At the edge of intonation: the interplay of utterance-final F0 movements and voiceless fricative sounds

The paper is concerned with the 'edge of intonation' in a twofold sense. It focuses on utterance-final F0 movements and crosses the traditional segment-prosody divide by investigating the interplay of F0 and voiceless fricatives in speech production. An experiment was performed for German with four types of voiceless fricatives: /f/, /s/, /ʃ/ and /x/. They were elicited with scripted dialogues in the contexts of terminal falling statement and high rising question intonations. Acoustic analyses show that fricatives concluding the high rising question intonations had higher mean centres of gravity (CoGs), larger CoG ranges and higher noise energy levels than fricatives concluding the terminal falling statement intonations. The different spectral-energy patterns are suitable to induce percepts of a high 'aperiodic pitch' at the end of the questions and of a low 'aperiodic pitch' at the end of the statements. The results are discussed with regard to the possible existence of 'segmental intonation' and its implication for F0 truncation and the segment-prosody dichotomy, in which segments are the alleged troublemakers for the production and perception of intonation

Towards balance and boundaries in public discourse : expressing and perceiving online hate speech (XPEROHS)

This study presents an overview and preliminary findings from the XPEROHS-project on hate speech in online contexts. The data is extracted from large-scale Facebook and Twitter corpora, while comparing linguistic instantiations of hate speech in the Danish and German languages. Findings are based on four sub-projects involving the semantics and pragmatics of denigration, the covert dynamics of hate speech, perceptions of spoken and written hate speech, and rhetorical hate speech strategies employed in online interaction. The results demonstrate both overt and covert hate speech towards minority groups, especially Muslims, that are symptomatic of larger societal othering processes and stigmatization

The time course of auditory and language-specific mechanisms in compensation for sibilant assimilation

Models of spoken-word recognition differ on whether compensation for assimilation is language-specific or depends on general auditory processing. English and French participants were taught words that began or ended with the sibilants /s/ and /∫/. Both languages exhibit some assimilation in sibilant sequences (e.g., /s/ becomes like [∫] in dress shop and classe chargée), but they differ in the strength and predominance of anticipatory versus carryover assimilation. After training, participants were presented with novel words embedded in sentences, some of which contained an assimilatory context either preceding or following. A continuum of target sounds ranging from [s] to [∫] was spliced into the novel words, representing a range of possible assimilation strengths. Listeners' perceptions were examined using a visual-world eyetracking paradigm in which the listener clicked on pictures matching the novel words. We found two distinct language-general context effects: a contrastive effect when the assimilating context preceded the target, and flattening of the sibilant categorization function (increased ambiguity) when the assimilating context followed. Furthermore, we found that English but not French listeners were able to resolve the ambiguity created by the following assimilatory context, consistent with their greater experience with assimilation in this context. The combination of these mechanisms allows listeners to deal flexibly with variability in speech forms

Recent Innovations & Daily Problems. A new prosthesis in inguinal hernia repair:preliminary results of a pilot study.

Introduction: Elective surgery for inguinal hernia is affected by very low mortality « 1 per 10000 operation); in contrast, when surgery is carried out for complicated inguinal hernia, risks of postoperative complication are higher. TAPP is a world-wide accepted surgical practice in the treatment of elective bilateral or recurrent inguinal hernia, above all in young patients. Few exploratory studies were published on laparoscopic approach in the treatment of urgent complicated inguinal hernia. Aim of this study was to analyze feasibility (operative time, conversion rate), safety (postoperative morbidity, length of hospital stay) and quality of life (acute and chronic pain, return to work) of trans-abdominal pre-peritoneal laparoscopic hernia repair in acute incarcerated inguinal hernia. Rationale of laparoscopic trans-abdominal approach is the easier hernia reduction under vision and a better exploration of the abdominal cavity. Methods: from September 2012 to September 2013, 15 consecutive patients admitted in emergency at the Division of General Surgery of University "Sapienza", Polo Pontino, for acute incarcerated inguinal hernia were submitted to TAPP using 3 trocars (1 of 10 mm and 2 of 5mm) and polyester prosthesis fixed by fibrin glue. Exclusion criteria for laparoscopic approach were age III, previous abdominal surgery, signs of strangulated hernia. All of them were evaluated for operative time, conversion rate, postoperative morbidity, organ resection or other surgery required. All patients were scored for pain by Visual Analogic Scale (VAS) during postoperative in hospital stay at 7 days, 1,6 and 12 months after surgery. Results: median follow-up was 16 months and 12 as minimum. In all cases reduction of hernia was always possible and none conversion to open surgery was recorded, median operative time was 89 minutes (55-137 as range), omental resection was carried out in one patient (6,6%), no other organ resections needed, whereas contralateral hernia was diagnosed and repaired at the same time in 4 patients (26,6%). No major complications were observed, median blood loss was 100 ml, minor morbidity was contained to 18% represented by fever and wound infection of surgical umbilical scar. Median in hospital stay was 1,5 days with 1-5 days as range. Postoperative median acute pain, measured by visual analogic scale (VAS), was 2 (range:0-4), none patient referred any pain during follow-up. Median time of return to work was 6,5 days, ranged between 3 to 15 days. Patients' compliance to treatment and to follow-up was complete as well their satisfaction. Conclusions: In centres skilled for laparoscopy in emergency, TAPP could be considered a feasible and safe technique. In well-selected patients (especially if emolled in controlled clinical trial) TAPP could represent an alternative surgical approach for complicated incarcerated inguinal hernia to conventional open surgery even in urgency. The main advantages of laparoscopic approach are the ability to perform surgical hernia reduction under vision, a better exploration and evaluation of abdominal cavity and diagnosis and treatment of eventual contralateral defect of wall, otherwise often missed. Finally, the good control of acute and chronic pain, faster return to normal activity and work, better aesthetic results contributed to total satisfaction and compliance of the patients

Development of a blood-based molecular biomarker test for identification of schizophrenia before disease onset

Recent research efforts have progressively shifted towards preventative psychiatry and prognostic identification of individuals before disease onset. We describe the development of a serum biomarker test for the identification of individuals at risk of developing schizophrenia based on multiplex immunoassay profiling analysis of 957 serum samples. First, we conducted a meta-analysis of five independent cohorts of 127 first-onset drug-naive schizophrenia patients and 204 controls. Using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression, we identified an optimal panel of 26 biomarkers that best discriminated patients and controls. Next, we successfully validated this biomarker panel using two independent validation cohorts of 93 patients and 88 controls, which yielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.97 (0.95-1.00) for schizophrenia detection. Finally, we tested its predictive performance for identifying patients before onset of psychosis using two cohorts of 445 pre-onset or at-risk individuals. The predictive performance achieved by the panel was excellent for identifying USA military personnel (AUC: 0.90 (0.86-0.95)) and help-seeking prodromal individuals (AUC: 0.82 (0.71-0.93)) who developed schizophrenia up to 2 years after baseline sampling. The performance increased further using the latter cohort following the incorporation of CAARMS (Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental State) positive subscale symptom scores into the model (AUC: 0.90 (0.82-0.98)). The current findings may represent the first successful step towards a test that could address the clinical need for early intervention in psychiatry. Further developments of a combined molecular/symptom-based test will aid clinicians in the identification of vulnerable patients early in the disease process, allowing more effective therapeutic intervention before overt disease onset

Measurement of the branching ratio of pi^0 -> e^+e^- using K_L -> 3 pi^0 decays in flight

The branching ratio of the rare decay pi^0 -> e^+e^- has been measured in E799-II, a rare kaon decay experiment using the KTeV detector at Fermilab. The pi^0's were produced in fully-reconstructed K_L -> 3 pi^0 decays in flight. We observed 275 candidate pi^0 -> e^+e^- events, with an expected background of 21.4 +- 6.2 events which includes the contribution from Dalitz decays. We measured BR(pi^0 -> e^+e^-, x>0.95) = (6.09 +- 0.40 +- 0.24) times 10^{-8}, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. This result is the first significant observation of the excess rate for this decay above the unitarity lower bound.Comment: New version shortened to PRL length limit. 5 pages, 4 figures. Published in Phys. Rev. Let

The soft power of development: aid and assistance as public diplomacy activities

Following a political communications framework can provide useful critical understanding of the international philanthropic industries beyond the more traditional approaches of political economy, anthropology and postcolonial studies. To this end, this chapter frames foreign aid and development assistance through theories of soft power, arguing that these activities are acts of public diplomacy and thereby conducive to the source government's power accumulation motive. This is open to some contest across the literature as research framed under international political economy or social anthropology often assumes that international power redistribution is the primary motive. Analysis of these programmes under the soft power framework allows for the discussion of the multitude of audiences that the activities engage with beyond the direct recipients of assistance as part of the power accumulation precedent. The chapter will hereby discuss the role of morality and compassion within the policy-making process, which leads to the question of whether we should really be considering whether most aid and development is in fact meant to work rather than the more popular query of why so much of it does not work

Measurement of the CP Violation Parameters in B0 -> pi+ pi- Decays

We present a measurement of the time-dependent charge-parity (CP) violation parameters in B0 -> pi+ pi- decays. The results are obtained from the final data sample containing 772 million BBbar pairs collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e+e- collider. We obtain the CP violation parameters Acp = +0.33 +/- 0.06 (stat) +/- 0.03 (syst) and Scp = -0.64 +/- 0.08 (stat) +/- 0.03 (syst), where Acp and Scp represent the direct and mixing-induced CP asymmetry, respectively. Using an isospin analysis including results from other Belle measurements, we find 23.8 < phi2 < 66.8 degrees is disfavored at the 1 sigma level, where phi2 is one of the three interior angles of the CKM unitarity triangle related to B_{u,d} decays.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, CKM2012 conference paper, Submitted to PR

Competitive Regulation of E-Cadherin JuxtaMembrane Domain Degradation by p120-Catenin Binding and Hakai-Mediated Ubiquitination

p120-Catenin binding to, and Hakai-mediated ubiquitination of the E-cadherin juxtamembrane domain (JMD) are thought to be involved in regulating E-cadherin internalization and degradation. However, the relationship between these two pathways is not understood. We targeted the E-cadherin JMD to mitochondria (WT-JMD) to isolate this domain from the plasma membrane and internalization, and to examine protein modifications and degradation. WT-JMD localized to mitochondria, but did not accumulate there except when proteasome activity was inhibited. We found WT-JMD was ubiquitinated, and arginine substitution of lysines at position 5 (K5R) and 83 (K83R) resulted in the stable accumulation of mutant JMD at mitochondria. p120-Catenin did not localize, or bind to WT-JMD even upon proteasome inhibition, whereas the K5,83R-JMD mutant bound and localized p120-catenin to mitochondria. Mutation of the p120-catenin binding site in combination with these lysine mutations inhibited p120-catenin binding, but did not decrease JMD stability or its accumulation at mitochondria. Thus, increased stability of JMD lysine mutants was due to inhibition of ubiquitination and not to p120-catenin binding. Finally, mutation of these critical lysines in full length E-cadherin had similar effects on protein stability as WT-JMD. Our results indicate that ubiquitination of the JMD inhibits p120-catenin binding, and targets E-cadherin for degradation