UniMorph 4.0:Universal Morphology

The Universal Morphology (UniMorph) project is a collaborative effort providing broad-coverage instantiated normalized morphological inflection tables for hundreds of diverse world languages. The project comprises two major thrusts: a language-independent feature schema for rich morphological annotation and a type-level resource of annotated data in diverse languages realizing that schema. This paper presents the expansions and improvements made on several fronts over the last couple of years (since McCarthy et al. (2020)). Collaborative efforts by numerous linguists have added 67 new languages, including 30 endangered languages. We have implemented several improvements to the extraction pipeline to tackle some issues, e.g. missing gender and macron information. We have also amended the schema to use a hierarchical structure that is needed for morphological phenomena like multiple-argument agreement and case stacking, while adding some missing morphological features to make the schema more inclusive. In light of the last UniMorph release, we also augmented the database with morpheme segmentation for 16 languages. Lastly, this new release makes a push towards inclusion of derivational morphology in UniMorph by enriching the data and annotation schema with instances representing derivational processes from MorphyNet

Influence of Nicotine from Diverse Delivery Tools on the Autonomic Nervous and Hormonal Systems

Background: Through measurements of the heart rate variability (HRV) accompanied by the pertinent biomarker assays, the effects of nicotine and byproducts derived from alternative nicotine delivery systems (ANDS) on the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and hormonal system have been investigated. Methods: HRV was studied in a group of volunteers (17 people), involving non-smokers, i.e., who never smoked before (11), ex-smokers (4) and active smokers (2). ANDS and smoking simulators, including regular, nicotine-free and electronic cigarettes; tobacco heating systems; chewing gums and nicotine packs of oral fixation (nic-packs), were used. Blood pressure, levels of stress hormones in saliva and catecholamines in the blood were also monitored. Results: HRV analysis showed relatively small changes in HRV and in the other studied parameters with the systemic use of nic-packs with low and moderate nicotine contents (up to 6 mg) compared to other ANDS. Conclusions: The HRV method is proven to be a promising technique for evaluation of the risks associated with smoking, dual use of various ANDS and studying the biomedical aspects of smoking cessation. Nic-packs are shown to be leaders in biological safety among the studied ANDS. A sharp surge in the activity of the sympathetic division of the ANS within the first minutes of the use of nicotine packs implies that nicotine begins to act already at very low doses (before entering the blood physically in any significant amount) through fast signal transmission to the brain from the nicotinic and taste buds located in the mouth area