English compound and non-compound processing in bilingual and multilingual speakers: effects of dominance and sequential multilingualism

This article reports on a study investigating the relative influence of the first and dominant language on L2 and L3 morpho-lexical processing. A lexical decision task compared the responses to English NV-er compounds (e.g., taxi driver) and non-compounds provided by a group of native speakers and three groups of learners at various levels of English proficiency: L1 Spanish-L2 English sequential bilinguals and two groups of early Spanish-Basque bilinguals with English as their L3. Crucially, the two trilingual groups differed in their first and dominant language (i.e., L1 Spanish-L2 Basque vs. L1 Basque-L2 Spanish). Our materials exploit an (a)symmetry between these languages: while Basque and English pattern together in the basic structure of (productive) NV-er compounds, Spanish presents a construction that differs in directionality as well as inflection of the verbal element (V[3SG] + N). Results show between and within group differences in accuracy and response times that may be ascribable to two factors besides proficiency: the number of languages spoken by a given participant and their dominant language. An examination of response bias reveals an influence of the participants' first and dominant language on the processing of NV-er compounds. Our data suggest that morphological information in the nonnative lexicon may extend beyond morphemic structure and that, similarly to bilingualism, there are costs to sequential multilingualism in lexical retrieval.

A process-based evaluation of dust-emitting winds in the CMIP5 simulation of HadGEM2-ES

Despite the importance of dust aerosol in the Earth system, state-of-the-art models show a large variety for North African dust emission. This study presents a systematic evaluation of dust emitting-winds in 30 years of the historical model simulation with the UK Met Office Earth-system model HadGEM2-ES for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. Isolating the effect of winds on dust emission and using an automated detection for nocturnal low-level jets (NLLJs) allow an in-depth evaluation of the model performance for dust emission from a meteorological perspective. The findings highlight that NLLJs are a key driver for dust emission in HadGEM2-ES in terms of occurrence frequency and strength. The annually and spatially averaged occurrence frequency of NLLJs is similar in HadGEM2-ES and ERA-Interim from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Compared to ERA-Interim, a stronger pressure ridge over northern Africa in winter and the southward displaced heat low in summer result in differences in location and strength of NLLJs. Particularly the larger geostrophic winds associated with the stronger ridge have a strengthening effect on NLLJs over parts of West Africa in winter. Stronger NLLJs in summer may rather result from an artificially increased mixing coefficient under stable stratification that is weaker in HadGEM2-ES. NLLJs in the Bodélé Depression are affected by stronger synoptic-scale pressure gradients in HadGEM2-ES. Wintertime geostrophic winds can even be so strong that the associated vertical wind shear prevents the formation of NLLJs. These results call for further model improvements in the synoptic-scale dynamics and the physical parametrization of the nocturnal stable boundary layer to better represent dust-emitting processes in the atmospheric model. The new approach could be used for identifying systematic behavior in other models with respect to meteorological processes for dust emission. This would help to improve dust emission simulations and contribute to decreasing the currently large uncertainty in climate change projections with respect to dust aerosol.

Barriers to “industrialisation” for interwar British retailing? The case of Marks & Spencer Ltd.

Research on international differences in retail productivity has highlighted formidable environmental barriers to the ‘industrialisation’ of mass retailing as a driver of declining British interwar productivity growth in this sector (and in services more generally). We examine evidence for such barriers, using a case study of a firm that built its interwar expansion strategy on ‘American’ retail methods – Marks & Spencer (M&S). We find that, rather than facing barriers to the adoption of American mass retail practices, M&S reaped major productivity gains from this process. This adds further evidence to an emerging literature rejecting the barriers to industrialisation thesis for retailing.

Simulating decadal variability in the North Atlantic Ocean

Observations and climate models suggest significant decadal variability within the North Atlantic subpolar gyre (NA SPG), though observations are sparse and models disagree on the details of this variability. Therefore, it is important to understand 1) the mechanisms of simulated decadal variability, 2) which parts of simulated variability are more faithful representations of reality, and 3) the implications for climate predictions. Here, we investigate the decadal variability in the NA SPG in the state-of-the-art, high resolution (0.25◦ ocean resolution), climate model ‘HadGEM3’. We find a decadal mode with a period of 17 years that explains 30% of the annual variance in related indices. The mode arises due to the advection of heat content anomalies, and shows asymmetries in the timescale of phase reversal between positive and negative phases. A negative feedback from temperature-driven density anomalies in the Labrador Sea (LS) allows for the phase reversal. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which exhibits the same periodicity, amplifies the mode. The atmosphere-ocean coupling is stronger during positive rather than negative NAO states, explaining the asymmetry. Within the NA SPG, there is potential predictability arising partly from this mode for up to 5 years. There are important similarities between observed and simulated variability, such as the apparent role for the propagation of heat content anomalies. However, observations suggest interannual LS density anomalies are salinity-driven. Salinity control of density would change the temperature feedback to the south, possibly limiting real-world predictive skill in the southern NA SPG with this model. Finally, to understand the diversity of behaviours, we analyse 42 present-generation climate models. Temperature and salinity biases are found to systematically influence the driver of density variability in the LS. Resolution is a good predictor of the biases. The dependence of variability on the background state has important implications for decadal predictions.

Fast and slow precipitation responses to individual climate forcers: a PDRMIP multi-model study

Precipitation is expected to respond differently to various drivers of anthropogenic climate change. We present the first results from the Precipitation Driver and Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP), where nine global climate models have perturbed CO2, CH4, black carbon, sulfate, and solar insolation. We divide the resulting changes to global mean and regional precipitation into fast responses that scale with changes in atmospheric absorption and slow responses scaling with surface temperature change. While the overall features are broadly similar between models, we find significant regional intermodel variability, especially over land. Black carbon stands out as a component that may cause significant model diversity in predicted precipitation change. Processes linked to atmospheric absorption are less consistently modeled than those linked to top-of-atmosphere radiative forcing. We identify a number of land regions where the model ensemble consistently predicts that fast precipitation responses to climate perturbations dominate over the slow, temperature-driven responses.

A possible reconceptualization of food engineering discipline

Food industry is critical to any nation’s health and well-being; it is also critical to the economic health of a nation, since it can typically constitute over a fifth of the nation’s manufacturing GDP. Food Engineering is a discipline that ought to be at the heart of the food industry. Unfortunately, this discipline is not playing its rightful role today: engineering has been relegated to play the role of a service provider to the food industry, instead of it being a strategic driver for the very growth of the industry. This paper hypothesises that food engineering discipline, today, seems to be continuing the way it was in the last century, and has not risen to the challenges that it really faces. This paper therefore categorises the challenges as those being posed by: 1. Business dynamics, 2. Market forces, 3. Manufacturing environment and 4. Environmental Considerations, and finds the current scope and subject-knowledge competencies of food engineering to be inadequate in meeting these challenges. The paper identifies: a) health, b) environment and c) security as the three key drivers of the discipline, and proposes a new definition of food engineering. This definition requires food engineering to have a broader science base which includes biophysical, biochemical and health sciences, in addition to engineering sciences. This definition, in turn, leads to the discipline acquiring a new set of subject-knowledge competencies that is fit-for-purpose for this day and age, and hopefully for the foreseeable future. The possibility of this approach leading to the development of a higher education program in food engineering is demonstrated by adopting a theme based curriculum development with five core themes, supplemented by appropriate enabling and knowledge integrating courses. At the heart of this theme based approach is an attempt to combine engineering of process and product in a purposeful way, termed here as Food Product Realisation Engineering. Finally, the paper also recommends future development of two possible niche specialisation programs in Nutrition and Functional Food Engineering and Gastronomic Engineering. It is hoped that this reconceptualization of the discipline will not only make it more purposeful for the food industry, but it will also make the subject more intellectually challenging and attract bright young minds to the discipline.

Renormalized time scale for anticipating and lagging synchronization

Anticipating synchronization has been recently proposed as a mechanism of interaction in dynamical systems which are able to bring about predictions of future states of a driver system. We suggest that an interesting insight into the anticipating synchronization can be obtained by the renormalization of the time scale in the driven system. Our approach directly links the feedback delay of the driven system with the renormalized time scale of the driven system, identifying the main component in the anticipating synchronization paradigm and suggesting an alternative method to generate the anticipating and the lagging synchronization.

SURFACE ALFVEN WAVE DAMPING IN A THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF THE SOLAR WIND

Here we investigate the contribution of surface Alfven wave damping to the heating of the solar wind in minima conditions. These waves are present in the regions of strong inhomogeneities in density or magnetic field (e.g., the border between open and closed magnetic field lines). Using a three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) model, we calculate the surface Alfven wave damping contribution between 1 and 4 R(circle dot) (solar radii), the region of interest for both acceleration and coronal heating. We consider waves with frequencies lower than those that are damped in the chromosphere and on the order of those dominating the heliosphere: 3 x 10(-6) to 10(-1) Hz. In the region between open and closed field lines, within a few R(circle dot) of the surface, no other major source of damping has been suggested for the low frequency waves we consider here. This work is the first to study surface Alfven waves in a 3D environment without assuming a priori a geometry of field lines or magnetic and density profiles. We demonstrate that projection effects from the plane of the sky to 3D are significant in the calculation of field line expansion. We determine that waves with frequencies >2.8 x 10(-4) Hz are damped between 1 and 4 R(circle dot). In quiet-Sun regions, surface Alfven waves are damped at further distances compared to active regions, thus carrying additional wave energy into the corona. We compare the surface Alfven wave contribution to the heating by a variable polytropic index and find it as an order of magnitude larger than needed for quiet-Sun regions. For active regions, the contribution to the heating is 20%. As it has been argued that a variable gamma acts as turbulence, our results indicate that surface Alfven wave damping is comparable to turbulence in the lower corona. This damping mechanism should be included self-consistently as an energy driver for the wind in global MHD models.

Invasive grasses and native Asteraceae in the Brazilian Cerrado

Anthropogenic disturbances frequently modify natural disturbance regimes and foster the invasion and spread of nonindigenous species. However, there is some dispute about whether disturbance events or invasive plants themselves are the major factors promoting the local extinction of native plant species. Here, we used a set of savanna remnants comprising a gradient of invasive grass cover to evaluate whether the species richness of Asteraceae, a major component of the Brazilian Cerrado, is affected by invasive grass cover, or alternatively, whether variation in richness can be directly ascribed to disturbance-related variables. Furthermore, we evaluate whether habitat-specialist Asteraceae differ from habitat generalist species in their responses to grass invasion. Abundance and species richness showed unimodal variation along the invasive grass gradient for both total Asteraceae and habitat-generalists. The cerrado-specialist species, however, showed no clear variation from low-to-intermediate levels of grass cover, but declined monotonically from intermediate-to-higher levels. Through a structural equation model, we found that only invasive grass cover had significant effects on both abundance and species density of Asteraceae. The effect of invasive grass cover was especially high on the cerrado-specialist species, whose proportion declined consistently with increasing invasive dominance. Our results support the prediction that invasive grasses reduce the floristic uniqueness of pristine vegetation physiognomies.

Adapting Web content for low-literacy readers by using lexical elaboration and named entities labeling

This paper presents an approach for assisting low-literacy readers in accessing Web online information. The oEducational FACILITAo tool is a Web content adaptation tool that provides innovative features and follows more intuitive interaction models regarding accessibility concerns. Especially, we propose an interaction model and a Web application that explore the natural language processing tasks of lexical elaboration and named entity labeling for improving Web accessibility. We report on the results obtained from a pilot study on usability analysis carried out with low-literacy users. The preliminary results show that oEducational FACILITAo improves the comprehension of text elements, although the assistance mechanisms might also confuse users when word sense ambiguity is introduced, by gathering, for a complex word, a list of synonyms with multiple meanings. This fact evokes a future solution in which the correct sense for a complex word in a sentence is identified, solving this pervasive characteristic of natural languages. The pilot study also identified that experienced computer users find the tool to be more useful than novice computer users do.

Risk of Giardia infection for drinking water and bathing in a peri-urban area in Sao Paulo, Brazil

A high incidence of waterborne diseases is observed worldwide and in order to address contamination problems prior to an outbreak, quantitative microbial risk assessment is a useful tool for estimating the risk of infection. The objective of this paper was to assess the probability of Giardia infection from consuming water from shallow wells in a peri-urban area. Giardia has been described as an important waterborne pathogen and reported in several water sources, including ground waters. Sixteen water samples were collected and examined according to the US EPA (1623, 2005). A Monte Carlo method was used to address the potential risk as described by the exponential dose response model. Giardia cysts occurred in 62.5% of the samples (0.1-36.1 cysts/l). A median risk of 10-1 for the population was estimated and the adult ingestion was the highest risk driver. This study illustrates the vulnerability of shallow well water supply systems in peri-urban areas.

Real-Time Recognition System for Traffic Signs

The aim of this thesis project is to develop the Traffic Sign Recognition algorithm for real time. Inreal time environment, vehicles move at high speed on roads. For the vehicle intelligent system itbecomes essential to detect, process and recognize the traffic sign which is coming in front ofvehicle with high relative velocity, at the right time, so that the driver would be able to pro-actsimultaneously on instructions given in the Traffic Sign. The system assists drivers about trafficsigns they did not recognize before passing them. With the Traffic Sign Recognition system, thevehicle becomes aware of the traffic environment and reacts according to the situation.The objective of the project is to develop a system which can recognize the traffic signs in real time.The three target parameters are the system’s response time in real-time video streaming, the trafficsign recognition speed in still images and the recognition accuracy. The system consists of threeprocesses; the traffic sign detection, the traffic sign recognition and the traffic sign tracking. Thedetection process uses physical properties of traffic signs based on a priori knowledge to detect roadsigns. It generates the road sign image as the input to the recognition process. The recognitionprocess is implemented using the Pattern Matching algorithm. The system was first tested onstationary images where it showed on average 97% accuracy with the average processing time of0.15 seconds for traffic sign recognition. This procedure was then applied to the real time videostreaming. Finally the tracking of traffic signs was developed using Blob tracking which showed theaverage recognition accuracy to 95% in real time and improved the system’s average response timeto 0.04 seconds. This project has been implemented in C-language using the Open Computer VisionLibrary.

Characters Extraction for Traffic Sign Destination boards in video and still images

Traffic Control Signs or destination boards on roadways offer significant information for drivers. Regulation signs tell something like your speed, turns, etc; Warning signs warn drivers of conditions ahead to help them avoid accidents; Destination signs show distances and directions to various locations; Service signs display location of hospitals, gas and rest areas etc. Because the signs are so important and there is always a certain distance from them to drivers, to let the drivers get information clearly and easily even in bad weather or other situations. The idea is to develop software which can collect useful information from a special camera which is mounted in the front of a moving car to extract the important information and finally show it to the drivers. For example, when a frame contains on a destination drive sign board it will be text something like "Linkoping 50",so the software should extract every character of "Linkoping 50", compare them with the already known character data in the database. if there is extracted character match "k" in the database then output the destination name and show to the driver. In this project C++ will be used to write the code for this software.

Företagsformens betydelse för nyföretagande : En jämförande studie mellan ekonomiska föreningar och aktiebolag

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka nyföretagares motivgrund för val av företagsform avseende formerna ekonomisk förening och aktiebolag. Syftet är också att söka belysa några av de skillnader i bemötande som finns gentemot företagare vilka bedriver sina verksamheter i formerna ekonomisk förening respektive aktiebolag. Bakgrunden till studien är en rådande uppfattning om att ekonomiska föreningar ibland inte bemöts och behandlas på samma sätt som andra företagsformer vid kontakt med intressenter. Många ekonomiska föreningar är verksamma inom den s.k. sociala ekonomin och då den sociala ekonomin i Sverige är en växande sektor, både vad gäller antal sysselsatta och omsättning, där den sistnämnda uppgår till ca 350 miljarder om året, är ämnet intressant att undersöka.  I studien genomfördes djupintervjuer med företagsrepresentanter från åtta ekonomiska föreningar samt sju aktiebolag samt ett företag med erfarenhet från bådadera. Respondenterna fick bl.a. besvara frågor med avseende på vilka motiv de haft för valet av företagsform, hur de upplevt bemötande från intressenter samt vilka för- och nackdelar de upplever sig ha fått av sitt val.  Från svaren framkommer att flera av de som driver ekonomiska föreningar gör detta för att de känner att det är bra alternativ om man vill driva företag tillsammans samt om man vill ha en, vad de uppfattar, mer demokratisk form för sitt företagande. Formen sågs också som ett hjälpmedel för att skapa delaktighet och ett bättre samarbete. Med formen ekonomisk förening kom även nackdelar som inte upplevdes hos aktiebolagens företrädare. De främsta nackdelar som framkom var att vissa intressenter, t.ex. banker och kreditinstitut bemöter ekonomiska föreningar med skepsis; det finns en osäkerhet kring vad formen medför och innebär. Det framkom även att viktiga intressenter och aktörer har en okunskap om ekonomiska föreningar vilket kan påverka bemötandet negativt. I vissa fall lämnar inte affärssystem och rutiner något utrymme för att hantera ekonomiska föreningar.

Use of Photovoltaic on an E-bike? : A Feasibility Study

In recent years the number of bicycles with e-motors has been increased steadily. Within the pedelec – bikes where an e-motor supports the pedaling – a special group of transportation bikes has developed. These bikes have storage boxes in addition to the basic parts of a bike. Due to the space available on top of those boxes it is possible to install a PV system to generate electricity which could be used to recharge the battery of the pedelec. Such a system would lead to grid independent charging of the battery and to the possibility of an increased range of motor support. The feasibility of such a PV system is investigated for a three wheeled pedelec delivered by the company BABBOE NORDIC.The measured data of the electricity generation of this mobile system is compared to the possible electricity generation of a stationary system.To measure the consumption of the pedelec different tracks are covered, and the energy which is necessary to recharge the bike battery is measured using an energy logger. This recharge energy is used as an indirect measure of the electricity consumption. A PV prototype system is installed on the bike. It is a simple PV stand alone system consisting of PV panel, charge controller with MPP tracker and a solar battery. This system has the task to generate as much electricity as possible. The produced PV current and voltage aremeasured and documented using a data logger. Afterwards the average PV power is calculated. To compare the produced electricity of the on-bike system to that of a stationary system, the irradiance on the latter is measured simultaneously. Due to partial shadings on the on-bike PV panel, which are caused by the driver and some other bike parts, the average power output during riding the bike is very low. It is too low to support the motor directly. In case of a similar installation as the PV prototype system and the intention always to park the bike on a sunny spot an on-bike system could generate electricity to at least partly recharge a bike battery during one day. The stationary PV system using the same PV panel could have produced between 1.25 and 8.1 times as much as the on-bike PV system. Even though the investigation is done for a very specific case it can be concluded that anon-bike PV system, using similar components as in the investigation, is not feasible to recharge the battery of a pedelec in an appropriate manner. The biggest barrier is that partial shadings on the PV panel, which can be hardly avoided during operation and parking, result in a significant reduction of generated electricity. Also the installation of the on-bike PV system would lead to increased weight of the whole bike and the need for space which is reducing the storage capacity. To use solar energy for recharging a bike battery an indirect way is giving better results. In this case a stationary PV stand alone system is used which is located in a sunny spot without shadings and adjusted to use the maximum available solar energy. The battery of the bike is charged using the corresponding charger and an inverter which provides AC power using the captured solar energy.