Online Permaculture Resources: An Evaluation of a Selected Sample

As a newly-emerging, sustainable approach to landscape management, permaculture seeks to integrate knowledge from several disciplines into a holistic system with emphasis on ecological and social responsibility. Online resources on permaculture appear to represent a promising direction in the movement by supplementing existing printed sources, serving to update and diversify existing content, and increasing access to permaculture information and praxis among the general public. This study evaluated a sample of online resources on permaculture using a framework of parameters reflecting website usability and content quality. Best practice for website usability, as well as diversity of information and applicability, was addressed. The evaluation revealed, overall, good quality and usability in the majority of cases, and suggests a strong online presence among the existing permaculture community, and accessible support for those with an interest in joining the movement

When You CAN See the Difference: The Phonetic Basis of Sonority in American Sign Language

Spoken and signed languages (SL) deliver perceptual cues which exhibit various degrees of perceptual validity during categorization: In spoken languages, listeners develop perceptual biases when integrating multiple acoustic dimensions during auditory categorization (Holt & Lotto, 2006). This leads us to expect differential perceptual validity for dynamic gestural units HANDSHAPE, MOVEMENT, ORIENTATION, and LOCATION produced by manual articulators in SLs. In this study, we use a closed-set sentence discrimination task developed by Bochner et al. (2011) to evaluate the perceptual saliency of the gestural components of signs in American Sign Language (ASL) for naiïve signers and deaf L2 learners of ASL proficient in another SL. Our goal is to gauge which of these features are likely to present the phonetic basis of sonority in sign modality and relay phonemic contrasts perceptible for even first-time signers.25 deaf L2 ASL signers and 28 hearing English speakers with no experience in any SL participated in this study. Results reveal that phonemic contrasts based on HANDSHAPE presented an area of maximum difficulty in phonological discrimination for sign-naïve participants. For all participants, contrasts based on ORIENTATION and LOCATION and involving larger scale articulators, were associated with robust categorical discrimination

Prosodic and structural variability in free word order language discourse

Independently of the modality of presentation (written or auditory), human processing of discourse obligatorily involves monitoring relative information prominence which reflects how important information is in discourse, and thereby determines the perceptual impact it makes on the speaker and the listener. In spoken language use, relative information prominence is expressed it by means of morphology, structural organization of information across an utterance, and by prosodic means (Morgan, Meier, & Newport 1987, Stolterfoht, Friederici, Alter, & Steube 2007, Watson 2010). To illustrate, Hindi speakers may use special morphological prominence markers, bound morphemes 'hii' and 'bhii', which attach to words that the listener is likely to identify as prominent (Luchkina, Puri, Jyothi, Cole 2015). In Hungarian and Hindi, speakers place the prominent word in the pre-verbal position in a sentence or phrase, which presents a designated location for prominent (focused) information in these languages (Genzel and Kügler 2010, Féry 2013). In English, it is the utterance-final or, else, the most prosodically prominent word in a sentence or phrase that is likely to be identified as prominent (Ladd, 2008, Watson 2010). This thesis examines the use of acoustic-prosodic cues and constituent ordering in the expression of relative information prominence and the way it affects perception (as perceived prominence) in Russian, a free word order language, by empirically testing the "dual route" model of expressing prominence in discourse. This model presupposes (1) structural "packaging" of information, evident from the linear ordering of words in an utterance such that words communicating relatively more accessible and therefore less salient information precede words communicating less accessible and therefore more salient information, and (2) varying magnitude of acoustic-prosodic parameters in a controlled way such that prominent information bears greater perceptual salience in speech. Speech production and comprehension experiments described below test whether these routes, structural and acoustic-prosodic, are used independently or together in the encoding of information prominence. Russian is chosen as the test case because it allows but does not require surface reordering of sentential constituents for information structural purposes and exhibits distinctions in prosodic prominence among the constituents of a sentence (Sekerina 2003, Slioussar 2011a, b, Svetozarova 1998). To examine how prosodic and structural cues are utilized during the off-line and the online processing of discourse in Russian, the following research objectives are pursued. In Study 1 (see Chapter 2 of the present version), the distribution of structural and acoustic-prosodic variability in read discourse is examined in association with two well-known prominence scales: distinctions in the information status of a discourse referent and animacy of a discourse referent (in conjunction with grammatical function of the corresponding lexical word). In Study 2 (see Chapter 3 of the present thesis), relative contribution and perceptual validity of linearization prominence cues and acoustic-prosodic prominence cues is examined using perceived prominence ratings solicited from linguistically-naïve native speakers of Russian. In Study 3 (see Chapter 4 of the present thesis), processing costs associated with these prominence cues are gauged using probe recognition response times obtained during online comprehension of discourse fragments with experimentally controlled variation in word order and acoustic-prosodic expression

Sixteen-month-olds comprehend unanchored absent reference

A nascent understanding of absent reference emerges around 12months: provided with rich contextual support, infants look and pointto the location of a displaced object. When can infants understandabsent reference without contextual support? Using a proceduremodified from Hendrickson and Sundara (2017), 13- and 16-month-olds first listened to utterances containing familiar target words, whileviewing a checkerboard. Then, two objects – a referent and a distractor(e.g., a cup and a shoe) – appeared on the screen. Only 16-month-oldsdemonstrated a reliable looking preference for the referents, suggestingthat listening to the utterances activated their mental images of thereferents. These results establish that at 16 months, infants comprehendreference to absent entities without any contextual support

Developmental switch in the kinase dependency of long-term potentiation depends on expression of GluA4 subunit-containing AMPA receptors

Peer reviewe

Systemic, Physical and Pharmacological Treatment of Spinal Column and Somatic Diseases or Russian Alternative to Chinese Acupuncture

The complex KUMP-01 was designed for relief of acute and chronic pains in spinal column. The complex became the basis for new medical technologies of combined treatment with the use of medicinal products against the background of restoring of vertebral column physiology. This allowed to manage spinal column pains and treat somatic diseases as well as maintain the proper quality of life

Geoecology of small hydroelectric power stations on the rivers of the Moscow region, Russia

The aim of this paper is validation of possibility of using hydropower potential of local drops in water supply and water disposal systems of large enterprises and thermal power stations, reservoirs and other structures located on the territory of Moscow and Moscow Oblast; also there validated the possibility and feasibility of their hydropower potential use and consideration of geo-ecological factors such as geological setting and composition of soils on the territories of weirs, presence of forest vegetation, sorption characteristics and composition of soils significantly affecting the degree of protection of live streams against pollution. Therefore, they should be taken into consideration at conducting comprehensive assessment of the springs condition. Units of small HPPs may be installed at spillage of clarified water from sedimentation basins of thermal power stations, water purification facilities. Construction of small HPPs of such types should be realized within the frame of energy efficiency policy. Apart from incorporation of energy efficiency technologies they may contribute in power supply of enterprises at which they are constructed. Such stations may serve as a power supply reserve of certain consumers

GluA4 Dependent Plasticity Mechanisms Contribute to Developmental Synchronization of the CA3-CA1 Circuitry in the Hippocampus

During the course of development, molecular mechanisms underlying activity-dependent synaptic plasticity change considerably. At immature CA3-CA1 synapses in the hippocampus, PKA-driven synaptic insertion of GluA4 AMPA receptors is the predominant mechanism for synaptic strengthening. However, the physiological significance of the developmentally restricted GluA4-dependent plasticity mechanisms is poorly understood. Here we have used microelectrode array (MEA) recordings in GluA4 deficient slice cultures to study the role of GluA4 in early development of the hippocampal circuit function. We find that during the first week in culture (DIV2-6) when GluA4 expression is restricted to pyramidal neurons, loss of GluA4 has no effect on the overall excitability of the immature network, but significantly impairs synchronization of the CA3 and CA1 neuronal populations. In the absence of GluA4, the temporal correlation of the population spiking activity between CA3-CA1 neurons was significantly lower as compared to wild-types at DIV6. Our data show that synapse-level defects in transmission and plasticity mechanisms are efficiently compensated for to normalize population firing rate at the immature hippocampal network. However, lack of the plasticity mechanisms typical for the immature synapses may perturb functional coupling between neuronal sub-populations, a defect frequently implicated in the context of developmentally originating neuropsychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

The Potential of Humorous Discourse in Understanding National Character

Юмористический дискурс дает материал для исследования национального характера носителей языка. Текст анекдотов может служить как эффективным средством персональной самоидентификации, так и средством осознания групповой национальной идентичности. Герой анекдота является неким собирательным образом, носителем тех качеств, которые делают его представителем определенного национально-культурного сообщества со своими психологическими и поведенческими особенностями.Humorous discourse provides material for studying the national character of native speakers. The text of anecdotes can be an effective means of both personal self-identification and awareness of group national identity. The hero of an anecdote is a collective image of the qualities that make him a member of a particular national cultural community with its own psychological and behavioral characteristics

Molecular mechanisms controlling synaptic recruitment of GluA4 subunit-containing AMPAreceptors

Synaptic recruitment of AMPA receptors (AMPARs) represents a key postsynaptic mechanism driving functional development and maturation of glutamatergic synapses. At immature hippocampal synapses, PKA-driven synaptic insertion of GluA4 is the predominant mechanism for synaptic reinforcement. However, the physiological significance and molecular determinants of this developmentally restricted form of plasticity are not known. Here we show that PKA activation leads to insertion of GluA4 to synaptic sites with initially weak or silent AMPAR-mediated transmission. This effect depends on a novel mechanism involving the extreme C-terminal end of GluA4, which interacts with the membrane proximal region of the C-terminal domain to control GluA4 trafficking. In the absence of GluA4, strengthening of AMPAR-mediated transmission during postnatal development was significantly delayed. These data suggest that the GluA4-mediated activation of silent synapses is a critical mechanism facilitating the functional maturation of glutamatergic circuitry during the critical period of experience-dependent fine-tuning