Studying Conversational Adjustments in Interaction: Beyond Acoustic Phonetic Changes.

Purpose: We examined which measures of complexity are most informative when studying language produced in interaction. Specifically, using these measures, we explored whether native and nonnative speakers modified the higher level properties of their production beyond the acoustic-phonetic level based on the language background of their conversation partner.

Method: Using a subset of production data from the Wildcat Corpus that used Diapix, an interactive picture matching task, to elicit production, we compared English language production at the dyad and individual level across three different pair types: eight native pairs (English-English), eight mixed pairs (four English-Chinese and four English-Korean), and eight nonnative pairs (four Chinese-Chinese and four Korean-Korean).

Noise-induced differences in the complexity of spoken language.

Although speaking in noisy environments is a common occurrence, few studies have investigated how noise affects language production beyond the acoustic level. In seeking to differentiate between speaker- and listener-oriented modifications, this study examines the effect of noise on the complexity of language production and examines whether cognitive control predicts noise-induced modifications. Participants completed a picture description task via videoconferencing software while both the speaker (the participant) and listener (the experimenter) were exposed to multi-talker babble.

Dynamic changes in chromatin accessibility, altered adipogenic gene expression, and total versus de novo fatty acid synthesis in subcutaneous adipose stem cells of normal-weight polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) women during adipogenesis: evidence of cellular programming.

Background: Normal-weight polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) women exhibit adipose resistance in vivo accompanied by enhanced subcutaneous (SC) abdominal adipose stem cell (ASC) development to adipocytes with accelerated lipid accumulation per cell in vitro. The present study examines chromatin accessibility, RNA expression and fatty acid (FA) synthesis during SC abdominal ASC differentiation into adipocytes in vitro of normal-weight PCOS versus age- and body mass index-matched normoandrogenic ovulatory (control) women to study epigenetic/genetic characteristics as well as functional alterations of PCOS and control ASCs during adipogenesis.

Results: SC abdominal ASCs from PCOS women versus controls exhibited dynamic chromatin accessibility during adipogenesis, from significantly less chromatin accessibility at day 0 to greater chromatin accessibility by day 12, with enrichment of binding motifs for transcription factors (TFs) of the AP-1 subfamily at days 0, 3, and 12.