Verbal fluency as a measure of lexico-semantic access and cognitive control in bilingual aphasia

The research on bilingual language processing explores two main avenues of relevance to the present study: lexico-semantic access and cognitive control. Lexico-semantic access research investigates the manner in which bilingual individuals retrieve single words from their lexical system. Healthy bilingual individuals can manipulate their lexico-semantic access to accommodate settings in which code- or language-switching is expected. Alternatively, they can manipulate their lexico-semantic access to speak only their first (L1) or second (L2) languages. Cognitive control, also known as executive functioning, is closely related to lexico-semantic access. Specifically, bilingual individuals maintain and switch between their languages through a mechanism known as cognitive control. Both cognitive control and lexico-semantic access are important for language processing in healthy bilingual individuals as well as bilingual persons with aphasia (BPWA). However, the extent to which BPWA utilize each of these processes in the production of single words is still unknown. The present study used a method of verbal fluency in the form of a novel modified category generation task to assess the relative contributions of lexico-semantic access and cognitive control in bilingual healthy controls and BPWA

Hybrid Embryo Rescue: A Non-Conventional Breeding Strategy in Horticultural Crops

Production of interspecific and intergeneric hybrids is useful for transfer of desirable genes from wild species into cultivated species. In many instances, progeny from wide crosses is difficult to produce owing to several barriers. Post-zygotic barriers such as endosperm abortion and, at later stages, embryo degeneration are of common occurrence, leading to low fertility; but these have been overcome through the use of embryo rescue and several hybrids have been developed. This approach is especially useful in horticultural crops, more so in fruit crops. In our laboratory, we have developed protocols for hybrid embryo rescue in several top-of-the-line fruit crops that suffer from an inability to cross naturally (e.g., distant crosses, use of seedless parent/s) or instances where initial fruit drop is very high. Thus, interspecific, intergeneric and intervarietal hybrids have been generated in mango, banana, seedless grape, papaya and seedless citrus using embryo rescue. Culture of embryos has also been demonstrated in rose, capsicum, hot pepper, onion and tomato. Among the very important strategies under non-GM biotechnologies figure techniques of hybrid embryo rescue, and related applications like ovule/ovary/placental cultures through sequential embryo culture. Embryo culture applied to practical problems is a tissue culture technique that has proven to be of greatest value to breeders

Face Recognition Using the Eigen Face Algorithm to Support Smart Voting

A new authentication technique in online voting system using facial recognition of the voter is used.  In India, currently there are two types of voting system in practice. They are secret Ballet paper and Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), but both of the processes have some limitation or demerits.  In India online voting has not been yet implemented. The current voting system is not safe and secure too. The voters need to go to distributed places like polling booths and stand in a long queue to cast their vote, because of these reasons most of the people misses their chance of voting. The voter who is not eligible can also cast its vote by fake means which may leads to many problems. That’s why in this project we have to propose a system or way for voting which is very effective or useful in voting. In our approach we have three level of security in voting process. The first level is the verification of unique id number (UID), second level is the verification of election id number (EID) and third level is face recognition or face matching. The security level of our system is greatly improved by the new application method for each voter. The user authentication process of the system is improved by adding face recognition in an application which will identify whether the particular user is authenticated user or not

An assessment of sampling biases across studies of diel activity patterns in marine ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii)

Author Posting. © University of Miami - Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of University of Miami - Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of Marine Science 93 (2017): 611-639, doi:10.5343/bms.2016.1016.Understanding the promotion and regulation of circadian rhythms in marine fishes is important for studies spanning conservation, evolutionary biology, and physiology. Given numerous challenges inherent to quantifying behavioral activity across the full spectrum of marine environments and fish biodiversity, case studies offer a tractable means of gaining insights or forecasting broad patterns of diel activity. As these studies continue to accumulate, assessing whether, and to what extent, the cumulatively collected data are biased in terms of geography, habitat, or taxa represents a fundamentally important step in the development of a broad overview of circadian rhythms in marine fish. As such investigations require a phylogenetic framework, general trends in the phylogenetic sampling of marine fishes should be simultaneously assessed for biases in the sampling of taxa and trait data. Here, we compile diel activity data for more than 800 marine species from more than five decades of scientific studies to assess general patterns of bias. We found significant geographic biases that largely reflect a preference toward sampling warm tropical waters. Additionally, taxonomic biases likewise reflect a tendency toward conspicuous reef associated clades. Placing these data into a phylogenetic framework that includes all known marine fishes revealed significant under-dispersion of behavioral data and taxon sampling across the whole tree, with a few subclades exhibiting significant over-dispersion. In total, our study illuminates substantial gaps in our understanding of diel activity patterns and highlights significant sampling biases that have the potential to mislead evolutionary or ecological analyses.Partial funding was provided by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Graphene as an atomically thin interface for growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes

Growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) forests is highly sensitive to the nature of the substrate. This constraint narrows the range of available materials to just a few oxide-based dielectrics and presents a major obstacle for applications. Using a suspended monolayer, we show here that graphene is an excellent conductive substrate for CNT forest growth. Furthermore, graphene is shown to intermediate growth on key substrates, such as Cu, Pt, and diamond, which had not previously been compatible with nanotube forest growth. We find that growth depends on the degree of crystallinity of graphene and is best on mono-or few-layer graphene. The synergistic effects of graphene are revealed by its endurance after CNT growth and low contact resistances between the nanotubes and Cu. Our results establish graphene as a unique interface that extends the class of substrate materials for CNT growth and opens up important new prospects for applications

Schwannoma of intermediate supraclavicular nerve: Case report

Schwannoma of supraclavicular nerve is very rare tumour occurring in head and neck region. This case is reported as a rare case of intermediate supraclavicular nerve schwannoma. A 48-year-old female patient presented to the outpatient department with right supraclavicular swelling for 5 years. She was diagnosed differently initially as having connective tissue neoplasm, tuberculous lymphadenitis, and granulomatous lymphadenitis by different surgeons. After all investigations, she was subjected to enucleation of mass and the histopathological report was suggestive of schwannoma. Post-op no neurological deficit was observed. She was discharged on fourth post-operative day

Combined effects of precipitation and nitrogen deposition on native and invasive winter annual production in California deserts

Primary production in deserts is limited by soil moisture and N availability, and thus is likely to be influenced by both anthropogenic N deposition and precipitation regimes altered as a consequence of climate change. Invasive annual grasses are particularly responsive to increases in N and water availabilities, which may result in competition with native forb communities. Additionally, conditions favoring increased invasive grass production in arid and semi-arid regions can increase fire risk, negatively impacting woody vegetation that is not adapted to fire. We conducted a seeded garden experiment and a 5-year field fertilization experiment to investigate how winter annual production is altered by increasing N supply under a range of water availabilities. The greatest production of invasive grasses and native forbs in the garden experiment occurred under the highest soil N (inorganic N after fertilization = 2.99 g m−2) and highest watering regime, indicating these species are limited by both water and N. A classification and regression tree (CART) analysis on the multi-year field fertilization study showed that winter annual biomass was primarily limited by November–December precipitation. Biomass exceeded the threshold capable of carrying fire when inorganic soil N availability was at least 3.2 g m−2 in piñon-juniper woodland. Due to water limitation in creosote bush scrub, biomass exceeded the fire threshold only under very wet conditions regardless of soil N status. The CART analyses also revealed that percent cover of invasive grasses and native forbs is primarily dependent on the timing and amount of precipitation and secondarily dependent on soil N and site-specific characteristics. In total, our results indicate that areas of high N deposition will be susceptible to grass invasion, particularly in wet years, potentially reducing native species cover and increasing the risk of fire