Indefinite determiner introducing definite referent: a special use of 'yi 'one' + classifier' in Chinese

The indefinite determiner yi 'one'+ classifier' is the most approximate to an indefinite article, like the English a, in Chinese. It serves all the functions characteristic of representative stages of grammaticalization from a numeral to a generalized indefinite determiner as elaborated in the literature. It is established in this paper that the Chinese indefinite determiner has developed a special use with definite expressions, serving as a backgrounding device marking entities as of low thematic importance and unlikely to receive subsequent mentions in ensuing discourse. 'yi+ classifier' in the special use with definite expressions displays striking similarities in terms of semantic bleaching and phonological reduction with the same determiner at the advanced stage of grammaticalization characterized by uses with generics, nonspecifics and nonreferentials. An explanation is offered in terms of an implicational relation between nonreferentiality and low thematic importance which characterize the two uses of the indefinite determiner. While providing another piece of evidence in support of the claim that semantically nonreferentials and entities of low thematic importance tend to be encoded in terms of same linguistic devices in language, findings in this paper have shown how an indefinite determiner can undergo a higher degree of grammaticalization than has been reported in the literature-it expands its scope to mark not only indefinite but also definite expressions as semantically nonreferential and/or thematically unimportant. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Quantum dynamics with stochastic gauge simulations

The general idea of a stochastic gauge representation is introduced and compared with more traditional phase-space expansions, like the Wigner expansion. Stochastic gauges can be used to obtain an infinite class of positive-definite stochastic time-evolution equations, equivalent to master equations, for many systems including quantum time evolution. The method is illustrated with a variety of simple examples ranging from astrophysical molecular hydrogen production, through to the topical problem of Bose-Einstein condensation in an optical trap and the resulting quantum dynamics.

Entangled subspaces and quantum symmetries

Entanglement is defined for each vector subspace of the tensor product of two finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, by applying the notion of operator entanglement to the projection operator onto that subspace. The operator Schmidt decomposition of the projection operator defines a string of Schmidt coefficients for each subspace, and this string is assumed to characterize its entanglement, so that a first subspace is more entangled than a second, if the Schmidt string of the second majorizes the Schmidt string of the first. The idea is applied to the antisymmetric and symmetric tensor products of a finite-dimensional Hilbert space with itself, and also to the tensor product of an angular momentum j with a spin 1/2. When adapted to the subspaces of states of the nonrelativistic hydrogen atom with definite total angular momentum (orbital plus spin), within the space of bound states with a given total energy, this leads to a complete ordering of those subspaces by their Schmidt strings.

OMERACT-OARSI Initiative: Osteoarthritis Research Society International set of responder criteria for osteoarthritis clinical trials revisited.

Background: The OARSI Standing Committee for Clinical Trials Response Criteria Initiative had developed two sets of responder criteria to present the results of changes after treatment in three symptomatic domains (pain, function, and patient's global assessment) as a single variable for clinical trials (1). For each domain, a response was defined by both a relative and an absolute change, with different cut-offs with regard to the drug, the route of administration and the OA localization. Objective: To propose a simplified set of responder criteria with a similar cut-off, whatever the drug, the route or the OA localization. Methods: Data driven approach: (1) Two databases were considered The 'elaboration' database with which the formal OARSI sets of responder criteria were elaborated and The 'revisit' database. (2) Six different scenarios were evaluated: The two formal OARSI sets of criteria Four proposed scenarios of simplified sets of criteria Data from clinical randomized blinded placebo controlled trials were used to evaluate the performances of the two formal scenarios with two different databases ('elaboration' versus 'revisit') and those of the four proposed simplified scenarios within the 'revisit' database. The placebo effect, active effect, treatment effect, and the required sample arm size to obtain the placebo effect and the active treatment effect observed were the performances evaluated for each of the six scenarios. Experts' opinion approach: Results were discussed among the participants of the OMERACT VI meeting, who voted to select the definite OMERACT-OARSI set of criteria (one of the six evaluated scenarios). Results: Data driven approach: Fourteen trials totaling 1886 CA patients and fifteen studies involving 8164 CA patients were evaluated in the 'elaboration' and the 'revisit' databases respectively. The variability of the performances observed in the 'revisit' database when using the different simplified scenarios was similar to that observed between the two databases ('elaboration' versus 'revisit') when using the formal scenarios. The treatment effect and the required sample arm size were similar for each set of criteria. Experts' opinion approach: According to the experts, these two previous performances were the most important of an optimal set of responder criteria. They chose the set of criteria considering both pain and function as evaluation domain and requiring an absolute change and a relative change from baseline to define a response, with similar cut-offs whatever the drug, the route of administration or the CA localization. Conclusion: This data driven and experts' opinion approach is the basis for proposing an optimal simplified set of responder criteria for CA clinical trials. Other studies, using other sets of CA patients, are required in order to further validate this proposed OMERACT - OARSI set of criteria. (C) 2004 OsteoArthritis Research Society International. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Two envelope problems and the roles of ignorance

Four variations on Two Envelope Paradox are stated and compared. The variations are employed to provide a diagnosis and an explanation of what has gone awry in the paradoxical modeling of the decision problem that the paradox poses. The canonical formulation of the paradox underdescribes the ways in which one envelope can have twice the amount that is in the other. Some ways one envelope can have twice the amount that is in the other make it rational to prefer the envelope that was originally rejected. Some do not, and it is a mistake to treat them alike. The nature of the mistake is diagnosed by the different roles that rigid designators and definite descriptions play in unproblematic and in untoward formulations of decision tables that are employed in setting out the decision problem that gives rise to the paradox. The decision maker’s knowledge or ignorance of how one envelope came to have twice the amount that is in the other determines which of the different ways of modeling his decision problem is correct. Under this diagnosis, the paradoxical modeling of the Two Envelope problem is incoherent.

Identifiability and definiteness in Chinese

This article explores how the pragmatic notion of identfiability is encoded in Chinese. It presents a detailed analysis of the distinctive linguistic devices, including lexical, morphological, and position in sentence, which are employed in Chinese to indicate the interpretation of referents in respect of identifiability. Of the major determiners in Chinese, demonstratives are developing uses of a definite article, and yi 'one' + classier has developed uses of an indefinite article, although morphologically and in some cases also functionally they have not yet been fully grammaticalized. What makes Chinese further different from languages like English is the interpretation in this regard of what are called indeterminate lexical encodings, which include bare NPs and cardinality expressions. They by themselves are neutral in respect of the interpretation of identifiability. For indeterminate expressions, there is a strong but seldom absolute correlation between the interpretation of identiability or nonidentfiability and their occurrence in different positions in a sentence. Unlike the cases with several other languages without articles like Czech, Hindi, and Indonesian, the features of definiteness and indefiniteness cannot be obligatorily and uniquely specified for nominal expressions in Chinese. The findings in this article lead to the conclusion that definiteness as a grammatical category defined in the narrow sense has not been fully developed in Chinese.

IS/IT outsourcing practices of small- and medium-sized manufacturers

Firms began outsourcing information system functions soon after the inception of electronic computing. Extant research has concentrated on large organizations and large-valued outsourcing contracts from a variety of different industries. Smaller-sized firms are inherently different from their large counterparts. These differences between small and large firms could lead to different information technology/information system (IT/IS) items being outsourced and different outsourcing agreements governing these arrangements. This research explores and examines the outsourcing practices of very small through to medium-sized manufacturing organizations. The in-depth case studies not only explored the extent to which different firms engaged in outsourcing but also the nuances of their outsourcing arrangements. The results reveal that all six firms tended to outsource the same sorts of functions. Some definite differences existed, however, in the strategies adopted in relation to the functions they outsourced. These differences arose for a variety of reasons, including size, locality, and holding company influences. The very small and small manufacturing firms tended to make outsourcing purchases on an ad hoc basis with little reliance on legal advice. In contrast, the medium-sized firms often used a more planned initiative and sought legal advice more often. Interestingly, not one of the six firms outsourced any of their transaction processing. These findings now give very small, small-, and medium-sized manufacturing firms the opportunity to compare their practices against other firms of similar size.

The 1000 brightest HIPASS galaxies H I properties

We present the HIPASS Bright Galaxy Catalog (BGC), which contains the 1000 H I brightest galaxies in the southern sky as obtained from the H i Parkes All-Sky Survey ( HIPASS). The selection of the brightest sources is based on their H I peak flux density (S-peak greater than or similar to116 mJy) as measured from the spatially integrated HIPASS spectrum. The derived H I masses range from similar to10(7) to 4 x 10(10) M-.. While the BGC ( z< 0.03) is complete in S-peak, only a subset of &SIM;500 sources can be considered complete in integrated H I flux density (F-H I &GSIM;25 Jy km s(-1)). The HIPASS BGC contains a total of 158 new redshifts. These belong to 91 new sources for which no optical or infrared counterparts have previously been cataloged, an additional 51 galaxies for which no redshifts were previously known, and 16 galaxies for which the cataloged optical velocities disagree. Of the 91 newly cataloged BGC sources, only four are definite H I clouds: while three are likely Magellanic debris with velocities around 400 km s(-1), one is a tidal cloud associated with the NGC 2442 galaxy group. The remaining 87 new BGC sources, the majority of which lie in the zone of avoidance, appear to be galaxies. We identified optical counterparts to all but one of the 30 new galaxies at Galactic latitudes > 10degrees. Therefore, the BGC yields no evidence for a population of free-floating'' intergalactic H I clouds without associated optical counterparts. HIPASS provides a clear view of the local large-scale structure. The dominant features in the sky distribution of the BGC are the Supergalactic Plane and the Local Void. In addition, one can clearly see the Centaurus Wall, which connects via the Hydra and Antlia Clusters to the Puppis Filament. Some previously hardly noticable galaxy groups stand out quite distinctly in the H I sky distribution. Several new structures, including some not behind the Milky Way, are seen for the first time.

On the possibility of elastic strain localisation in a fault

The phenomenon of strain localisation is often observed in shear deformation of particulate materials, e.g., fault gouge. This phenomenon is usually attributed to special types of plastic behaviour of the material (e.g., strain softening or mismatch between dilatancy and pressure sensitivity or both). Observations of strain localisation in situ or in experiments are usually based on displacement measurements and subsequent computation of the displacement gradient. While in conventional continua the symmetric part of the displacement gradient is equal to the strain, it is no longer the case in the more realistic descriptions within the framework of generalised continua. In such models the rotations of the gouge particles are considered as independent degrees of freedom the values of which usually differ from the rotation of an infinitesimal volume element of the continuum, the latter being described for infinitesimal deformations by the non-symmetric part of the displacement gradient. As a model for gouge material we propose a continuum description for an assembly of spherical particles of equal radius in which the particle rotation is treated as an independent degree of freedom. Based on this model we consider simple shear deformations of the fault gouge. We show that there exist values of the model parameters for which the displacement gradient exhibits a pronounced localisation at the mid-layers of the fault, even in the absence of inelasticity. Inelastic effects are neglected in order to highlight the role of the independent rotations and the associated additional parameters. The localisation-like behaviour occurs if (a) the particle rotations on the boundary of the shear layer are constrained (this type of boundary condition does not exist in a standard continuum) and (b) the contact moment-or bending stiffness is much smaller than the product of the effective shear modulus of the granulate and the square of the width of the gouge layer. It should be noted however that the virtual work functional is positive definite over the range of physically meaningful parameters (here: contact stiffnesses, solid volume fraction and coordination number) so that strictly speaking we are not dealing with a material instability.

Use of electropalatography in the treatment of disordered articulation following traumatic brain injury: A case study

Electropalatography (EPG) was used as a biofeedback tool in a case study of a 30-year-old male with disordered articulation following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Based on qualitative measures of the participant's intelligibility, improved articulation of the fricatives /s/ and /integral/ were selected as treatment targets. Therapy was administered three times a week for 5 weeks. Results showed that word and sentence intelligibility increased approximately 10%, and error patterns for lingual articulation indicated that fricative -> stop and other fricative errors decreased considerably. EPG measures for /s/ exhibited a significantly more anterior main focus of articulatory contact post therapy. Consonant durations were significantly longer during weeks 3 and 4, and this finding was associated with the emergence of an articulatory contact pattern with a groove rather than complete closure. This articulatory pattern appeared inconsistently and was found to vary across articulations of /s/ but also within a single consonant production. For /integral/, the amount of contact was significantly reduced post therapy and an increase in duration was noted during week 4, similar to that occurring in the production of /s/. Spatial and timing measures were more variable than in normal speakers of English and indicated a general increase in variability across weeks for both /s/ and /integral/. It was concluded that, although the correct fricative patterns appeared only intermittently during production of the consonants, there seemed to be sufficient information for the listener to be able to classify the sound as a fricative. As a part of an intervention program, visual EPG biofeedback therapy would appear to have a definite role in assisting dysarthric speakers exhibiting difficulties with lingual articulation in understanding their errors, learning how to exploit kinesthetic, and acoustic sources of feedback, and how to make appropriate adjustments in tongue articulation to increase the level of speech intelligibility.

Phase-space analysis of bosonic spontaneous emission

We present phase-space techniques for the modelling of spontaneous emission in two-level bosonic atoms. The positive-P representation is shown to give a full and complete description within the limits of our model. The Wigner representation, even when truncated at second order, is shown to need a doubling of the phase-space to allow for a positive-definite diffusion matrix in the appropriate Fokker-Planck equation and still fails to agree with the full quantum results of the positive-P representation. We show that quantum statistics and correlations between the ground and excited states affect the dynamics of the emission process, so that it is in general non-exponential. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Patch and whole of surface mass-transfer rate measurements on a stepped rotating cylinder electrode

A recently developed whole of surface electroplating technique was used to obtain mass-transfer rates in the separated flow region of a stepped rotating cylinder electrode. These data are compared with previously reported mass-transfer rates obtained with a patch electrode. It was found that the two methods yield different results, where at lower Reynolds numbers, the mass-transfer rate enhancement was noticeably higher for the whole of the surface electrode than for the patch electrode. The location of the peak mass transfer behind the step, as measured with a patch electrode, was reported to be independent of the Reynolds number in previous studies, whereas the whole of the surface electrode shows a definite Reynolds number dependence. Large eddy simulation results for the recirculating region behind a step are used in this work to show that this difference in behavior is related to the existence of a much thinner fluid layer at the wall for which the velocity is a linear junction of distance from the wall. Consequently, the diffusion layer no longer lies well within a laminar sublayer. It is concluded that the patch electrode responds to the wall shear stress for smooth wall flow as well as for the disturbed flow region behind the step. When the whole of the surface is electro-active, the response is to mass transfer even when this is not a sole function of wall shear stress. The results demonstrate that the choice of the mass-transfer measurement technique in corrosion studies can have a significant effect on the results obtained from empirical data.

Bounds on integrals of the Wigner function: The hyperbolic case

Wigner functions play a central role in the phase space formulation of quantum mechanics. Although closely related to classical Liouville densities, Wigner functions are not positive definite and may take negative values on subregions of phase space. We investigate the accumulation of these negative values by studying bounds on the integral of an arbitrary Wigner function over noncompact subregions of the phase plane with hyperbolic boundaries. We show using symmetry techniques that this problem reduces to computing the bounds on the spectrum associated with an exactly solvable eigenvalue problem and that the bounds differ from those on classical Liouville distributions. In particular, we show that the total "quasiprobability" on such a region can be greater than 1 or less than zero. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.

Australian and New Zealand practice in intensive care (ANZPIC II): Predictors of physician confidence to diagnose pneumonia and determine illness severity in ventilated patients

The manner in which elements of clinical history, physical examination and investigations influence subjectively assessed illness severity and outcome prediction is poorly understood. This study investigates the relationship between clinician and objectively assessed illness severity and the factors influencing clinician's diagnostic confidence and illness severity rating for ventilated patients with suspected pneumonia in the intensive care unit (ICU). A prospective study of fourteen ICUs included all ventilated admissions with a clinical diagnosis of pneumonia. Data collection included pneumonia type - community-acquired (CAP), hospital-acquired (HAP) and ventilator-associated (VAP), clinician determined illness severity (CDIS), diagnostic methods, clinical diagnostic confidence (CDC), microbiological isolates and antibiotic use. For 476 episodes of pneumonia (48% CAP, 24% HAP, 28% VAP), CDC was greatest for CAP (64% CAP, 50% HAP and 49% VAP, P < 0.01) or when pneumonia was considered life-threatening (84% high CDC, 13% medium CDC and 3% low CDC, P < 0.001). Life-threatening pneumonia was predicted by worsening gas exchange (OR 4.8, CI 95% 2.3-10.2, P < 0.001), clinical signs of consolidation (OR 2.0, CI 95% 1.2-3.2, P < 0.01) and the Sepsis-Related Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) Score (OR 1.1, CI 95% 1.1-1.2, P < 0.001). Diagnostic confidence increased with CDIS (OR 163, CI 95% 8.4-31.4, P < 0.001), definite pathogen isolation (OR 3.3, CI 95% 2.0-5.6) and clinical signs of consolidation (OR 2.1, CI 95% 1.3-3.3, P = 0.001). Although the CDIS, SOFA Score and the Simplified Acute Physiologic Score (SAPS II) were all associated with mortality, the SAPS II Score was the best predictor of mortality (P = 0.02). Diagnostic confidence for pneumonia is moderate but increases with more classical presentations. A small set of clinical parameters influence subjective assessment. Objective assessment using SAPS II Scoring is a better predictor of mortality.

Atypical prostatic glandular proliferations on needle biopsy - Diagnostic implications, use of immunohistochemistry, and clinical significance

In recent times, PSA screening and a substantial increase in prostate needle biopsies have not only resulted in detection of minute foci of cancer but have also very likely resulted in increased detection of atypical glandular proliferations. Not uncommonly, there are only a limited number of atypical glands in these biopsies, and these require careful evaluation to enable an accurate diagnosis. We describe diagnostic implications, use of immunohistochemistry, and clinical significance of these lesions. Foci of atypical glands, also labeled atypical small acinar proliferation of uncertain significance, have features suspicious for but not diagnostic of cancer. Atypical foci include a broad group of lesions of differing clinical significance. These include benign, small acinar proliferations mimicking prostate cancer and atypical glandular proliferations suspicious for carcinoma. Definite diagnosis requires accurate histopathologic assessment and judicious use of immunohistochemistry. Patients with atypical glands on prostate needle biopsy have a high risk for harboring cancer and therefore have an increased risk for having cancer detected in subsequent biopsies.