ in Fecal Microbiome Stability, Affecting Suitability for Field Studies.

Immediate freezing at -20°C or below has been considered the gold standard for microbiome preservation, yet this approach is not feasible for many field studies, ranging from anthropology to wildlife conservation. Here we tested five methods for preserving human and dog fecal specimens for periods of up to 8 weeks, including such types of variation as freeze-thaw cycles and the high temperature fluctuations often encountered under field conditions. We found that three of the methods-95% ethanol, FTA cards, and the OMNIgene Gut kit-can preserve samples sufficiently well at ambient temperatures such that differences at 8 weeks are comparable to differences among technical replicates. However, even the worst methods, including those with no fixative, were able to reveal microbiome differences between species at 8 weeks and between individuals after a week, allowing meta-analyses of samples collected using various methods when the effect of interest is expected to be larger than interindividual variation (although use of a single method within a study is strongly recommended to reduce batch effects). Encouragingly for FTA cards, the differences caused by this method are systematic and can be detrended. As in other studies, we strongly caution against the use of 70% ethanol. The results, spanning 15 individuals and over 1,200 samples, provide our most comprehensive view to date of storage effects on stool and provide a paradigm for the future studies of other sample types that will be required to provide a global view of microbial diversity and its interaction among humans, animals, and the environment. IMPORTANCE Our study, spanning 15 individuals and over 1,200 samples, provides our most comprehensive view to date of storage and stabilization effects on stool. We tested five methods for preserving human and dog fecal specimens for periods of up to 8 weeks, including the types of variation often encountered under field conditions, such as freeze-thaw cycles and high temperature fluctuations. We show that several cost-effective methods provide excellent microbiome stability out to 8 weeks, opening up a range of field studies with humans and wildlife that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive

Creation of a database to assess effects of omega-3, omega-6 and total polyunsaturated fats on health: methodology for a set of systematic reviews

Objective To create a database of long-term RCTs comparing higher with lower omega-3, omega-6 or total PUFA, regardless of reported outcomes, and develop methods to assess effects of increasing omega-6, ALA, LCn3 and total PUFA on health outcomes. Design Systematic review search, methodology and meta-analyses. Data Sources Medline, Embase, WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, Clinicaltrials.gov, and trials in relevant systematic reviews. Eligibility Criteria Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of ≥24 weeks duration assessing effects of increasing alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), long-chain omega-3 (LCn3), omega-6 or total polyunsaturated fats (PUFA), regardless of outcomes reported Data Synthesis Methods included random-effects meta-analyses, sensitivity analyses. Funnel plots were examined and subgrouping assessed effects of intervention type, replacement, baseline diabetes risk and use of diabetic medications, trial duration and dose. Quality of evidence was assessed using GRADE. Results Electronic searches generated 37,810 hits, de-duplicated to 19,772 titles and abstracts. We assessed 2155 full text papers, conference abstracts and trials registry entries independently in duplicate. Included studies were grouped into 363 RCTs comparing higher with lower omega-3, omega-6 and/or total PUFA intake of at least 6 months duration – the Database. Of these 363 included RCTs, 216 RCTs were included in at least one of our reviews of health outcomes, data extracted and risk of bias assessed in duplicate (Dataset 1, Supplementary File 1). Ninety five RCTs were included in the database but not included in our current reviews (Dataset 2, Supplementary File 2). Of these 311 completed trials, 27 altered ALA intake, 221 altered LCn3 intake, and 16 trials altered omega-3 intake without specifying whether ALA or LCn3. Forty one trials altered omega-6 fats and 59 total PUFA. The remaining 52 trials (Dataset 3, Supplementary File 3) are ongoing though 13 (25%) appear to be outstanding, or constitute missing data. Conclusions This extensive database of trials is available to allow assessment of further health outcomes

Development and validation of a pragmatic natural language processing approach to identifying falls in older adults in the emergency department

BACKGROUND: Falls among older adults are both a common reason for presentation to the emergency department, and a major source of morbidity and mortality. It is critical to identify fall patients quickly and reliably during, and immediately after, emergency department encounters in order to deliver appropriate care and referrals. Unfortunately, falls are difficult to identify without manual chart review, a time intensive process infeasible for many applications including surveillance and quality reporting. Here we describe a pragmatic NLP approach to automating fall identification. METHODS: In this single center retrospective review, 500 emergency department provider notes from older adult patients (age 65 and older) were randomly selected for analysis. A simple, rules-based NLP algorithm for fall identification was developed and evaluated on a development set of 1084 notes, then compared with identification by consensus of trained abstractors blinded to NLP results. RESULTS: The NLP pipeline demonstrated a recall (sensitivity) of 95.8%, specificity of 97.4%, precision of 92.0%, and F1 score of 0.939 for identifying fall events within emergency physician visit notes, as compared to gold standard manual abstraction by human coders. CONCLUSIONS: Our pragmatic NLP algorithm was able to identify falls in ED notes with excellent precision and recall, comparable to that of more labor-intensive manual abstraction. This finding offers promise not just for improving research methods, but as a potential for identifying patients for targeted interventions, quality measure development and epidemiologic surveillance

Ctf18-RFC and DNA Pol ϵ form a stable leading strand polymerase/clamp loader complex required for normal and perturbed DNA replication

The eukaryotic replisome must faithfully replicate DNA and cope with replication fork blocks and stalling, while simultaneously promoting sister chromatid cohesion. Ctf18-RFC is an alternative PCNA loader that links all these processes together by an unknown mechanism. Here, we use integrative structural biology combined with yeast genetics and biochemistry to highlight the specific functions that Ctf18-RFC plays within the leading strand machinery via an interaction with the catalytic domain of DNA Pol ϵ. We show that a large and unusually flexible interface enables this interaction to occur constitutively throughout the cell cycle and regardless of whether forks are replicating or stalled. We reveal that, by being anchored to the leading strand polymerase, Ctf18-RFC can rapidly signal fork stalling to activate the S phase checkpoint. Moreover, we demonstrate that, independently of checkpoint signaling or chromosome cohesion, Ctf18-RFC functions in parallel to Chl1 and Mrc1 to protect replication forks and cell viability. [Abstract copyright: © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

Wallerian Degeneration Surveyed in Poliomyelitis

Poliomyelitis is a highly infectious disease rendering varying degrees of respiratory illness, gastroenteritis, malaise and potentially severe forms of paralysis. Infection is generated by a virus belonging in the Picornaviridae family. This enterovirus infects the human body most often through the fecal-oral route and proliferates within the mucosa of the pharynx and gastrointestinal tract. The virus ordinarily invades the lymphoid tissue and enters the bloodstream where it may enter the central nervous system and infect motor neurons in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and brainstem. Replication of the virus within the motor neurons induces neuronal cell death and axonal degeneration, resulting in the denervation of skeletal muscle and the subsequent manifestation of poliomyelitis. Patients with poliomyelitis will experience asymmetric muscle atrophy and flaccid paralysis. Here, we report on a case of a 67 year old male cadaver with poliomyelitis discovered during a routine cadaveric dissection in the gross anatomy lab at the University of Bridgeport