bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From the origin of language to the diversification of languages
Authors: d'Errico Francesco , Vanhaeren Marian , Henshilwood Christopher S. , Lawson Graeme , Maureille Bruno , Gambier Dominique , Tillier Anne-Marie , Soressi Marie , Niekerk Karen van
Published: August 2014

In this paper we recall the arguments put forward in an attempt to link language origins and specific elements of the fossil record (pigment use, burial practices, personal ornaments, production of depictions and carvings, musical traditions, various anatomical features), and summarise the scenarios proposed by palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists to account for the emergence of modern behavioral traits. This review challenges the idea of a strict link between biological and behavioural change and suggests that modern cognition and language are results of a gradual, complex and non-linear process to whose advancement different human populations and possibly a number of fossil human species have contributed.
Can agent-based language evolution contribute to archeology?
Authors: Steels Luc
Published: August 2014

A growing scala of computational and robotic experiments are trying to pin down the cognitive and social prerequisites that may have given rise to human language. From humble beginnings showing how a lexicon may self-organize in a population of artificial agents, these research efforts are now exploring how grammatical languages about complex scenes may emerge. This paper introduces this field of inquiry and then explores whether a dialog with archeologists might be useful.
Chomsky’s paradigm
Authors: Radwańska-Williams Joanna
Published: August 2014

“Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech […]” George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion In the structuralist tradition, the semiotic nature of the linguistic sign was seen as grounded in the psychological association between sound and meaning. On the one hand, this association is arbitrary, since sound and meaning are dissimilar in nature; on the other hand, the language system as a whole is partially motivated through various associations by similarity, which group paradigmatic relations and are a factor in semantic change. The system relies on the social fact of language use as the guarantor of the stability of conventionalized form-meaning associations, but also as the agent of change, which is a slow disruption and restructuring of the stability of the system. The article discusses evidence for the semiotic nature of language from the domain of poetic iconicity, which heightens and highlights the possibility of non-arbitrary association between meaning and form. The importance of the dimension of language use is also discussed with reference to Mufwene’s (2001, 2005, 2007) ‘uniformitarian’ theory of language contact, according to which idiolectal contact is the linguistic locus of social interaction and language change. It is argued that, in discounting language use, i.e., ‘linguistic performance’ and ‘E-language’, the Chomskyan theoretical framework is incomplete as an account of the nature of language.
British empiricism and Transformational Grammar
Authors: Léon Jacqueline
Published: August 2014

Our aim in this paper is to show, that, although Chomsky’s interest in empiricist British linguistics was always very limited, and the controversy of Transformational Grammar against British empiricism was led more by Neo- Firthians against Chomsky than by Chomskyans against Firth and his followers, the debate has gone through different phases since the 1950s, and is not yet over. It was very vivid in the 1960s, when British empiricist linguists, such as Randolph Quirk and M.A.K. Halliday, discussed mostly grammaticalness and competence versus ppperformance acceptability and gradience. Contrary to what happened with the Neo-Bloomfieldians, the debate did not touch on the validity of corpora. After a decline of several decades, the discussion was revived in the 1980s–90s with the rise of large computerized corpora. At this point the debate concerned mostly new topics still pertaining to TG, such as corpora, statistics, and creativity. It was carried out within the area of computational linguistics and is still currently vivid. The issue is to investigate whether this debate with TG is still relevant, in particular for corpus linguistics, or whether these arguments are past their time and are revived only for strategic reasons, in pretending to justify the emergence of a new linguistics.
The linguist’s responsibilities to the community of speakers
Authors: Rice Keren
Published: August 2014

Recent years have seen an increased focus of attention on the responsibilities of linguists engaged in fieldwork to the communities of speakers with whom they work. This article focuses on the evolving nature of ethical responsibilities, concentrating on developments in Canada in the past fifteen or twenty years, examining both the development of ethical guidelines and programs funded through the granting councils and the types of language-oriented work that has been going on. There is a brief comparison with programs elsewhere, and a discussion of the some of the consequences of a community-based model for language documentation.
Language documentation
Authors: Macri Martha J.
Published: August 2014

Ethical issues as they relate to documentation of endangered languages include consideration of the rights and obligations of the various parties who have interests in such work. Ownership, copyright, and access restrictions are examined from the perspectives of the language documenters, of the minority societies within larger governments, and of the individuals and communities whose speech have been documented. Goals for collaboration with speakers and other members of their communities, questions of ownership of archived materials, and access to collections – these can be negotiated between communities and academic institutions. Efforts toward language documentation might be most effectively aimed, not only at recording languages, but in supporting their continued use within their respective communities.
Documenting different genres of oral narrative in Cora (Uto-Aztecan)
Authors: Vázquez Soto Verónica
Published: August 2014

This paper discusses genres of oral literature in Meseño Cora, an indigenous language of Nayarit, Mexico, and their inclusion in teaching textbooks as well as grammars and dictionaries. Both texts presented here were taken from a single narrator and collected during specific narrative festivals. “The Rabbit” illustrates níukari hí’iwahkari or ‘word playing’, a genre targeted for children, it uses dialogue and Spanish borrowings extensively. “The Birth of Corn” belongs to the níukari míme’ekan or ‘ancient word’ genre which is characteristic of creation myths. It has almost no Spanish loan words and employs prose instead of dialogue. This genre also uses different vocabulary and many cultural symbols also present in Cora daily life.
Sharing data in small and endangered languages
Authors: Thieberger Nicholas , Jacobson Michel
Published: August 2014

Speakers of small or ‘under-resourced’ languages often first contact the world of Information Technology via the effort of field linguists. Good practices in linguistic data management include the separation of structure and content and of data and metadata formats. Primary outputs of field research (lexicon, transcripts and interlinear glossed text collections, and their associated media) need to be coded and preserved. Long-term access to these data is addressed by the establishment of archives that also act as the locus for training and advocacy for well-formed data. In this paper we discuss two such archives, one in Australia, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC), and the other in France, the “Archiving Project” from the LACITO/CNRS.
Models of successful collaboration
Authors: Dwyer Arienne
Published: August 2014

This chapter uses case studies to develop a model of productive collaborative research. In contrast to the privileged position academician-researchers may accord themselves, true collaborations recognize full agency in all key participants and attempt to align their disparate aims. More than in the business world, collaborations in language documentation and revitalization require active bridging the motivations of multiple actors to establish and maintain a community of practice. Ingredients for successful collaborations are closely tied to emerging models of research ethics, and include establishing working relationships based on inclusiveness; fully consultative planning; clear goal-setting; mutual training; a smooth workflow; flexibility; and the empowerment of indigenous capacities beyond the scope of the original project.
Training graduate students and community members for native language documentation
Authors: Maxwell Judith M.
Published: August 2014

In a world where “remote” communities have cell phones, some internet access, and are tied to national and international webs of commerce and socialization, linguistic study must be attuned to the desires and expectations of the host community and graduate students must, in addition to training in phonetics, transcription, use of technology for recording and analyzing the language, learn to work with language brokers and develop goals for their research conjointly with the speakers who facilitate their data, while writing for the (academic) community. Student projects may range from salvage to revitalization, from documentation to theoretic exploration. Projects co-constructed with the host community promise to give both local and academic communities the greatest satisfaction in goals, products, applications and dissemination.
Touchy-Feely colour
Authors: Chirimuuta Mazviita
Published: August 2014

The default opinion in philosophy is that we perceive colours to be intrinsic properties of things, properties that objects have regardless of their relations with perceivers. This intrinsic-intuition is considered a crucial objection to relational theories of colour, ones that account for colours in terms of interactions between perceivers and objects. In this paper I defend relationism by analysing the motivation for the intrinsic-intuition. Firstly, I argue that intuition relies on a historically entrenched, passive model of vision. Secondly, I discuss recent psychophysical work on the connection between colour and perceived material stability. Finally, I develop a relationist phenomenology of colour by making the comparison between colour vision and the active – and interactive – sense of touch.
Basic colour terms of Arabic
Authors: Al-Rasheed Abdulrahman S. , Al-Sharif Humood H. , Thabit Mohammed J. , Al-Mohimeed Norah S. , Davies Ian R.L.
Published: August 2014

This study aimed to establish the basic colour terms of Arabic and to clarify the status of three Arabic terms for blue: azrock, samawee and khuhlie. Data from a list task were collected from 253 child and 200 adult native Arabic speakers. The patterns of the terms ordered by their frequency from the two samples were essentially the same. In the colour-naming task, the child and adult samples (N = 61 and 60 respectively) had to name a set of 65 colours representing the whole colour palette. Both samples performed similarly. Based on these results, it appears that Arabic has eleven basic colour terms that correspond to Berlin and Kay’s (1969) universal set. In addition, the terms of particular interest – samawee “light blue” and khuhlie “dark blue” – are not basic Arabic colour terms.
Towards a diachrony of Maltese basic colour terms
Authors: Borg Alexander
Published: August 2014

...
la perception de la couleur n’est pas entièrement elucidée quand on en a precisé les domaines physiques et physiologiques. Il y a une histoire humaine de la perception. [colour perception cannot be fully explained merely by a precise specification of the relevant physical and physiological domains; perception is itself a product of human history.](Ignace Meyerson 1957: 7)The vernacular of the Maltese archipelago displays a twelve-term colour paradigm comprising 〈abjad〉 “white”, 〈iswed〉 “black”, 〈aħmar〉 “red”, 〈aħdar〉 “green”, 〈isfar〉 “yellow”, 〈ċelesti〉 “sky blue”, 〈blu〉 “dark blue”, 〈kannella〉 “brown”, 〈roża〉 “pink”, 〈griż〉 “grey”, 〈oranġjo〉 “orange” and 〈vjola〉 “violet”. The dual systemic split of the blue category is a striking feature of Maltese, inviting comparison with the situation obtaining in Italian and other Mediterranean languages. The hybrid (basically Arabic/Italian) composition of the Maltese colour system presents the linguistic researcher with an intriguing cultural synthesis reached by an erstwhile medieval vernacular of Arabic spoken by a small island community exposed to complex linguistic and cultural currents endemic in its regional and local history. The case of Maltese – a Europeanized Arabic vernacular – highlights the crucial role of external influences on cognitive processes monitoring the acquisition of colour categories, and evokes the need for a linguistic model incorporating an elaborate cultural dimension restricting universalist claims commonly associated with the Berlin and Kay paradigm.
Hues and cries
Authors: Chare Nicholas
Published: August 2014

This chapter examines the use of colour in Francis Bacon’s paintings, focusing particularly on Head VI (1949) and the neglected Triptych (1977). The chapter will demonstrate how Julia Kristeva’s ideas about colour and language, developed in the context of Early Renaissance art, are equally applicable to Bacon’s paintings. They provide a valuable explanation for the artist’s rich palette and his often unusual techniques. Kristeva’s ideas also reveal how Bacon’s chromatics can be understood to trigger memories of the early stages of psychic life. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Bacon’s approach to colour should be understood as contributing to the expression of a sexuality for which no pre-existing visual rhetoric was available.
Category training affects colour discrimination but only in the right visual field
Authors: Drivonikou Gilda V. , Clifford Alexandra , Franklin Anna , Özgen Emre , Davies Ian R.L.
Published: August 2014

There is indirect evidence that categorical colour perception (better discrimination of colours from different categories than those from the same category). For instance, CP can be induced across a newly learned category boundary (Özgen & Davies 2002). Here we replicate and extend Özgen and Davies’s category learning study to try and pinpoint the nature of the changes underlying category learning. Participants learned to divide green into two new categories ‘yellow-green’/‘blue-green’ across four days. The trained group showed CP across the new boundary on a target detection task and this was restricted to the left hemisphere (LH; cf. Drivonikou et al. 2007), whereas the controls did not. The results could suggest that category training produces changes at early stages in visual processing mainly in the LH.
Chapter 1. Pan symbolicus
Authors: McGrew William C.
Published: August 2014

Traditional views of non-human primate communication held that it was hard-wired, involuntary, and emotionally expressive only. All of these conclusions have been proven wrong: chimpanzees use natural vocalisations to signal the nature and location of foodstuffs, that is, spontaneous referentiality. Gibbons signal anti-predator alarm by using song-elements in rule-governed combinations. Chimpanzees show tactical deception in their recruitment screams, tailoring these to the audience. Pant-hoots show local variation that if found in human language, would be called dialects. Males devise individualised courtship routines. Some of these signals become group-typical, and such gestures are neither iconic nor onomatopoeic, but instead are arbitrary. Primatological studies of apes behaving spontaneously show us repeatedly that their communicative and cognitive capacities exceed our anthropocentric expectations.
Chapter 2. The evolution and the rise of human language
Authors: Savage-Rumbaugh E. Sue , Fields William M.
Published: August 2014

Is it the case that a complete psyche discontinuity exists between ape and man, as a function of human consciousness and human grammatical abilities? The genetic evidence makes this seem unlikely. We offer an alternative explanation, based on the plasticity of neuronal development and the discontinuity between infant clinging and infant carriage in ape and human. Human infants not only fail to cling, they display innate motor patterns of rotational hand-waving and leg kicking. These patterns (absent in ape infants) prevent clinging. In their place, ape infants display an elaboration of the moro-reflex, which enables them to cling with all four limbs shortly after birth. The absence of clinging in the human infant is not due to loss of hair, but to the presence of motor patterns incompatible with clinging. The neuronal- developmental consequences of these contrasting innate patterns form the substrate for the emergence of human/ape differences.
Spatial indexicalities and spatial pragmatics
Authors: Auer Peter
Published: August 2014

This paper argues for a rapprochement between the two hitherto entirely separate linguistic research traditions that have as their topic the relationship of space and language. This is on the one hand research on spatial deixis, which focuses on how languages are equipped to deal with location and manoeuvring in space. On the other hand, there is research in areal linguistics which looks at the way in which variable linguistic features are distributed across geographical spaces. It is argued that at the heart of areal linguistics lies a deeply pragmatic procedure: that of locating speakers in space on the basis of their language, an issue that is of permanent concern for speakers as it is one basis of social categorisation. While spatial deixis serves to locate discourse objects by means of indexical linguistic signs (deixis), areal variation in language serves to locate speakers in space through another type of indexicality based on lay knowledge about where people speak how.
Knowledge, discourse and domination
Authors: van Dijk Teun A.
Published: August 2014

Within the framework of an interdisciplinary project on discourse and knowledge, this paper explores the more critical, sociopolitical aspects of the relationship between these two fundamental notions in the humanities and social sciences, relating them with another fundamental notion, namely that of power. More specifically, I focus on power abuse – or domination – as a major dimension of social inequality. After a summary of the main properties of knowledge as I define it – namely as justified, shared beliefs of an epistemic community – I first examine the fundamental role of knowledge in discourse production and comprehension, for instance in the construction of mental (situation) models that are the basis of discourse meaning as attributed by the participants. It is argued that in addition to the standard cognitive theory of discourse processing, we also need a pragmatic component defining contexts as mental context models subjectively representing the relevant parameters of the communicative situation, and defining the appropriateness of discourse. One of the fundamental appropriateness conditions is that speakers adapt their discourse to the (assumed) knowledge of the recipients. It is at this point that the paper focuses on the possible domination as power abuse when powerful persons or institutions manage knowledge or information to recipients in their own interests. The paper examines various levels and structures of discourse as possible means to manipulate knowledge in communication and interaction, finally illustrated with an analysis of the usage of knowledge by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in his well-known Iraq speech in the House of Commons on March 13, 2003.
Chapter 1. Fair play to them
Authors: MacKenzie Ian
Published: August 2014

Proficiency in English is increasing across Europe. Because bilingual speech often contains ephemeral, speaker-specific nonce borrowings, code-switches, and all the other manifestations of crosslinguistic interaction, this will to a minor extent Anglicize much everyday language use. But increasing bilingualism is also likely to change patterns of borrowing. This article predicts that, while cultural and prestige borrowings from English will continue, increased proficiency in English will result in fewer false Anglicisms being created and more complex and abstract words being borrowed, although these will often not retain their native English meanings.
Chapter 7. Anglicisms in Armenian
Authors: Galstyan Anahit
Published: August 2014

The influence of English on Armenian is limited to borrowings at the lexical level. This brief survey examines the problem of the domestication of English words in Eastern Armenian. It is essential that our focus be on contrastive and typological studies of the two languages, as English and Eastern Armenian differ in their phonetic systems, systems of grammatical categories, and semantics. We analyze the phonetic and graphemic integration of Anglicisms in Eastern Armenian. We also elucidate the peculiarities of the grammatical integration of Anglicisms belonging to different parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The last part of the article is devoted to the problem of semantic integration of loanwords in the receptor language.
On the interactional ecology of objects
Authors: Nevile Maurice , Haddington Pentti , Heinemann Trine , Rauniomaa Mirka
Published: August 2014

The empirical studies of this book examine how objects feature in the momentto-moment conduct of social interaction and activity. The studies draw on naturally occurring data, video recordings of people interacting with one another as they engage with objects for a wide range of purposes, across many real-life settings, situations and occasions. Here in this introductory chapter we define ‘object’, and highlight how objects in the social world have been investigated across scholarly fields. We outline the dominant methodological and analytic influences for this collection, ethnomethodology (EM) and conversation analysis (CA), and emphasise the significance of embodiment and materiality. We describe the broad arrangement of the chapters around two overarching themes, ‘Objects as situated resources’ and ‘Objects as practical accomplishments’. Lastly, looking across the chapters we identify a number of possible alternative points of convergence which emerge when objects in and for social interaction are themselves treated as the principal focus of analysis.
The order of ordering
Authors: Richardson Emma , Stokoe Elizabeth
Published: August 2014

This chapter examines how, in video-recorded public house service encounters between customers and bartenders, different objects emerge and are constituted as essential resources in accomplishing the service encounter at the bar. The objects of interest are the cash till and the tables in the bar, as well as the bar environment itself. Using ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, we show how the bartenders and customers recruit and index these objects at particular junctions in the ordering sequence, and how they work collaboratively with spoken talk to progress the activity of ordering. This chapter aims to expand thinking on how embodied conduct may be analysed in conjunction with talk, and highlights the integral nature of objects to the progression of social life.
“I’ll just see what you had before”
Authors: Beck Nielsen Søren
Published: August 2014

This chapter focuses on how doctors, during consultations, use computers as objects that serve diagnostic purposes. Specifically, the chapter investigates instances when doctors shift their attention towards their computers while patients present their problems. Such shifts momentarily change the focus of the doctor-patient interaction from patient-centred, in which patients typically describe their problems and/or answer questions from their own perspective, to computer-centred, where doctors seek answers about patients’ histories and general conditions as available in the digital records. I call this activity ‘historytaking side sequences’ because participants treat them as relevant departures from on-going interactional trajectories, which make a range of options such as diagnoses and informed decisions possible. The study sheds light on how computer use has become an integral part of face-to-face doctor-patient communication. More specifically, the study also shows that integrating the computer into the consultation requires doctors’ active efforts, both verbal and embodied, to indicate that the computer is a relevant object and its use is important for the medical business at hand.
Objects as tools for talk
Authors: Day Dennis , Wagner Johannes
Published: August 2014

This paper deals with the touching, grasping, moving and handling of relatively small physical objects within spates of talk-in-interaction. We are interested in the organisation of such actions and the distribution of the objects amongst interactants in their unfolding activities, specifically in relation to how nteractants, analogously, organise and distribute their turns at talk. Unlike previous work, we attend less to objects as referred-to objects or as components of topic development. Instead, our focus is on objects as transactional in the ways in which they support fundamental infrastructure of interaction, namely that turns at talk and objects are taken or possessed in some sense and this is signalled and collaboratively organised by participants.
Cooking instructions and the shaping of things in the kitchen
Authors: Mondada Lorenza
Published: August 2014

This chapter looks into the kitchen as a place where things are transformed into culinary preparations. On the basis of a video-recorded cooking course in which a group of trainees prepared a dinner under the supervision of a chef, I examine how objects are assembled, manipulated and transformed in a visibly embodied way. The chef instructs the trainees on how to prepare some ingredients and they organise their actions to follow these instructions. The analysis deals with the manipulation of ingredients at three key moments within this sequence of cooking instructions: the chef ’s instructions; questions following instructions; and instructed action leading to the final shaping of the ingredients. The first moment shows how objects have features that are taken for granted by experts; the second shows how participants work to identify the relevant aspects of the objects they manipulate; the third reveals the normative way in which objects are expected to be transformed.
Having a ball
Authors: Keevallik Leelo
Published: August 2014

This chapter looks at how immaterial objects are manipulated into being for pedagogical purposes. Dance teachers employ objects to visualise subtle tactile and kinaesthetic experiences. The objects emerge in a situated manner within activity metaphors where alternative bodily activities are juxtaposed with the dance movement, taking for granted that these alternative activities are tacitly known or more basic. The objects have a temporally limited existence within activity metaphors that involve verbal explanations as well as embodied demonstrations of both the dance and the alternative activity. Furthermore, participants are shown to orient differently to mere object-implying gestures as opposed to fully-fledged whole-body enactments. In the latter, objects may be maintained collectively across time.
Envisioning the plan in interaction
Authors: Sakai Shinichiro , Korenaga Ron , Mizukawa Yoshifumi , Igarashi Motoko
Published: August 2014

The central focus of this chapter is the methods of practical reasoning that accomplish a mutual understanding of relevant objects during the organisation and operation of a plumbing design. To execute successfully the task of coordinating disparate actions in the work, participants must achieve a shared and collective vision of the particular objects under discussion. We emphasise that for objects to be used as interactional resources, they must first be made recognisable and intelligible as interactional accomplishments, though we also suggest that these two analytical issues are inseparable for members when developing a course of practical activity. Objects in our study include tangible artefacts that have physical materiality as well as not-yet-existing abstractions, the designs.
Towards multiactivity as a social and interactional phenomenon
Authors: Haddington Pentti , Keisanen Tiina , Mondada Lorenza , Nevile Maurice
Published: August 2014

Multiactivity – the different ways in which two or more activities can be intertwined and made co-relevant in social interaction – is an inseparable element of everyday life. At the same time it is a little understood form of human conduct. This introductory chapter builds on the basis that multiactivity is a social, verbal and embodied phenomenon, manifest in people’s participation and conduct in interaction, and can be studied empirically by relying on the close analysis of video-recorded data of naturally occurring situations. The chapter connects to previous research on multitasking and outlines how an interactional and social view of the phenomenon can add to our knowledge of how participants engage in, manage and accomplish multiple activities. The chapter outlines new interactional practices and new concepts to describe them.
Negotiating favourable conditions for resuming suspended activities
Authors: Sutinen Marika
Published: August 2014

This paper examines how participants in multiactivity situations are able to resume an ongoing activity that becomes temporarily suspended in favour of a locally emergent, competing line of action. Detailed analyses of video data from English and Finnish everyday interactions show that resumptions are not achieved unproblematically at the first suitable transition-relevant slot but involve a gradual, stepwise process of multimodal negotiations, where participants first collaboratively establish favourable conditions for resumption. It is argued that these negotiations represent a local instance of multiactivity in practice, i.e. where organising multiactivity becomes a demonstrable concern for the participants. The gradualness of resumptions provides participants with an interactional resource that can be exploited to flexibly manage activity transitions in complex multiactivity situations.
Attending to a summons and putting other activities ‘on hold’
Authors: Licoppe Christian , Tuncer Sylvaine
Published: August 2014

Trying to grasp multi-activity within a praxeological perspective, we focus on a set of situations in which participants experiencing some summoning event, such as a phone ring, recognisably ‘put on hold’ some other involvement, and demonstrably orient towards the current relevance of two or more streams of activity. We will endeavour to show (a) the kind of collaborative work through which such a perceptible occurrence is turned into a recognisable event with sequential implications; (b) how a course of action is witnessably put on hold for the recipient of the summons to attend it; (c) how such an accomplishment rests on a variety of interactional devices, through the use of which two streams of action are shaped as recognisable, comparable and competing distinct projects.
Multimodal participation in simultaneous joint projects
Authors: Deppermann Arnulf
Published: August 2014

This paper analyses paramedic emergency interaction as multi-modal multi-activity. Based on a corpus of video-recordings of emergency drills performed by professional paramedics during advanced training, the focus is on paramedics’ participation in multiple joint projects which become simultaneously relevant. Simultaneity and fast succession of multi-activity does not only characterise work on the team level, but also the work profile of the individual paramedic. Participants have to coordinate their own participation in more than one joint project intra-personally. In the data studied, three patterns of allocating multi-modal resources stood out as routine ways of coordinating participation in two simultaneous projects intra-personally:
1. Talk and hearing vs. manual action monitored by gaze,
2. Talk and hearing vs. gazing (and pointing),
3. Manual action vs. gaze (and talk and hearing).
The Response of the Pulmonary Circulation and Right Ventricle to Exercise: Exercise‐Induced Right Ventricular Dysfunction and Structural Remodeling in Endurance Athletes (2013 Grover Conference Series)
Authors: La Gerche André , Roberts Timothy , Claessen Guido
Published: August 2014

There is unequivocal evidence that exercise results in considerable health benefits. These are the result of positive hormonal, metabolic, neuronal, and structural changes brought about by the intermittent physiological challenge of exercise. However, there is evolving evidence that intense exercise may place disproportionate physiological stress on the right ventricle (RV) and the pulmonary circulation. Both echocardiographic and invasive studies are consistent in demonstrating that pulmonary arterial pressures increase progressively with exercise intensity, such that the harder one exercises, the greater the load on the RV. This disproportionate load can result in fatigue or damage of the RV if the intensity and duration of exercise is sufficiently prolonged. This is distinctly different from the load imposed by exercise on the left ventricle (LV), which is moderated by a greater capacity for reductions in systemic afterload. Finally, given the increasing RV demand during exercise, it may be hypothesized that chronic exercise–induced cardiac remodeling (the so‐called athlete's heart) may also disproportionately affect the RV. Indeed, there is evidence, although somewhat inconsistent, that RV volume increases may be relatively greater than those for the LV. Perhaps more importantly, there is a suggestion that chronic endurance exercise may cause electrical remodeling, predisposing some athletes to serious arrhythmias originating from the RV. Thus, a relatively consistent picture is emerging of acute stress, prolonged fatigue, and long‐term remodeling, which all disproportionately affect the RV. Thus, we contend that the RV should be considered a potential Achilles' heel of the exercising heart.
Enhancing immunomodulation on innate immunity by shape transition among RNA triangle, square and pentagon nanovehicles
Authors: Khisamutdinov Emil F. , Li Hui , Jasinski Daniel L. , Chen Jiao , Fu Jian , Guo Peixuan
Published: August 2014

Modulation of immune response is important in cancer immunotherapy, vaccine adjuvant development and inflammatory or immune disease therapy. Here we report the development of new immunomodulators via control of shape transition among RNA triangle, square and pentagon. Changing one RNA strand in polygons automatically induced the stretching of the interior angle from 60° to 90° or 108°, resulting in self-assembly of elegant RNA triangles, squares and pentagons. When immunological adjuvants were incorporated, their immunomodulation effect for cytokine TNF-α and IL-6 induction was greatly enhanced in vitro and in animals up to 100-fold, while RNA polygon controls induced unnoticeable effect. The RNA nanoparticles were delivered to macrophages specifically. The degree of immunostimulation greatly depended on the size, shape and number of the payload per nanoparticles. Stronger immune response was observed when the number of adjuvants per polygon was increased, demonstrating the advantage of shape transition from triangle to pentagon.
Human fetal globin gene expression is regulated by LYAR
Authors: Ju Junyi , Wang Ying , Liu Ronghua , Zhang Yichong , Xu Zhen , Wang Yadong , Wu Yupeng , Liu Ming , Cerruti Loretta , Zou Fengwei , Ma Chi , Fang Ming , Tan Renxiang , Jane Stephen M. , Zhao Quan
Published: August 2014

Human globin gene expression during development is modulated by transcription factors in a stage-dependent manner. However, the mechanisms controlling the process are still largely unknown. In this study, we found that a nuclear protein, LYAR (human homologue of mouse Ly-1 antibody reactive clone) directly interacted with the methyltransferase PRMT5 which triggers the histone H4 Arg3 symmetric dimethylation (H4R3me2s) mark. We found that PRMT5 binding on the proximal γ-promoter was LYAR-dependent. The LYAR DNA-binding motif (GGTTAT) was identified by performing CASTing (cyclic amplification and selection of targets) experiments. Results of EMSA and ChIP assays confirmed that LYAR bound to a DNA region corresponding to the 5′-untranslated region of the γ-globin gene. We also found that LYAR repressed human fetal globin gene expression in both K562 cells and primary human adult erythroid progenitor cells. Thus, these data indicate that LYAR acts as a novel transcription factor that binds the γ-globin gene, and is essential for silencing the γ-globin gene.
The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Acute Occupational Stress in New Anesthesiology Residents
Authors: Eisenach John H. , Sprung Juraj , Clark Matthew M. , Shanafelt Tait D. , Johnson Bruce D. , Kruse Timothy N. , Chantigian Daniel P. , Carter Jason R. , Long Timothy R.
Published: August 2014

Background:

Occupational stress in resident physicians has profound implications for wellness, professionalism, and patient care. This observational pilot trial measured psychological and physiological stress biomarkers before, during, and after the start of anesthesia residency.

Methods:

Eighteen physician interns scheduled to begin anesthesia residency were recruited for evaluation at three time points: baseline (collected remotely before residency in June 2013); first-month visit 1 (July); and follow-up visit 2 (residency months 3 to 5, September–November). Validated scales were used to measure stress, anxiety, resilience, and wellness at all three time points. During visits 1 and 2, the authors measured resting heart-rate variability, responses to laboratory mental stress (hemodynamic, catecholamine, cortisol, and interleukin-6), and chronic stress indices (C-reactive protein, 24-h ambulatory heart rate and blood pressure, 24-h urinary cortisol and catecholamines, overnight heart-rate variability).

Results:

Thirteen interns agreed to participate (72% enrollment). There were seven men and six women, aged 27 to 33 yr. The mean ± SD of all study variables are reported.

Conclusion:

The novelty of this report is the prospective design in a defined cohort of residents newly exposed to the similar occupational stress of the operating environment. Because of the paucity of literature specific to the measures and stress conditions in this investigation, no data were available to generate a priori definition of primary outcomes and a data analytic plan. These findings will allow power analysis for future design of trials examining occupational stress and stress-reducing interventions. Given the importance of physician burnout in our country, the impact of chronic stress on resident wellness requires further study.
Etiology of Adult-onset Stress Fracture in the Lumbar Spine
Authors: Tezuka Fumitake , Sairyo Koichi , Sakai Toshinori , Dezawa Akira
Published: August 2014

Study Design:

This study was a case series.

Objective:

The purpose of this paper was to present a case series of fresh stress fractures (spondylolysis) in the lumbar spines of adult athletes.

Summary of Background Data:

Lumbar spondylolysis is a stress fracture of the pars interarticularis, which is generally considered a disease of children or adolescence. There is only 1 case series written in English reporting on adult-onset fresh spondylolysis.

Methods:

Eleven patients aged 20–27 years are included in this case series. A retrospective analysis was made of events that may cause stress fracture such as traumatic episodes or sports activities, spinal level, radiologic findings, stage of spondylolysis, treatment, and prognosis.

Results:

Among the 11 patients, two had bilateral early-stage spondylolysis, 7 had unilateral early-stage spondylolysis and 2 had unilateral progressive-stage spondylolysis. Three occurred subsequent to a preexisting terminal-stage spondylolysis in the contralateral side, 1 occurred subsequent to a terminal-stage spondylolysis at the adjacent spinal level, and 1 occurred subsequent to a terminal-stage spondylolysis at a distant level. Thirteen pedicles adjacent to the pars interarticularis in the 11 patients showed bone marrow edema-like signal on magnetic resonance imaging. Six spondylolyses were found at L5, 2 each at L3 and L4, and 1 spondylolysis at L2. The 11 patients were divided into 4 groups according to suspected pathogenic mechanism: preexistent spondylolysis in the contralateral side, alteration of the athletic event, apparent traumatic episode, and others. Conservative treatment was prescribed for return to sports in all cases. Although 1 patient retired because of persistent low back pain, the remaining 10 patients returned to competition.

Conclusions:

Although lumbar spondylolysis is generally recognized to occur in childhood or adolescence, fresh lumbar spondylolysis should be included in the differential diagnosis of adult low back pain when patients are high-level athletes. Conservative treatment should be attempted for adult patients.
The sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis for language acquisition and language evolution
Authors: Imai Mutsumi , Kita Sotaro
Published: August 2014

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose thesound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gainreferential insightfor speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel between historical development of language across generations and ontogenetic development within individuals. Finally, we suggest that sound symbolism bootstrapping is a part of a more general phenomenon of bootstrapping by means of iconic representations, drawing on similarities and close behavioural links between sound symbolism and speech-accompanying iconic gesture.
Analysis of the anti-apoptotic activity of four vaccinia virus proteins demonstrates that B13 is the most potent inhibitor in isolation and during viral infection
Authors: Veyer David L. , Maluquer de Motes Carlos , Sumner Rebecca P. , Ludwig Louisa , Johnson Benjamin F. , Smith Geoffrey L.
Published: August 2014

Vaccinia virus (VACV) is a large dsDNA virus encoding ~200 proteins, several of which inhibit apoptosis. Here, a comparative study of anti-apoptotic proteins N1, F1, B13 and Golgi anti-apoptotic protein (GAAP) in isolation and during viral infection is presented. VACVs strains engineered to lack each gene separately still blocked apoptosis to some degree because of functional redundancy provided by the other anti-apoptotic proteins. To overcome this redundancy, we inserted each gene separately into a VACV strain (vv811) that lacked all these anti-apoptotic proteins and that induced apoptosis efficiently during infection. Each protein was also expressed in cells using lentivirus vectors. In isolation, each VACV protein showed anti-apoptotic activity in response to specific stimuli, as measured by immunoblotting for cleaved poly(ADP ribose) polymerase-1 and caspase-3 activation. Of the proteins tested, B13 was the most potent inhibitor, blocking both intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli, whilst the activity of the other proteins was largely restricted to inhibition of intrinsic stimuli. In addition, B13 and F1 were effective blockers of apoptosis induced by vv811 infection. Finally, whilst differences in induction of apoptosis were barely detectable during infection with VACV strain Western Reserve compared with derivative viruses lacking individual anti-apoptotic genes, several of these proteins reduced activation of caspase-3 during infection by vv811 strains expressing these proteins. These results illustrated that vv811 was a useful tool to determine the role of VACV proteins during infection and that whilst all of these proteins have some anti-apoptotic activity, B13 was the most potent.
Crystal structure ofcatena-poly[[aqua(2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine-κ3N,N′,N′′)cobalt(II)]-μ-cyanido-κ2N:C-[dicyanidoplatinum(II)]-μ-cyanido-κ2C:N]
Authors: White Frankie , Sykora Richard E.
Published: August 2014

The title compound, [Co(C15H11N3)(H2O){Pt(CN)4}]n, is a one-dimensional coordination polymer formed under hydrothermal reaction conditions. The CoIIsite has sixfold coordination with a distorted octahedral geometry, while the PtIIion is coordinated by four cyanide groups in an almost regular square-planar geometry. The compound contains twofold rotation symmetry about its CoIIion, the water molecule and the terpyridine ligand, and the PtIIatom resides on an inversion center.trans-Bridging by the tetracyanidoplatinate(II) anions links the CoIIcations, forming chains parallel to [-101]. Additionally, each CoIIatom is coordinated by one water molecule and one tridentate 2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine ligand. O—H...N hydrogen-bonding interactions are found between adjacent chains and help to consolidate the crystal packing. In addition, relatively weak π–π stacking interactions exist between the terpyridine ligands of adjacent chains [interplanar distance = 3.464 (7) Å]. No Pt...Pt interactions are observed in the structure.
Crystal structure of [4-(2-methoxyphenyl)-3-methyl-1-phenyl-6-trifluoromethyl-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridin-5-yl](thiophen-2-yl)methanone
Authors: Rajni Swamy V. , Gunasekaran P. , Krishnakumar R. V. , Srinivasan N. , Müller P.
Published: August 2014

The title compound, C26H18F3N3O2S, a 2-methoxy-substituted derivative, is closely related to its 4-methyl- and 4-chloro-substituted analogues and yet displays no structural relationships with them. The thiophene ring is disorder free and the –CF3group exhibits disorder, respectively, in contrast and similar to that observed in the 4-methyl- and 4-chloro-substituted derivatives. The torsion angle which defines the twist of the thiophene ring is −69.6 (2)° (gauche) in the title compound, whereas it is anticlinal in the 4-methyl- and 4-chloro-substituted derivatives, with respective values of 99.9 (2) and 99.3 (2)°. The absence of disorder in the thiophene ring facilitates one of its ring C atoms to participate in the lone intermolecular C—H...O hydrogen bond present in the crystal, leading to a characteristicC(5) chain graph-set motif linking molecules related through glides along [010]. An intramoleculr C—H...N hydrogen bond also occurs.