Introduction: Language, Sound, and the Humanities

Presenting the joint historical and methodological framework of the theme issue “Sounds of Language—Languages of Sound,” this introduction situates the individual contributions within a broader history of the humanities. The eight contributions address the period between approximately 1890 and 1970—from the modern disciplinary formation of knowledge about sound and the rise of the social sciences and humanities to the beginnings of computerized sound research. During this period, disciplines as diverse as linguistics, musicology, history, sociology, law, and theology all aspired to give scholarly attention to sound, and in particular to the spoken word. Starting from the observation that late nineteenth-century scholars of language turned from expert readers of historical texts into expert listeners to living languages, we trace the dual use of language as an object and a tool of knowledge production. As a research theme, language often broke through frontiers between the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, as well as between academic and nonacademic domains of knowledge. At the same time, new languages and modes of speaking arose as tools to examine, represent, and utilize sonic phenomena—whether in speech, music, or other sonic environments. The theme issue’s three claims are, first, that sound both enabled and necessitated new alliances between otherwise divergent fields of knowledge; second, that sound and language motivated humanities scholars to reconsider or even reinvent their methodologies; and, third, that research on sound and language was deeply permeated by issues of power and politics

Evaluation of culture methods for investigation of Salmonella enterica serovar ecology in feces

The present study evaluated culture methods to optimize detection and isolation of a wide range of Salmonella serovars. Fecal samples were obtained from cows, horses and pigs. Select samples were seeded with antibiotic resistance carrying S. Typhimurium and S. Choleraesuis as positive controls

Null sets of harmonic measure on NTA domains: Lipschitz approximation revisited

We show the David-Jerison construction of big pieces of Lipschitz graphs inside a corkscrew domain does not require its surface measure be upper Ahlfors regular. Thus we can study absolute continuity of harmonic measure and surface measure on NTA domains of locally finite perimeter using Lipschitz approximations. A partial analogue of the F. and M. Riesz Theorem for simply connected planar domains is obtained for NTA domains in space. As a consequence every Wolff snowflake has infinite surface measure.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Screening for Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes With Proposed A1C-Based Diagnostic Criteria

OBJECTIVE — An International Expert Committee (IEC) and the American Diabetes Asso-ciation (ADA) proposed diagnostic criteria for diabetes and pre-diabetes based on A1C levels. We hypothesized that screening for diabetes and pre-diabetes with A1C measurements would differ from using oral glucose tolerance tests (OGTT). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS — We compared pre-diabetes, dysglycemia (diabetes or pre-diabetes), and diabetes identified by the proposed criteria (A1C 6.5 % for diabetes and 6.0–6.4 % [IEC] or 5.7–6.4 % [ADA] for high risk/pre-diabetes) with standard OGTT diagnoses in three datasets. Non-Hispanic white or black adults without known diabetes who had A1C and 75-g OGTT measurements were included from the prospective Screening for Impaired Glucose Tolerance study (n 1,581), and from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III (n 2014), and NHANES 2005–2006 (n 1,111). RESULTS — OGTTs revealed pre-diabetes in 35.8 % and diabetes in 5.2 % of combined study subjects. A1C provided receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve areas for diabetes of 0.79– 0.83, but ROC curve areas were 0.70 for dysglycemia or pre-diabetes. The proposed criteria missed 70 % of individuals with diabetes, 71–84 % with dysglycemia, and 82–94 % with pre

Probabilistic analysis of the upwind scheme for transport

We provide a probabilistic analysis of the upwind scheme for multi-dimensional transport equations. We associate a Markov chain with the numerical scheme and then obtain a backward representation formula of Kolmogorov type for the numerical solution. We then understand that the error induced by the scheme is governed by the fluctuations of the Markov chain around the characteristics of the flow. We show, in various situations, that the fluctuations are of diffusive type. As a by-product, we prove that the scheme is of order 1/2 for an initial datum in BV and of order 1/2-a, for all a>0, for a Lipschitz continuous initial datum. Our analysis provides a new interpretation of the numerical diffusion phenomenon

Phase transition and correlation decay in Coupled Map Lattices

For a Coupled Map Lattice with a specific strong coupling emulating Stavskaya's probabilistic cellular automata, we prove the existence of a phase transition using a Peierls argument, and exponential convergence to the invariant measures for a wide class of initial states using a technique of decoupling originally developed for weak coupling. This implies the exponential decay, in space and in time, of the correlation functions of the invariant measures