Social Context Modulates Tolerance For Pragmatic Violations In Binary But Not Graded Judgments

A common method for investigating pragmatic processing and its development in children is to have participants make binary judgments of underinformative (UI) statements such as Some elephants are mammals. Rejection of such statements indicates that a (not-all) scalar implicature has been computed. Acceptance of UI statements is typically taken as evidence that the perceiver has not computed an implicature. Under this assumption, the results of binary judgment studies in children and adults suggest that computing an implicature may be cognitively costly. For instance, children under 7 years of age are systematically more likely to accept UI statements compared to adults. This makes sense if children have fewer processing resources than adults. However, Katsos and Bishop (2011) found that young children are able to detect violations of informativeness when given graded rather than binary response options. They propose that children simply have a greater tolerance for pragmatic violations than do adults. The present work examines whether this pragmatic tolerance plays a role in adult binary judgment tasks. We manipulated social attributes of a speaker in an attempt to influence how accepting a perceiver might be of the speaker’s utterances. This manipulation affected acceptability rates for binary judgments (Experiment 1) but not for graded judgments (Experiment 2). These results raise concerns about the widespread use of binary choice tasks for investigating pragmatic processing and undermine the existing evidence suggesting that computing scalar implicatures is costly

Rapid onset of hypercalcemia from high-grade lymphoma in the setting of HIV-related immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome.

Hypercalcemia in HIV patients has been previously reported, but 1,25-(OH)2 vitamin D-mediated hypercalcemia, due to increased activity of extrarenal 1-alpha hydroxylase, is rarely described with HIV-related infections or malignancies. We describe a case of 1,25-(OH)2 vitamin D-mediated hypercalcemia in a patient presenting with progressive cognitive decline and weakness. Initial evaluation revealed a new diagnosis of HIV, for which he was started on antiretroviral therapy (ART). He was also noted to have mild asymptomatic hypocalcemia, likely from his acute illness and malnutrition, which was not further investigated at the time. While the patient's mental status initially improved with ART, he became progressively delirious and was found to be hypercalcemic approximately 4 weeks after the initiation of ART. Possible etiologies for hypercalcemia were vigorously evaluated, including granulomatous disease, infection, and malignancy, in the setting of suspected immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS), due to recent initiation of ART. Infectious workup was unrevealing, but computed tomography (CT) of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis revealed new extensive diffuse lymphadenopathy and hepatomegaly, not present on admission studies. Cytology and flow cytometry of a liver biopsy specimen revealed CD10 positive high-grade B-cell lymphoma. Chemotherapy was not pursued due to poor performance status. Over the next week, spontaneous tumor lysis developed, and the patient expired. Postmortem, his 1,25-(OH)2 vitamin D level returned as markedly elevated. Immunohistochemical staining of his liver biopsy tissue showed strong expression of CYP27B1. 1,25-(OH)2 vitamin D-mediated hypercalcemia is uncommon in a patient with newly diagnosed HIV and, in this case, was likely due to IRIS unmasking an underlying high-grade lymphoma and restoration of immune function (including T-cells and cytokine production). This case emphasizes the importance of including aggressive lymphomas, capable of progressing over days to weeks, in the evaluation of hypercalcemia in HIV patients at risk for developing IRIS and the rapid dynamic changes in mineral homeostasis that can occur with such an aggressive tumor in an immunocompromised host

Generation of graph-state streams

We propose a protocol to generate a stream of mobile qubits in a graph state through a single stationary parent qubit and discuss two types of its physical implementation, namely, the generation of photonic graph states through an atom-like qubit and those of flying atoms through a cavity-mode photonic qubit. The generated graph states fall into an important class that can hugely reduce the resource requirement of fault-tolerant linear optics quantum computation, which was previously known to be far from realistic. In regard to the flying atoms, we also propose a heralded generation scheme, which allows for high-fidelity graph states even under the photon loss.Comment: Accepted for publication at PRA Rapid Communication

Role for targeted resection in the multidisciplinary treatment of metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor

The management of advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) has evolved in the modern era due to the discovery of c-kit mutations and the development of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Until the advent of TKIs such as imatinib, the median survival reported for patients with advanced GIST was 19 months. Although surgery is the treatment of choice for resectable primary GIST, its role in cases of recurrence and metastasis remains to be unclear. This review outlines the potential beneficial role of repeat surgical resection in the multidisciplinary treatment of advanced GIST in the era of TKIs

A novel chromosome segregation mechanism during female meiosis.

In a wide range of eukaryotes, chromosome segregation occurs through anaphase A, in which chromosomes move toward stationary spindle poles, anaphase B, in which chromosomes move at the same velocity as outwardly moving spindle poles, or both. In contrast, Caenorhabditis elegans female meiotic spindles initially shorten in the pole-to-pole axis such that spindle poles contact the outer kinetochore before the start of anaphase chromosome separation. Once the spindle pole-to-kinetochore contact has been made, the homologues of a 4-μm-long bivalent begin to separate. The spindle shortens an additional 0.5 μm until the chromosomes are embedded in the spindle poles. Chromosomes then separate at the same velocity as the spindle poles in an anaphase B-like movement. We conclude that the majority of meiotic chromosome movement is caused by shortening of the spindle to bring poles in contact with the chromosomes, followed by separation of chromosome-bound poles by outward sliding