Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization

Participants aged 5;2-6;8, 9;2-10;6 and 18;1-22;2 (72 at each age) rated verb argument structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Daddy giggled the baby) using a five-point scale. The study was designed to investigate the feasibility of two proposed construction-general solutions to the question of how children retreat from, or avoid, such errors. No support was found for the prediction of the preemption hypothesis that the greater the frequency of the verb in the single most nearly synonymous construction (for this example, the periphrastic causative; e.g., Daddy made the baby giggle), the lower the acceptability of the error. Support was found, however, for the prediction of the entrenchment hypothesis that the greater the overall frequency of the verb, regardless of construction, the lower the acceptability of the error, at least for the two older groups. Thus while entrenchment appears to be a robust solution to the problem of the retreat from error, and one that generalizes across different error types, we did not find evidence that this is the case for preemption. The implication is that the solution to the retreat from error lies not with specialized mechanisms, but rather in a probabilistic process of construction competition.     

Meeting Review: Advances from the GPCR Retreat

In London, Ontario, the 8th Annual Joint meeting of the Great Lakes GPCR Retreat and the Club des Récepteurs à Sept Domaines Transmembranaires (now known simply as the GPCR Retreat) was held September 27–29, 2007. This meeting gathers together a core group of investigators from Michigan, Ontario, and Québec and has steadily increased its attendance in both the eastern (Europe) and western (USA, Canada) directions. The highlight this year was a sneak preview of the β₂AR crystal structure provided by Brian Kobilka, but as can be seen below, many other cutting edge talks were heard as well.     

Meeting review: advances from the GPCR Retreat

In London, Ontario, the 8th Annual Joint meeting of the Great Lakes GPCR Retreat and the Club des Récepteurs à Sept Domaines Transmembranaires (now known simply as the GPCR Retreat) was held September 27-29, 2007. This meeting gathers together a core group of investigators from Michigan, Ontario, and Québec and has steadily increased its attendance in both the eastern (Europe) and western (USA, Canada) directions. The highlight this year was a sneak preview of the beta(2)AR crystal structure provided by Brian Kobilka, but as can be seen below, many other cutting edge talks were heard as well.     

Predicting Survey Responses: How and Why Semantics Shape Survey Statistics on Organizational Behaviour

Some disciplines in the social sciences rely heavily on collecting survey responses to detect empirical relationships among variables. We explored whether these relationships were a priori predictable from the semantic properties of the survey items, using language processing algorithms which are now available as new research methods. Language processing algorithms were used to calculate the semantic similarity among all items in state-of-the-art surveys from Organisational Behaviour research. These surveys covered areas such as transformational leadership, work motivation and work outcomes. This information was used to explain and predict the response patterns from real subjects. Semantic algorithms explained 60–86% of the variance in the response patterns and allowed remarkably precise prediction of survey responses from humans, except in a personality test. Even the relationships between independent and their purported dependent variables were accurately predicted. This raises concern about the empirical nature of data collected through some surveys if results are already given a priori through the way subjects are being asked. Survey response patterns seem heavily determined by semantics. Language algorithms may suggest these prior to administering a survey. This study suggests that semantic algorithms are becoming new tools for the social sciences, opening perspectives on survey responses that prevalent psychometric theory cannot explain.     

冰川退缩地15种丛藓科植物茎的比较结构学观察

应用石蜡切片和扫描电镜方法对一号冰川退缩地生长的15种丛藓科植物茎的结构及表面微形态特征进行观察,结果表明：该地区的15种丛藓科植物的茎分为具中轴和无中轴两类,其细胞壁均有不同程度的加厚。而具中轴的丛藓科植物的茎又分为表皮、皮部、中轴三部分,茎表皮细胞短,1层,细胞壁大多向外突出,表面粗糙,表面纹饰多为颗粒状;皮部所占面积最大,大部分有内、外皮部的分化,大多数种的细胞壁由外向内逐渐变薄,细胞由小到大整齐排列;中轴所占的面积也不同,其细胞壁多具角隅加厚;而没有中轴分化的种类,其各自细胞壁加厚的程度基本一致。     

Prospective Investigation of Video Game Use in Children and Subsequent Conduct Disorder and Depression Using Data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children

There is increasing public and scientific concern regarding the long-term behavioural effects of video game use in children, but currently little consensus as to the nature of any such relationships. We investigated the relationship between video game use in children, degree of violence in games, and measures of depression and a 6-level banded measure of conduct disorder. Data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children were used. A 3-level measure of game use at age 8/9 years was developed, taking into account degree of violence based on game genre. Associations with conduct disorder and depression, measured at age 15, were investigated using ordinal logistic regression, adjusted for a number of potential confounders. Shoot-em-up games were associated with conduct disorder bands, and with a binary measure of conduct disorder, although the strength of evidence for these associations was weak. A sensitivity analysis comparing those who play competitive games to those who play shoot-em-ups found weak evidence supporting the hypothesis that it is violence rather than competitiveness that is associated with conduct disorder. However this analysis was underpowered, and we cannot rule out the possibility that increasing levels of competition in games may be just as likely to account for the observed associations as violent content. Overall game exposure as indicated by number of games in a household was not related to conduct disorder, nor was any association found between shoot-em-up video game use and depression.     

The Use of Statistics in Health Sciences: Situation Analysis and Perspective

Statistics plays a crucial role in research, planning and decision-making in the health sciences. Progress in technologies and continued research in computational statistics has enabled us to implement sophisticated mathematical models within software that are handled by non-statistician researchers. As a result, over the last decades, medical journals have published a host of papers that use some novel statistical method. The aim of this paper is to present a review on how the statistical methods are being applied in the construction of scientific knowledge in health sciences, as well as, to propose some improvement actions. From the early twentieth century, there has been a remarkable surge in scientific evidence alerting on the errors that many non-statistician researchers were making in applying statistical methods. Today, several studies continue showing that a large percentage of articles published in high-impact factor journals contain errors in data analysis or interpretation of results, with the ensuing repercussions on the validity and efficiency of the research conducted. Scientific community should reflect on the causes that have led to this situation, the consequences to the advancement of scientific knowledge and the solutions to this problem.     

Paludification and Forest Retreat in Northern Oceanic Environments

Examination of temperature variations over the past centuryfor Europe and the Arctic from northern Norway to Siberia suggeststhat variations in the North Atlantic Oscillation are associatedwith an increase in oceanicity in certain maritime regions.A southward depression of the treeline in favour of wet heaths,bogs and wetland tundra communities is also observed in northernoceanic environments. The physiological basis for this changein ecological succession from forest to bog is discussed inrelation to the long-term effects of flooding on tree survival.The heightened values currently detected in the North AtlanticOscillation Index, together with rising winter temperatures,and increased rainfall in many areas in northern Europe, presentsan increasing risk of paludification with adverse consequencesfor forest regeneration, particularly in areas with oceanicclimates. Climatic warming in oceanic areas may increase thearea covered by bogs and, contrary to general expectations,lead to a retreat rather than an advance in the northern limitof the boreal forest. High water-table levels are not automaticallydetrimental to forest survival as can be seen in swamp, bottomlandand mangrove forests. Consequently, the inhibitory effects offlooding on tree survival and regeneration in northern regionsshould not be uncritically accepted as merely due to high waterlevels. Evidence is discussed which suggests that physiologicaland ecological factors may interact to inhibit forest regenerationin habitats where there is a risk of prolonged winter-floodingcombined with warmer winters and cool moist summers.     

The Use of Multiplicity Corrections,Order Statistics and Generalized Family-Wise Statistics with Application to Genome-Wide Studies

The most important decision faced by large-scale studies, such as those presently encountered in human genetics, is to distinguish between those tests that are true positives from those that are not. In the context of genetics, this entails the determination of genetic markers that actually underlie medically-relevant phenotypes from a vast number of makers typically interrogated in genome-wide studies. A critical part of these decisions relies on the appropriate statistical assessment of data obtained from tests across numerous markers. Several methods have been developed to aid with such analyses, with family-wise approaches, such as the Bonferroni and Dunn-Šidàk corrections, being popular. Conditions that motivate the use of family-wise corrections are explored. Although simple to implement, one major limitation of these approaches is that they assume that p-values are i.i.d. uniformly distributed under the null hypothesis. However, several factors may violate this assumption in genome-wide studies including effects from confounding by population stratification, the presence of related individuals, the correlational structure among genetic markers, and the use of limiting distributions for test statistics. Even after adjustment for such effects, the distribution of p-values can substantially depart from a uniform distribution under the null hypothesis. In this work, I present a decision theory for the use of family-wise corrections for multiplicity and a generalization of the Dunn-Šidàk correction that relaxes the assumption of uniformly-distributed null p-values. The independence assumption is also relaxed and handled through calculating the effective number of independent tests. I also explicitly show the relationship between order statistics and family-wise correction procedures. This generalization may be applicable to multiplicity problems outside of genomics.     

Fairy-tale Semantics in the Play of Preschoolers

The following study was done within the mainstream of the cultural-historical theory of mental development, which postulates that mental development consists in the assimilation of the tools and instruments of culture. Our main purpose in this article is to describe this process using fairy tales as an example and to answer the question of how the objective semantics of a story becomes a subjective semantics.     

Exploring the Relationship between Semantics and Space

The asymmetric distribution of human spatial attention has been repeatedly documented in both patients and healthy controls. Biases in the distribution of attention and/or in the mental representation of space may also affect some aspects of language processing. We investigated whether biases in attention and/or mental representation of space affect semantic representations. In particular, we investigated whether semantic judgments could be modulated by the location in space where the semantic information was presented and the role of the left and right parietal cortices in this task. Healthy subjects were presented with three pictures arranged horizontally (one middle and two outer pictures) of items belonging to the same semantic category. Subjects were asked to indicate the spatial position in which the semantic distance between the outer and middle pictures was smaller. Subjects systematically overestimated the semantic distance of items presented in the right side of space. We explored the neural correlates underpinning this bias using rTMS over the left and right parietal cortex. rTMS of the left parietal cortex selectively reduced this rightward bias. Our findings suggest the existence of an attentional and/or mental representational bias in semantic judgments, similar to that observed for the processing of space and numbers. Spatial manipulation of semantic material results in the activation of specialised attentional resources located in the left hemisphere.     

Mathematical Logic in the Human Brain: Semantics

As a higher cognitive function in humans, mathematics is supported by parietal and prefrontal brain regions. Here, we give an integrative account of the role of the different brain systems in processing the semantics of mathematical logic from the perspective of macroscopic polysynaptic networks. By comparing algebraic and arithmetic expressions of identical underlying structure, we show how the different subparts of a fronto-parietal network are modulated by the semantic domain, over which the mathematical formulae are interpreted. Within this network, the prefrontal cortex represents a system that hosts three major components, namely, control, arithmetic-logic, and short-term memory. This prefrontal system operates on data fed to it by two other systems: a premotor-parietal top-down system that updates and transforms (external) data into an internal format, and a hippocampal bottom-up system that either detects novel information or serves as an access device to memory for previously acquired knowledge.     

Argument Structure and the Representation of Abstract Semantics

According to the dual coding theory, differences in the ease of retrieval between concrete and abstract words are related to the exclusive dependence of abstract semantics on linguistic information. Argument structure can be considered a measure of the complexity of the linguistic contexts that accompany a verb. If the retrieval of abstract verbs relies more on the linguistic codes they are associated to, we could expect a larger effect of argument structure for the processing of abstract verbs. In this study, sets of length- and frequency-matched verbs including 40 intransitive verbs, 40 transitive verbs taking simple complements, and 40 transitive verbs taking sentential complements were presented in separate lexical and grammatical decision tasks. Half of the verbs were concrete and half were abstract. Similar results were obtained in the two tasks, with significant effects of imageability and transitivity. However, the interaction between these two variables was not significant. These results conflict with hypotheses assuming a stronger reliance of abstract semantics on linguistic codes. In contrast, our data are in line with theories that link the ease of retrieval with availability and robustness of semantic information.     

Advantages of the Use of Deciduous Teeth,Hair, and Blood Analysis for Lead and Cadmium Bio-Monitoring in Children. A Study of 6-Year-Old Children from Krakow (Poland)

The population of about 300 6-year-old preschool children was studied for lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) in deciduous teeth, scalp hair, and capillary blood. Zinc (Zn) content in hair was also measured due to its possible interferences with the elements studied. The Pb and Cd contents were measured by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry with Zeeman background correction, and Zn, by flame method. Metal levels found were comparable to those in European countries. Positive correlations between Pb and Cd in the same and different tissues were widespread (r = 0.23–0.68). A positive correlation was found between Pb in teeth and blood (r = 0.65, p < 0.001). Pb blood threshold 100 μg L⁻¹ referred to 2.6 μg g⁻¹ Pb in teeth. Predictability of this Pb teeth limit was 14% vs. 5% for Pb blood. Strong negative correlation was found between hair Pb and Zn (r = −0.68, p < 0.001). Enhanced Cd and Zn levels in hair were associated with the household drinking water hardness. The associations with some other environmental and behavioral factors were also presented and discussed. The results proved the advantage of analysis of primary teeth for Pb exposure screening of preschool children.