Prosody and pragmatics in parenthetical insertions in catalan

This paper analyses the role of prosody in parenthetical insertions, a type of structure that is extremely common in both speech and writing. The materials under study come from a corpus of spontaneous speech acts in Central Catalan (with varying degrees of spontaneity) from which a corpus of oral parenthetical insertions has been compiled. The prototypical prosodic features of a parenthetical insertion in Catalan are: prosodic autonomy, limited extension, production in between pauses or final pause, tendency towards acceleration, fall in intensity, lower pitch range and, finally, falling or rising melodic pattern. While the final fall is the most frequent pattern in spontaneous conversations with a high degree of confidence between interlocutors, a final rising structure is found in interviews in which the degree of confidence between participants is smaller, their roles are unequal, and the interviewed constructs a narrative discourse. We thus suggest that the pitch contour of parenthetical insertions is related to formality and discourse typology (in this case, narrative vs. dialogue). Bearing in mind the discursive functions performed by these insertions, we propose a typology which classifies them with regards to two main functions: completion of information, and modalisation.

'Comfort Me With Apples': Ambivalent Allusion in Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost can be read on various levels, some of which challenge or even contradict others. The main, explicit narrative from Genesis chapters 2 and 3 is shadowed by many other related stories. Some of these buried tales question or subvert the values made explicit in the dominant narrative. An attentive reader needs to be alert to the ways in which such references introduce teasing complexities. The approach of Satan to Eve in the ninth book of Paradise Lost is loaded in just that way with allusion to the literature of Greece and Rome. The poem recovers for this long and intricately constructed passage the weight of classical reference, especially in similes, that it had during the first Satanic books. Gardens, both classical and biblical, disguised or transformed serpents, and the weight of allusions that Eve is required to bear, all threaten to undermine the meanings of the overt narrative. The narrator has difficulty rescuing Eve from the allusions she attracts, or the many stories told about her.

Comparison of citrus rooting evaluation methods using root images in soil profiles and root weight

A digitized image method was compared with a standard washing technique for measuring citrus roots in the field. Video pictures of roots were taken in a soil profile. The profile area analyzed was defined by iron rings, which were also used to remove the roots to determine their dry weight. The roots presented in the pictures were quantified using SIARCS software developed by Embrapa. The root length and area determined by digital images provided a good estimate of root quantity present in the profile.

Comparison of methods for estimation of needle losses in Scots pine following defoliation by Bupalus piniaria

Abstract

Mouvements anormaux et accident vasculaire cérébral [Movement disorders in stroke]

Dyskinesias are infrequent presentations in acute stroke (1%). They can be found more frequently as delayed presentations after a stroke, but the prevalence is not available from the literature. The full spectrum of hyper- and hypo-akinetic syndromes has been described, but three main pictures are rather specific of an acute stroke: limb shaking, hemichorea-hemiballism and unilateral asterixis. Besides limb shaking, that seems to reflect a transient diffuse ischemia of the frontosubcortical motor pathway, lesions are described at all levels of the frontosubcortical motor circuit including the sensorimotor frontoparietal cortex, the striatum, the pallidum, the thalamic nuclei, the subthalamic nucleus, the substantia nigra, the cerebellum, the brainstem and their interconnecting pathways, as ischemic or hemorrhagic strokes. The preferentially late development of dyskinesia could reflect the return to a more ancestral motor control level, the most functional possible with the remaining configuration of structures, elaborated by brain plasticity after stroke.

Network characteristics of film tourism websites in Catalonia: an application of network analysis in tourism

This master thesis presents a research on the analysis of film tourism stakeholders in Catalonia applying the network analysis approach. The research aims to provide an analysis of the relations between local tourism stakeholders with local film offices through their websites. Therefore, the development of the present work involved the review of literature on the themes of film tourism and network analysis. Then the main stakeholders of film and tourism of Catalonia were identified and their websites analyzed. The measures indicators for network analysis such as centrality, closeness and betweenness degree have been applied on the analysis of the websites to determine the extent of the relations of film and tourism stakeholders in Catalonia. Results and conclusions are presented on the referred sections

An international university network for online teaching of pathology in Frenchspeaking countries

Introduction: Building online courses is a highly time consuming task for teachers of a single university. Universities working alone create high-quality courses but often cannot cover all pathological fields. Moreover this often leads to duplication of contents among universities, representing a big waste of teacher time and energy. We initiated in 2011 a French university network for building mutualized online teaching pathology cases, and this network has been extended in 2012 to Quebec and Switzerland. Method: Twenty French universities (see & for details), University Laval in Quebec and University of Lausanne in Switzerland are associated to this project. One e-learning Moodle platform (http://moodle.sorbonne-paris-cite.fr/) contains texts with URL pointing toward virtual slides that are decentralized in several universities. Each university has the responsibility of its own slide scanning, slide storage and online display with virtual slide viewers. The Moodle website is hosted by PRES Sorbonne Paris Cité, and financial supports for hardware have been obtained from UNF3S (http://www.unf3s.org/) and from PRES Sorbonne Paris Cité. Financial support for international fellowships has been obtained from CFQCU (http://www.cfqcu.org/). Results: The Moodle interface has been explained to pathology teachers using web-based conferences with screen sharing. The teachers added then contents such as clinical cases, selfevaluations and other media organized in several sections by student levels and pathological fields. Contents can be used as online learning or online preparation of subsequent courses in classrooms. In autumn 2013, one resident from Quebec spent 6 weeks in France and Switzerland and created original contents in inflammatory skin pathology. These contents are currently being validated by senior teachers and will be opened to pathology residents in spring 2014. All contents of the website can be accessed for free. Most contents just require anonymous connection but some specific fields, especially those containing pictures obtained from patients who agreed for a teaching use only, require personal identification of the students. Also, students have to register to access Moodle tests. All contents are written in French but one case has been translated into English to illustrate this communication (http://moodle.sorbonne-pariscite.fr/mod/page/view.php?id=261) (use "login as a guest"). The Moodle test module allows many types of shared questions, making it easy to create personalized tests. Contents that are opened to students have been validated by an editorial committee composed of colleagues from the participating institutions. Conclusions: Future developments include other international fellowships, the next one being scheduled for one French resident from May to October 2014 in Quebec, with a study program centered on lung and breast pathology. It must be kept in mind that these e-learning programs highly depend on teachers' time, not only at these early steps but also later to update the contents. We believe that funding resident fellowships for developing online pathological teaching contents is a win-win situation, highly beneficial for the resident who will improve his knowledge and way of thinking, highly beneficial for the teachers who will less worry about access rights or image formats, and finally highly beneficial for the students who will get courses fully adapted to their practice.

Maternal and Child Health Services Title V Block Grant State Narrative for Iowa Application for 2015 Annual Report for 2013, September 21, 2014

Key factors that provide context for the state's Maternal and Child Health (MCH) annual report and state plan are highlighted in this overview. This section briefly outlines Iowa's demographics, population changes, economic indicators and significant public initiatives. Major strategic planning efforts affecting development of program activities are also identified.

Corruption in building the image of politics in television news broadcasts

This work analyses the political news of eight Spanish television channels in order to see what image is built of politics, and particularly how the news of corruption affects the image of politics in Spanish news broadcasts. Different cases of corruption such as Gürtel, Palma Arena and those associated with judge Baltasar Garzón in his final stage in office, occupy part of the study. A new methodology is therefore proposed that enables the quality of the political information emitted from inside and outside the political content of the news programmes to be observed. Particular attention is paid to the news broadcasts of Televisión Española and Cuatro as those which offer a more balanced view of politics, and channels such as La Sexta, which give priority to a narrative construction of politics in the news programmes around causes of corruption.

Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used this approach to avoid the difficulties of creating models and methods in one country and then trying to export them to other countries where they would be adapted for use. This article presents the initial outcome of this collaboration, a counseling model and methods. The life-designing model for career intervention endorses five presuppositions about people and their work lives: contextual possibilities, dynamic processes, non-linear progression, multiple perspectives, and personal patterns. Thinking from these five presuppositions, we have crafted a contextualized model based on the epistemology of social constructionism, particularly recognizing that an individual's knowledge and identity are the product of social interaction and that meaning is co-constructed through discourse. The life-design framework for counseling implements the theories of self-constructing [Guichard, J. (2005). Life-long self-construction. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 5, 111-124] and career construction [Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counselling: putting theory and research to work (pp. 42-70). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley] that describe vocational behavior and its development. Thus, the framework is structured to be life-long, holistic, contextual, and preventive.

Association entre consommation d'alcool et facteurs de risque cardiovasculaire: une étude sur la population lausannoise. [Association between alcohol consumption and cardiovascular risk factors: a narrative review]

Alors que la consommation modérée d'alcool est liée à un risque plus faible de développer une maladie coronarienne, l'impact d'une consommation plus importante d'alcool sur les facteurs de risque cardiovasculaire (FRCV) et la maladie coronarienne est moins clair. Nous avons étudié l'association entre la consommation d'alcool, les FRCV et l'estimation du risque à dix ans de faire un événement cardiovasculaire dans l'étude populationnelle lausannoise CoLaus. Dans cette étude, 73% des participants consomment de l'alcool, 16% consomment de 14 à 34 unités d'alcool par semaine et 2% consomment 35 unités ou plus par semaine. Cet article montre notamment l'impact d'une consommation importante d'alcool sur les FRCVet passe en revue les liens entre la consommation d'alcool, le type de boissons et les FRCV. [Abstract] Moderate alcohol consumption has been associated with lower coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. However, the impact of higher alcohol consumption on cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) is conflicting. We examined the association between alcohol consumption, CVRFs and the estimated 10-year CHD risk in the population-based CoLaus study in Lausanne, Switzerland. Among 5'769 participants without cardiovascular disease, 73% of the participants were alcohol drinkers; 16% consumed 14-34 drinks/week and 2% consumed >= 35 drinks/week. This article shows the impact of high alcohol consumption on CVRFs and reviews the literature on the associations between alcohol consumption and CVRFs.

Team Effectiveness in Patient Health Management: An Overview of Reviews

Background: The desire to improve the quality of health care for an aging population with multiple chronic diseases is fostering a rapid growth in inter-professional team care, supported by health professionals, governments, businesses and public institutions. However, the weight of evidence measuring the impact of team care on patient and health system outcomes has not, heretofore, been clear. To address this deficiency, we evaluated published evidence for the clinical effectiveness of team care within a chronic disease management context in a systematic overview. Methods: A search strategy was built for Medline using medical subject headings and other relevant keywords. After testing for perform- ance, the search strategy was adapted to other databases (Cinhal, Cochrane, Embase, PsychInfo) using their specific descriptors. The searches were limited to reviews published between 1996 and 2011, in English and French languages. The results were analyzed by the number of studies favouring team intervention, based on the direction of effect and statistical significance for all reported outcomes. Results: Sixteen systematic and 7 narrative reviews were included. Diseases most frequently targeted were depression, followed by heart failure, diabetes and mental disorders. Effective- ness outcome measures most commonly used were clinical endpoints, resource utilization (e.g., emergency room visits, hospital admissions), costs, quality of life and medication adherence. Briefly, while improved clinical and resource utilization endpoints were commonly reported as positive outcomes, mixed directional results were often found among costs, medication adherence, mortality and patient satisfaction outcomes. Conclusions: We conclude that, although suggestive of some specific benefits, the overall weight of evidence for team care efficacy remains equivocal. Further studies that examine the causal interactions between multidisciplinary team care and clinical and economic outcomes of disease management are needed to more accurately assess its net program efficacy and population effectiveness.

Evaluation of a novel biomaterial in the suprachoroidal space of the rabbit eye.

PURPOSE: Drug delivery to treat diseases of the posterior segment of the eye, such as choroidal neovascularization and its complications, is hampered by poor intraocular penetration and rapid elimination of the drug from the eye. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility and tolerance of suprachoroidal injections of poly(ortho ester) (POE), a bioerodible and biocompatible polymer, as a biomaterial potentially useful for development of sustained drug delivery systems. METHODS: After tunnelization of the sclera, different formulations based on POE were injected (100 microL) into the suprachoroidal space of pigmented rabbits and compared with 1% sodium hyaluronate. Follow-up consisted of fundus observations, echography, fluorescein angiography, and histologic analysis over 3 weeks. RESULTS: After injection, POE spread in the suprachoroidal space at the posterior pole. It was well tolerated and progressively disappeared from the site of injection without sequelae. No bleeding or retinal detachment occurred. Echographic pictures showed that the material was present in the suprachoroidal space for 3 weeks. Angiography revealed minor pigment irregularities at the site of injection, but no retinal edema or necrosis. Histology showed that POE was well tolerated in the choroid. CONCLUSIONS: POE suprachoroidal injections, an easy, controllable, and reproducible procedure, were well tolerated in the rabbit eye. POE appears to be a promising biomaterial to deliver drugs focally to the choroid and the retina.

Memory Revisited in Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending

An accumulation of years brings with it an accumulation of experiences. The revision of such experiences usually becomes more recurrent after retirement, a transition time from one period of life to another and, as such, a time in which we, human beings, have a tendency to take stock of our lives. This is actually one of the main issues present in Julian Barnes's last novel The Sense of an Ending (2011). When the main protagonist, a retired man quite comfortable and contented with his present life, receives an unexpected inheritance from the mother of a girlfriend from his university years, he is forced to track down a part of his life that he had left at the back of his mind a long time ago. As he explains his story, the protagonist and narrator of the novel raises a number of questions related to the quality and function of memory as one gets into old age. He experiments the unreliability of memory and questions to what extent memory is constructed through the remembered emotions that invaded him over that episode of his life rather than through the events as they actually took place. On the other hand, the act of revisiting and revising that specific episode, brings with it feelings of guilt and remorse as the protagonist realises that his past acts were not as noble as he remembered them to be. However, these acts are part of the past and they cannot be changed; thus, another question that the novel raises is how to account for those actions of which one does not feel proud and, more importantly, how to manage those bad memories as one gets older.