The Evolutionary Dynamics of Negative Existentials in Indo-European

Where in earlier work diachronic change is used to explain away exceptions to typologies, linguistic typologists have started to make use of explicit diachronic models as explanations for typological distributions. A topic that lends itself for this approach especially well is that of negation. In this article, we assess the explanatory value of a specific hypothesis, the Negative Existential Cycle (NEC), on the distribution of negative existential strategies (“types”) in 106 Indo-European languages. We use Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods to infer posterior distributions of transition rates and parameters, thus applying rational methods to construct and evaluate a set of different models under which the attested typological distribution could have evolved. We find that the frequency of diachronic processes that affect negative existentials outside of the NEC cannot be ignored—the unidirectional NEC alone cannot explain the evolution of negative existential strategies in our sample. We show that non-unidirectional evolutionary models, especially those that allow for different and multiple transitions between strategies, provide better fit. In addition, the phylogenetic modeling is impacted by the expected skewed distribution of negative existential strategies in our sample, pointing out the need for densely sampled and family-based typological research

Teaching Electrolysis in High School and College—A Comparative Research

This paper presents a comparative research between high school and college students, regarding the basic concepts of electrolysis. The importance of electrolysis as a crossroad between sciences, and as essential for understanding the causes of electricity and the influence on technology, is emphasized. The results showed a significant difference between the pre-test and the post-tests. The achievements of the college students were higher than those of the high school, however some of the difficulties observed in the high school still exist to some extent in the college. This paper argues that the history of science can be a useful and fruitful inspiration to science teaching

Teaching Electrolysis Using STSE Method, Multidisciplinary Approach

The paper presents a case study aimed at introducing electrolysis to a group of high school students. The instructional method consisted of hands on experiences and discussions undertaken in a facility for highly motivated students with access to high quality equipment. The method of instruction is not used in schools where the students study daily, nor did they learn electrolysis within their regular curriculum. The instruction was built on experimenting with the basic scientific concepts of electrolysis together with understanding technological applications. Learning included the concepts of ions, reduction potentials and being exposed to the way current is moving in an aqueous solution, in contrast to the electrons that carry the current in metals. The instruction consisted on 15 sections; the duration of each was 90 minutes. The involvement was done through the method of pre-test, instructional set, and a post-test. The post-test revealed difficulties found in the previous literature concerning this discipline. A T-test showed a significant difference between the pre and the post-test results. Curricula suggestions to improve the teaching of both the electrolysis cell and the Galvanic cell are offered. All the students said that they enjoyed the method of instruction and wished to continue to learn according to the same method in their school. The paper is preceded by a short description of the history of electrochemistry and concern for pupil’s difficulties

Emphasizing the Role of the Insulator in Electric Circuits: Toward a More Symmetric Approach to Insulator and Conductor in the Instruction of Electricity

Instruction of electricity at the elementary and middle school level as recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), suggests that students should develop mental models that can be applied both to the open circuits of static electrical phenomena, and to closed electric circuits. They suggest starting the instruction of electricity by presenting experiences regarding electrostatic. The threshold concepts given by them are insulator and conductor take on a new importance, and common misconceptions concerning these terms should be acknowledged. The current paper reports the results of a learning study designed to avoid common pupil’s misconceptions, especially regarding the insulator

Economic Valuation for Information Security Investment: A Systematic Literature Review

Research on technological aspects of information security risk is a well-established area and familiar territory for most information security professionals. The same cannot be said about the economic value of information security investments in organisations. While there is an emerging research base investigating suitable approaches measuring the value of investments in information security, it remains difficult for practitioners to identify key approaches in current research. To address this issue, we conducted a systematic literature review on approaches used to evaluate investments in information security. Following a defined review protocol, we searched several databases for relevant primary studies and extracted key details from the identified studies to answer our research questions. The contributions of this work include: a comparison framework and a catalogue of existing approaches and trends that would help researchers and practitioners navigate existing work; categorisation and mapping of approaches according to their key elements and components; and a summary of key challenges and benefits of existing work, which should help focus future research efforts

Patterns of Morphosyntactic and Functional Diversification in the Usage of Cognate Verbs in Indo-Iranian

This is a study of processes of structural and functional diversification of the uses of three cognate verbs across the Indo-Iranian language family: “do/make”, “be/become”, and “give”. First, this study identifies over sixty distinct construction types in which these verbs are used, including complex predicate constructions, nominal predication constructions, serial verb constructions, and several distinct auxiliary constructions. Since the sets of verbs studied here are cognates, and share a common source, crosslinguistic differences in their uses are the result of grammatical change, and especially shared and parallel innovations of similar uses. Then, this study presents a taxonomy of different complex predication types with “do/make”, and shows that there are general patterns in the deployment of different types of complex predication to express different types of situations. These patterns exhibit “transitivity prominence” previously identified by typologists with “heavy” or “lexical” verbs. This study then shows that these patterns are the result of several distinct pathways of grammatical change, often motivated by analogy to existing constructions, giving raise to different types of N-V complex predication constructions. Then, this study shows that despite the fact that Indo-Iranian speakers can potentially deploy distinct constructions to encode each of the six nominal predication functions, sets of such functions are often co-expressed by the same structural coding means, especially clauses with cognate “be/become” verbs. This study uses a novel method, based on bipartite network graphs, to compare of the degree to which nominal predication functions are co-expressed in different languages. Finally, this study shows that the three sets of cognate verbs are more likely to be used similarity within branches and subbranches of Indo-Iranian than across branches. The scope of this branches, however, is different for different verbs: “do/make” and “give” behave more similarly in languages which belong to the same major branch, Iranian or Indo-Aryan, but “be/become” clusters are at different levels of subbranching. This is the result of the different types of innovations attested with these verbs: reanalysis and actualization motivated by analogy with “do/make” and “give”, and metaphorical and metonymy extensions with “be/become”

Data from: Multi-scale quantification of tissue behavior during amniote embryo axis elongation

Embryonic axis elongation is a complex multi-tissue morphogenetic process responsible for the formation of the posterior part of the amniote body. How movements and growth are coordinated between the different posterior tissues (e.g. neural tube, axial and paraxial mesoderm, lateral plate, ectoderm, endoderm) to drive axis morphogenesis remain largely unknown. Here, we use quail embryos to quantify cell behavior and tissue movements during elongation. We quantify the tissue-specific contribution to axis elongation by using 3D volumetric techniques, then quantify tissue-specific parameters such as cell density and proliferation. To study cell behavior at a multi-tissue scale we used high-resolution 4D imaging of transgenic quail embryos expressing fluorescent proteins. We developed specific tracking and image analysis techniques to analyze cell motion and compute tissue deformations in 4D. This analysis reveals extensive sliding between tissues during axis extension. Further quantification of tissue tectonics showed patterns of rotations, contractions and expansions, which are coherent with the multi-tissue behavior observed previously. Our approach defines a quantitative and multiscale method to analyze the coordination between tissue behaviors during early vertebrate embryo morphogenetic events

Erodium cicutarium (L.) L'Hér. ex Aiton (BR0000012038770)

Belgium Herbarium image of Meise Botanic Garden