Speaker sex effects on temporal and spectro-temporal measures of speech

This study investigated speaker sex differences in the temporal and spectro-temporal parameters of English monosyllabic words spoken by thirteen women and eleven men. Vowel and utterance duration were investigated. A number of formant frequency parameters were also analysed to assess the spectro-temporal dynamic structures of the monosyllabic words as a function of speaker sex. Absolute frequency changes were measured for the first (F1), second (F2), and third (F3) formant frequencies (ΔF1, ΔF2, and ΔF3, respectively). Rates of these absolute formant frequency changes were also measured and calculated to yield measurements for rF1, rF2, and rF3. Normalised frequency changes (normΔF1, normΔF2, and normΔF3), and normalised rates of change (normrF1, normrF2, and normrF3) were also calculated. F2 locus equations were then derived from the F2 measurements taken at the onset and temporal mid points of the vowels. Results indicated that there were significant sex differences in the spectro-temporal parameters associated with F2: ΔF2, normΔF2, rF2, and F2 locus equation slopes; women displayed significantly higher values for ΔF2, normΔF2 and rF2, and significantly shallower F2 locus equation slopes. Collectively, these results suggested lower levels of coarticulation in the speech samples of the women speakers, and corroborate evidence reported in earlier studies

Gene and MicroRNA Expression Profile Changes in ISS Crewmembers Blood Samples

In space, living organisms are exposed to multiple stress factors including microgravity and space radiation. For humans, these harmful environmental factors have been known to cause negative health impacts such as immune dysfunction. Understanding the mechanisms by which spaceflight impacts human health at the molecular level is critical not only for accurately assessing the risks associated with spaceflight, but also for developing effective countermeasures. This study is part of the Functional Immune Project, intended to determine alterations in crewmember immunobiology before, during, and after spaceflight. It emphasizes the study of DNA damage in the ISS crewmembers peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), expression patterns of damage-response and inflammatory process genes, and changes in latent virus reactivation biomarkers

A UK-US investigation of early education practitioners’ opinions about child poverty and its prioritizing within their practice: final report

Introduction In many developed societies, children in poverty make up a significant minority across education sectors estimated to be 21% of children in the UK and 22% in the USA. Globally, ECEC has been prioritized as a key policy and practice lever to remediate child poverty by reducing the ‘outcomes gap’ in children’s learning and development. Experiencing poverty has a negative effect, particularly for children in the early years range, and children in poverty are disadvantaged in their learning and development by the age of five years. An evidence base suggests quality ECEC provision can address educational and social inequality by improving outcomes for children in poverty. But what constitutes quality early learning provision and environments for children and their families experiencing poverty remains highly contested. With such a significant minority of children experiencing disadvantage, though, for ECEC provision to have 'quality' it needs to be poverty sensitive. So provision should be characterized by poverty sensitivity and it should be poverty proofed i.e. ECEC practitioners’ delivery, practice and decision making will take poverty, social disadvantage and inequality into account in their everyday provision for children from disadvantaged families. Research, hough, which has considered early education practitioners’ opinions on child poverty is rare and recent small -scale qualitative research completed by members of this research team has suggested poverty sensitivity cannot be assumed (Simpson et al,2015). The research reported here built up on this previous work to provide a broad -scale and unique exploration of ECEC practitioners’ opinions about child poverty. Within the context described above, he central aim of the research was to develop knowledge of early education practitioners’ opinions about child poverty and the extent to which they prioritize it in their practice across several geographic locations in England and the USA. The proposed research hoped to move beyond the restrictions of a country by country sui generis approach, allowing for translocal and transnational connections to be made between early education practitioners’ opinions and engagement with child poverty and its remediation. There were good reasons for choosing to focus upon England and the USA to explore these issues. Increasingly there are parallels and points of tangency between the two countries in regard to child poverty and policies to remediate its impact in early childhood. For instance, as indicated above, there are currently high levels of child poverty in the UK and the USA in comparison with other developed nations. Convergence includes prioritizing ECEC as a social mechanism to address child poverty across both countries (Nandy and Minujin 2012). In England and the USA and many other countries, a dominant neoliberal political discourse emphasizing individualism and limited state involvement pervades this prioritizing. ECEC is delivered via a mixed market model including a significant amount of private for profit provision, the costs of which are relatively high in both countries and prohibitive for low income families. Within the US this has necessitated federal and state level programmes. Across England several national schemes can also be seen to cater for those that are excluded from the ECEC market. In meeting the aim mentioned above the following objectives were achieved. The first objective was to ascertain and contrast early education practitioners’ opinions about child poverty in a selection of geographic locations across England and the USA. The second objective was then to clarify the extent to which these ECEC practitioners engage with (or not) poverty sensitivity in their practice. The third objective was, through the research, to provide a mechanism for bringing practitioners’ opinions to current policy, practice and academic debates around the role of early education in remediating child poverty. A final objective was to draw out wider implications for early education policy and practice including the possible need for poverty proofing toolkits in the early years

‘Seen but not heard’. Practitioners work with poverty and the organising out of disadvantaged children’s voices and participation in the early years

Living in poverty disadvantages young children reducing school readiness. ‘Pedagogy of listening’ can potentially support resilience remediating against poverty’s negative effects. Little, though, is known about how early childhood education and care (ECEC) practitioners work with children in poverty and the attainment gap between such children and their peers remains significant within England and the US. This article reports research using a mixed methodology which explored these issues in localities across both these countries. We argue a dominant technocratic model of early years provision in these contexts creates normalisation and diversity reduction. This, and austerity measures, stymie pedagogical space and practice organising out listening to children in poverty. We suggest this may help explain why the attainment gap remains so stubbornly resistant to reduction across these countries

Talking heresy about ‘quality’ early childhood education and care for children in poverty

This paper considers the socially progressive function of a model of 'quality' early childhood education and care widely prescribed to address child poverty across England and the USA. Ubiquitous, it is imbued with a sense of objectivity, secureness and practicality. We question these foundations. Then using data from practitioners in both countries, we contrast expectations about this model of ECEC as an unmitigated good building resilience to 'break cycles of disadvantage', with the everyday experiences and frustrations of practitioners pursuing it. Their data suggest this model of 'quality' has limitations and some heresy is required about this policy orthodoxy

Evidence for a correlation between the sizes of quiescent galaxies and local environment to z ~ 2

We present evidence for a strong relationship between galaxy size and environment for the quiescent population in the redshift range 1 < z < 2. Environments were measured using projected galaxy overdensities on a scale of 400 kpc, as determined from ~ 96,000 K-band selected galaxies from the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey (UDS). Sizes were determined from ground-based K-band imaging, calibrated using space-based CANDELS HST observations in the centre of the UDS field, with photometric redshifts and stellar masses derived from 11-band photometric fitting. From the resulting size-mass relation, we confirm that quiescent galaxies at a given stellar mass were typically ~ 50 % smaller at z ~ 1.4 compared to the present day. At a given epoch, however, we find that passive galaxies in denser environments are on average significantly larger at a given stellar mass. The most massive quiescent galaxies (M_stellar > 2 x 10^11 M_sun) at z > 1 are typically 50 % larger in the highest density environments compared to those in the lowest density environments. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we reject the null hypothesis that the size-mass relation is independent of environment at a significance > 4.8 sigma for the redshift range 1 < z < 2. In contrast, the evidence for a relationship between size and environment is much weaker for star-forming galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 16 pages, 11 figures, 6 table

Do Canine Companions Reduce College Stress?

Introduction Rates of mental health concerns among college students are rising. A recent World Health Organization Survey of ~14,000 students revealed clinically concerning scores on anxiety, depression and substance use disorder for 31% [2][3]. With these high levels of clinically concerning scores in college students, great amounts of stress are the result, which have been negatively correlated with greater feelings of loneliness and lower hedonic well-being (satisfaction in life), without proper social support [6][10]. We explored potential mental health benefits of canine companions in the college setting by collecting psychosocial measures from both dog-owners and non-dog-owners assessing their levels of anxiety, loneliness, and hedonic well-being. We also explored how the dimensions of dog cognition look when correlated with their owners\u27 scores on measures assessing their mental health. We assessed these levels of dog cognition through The Dognition Assessment, a web-based assessment for dog cognition and reasoning. Dognition measures levels of canine empathy, communication, as well as cunning (Figure 3). Dognition has been found to produce very similar results whether performed in a laboratory or in a home as citizen science [9]. • Hypothesis 1. Students living with dogs ( n = 20 ) will have lower anxiety and loneliness and higher satisfaction with life in comparison with a matched group of students not living with dogs ( n = 17). • Hypothesis 2. Among the student-canine dyads, canines with higher scores on empathy, communication, and cunning—measured via The Dognition Assessment—will have human partners with lower anxiety and loneliness and higher satisfaction with life

Long-term efficacy and safety of first-line ibrutinib treatment for patients with CLL/SLL: 5 years of follow-up from the phase 3 RESONATE-2 study.

RESONATE-2 is a phase 3 study of first-line ibrutinib versus chlorambucil in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). Patients aged ≥65 years (n = 269) were randomized 1:1 to once-daily ibrutinib 420 mg continuously or chlorambucil 0.5-0.8 mg/kg for ≤12 cycles. With a median (range) follow-up of 60 months (0.1-66), progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) benefits for ibrutinib versus chlorambucil were sustained (PFS estimates at 5 years: 70% vs 12%; HR [95% CI]: 0.146 [0.098-0.218]; OS estimates at 5 years: 83% vs 68%; HR [95% CI]: 0.450 [0.266-0.761]). Ibrutinib benefit was also consistent in patients with high prognostic risk (TP53 mutation, 11q deletion, and/or unmutated IGHV) (PFS: HR [95% CI]: 0.083 [0.047-0.145]; OS: HR [95% CI]: 0.366 [0.181-0.736]). Investigator-assessed overall response rate was 92% with ibrutinib (complete response, 30%; 11% at primary analysis). Common grade ≥3 adverse events (AEs) included neutropenia (13%), pneumonia (12%), hypertension (8%), anemia (7%), and hyponatremia (6%); occurrence of most events as well as discontinuations due to AEs decreased over time. Fifty-eight percent of patients continue to receive ibrutinib. Single-agent ibrutinib demonstrated sustained PFS and OS benefit versus chlorambucil and increased depth of response over time