Between-word junctures in early multi-word speech

Most children aged 1;6 to 2;0 begin to use utterances of two words or more. It is therefore important for child phonologists to consider the development of phonetic and phonological phenomena that characterize connected speech. The longitudinal case study reported here investigated three juncture types – assimilation, elision and liaison – in the speech of a typically-developing child between the ages of 2;4 and 3;4. Attempts at production of these adult juncture types occurred from the onset of two-word utterances. However, for some juncture types, the child still had to perfect the intergestural relationships and gestural articulations that the adult between-word junctures demand. This process of phonetic development was largely accomplished by the age of 3;4. With one exception, between-word junctures appear not to be the result of learned phonological rules or processes. The exception is liaison involving /r/, which did not occur until the child was three years old

Can children with speech difficulties process an unfamiliar accent?

This study explores the hypothesis that children identified as having phonological processing problems may have particular difficulty in processing a different accent. Children with speech difficulties (n = 18) were compared with matched controls on four measures of auditory processing. First, an accent auditory lexical decision task was administered. In one condition, the children made lexical decisions about stimuli presented in their own accent (London). In the second condition, the stimuli were spoken in an unfamiliar accent (Glaswegian). The results showed that the children with speech difficulties had a specific deficit on the unfamiliar accent. Performance on the other auditory discrimination tasks revealed additional deficits at lower levels of input processing. The wider clinical implications of the findings are considered

Development of the command data system and ground software for the SEDSAT-1 microsatellite

SEDSAT-1 is designed to be a low cost scientific satellite which is to be used to perform a minimum of five tasks which include: (1) the acquisition of a number of important parameters associated with the tethering processes from the payloads perspective (such as accelerations incurred and imaging data of the tether during deployment), (2) to act as a remote sensing platform for making measurements of the Earth's Atmosphere (allowing research to be performed in such areas as vertical lightning observation, visible light spectrography, and cloud cover studies, (3) to act as a general purpose amateur radio communication satellite relaying information back to earth, (4) to demonstrate the feasibility of the deployment in low earth orbit of advanced technology such as the Gallium Arsenide Solar Cells, Nickel Metal Hydride batteries, and multi-chip module technology and, (5) to support student's active participation in applying the disciplines of engineering and science to space-based hardware platforms. The project includes the Three-axis Accelerometer System, TAS, Experiment which is designed to report the accelerations that the satellite undergoes during the tethering operations and during the second phase of the mission when the free floating satellite comes in contact with orbit debris. The SEASIS (SEDS Earth, Atmosphere, and Space Imaging System) is another SEDSAT experiment designed to provide images of the tether during its deployment and the earth during the second phase of the mission. To control these experiments and virtually all other satellite operations the Command Data System, CDS is employed. This system utilizes a moderate complexity micro-controller controlled by tasks operating under a real-time operating system to dynamically monitor and control the satellite. The scope of this researchers efforts has been in the general area of coordinating and assisting the student researchers with the development of the CDS and ground station interfaces. This included the low level CDS hardware design and the formulization of a general software plan and schedule for both the CDS and ground station portions of the project

Identity Problems (An Interview with John B. Davis)

In this interview, Professor Davis discusses the evolution of his career and research interests as a philosopher-economist and gives his perspective on a number of important issues in the field. He argues that historians and methodologists of economics should be engaged in the practice of economics, and that historians should be more open to philosophical analysis of the content of economic ideas. He suggests that the history of recent economics is a particularly fruitful and important area for research exactly because it is an open-ended story that is very relevant to understanding the underlying concerns and concepts of contemporary economics. He discusses his engagement with heterodox economics schools, and their engagement with a rapidly changing mainstream economics. He argues that the theory of the individual is “the central philosophical issue in economics” and discusses his extensive contributions to the issue

Representations of finite element tensors via automated code generation

We examine aspects of the computation of finite element matrices and vectors which are made possible by automated code generation. Given a variational form in a syntax which resembles standard mathematical notation, the low-level computer code for building finite element tensors, typically matrices, vectors and scalars, can be generated automatically via a form compiler. In particular, the generation of code for computing finite element matrices using a quadrature approach is addressed. For quadrature representations, a number of optimisation strategies which are made possible by automated code generation are presented. The relative performance of two different automatically generated representations of finite element matrices is examined, with a particular emphasis on complicated variational forms. It is shown that approaches which perform best for simple forms are not tractable for more complicated problems in terms of run time performance, the time required to generate the code or the size of the generated code. The approach and optimisations elaborated here are effective for a range of variational forms

(WP 2016-01) Transformation without Paternalism

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people’s lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent, and the principle of democratic development

Expressiveness of Generic Process Shape Types

Shape types are a general concept of process types which work for many process calculi. We extend the previously published Poly* system of shape types to support name restriction. We evaluate the expressiveness of the extended system by showing that shape types are more expressive than an implicitly typed pi-calculus and an explicitly typed Mobile Ambients. We demonstrate that the extended system makes it easier to enjoy advantages of shape types which include polymorphism, principal typings, and a type inference implementation.Comment: Submitted to Trustworthy Global Computing (TGC) 2010

Transformation without Paternalism

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people's lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless, this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent and the principle of democratic development

Intonation development from five to thirteen

Research undertaken to date suggests that important developments in the understanding and use of intonation may take place after the age of 5;0. The present study aims to provide a more comprehensive account of these developments. A specially designed battery of prosodic tasks was administered to four groups of thirty children, from London (U.K.), with mean ages of 5;6, 8;7, 10;10 and 13;9. The tasks tap comprehension and production of functional aspects of intonation, in four communicative areas: CHUNKING (i.e. prosodic phrasing), AFFECT, INTERACTION and FOCUS. Results indicate that there is considerable variability among children within each age band on most tasks. The ability to produce intonation functionally is largely established in five-year-olds, though some specific functional contrasts are not mastered until C.A. 8;7. Aspects of intonation comprehension continue to develop up to C.A. 10;10, correlating with measures of expressive and receptive language development

Apparatus for ejection of an instrument cover

Apparatus for ejecting covers of instrument packages using differential pressure principl