Meta-morphomic patterns in North Germanic

The paper presents examples of meta-morphomes (a kind of morphomic patterns, involving syncretisms) in North Germanic. There has been some debate over the notion of such patterns, and the aim is therefore to present relatively clear cases. Five cases are presented, involving inflection in verbs, nouns and adjectives. The syncretisms are all ‘unnatural’; they do not make much sense for syntax, semantics or phonology. While patterns that are obvious to the linguist are not necessarily obvious to speakers, the paper presents diachronic evidence that these morphomic patterns have been noticed by speakers. At least some criticism against ‘morphomic’ analyses is based on implausible premises: An analysis in terms of features is not automatically preferable only by being possible; the idea of ‘taking morphology seriously’ is untenable; the claim that the morphomic approach is a mere enumeration of facts may involve a self-contradiction.

Linguistic Mistakes

Ever since the publication of Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, there’s been a raging debate in philosophy of language over whether meaning and thought are, in some sense, normative. Most participants in the normativity wars seem to agree that some uses of meaningful expressions are semantically correct while disagreeing over whether this entails anything normative. But what is it to say that a use of an expression is semantically correct? On the so-called orthodox construal, it is to say that it doesn’t result in a factual mistake, that is, in saying or thinking something false. On an alternative construal it is instead to say that it doesn’t result in a distinctively linguistic mistake, that is, in misusing the expression. It is natural to think that these two construals of semantic correctness are simply about different things and not necessarily in competition with each other. However, this is not the common view. Instead, several philosophers who subscribe to the orthodox construal have argued that the alternative construal of correctness as use in accordance with meaning doesn’t make any sense, partly because there are no clear cases of linguistic mistakes (Whiting in Inquiry, 59:219–238, 2016, Wikforss in Philos Stud 102:203–226, 2001). In this paper I develop and defend the idea that there’s a distinctively linguistic notion of correctness as use in accordance with meaning and argue that there are clear cases of linguistic mistakes.

Contours of citizen science: a vignette study

Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature—for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners community on what should be considered as citizen science activity. This paper describes the development and results of a survey that examined this issue, through the use of vignettes—short case descriptions that describe an activity, while asking the respondents to rate the activity on a scale from ‘not citizen science’ (0%) to ‘citizen science’ (100%). The survey included 50 vignettes, of which five were developed as clear cases of not-citizen science activities, five as widely accepted citizen science activities and the others addressing 10 factors and 61 sub-factors that can lead to controversy about an activity. The survey has attracted 333 respondents, who provided over 5100 ratings. The analysis demonstrates the plurality of understanding of what citizen science is and calls for an open understanding of what activities are included in the field.

Appendix to Chapter 14

In the Forced March Sorites, there is no deductive path to a formal contradiction. Rather, a hapless subject is required to return a verdict in point of F-ness about each successive element in a soritical series for F. Competence requires the appropriate verdicts concerning the clear cases at the poles. Hence, since the verdicts required at the poles are different, the subject must at some point give some kind of differential responses to an adjacent pair of elements between which—for so the series is constructed—she can discern no relevant difference. Since it is a form of incompetence to purport to discriminate cases between which one discerns no relevant difference, it appears to follow that consistently competent use of F throughout the series is metaphysically impossible. It is argued that the intuitionist conception of vagueness provides the means to explain nicely why a differential response need not implicate discrimination.

On the spatial representativeness of point station measurements for comparison with WRF estimates

<p>Solar energy proves to be an interesting alternative to conventional sources based on the burning of fossil fuels. However, it shows a high short-term variability that makes its integration into the electricity mix difficult. To facilitate this integration, reliable short- and medium-term forecasts become highly necessary. To respond to this demand, solar radiation forecasting models have emerged. Among them, Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) has become particularly promising and has shown good performance at different temporal and spatial scales. The performance of these models is usually assessed by comparing their estimates with point measurements at selected stations. This comparison is hampered by the difference in spatial dimensions between the model estimates (representative of a given area) and the station (point) measurements. This difference introduces a certain error in the forecast, mainly related to the short-scale variability of cloudiness. Despite being essential to understand model validation, this issue has not been sufficiently investigated. In this framework, the present study analyzes the effect of the spatial representativeness of point measurements when used to validate model estimates. For this purpose, a specific one-month measurement campaign was conducted, deploying seven pyranometers in the vicinity of the city of Badajoz, Spain. To ensure their intercomparability, all pyranometers were calibrated with respect to a reference pyranometer previously calibrated by the World Radiation Center in Davos, Switzerland. Solar radiation was measured at a 1-minute basis to record the short-term variability due to cloudiness. Two series were constructed with these data, one corresponding to a selected station and the other to the average of the seven stations. These series of measurements were compared with the estimates provided by the WRF model for the same period and location. A configuration with two nested domains of 27 km and 9 km was used. Model performance showed better agreement when averaging was used instead of individual measurements, with RMSE improving from 89 W/m² to 77 W/m². Cloudy cases contributed the most to the differences between station measurements and model estimates, showing an RMSE greater than 100 W/m2, more than three times higher than the RMSE for clear cases (about 33 W/m2). The difference between the stations and the model for cloudy cases is reduced from 125 W/m2 to 107 W/m2 when averaged measurements are considered instead of single station measurements. This study contributes to the understanding of the representativeness of point station measurements for validation and comparison with WRF estimates. Acknowledgments. This work is partially funded by FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades-Agencia Estatal de Investigación of Spain through project RTI 2018-097332-B-C22, and by Junta de Extremadura-FEDER through project GR18097.</p>

Gene Conversion amongst Alu SINE Elements

The process of non-allelic gene conversion acts on homologous sequences during recombination, replacing parts of one with the other to make them uniform. Such concerted evolution is best described as paralogous ribosomal RNA gene unification that serves to preserve the essential house-keeping functions of the converted genes. Transposed elements (TE), especially Alu short interspersed elements (SINE) that have more than a million copies in primate genomes, are a significant source of homologous units and a verified target of gene conversion. The consequences of such a recombination-based process are diverse, including multiplications of functional TE internal binding domains and, for evolutionists, confusing divergent annotations of orthologous transposable elements in related species. We systematically extracted and compared 68,097 Alu insertions in various primates looking for potential events of TE gene conversion and discovered 98 clear cases of Alu–Alu gene conversion, including 64 cases for which the direction of conversion was identified (e.g., AluS conversion to AluY). Gene conversion also does not necessarily affect the entire homologous sequence, and we detected 69 cases of partial gene conversion that resulted in virtual hybrids of two elements. Phylogenetic screening of gene-converted Alus revealed three clear hotspots of the process in the ancestors of Catarrhini, Hominoidea, and gibbons. In general, our systematic screening of orthologous primate loci for gene-converted TEs provides a new strategy and view of a post-integrative process that changes the identities of such elements.

Is Word-Level Recursion Actually Recursion?

There is a longstanding debate in the literature about if, and where, recursion occurs in prosodic structure. While there are clear cases of genuine recursion at the phrase level and above, there are very few convincing cases of word-level recursion. Most cases are—by definition—not recursive and instead best analyzed as different constituents (e.g., the Composite Group, Prosodic Word Group, etc.). We show that two convincing cases of prosodic word-level recursion can easily be reanalyzed without recursion if phonology and prosody are evaluated cyclically at syntactic phase boundaries. Our analysis combines phase-based spell-out and morpheme-specific subcategorization frames of Cophonologies by Phase with Tri-P Mapping prosodic structure building. We show that apparent word-level recursion is due to cyclic spell-out, and non-isomorphisms between syntactic and prosodic structure are due to morpheme-specific prosodic requirements.

Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Thyroid Gland in an elderly Female

Background: Squamous cell carcinoma of the thyroid gland is a rare tumor. The tumor may arise as a primary tumor within the thyroid gland. Case Presentation: A 62-years-old lady with history a history of a long-standing left neck mass presented with progressive enlargement of the mass for the last 2 months. The mass was associated with dyspnea, dry cough, and difficulty in swallowing but no change of voice. On examination, it was hard and fixed, and other parts of the general examination were unremarkable. Fine needle aspiration revealed malignant cells with squamous cell cancer (BETHESDA VI). On surgical exploration, there was a mixed cystic and solid mass arising from the left thyroid gland locally invading strap muscles, esophagus and trachea. Complete excision was not possible, debulking was done with modified radical neck dissection. The histopathology showed Invasive poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma of the thyroid with cystic changes in background of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Conclusion: Thyroid squamous cell carcinoma is a rare malignancy with significant management implications. Less than three hundred clear cases of thyroid squamous cell carcinoma have been reported. In this report we describe one additional case of a thyroid squamous cell carcinoma and provide a comprehensive discussion of the clinical significance, and appropriate surgical management.

Sauter & Russell Handbook of Emotion Theory

What is a nonverbal expression of emotion? Both the notion of expression and the notion of emotion are contentious in the literature. Everyone knows the clear cases – smiles, frowns, screams, chuckles, slumps, and so on – but the category as a whole is not well defined. Writers from different theoretical backgrounds have criticized the implicit assumptions inherent in this phrase (Ekman, 1971; Hinde, 1985; Parkinson, 2005; Zajonc, 1985). Are the referenced behaviors in fact expressing something, and is this something an emotion? Not all scientific accounts are consistent with the implication that certain nonverbal behaviors express an emotion.However, for simplicity of reference we will continue to use the phrase “nonverbal expression.” But we do so in an inverted-commas sense only, namely, to refer to those nonverbal behaviors that are commonly taken to express emotions. We acknowledge that the category is vague, and we remain agnostic on whether what is expressed is truly an emotion, or, indeed, whether “express” is what such behaviors do.We are similarly agnostic on the definition of emotion, and we do not use that word here in any technical sense. Instead, our focus in this chapter is on short-term emotion episodes, which we take to be multi-componential events of limited duration commonly taken to be an emotion. Components include but are not limited to appraisals, physiological changes, subjective experiences, nonverbal expressions, and instrumental behaviors.We now turn to summarizing how the basic emotion, appraisal, and psychological constructionist research programs account for the production and perception of nonverbal expressions. (See chapters in this volume by Shiota, Ellsworth, and Barrett, respectively, for more general discussions of each research program and for fuller sets of references.) Although each program is commonly called a theory, they are instead broad research programs: each includes a family of loosely related (indeed sometimes conflicting) theories and assumptions, an interpretation of the history of the field, various background assumptions about human nature, prescribed methods and data analytic procedures, and conclusions drawn from previous research. Furthermore, each program continues to develop. We present a prototypical version of each program, emphasizing differences among the three research programs. That said, the three research programs also share important assumptions, methods, and conclusions, although the emphasis may vary. For example, when we describe one program’s account of evolutionary origins, the reader should not infer that the other two programs reject evolution by natural selection or assume special creation. Similarly, the fact that one program emphasizes context does not mean that contextual effects are incompatible with the other programs. We present each program’s assertions as if they were established facts, but in fact they are hypotheses. In the conclusion to our chapter, we elaborate on compatibilities and convergences, but we begin by contrasting the three programs.

COVID-19 may hit less resilient EU eastern areas more

Significance At least in the EU’s eleven eastern member states (EU-11), there has been significant if slow progress in lifting standards of living across the board in the past decade. However, progress is uneven and the impact of the economic slowdown due to lockdowns in the past year may well have affected disproportionately already poorer regions. Impacts Some governments, notably Hungary’s, will put political loyalty above need in directing recovery funds to the localities. People in ‘left-behind’ regions may seek a better life in relatively prosperous capital cities or abroad. There is scope for countries and regions to learn from each other given clear cases of significant development in the past decade.