The impact of shared knowledge on speakers’ prosody

International audienceHow does the knowledge shared by interlocutors during interaction modify the way speakers speak? Specifically, how does prosody change when speakers know that their addressees do not share the same knowledge as them? We studied these effects in an interactive paradigm in which French speakers gave instructions to addressees about where to place a cross between different objects (e.g., You put the cross between the red mouse and the red house). We manipulated (i) whether the two interlocutors shared or did not necessarily share the same objects and (ii) the informational status of referents. We were interested in two types of prosodic variations: global prosodic variations that affect entire utterances (i.e., pitch range and speech rate variations) and more local prosodic variations that encode infor-mational status of referents (i.e., prosodic phrasing for French). We found that participants spoke more slowly and with larger pitch excursions in the not-shared knowledge condition than in the shared knowledge condition while they did not prosodically encode the informa-tional status of referents regardless of the knowledge condition. Results demonstrated that speakers kept track of what the addressee knew, and that they adapted their global prosody to their interlocutors. This made the task too cognitively demanding to allow the prosodic encoding of the informational status of referents. Our findings are in line with the idea that complex reasoning usually implicated in constructing a model of the addressee co-exists with speaker-internal constraints such as cognitive load to affect speaker's prosody during interaction

The prevention and management of chronic disease in primary care: recommendations from a knowledge translation meeting

BACKGROUND: Seven chronic disease prevention and management programs were implemented across Quebec with funding support from a provincial-private industry funding initiative. Given the complexity of implementing integrated primary care chronic disease management programs, a knowledge transfer meeting was held to share experiences across programs and synthesize common challenges and success factors for implementation. METHODS: The knowledge translation meeting was held in February 2014 in Montreal, Canada. Seventy-five participants consisting of 15 clinicians, 14 researchers, 31 knowledge users, and 15 representatives from the funding agencies were broken up into groups of 10 or 11 and conducted a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis on either the implementation or the evaluation of these chronic disease management programs. Results were reported back to the larger group during a plenary and recorded. Audiotapes were transcribed and summarized using pragmatic thematic analysis. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Strengths to leverage for the implementation of the seven programs include: (1) synergy between clinical and research teams; (2) stakeholders working together; (3) motivation of clinicians; and (4) the fact that the programs are evidence-based. Weaknesses to address include: (1) insufficient resources; (2) organizational change within the clinical sites; (3) lack of referrals from primary care physicians; and (4) lack of access to programs. Strengths to leverage for the evaluation of these programs include: (1) engagement of stakeholders and (2) sharing of knowledge between clinical sites. Weaknesses to address include: (1) lack of referrals; (2) difficulties with data collection; and (3) difficulties in identifying indicators and control groups. Opportunities for both themes include: (1) fostering new and existing partnerships and stakeholder relations; (2) seizing funding opportunities; (3) knowledge transfer; (4) supporting the transformation of professional roles; (5) expand the use of health information technology; and (6) conduct cost evaluations. Fifteen recommendations related to mobilisation of primary care physicians, support for the transformation of professional roles, and strategies aimed at facilitating the implementation and evaluation of chronic disease management programs were formulated based on the discussions at this knowledge translation event. CONCLUSION: The results from this knowledge translation day will help inform the sustainability of these seven chronic disease management programs in Quebec and the implementation and evaluation of similar programs elsewhere

DMTs and Covid-19 severity in MS: a pooled analysis from Italy and France

We evaluated the effect of DMTs on Covid-19 severity in patients with MS, with a pooled-analysis of two large cohorts from Italy and France. The association of baseline characteristics and DMTs with Covid-19 severity was assessed by multivariate ordinal-logistic models and pooled by a fixed-effect meta-analysis. 1066 patients with MS from Italy and 721 from France were included. In the multivariate model, anti-CD20 therapies were significantly associated (OR = 2.05, 95%CI = 1.39–3.02, p < 0.001) with Covid-19 severity, whereas interferon indicated a decreased risk (OR = 0.42, 95%CI = 0.18–0.99, p = 0.047). This pooled-analysis confirms an increased risk of severe Covid-19 in patients on anti-CD20 therapies and supports the protective role of interferon

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics' resources: focus on curated databases

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (www.isb-sib.ch) provides world-class bioinformatics databases, software tools, services and training to the international life science community in academia and industry. These solutions allow life scientists to turn the exponentially growing amount of data into knowledge. Here, we provide an overview of SIB's resources and competence areas, with a strong focus on curated databases and SIB's most popular and widely used resources. In particular, SIB's Bioinformatics resource portal ExPASy features over 150 resources, including UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, ENZYME, PROSITE, neXtProt, STRING, UniCarbKB, SugarBindDB, SwissRegulon, EPD, arrayMap, Bgee, SWISS-MODEL Repository, OMA, OrthoDB and other databases, which are briefly described in this article

Accidents iatrogènes médicamenteux chez le sujet âgé hospitalisé en court séjour gériatrique (étude de prévalence et des facteurs de risque)

AIX-MARSEILLE2-BU Méd/Odontol. (130552103) / SudocPARIS-BIUM (751062103) / SudocSudocFranceF

How Does the Absence of Shared Knowledge Between Interlocutors Affect the Production of French Prosodic Forms?

International audienceWe examine the hypothesis that modelling the addressee in spoken interaction affects the production of prosodic forms by the speaker. This question was tested in an interactive paradigm that enabled us to measure prosodic variations at two levels: the global/acoustic level and the phonological one. We used a semi-spontaneous task in which French speakers gave instructions to addressees about where to place a cross between different objects (e.g., Tu mets la croix entre la souris bordeau et la maison bordeau; ‘You put the cross between the red mouse and the red house’). Each trial was composed of two noun-adjective fragments and the target was the second fragment. We manipulated (i) whether the two interlocutors shared or didn’t share the same objects and (ii) the informational status of targets to obtain variations in abstract prosodic phrasing. We found that the absence of shared knowledge between interlocutors affected the speaker’s production of prosodic forms at the global/acoustic level (i.e., pitch range and speech rate) but not at the phonological one (i.e., prosodic phrasing). These results are consistent with a mechanism in which global prosodic variations are influenced by audience design because they reflect the way that speakers help addressees to understand speech

Structuring pasta with legumes to improve nutritional properties

Structuring pasta with legumes to improve nutritional properties. International Symposium of Food Science and Human Wellnes

Am J Epidemiol

Healthy lifestyles are promising targets for prevention of cognitive aging, yet the optimal time windows for interventions remain unclear. We selected a case-control sample nested within the Nurses’ Health Study (starting year 1976, mean age = 51 years), including 14,956 women aged ≥70 years who were free of both stroke and cognitive impairment at enrollment in a cognitive substudy (1995–2001). Cases (n = 1,496) were women with the 10% worst slopes of cognitive decline, and controls (n = 7,478) were those with slopes better than the median. We compared the trajectories of body mass index (weight (kg)/height (m)2), alternate Mediterranean diet (A-MeDi) score, and physical activity between groups, from midlife through 1 year preceding the cognitive substudy. In midlife, cases had higher body mass index than controls (mean difference (MD) = 0.59 units, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.39, 0.80), lower physical activity (MD = –1.41 metabolic equivalent of task–hours/week, 95% CI: –2.07, –0.71), and worse A-MeDi scores (MD = –0.16 points, 95% CI: –0.26, –0.06). From midlife through later life, compared with controls, cases had consistently lower A-MeDi scores but a deceleration of weight gain and a faster decrease in physical activity. In conclusion, maintaining a healthy lifestyle since midlife may help reduce cognitive decline in aging. At older ages, both deceleration of weight gain and a decrease in physical activity may reflect early signs of cognitive impairment

A simplified model system for Toxoplasma gondii spread within a heterogeneous environment

This study is dedicated to building and analyzing the spatial spread of Toxoplasma gondii through a heterogeneous predator‐prey system. The spatial domain is made of N patches hosting various population species, some of them being prey, others being predators. Predators offer strong heterogeneities with respect to local sustainable resources yielding variable growth rates, from exponential decay to logistic regulation. T. gondii life cycle goes through several stages, starting in the environment where oocysts are released from cat feces, reaching prey within which asexual reproduction yields cysts and then predators wherein sexual reproduction takes place. The resulting model system is complex to handle. We consider some relevant toy models with three patches, two resident predator species and Lotka‐Volterra functional responses to predation. We provide the existence and local stability of a persistent stationary state for the underlying predator‐prey model systems. The reproduction number R0 is computed in the quasi‐stationary case; it simplifies when slow‐fast dynamics are considered. Numerical experiments illustrate our analysis