Acoustic-Perceptual Factors Both Maintain and Account for the Rarity of the Czech Trill-Fricative

Czech has a sibilant inventory that contrasts at three places of articulation: Alveolar, a pre-post-alveolar, and palato-alveolar. The specific aim of this study is to examine the perception of the typologically rare Czech sibilant inventory and to determine whether acoustic-perceptual characteristics play a role in the maintenance of the Czech trill-fricative. These results are compared to a more common three-way sibilant inventory, Polish. Native Czech listeners performed an auditory AX discrimination task in two blocks: A Czech block and a Polish block. Stimuli were embedded in varying levels of noise to increase task difficulty. Signal-to-noise ratio differences affected the perception of the Czech sibilants more than Polish sibilants. Moreover, a multidimensional scaling analysis revealed less perceptual dispersion for the Czech inventory than the Polish inventory. These results suggest that there is greater difficulty maintaining the Czech inventory considering the signal-to-noise comparisons and that this a factor that contributes to its rarity; however, similarities in perceptual dispersion indicate that maintenance across several acoustic-perceptual cues is possible, and Czech shows few signs of losing this typologically rare contrast.

Generating semantic maps through multidimensional scaling: linguistic applications and theory

This paper reports on the state-of-the-art in application of multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques to create semantic maps in linguistic research. MDS refers to a statistical technique that represents objects (lexical items, linguistic contexts, languages, etc.) as points in a space so that close similarity between the objects corresponds to close distances between the corresponding points in the representation. We focus on the use of MDS in combination with parallel corpus data as used in research on cross-linguistic variation. We first introduce the mathematical foundations of MDS and then give an exhaustive overview of past research that employs MDS techniques in combination with parallel corpus data. We propose a set of terminology to succinctly describe the key parameters of a particular MDS application. We then show that this computational methodology is theory-neutral, i.e. it can be employed to answer research questions in a variety of linguistic theoretical frameworks. Finally, we show how this leads to two lines of future developments for MDS research in linguistics.

Perception of the Values of the Biocultural Landscape Types of Slovakia by the Population

The perception of the landscape by society is becoming an integral part of many studies in terms of the quality of the living environment, sport and recreation and building and developing social relationships. To evaluate the perception and appreciation of individual landscape types by society, we used an online questionnaire as a form of sociological survey. We used the statistical method of non-metric multidimensional scaling NMDS in R package to determine the variability of responses in relation to respondents. The relationship between demographic factors and landscape perception and landscape type preferences was evaluated. The results of multidimensional scaling show a strong relationship between young men and a preference for recreation over agro-tourism. The middle generation with university education looks more frequently for cultural monuments. University-educated middle-aged men perceive the natural landscape as degraded and endangered, and middle-aged men with secondary education understand the need for the protection of traditional agricultural landscapes. It is important to integrate people’s preferences and needs into the landscape planning and decision-making processes, so that they can contribute to the creation of development plans and other strategic documents.

Exploring and Comparing High Stakes Writing Test Prompts Content Structure

TOEFL and IELTS are two major tests that measure language preparedness of prospective college students. The writing section of these two tests provide a measure of readiness for academic writing. However, to what extent these two tests measure the same contents has not been quantitatively investigated before. In this paper, multidimensional scaling (MDS) is applied to explore the content structure of writing prompts in TOEFL and IELTS examinations.

Comparison of the Universities in Turkey with Multidimensional Scaling Analysis

Higher education institutions are among the keystones of a country. Besides being the primary institutions of a country that expand overseas, universities are the most important organizations representing it at the international level. It is an undeniable fact that a university benefits the country in which it is located in many ways. It is crucial to examine the performances of universities, which are among the major drivers of global change. As such, the positions of the Turkish universities during the 2008–2009 and 2018–2019 periods were examined by multidimensional scaling analysis. Especially the change in the positions of the recently-opened universities and their proximity or distance to the established universities constitute the primary focus of this study. The universities in Turkey were analyzed through multidimensional scaling analysis by using the variables of the number of students at associate and undergraduate level, the number of academic staff, the number of doctoral students, the total number of publications, and the number of graduate students. No significant difference was found between the positions of the universities that were opened under the policy of “one university for each city”.

Entomological surveillance of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae), vectors of arboviruses, in an ecotourism park in Cachoeiras de Macacu, state of Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil

Arboviruses are arthropod-dependent viruses to complete their zoonotic cycle. Among the transmitting arthropods, culicids stand out, which participate in the cycle of several arboviruses that can affect humans. The present study aimed to identify species of culicidae and to point out the risk of circulation, emergency, or reemergence of pathogenic arboviruses to humans in the region of the Jequitibá headquarters of the Parque Estadual dos Três Picos (PETP), in Cachoeiras de Macacu, state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Sampling was carried out at five Sample Points (SP) demarcated on trails from the headquarters, with CDC light traps, HP model with dry ice attached to the side, for 48 hours of activity each month. Additionally, active catches were made with a castro catcher in the period of one hour per day in the field, from six to eleven o’clock in the morning, in each PM. After the captures, thematic map was assembled using the ArcGIS 10 software and performing a multidimensional scaling (MDS). A total of 1151 specimens were captured and the presence of culicids already incriminated as vectors of arboviruses circulating in the region was observed: Aedes fluviatilis Lutz, 1904 (71 specimens); Aedes scapularis Rondani, 1848 (55 specimens); Haemagogus leococelaenus Dyar and Shannon, 1924 (29 specimens). In addition to the subgenus Culex (culex) spp. (163 specimens). In this sense, we highlight the importance of strengthening the actions of continuous entomological surveillance of the emergence and re-emergence of new arboviruses in ecotourism visitation parks.

An Efficient Kriging Modeling Method Based on Multidimensional Scaling for High-Dimensional Problems

Kriging-based modeling has been widely used in computationally intensive simulations. However, the Kriging modeling of high-dimensional problems not only takes more time, but also leads to the failure of model construction. To this end, a Kriging modeling method based on multidimensional scaling (KMDS) is presented to avoid the “dimensional disaster”. Under the condition of keeping the distance between the sample points before and after the dimensionality reduction unchanged, the KMDS method, which mainly calculates each element in the inner product matrix due to the mapping relationship between the distance matrix and the inner product matrix, completes the conversion of design data from high dimensional to low dimensional. For three benchmark functions with different dimensions and the aviation field problem of aircraft longitudinal flight control, the proposed method is compared with other dimensionality reduction methods. The KMDS method has better modeling efficiency while meeting certain accuracy requirements.

A comparative analysis of proximity measures to determine the Lithuanian population structure

In this paper the multidimensional scaling, the principal coordinate and principal component methods for the Lithuanian population structure have investigated, taken that the proximity measures are Euclid, Gower, Bray-Curtis, Kulczynski, Jaccard and Morisita. The genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism genetic data analyzed. A comparative analysis of proximity measures performed. The results of visualization are also presented.

A Quantum Geometric Model of Color Similarity Judgements

Since Tversky (1977) argued that similarity judgments violate the three metric axioms, asymmetrical similarity judgments have been offered as particularly difficult challenges for standard, geometric models of similarity, such as multidimensional scaling. According to Tversky (1977), asymmetrical similarity judgments are driven by differences in salience or extent of knowledge. However, the notion of salience has been difficult to operationalize to different kinds of stimuli, especially perceptual stimuli for which there are no apparent differences in extent of knowledge. To investigate similarity judgments between perceptual stimuli, across three experiments we collected data where individuals would rate the similarity of a pair of temporally separated color patches. We identified several violations of symmetry in the empirical results, which the conventional multidimensional scaling model cannot readily capture. Pothos et al. (2013) proposed a quantum geometric model of similarity to account for Tversky’s (1977) findings. In the present work, we developed this model to a form that can be fit to similarity judgments. We fit several variants of quantum and multidimensional scaling models to the behavioral data and concluded in favor of the quantum approach. Without further modifications of the model, the quantum model additionally predicted violations of the triangle inequality that we observed in the same data. Overall, by offering a different form of geometric representation, the quantum geometric model of similarity provides a viable alternative to multidimensional scaling for modeling similarity judgments, while still allowing a convenient, spatial illustration of similarity.