Zero, Null Individuals, and Nominal Semantics in Cantonese

It has been convincingly argued that English zero provides evidence for introducing null individuals into the ontology of natural language (Bylinina & Nouwen 2018). We examine ‘zero’ in Cantonese, where it provides evidence that such null individuals are a matter of crosslinguistic variation. Cantonese zero has a more restricted distribution. It occurs widely in a number of contexts, but it is systematically ruled out with ordinary classifiers. These facts, coupled with assumptions about the nature of measurement and nominal semantics, demonstrate despite its extensive use in the language, zero is impossible in precisely the uses that require null individuals. Cantonese seems to be telling us that such null individuals are simply absent from its ontology, implying an interesting difference in natural language metaphysics between the languages—and perhaps a different perspective on what theoretical shape crosslinguistic variation can take.

Screening off generalized: Reichenbach’s legacy

Eells and Sober proved in 1983 that screening off is a sufficient condition for the transitivity of probabilistic causality, and in 2003 Shogenji noted that the same goes for probabilistic support. We start this paper by conjecturing that Hans Reichenbach may have been aware of this fact. Then we consider the work of Suppes and Roche, who demonstrated in 1986 and 2012 respectively that screening off can be generalized, while still being sufficient for transitivity. We point out an interesting difference between Reichenbach’s screening off and the generalized version, which we illustrate with an example about haemophilia among the descendants of Queen Victoria. Finally, we embark on a further generalization: we develop a still weaker condition, one that can be made as weak as one wishes.

Can Twitter give insights into international differences in Covid-19 vaccination? Eight countries’ English tweets to 21 March 2021

Vaccination programs may help the world to reduce or eliminate Covid-19. Information about them may help countries to design theirs more effectively, with important benefits for public health. This article investigates whether it is possible to get insights into national vaccination programmes from a quick international comparison of public comments on Twitter. For this, word association thematic analysis (WATA) was applied to English-language vaccine-related tweets from eight countries gathered between 5 December 2020 and 21 March 2021. The method was able to quickly identify multiple international differences. Whilst some were irrelevant, potentially non-trivial differences include differing extents to which non-government scientific experts are important to national vaccination discussions. For example, Ireland seemed to be the only country in which university presidents were widely tweeted about in vaccine discussions. India’s vaccine kindness term #VaccineMaitri was another interesting difference, highlighting the need for international sharing.

Song Is More Memorable Than Speech Prosody: Discrete Pitches Aid Auditory Working Memory

Vocal music and spoken language both have important roles in human communication, but it is unclear why these two different modes of vocal communication exist. Although similar, speech and song differ in certain design features. One interesting difference is in the pitch intonation contour, which consists of discrete tones in song, vs. gliding intonation contours in speech. Here, we investigated whether vocal phrases consisting of discrete pitches (song-like) or gliding pitches (speech-like) are remembered better, conducting three studies implementing auditory same-different tasks at three levels of difficulty. We tested two hypotheses: that discrete pitch contours aid auditory memory, independent of musical experience (“song memory advantage hypothesis”), or that the higher everyday experience perceiving and producing speech make speech intonation easier to remember (“experience advantage hypothesis”). We used closely matched stimuli, controlling for rhythm and timbre, and we included a stimulus intermediate between song-like and speech-like pitch contours (with partially gliding and partially discrete pitches). We also assessed participants' musicality to evaluate experience-dependent effects. We found that song-like vocal phrases are remembered better than speech-like vocal phrases, and that intermediate vocal phrases evoked a similar advantage to song-like vocal phrases. Participants with more musical experience were better in remembering all three types of vocal phrases. The precise roles of absolute and relative pitch perception and the influence of top-down vs. bottom-up processing should be clarified in future studies. However, our results suggest that one potential reason for the emergence of discrete pitch–a feature that characterises music across cultures–might be that it enhances auditory memory.

Neutrino amplitude decomposition: toward observing the atmospheric-solar wave interference

Observation of the interference between the atmospheric and solar oscillation waves with the correct magnitude would provide another manifestation of the three-generation structure of leptons. As a prerequisite for such analyses we develop a method for decomposing the oscillation S matrix into the atmospheric and solar amplitudes. Though the similar method was recently proposed successfully in vacuum, once an extension into the matter environment is attempted, it poses highly nontrivial problems. Even for an infinitesimal matter potential, inherent mixture of the atmospheric and solar oscillation waves occurs, rendering a simple extension of the vacuum definition untenable. We utilize general kinematic structure as well as analyses of the five perturbative frameworks, in which the nature of matter-dressed atmospheric and solar oscillations are known, to understand the origin of the trouble, how to deal with the difficulty, and to grasp the principle of decomposition. Then, we derive the amplitude decomposition formulas in these frameworks, and discuss properties of the decomposed probabilities. We mostly discuss the $$\nu _{\mu } \rightarrow \nu _{e}$$ ν μ → ν e channel, but a comparison with the $$\nu _{\mu } \rightarrow \nu _{\tau }$$ ν μ → ν τ channel reveals an interesting difference.

Are There Sex Differences in the Reaction of Undercarboxylated Osteocalcin to Hypoglycemia?

There has been increasing evidence in recent years for the hypothesis of bones as endocrine organs. Osteocalcin, long considered just a marker of new bone formation, is now seen as the first hormone produced by bones, and seems to be associated with regulating glucose metabolism and reproduction. The aim of this work was to monitor changes of osteocalcin in reaction to hypoglycemia, and determine if there are differences in such reactions between the sexes. The study included 61 healthy probands with physiological calciophosphate metabolism (30 men and 31 women). We applied to each of them an insulin tolerance test, and then monitored levels of undercarboxylated osteocalcin and reactions to hypoglycemia at regular time intervals. We found differences in the reaction to hypoglycemia between the sexes. In men there was a significant decline in undercarboxylated osteocalcin between the 30 and 40 min (p<0.0015), which reflects a reaction to a glycemic decline between 25-30 min, followed by reversal. Low undercarboxylated osteocalcin in men lasted up to 90 min, after which they returned to levels before the test. In women we did not find any significant changes in undercarboxylated osteocalcin levels. Changes in undercarboxylated osteocalcin induced by hypoglycemia indicate a relationship between bones and glucose metabolism. There was an interesting difference between the sexes. However, a definitive conclusion about the role of osteocalcin in human metabolism will require numerous future studies.

A Preference-Based Approach to Defeasible Deontic Inference

In this paper we present an approach to defeasible deontic inference. Given a set of rules R expressing conditional obligations and a formula A giving contingent information, the goal is to determine the most desirable outcome with respect to this information. Semantically, the rules R induce a partial preorder on the set of models, giving the relative desirability of each model. Then the set of minimal A models characterises the best that can be attained given that A holds. A syntactic approach is also given, in terms of maximal subsets of material counterparts of rules in R, and that yields a formula that expresses the best outcome possible given that A holds. These approaches are shown to coincide, providing an analogue to a soundness and completeness result. Complexity is not unreasonable, being at the second level of the polynomial hierarchy when the underlying logic is propositional logic. The approach yields desirable and intuitive results, including for the various “paradoxes” of deontic reasoning. The approach also highlights an interesting difference in how specificity is dealt with in nonmonotonic and deontic reasoning.

PLK1- and PLK4-mediated asymmetric mitotic centrosome size and positioning in the early zebrafish embryo

SUMMARYFactors that regulate mitotic spindle positioning have been elucidated in vitro, however it remains unclear how a spindle is placed within the confines of extremely large cells. Our studies identified a uniquely large centrosome structure in the early zebrafish embryo (246.44±11.93μm2 mitotic centrosome in a 126.86±0.35μm diameter cell), whereas C. elegans centrosomes are notably smaller (6.75±0.28μm2 mitotic centrosome in a 55.83±1.04μm diameter cell). During early embryonic cell divisions, cell size changes rapidly in C. elegans and zebrafish embryos. Notably, mitotic centrosome area scales closely with changing cell size compared to changes in spindle length for both organisms. One interesting difference between the two is that mitotic centrosomes are asymmetric in size across embryonic zebrafish spindles, with the larger mitotic centrosome being 2.14±0.13-fold larger in size than the smaller. The largest mitotic centrosome is placed towards the embryo center in a Polo-Like Kinase (PLK) 1 and PLK4 dependent manner 87.14±4.16% of the time. We propose a model in which uniquely large centrosomes direct spindle placement within the disproportionately large zebrafish embryo cells to orchestrate cell divisions during early embryogenesis.

A hangos olvasás szerepe a kiejtés tanításában a kínai mint idegen nyelv oktatása során

This paper discusses the use of reading aloud as a technique in the teaching of pronunciation to learners of Chinese as a foreign language, emphasizing the importance of identifying and catering for the learners’ own attitudes. A questionnaire-based survey of university-level learners reveals an interesting difference between their rational belief in the usefulness of reading aloud and their emotional reactions to the idea. On the basis of these findings, the paper describes ways of including reading aloud in Chinese language courses without making the experience too threatening.

Bioinformatics of Thymidine metabolism in camels and Trypanosoma evansi: nucleoside deoxyribosyltransferase (NDRT) as a drug target

Background Trypanosoma evansi (T. evansi), the causative agent for surra or camel trypanosomiasis, is characterized by the widest geographic distribution and infects the widest range of hosts among the known trypanosomes. The recent zoonotic importance and increasing reports of drug resistance necessitate the discovery of new drug targets. Drug discovery process entails finding an interesting difference between the host and the parasite. Results In this study, the thymidine metabolic pathways were compared in camel and T. evansi. Metabolic maps, protein sequence comparisons, domain and motifs contents analysis, phylogenetic relations and 3D structure models were used in comparisons. A unique difference in thymidine metabolism was at the level of recycling of thymidine which was performed by thymidine phosphorylase in camel, while this role is T. evansi was associated with nucleoside deoxyribosyltransferase (NDRT), which is a unique enzyme for the trypanosome and was absent in camel. Thymidine in T. evansi seems to be governed by thymine through NDRT. In contrast to camel, in which thymidine can be produced from thymidylate by the action of 5'-nucleotidase. Conclusions NDRT can be regarded as a drug target against T. evansi for its strict presence in the parasite but not in the host.