MaxElide and clause structure in Scottish Gaelic

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Syntactic identity, Parallelism and accommodated antecedents

Analyses of the ellipsis identity condition must account for the fact that some syntactic mismatches between an ellipsis site E and its antecedent A are possible while others are not. Previous accounts have suggested that the relevant distinction is between different kinds of heads, such that some heads in the ellipsis site may mismatch while others may not, and they have dealt with this sensitivity to a set of “special heads” with a built-for-purpose syntactic identity condition which holds over and above semantic identity to constrain ellipsis. In this article I argue against this approach and pursue an alternative which holds that identity is syntactic but “loose” in a precisely defined way. I show that the relevant generalization that accounts for syntactic identity effects in sluicing and VP-ellipsis-like constructions concerns the position of variables in the antecedent, rather than the feature content of syntactic heads. I propose an implementation of syntactic identity which allows for the accommodation of additional antecedents, with these being derived by a grammatical algorithm for generating alternatives, and I show that this implementation derives the right kinds of looseness while restricting mismatches with respect to the position of variables, thus deriving both the tolerable and intolerable mismatches between E and A without recourse to a specific condition regulating the content of special heads

Short answers in Scottish Gaelic and their theoretical implications

This article presents an analysis of a novel short answer strategy in Scottish Gaelic, called the Verb-Answer, which differs from standard fragment answers in allowing us to directly observe some of the clausal structure in which it is embedded. It is shown that the Verb-Answer is identical to the fragment answer in virtually all other respects, demanding a unified analysis, and it is demonstrated that pursuing a unified analysis is problematic for Direct Interpretation approaches to short answers, but straightforward for the Silent Structure approach of Morgan (1973) and Merchant (2004). The extended typology of short answer strategies therefore provides an argument in favour of the latter approach to elliptical phenomena

The Psychological Importance of Forensic Identification to Families of Victims of Human Rights Violations

No one knows how many people are missing in the world. Among cases involving kidnapping, human trafficking, and armed conflicts, even the most scrutinous efforts can never verify the sheer number of missing persons. This mystery is especially true for armed conflicts and human rights abuses as “the reluctance of most states to deal honestly and effectively with this issue” keeps the number unknown (“Missing”). Sadly, a great deal of missing persons are not only missing, but dead and unidentified, often as a result of armed conflicts like genocide, which uses mass graves. Once the mass graves are unearthed, specially trained experts called forensic anthropologists work tirelessly to examine the skeletonized remains to identify and return them to families and hopefully achieve justice for the victims. The forensic identification of victims of human rights violations, while challenging, is important for the psychological healing of victims’ broken families and is ultimately worth the intense effort

Ellipsis, economy, and the (non)uniformity of traces

A number of works have attempted to account for the interaction between movement and ellipsis in terms of an economy condition Max- Elide. We show that the elimination of MaxElide leads to an empirically superior account of these interactions. We show that a number of the core effects attributed to MaxElide can be accounted for with a parallelism condition on ellipsis. The remaining cases are then treated with a generalized economy condition that favors shorter derivations over longer ones. The resulting analysis has no need for the ellipsisspecific economy constraint MaxElide

Dynamical mechanism of antifreeze proteins to prevent ice growth

The fascinating ability of algae, insects and fishes to survive at temperatures below normal freezing is realized by antifreeze proteins (AFPs). These are surface-active molecules and interact with the diffusive water/ice interface thus preventing complete solidification. We propose a new dynamical mechanism on how these proteins inhibit the freezing of water. We apply a Ginzburg-Landau type approach to describe the phase separation in the two-component system (ice, AFP). The free energy density involves two fields: one for the ice phase with a low AFP concentration, and one for liquid water with a high AFP concentration. The time evolution of the ice reveals microstructures resulting from phase separation in the presence of AFPs. We observed a faster clustering of pre-ice structure connected to a locking of grain size by the action of AFP, which is an essentially dynamical process. The adsorption of additional water molecules is inhibited and the further growth of ice grains stopped. The interfacial energy between ice and water is lowered allowing the AFPs to form smaller critical ice nuclei. Similar to a hysteresis in magnetic materials we observe a thermodynamic hysteresis leading to a nonlinear density dependence of the freezing point depression in agreement with the experiments

Promotion of Chondrocyte-specific Function by Inhibition of HIF-targeting Hydroxylases

Human articular cartilage is an avascular tissue, and therefore functions in a hypoxic environment. Cartilage cells, the chondrocytes, have adapted to this and actually use hypoxia to drive tissue-specific functions. Previous work in our laboratory has shown that human chondrocytes enhance cartilage matrix synthesis in response to hypoxia specifically through Hypoxia Inducible Factor 2alpha (HIF-2α) mediated upregulation of master regulator transcription factor SOX9, which in turn drives expression of the main cartilage-specific extracellular matrix genes. HIF-α isoforms are themselves regulated by specific prolyl hydroxylases (PHDs) which target them for proteosomal degradation. In fact, the PHDs are the true direct oxygen sensors since they require molecular oxygen as a co-substrate. Here we show that PHD2 is the dominant isoenzyme regulating HIF-2α (and HIF-1α) stability in human chondrocytes. Moreover, specific inhibition of PHD2 using RNAi-mediated depletion caused an upregulation of SOX9 and enhanced extracellular matrix protein production. Depletion of PHD2 resulted in greater HIF-2α levels, and therefore enhanced SOX9-induced matrix cartilage matrix production, even when performed in hypoxia (1% oxygen) implying that PHD2 inhibition offers a novel means to enhance cartilage repair. The need for HIF-specific hydroxylase inhibitors was highlighted as treatment with the oxoglutarate analogue dimethyloxalylglycine (which also inhibits the collagen prolyl hydroxylases) resulted in reduced secretion of type II collagen, a critical matrix component. Complimentary to these anabolic effects, hypoxia was found to mediate anti-catabolic effects, suppressing aggrecan degradation in human cartilage explants. In isolated chondrocytes hypoxia downregulates key matrix metalloproteinases (ADAMTS5 and MMP13) and upregulates metalloproteinase inhibitor (TIMP3). Unlike the anabolic effects (HIF-2α-dependent), these hypoxia induced anti-catabolic chondrocyte responses were predominantly HIF-1α dependent. Both anabolic and anti-catabolic hypoxia-induced responses were further enhanced by depletion of PHD2, whose inhibition thus offers a novel means to induce cartilage repair

Remote sensing as an aid to route evaluation for relocated Louisiana Highway 1

Aerial photography in the form of color infrared and color positive transparencies was used as an aid for evaluation of the route proposed for relocated Louisiana Highway 1, between LaRose and Golden Meadows, in South Louisiana