Effects of Duration, Locality, and Surprisal in Speech Disfluency Prediction in English Spontaneous Speech

This study examines the role of two influential theories of language processing, Surprisal Theory and Dependency Locality Theory (DLT), in predicting disfluencies (fillers and reparandums) in the Switchboard corpus of English conversational speech. Using Generalized Linear Mixed Models for this task, we incorporate syntactic factors (DLT-inspired costs and syntactic surprisal) in addition to lexical surprisal and duration, thus going beyond the local lexical frequency and predictability used in previous work on modelling word durations in Switchboard speech. Our results indicate that compared to fluent words, words preceding disfluencies tend to have lower lexical surprisal (hence higher activation levels) and lower syntactic complexity (low DLT costs and low syntactic surprisal except for reparandums). Disfluencies tend to occur before upcoming difficulties, i.e., high lexical surprisal words (low activation levels) with high syntactic complexity (high DLT costs and high syntactic surprisal). Further, we see that reparandums behave almost similarly to disfluent fillers with differences possibly arising due to effects being present in the word choice of the reparandum, i.e., in the disfluency itself rather than surrounding it. Moreover, words preceding disfluencies tend to be function words and have longer durations compared to their fluent counterparts, and word duration is a very effective predictor of disfluencies. Overall, speakers may be leveraging the differences in access between content and function words during planning as part of a mechanism to adapt for disfluencies while coordinating between planning and articulation

Linguistic Complexity and Planning Effects on Word Duration in Hindi Read Aloud Speech

Our study investigates the impact of linguistic complexity and planning on word durations in Hindi read aloud speech. Reading aloud involves both comprehension and production processes, and we use measures defined by two influential theories of sentence comprehension, Surprisal Theory and Dependency Locality Theory, to model the time taken to enunciate individual words. We model planning processes using an information-theoretic measure we call FORWARD SURPRISAL, inspired by surprisal theory which has been prominent in recent psycholinguistic work. Forward surprisal aims to capture articulatory planning when readers incorporate parafoveal viewing during reading aloud. Using a Linear Mixed Model containing memory and surprisal costs as predictors of word duration in read aloud speech (parts-of-speech and speakers being intercept terms), we investigate the following hypotheses: 1. High values of linguistic complexity measures (lexical+PCFG surprisal and DLT memory costs) lead to high word durations. 2. High values of forward lexical surprisal tend to induce high word durations. 3. High-frequency words are read aloud faster than low-frequency words. We validate the above hypotheses using data from the TDIL corpus of read aloud speech. Further, using a Generalized Linear Model to predict content and function word labels we show that lexical surprisal measures do not help distinguish between these 2 classes. Thus reading aloud might not involve distinct access strategies for content and function words, unlike spontaneous speech

Organizational safety climate and workplace violence among primary healthcare workers in Malaysia

Workplace violence (WPV) has become a global safety and health concern in recent times particularly in the healthcare sector. In addition, low levels of organisational safety climate (OSC) have been associated with higher occurrence of occupational related health outcomes. Hence, the objective of this study was to determine the association between organisational safety climate and workplace violence among government primary healthcare workers. A cross-sectional study among a stratified random sample of 838 primary healthcare workers (HCW) from the nine district health offices under the Selangor state health department. Two standardized self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain data on WPV and OSC. Logistic regression models used to estimate the association between OSC and WPV. Prevalence of WPV was 68.5% whereby verbal abuse was the most common type (65%) followed by bullying (27%), physical violence (6%) and sexual harassment (2%). Nurses (29.7%) were the most affected by WPV. The main perpetrators were relatives of patients (38%). Low level of OSC was also associated with WPV (OR=3.04, 95% CI=1.45-6.41). The results of this study confirmed that safety climate is associated with WPV. Hence, interventions and efforts to prevent WPV among HCW should also include improving organizational safety factors

Molecular fingerprinting of Helicanthus elastica (Desr.) Danser growing on five different hosts by RAPD

AbstractMistletoes are hemiparasitic plants growing on aerial parts of other host trees. Many of the mistletoes are reported to be medicinally important. The hemiparasitic nature of these plants makes their chemical composition dependent on the host on which it grows. They are shown to exhibit morphological dissimilarities also when growing on different hosts. Helicanthus elastica (Desr.) Danser (mango mistletoe) is one such less explored medicinal mistletoe found on almost every mango tree in India. Traditionally, the leaves of this plant are used for checking abortion and for removing stones in the kidney and urinary bladder while significant antioxidant and antimicrobial properties are also attributed to this species of mistletoe. The current study was undertaken to evaluate molecular differences in the genomic DNA of the plant while growing on five different host trees using four random markers employing random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) followed by similarity matrix by Jaccard’s coefficient and distance matrix by hierarchal clustering analysis. Similarity and distance matrix data employing just 4 random markers, separately and the pooled data as well, revealed significant difference in the genomic DNA of H. elastica growing on five different hosts. Pooled data of similarity from all the 4 primers cumulatively showed similarity between 0.256 and 0.311. Distance matrix ranged from of 0.256 to 0.281 on pooling the data from all the four primers. The result employing a minimum number of primers could conclude that genomic DNA of H. elastica differs depending upon the host on which it grows, hence the host must be considered while studying or utilizing this mistletoe for medicinal purposes

Doc2b Protects β-Cells Against Inflammatory Damage and Enhances Function

Loss of functional β-cell mass is an early feature of type 1 diabetes. To release insulin, β-cells require soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complexes, as well as SNARE complex regulatory proteins like double C2 domain-containing protein β (Doc2b). We hypothesized that Doc2b deficiency or overabundance may confer susceptibility or protection, respectively, to the functional β-cell mass. Indeed, Doc2b+/- knockout mice show an unusually severe response to multiple-low-dose streptozotocin (MLD-STZ), resulting in more apoptotic β-cells and a smaller β-cell mass. In addition, inducible β-cell-specific Doc2b-overexpressing transgenic (βDoc2b-dTg) mice show improved glucose tolerance and resist MLD-STZ-induced disruption of glucose tolerance, fasting hyperglycemia, β-cell apoptosis, and loss of β-cell mass. Mechanistically, Doc2b enrichment enhances glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) and SNARE activation and prevents the appearance of apoptotic markers in response to cytokine stress and thapsigargin. Furthermore, expression of a peptide containing the Doc2b tandem C2A and C2B domains is sufficient to confer the beneficial effects of Doc2b enrichment on GSIS, SNARE activation, and apoptosis. These studies demonstrate that Doc2b enrichment in the β-cell protects against diabetogenic and proapoptotic stress. Furthermore, they identify a Doc2b peptide that confers the beneficial effects of Doc2b and may be a therapeutic candidate for protecting functional β-cell mass

VAV2, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rac1, regulates glucose-stimulated insulin secretion in pancreatic beta cells

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Rho GTPases (Ras-related C3 botulinum toxin substrate 1 [Rac1] and cell division cycle 42 [Cdc42]) have been shown to regulate glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) via cytoskeletal remodelling, trafficking and fusion of insulin-secretory granules with the plasma membrane. GTP loading of these G proteins, which is facilitated by GDP/GTP exchange factors, is a requisite step in the regulation of downstream effector proteins. Guanine nucleotide exchange factor VAV2 (VAV2), a member of the Dbl family of proteins, has been identified as one of the GDP/GTP exchange factors for Rac1. Despite recent evidence on the regulatory roles of VAV2 in different cell types, roles of this guanine nucleotide exchange factor in the signalling events leading to GSIS remain undefined. Using immunological, short interfering RNA (siRNA), pharmacological and microscopic approaches we investigated the role of VAV2 in GSIS from islet beta cells. METHODS: Co-localisation of Rac1 and VAV2 was determined by Triton X-114 phase partition and confocal microscopy. Glucose-induced actin remodelling was quantified by live cell imaging using the LifeAct-GFP fluorescent biosensor. Rac1 activation was determined by G protein linked immunosorbent assay (G-LISA). RESULTS: Western blotting indicated that VAV2 is expressed in INS-1 832/13 beta cells, normal rat islets and human islets. Vav2 siRNA markedly attenuated GSIS in INS-1 832/13 cells. Ehop-016, a newly discovered small molecule inhibitor of the VAV2-Rac1 interaction, or siRNA-mediated knockdown of VAV2 markedly attenuated glucose-induced Rac1 activation and GSIS in INS-1 832/13 cells. Pharmacological findings were recapitulated in primary rat islets. A high glucose concentration promoted co-localisation of Rac1 and VAV2. Real-time imaging in live cells indicated a significant inhibition of glucose-induced cortical actin remodelling by Ehop-016. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: Our data provide the first evidence to implicate VAV2 in glucose-induced Rac1 activation, actin remodelling and GSIS in pancreatic beta cells