380 research outputs found
Eigenspaces and the tame kernel
No full textContains fulltext :
mmubn000001_242570828.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Promotores : A. Levelt en F. KeuneVIII, 72 p
The tame kernel: computational aspects
No full textContains fulltext :
mmubn000001_116865091.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Promotores : A. Levelt en F. KeuneXIII, 87 p
Oral development in english as a foreign language: perceptions of distance education students on resources and activities
No full textDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em InglêsIn 2009/2, the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC) establishes a new program entitled Curso de Licenciatura em Letras - Inglês, via distance learning (DL), having as objective the education of future English teachers. The present research aims at investigating how students of the program, taking the courses Compreensão e Produção Oral em Língua Inglesa IV and Compreensão e Produção Oral em Língua Inglesa V perceive the use of the resources and activities aiming at the development of their linguistic skills in English. The data were collected from 25 students of those courses who answered an online questionnaire, which was composed by closed questions and, mostly, by closed questions with justification. Among those 25 participants, 5 were chosen to participate in a second data collection process, a semi-structured interview. The data analysis consisted of careful reflection and interpretation of that data. That analysis reveals that the participants perceive both main resources, and the activities developed with them, to be adequate for developing their oral production skill in different aspects. The participants perceived the Final Projects as an opportunity for them to focus on matters related to accuracy, such as the opportunity of working on grammar and pronunciation. On the other hand, the Skype Chats, were perceived by the participants as positive as they give them the opportunity to formulate sentences quickly and spontaneously in the target language.No segundo semestre de 2009, o Departamento de Língua e Literatura Estrangeira da UFSC abre um novo programa chamado "Curso de Licenciatura em Letras - Inglês", na modalidade a distância, tendo como objetivo a formação de futuros professores de inglês. Essa pesquisa busca investigar como alunos do curso, matriculados nas disciplinas Compreensão e Produção Oral em Língua Inglesa IV e Compreensão e Produção Oral em Língua Inglesa V percebem o uso dos recursos e das atividades que objetivam desenvolver suas habilidades linguísticas em Inglês. Os dados foram coletados com 25 alunos dessas disciplinas que responderam um questionário online composto por questões fechadas e, na sua maioria, questões fechadas com espaço para justificativas. Desses 25 participantes, 5 foram escolhidos para participar de uma segunda coleta de dados em forma de entrevista semi-estruturada. A análise dos dados consiste em uma reflexão e interpretação cuidadosa dos dados. A análise revelou que os participantes percebem os dois recursos principais, e as atividades desenvolvidas com eles, como adequadas para o desenvolvimento da habilidade de produção oral em diferentes aspectos. Os participantes perceberam os Final Projects como uma oportunidade para focar em aspectos relacionados a precisão, como a oportunidade de trabalhar gramática e pronúncia. Por outro lado, com os Skype Chats, foi percebido como positivo pelos participantes a oportunidade que o recurso trás de formular frases rapidamente e espontaneamente na língua alvo
Are language production problems apparent in adults who no longer meet diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder?
No full textIn this study, we examined sentence production in a sample of adults (N = 21) who had had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as children, but as adults no longer met DSM-IV diagnostic criteria (APA, 2000). This “remitted” group was assessed on a sentence production task. On each trial, participants saw two objects and a verb. Their task was to construct a sentence using the objects as arguments of the verb. Results showed more ungrammatical and disfluent utterances with one particular type of verb (i.e., participle). In a second set of analyses, we compared the remitted group to both control participants and a “persistent” group, who had ADHD as children and as adults. Results showed that remitters were more likely to produce ungrammatical utterances and to make repair disfluencies compared to controls, and they patterned more similarly to ADHD participants. Conclusions focus on language output in remitted ADHD, and the role of executive functions in language production
Moving eyes and naming objects
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19013.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)The coordination between eye movements and speech was examined while speakers were naming objects. Earlier research has shown that eye movements reflect on the underlying visual attention. Also, eye movements were found to reflect upon not only the visual and conceptual processing of an object, but also on the length of linguistic planning processes of retrieval of the object's name. In one series of experiments speakers used noun phrases and pronouns to name objects that were recently seen before. Looking rates were lower when pronouns instead of noun phrases were used, and viewing time on the objects were shorter, reflecting the shorter, easier processing needed to name a pronoun compared to a noun phrase. In another experiment speakers named the object names and two adjectives, describing colour and size, either early or late in the sentence. Speakers fixated the information on the screen that was being verbalized, and returned their gaze to that visual information when it was mentioned later (The mouse, which is next to the ball, is large and red). In a final experiment, the order of mentioning four objects was either given or needed to be retrieved from the visual presentation. Speakers previewed the information they needed to decide upon the correct word order first (comparing two of the four objects), and than fixated each and every one of the objects while producing the correct name for them. Previewing the objects caused viewing times during the naming phase to be significantly reduced, indicating that (part of) the underlying processing was speeded up or skipped when seeing the previewed object again. In all experiments viewing times were found to reflect upon the underlying linguistic processing of producing the object's name or referent: speakers kept their eyes on an object to be named for the time they needed to retrieve the object's name. Therefore, the timing of eye movements reflects on both conceptual and linguistic processing, and records of eye movements can be used to study object naming and language production, even when experimental tasks get more complicated or when sentences get longer130 p
Predicting myocardial infarction through retinal scans and minimal personal information
No full textIn ophthalmologic practice, retinal images are routinely obtained to diagnose and monitor primary eye diseases and systemic conditions affecting the eye, such as diabetic retinopathy. Recent studies have shown that biomarkers on retinal images, for example, retinal blood vessel density or tortuosity, are associated with cardiac function and may identify patients at risk of coronary artery disease. In this work we investigate the use of retinal images, alongside relevant patient metadata, to estimate left ventricular mass and left ventricular end-diastolic volume, and subsequently, predict incident myocardial infarction. We trained a multichannel variational autoencoder and a deep regressor model to estimate left ventricular mass (4.4 (–32.30, 41.1) g) and left ventricular end-diastolic volume (3.02 (–53.45, 59.49) ml) and predict risk of myocardial infarction (AUC = 0.80 ± 0.02, sensitivity = 0.74 ± 0.02, specificity = 0.71 ± 0.03) using just the retinal images and demographic data. Our results indicate that one could identify patients at high risk of future myocardial infarction from retinal imaging available in every optician and eye clinic
Improvements to the OMI O<sub>2</sub>-O<sub>2</sub> operational cloud algorithm and comparisons with ground-based radar-lidar observations
No full textThe OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument on board NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Aura satellite) OMCLDO2 cloud product supports trace gas retrievals of for example ozone and nitrogen dioxide. The OMCLDO2 algorithm derives the effective cloud fraction and effective cloud pressure using a DOAS (differential optical absorption spectroscopy) fit of the O2-O2 absorption feature around 477m. A new version of the OMI OMCLDO2 cloud product is presented that contains several improvements, of which the introduction of a temperature correction on the O2-O2 slant columns and the updated look-up tables have the largest impact. Whereas the differences in the effective cloud fraction are on average limited to 0.01, the differences of the effective cloud pressure can be up to 200hPa, especially at cloud fractions below 0.3. As expected, the temperature correction depends on latitude and season. The updated look-up tables have a systematic effect on the cloud pressure at low cloud fractions. The improvements at low cloud fractions are very important for the retrieval of trace gases in the lower troposphere, for example for nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde. The cloud pressure retrievals of the improved algorithm are compared with ground-based radar-lidar observations for three sites at mid-latitudes. For low clouds that have a limited vertical extent the comparison yields good agreement. For higher clouds, which are vertically extensive and often contain several layers, the satellite retrievals give a lower cloud height. For high clouds, mixed results are obtained.</p
Same, different, or closely related: What is the relationship between language production and comprehension?
No full textItem does not contain fulltext7 p
A focus on learners' metacognitive processes: the impact of strategic planning, repetition, strategic planning plus repetition, and strategic planning for repetition on L2 oral performance
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondenteThe present study, carried out under an information-processing perspective, investigated the impact of four metacognitive processes - strategic planning (Foster & Skehan, 1996), repetition (Bygate, 2001b), strategic planning plus repetition (D'Ely & Fortkamp, 2003), and strategic planning for repetition (D'Ely, 2004) - on 47 L2 learners' oral performance of a video-based narrative task. The participants of this study, registered in the Licenciatura, Secretariado, and Extra-curricular courses of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, were divided into 5 groups: (1) the control group (2) the strategic planning group, (3) the repetition group, (4) the strategic planning plus repetition group, and (5) the strategic planning for repetition group. Following Foster and Skehan (1996) and Fortkamp (2000), learners' oral production was examined in four dimensions of speech: fluency, complexity, lexical density, and accuracy. Post-task questionnaires were administered for the purpose of assessing learners' appraisal of task type, their oral performance, and the conditions in which they performed. In general, statistical analyses revealed that repetition, strategic planning plus repetition, and strategic planning for repetition exerted a positive and significant impact on some of the dimensions of oral performance such as fluency, lexical density, and accuracy for the repetition group, lexical density for the strategic planning plus repetition group, and accuracy and lexical density for the strategic planning for repetition group. The strategic planning for repetition group also obtained significant gains in complexity. The strategic planning condition, for participants in the strategic planning group, had little impact on participants' oral performance. Overall, these results may be taken as evidence for the trade-off effects among the different dimensions of L2 learners' oral performance. Furthermore, the multifaceted results signal that learners' approach to different experimental conditions is idiosyncratic and that a series of variables interact in different ways when learners perform orally in L2. These variables include the nature of the task, learners' focus of attention during performance, and learners' effectiveness in implementing and retrieving pre-planned ideas. The findings of the present study might contribute to theory building in second language performance as well as to L2 pedagogy
Syt2 in L2-3 and L5 is not expressed in VGLUT1&2 positive boutons.
No full text<p>(A–F) Syt2 puncta (arrowheads) in L2-3 and L5 are not VGLUT1 positive. Arrows indicate VGLUT1 boutons. VGLUT1 and Syt2 show an alternating perisomatic localization (F). Similarly VGLUT2 boutons, indicated with arrows do not show expression of Syt2. Syt2 puncta indicated with arrowheads (G–L). A–L n = 3. Scale bars 10 µm.</p
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