Pragmatic Side Effects

International audienceIn the quest to give a formal compositional semantics to natural languages, semanticists have started turning their attention to phenomena that have been also considered as parts of pragmatics (e.g., discourse anaphora andpresupposition projection). To account for these phenomena, the very kinds of meanings assigned to words and phrases are often revisited. To be more specific, in the prevalent paradigm of modeling natural languagedenotations using the simply-typed lambda calculus (higher-order logic) this means revisiting the types of denotations assigned to individual parts of speech. However, the lambda calculus also serves as a fundamental theory of computation, and in the study of computation, similar type shifts have been employed to give a meaning to side effects. Side effects in programming anguages correspond to actions that go beyond the lexical scope of an expression (a thrown exception might propagate throughout a program, a variable modified at one point might later be read at an another) or even beyond the scope of the program itself (a program might interact with the outside world by e.g., printing documents, making sounds, operating robotic limbs\ldots)

X-ray imaging with compound refractive lens and microfocus X-ray tube

Compound refractive lenses (CRL), consisting of a lot number in-line concave microlenses made of low-Z material were studied. Lenses with focal length 109 mm and 41 mm for 8-keV X-rays, microfocus X-ray tube and X-ray CCD camera were used in experiments. Obtained images show intensity distribution of magnified microfocus X-ray source focal spot. Within the experiments, one lens was also used as an objective lens of the X-ray microscope, where the copper anode X-ray microfocus tube served as a source. Magnified images of gold mesh with 5 microns bars were obtained. Theoretical limits of CRL and experimental results are discussed

Towards a Wide-Coverage Grammar : Graphical Abstract Categorical Grammars

We present work whose ultimate goal is the creation af o wide-coverage abstract categorical grammar (ACG) that could be used to automatically build discourse-level representations. In our work, we advance towards that goal by laying down the foundations necessary for building wide-coverage ACGs. We first examine existing language resources, in particular the Frigram interaction grammar and its lexicon Frilex, and assess their utility to building a wide-coverage. ACG. We then present our implementation of the ACG machinery wich allows us to experiment with grammars lexicalized by Frilex. Finally, we consider the challenge of integrating the treatment of disparate linguistic constraints in a single ACG and porpose a generalization of the formalism : graphical abstract categorical grammars. The report concludes with an exploration of some of the formal properties of graphical ACGs

Effect of Selected Stilbenoids on Human Fecal Microbiota

Dietary phenolics or polyphenols are mostly metabolized by the human gut microbiota. These metabolites appear to confer the beneficial health effects attributed to phenolics. Microbial composition affects the type of metabolites produced. Reciprocally, phenolics modulate microbial composition. Understanding this relationship could be used to positively impact health by phenolic supplementation and thus create favorable colonic conditions. This study explored the effect of six stilbenoids (batatasin III, oxyresveratrol, piceatannol, pinostilbene, resveratrol, thunalbene) on the gut microbiota composition. Stilbenoids were anaerobically fermented with fecal bacteria from four donors, samples were collected at 0 and 24 h, and effects on the microbiota were assessed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Statistical tests identified affected microbes at three taxonomic levels. Observed microbial composition modulation by stilbenoids included a decrease in the Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio, a decrease in the relative abundance of strains from the genus Clostridium, and effects on the family Lachnospiraceae. A frequently observed effect was a further decrease of the relative abundance when compared to the control. An opposite effect to the control was observed for Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, whose relative abundance increased. Observed effects were more frequently attributed to resveratrol and piceatannol, followed by thunalbene and batatasin III