On Voice in Poetry: The Work of Animation by David Nowell Smith

A review of On Voice In Poetry: The Work of Animation, by David Nowell Smith

Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients

Is thought possible without language? Individuals with global aphasia, who have almost no ability to understand or produce language, provide a powerful opportunity to find out. Surprisingly, despite their near-total loss of language, these individuals are nonetheless able to add and subtract, solve logic problems, think about another person's thoughts, appreciate music, and successfully navigate their environments. Further, neuroimaging studies show that healthy adults strongly engage the brain's language areas when they understand a sentence, but not when they perform other nonlinguistic tasks such as arithmetic, storing information in working memory, inhibiting prepotent responses, or listening to music. Together, these two complementary lines of evidence provide a clear answer: many aspects of thought engage distinct brain regions from, and do not depend on, language

Seismic data clustering management system

This is the abstract of the paper given at the conference. Copyright @ 2011 The Authors.Over the last years, seismic images have increasingly played a vital role to the study of earthquakes. The large volume of seismic data that has been accumulated has created the need to develop sophisticated systems to manage this kind of data. Seismic interpretation can play a much more active role in the evaluation of large volumes of data by providing at an early stage vital information relating to the framework of potential producing levels. [1] This work presents a novel method to manage and analyse seismic data. The data is initially turned into clustering maps using clustering techniques [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], in order to be analysed on the platform. These clustering maps can then be analysed with the friendly-user interface of Seismic 1 which is based on .Net framework architecture [7]. This feature permits the porting of the application in any Windows – based computer as also to many other Linux based environments, using the Mono project functionality [8], so it can run an application using the No-Touch Deployment [7]. The platform supports two ways of processing seismic data. Firstly, a fast multifunctional version of the classical region-growing segmentation algorithm [9], [10] is applied to various areas of interest permitting their precise definition and labelling. Moreover, this algorithm is assigned to automatically allocate new earthquakes to a particular cluster based upon the magnitude of the centre of gravity of the existing clusters; or create a new cluster if all centers of gravity are above a predefined by the user upper threshold point. Secondly, a visual technique is used to record the behaviour of a cluster of earthquakes in a designated area. In this way, the system functions as a dynamic temporal simulator which depicts sequences of earthquakes on a map [11]

Determiner Primes as Facilitators of Lexical Retrieval in English

Gender priming studies have demonstrated facilitation of noun production following pre-activation of a target noun’s grammatical gender. Findings provide support for models in which syntactic information relating to words is stored within the lexicon and activated during lexical retrieval. Priming effects are observed in the context of determiner plus noun phrase production. Few studies demonstrate gender priming effects in bare noun production (i.e., nouns in isolation). We investigated the effects of English determiner primes on bare mass and count noun production. In two experiments, participants named pictures after exposure to primes involving congruent, incongruent and neutral determiners. Facilitation of noun production by congruent and neutral determiner primes was found in both experiments. The results suggest that noun phrase syntax is activated in lexical retrieval, even when not explicitly required for production. Post hoc analysis of the relative frequency of congruent and incongruent prime-target pairs provides support for a frequency-based interpretation of the data

Detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth 55 Cancri e

We report the analysis of two new spectroscopic observations of the super-Earth 55 Cancri e, in the near infrared, obtained with the WFC3 camera onboard the HST. 55 Cancri e orbits so close to its parent star, that temperatures much higher than 2000 K are expected on its surface. Given the brightness of 55 Cancri, the observations were obtained in scanning mode, adopting a very long scanning length and a very high scanning speed. We use our specialized pipeline to take into account systematics introduced by these observational parameters when coupled with the geometrical distortions of the instrument. We measure the transit depth per wavelength channel with an average relative uncertainty of 22 ppm per visit and find modulations that depart from a straight line model with a 6$\sigma$ confidence level. These results suggest that 55 Cancri e is surrounded by an atmosphere, which is probably hydrogen-rich. Our fully Bayesian spectral retrieval code, T-REx, has identified HCN to be the most likely molecular candidate able to explain the features at 1.42 and 1.54 $\mu$m. While additional spectroscopic observations in a broader wavelength range in the infrared will be needed to confirm the HCN detection, we discuss here the implications of such result. Our chemical model, developed with combustion specialists, indicates that relatively high mixing ratios of HCN may be caused by a high C/O ratio. This result suggests this super-Earth is a carbon-rich environment even more exotic than previously thought.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables, Accepted for publication in Ap

Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Model Higgs Scenarios for Partially Universal GUT Scale Boundary Conditions

We examine the extent to which it is possible to realize the NMSSM "ideal Higgs" models espoused in several papers by Gunion et al in the context of partially universal GUT scale boundary conditions. To this end we use the powerful methodology of nested sampling. We pay particular attention to whether ideal-Higgs-like points not only pass LEP constraints but are also acceptable in terms of the numerous constraints now available, including those from the Tevatron and $B$-factory data, $(g-2)_\mu$ and the relic density $\Omega h^2$. In general for this particular methodology and range of parameters chosen, very few points corresponding to said previous studies were found, and those that were found were at best $2\sigma$ away from the preferred relic density value. Instead, there exist a class of points, which combine a mostly singlet-like Higgs with a mostly singlino-like neutralino coannihilating with the lightest stau, that are able to effectively pass all implemented constraints in the region $80<m_h<100$. It seems that the spin-independent direct detection cross section acts as a key discriminator between ideal Higgs points and the hard to detect singlino-like points.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figure

Willow on yellowstone's northern range: Evidence for a trophic cascade?

Reintroduction of wolves (Canis lupus) to Yellowstone National Park in 1995-1996 has been argued to promote a trophic cascade by altering elk (Cervus elaphus) density, habitat-selection patterns, and behavior that, in turn, could lead to changes within the plant communities used by elk. We sampled two species of willow (Salix boothii and S. geyeriana) on the northern winter range to determine whether (1) there was quantitative evidence of increased willow growth following wolf reintroduction, (2) browsing by elk affected willow growth, and (3) any increase in growth observed was greater than that expected by climatic and hydrological factors alone, thereby indicating a trophic cascade caused by wolves. Using stem sectioning techniques to quantify historical growth patterns we found an approximately twofold increase in stem growth-ring area following wolf reintroduction for both species of willow. This increase could not be explained by climate and hydrological factors alone; the presence of wolves on the landscape was a significant predictor of stem growth above and beyond these abiotic factors. Growth-ring area was positively correlated with the previous year's ring area and negatively correlated with the percentage of twigs browsed from the stem during the winter preceding growth, indicating that elk browse impeded stem growth. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis of a behaviorally mediated trophic cascade on Yellowstone's northern winter range following wolf reintroduction. We suggest that the community-altering effects of wolf restoration are an endorsement of ecological-process management in Yellowstone National Park

Unusual Formation of Point-Defect Complexes in the Ultrawide-Band-Gap Semiconductor β-Ga2 O3

Understanding the unique properties of ultra-wide band gap semiconductors requires detailed information about the exact nature of point defects and their role in determining the properties. Here, we report the first direct microscopic observation of an unusual formation of point defect complexes within the atomic-scale structure of β-Ga2O3 using high resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Each complex involves one cation interstitial atom paired with two cation vacancies. These divacancy-interstitial complexes correlate directly with structures obtained by density functional theory, which predicts them to be compensating acceptors in β-Ga2O3. This prediction is confirmed by a comparison between STEM data and deep level optical spectroscopy results, which reveals that these complexes correspond to a deep trap within the band gap, and that the development of the complexes is facilitated by Sn doping through increased vacancy concentration. These findings provide new insight on this emerging material's unique response to the incorporation of impurities that can critically influence their properties

Dynamics of a map with power-law tail

We analyze a one-dimensional piecewise continuous discrete model proposed originally in studies on population ecology. The map is composed of a linear part and a power-law decreasing piece, and has three parameters. The system presents both regular and chaotic behavior. We study numerically and, in part, analytically different bifurcation structures. Particularly interesting is the description of the abrupt transition order-to-chaos mediated by an attractor made of an infinite number of limit cycles with only a finite number of different periods. It is shown that the power-law piece in the map is at the origin of this type of bifurcation. The system exhibits interior crises and crisis-induced intermittency.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figure