2,865 research outputs found
Communicative and linguistic development in preterm children: a longitudinal study from 12 to 24 months.
BACKGROUND: Research conducted on preterm children's linguistic skills has provided varying pictures, and the question of whether and to what extent preterm children are delayed in early language acquisition remains largely unresolved. AIMS: To examine communicative and linguistic development during the second year in a group of Italian children born prematurely using the 'Primo Vocabolario del Bambino' (PVB), the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. The primary goal was to compare action/gesture production, word comprehension, and word production, and the relationship between these three domains in preterm children and to normative data obtained from a large sample of Italian children born at term. A second aim was to address the longstanding debate regarding the use of chronological versus corrected gestational age in the assessment of preterm children's abilities. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Parents of twelve preterm children completed the PVB questionnaire at five age points during the children's second year, and scores were compared with those from a normative sample of full-term children and those of 59 full-term children selected as a control group from the normative sample for the PVB. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Preterm children exhibited a delay in all three aspects of communication and language. In particular, communicative-linguistic age tended to lag approximately 3 months behind chronological age when children were between the ages of 12 and 24 months. When chronological age was used, preterm children's percentile scores for all three components of communication and language fell within the lower limits of the normal range, while scores calculated using corrected age either fell at or above the 50th percentile. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Findings suggest that despite the significant biological risk engendered by premature birth, early communicative and linguistic development appears to proceed in a relatively robust fashion among preterm children, with tight relations across communicative domains as in full-term children. Employing both chronological and corrected gestational age criteria in the evaluation of preterm children's abilities may provide important information about their progress in language acquisition. This may be especially important during the initial stages of communicative and linguistic development, inasmuch as comparisons of the two sets of scores may provide clinicians with a way to distinguish children who may be at risk for language problems from those who may be expected to progress normally
Effects of language experience on pre-categorical perception: Distinguishing general from specialized processes in speech perception
Cross-language differences in speech perception have traditionally been linked to phonological categories, but it has become increasingly clear that language experience has effects beginning at early stages of perception, which blurs the accepted distinctions between general and speech-specific processing. The present experiments explored this distinction by playing stimuli to English and Japanese speakers that manipulated the acoustic form of English /r/ and /l/, in order to determine how acoustically natural and phonologically identifiable a stimulus must be for cross-language discrimination differences to emerge. Discrimination differences were found for stimuli that did not sound subjectively like speech or /r/ and /l/, but overall they were strongly linked to phonological categorization. The results thus support the view that phonological categories are an important source of cross-language differences, but also show that these differences can extend to stimuli that do not clearly sound like speech
Explaining Aviation Safety Incidents Using Deep Temporal Multiple Instance Learning
Although aviation accidents are rare, safety incidents occur more frequently
and require a careful analysis to detect and mitigate risks in a timely manner.
Analyzing safety incidents using operational data and producing event-based
explanations is invaluable to airline companies as well as to governing
organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United
States. However, this task is challenging because of the complexity involved in
mining multi-dimensional heterogeneous time series data, the lack of
time-step-wise annotation of events in a flight, and the lack of scalable tools
to perform analysis over a large number of events. In this work, we propose a
precursor mining algorithm that identifies events in the multidimensional time
series that are correlated with the safety incident. Precursors are valuable to
systems health and safety monitoring and in explaining and forecasting safety
incidents. Current methods suffer from poor scalability to high dimensional
time series data and are inefficient in capturing temporal behavior. We propose
an approach by combining multiple-instance learning (MIL) and deep recurrent
neural networks (DRNN) to take advantage of MIL's ability to learn using weakly
supervised data and DRNN's ability to model temporal behavior. We describe the
algorithm, the data, the intuition behind taking a MIL approach, and a
comparative analysis of the proposed algorithm with baseline models. We also
discuss the application to a real-world aviation safety problem using data from
a commercial airline company and discuss the model's abilities and
shortcomings, with some final remarks about possible deployment directions
Interpreting forest and grassland biome productivity utilizing nested scales of image resolution and biogeographical analysis
Several hardware, software, and data collection problems encountered were conquered. The Geographic Information System (GIS) data from other systems were converted to ERDAS format for incorporation with the image data. Statistical analysis of the relationship between spectral values and productivity is being pursued. Several project sites, including Jackson, Pope, Boulder, Smokies, and Huntington Forest are evolving as the most intensively studied areas, primarily due to availability of data and time. Progress with data acquisition and quality checking, more details on experimental sites, and brief summarizations of research results and future plans are discussed. Material on personnel, collaborators, facilities, site background, and meetings and publications of the investigators are included
Avalanche Dynamics in Wet Granular Materials
We have studied the dynamics of avalanching wet granular media in a rotating
drum apparatus. Quantitative measurements of the flow velocity and the granular
flux during avalanches allow us to characterize novel avalanche types unique to
wet media. We also explore the details of viscoplastic flow (observed at the
highest liquid contents) in which there are lasting contacts during flow,
leading to coherence across the entire sample. This coherence leads to a
velocity independent flow depth at high rotation rates and novel robust pattern
formation in the granular surface.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures in color, REVTeX4, for smaller pdfs see
http://angel.elte.hu/~tegzes/condmat.htm
Principles And Practices Fostering Inclusive Excellence: Lessons From The Howard Hughes Medical Instituteâs Capstone Institutions
Best-practices pedagogy in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) aims for inclusive excellence that fosters student persistence. This paper describes principles of inclusivity across 11 primarily undergraduate institutions designated as Capstone Awardees in Howard Hughes Medical Instituteâs (HHMI) 2012 competition. The Capstones represent a range of institutional missions, student profiles, and geographical locations. Each successfully directed activities toward persistence of STEM students, especially those from traditionally underrepresented groups, through a set of common elements: mentoring programs to build community; research experiences to strengthen scientific skill/identity; attention to quantitative skills; and outreach/bridge programs to broaden the student pool. This paper grounds these program elements in learning theory, emphasizing their essential principles with examples of how they were implemented within institutional contexts. We also describe common assessment approaches that in many cases informed programming and created traction for stakeholder buy-in. The lessons learned from our shared experiences in pursuit of inclusive excellence, including the resources housed on our companion website, can inform othersâ efforts to increase access to and persistence in STEM in higher education
Effect of a Cold Margin on Ice Flow at the Terminus of Storglaciaren, Sweden: Implications for Sediment Transfer
The cold-based termini of polythermal glaciers are usually assumed to adhere strongly to an immobile substrate and thereby supply significant resistance to the flow of warm-based ice upglacier. This compressive environment is commonly thought to uplift basal sediment to the surface of the glacier by folding and thrust faulting. We present model and field evidence from the terminus of Storglaciaren, Sweden, showing that the cold margin provides limited resistance to flow from up-glacier. Ice temperatures indicate that basal freezing occurs in this zone at 10â1 â10â2 maâ1, but model results indicate that basal motion at rates greater than 1maâ1 must, nevertheless, persist there for surface and basal velocities to be consistent with measurements. Estimated longitudinal compressive stresses of 20â 25 kPa within the terminus further indicate that basal resistance offered by the cold-based terminus is small. These results indicate that where polythermal glaciers are underlain by unlithified sediments, ice-flow trajectories and sediment transport pathways may be affected by subglacial topography and hydrology more than by the basal thermal regime
Covariant Quantization of d=4 Brink-Schwarz Superparticle with Lorentz Harmonics
Covariant first and second quantization of the free d=4 massless
superparticle are implemented with the introduction of purely gauge auxiliary
spinor Lorentz harmonics. It is shown that the general solution of the
condition of maslessness is a sum of two independent chiral superfields with
each of them corresponding to finite superspin. A translationally covariant, in
general bijective correspondence between harmonic and massless superfields is
constructed. By calculation of the commutation function it is shown that in the
considered approach only harmonic fields with correct connection between spin
and statistics and with integer negative homogeneity index satisfy the
microcausality condition. It is emphasized that harmonic fields that arise are
reducible at integer points. The index spinor technique is used to describe
infinite-component fields of finite spin; the equations of motion of such
fields are obtained, and for them Weinberg's theorem on the connection between
massless helicity particles and the type of nongauge field that describes them
is generalized.Comment: V2: 1 + 26 pages, published versio
Results on Plasma Focusing of High Energy Density Electron and Positron Beams
We present results from the SLAC E-150 experiment on plasma focusing of high
energy density electron and, for the first time, positron beams. We also
discuss measurements on plasma lens-induced synchrotron radiation, longitudinal
dynamics of plasma focusing, and laser- and beam-plasma interactions.Comment: LINAC 2000 paper No. THC13, Monterey, CA. Aug.21-25,2000, 3 pages, 2
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