Introducing MICRELA: Predicting mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in Europe

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Introducing MICRELA: Predicting mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in Europe

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Elävä arkisto - kansakunnan muistot klikkauksen päässä

Yleisradion Elävä arkisto on yksi internetissä toimivista maailman arkistopalveluista, joissa nostalgiasta kiinnostuneet voivat nähdä nuoruuden ja lapsuuden suosikkisarjojaan ja muistella historiallisesti merkittäviä päiviä. Tämän tutkimustyyppisen opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena on verrata Elävää arkistoa kahteen ulkomaalaiseen arkistopalveluun. Kun erot ja yhtäläisyydet näiden kolmen palvelun välillä on selvitetty, tehdään Elävälle arkistolle kehitysehdotuksia. Tutkimuksessa Elävän arkiston verrokkikohteiksi on valittu Ruotsin julkisen palvelun televisioyhtiö SVT:n arkistopalvelu Öppet arkiv sekä Kanadan julkisen palvelun yleisradioyhtiö CBC/Radio-Canadan Digital Archives. Koska palvelut ovat julkisen palvelun yhtiöiden omistamia, teoriaosuudessa tarkastellaan erityisesti julkista palvelua ja siihen liittyvää keskustelua. Työ toteutettiin syksyn 2013 aikana kvalitatiiviselle eli laadulliselle tutkimukselle tyypillisin metodein. Ensin jokaista palvelua tutkittiin havainnoimalla niitä erikseen: miltä ne näyttävät, miten niitä käytetään ja niin edelleen. Havainnoinnin jälkeen jokaisesta palvelusta haastateltiin yhtä edustajaa selittämään tarkemmin, miksi palvelu on juuri sellainen kuin se on. Haastattelut toteutettiin teemahaastatteluina ja toisistaan poikkeavin metodein, sillä kaikki haastateltavat olivat eri maissa. Havainnoinnista ja haastatteluista saatujen tietojen avulla kolmen palvelun eroja ja yhtäläisyyksiä käsiteltiin ennalta valittujen teemojen kautta. Teemat ovat palveluiden ulkoasu, käyttäminen, ohjelmatarjonta, palveluissa työskenteleminen, niiden uudistukset sekä niiden kohtaamat haasteet. Tulosten perusteella Elävällä arkistolla menee maailman arkistopalveluna oikein hyvin, sillä se nauttii Yleisradion sisäistä ja ulkoista arvostusta ja palvelussa on monipuolista ohjelmaa draamasta lastenohjelmiin ja uutisiin. Tästä syystä kehitysehdotuksia ei tullut kuin muutamia. Niitä ovat entistä laajempien oikeuksien tavoittelu draama- ja viihdeohjelmien esittämiseen sekä kaksi uutta palvelua ja tapaa jäsentää Elävän arkiston sisältöä. Jatkotutkimuksiksi ehdotetaan Elävän arkiston tutkimista opetuskäytössä sekä laajaa käyttäjätutkimusta, jossa selvitetään, kumpi ruokkii ihmisten nostalgiannälkää paremmin – lapsuudessa ja nuoruudessa nähdyt televisiosarjat vai tärkeästä historiallisesta tapahtumasta kertovat uutisklipit?Yleisradio’s archive service Elävä arkisto is an internet-based archive service. Through it, users interested in nostalgia can see their favorite programs from childhood and youth and familiarize themselves with important events and dates. This study examines Elävä arkisto in comparison to two foreign archive services, look-ing at the differences and similarities among these services. It also makes some devel-opment suggestions to Elävä arkisto based on these findings. The two services compared to Elävä arkisto are the Swedish public service television company Sveriges Television AB’s archive service, Öppet arkiv, and the Canadian public broadcasting company CBC/Radio-Canada’s Digital Archives. Since these services are owned by public service companies, the thesis will also deal with public service. The study was conducted during fall 2013 using methods typical of qualitative studies. Firstly, all the three services were observed separately – what they look like, how are they are utilized and so on. After this observation, one person was interviewed from each service to ascertain why the service is the way it is. The interviews were conducted thematically and also separately, as all the interviewees were in different countries. From the information that was gathered by observation and interviews, the differences and similarities between the services were examined, based on themes decided in ad-vance, specifically how the services appear, their usage, their program content, how it is to work in these services, past and future updating of services and any obstacles they might face. According to the results, Elävä arkisto is doing great as an archive service. It’s respected inside and outside of Yle, and it offers diverse programs, from drama and kids’ pro-gramming to news clips. For this reason there were only a few development recom-mendations – the pursuing of ever broader rights to offer drama and entertainment programs, two new services and ways to interpret the content of Elävä arkisto. Future studies are suggested regarding Elävä arkisto’s usage in teaching. A deeper user study was also suggested, in order to find out which satisfies the need for nostalgia bet-ter: programs seen in one’s childhood and youth or news clips regarding historically important events

Sclerostin: Current Knowledge and Future Perspectives

In recent years study of rare human bone disorders has led to the identification of important signaling pathways that regulate bone formation. Such diseases include the bone sclerosing dysplasias sclerosteosis and van Buchem disease, which are due to deficiency of sclerostin, a protein secreted by osteocytes that inhibits bone formation by osteoblasts. The restricted expression pattern of sclerostin in the skeleton and the exclusive bone phenotype of good quality of patients with sclerosteosis and van Buchem disease provide the basis for the design of therapeutics that stimulate bone formation. We review here current knowledge of the regulation of the expression and formation of sclerostin, its mechanism of action, and its potential as a bone-building treatment for patients with osteoporosis

Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language

Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker's voice, regardless of an individual's culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances ("nonsense speech") produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language ("in-group advantage"). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables

Myeloma cells suppress osteoblasts through sclerostin secretion

Wingless-type (Wnt) signaling through the secretion of Wnt inhibitors Dickkopf1, soluble frizzled-related protein-2 and -3 has a key role in the decreased osteoblast (OB) activity associated with multiple myeloma (MM) bone disease. We provide evidence that another Wnt antagonist, sclerostin, an osteocyte-expressed negative regulator of bone formation, is expressed by myeloma cells, that is, human myeloma cell lines (HMCLs) and plasma cells (CD138+ cells) obtained from the bone marrow (BM) of a large number of MM patients with bone disease. We demonstrated that BM stromal cells (BMSCs), differentiated into OBs and co-cultured with HMCLs showed, compared with BMSCs alone, reduced expression of major osteoblastic-specific proteins, decreased mineralized nodule formation and attenuated the expression of members of the activator protein 1 transcription factor family (Fra-1, Fra-2 and Jun-D). Moreover, in the same co-culture system, the addition of neutralizing anti-sclerostin antibodies restored OB functions by inducing nuclear accumulation of β-catenin. We further demonstrated that the upregulation of receptor activator of nuclear factor κ-B ligand and the downregulation of osteoprotegerin in OBs were also sclerostin mediated. Our data indicated that sclerostin secretion by myeloma cells contribute to the suppression of bone formation in the osteolytic bone disease associated to MM

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS)

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) small explorer spacecraft provides simultaneous spectra and images of the photosphere, chromosphere, transition region, and corona with 0.33-0.4 arcsec spatial resolution, 2 s temporal resolution and 1 km/s velocity resolution over a field-of-view of up to 175 arcsec x 175 arcsec. IRIS was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit on 27 June 2013 using a Pegasus-XL rocket and consists of a 19-cm UV telescope that feeds a slit-based dual-bandpass imaging spectrograph. IRIS obtains spectra in passbands from 1332-1358, 1389-1407 and 2783-2834 Angstrom including bright spectral lines formed in the chromosphere (Mg II h 2803 Angstrom and Mg II k 2796 Angstrom) and transition region (C II 1334/1335 Angstrom and Si IV 1394/1403 Angstrom). Slit-jaw images in four different passbands (C II 1330, Si IV 1400, Mg II k 2796 and Mg II wing 2830 Angstrom) can be taken simultaneously with spectral rasters that sample regions up to 130 arcsec x 175 arcsec at a variety of spatial samplings (from 0.33 arcsec and up). IRIS is sensitive to emission from plasma at temperatures between 5000 K and 10 MK and will advance our understanding of the flow of mass and energy through an interface region, formed by the chromosphere and transition region, between the photosphere and corona. This highly structured and dynamic region not only acts as the conduit of all mass and energy feeding into the corona and solar wind, it also requires an order of magnitude more energy to heat than the corona and solar wind combined. The IRIS investigation includes a strong numerical modeling component based on advanced radiative-MHD codes to facilitate interpretation of observations of this complex region. Approximately eight Gbytes of data (after compression) are acquired by IRIS each day and made available for unrestricted use within a few days of the observation.Comment: 53 pages, 15 figure

Extracorporeal shock waves down-regulate the expression of interleukin-10 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha in osteoarthritic chondrocytes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of extra corporeal shock waves (ESW) therapy on the metabolism of healthy and osteoarthritic human chondrocytes, and particularly on the expression of IL-10, TNF-alpha and beta1 integrin.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Human adult articular cartilage was obtained from 9 patients (6 male and 3 females), with primary knee osteoarthritis (OA), undergoing total joint replacement and from 3 young healthy donors (HD) (2 males, 1 female) with joint traumatic fracture. After isolation, chondrocytes underwent ESW treatment (electromagnetic generator system, MINILITH SL1, STORZ MEDICAL) at different parameters of impulses, energy levels and energy flux density. After that, chondrocytes were cultured in 24-well plate in DMEM supplemented with 10% FCS for 48 hours and then beta₁integrin surface expression and intracellular IL-10 and TNF-alpha levels were evaluated by flow-cytometry.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>At baseline, osteoarthritic chondrocytes expressed significantly lower levels of beta1 integrin and higher levels and IL-10 and TNF-alpha levels. Following ESW application, while beta1 integrin expression remain unchanged, a significant decrease of IL-10 and TNF-alpha intracellular levels was observed both in osteoarthritic and healthy chondrocytes. IL-10 levels decreased at any impulses and energy levels, while a significant reduction of TNF-alpha was mainly found at middle energies.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study confirmed that osteoarthritic chondrocytes express low beta₁integrin and high TNF-alpha and IL-10 levels. Nonetheless, ESW treatment application down-regulate the intracellular levels of TNF-alpha and IL-10 by chondrocytes, suggesting that ESW might restore TNF-alpha and IL-10 production by osteoarthritic chondrocytes at normal levels. However, further in vivo and in vitro studies are necessary to establish if ESW can represent a viable option in the treatment of OA.</p