3,403 research outputs found
Language Matters: A Guide To Everyday Questions About Language
Is Ebonics really a dialect or simply bad English? Do women and men speak differently? Will computers ever really learn human language? Does offensive language harm children? These are only a few of the issues surrounding language that crop up every day. Most of us have very definite opinions on these questions one way or another. Yet as linguists Donna Jo Napoli and Vera Lee-Schoenfeld point out in this short and thoroughly readable volume, many of our most deeply held ideas about the nature of language and its role in our lives are either misconceived or influenced by myths and stereotypes Language Matters provides a highly informative tour of the world of language, examining these and other vexing and controversial language-related questions. Throughout, Napoli and Lee-Schoenfeld encourage and lead the reader to use common sense and everyday experience rather than preconceived notions or technical linguistic expertise. Both their questions and their conclusions are surprising, sometimes provocative, and always entertaining. This thoroughly revised second edition updates the book with a new coauthor and includes new chapters on language and power, language extinction, and what it is linguists actually do. Language Matters is sure to engage both general readers and students of language and linguistics at any level
Cell motility: a viscous fingering analysis of active gels
The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal
symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish
cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two
dimensional actin flow which includes the polymerisation at the edge and
depolymerisation in the bulk can be modelled as a Darcy flow, the cell shape
and dynamics being then modelled by standard complex analysis methods. We use
the theory of active gels to describe the orientational order of the filaments
which varies from the border to the bulk. We show analytically that the
reorganisation of the cortex is enough to explain the motility of the cell and
find the velocity as a function of the orientation order parameter in the bulk.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in EPJ - Plu
Questioning the ‘exotic’ in two Italian travellers’ accounts of New Zealand
L’articolo studia le testimonianze di due missionari italiani presenti in Nuova Zelanda tra la fine dell’Ottocento e l’inizio del Novecento: il benedettino Dom Felice Vaggioli e il salesiano Giuseppe Capra. Sia l’uno sia l’altro, attratti dalle bellezze naturali del paese descritto come una sorta di esotico nuovo Eden, finirono col guardare alla Nuova Zelanda da una prospettiva fortemente eurocentrica, Vaggioli addirittura definendo la Nuova Zelanda – a partire da superficiali coincidenze topografiche – come l’Italia dell’emisfero australe. Di là dalle finalità di proselitismo religioso (permeato da una forte vena antiinglese), gli scritti dei due religiosi costituiscono una viva autorappresentazione dell’Italia e degli italiani mezzo secolo dopo l’unificazione.Article is in Englis
Speeding up antidynamical Casimir effect with nonstationary qutrits
The antidynamical Casimir effect (ADCE) is a term coined to designate the
coherent annihilation of excitations due to resonant external perturbation of
system parameters, allowing for extraction of quantum work from nonvacuum
states of some field. Originally proposed for a two-level atom (qubit) coupled
to a single cavity mode in the context of nonstationary quantum Rabi model, it
suffered from very low transition rate and correspondingly narrow resonance
linewidth. In this paper we show analytically and numerically that the ADCE
rate can be increased by at least one order of magnitude by replacing the qubit
by an artificial three-level atom (qutrit) in a properly chosen configuration.
For the cavity thermal state we demonstrate that the dynamics of the average
photon number and atomic excitation is completely different from the qubit's
case, while the behavior of the total number of excitations is qualitatively
similar yet significantly faster.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Introduction to the JOCN Special Issue on Open Optical Networks
We provide an introduction to the paradigm of open optical networks (OON), including its evolution and benefits, followed by a brief summary of the papers in the OON special issue
Exploring the immune-checkpoint inhibitors' efficacy/tolerability in special non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) populations: Focus on steroids and autoimmune disease
The advent of immune-checkpoint inhibitors targeting the programmed cell death-1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) axis, both as monotherapy and in combination strategies, produced a paradigm change of the treatment algorithm for metastatic, non-oncogene addicted, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Although the great efficacy and the optimal tolerability emerging from clinical studies has been confirmed for the majority of patients treated in the real-word scenario, however the potential activity and safety profile of these agents in uncommon NSCLC populations remains still controversial. Particularly, patients with previously diagnosed autoimmune disease or concomitant steroids treatment at the time of immunotherapy initiation represent two special subgroups of patients not unusual in the real-word practice, to whom the clinical implication of immune-checkpoint inhibitors administration is largely unknown. In this review we provided an updated literature overview, summarizing available evidence and reporting practical suggestions, which may guide physicians in their clinical management of these NSCLC sub-populations
Fractional differentiability for solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations
We study nonlinear elliptic equations in divergence form
When
has linear growth in , and assuming that enjoys smoothness, local
well-posedness is found in for certain values of
and . In the particular case
, and ,
, we obtain for each
. Our main tool in the proof is a more general result, that
holds also if has growth in , , and
asserts local well-posedness in for each , provided that
satisfies a locally uniform condition
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