In this paper, we will argue that, of the various grammatical and discourse constraints that affect acceptability in Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE), only the structural parallelism constraint is unique to VPE. We outline (previously noted) systematic problems that arise for classical structural accounts of VPE resolution, and discuss efforts in recent research on VPE to reduce explanations of acceptability in VPE to general well-formedness constraints at the level of information structure [e.g. Kehler, 2000, 2002, Kertz, 2013, Kehler, 2015]. In two (...) magnitude estimation experiments, we show that — in line with Kehler’s predictions — degradation due to structural mismatch is modulated by coherence relation. On the other hand, we consistently find residual structural mismatch effects, suggesting that the interpretation of VPE is sensitive to structural features of the VPE antecedent. We propose that a structural constraint licenses VPE, but that sentences violating this constraint can nevertheless be interpreted. The variability in acceptability is accounted for not by additional constraints on VPE in the grammar, but by the numerous general biases that affect sentence and discourse well-formedness, such as information structural constraints [as proposed by Kertz, 2013], discourse coherence relations Kehler [2000], sensitivity to Question Under Discussion structure [e.g. Ginzburg and Sag, 2000, Kehler, 2015], and thematic role bias at the lexical level [e.g. McRae et al., 1998]. We test the prediction that thematic role bias (Experiment 3) and QUD structure (Experiment 4) will influence both elliptical and non-elliptical sentences alike, while structural mismatch continues to degrade elliptical sentences alone. Our proposal differs from existing proposals in cutting the explanatory pie in a different way with respect to how variations in acceptability are accounted for. We suggest that degradation can result from at least two distinct and separable sources: violating construction-specific grammatical constraints, or from complexity differences in interpretation related to very general discourse level information. (shrink)

Through imaginative engagement readers of fiction become, to an extraordinary extent, the narrator’s ‘children’: they often submit themselves to the narrator’s authority without reserve. But precisely because of that, readers are deeply at a loss when their trust is betrayed. This underscores a core function of fiction, namely to evoke emotional response in the reader. In this paper, we hypothesize how a reader’s imaginative engagement can be subjected to narrative frustration due to processing or moral complexity. The types of narrative (...) frustration we consider differ in terms of their sources, and their emotional and behavioral impacts on the reader. Here, we break down these frustrations into their component parts, in an effort to better characterize the different classes of frustrations. We propose that frustrations arise from different combinations of local uncertainty, moral clash and global uncertainty. These sources of frustration in turn explain the reader’s emotional response and their consequent reading behavior as they imaginatively engage with fiction. (shrink)

This study explored how women with a diagnosis of cancer (lymphoma) deal with moral concerns related to their responsibility as parents. Ten women with cancer and who had children living at home were interviewed. The interviews were analysed according to the constant comparative method used in grounded theory. In order to provide a focus for the analysis, the ethics of care and the concept of mothering were used as sensitizing concepts. The core concept ‘experience of dealing with moral responsibility of (...) being a parent with cancer by redefining oneself as a mother’ was identified. The processes involved were: interrupted mothering; facing the life-threatening illness and children’s reactions; striving to be a good mother; attempting to deal with moral responsibility; and coming to terms with being a mother. (shrink)

Background Most jurisdictions that allow euthanasia and assisted suicide (AS) regulate it through the medical profession. However, the extent and nature of how medicine should be involved are debated. Swiss AS practice is unusual in that it is managed by lay AS organizations that rely on a law that permits AS when done for nonselfish reasons. Physicians are not mentioned in the law but are usually called upon to prescribe the lethal medications and perform capacity evaluations.Methods We analyzed in-depth interviews (...) of 23 Swiss AS experts including ethicists, lawyers, medical practitioners, and senior officials of AS organizations for their views on AS.Results Although there was agreement on some issues (e.g., need for better end-of-life care), the interviewees’ preferred model for AS, and the nature of preferred medical involvement, varied, which we categorized into five types: preference for AS practice as it occurred prior to lay AS organizations; preference for the current lay model; preference for a modified lay model to increase autonomy protections while limiting medical AS normalization; preference for various types of more medicalized models of AS; and, ambivalence about any specific model of medical involvement. The rationales given for each type of model reflected varying opinions on how medicine’s role would likely impact AS practice and demonstrated the experts’ attitudes toward those impacts.Conclusion The dynamics within the Swiss AS regime, as reflected in the varying views of Swiss AS experts, shed light on the dilemmas inherent to medical scope and involvement in AS, which may have implications for debates in other jurisdictions. (shrink)

Food choices are a key determinant of dietary intake, with brain regions, such as the mesolimbic and prefrontal cortex maturing at differential rates into adulthood. More needs to be understood about developmental changes in healthy and unhealthy food perceptions and preference. We investigated how food perceptions and preference vary as a function of age and how food attributes impact age-related changes. One hundred thirty-nine participants completed computerized tasks to rate high-calorie and low-calorie food cues for taste, health, and liking, followed (...) by 100 binary food choices based on each participant’s ratings. Dietary self-control was considered successful when the healthier food was chosen. Self-control success ratio was the proportion of success trials over total number of choices. Beta-weights for health and taste were calculated as each attribute’s influence on food preference. Adiposity measurements included BMI z-score and waist-to-height ratio. High-calorie foods were rated more tasty and less healthy with increasing age. Older participants liked high-calorie foods more, and β-taste was associated with age. Significant age-by-WHtR interactions were observed for health and taste ratings of high-calorie foods, β-taste, and marginally for preference of high-calorie foods. Stratifying by WHtR, we found age-related increases in taste and preference ratings of high-calorie foods in the high WHtR group alone. In contrast, age-related decreases in health ratings of high-calorie foods were significant in the low WHtR group alone. Age and β-taste were significantly associated in the high WHtR group and only marginally significant with low WHtR. Although participants rated low-calorie foods as less tasty and less healthy with increasing age, there was no association between age and preference for low-calorie foods. Participants made faster food choices with increasing age regardless of WHtR, with a significant age-by-WHtR interaction on reaction time. There were no age-related effects in self-control success ratio and β-health. These results suggest that individual differences in age and central adiposity play an important role in preference for high-calorie foods, and a higher importance of food tastiness in food choice may contribute to greater preference for high-calorie foods with increasing age. (shrink)

Through a wide-ranging international collection of papers, this volume provides theoretical and historical insights into the development and application of phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology and offers detailed examples of research into social phenomena from these standpoints. All the articles in this volume join together to testify to the enormous efficacy and potential of both phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology.

The first 1000 days of life, from conception to 2 years, are a critical window for the influence of environmental exposures on the assembly of the oral microbiome, which is the precursor to dental caries (decay), one of the most prevalent microbially induced disorders worldwide. While it is known that the human microbiome is susceptible to environmental exposures, there is limited understanding of the impact of prenatal and early childhood exposures on the oral microbiome trajectory and oral health. A barrier (...) has been the lack of technology to directly measure the foetal "exposome", which includes nutritional and toxic exposures crossing the placenta. Another barrier has been the lack of statistical methods to account for the high dimensional data generated by‐omic assays. Through identifying which early life exposures influence the oral microbiome and modify oral health, these findings can be translated into interventions to reduce dental decay prevalence. (shrink)

Event-related desynchronization, as a proxy for mirror neuron activity, has been used as a neurophysiological marker for motor execution after mirror visual feedback. Using EEG, this study investigated ERD upon the immediate effects of single-session MVF in unimanual arm movements compared with the ERD effects occurring without a mirror, in two groups: stroke patients with left hemiplegia and their healthy counterparts. During EEG recordings, each group performed one session of mirror therapy training in three task conditions: with a mirror, with (...) no mirror, and with a covered mirror. An asymmetry index was calculated from the subtraction of the event-related spectrum perturbations between the C3 and C4 electrodes located over the sensorimotor cortices contralateral and ipsilateral to the moved arm. Results of the effect of task versus group in contralateral and ipsilateral motor areas showed that there was a significant effect of task condition at the contralateral motor area in the high beta band at C3. High beta ERD showed that the suppression was greater over the contralateral hemisphere than it was over the ipsilateral hemisphere in both study groups. The magnitude of low beta ERD in patients with stroke was more suppressed in contralesional C3 under the no mirror compared to that of the covered mirror and similarly more suppressed in ipsilesional C4 ERD under the no mirror compared to that of the mirror condition. The correlation analysis revealed that the magnitude of ERSP power correlated significantly with arm severity in the low and high beta bands in patients with stroke, and a higher asymmetry index in the low beta band was associated with higher arm functioning under the no-mirror condition. There was a shift in sensorimotor ERD toward the contralateral hemisphere as induced by MVF accompanying unimanual movement in both stroke patients and healthy controls. The use of ERD in the low beta band as a neurophysiological marker to indicate the relationships between the amount of MVF-induced ERD attenuation and motor severity, and the outcome indicator for improving stroke patients’ neuroplasticity in clinical trials using MVF are warranted to be explored in the future. (shrink)

This article illustrates how a collaborative research process can successfully engage an underserved minority community to address health disparities. Pacific Islanders, including the Marshallese, are one of the fastest growing US populations. They face significant health disparities, including extremely high rates of type 2 diabetes. This article describes the engagement process of designing patient‐centered outcomes research with Marshallese stakeholders, highlighting the specific influences of their input on a randomized control trial to address diabetes. Over 18 months, an interdisciplinary research team (...) used community‐based participatory principles to conduct patient‐engaged outcomes research that involved 31 stakeholders in all aspects of research design, from defining the research question to making decisions about budgets and staffing. This required academic researcher flexibility, but yielded a design linking scientific methodology with community wisdom. (shrink)

A variety of studies show that parental absence early in life leads to deleterious effects on the developing CNS. This is thought to be largely because evolutionary-dependent stimuli are necessary for the appropriate postnatal development of the young brain, an effect sometimes termed the “experience-expectant brain,” with parents providing the necessary input for normative synaptic connections to develop and appropriate neuronal survival to occur. Principal among CNS systems affected by parental input are the monoamine systems. In the present study,N= 434 (...) rhesus monkeys (233 males, 201 females) were reared in one of two conditions: as mother-reared controls (MR;n= 269) or without adults with 24-h access to same-aged peers (PR;n= 165). When subjects were six-months-old, they underwent a separation paradigm involving 4, sequential, four-day social separations from their mothers or peers, with each separation followed by three-day reunions with their mothers or their peers. Prior to the separation paradigm, baseline cisternal CSF samples were obtained, as well as at the end of each the four social separations, and after final separation, during a recovery period. CSF was assayed for concentrations of monoamine metabolites and a blood sample was genotyped for the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) genotype. Replicating earlier landmark findings, PR subjects with thesallele exhibited lower baseline concentrations of the serotonin metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), when compared to PR subjects homozygous for theLallele. MR subjects were undifferentiated by genotype. PR subjects exhibited lower CSF 5-HIAA concentrations during baseline, but higher CSF 5-HIAA during social separations, when compared to MR subjects. There were rearing effects for the dopamine metabolite homovanillic acid (HVA) and for the norepinephrine metabolite 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG), with PR subjects showing higher HVA and lower MHPG when compared to MR subjects. These findings indicate that there are long-term deficits in the response of monoamines following early maternal absence. The results of this study confirm and extend earlier findings that early parental absence has deleterious consequences for the development of the monoamine systems, and that these consequences are modulated by the 5-HTT genotype. (shrink)

This volume collects twenty original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Chris Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey, and Thomas Wartenberg. While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect (...) them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, the first two sections offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. The next section focuses on the film-as-philosophy debate. Section IV covers cinematic experience, while Section V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema's biopolitical potential. Finally, the last section proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film. This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

The amount of data available to healthcare practitioners is growing, and the rapid increase in available patient data is becoming a problem for healthcare practitioners, as they are often unable to fully survey and process the data relevant for the treatment or care of a patient. Consequently, there are currently several efforts to develop systems that can aid healthcare practitioners with reading and processing patient data and, in this way, provide them with a better foundation for decision-making about the treatment (...) and care of patients. There are also efforts to develop algorithms that provide suggestions for such decisions. However, the development of these systems and algorithms raises several concerns related to the privacy of patients, the patient–practitioner relationship, and the autonomy of healthcare practitioners. The aim of this article is to provide a foundation for understanding the ethical challenges related to the development of a specific form of data-processing systems, namely clinical algorithms. (shrink)

Given the widening gap between the number of individuals on transplant waiting lists and the availability of donated organs, as well as the recent plateau in donations based on neurological criteria, there has been a growing interest in expanding donation after circulatory determination of death. While the prevalence of this form of organ donation continues to increase, many thorny ethical issues remain, often creating moral distress in both clinicians and families. In this article, we address one of these issues, namely, (...) the challenges surrounding patient and surrogate informed consent for donation after circulatory determination of death. First we discuss several general concerns regarding consent related to this form of organ donation, and then we address additional issues that are unique to three different patient categories: adult patients with medical decision-making capacity or potential capacity, adult patients who lack capacity, and pediatric patients. (shrink)

The chromosome passenger complex (CPC) localizes to chromosomes and microtubules, sometimes simultaneously. The CPC also has multiple domains for interacting with chromatin and microtubules. Interactions between the CPC and both the chromatin and microtubules is important for spindle assembly and error correction. Such dual chromatin‐microtubule interactions may increase the concentration of the CPC necessary for efficient kinase activity while also making it responsive to specific conditions or structures in the cell. CPC‐microtubule dependent functions are considered in the context of the (...) first meiotic division. Acentrosomal spindle assembly is a process that depends on transfer of the CPC from the chromosomes to the microtubules. Furthermore, transfer to the microtubules is not only to position the CPC for a later role in cytokinesis; metaphase I error correction and subsequent bi‐orientation of bivalents may depend on microtubule associated CPC interacting with the kinetochores. (shrink)

A common and driving assumption in agricultural research is that the introduction of research trials, new practices and innovative technologies will result in technology adoption, and will subsequently generate benefits for farmers and other stakeholders. In Lao PDR, the potential benefits of introduced technologies have not been fully realised by beneficiaries. We report on an analysis of a survey of 735 smallholder farmers in Southern Lao PDR who were questioned about factors that influenced their decisions to adopt new technologies. In (...) this study, we have constructed measures or states of adoption which identify key elements of an adoption decision-making nexus. Analysis was conducted to statistically group explanatory factors of adoption. The key explanatory factors represented attributes of the farmer, the factors considered when undertaking production decisions and elements of the agricultural value chain that present as opportunities or constraints. We describe the combination of farmer’s personal attributes, perceptions of the value chain, and the introduction of new technologies by external actors as an “agricultural research value chain”, where agricultural research activities intervene to derive greater benefits for local farmers. A generalised linear model, via Poisson regression analysis on the identified explanatory factors, was applied to explore how they influence adoption measures and we found several significant relationships. (shrink)

It is shown that the jet mechanism derivable from the Lorentz deformation picture leads to a nearly constant average jet transverse momentum. It is pointed out that this is consistent with the high-energy experimental data. It is pointed out further that this result strengthens the physical basis for the minimal time-energy uncertainty combined covariantly with Heisenberg's space-momentum uncertainty relation.