The effect of salience on Chinese pun comprehension : a visual world paradigm study

The present study adopted the printed-word visual world paradigm to investigate the salience effect on Chinese pun comprehension. In such an experiment, participants listen to a spoken sentence while looking at a visual display of four printed words (including a semantic competitor, a phonological competitor, and two unrelated distractors). Previous studies based on alphabetic languages have found robust phonological effects (participants fixated more at phonological competitors than distractors during the unfolding of the spoken target words), while controversy remains regarding the existence of a similar semantic effect. A recent Chinese study reported reliable semantic effects in two experiments using this paradigm, suggesting that Chinese participants could actively map the semantic input from the auditory modality with the semantic information retrieved from printed words. In light of their study, we designed an experiment with two conditions: a replication condition to test the validity of using the printed-word world paradigm in Chinese semantic research, and a pun condition to assess the role played by salience during pun comprehension. Indeed, global analyses have revealed robust semantic effects in both experimental conditions, where participants were found more attracted to the semantic competitors than to the distractors with the emergence of target words. More importantly, the local analyses from the pun condition have shown that the participants were more attracted to the semantic competitors related to the salient meaning of the ambiguous word in a pun than to those related to the less salient meanings within 200 ms after target word offset. This finding suggests that the salient meaning of the ambiguous word in a pun is activated and assessed faster than its less salient counterpart. The initial advantage observed in the present study is consistent with the prediction of the graded salience hypothesis rather than the direct access model

Developing IncidentUI -- A Ride Comfort and Disengagement Evaluation Application for Autonomous Vehicles

This report details the design, development, and implementation of IncidentUI, an Android tablet application designed to measure user-experienced ride comfort and record disengagement data for autonomous vehicles (AV) during test drives. The goal of our project was to develop an Android application to run on a peripheral tablet and communicate with the Drive Pegasus AGX, the AI Computing Platform for Nvidia's AV Level 2 Autonomy Solution Architecture [1], to detect AV disengagements and report ride comfort. We designed and developed an Android XML-based intuitive user interface for IncidentUI. The development of IncidentUI required a redesign of the system architecture by redeveloping the system communications protocol in Java and implementing the Protocol Buffers (Protobufs) in Java using the existing system Protobuf definitions. The final iteration of IncidentUI yielded the desired functionality while testing on an AV test drive. We also received positive feedback from Nvidia's AV Platform Team during our final IncidentUI demonstration.Comment: Previously embargoed by Nvidia. Nvidia owns the right

Inheritance of downy mildew resistance in two interspecific crosses between Chinese wild grapes and European grapes

Research Note

Evaluation of agronomic traits in Chinese wild grapes and screening superior accessions for use in a breeding program

This study was conducted to evaluate 15 agronomic traits in 67 accessions of 13 Chinese wild Vitis species. The results have been used to screen superior accessions for grape breeding in the future. Chinese wild Vitis had high diversity in economic traits among the species, such as bud-burst date, blooming date, berry ripening date, bunch weights, berry weights, berry soluble solid contents, berry acid contents, and vine production. Bunch weights of 56 Chinese wild accessions and berry weights of 12 Chinese species (except V. davidii) were much smaller than those of the two European cultivars. In our 25-year of evaluation on disease resistance and economic qualities in this Chinese germplasm, we suggest that V. quinquangularis, V. amurensis, V. yeshanensis, V. romanetii, and certain accessions in V. liubanensis be the first potential materials chosen for breeding.

PU.1 controls the expression of long noncoding RNA HOTAIRM1 during granulocytic differentiation

Abstract Background Long noncoding RNA HOX antisense intergenic RNA myeloid 1 (HOTAIRM1) has been characterized as a critical factor in all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA)-induced differentiation of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) cells. However, the essential transcription factor for gene expression of HOTAIRM1 is still unknown. Findings Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays revealed that PU.1 constitutively bound to the regulatory region of HOTAIRM1. Co-expression of PU.1 led to the transactivation of the regulatory region of HOTAIRM1 in a reporter assay. Detailed analysis showed that two PU.1 motifs, which were located around +1100 bp downstream of the transcriptional start site of the HOTAIRM1 promoter, were responsible for the PU.1-dependent transactivation. The induction of HOTAIRM1 by ATRA was dependent on PU.1, and ectopic expression of PU.1 significantly up-regulated HOTAIRM1. Furthermore, low HOTAIRM1 expression was observed in APL cells, which was attributed to the reduced PU.1 expression rather than the repression by PML-RARα via the direct binding. Conclusion PU.1 directly activates the expression of HOTAIRM1 through binding to the regulatory region of HOTAIRM1 during granulocytic differentiation. The reduced PU.1 expression, rather than PML-RARα itself, results in the low expression of HOTAIRM1 in APL cells. Our findings enrich the knowledge on the regulation of lncRNAs and the underlying mechanisms of the abnormal expression of lncRNAs involved in APL

Comparison of resistance to powdery mildew and downy mildew in Chinese wild grapes

This research was performed under natural conditions in an effort to compare resistance within Chinese Vitis germplasm to powdery mildew and downy mildew. Sixty-six genotypes of 13 Chinese wild Vitis species were selected to evaluate disease resistance. Seven among these 13 species, V. amurensis, V. romanetii, V. piazezkii, V. davidii, V. davidii var. cyanocarpa, V. liubanensis, and V. bashanica showed resistance to powdery mildew. Three species, V. yeshanensis, V. davidii var. cyanocarpa, and V. pseudoreticulata exhibited resistance to downy mildew. Among 66 genotypes, 46 were resistant to powdery mildew, 28 were resistant to downy mildew and 19 genotypes had resistance to both diseases. Although more than half of the genotypes exhibited resistance to powdery mildew and a lesser number expressed resistance to downy mildew, resistance to both diseases in Chinese Vitis were significantly related (r = 0.395, df = 64, r0,01 = 0.325). Also, there is resistance variation regarding both diseases between the species and also, to a lesser degree, among the genotypes. The variation is not related to the geographic distribution of the germplasm. These variations should be considered when researchers collect the gemplasm on location, making every effort to obtain extensive genotypes for the breeding program.

Relatedness of resistance to anthracnose and to white rot in Chinese wild grapes

Resistance to anthracnose and to white rot in 56 accessions of 13 Chinese wild Vitis species, V. amurensis, V. quinquangularis, V. romanetii, V. adstricta, V. pseudoreticulata, V. piazezkii, V. davidii, V. davidii var. cyanocarpa, V. liubanensis, V. qinlingensis, V. bashanica, V. yeshanensis and V. hankockii was evaluated under natural conditions in 1996-1998. All 56 accessions and the 13 species showed resistance to anthracnose. All nine accessions of V. quinquangularis, and one accession each of V. romanetii, V. adstricta and V. pseudoreticulata exhibited susceptibility to white rot; the remaining 44 accessions (78.57 %) and the other 9 species presented resistant to grape white rot. Two V. vinifera cultivars (‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ and ‘Chardonnay’) were susceptible to anthracnose and highly susceptible to white rot. The r-value of susceptibility indices between anthracnose and white rot in the 56 accessions is insignificant. In Chinese wild grapes, the mechanisms for producing resistance to both diseases would be very different, but inheritance of resistance to these two diseases in a certain cross is somewhat related by molecular data.