Compound headedness in Chinese: an analysis of neologisms

Compounding is the most significant morphological phenomenon of Chinese. In fact, it has been shown that up to 80% of Chinese words are compounds (Zhou et al. Language and Cognitive Processes 14(5/6):525–565, 1999; Xing Teaching and learning Chinese as a foreign language: A pedagogical grammar, 2006). This paper is based on a corpus of Chinese neologisms. It aims at discussing current theoretical approaches to compounding and presents a novel analysis of Chinese compounds. We first discuss the issue of the classification of Chinese compounds, modifying the proposal put forth by Bisetto and Scalise (Lingue e Linguaggio 2:319–332, 2005), which has first been adopted for Chinese com- pounding by Ceccagno and Scalise (Lingue e Linguaggio 2:233–260, 2006). After presenting a new classification for Chinese compounding, we show the variety of structures existing inChinese compounds.We thendiscuss themuchdebatednotion of headedness in compounding, challenging the widespread idea that any language must be either right-headed or left-headed (as partially highlighted by Packard The morphology of Chinese, 2000). Crucially, Chinese seems to display three different productive patterns: right-headedness, left-headedness and two-headedness. These conclusions represent a challenge for the cross-linguistic study of compounding. The general outline of the work was discussed jointly by the authors, however Bianca Basciano is responsible for Sects. 1–4, 5.1 and Antonella Ceccagno for Sects. 5.2, 5.3, 6–8.     

城市生态系统:人与自然复合

随着城市化快速发展,城市生态学进入了空前繁荣时期,一些新理念和新范式引起了广泛关注。从生态系统角度,分析了城市生态系统组分、结构、过程、功能和服务的特点,提出了城市生态系统研究的黑箱范式和结构-过程-功能-服务级联范式。重点分析了人与自然在城市生态系统的组分、结构、过程、功能和服务等方面上的不同角色,探讨了人与自然在城市生态系统组分上镶嵌、结构上融合、过程上耦合、功能上互补和服务上协同的相互作用机制,提出了城市生态系统研究的人与自然共同进化范式,即人类和自然相互作用和适应,推动了城市发展。这将为深入认识和研究城市生态系统提供重要理论支撑。     

Visual stimulus compounding with pigeons

Eight pigeons responded to successively presented color and line stimuli correlated with different likelihoods of reinforcement (100, 50 and 10%). An intertriai interval was included during training for half of the birds. In Experiment 1, tests with superimposed compounds resulted in variable responding, but overall, rates of responding were intermediate to the rates controlled by the individual component stimuli. In Experiments 2a and 2b, tests with compounds of spatially separated stimuli yielded rates of responding that were intermediate to, and in some cases lower than, responding controlled by the individual component stimuli. These results suggest limitations to the generality of additive models of stimulus compounding when visual stimulus combinations are employed.     

Olfactory cell derivation and migration

This special issue of the Journal of Molecular Histology is devoted to the unique phenomena of migration and adult neurogenesis observed in the olfactory system. Neural progenitors migrate from the olfactory placode and epithelium (OE) into the central nervous system (CNS) and from the forebrain ventricular region to the olfactory bulb (OB). Not unexpectedly, there are a number of controversies with regard to the mechanisms regulating these phenomena in both developing and adult animals. One especially controversial issue common to both the peripheral (OE) and central (OB) systems is the identity of the slowly dividing multipotent stem cell and the mechanisms regulating the lineage specification of these progenitors which eventually differentiate into neurons and glia. Nine contributions from leading laboratories address these and other issues with respect to progenitors and their integration into OE and OB circuitry in several species.     

Drosophila subobscura in Egypt and its probable derivation

In April 1978 a total of 26565 drosophilid flies were collected in Egypt. Of ten species five are new records for Egypt, while two previously reported Drosophila species were not found. Seven of the species belong to the genus Drosophila and are known to be partly, or wholly, domestic.For the first time Drosophila subobscura is reported from Egypt. The species was collected at low frequency in an orchard near Alexandria, and one specimen was trapped in a city park in Cairo. Judged from the gene arrangements of 41 males studied, Egyptian Drosophila subobscura seem likely to be derived from recent immigrants from the south coast of Asia Minor.     

Globality and Constructions of World Health

Explorations of the social construction of health and illness reveal that popular and professional discourses on health and disease implicitly contain underlying images of how societies can or should be structured. Globality, which is a notion that refers to the consciousness of the world as a single place, suggests that these images of world structure are now salient. This article describes four current discourses of "world health" and discusses them in terms of their underlying ideal images of world order. The four images of the world are defined in terms of four elemental points of reference: individuals, societies, the system of societies, and humankind. These ideal images have either a gemeinschaft (community) or gesellschaft (society) orientation. An anthropology of globality can refine and extend our understandings of discourses of world health. Sensitivity to these discourses and their world-oriented ideological roots should help to demystify the notion of world health. [world health, globality, global culture]     

New Constructions of BIB Designs

A method of construction of certain balanced incomplete block (BIB) designs is defined from which we get new series of BIB designs.     

Ultrafast vascular strain compounding using plane wave transmission

Deformations of the atherosclerotic vascular wall induced by the pulsating blood can be estimated using ultrasound strain imaging. Because these deformations indirectly provide information on mechanical plaque composition, strain imaging is a promising technique for differentiating between stable and vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques. This paper first explains 1-D radial strain estimation as applied intravascularly in coronary arteries. Next, recent methods for noninvasive vascular strain estimation in a transverse imaging plane are discussed. Finally, a compounding technique that our group recently developed is explained. This technique combines motion estimates of subsequently acquired focused ultrasound images obtained at various insonification angles. However, because the artery moves and deforms during the multi-angle acquisition, errors are introduced when compounding. Recent advances in computational power have enabled plane wave ultrasound acquisition, which allows 100 times faster image acquisition and thus might resolve the motion artifacts. In this paper the performance of strain imaging using plane wave compounding is investigated using simulations of an artery with a vulnerable plaque and experimental data of a two-layered vessel phantom. The results show that plane wave compounding outperforms 0° focused strain imaging. For the simulations, the root mean squared error reduced by 66% and 50% for radial and circumferential strain, respectively. For the experiments, the elastographic signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratio (SNR_e and CNR_e) increased with 2.1 dB and 3.7 dB radially, and 5.6 dB and 16.2 dB circumferentially. Because of the high frame rate, the plane wave compounding technique can even be further optimized and extended to 3D in future.     

A derivation of latency equation

Given three primary events, occurrences or nonoccurrences of two response classes and nonoccurrence of both response classes, with their respective probabilities to be known, and assuming the first two events are disjoint, this paper deduces the error equation of the incorrect response and the latency equation of the correct response under the condition of correlated reward situation.     

Mechanized derivation of linear invariants

Linear invariants, discovered by Lake, promise to provide a versatile way of inferring phylogenies on the basis of nucleic acid sequences (the method that he called "evolutionary parsimony"). A semigroup of Markov transition matrices embodies the assumptions underlying the method, and alternative semigroups exist. The set of all linear invariants may be derived from the semigroup by using an algorithm described here. Under assumptions no stronger than Lake's, there are greater than 50 independent linear invariants for each of the 15 rooted trees linking four species.     

Parthenogenesis in mammals: pros and cons in pluripotent cell derivation

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) represent a useful tool for cell therapy studies, however the use of embryos for their derivation give rise to ethical, religious and legal problems when applied to the human. During the last years parthenogenesis has been proposed as an alternative source to obtain ESCs. Based on the fact that parthenotes avoid many concerns surrounding the “ad hoc” in vitro production and following destruction of viable human embryos. Unfortunately many aspects related to parthenogenetic cell biology are not fully understood and still need to be elucidated. In this review we describe advantages and limits of these cells. We discuss their typical ESC morphology and high telomerase activity, which disappears after differentiation. We examine the pluripotency signature that they share with bi-parental ESCs. We review their high differentiation plasticity that allow for the derivation of several mature cell type populations when we expose these cells to adequate conditions. On the other hand, in-depth analysis demonstrated chromosome mal-segregation and altered mechanisms controlling centriole arrangement and mitotic spindle formation in these cells. We hypothesize their monoparental origin as one of the possible cause of these anomalies and suggest a great caution if a therapeutic use is considered.     

Frequency equalized compounding for effective speckle reduction in medical ultrasound imaging

Frequency compounding (FC) is commonly used to reduce the speckle variance in order to enhance contrast resolution by averaging two or more uncorrelated sub-band images. However, due to the frequency dependent attenuation, the contrast resolution cannot be enhanced to the theoretical limit when imaging deep-lying tissue. In this paper, we propose the frequency equalized compounding (FEC) method to achieve contrast enhancement in the area of imaging as a whole. In this proposed method, a sub-band signal is divided into several zones along the imaging depth (or time), and the center frequencies and weighting factors for each zone are estimated; the estimated values are used in dynamic quadrature demodulation (DQDM) and image compounding respectively. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated through simulations and experiments. During the evaluation, the contrast resolution was quantified by speckle's signal-to-noise ratio (SSNR) in speckle regions and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) in hyper- and hypoechoic regions. Theoretical values of the SSNR and the CNR by the FC were computed by multiplying the SSNR and CNR values measured from the original image by $\sqrt{N}$, where N is the number of sub-bands used in the compounding. From in vitro phantom experiments, it was learned that the SSNR and CNR values from the proposed method were similar to the theoretical values; the maximum and minimum errors from the theoretical value were 9% and 1% while those of the conventional FC (CFC) method were 25% and 7%. Similar results were obtained from the in vivo experiments with RF data acquired from the liver and the kidney. In addition, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement was measured. The SNR also improved due to the DQDM; maximum improvements for the in vitro and the in vivo experiments were 2.3 dB and 4.8 dB higher the results from the CFC method. These results demonstrate that the proposed FEC method can improve the contrast resolution up to a theoretically achievable value and may be useful in imaging technically difficult patients.     

Selection inherent in monoploid derivation mechanisms for potato

Monoploid potato (2n=1×=12) can be derived either paternally through anther or microspore culture (androgenesis) or maternally through crossing with a haploid-inducing pollinator (gynogenesis). Androgenic and gynogenic monoploid populations, derived from each of two Solanum phureja clones, were compared in both greenhouse and field studies, and their frequency of cells at the 1x, 2x and 4x DNA contents was estimated by flow cytometry of in vitro plantlets. In 15 of 17 comparisons of morphological data (plant height, number of main stems, vigor, leaf length and width, internode length, tuber number and tuber weight) where a significant difference was found due to derivation, the androgenic monoploids were agronomically superior to their gynogenic counterparts (13–18% greater leaf size, double to triple the total tuber yield). Only plant height was significantly greater (26–27%) in the gynogenic monoploids. Flow cytometry revealed that the gynogenic monoploids retained 5% more cells at the monoploid level, whereas androgenic monoploids exhibited 27% more endopolyploid cells at the tetraploid level. Received: 19 April 2000 / Accepted: 17 November 2000     

The derivation and interpretation of control coefficients.

1. Equations for control coefficients are derived by using a method that generates all the control coefficients for a system in a single procedure. This requires solving fewer simultaneous equations than an equivalent method based on 'control theorems'. 2. The interpretation of control coefficients is discussed: in particular, it is shown that these functions are unsatisfactory as measures of 'control' and are perhaps best used as a means of testing control theories (models).     

Life expectancy change in perturbed communities: derivation and qualitative analysis

Pollution, loss of habitat, and climate change are introducing dramatic perturbations to natural communities and affecting public health. Populations in perturbed communities can change dynamically, in both abundance and age structure. While analysis of the community matrix can predict changes in population abundance arising from a sustained or press perturbation, perturbations also have the potential to modify life expectancy, which adds yet another means to falsify experimental hypotheses and to monitor management interventions in natural systems. In some instances, an input to a community will produce no change in the abundance of a population but create a major shift in its mean age. We present an analysis of change in both abundance and life expectancy, leading to a formal quantitative assessment as well as qualitative predictions, and illustrate the usefulness of the technique through general examples relating to vector-borne disease and fisheries.     

Innovation in the culture and derivation of pluripotent human stem cells

In recent years, substantial progress has been made in identifying culture conditions and specific molecular factors that maintain human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in a self-renewing, pluripotent state. As science and medicine move closer to producing viable hESC-based therapeutics, effective methods of isolating and maintaining undifferentiated hESCs using clinically acceptable good manufacturing practices must be developed. In recent years, progress toward this goal has included the identification of molecular factors that induce or repress hESC self-renewal and the development of defined media that support long-term hESC expansion. In addition, the recent discovery of novel means to derive pluripotent cells that avoid embryo destruction, including induced pluripotent stem (iPS cells), may mitigate ethical concerns associated with the use of hESCs.