Articulatory correlates of consonantal length contrasts: The case of Japanese mimetic geminates.

This study investigates the articulatory correlates of consonantal length contrasts in Japanese mimetic words using electromagnetic articulography data. Regression and dynamic time warping analyses applied to intragestural timing, kinematic properties, and intergestural timing reveal that Japanese geminates are characterized by longer closure phases, longer gestural plateaus, higher tongue tip positions, larger movements, and lower stiffness. Geminates also exhibit distinct timing relationships with adjacent vowels, specifically, longer times to target that allow for longer preceding vowels.

Perspective and practice patterns of mediastinal staging among thoracic surgeons.

Background: Accurate mediastinal staging of lung cancer patients is critical for determining appropriate treatment. Mediastinoscopy and endobronchial ultrasound (EBUS)-guided transbronchial needle aspiration are the most commonly utilized techniques. Limited data exist on training and practice trends among thoracic surgeons.

Data on acoustic phonetic properties of non-coronal fricatives in monosyllabic words of Zhongjiang Chinese.

The data reported in this article are non-coronal fricative measurements from 10 (5 male; 5 female) native speakers of Zhongjiang Chinese. Each speaker produced 10 repetitions of 90 monosyllabic words beginning with either a velar fricative, /x/, or a labial-dental fricative, /f/. The measurements reported include spectral properties often used to characterize fricative variation, including: spectrum center of gravity (CoG), spectrum standard deviation (SD), spectrum skew, spectrum kurtosis, maximum amplitude frequency, and maximum amplitude.

More on the articulation of devoiced [u] in Tokyo Japanese: effects of surrounding consonants.

Past work investigating the lingual articulation of devoiced vowels in Tokyo Japanese has revealed optional but categorical deletion. Some devoiced vowels retained a full lingual target, just like their voiced counterparts, whereas others showed trajectories that are best modelled as targetless, i.e.

A Narrative Review of update in per oral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) and endoscopic esophageal surgery.

The field of endoscopic esophageal surgery is based on the concept of natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES). Submucosal space surgery or third space surgery with the use of flexible endoscopy allows for decreased morbidity and hospital length of stay with equivalent outcomes for patients. In the case of achalasia, per oral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) allows for management of refractory cases in setting of previous Heller Myotomy or in patients whom laparoscopic or thoracoscopic surgery is contraindicated.

Can a Portable Balance System Predict Fall Risk in Community-Dwelling Older Women?

Purpose: Increased fall risk has been linked to age, being female, and age-related changes in the postural control system. The purpose of this study was to determine if a portable balance system could predict fall risk by determining the relationship among the modified Clinical Test for Sensory Interaction on Balance (mCTSIB) scores, age, the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC) score, and the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) score in community-dwelling older women. Insight into these relationships may facilitate early intervention and decrease fall risk in older women.

Prosody leaks into the memories of words.

The average predictability (aka informativity) of a word in context has been shown to condition word duration (Seyfarth, 2014). All else being equal, words that tend to occur in more predictable environments are shorter than words that tend to occur in less predictable environments. One account of the informativity effect on duration is that the acoustic details of probabilistic reduction are stored as part of a word's mental representation.

Localized Bathless Metal-Composite Plating via Electrostamping.

Composite plating with particles embedded into the metal matrix can enhance the properties of the metal coating to make it more or less conductive, hard, durable, lubricated or fluorescent. However, it can be more challenging than metal plating, because the composite particles are either 1) not charged so they do not have a strong electrostatic attraction to the cathode, 2) are hygroscopic and are blocked by a hydration shell, or 3) too large to remain stagnate at the cathode while stirring. Here, we describe the details of a bathless plating method that involves anode and cathode nickel plates sandwiching an aqueous concentrated electrolyte paste containing large hygroscopic phosphorescent particles and a hydrophilic membrane.

Gender and social network brokerage: A meta-analysis and field investigation.

In this article, we aim to address 2 important questions: (a) Are women less likely than men to occupy network brokerage positions? And if so, (b) what mechanisms may explain their fewer brokerage roles? Study 1, a meta-analysis examining gender differences in network brokerage, analyzed a cumulative sample of 15,743 individuals (69 independent samples) to show that women were less likely to be brokers in both instrumental and expressive networks, which partly explained their lower career success. Study 2, a follow-up study with 2 independent samples of new employees ( = 150 and 245, respectively), examined both structural opportunity (job-based opportunity and workplace discrimination) and individual agency (proactive networking) as potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between gender and network brokerage. Results of these 2 samples consistently show that proactive networking mediated gender's effect on network brokerage that was measured 6 months after the new employees entered their organizations.

Clinical Characteristics and Outcome of Pneumomediastinum in Patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia.

Pneumomediastinum (PM) is characterized by the presence of air within the mediastinum. The association between PM and coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has not been well established in the current literature. We sought to summarize the limited body of literature regarding PM in patients with COVID-19 and characterize the presentation and clinical outcomes of PM in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-COV-2 pneumonia at our institution to better define the incidence, prognosis, and available treatment for this condition.

COVID-19 and the workplace: Implications, issues, and insights for future research and action.

The impacts of COVID-19 on workers and workplaces across the globe have been dramatic. This broad review of prior research rooted in work and organizational psychology, and related fields, is intended to make sense of the implications for employees, teams, and work organizations. This review and preview of relevant literatures focuses on (a) emergent changes in work practices (e.

Effects of vowel coproduction on the timecourse of tone recognition.

Vowel contrasts tend to be perceived independently of pitch modulation, but it is not known whether pitch can be perceived independently of vowel quality. This issue was investigated in the context of a lexical tone language, Mandarin Chinese, using a printed word version of the visual world paradigm. Eye movements to four printed words were tracked while listeners heard target words that differed from competitors only in tone (test condition) or also in onset consonant and vowel (control condition).

Spatially Conditioned Speech Timing: Evidence and Implications.

Patterns of relative timing between consonants and vowels appear to be conditioned in part by phonological structure, such as syllables, a finding captured naturally by the two-level feedforward model of Articulatory Phonology (AP). In AP, phonological form - gestures and the coordination relations between them - receive an invariant description at the inter-gestural level. The inter-articulator level actuates gestures, receiving activation from the inter-gestural level and resolving competing demands on articulators.

The Use of Fluorescence Imaging in Colon Interposition for Esophageal Replacement: A Technical Note.

Every field of surgery has seen an explosion of new technologies aimed at improving surgical technique and reducing complications. The use of near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence to assess perfusion has been described in several surgical disciplines. NIR provides the surgeon with real-time perfusion assessment of a target organ or anastomosis and can be invaluable in aiding decision-making during the index operation.

Does Hands-on Guarding Influence Performance on the Functional Gait Assessment?

Background And Purpose: An accurate fall risk assessment is an important component of fall prevention, though a fall could occur during testing. To minimize this risk, different guarding methods are used, though there is disagreement regarding the optimal method. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of 2 guarding methods, contact guarding (CG) and standby guarding (SG), on performance during the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA).

Person-based differences in pay reactions: A compensation-activation theory and integrative conceptual review.

Compensation research has focused traditionally on how pay design characteristics (e.g., pay level, individual or group incentives) relate to average employee outcomes and, in toto, on how these outcomes affect organizational performance.

Effects of Surprisal and Entropy on Vowel Duration in Japanese.

Research on English and other languages has shown that syllables and words that contain more information tend to be produced with longer duration. This research is evolving into a general thesis that speakers articulate linguistic units with more information more robustly. While this hypothesis seems plausible from the perspective of communicative efficiency, previous support for it has come mainly from English and some other Indo-European languages.

Synchronous Hodgkin's lymphoma and seminoma: a rare coexistence and an important lesson.

Synchronous presentation of seminoma and lymphoma is rare but has important ramifications for the treatment of both malignancies. Without clinical vigilance, this situation may be easily missed, leading to inappropriate management. We describe a patient with synchronous seminoma and Hodgkin's lymphoma and discuss the implication on his treatment.

Simultaneous unilateral anterior thoracoscopy with transcervical thyroidectomy for the resection of large mediastinal thyroid goiter.

Background: Almost 25% of thyroid goiters have an intrathoracic component. Although the majority of mediastinal goiters may be approached through a cervical approach, up to a third of substernal goiters require a sternotomy or thoracotomy for resection. As an alternative to conventional sternotomy, we herein describe a combined anterior thoracoscopic and transcervical approach to large mediastinal thyroid goiters.

A comparison of acoustic and articulatory methods for analyzing vowel differences across dialects: Data from American and Australian English.

In studies of dialect variation, the articulatory nature of vowels is sometimes inferred from formant values using the following heuristic: F1 is inversely correlated with tongue height and F2 is inversely correlated with tongue backness. This study compared vowel formants and corresponding lingual articulation in two dialects of English, standard North American English, and Australian English. Five speakers of North American English and four speakers of Australian English were recorded producing multiple repetitions of ten monophthongs embedded in the /sVd/ context.

One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research.

We review seminal publications on employee turnover during the 100-year existence of the . Along with classic articles from this journal, we expand our review to include other publications that yielded key theoretical and methodological contributions to the turnover literature. We first describe how the earliest papers examined practical methods for turnover reduction or control and then explain how theory development and testing began in the mid-20th century and dominated the academic literature until the turn of the century.

Influences of Tone on Vowel Articulation in Mandarin Chinese.

Purpose: Models of speech production often abstract away from shared physiology in pitch control and lingual articulation, positing independent control of tone and vowel units. We assess the validity of this assumption in Mandarin Chinese by evaluating the stability of lingual articulation for vowels across variation in tone.

Method: Electromagnetic articulography was used to track flesh points on the tongue (tip, body, dorsum), lips, and jaw while native Mandarin speakers (n = 6) produced 3 vowels, /pa/, /pi/, /pu/, combined with 4 Mandarin tones: T1 "high," T2 "rising," T3 "low," and T4 "falling.

Stochastic time models of syllable structure.

Drawing on phonology research within the generative linguistics tradition, stochastic methods, and notions from complex systems, we develop a modelling paradigm linking phonological structure, expressed in terms of syllables, to speech movement data acquired with 3D electromagnetic articulography and X-ray microbeam methods. The essential variable in the models is syllable structure. When mapped to discrete coordination topologies, syllabic organization imposes systematic patterns of variability on the temporal dynamics of speech articulation.

Non-necrotizing Granulomatous Pulmonary Vasculitis Mimicking Lung Cancer on PET/CT.

Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography ((18)FDG-PET) scan has become a valuable resource in the staging of lung cancer. Inflammation is known to cause false positives on (18)FDG-PET scan. In the absence of symptoms suggesting a diagnosis of an inflammatory condition, (18)FDG-avid lung masses on PET/CT scan is strongly suggestive of a diagnosis of lung cancer, rather than an inflammatory condition.