5,210 research outputs found
The Sociophonetics and Phonology of Dutch r
No full textRhotics, or r-sounds, are known to display a large amount of variation, both cross-linguistically and within particular languages. Dutch is an example of such a language. Even within what is generally regarded as the standard variety, there is variation in place of articulation (ranging from alveolar to uvular), manner of articulation (trills, taps, fricatives, approximants and vowels), and r can be voiced, voiceless, or not there at all. This wide-ranging variation is governed by both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, in a complex interplay of intra- and inter-speaker variation. The present study’s main empirical aim is to catalogue the variation and untangle the underlying factors, based on the collection and analysis of a corpus of acoustic speech data from over 400 speakers (~20.000 tokens) in ten cities in the Netherlands and Flanders. In addition, it presents a detailed articulatory (ultrasound) study of an innovative coda approximant variant. Results from the urban accent corpus show that around 20 different phonetic variants of r can be distinguished and that many of these variants occur in all of the cities in the study. Syllable onsets are more restrictive and allow around 10 variants, whereas around 16 variants occur in codas (with all 20 occurring in the Utrecht accent). The most frequent variants in onsets are the voiced alveolar tap, the uvular approximant, and the uvular trill; most frequent in codas are the retroflex or bunched approximant, the voiceless alveolar tap or trill with frication, and the uvular fricative. Speakers tend to have either alveolar or uvular consonantal variants in onsets, although 16% have variation between these two places of articulation; Belgian Dutch speakers also have trill, tap or fricative variants in codas, but speakers in the Netherlands prefer approximants and vowels, with the retroflex/bunched approximant most frequent. Results from the ultrasound study reveal that the coda approximant known as Gooise r in Dutch, which is currently rapidly spreading in the Netherlands, is produced as either a retroflex or a bunched palatal approximant, echoing similar results from studies of American r. They also show the abstract, phonological nature of r-allophony for these speakers, as their articulatory strategies for the coda allophones do not depend on their onset allophones (alveolar taps or uvular trills, which can both be combined with retroflex or bunched articulations). The theoretical contribution of the thesis lies in the development of a model of progressive sound change to account for the origins, development and current status of Dutch r-variation. In doing so, it shows the relevance of detailed sociophonetic analysis for answering phonological questions. A diachronic model of “family relationships” between the different variants of r is proposed, which shows how the appearance and distribution of particular variants can be explained by reference to casual speech processes, particularly that of lenition. This proposal expands on earlier models that showed the phonetic commonalities between different r-variants without making predictions related to the sound changes that could give rise to them. Making these family relationships explicit provides a way to establish the long sought for unity among r-variants. Importantly, this unity is found in the diachronic, not the synchronic, domain
Impact of World Tuberculosis Day on digital awareness of tuberculosis: analyses using Google TrendsTM
No full textBACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) is the ninth leading cause of death worldwide. World Tuberculosis Day is held every year to increase global awareness of TB.OBJECTIVE: To quantify the impact of World Tuberculosis Day using Internet-based data.METHODS: Google TrendsTM data were used to quantify digital searches for the term 'tuberculosis' worldwide and in the seven countries with the highest TB incidence. We estimated the mean difference in relative search volume (RSV) between World Tuberculosis Day and control periods. This was done separately for each year (2004-2017) and for the period from 1 January 2004 to 31 December 2017. The mean differences in RSVs with the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated. P values were calculated using the Mann-Whitney U-test. P < 0.05 was considered significant.RESULTS: Analyses of single years revealed the mean difference in RSV for worldwide searches on average was 12.5 (95%CI 4.6-20.2). Between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2017, it was 10.4 (95%CI 6.0-15.0). In high-incidence countries, results ranged from -0.9 (95%CI -5.0 to 6.0) for Nigeria to 13.3 (95%CI 5.0-25.0) for South Africa.CONCLUSION: International campaigns such as the World Tuberculosis Day raise global awareness of TB. More actions are needed to increase TB awareness in high-incidence countries
Not Just a “Touch of the Sugars”: The Use of Occupational Therapy Interventions to Promote Independence in Diabetes Self-Management
No full textPrimary Focus: Health & Wellness
Secondary Focus: General & Professional Issues
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this presentation, participants will:
Objective 1: Define the scope of self-management in relation to diabetes care.
Objective 2: Describe how the prevalence of diabetes and complications from mismanagement impact the United States healthcare system.
Objective 3: Identify 2-3 ways in which occupational therapists can facilitate diabetes self-management in clinical practice to promote health and wellness.
Abstract:
In the United States (U.S.), 29.1 million people have diabetes mellitus (DM) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2014) and the cost of diabetes care totaled $245 billion in 2012 in the U.S. (CDC, 2014). DM and its complications can lead to serious health problems, such as heart disease and stroke, and was the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2010 (CDC, 2014). The high prevalence of DM and its costs within the U.S. indicate a need to improve diabetes self-management (DSM).
Occupational therapists (OTs) have extensive knowledge on the impact of lifestyle on disease course and overall health (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA], 2014). As such, OTs are well positioned to provide DSM interventions (AOTA, 2014). The purpose of this session is to determine how OT interventions can impact patient participation in DSM.
A systematic review of the literature was conducted to examine current research regarding patient participation in DSM. PubMed, Ovid Medline, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library of Clinical Trials were searched using key terms selected to identify appropriate research studies. The initial search produced 218 articles. After excluding articles and screening for eligibility, 17 articles were critiqued and analyzed for information the scope of OT practice in DSM.
The systematic review revealed the following themes: (1) Empowerment and Self-Efficacy, (2) Psychosocial Factors, (3) Occupational Engagement, and (4) Individualized Care. All of the themes had moderate levels of evidence to support them.
The themes suggest that practitioners should use individualized interventions that focus on empowerment to promote DSM. As OTs are trained in these themes, the profession needs to advocate for the role of OTs in DSM. One reason why OTs are not more involved in DSM may be a lack of training on the procedural aspects of DM medication management. Within OT education, there needs to be increased focus on the scope DSM so OT students are better prepared to provide care to this population. Additionally, the review found no high level evidence where OTs provided the intervention. This evidence is needed in order for practitioners to better understand the impact of OT for individuals with DM.
This session will define the prevalence and impact of DM in the U.S. and describe self-management in DM care. OT’s role in facilitating DSM in clinical practice to promote health and wellness will also be identified.
References:
American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA]. (2014). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68(Suppl. 1), S1–S48. doi:10.5014/ajot.2014.682006
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. (2014). National diabetes statistics report, 2014 (Statistics Report). Atlanta, GA: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]. (2012). Diabetes report card 2012. Atlanta, GA: Author. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/pdf/diabetesreport card.pdf
Level of Material Being Presented: Introductory
Target Audience: OT, OTA, Members of General Community, Health Professionals
Presentation: 39:4
OTS physics-based screening for environment-friendly selector materials
No full textAbstract: Restricted use of toxic elements is being explored extensively in the semiconductor industry for sustainable developments. In response to this trend, we performed systematic, and fully ab-initio screening for new ovonic threshold switching (OTS) ternary materials, excluding toxic elements such as As and Se. To narrow down the large amount of possible chemical compositions to the most promising candidates, we used OTS physics-based material parameters like material stability, electronic properties, or change in polarizability (OTS gauge). The OTS gauge concept is introduced as a condensed matter physics parameter to estimate the probability of a material to show an OTS behavior. As a result, we found 11 promising ternary compositions of As/Se-free OTS selector materials for RRAM applications
HeLI-OTS 1.4
No full textHeLI off-the-shelf language identifier with language models for 200 languages.
Usage:
java -jar HeLI.jar -r -w
The program will read the and classify the language of each line as one of the 200 languages it knows
and writes the results, one ISO 639-3 code per line, into file .
You can use the -c option to make the program print a confidence score for the identification after each language code.
Usage:
java -jar HeLI.jar -c -r -w
You can give the list of comma-separated ISO 639-3 identifiers for relevant languages after -l option.
Usage:
java -jar HeLI.jar -r -w -l fin,swe,eng
You can give the number of top-scored languages to print after the -t option. (overrides confidence)
Usage:
java -jar HeLI.jar -r -w -l fin,swe,eng -t 2
If you omit both of the filenames, the program will read the standard input one line at a time and write the result to standard output.
It can identify c. 3000 sentences per second using one core on a 2021 laptop and around 3 gigabytes of memory.
If you use this program in producing scientific publications, please refer to:
@inproceedings{heliots2022,
title = "{H}e{LI-OTS}, Off-the-shelf Language Identifier for Text",
author = "Jauhiainen, Tommi and
Jauhiainen, Heidi and
Lind{\'e}n, Krister",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation",
month = june,
year = "2022",
address = "Marseille, France",
publisher = "European Language Resources Association",
url = "http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2022/pdf/2022.lrec-1.416.pdf",
pages = "3912--3922",
language = "English",
}
Producing and publishing this software has been partly supported by The Finnish Research Impact Foundation Tandem Industry Academia -funding in cooperation with Lingsoft
Validation of ocular trauma score (OTS) in open- and closed-globe injuries in Indian patients
No full textPurpose:
To validate the predictive value of the ocular trauma score (OTS) in open- and closed-globe eye injuries in the Indian context.
Design:
Prospective interventional case series.
Methods:
This study, conducted at a tertiary healthcare institute from January 2018 to June 2019, included 150 eyes of 150 patients with open- and closed-globe injuries. Inclusion criteria were patients with globe injuries who provided informed consent and had complete OTS data. Exclusion criteria included electric, chemical, and thermal injuries, prior surgery, pre-existing poor visual acuity (VA), and severe systemic injuries. There was no randomization. Demographic details, initial and final VA, injury type, and OTS variables were recorded. Patients were classified into OTS categories preoperatively based on Kuhn et al.’s system, and VA distribution was compared with the original study. The main outcome was to assess the correlation between the final BCVA at 6 months post-intervention and the predicted VA based on the OTS category.
Results:
A total of 150 patients (72% open globe, 28% closed globe) were included, with a male-to-female ratio of 4.5:1. The mean age ± SD was 29.34 ± 17.49 years. OTS classification showed 6% in OTS 1, 17% in OTS 2, 67% in OTS 3, 4% in OTS 4, and 6% in OTS 5. Final VA was ≤20/40 (41%), 20/50–20/200 (20%), 20/200–1/200 (15%), HM/PL (15%), and NLP (9%). Final VA post-treatment correlated with predicted VA as per the OTS category (Spearman’s r = 0.53, P < 0.001).
Conclusion:
OTS provides reliable prognostic information and has fair predictive value for final VA in open- and closed-globe injuries
Understanding bit by bit: information theory and the role of inflections in sentence processing
No full textWhat makes a sentence hard to process? Apart from the meanings of the words it contains, their number, and the way these words combine into constituents, words also contribute to processing difficulty on the basis of their accessibility in lexical retrieval. Apart from their frequency of use or their complexity in form, the words’ accessibility is also influenced by the number and roles of related forms in the structure in which they are stored. This is a factor that so far has not been sufficiently taken into account. As is experimentally shown in this dissertation, a measure for this is the inflectional entropy of the paradigm, an information theoretic measure that quantifies the support that a word can receive from its inflectional paradigm during activation. This study investigates how the interplay between the available processing resources, as predicted by the inflectional entropy, and the linguistic constraints, modulates the speed of processing within and between-sentences, as well as within- and between-languages. I follow the ACT-R model of sentence comprehension, proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005), which states that processing delays in working memory result from interference during retrieval induced by the similarity between the target and the already processed items. Assuming that interference effects are present across the board, I focus on the stage of lexical activation (the stage before interpretation) and on verbs, in particular. The experimental results reported in this dissertation demonstrate that a verb's accessibility in long term memory, what I call the Activation Potential (AP), is proportional to the inflectional entropy of its paradigm, determining the speed, and thus the effort, with which it is processed, and also, crucially,modulating the processing of the rest of the sentence. In fact, the processing speed of a reflexive object, like the Dutch zichzelf, and unlike a definite NP like Maria, depends on the way the main verb was processed, providing evidence that the reflexive’s interpretation requires an operation on the verb. The processing speed of dependent elements in a sentence follows the “easy-to-activate-hard-to-re-access” principle and can either be boosted or delayed by the amount of available processing resources: reflexives will be processed more slowly as an object of a quickly processed verb than as an object of a hardly processed verb, unless the processing system abounds in resources and can boost the slow processing of the former. This principle holds within a sentence but is more apparent at a between-language level. More precisely, languages with rich inflection, like Greek, although they have longer words and more complicated paradigms, nevertheless benefit in terms of processing effort, at least during theinitial processing stages. This is because they have verbs with higher inflectional entropy which require fewer resources during first activation when compared to languages with poor inflection, like Dutch. Saving on resources at the first stages of sentence processing can boost computations that are costly but can also lead to excessive processing effort in subsequent steps. I take this to be a reflection of the necessary trade-off between space and information for the sake of successful real-time computations
HeLI-OTS 1.5
No full text<p>HeLI off-the-shelf language identifier with language models for 200 languages.</p><p>In order to use the language identifier, you need only to download the HeLI.jar file which is used as follows.</p><p>Usage:<br>java -jar HeLI.jar -r <infile> -w <outfile></p><p>The program will read the <infile> and classify the language of each line as one of the 200 languages it knows<br>and writes the results, one ISO 639-3 code per line, into file <outfile>.</p><p>You can use the -c option to make the program print a confidence score for the identification after each language code.</p><p>Usage:<br>java -jar HeLI.jar -c -r <infile> -w <outfile></p><p>You can give the list of comma-separated ISO 639-3 identifiers for relevant languages after -l option.</p><p>Usage:<br>java -jar HeLI.jar -r <infile> -w <outfile> -l fin,swe,eng</p><p>You can give the number of top-scored languages to print after the -t option.</p><p>Usage:<br>java -jar HeLI.jar -r <infile> -w <outfile> -l fin,swe,eng -t 2</p><p>You can activate language set identification by -s. You must give the maximum number resulting languages after -s option. (overrides confidence and printing several top-scored languages)</p><p>Usage:<br>java -jar HeLI.jar -r <infile> -w <outfile> -l fin,swe,eng -s 2</p><p>If you omit both of the filenames, the program will read the standard input one line at a time and write the result to standard output.</p><p>It can identify c. 2000 sentences (averaging c. 150 characters) per second from a file using one core and around 4,3 gigabytes of memory on a 2021 laptop.</p><p>If you use this program in producing scientific publications, please refer to: <br> @inproceedings{heliots2022,<br> title = "{H}e{LI-OTS}, Off-the-shelf Language Identifier for Text",<br> author = "Jauhiainen, Tommi and<br> Jauhiainen, Heidi and<br> Lind{\'e}n, Krister",<br> booktitle = "Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation",<br> month = june,<br> year = "2022",<br> address = "Marseille, France",<br> publisher = "European Language Resources Association",<br> url = "http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2022/pdf/2022.lrec-1.416.pdf",<br> pages = "3912--3922",<br> language = "English",<br> }</p><p>HeLI-OTS-1.5.zip includes the complete source code for the software.</p><p>Producing and publishing this software has been partly supported by the University of Helsinki, the Academy of Finland, the Kone Foundation, and the Finnish Research Impact Foundation Tandem Industry Academia -funding in cooperation with Lingsoft.</p>
Time comparison via OTS-2
No full textThe time comparisons carried out via OTS-2 between the Technical University Graz (Austria) and the Van Swinden Laboratory Delft (Netherlands) are discussed. The method is based on the use of the synchronization pulse in the TV-frame of the daily evening broadcasting of a French TV-program to Northern Africa. Corrections, as a consequence of changes in the position of the satellite coordinates are applied weekly after reception of satellite coordinates. A description of the method is given as well as some of the particular techniques used in both the participating laboratories. Preliminary results are presented
RTN in GexSe1-x OTS Selector Devices
No full textRandom telegraph noise (RTN) signals in GexSe1-x ovonic threshold switching (OTS) selector have been analyzed in this work, both before and after the first-fire (FF) operation and at on- and off-states. It is observed that RTN appears after the FF, and its absolute amplitude at the off-state is small and negligible in comparison with the RTN signals in RRAM devices. At the on-state, large RTN signals are observed, which can either partially or fully block the conduction path, supporting that a conductive filament is formed or activated by FF and then modulated during switching. Statistical analysis reveals that the relative RTN amplitude at on-state in GexSe1-x OTS selector is smaller than or equivalent to those in RRAM devices
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