Ethological study of early language

Sign language studies of cross-fostered chimpanzees measure the effect of special rearing conditions on the development of very young chimpanzees. Cross-fostered chimpanzees, like human children, develop gradually in a process that takes many years. Here we discuss details of the procedure, the overlap between human and chimpanzee infants in the contents of the first 50-item vocabularies, and the ways in which the signs of the chimpanzees exhibit the fuzziness of natural language categories. We also compare the cross-fostering approach with more traditional modular approaches to the study of language-like behavior in nonhuman animals. Project Washoe was originally supported by grants MH-12154 from the National Institute of Mental Health and GB-7432 from the National Science Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge this support and the support that later sign language studies of chimpanzees have received since then from NIH, NSF, the National Geographic Society, the Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the University of Nevada, and the UNR Foundation.     

Personal reflections on the nature of intelligence in humans and machines

Computers, the human mind, and social systems have common problems of inadequate memory and insufficient data manipulation speed. In each of these domains, information compression techniques have evolved to reduce storage and processing needs. Among the techniques for information compression, coding of information in procedures stands out as exceptionally powerful. Procedural information coding also gives rise to behavior that may be defined as intelligent. It is found in the human mind, in machines and in social systems. Its use in human thought is aided by language development which promotes regular review of abstract procedures. A practical consequence of better understanding of procedural information coding is the possibility of training people to exhibit greater mental capacity, a controversial possibility. This paper explores the impact of data processing resource limitations, data compression and procedural thinking in men and machines.     

早产儿语言发展的影响因素及其干预对策

早产儿的语言发展受到多种因素的影响,可能导致他们在词汇、语法、语音等方面出现发展滞后或障碍。本文首先简述了影响早产儿语言发展的生物学和环境因素的研究进展,其中生物学因素包括早产程度、体重和性别、新生儿发病率和疾病严重程度等,环境因素则包括新生儿重症监护室的环境、家庭中的语言环境和社会因素等。在明确这些影响因素的基础上,本文强调了早期评估和早期干预是优化早产儿语言发育效果的关键步骤,并分析了具体的干预对策,例如生理和神经干预、优化新生儿重症监护室（NICU）环境、增强家庭语言互动、多学科合作和社会支持等。此综述旨在探讨影响早产儿语言发展的各种因素,并总结出有效的早期干预措施,为其提供更为全面的语言发展支持。     

莱州湾中国对虾生长特性及其空间分布

根据2010年5月—10月调查资料,对山东莱州湾中国对虾(Fenneropenaeus chinensis)的资源状况、生长特性及其空间分布进行了研究。莱州湾放流前本底调查资料表明,目前山东莱州湾中国对虾捕捞产量主要来源于增殖放流,且在一定条件下捕捞产量与放流数量成正相关关系。依据2010年中国对虾生物学数据,应用R语言命令对中国对虾体长体重关系和体长生长方程进行了拟合,并对拟合系数进行了显著性检验,结果表明中国对虾体长与体重系数a、b处于显著水平(P0.05),中国对虾体长生长方程拟合系数K、t_0、L_∞处于极显著水平(P0.001),故拟合效果明显,获得为中国对虾生长参数雌虾为K=0.0226、t_0=37.45d、L_∞=200.77 mm、W_∞=80.50 g、t_r=85.18d(8月4日),雄虾为:K=0.0419、t_0=40.25d、L_∞=145.81 mm、W_∞=23.37 g、tr=67.24d(7月18日),与20世纪80年代相比,中国对虾个体明显减小,生长速度加快,生长拐点提前了1个月。另外,根据大面调查体长数据,对各个站位体长组出现频率进行Ward聚类分析,利用R语言聚类树的融合水平值定义划分水平,选择具有最大跳跃的分组水平,将中国对虾虾群大致可分为两个组群,河口组和深水组,同时按照各体长组的多度值大小,探讨了各组内具有代表性的分类体长组,结果表明,河口组的中国对虾以体长125—135 mm为主,深水组以体长115—125 mm和105—115mm为主,河口组个体明显大于深水组;河口组分布区入海河流较多,饵料生物丰富,以软泥底质为主,有利于中国对虾的摄食和前期保护,深水组分布于莱州湾中东部,蟹类资源相对较高,且以沙质底质为主,对中国对虾的生长与保护产生一定的影响。     

Technologies for integrating biological data

The process of building a new database relevant to some field of study in biomedicine involves transforming, integrating and cleansing multiple data sources, as well as adding new material and annotations. This paper reviews some of the requirements of a general solution to this data integration problem. Several representative technologies and approaches to data integration in biomedicine are surveyed. Then some interesting features that separate the more general data integration technologies from the more specialised ones are highlighted.     

A genome‐wide association study for reading and language abilities in two population cohorts

Candidate genes have been identified for both reading and language, but most of the heritable variance in these traits remains unexplained. Here, we report a genome‐wide association meta‐analysis of two large cohorts: population samples of Australian twins and siblings aged 12–25 years (n = 1177 from 538 families), and a younger cohort of children of the UK Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and their Children (aged 8 and 9 years; maximum n = 5472). Suggestive association was indicated for reading measures and non‐word repetition (NWR), with the greatest support found for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the pseudogene, ABCC13 (P = 7.34 × 10^?8), and the gene, DAZAP1 (P = 1.32 × 10^?6). Gene‐based analyses showed significant association (P < 2.8 × 10^?6) for reading and spelling with genes CD2L1, CDC2L2 and RCAN3 in two loci on chromosome 1. Some support was found for the same SNPs having effects on both reading skill and NWR, which is compatible with behavior genetic evidence for influences of reading acquisition on phonological‐task performance. The results implicate novel candidates for study in additional cohorts for reading and language abilities.     

Rule extraction in gene–disease relationship discovery

Background

Biomedical data available to researchers and clinicians have increased dramatically over the past years because of the exponential growth of knowledge in medical biology. It is difficult for curators to go through all of the unstructured documents so as to curate the information to the database. Associating genes with diseases is important because it is a fundamental challenge in human health with applications to understanding disease properties and developing new techniques for prevention, diagnosis and therapy.

Methods

Our study uses the automatic rule-learning approach to gene–disease relationship extraction. We first prepare the experimental corpus from MEDLINE and OMIM. A parser is applied to produce some grammatical information. We then learn all possible rules that discriminate relevant from irrelevant sentences. After that, we compute the scores of the learned rules in order to select rules of interest. As a result, a set of rules is generated.

Results

We produce the learned rules automatically from the 1000 positive and 1000 negative sentences. The test set includes 400 sentences composed of 200 positives and 200 negatives. Precision, recall and F-score served as our evaluation metrics. The results reveal that the maximal precision rate is 77.8% and the maximal recall rate is 63.5%. The maximal F-score is 66.9% where the precision rate is 70.6% and the recall rate is 63.5%.

Conclusions

We employ the rule-learning approach to extract gene–disease relationships. Our main contributions are to build rules automatically and to support a more complete set of rules than a manually generated one. The experiments show exhilarating results and some improving efforts will be made in the future.     

A typology of arguments in defence of a coercive language policy favouring a cultural minority

Abstract

What kind of arguments can be used to justify a coercive language policy favouring the language of a cultural minority over the majority language of a state? To answer this question we will focus mainly on the language policy of the Catalan government and, to a lesser extent, on the language policies of the Basque Country and Quebec. Our aim is to develop a typology of arguments and try to show that each argument resorts to a different reason for coercion and has both virtues and flaws.     

Nationalizing states revisited: projects and processes of nationalization in post-Soviet states

This paper analyses Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan as nationalizing states, focusing on four domains: ethnopolitical demography, language repertoires and practices, the polity and the economy. Nationalizing discourse has figured centrally in these and other ‘post-multinational’ contexts. But nationalizing projects and processes have differed substantially across cases. Where ethnonational boundaries have been strong, quasi-racial and intergenerationally persistent, as in Kazakhstan, nationalization (notwithstanding inclusive official rhetoric) has served primarily to strengthen and empower the core nation. Where ethnonational and linguistic boundaries have been blurred and permeable, as in Ukraine, nationalization has worked primarily to reshape cultural practices, loyalties and identities, thereby in effect redefining and enlarging the core nation. Where boundaries have been strong, yet show signs of being intergenerationally permeable, as in Estonia and Latvia, nationalization was initially oriented towards protecting, strengthening, and empowering the core nation as a sharply bounded collectivity, but has subsequently become more assimilationist and culturalist.