On the origin of the cumulative semantic inhibition effect

We report an extension of the cumulative semantic inhibition effect found by Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, and Cole-Virtue (2006). Using more sensitive statistical analyses, we found a significant variation in the magnitude of the effect across categories. This variation cannot be explained by the naming speed of each category. In addition, using a sub-sample of the data, a second cumulative effect arouse for newly-defined supra-categories, over and above the effect of the original ones. We discuss these findings in terms of the representations that drive lexical access, and interpret them as supporting featural or distributed hypotheses

La haquitía a partir de la obra «El maẕal de los pobres» de Elie Benchetrit

Haketia was the language spoken by Moroccan Jews in northern Morocco. The novel The Maẕal of the Poor, written by the Tangerian Elie Benchetrit, was published in 2017. It is the most faithful portrait we have about the last period of this language in Tangier, in the 1950s and early 1960s. There were 18 000 Jews in Tangier in 1955, but only 250 remained in 1970. This book includes a total of 415 Moroccan Jewish words, of which 171 come from Old Castilian, 125 from Moroccan Arabic, 114 from Hebrew, 3 from Amazigh and 2 from Portuguese. This article presents a linguistic study of these terms, accompanied by a presentation of Benchetrit’s work and of the haquitía, especially the variety that was spoken in Tangier.La haquitía fue una lengua hablada por los judíos marroquíes en el norte de Marruecos. La novela El maẕal de los pobres, del tangerino Elie Benchetrit, aparecida en 2017, es el retrato más fiel que conservamos sobre el último periodo de la existencia de esta lengua en Tánger, los años 1950 y principios de 1960. De los 18 000 judíos que había en Tánger en 1955, pasaron a ser 250 en 1970. Hemos contabilizado un total de 415 voces, de las que 171 proceden del castellano antiguo, 125 del árabe marroquí, 114 del hebreo, 3 del amazige y 2 del portugués. En este artículo presentamos un estudio lingüístico de estas voces que va acompañado de una presentación de la obra de Benchetrit y de la haquitía, especialmente de la variante que se habló en Tánger

Trepan Reloaded: A Knowledge-driven Approach to Explaining Artificial Neural Networks

Explainability in Artificial Intelligence has been revived as a topic of active research by the need of conveying safety and trust to users in the `how' and `why' of automated decision-making. Whilst a plethora of approaches have been developed for post-hoc explainability, only a few focus on how to use domain knowledge, and how this influences the understandability of global explanations from the users' perspective. In this paper, we show how ontologies help the understandability of global post-hoc explanations, presented in the form of symbolic models. In particular, we build on Trepan, an algorithm that explains artificial neural networks by means of decision trees, and we extend it to include ontologies modeling domain knowledge in the process of generating explanations. We present the results of a user study that measures the understandability of decision trees using a syntactic complexity measure, and through time and accuracy of responses as well as reported user confidence and understandability. The user study considers domains where explanations are critical, namely, in finance and medicine. The results show that decision trees generated with our algorithm, taking into account domain knowledge, are more understandable than those generated by standard Trepan without the use of ontologies

Power-efficient lumped-element meandered silicon Mach-Zehnder modulators

Driving electro-optic modulators in lumped-element (LE) configuration allows for small footprint, reduced power consumption, and improved high-speed performance. The main shortcoming of conventional rectilinear LE modulators are the required high drive-voltages, resulting from their shortened phase-shifters. To address this, we introduce a Mach-Zehnder modulator with meandered phase shifters (M-MZM), which can be driven in LE configuration, while keeping the optical phase shifter length in the same order as traveling-wave modulators (TW-MZMs). A design limitation that needs to be taken into account consists in the optical transit time of the device, that limits the overall electro-optic bandwidth. First, we review the overall power consumption improvement as well as the bandwidth enhancement in LE modulators compared to TW-MZMs, also taking the driver output impedance and parasitics from wire- or bump-bonds into account. Then, we report on the design, implementation, and experimental characterization of carrier-depletion based M-MZMs fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers using standard CMOS-compatible processes. The fabricated M-MZMs, provided with low (W1), moderately (W2) and highly (W3) doped junctions, require 9.2 Vpp, 5.5 Vpp, and 3.7 Vpp for full extinction, with optical insertion losses of 5 dB, 6.3 dB and 9.1 dB. For all three M-MZMs, open eye diagrams are recorded at 25 Gb/s using a 50Ω driver and termination. For unterminated M-MZMs, higher data rates could be achieved, provided that a low output impedance driver be wire- or bump-bonded to the modulators. Finally, we compare the power consumption of the M-MZMs with TW-MZMs and show that the M-MZMs feature a 4X reduced power consumption at 25 Gb/s

Hematoma epidural cervical tras latigazo cervical

Se describe un hematoma epidural a nivel cervical en un varón de 43 años, tras un traumatismo menor tipo latigazo cervical. Su sintomatología inicial obligó a descartar patología cardiaca llegándose al diagnóstico tras estudio mediante resonancia nuclear magnética. El cuadro clínico parcial y no progresivo desaconsejó la cirugía, observándose su reabsorción con nuevo control de resonancia. Se realza una revisión de la bibliografía, señalándose las principales características de esta entidad poco frecuente.We repor a case of cervical epidural hematoma in a 43 year-old man, after soft-tissue cervical spine strain (known as a “whiplast”). At the beginnig, because previous presumptive cardiac pain in this patient, we need to discart cardiac cause. We made the diagnostic of cervical epidural hematoma with the use of magnetic resonance imaging. The incomplete, not severe and nonprogressing defficits led us to conservative treatment; and the hematoma resolved spontaneously, as documented with a new magnetic resonance imaging. The medical literature relating to this uncommon entity has been reviewe

Crescentic Glomerulonephritis in IgA Multiple Myeloma: A Case Report

Background: There are few reports of glomerulonephritis (GN) with crescents and a rapidly progressive course that lead to a diagnosis of a previously unsuspected B-cell dyscrasia. Case Presentation: We report a case of rapidly progressive GN: the patient showed no evidence of etiology at the time of biopsy and was diagnosed as IgA multiple myeloma (MM) during investigation based on a renal biopsy. He presented diffuse proliferative and exudative GN and marked plasma cell infiltration of the kidney. Conclusion: The present case raises the possibility that proliferative GN with crescents may be a rare mode of presentation of MM

Pof8 is a La-related protein and a constitutive component of telomerase in fission yeast

Telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) and the non-coding telomerase RNA subunit (TR) constitute the core of telomerase. Here we now report that the putative F-box protein Pof8 is also a constitutive component of active telomerase in fission yeast. Pof8 functions in a hierarchical assembly pathway by promoting the binding of the Lsm2-8 complex to telomerase RNA, which in turn promotes binding of the catalytic subunit. Loss of Pof8 reduces TER1 stability, causes a severe assembly defect, and results in critically short telomeres. Structure profile searches identified similarities between Pof8 and telomerase subunits from ciliated protozoa, making Pof8 next to TERT the most widely conserved telomerase subunits identified to date

Obstacles to progress in R&D activities caused by Institutional and Regulatory Frameworks: the case of the Biotech Sector in Colombia

This article is based on an exhaustive review of empirical evidence from secondary sources of information seeking to answer the research question: What are the main obstacles raised by the Institutional and Regulatory framework for R&D activities in Colombia’s biotechnology sector? The main findings indicate: (I) that there is a flawed competitive environment that tends to create oligopolies and other scenarios that facilitate the hoarding of information and knowledge and prevent access by many scientists to relevant new information breakthroughs, thus generating material asymmetries between the scientific communities of developed and developing countries; and (II) that other obstacles, generally associated with government shortcomings, produce non-financial transaction costs in terms of time and administrative processes, that represent significant impediments to the development of the biotechnology industry and which, in the Colombian case, have slowed progress in the sector

The effect of metallicity on the Cepheid distance scale and its implications for the Hubble constant (H0H_0) determination

Recent HST determinations of the expansion's rate of the Universe (the Hubble constant, H_0) assumed that the Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation at V and I are independent of metallicity (Freedman, et al., 1996, Saha et al., 1996, Tanvir et al., 1995). The three groups obtain different vales for H_0. We note that most of this discrepancy stems from the asumption (by both groups) that the Period-Luminosity relation is independent of metallicity. We come to this conclusion as a result of our study of the Period-Luminosity relation of 481 Cepheids with 3 millions two colour measurements in the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud obtained as a by-product of the EROS microlensing survey. We find that the derived interstellar absorption corrections are particularly sensitive to the metallicity and when our result is applied to recent estimates based on HST Cepheids observations it makes the low-H_0 values higher and the high-H_0 value lower, bringing those discrepant estimates into agrement around $H_0 \approx 70 km/s Mpc^{-1}$.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, with 2 .ps accepted for publication astronomy and astrophysics Letter

Obstacles to progress in R&D activities caused by Institutional and Regulatory Frameworks: the case of the Biotech Sector in Colombia

This article is based on an exhaustive review of empirical evidence from secondary sources of information seeking to answer the research question: What are the main obstacles raised by the Institutional and Regulatory framework for R&D activities in Colombia’s biotechnology sector? The main findings indicate: (I) that there is a flawed competitive environment that tends to create oligopolies and other scenarios that facilitate the hoarding of information and knowledge and prevent access by many scientists to relevant new information breakthroughs, thus generating material asymmetries between the scientific communities of developed and developing countries; and (II) that other obstacles, generally associated with government shortcomings, produce non-financial transaction costs in terms of time and administrative processes, that represent significant impediments to the development of the biotechnology industry and which, in the Colombian case, have slowed progress in the sector