1,721,054 research outputs found
The learnability of gender agreement in Spanish bilinguals
No full textAchieving high levels of proficiency in a second language (L2) represents a great challenge. One of the domains where second language learners show persistent difficulties is morphosyntax, and specifically grammatical gender. This chapter will examine whether distributional regularities can improve the learnability of complex grammatical constructions, such as gender agreement dependencies. Previous behavioral studies seem to suggest that formfunction regularities (e.g. the presence of consistent correspondences between the gender of a word and its ending) facilitate L2 grammar acquisition and might have an impact on L2 gender agreement learnability. We will focus on this topic by examining the impact of gender-to-ending regularities on the time course of agreement processing in monolinguals and bilinguals. Four EEG (electroencephalography) experiments will be taken into account with four different experimental samples: Spanish monolinguals, Basque-Spanish bilinguals, Spanish deaf readers, English-Spanish bilinguals. Experimental sentences were presented in Spanish, a Romance language with a strong gender-to-ending consistency. In all experiments gender-to-ending consistency and grammatical gender agreement were manipulated. Nouns that were transparent (the ending is a reliable gender cue) and opaque (the ending is uninformative of gender) were presented embedded in Spanish sentences. These target nouns created grammatical and ungrammatical gender agreement dependencies. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were derived for each condition to test whether formal gender cues could affect agreement computation. The ERP results showed that while Spanish formal gender cues are not always crucial in native agreement processing, the role of gender distributional regularities becomes more important when Spanish is the non-native language. In non-native Spanish speakers, having a weak lexical representation of grammatical gender might lead to treating transparent and opaque nouns differently and over-relying on form-function regularities to compute agreement dependencies. These results suggest that the weight of formfunction regularities during agreement processing is not fixed and can change depending on language experience
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Spontaneous calcium release from sarcoplasmic reticulum. Effect of local anesthetics.
Full text linkSpontaneous calcium release from purified light sarcoplasmic reticulum has been previously described (Palade, P., Mitchell, R. D., and Fleischer, S. (1983) J. Biol. Chem. 258, 8098-8107 ) and found to be distinct from several other forms of Ca2+ release. Ca2+ release occurs after a lag period following active Ca2+ preloading and depletion of extravesicular Ca2+. In the present study, we find that local anesthetics inhibit spontaneous Ca2+ release, in a time-dependent manner, varying considerably in the preincubation time required to exert maximal effect. At pH 7.0, hydrophilic and mostly charged local anesthetics, such as procaine, procainamide, and N-(2,6-dimethylphenyl carbamoyl methyl)triethyl ammonium bromide, inhibit Ca2+ release only after long preincubations (hours), whereas more hydrophobic local anesthetics are effective after only a short incubation (minutes) with sarcoplasmic reticulum. The more hydrophobic anesthetics take somewhat longer to reach equilibrium, as studied by inhibition of unidirectional Ca2+ efflux, and there is a direct relationship between hydrophobic partition coefficient and half-time to reach equilibrium. Agents known to inhibit permeability pathways for monovalent cations i.e. K+ channel blockers (decamethonium and n-dodecane-1, 12-N,N,N,N',N',N'-hexamethyl-bis-ammonium) or the anion blocker (4,4'-diisothiocyanostilbene-2,2'-disulfonic acid), do not inhibit spontaneous Ca2+ release. Carbonyl cyanide m-fluorophenylhydrazone, a protonophore, and gramicidin D, a monovalent cation ionophore, have no effect on Ca2+ release whether local anesthetics are present or not, while the Ca2+ ionophore A23187 relieves inhibition of Ca2+ release by local anesthetics. Ruthenium red does not inhibit spontaneous Ca2+ release. These findings suggest that the binding site(s) for local anesthetics is located on the inner face of the sarcoplasmic reticulum membrane and that local anesthetics interact directly with a Ca2+ channel rather than with other permeability pathways which might indirectly influence Ca2+ channel gating
The effect of phenothiazines on Ca2+ fluxes in skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum.
No full textThe effect of phenothiazines (trifluoperazine, chlorpromazine, methochlorpromazine, and imipramine) on Ca2+ fluxes in light and heavy sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) isolated from rabbit fast-twitch skeletal muscle was investigated. These drugs inhibited Ca2+ loading and (Ca2+,Mg2+)-ATPase activity, but had no effect on unidirectional Ca2+ efflux from vesicles loaded either actively or passively with Ca2+. Chlorpromazine, which is membrane permeable, and its quaternary analog, methochlorpromazine, which is membrane impermeable, gave identical results. It is concluded that (a) the enhancement of net Ca2+ release by phenothiazines is due to inhibition of Ca2+ influx mediated by the Ca2+ pump rather than to the opening of a Ca2+ channel; and (b) phenothiazines act at the outer (myoplasmic) face of the SR membrane
Functional characterization of junctional terminal cisternae from mammalian fast skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum.
No full textJunctional terminal cisternae are a recently isolated sarcoplasmic reticulum fraction containing two types of membranes, the junctional face membrane with morphologically intact “feet” structures and the calcium pump membrane [Saito, A., Seiler, S., Chu, A., & Fleischer, S. (1984) J. Cell Biol. 99, 875–885]. In this study, the Ca2+ fluxes of junctional terminal cisternae are characterized and compared with three other well-defined fractions derived from the sarcotubular system of fast-twitch skeletal muscle, including light and heavy sarcoplasmic reticulum, corresponding to longitudinal and terminal cisternae regions of the sarcoplasmic reticulum, and isolated triads. Functionally, junctional terminal cisternae have low net energized Ca2+ transport measured in the presence or absence of a Ca2+-trapping anion, as compared to light and heavy sarcoplasmic reticulum and triads. Ca2+ transport and Ca2+ pumping efficiency can be restored to values similar to those of light sarcoplasmic retic..
Calcium release from sarcoplasmic reticulum of normal and dystrophic mice.
No full textContraction of skeletal muscle is triggered by release of calcium from the sarcoplasmic reticulum. In this study, highly purified normal and dystrophic mouse sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicles were compared with respect to calcium release characteristics. Sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicles were actively loaded with calcium in the presence of an ATP-regenerating system. Calcium fluxes were followed by dual wavelength spectrophotometry using the metallochromic indicators antipyrylazo III and arsenazo III, and by isotopic techniques. Calcium release from sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicle was elicited by (a) changing the free calcium concentration of the assay medium (calcium-induced calcium release); (b) addition of a permeant anion to the assay medium, following calcium loading in the presence of a relatively impermeant anion (depolarization-induced calcium release); (c) addition of the lipophilic anion tetraphenylboron (TPB-) to the assay medium and (d) using specific experimental conditions, i.e. high phosphate levels and low magnesium (spontaneous calcium release). Drugs known to influence Ca2+ release were shown to differentially affect the various types of calcium release. Caffeine (10 mM) was found to enhance calcium-induced calcium release from isolated sarcoplasmic reticulum. Ruthenium red (20 microM) inhibited both calcium-induced calcium release and tetraphenylboron-induced calcium release, and partially inhibited spontaneous calcium release and depolarization-induced calcium release. Local anesthetics inhibited spontaneous calcium release in a time-dependent manner, and inhibited calcium-induced calcium release instantaneously, but did not inhibit depolarization-induced calcium release. Use of pharmacological agents indicates that several types of calcium release operate in vitro. No significant differences were found between normal and dystrophic sarcoplasmic reticulum in calcium release kinetics or drug sensitivities
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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