Explore the vast range of titles available.

The present study compares native and nonnative processing of Spanish active and passive sentences. The nonnative speakers were tested before and after receiving processing instruction on the Spanish passive. The native speakers were tested once and provide a baseline for comparisons. We measured accuracy and response time to select the correct response in a paired picture matching task. We used eye-tracking measures to capture processing behaviors on both active and passive verb forms. We measured processing using time to first fixation on the verb area of interest, mean first fixation duration, mean first pass time, and mean second pass time. The results revealed that processing passive sentences comes at a cost to both native and nonnative speakers. After instruction the nonnative speakers showed no significant differences with native speakers in accuracy and response time. Also, the nonnative speakers’ processing behaviors became more nativelike but did not reach the native speaker level.

Athletes use creatine monohydrate (CM) to enhance high‐intensity exercise performance by increasing creatine phosphate availability. While CM supplementation is known to raise muscle creatine levels in vegans and vegetarians, its impact on exercise performance remains uncertain. We examined the effects of CM supplementation on muscle creatine content and exercise performance in vegans and vegetarians. In a randomized, double‐blind placebo‐controlled design, 15 healthy vegans and vegetarians consumed CM (0.3 g/kg/day, n = 7) or placebo (PLA, 0.3 g maltodextrin/kg/day, n = 8) four times a day for 7 days. Before and after supplementation, repeated sprint capacity was determined. Body mass and fat‐free mass (FFM) were assessed by dual‐energy x‐ray absorptiometry. The CM group increased body mass (1.56 ± 0.57 kg, p < 0.01) and FFM (1.15 ± 0.94 kg, p < 0.05), while the PLA group showed no changes. In the CM group, muscle creatine (Cr) and total muscle creatine (TCr) increased by 18.8 ± 13.1 mmol/kg (p < 0.05) and 30.8 ± 21.2 mmol/kg (p < 0.01), respectively. The PLA group showed no changes in Cr and TCr (−4.6 ± 13.1 mmol/kg and 2.9 ± 11.6 mmol/kg, respectively). Phosphocreatine levels remained consistent within and between groups. There were no observed changes in peak and mean power output during repeated sprints. A seven‐day CM supplementation in healthy vegans and vegetarians increased Cr and TCr whereas Phosphocreatine, peak and mean power output during repeated sprints was unchanged.

We know from the literature that high cognitive load can impede performance and educational outcomes. Previous measures of cognitive load have largely relied on subjective scales but few have explored more objective measures. This paper aims to address this issue by examining the validity of electroencephalography (or EEG) as an objective measure of cognitive load in the context of educational video. EEG is an online brain measure of the electrical activity that a population of neurons elicits when they are activated. Theta power is a brain oscillation ranging from 4 to 7 Hz that has been linked to cognitive and memory performance. We manipulated the linguistic complexity of three texts delivered by a speaker on video to induce a simple, a moderate and a complex level of cognitive load amongst a sample of students pursuing postgraduate studies through the medium of English as a second language (n = 35). We specifically measured intrinsic cognitive load via a subjective scale, a recall test, and theta power as an objective measure (average cognitive load). Our results show that the subjective scale was significantly different across the three levels of linguistic complexity. However, theta power and recall were only significantly different between the two most distinct levels of linguistic complexity. Although, this finding suggests theta power may not be as sensitive for average cognitive load as the subjective scale for intrinsic cognitive load, a correlation analysis shows that theta power was correlated with self-reported cognitive load. However, it may need more power compared to the subjective scale. These findings suggest that theta power may be developed into a valid objective measure of average cognitive load although its true potential lies in the possibility to measure online fluctuations in cognitive load or instantaneous cognitive load.

The present study compares native and nonnative processing of Spanish active and passive sentences. The nonnative speakers were tested before and after receiving processing instruction on the Spanish passive. The native speakers were tested once and provide a baseline for comparisons. We measured accuracy and response time to select the correct response in a paired picture matching task. We used eye-tracking measures to capture processing behaviors on both active and passive verb forms. We measured processing using time to first fixation on the verb area of interest, mean first fixation duration, mean first pass time, and mean second pass time. The results revealed that processing passive sentences comes at a cost to both native and nonnative speakers. After instruction the nonnative speakers showed no significant differences with native speakers in accuracy and response time. Also, the nonnative speakers’ processing behaviors became more nativelike but did not reach the native speaker level.

Eye tracking has been used successfully as a technique for measuring cognitive load in reading, psycholinguistics, writing, language acquisition etc. for some time now. Its application as a technique for measuring the reading ease of MT output has not yet, to our knowledge, been tested. We report here on a preliminary study testing the use and validity of an eye tracking methodology as a means of semiautomatically evaluating machine translation output. 50 French machine translated sentences, 25 rated as excellent and 25 rated as poor in an earlier human evaluation, were selected. Ten native speakers of French were instructed to read the MT sentences for comprehensibility. Their eye gaze data were recorded non-invasively using a Tobii 1750 eye tracker. The average gaze time and fixation count were found to be higher for the \"bad\" sentences, while average fixation duration and pupil dilations were not found to be substantially different for output rated as good and output rated as bad.Comparisons between HTER scores and eye gaze data were also found to correlate well with gaze time and fixation count, but not with pupil dilation and fixation duration.We conclude that the eye tracking data, in particular gaze time and fixation count, correlate reasonably well with human evaluation of MT output but fixation duration and pupil dilation may be less reliable indicators of reading difficulty for MT output.We also conclude that eye tracking has promise as a semi-automatic MT evaluation technique, whichdoes not require bi-lingual knowledge, and which can potentially tap into the end users' experience of machine translation output.

An animal model of posterolateral intertransverse process lumbar spinal fusion compared fusion rates amongst autologous bone (group 1), a porous, bioabsorbable, scaffold based on the biopolymer, poly(propylene glycol-co-fumaric acid) (PPF) (group 2), and a combination of autograft and the bioabsorbable scaffold (group 3). To evaluate the feasibility of augmenting spinal fusion with an osteoconductive and bioabsorbable scaffold as an alternative or as an adjunct, i.e., an extender, to autograft. There is little preclinical data on applications of bioabsorable bone graft extenders in spinal fusion. New Zealand White rabbits underwent single-level lumbar posterolateral intertransverse process fusion. Animals were treated with one of three materials: autologous bone (group 1), a bioabsorable material based on PPF (group 2), and the PPF biopolymer scaffold with autologous bone graft (group 3). Animals were evaluated at 6 weeks, and fusion was evaluated by manual palpation, and radiographic, histologic, and histomorphometric analyses. Radiographic and manual palpation showed evidence of fusion in all three groups. Histomorphometric measurement of bone ingrowth showed the highest quantity of new bone in group 3 (91%), followed by group 1 (72%) and group 2 (53%). Results of this study suggested that osteoconductive bioabsorbable scaffolds prepared from PPF might be used as an autograft extender when applied as an adjunct to spinal fusion.

This article tests the value of corpus linguistics in analyzing nineteenthcentury commissions of inquiry into British colonies. It examines and improves the capacity of a computerized text analysis tool called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to identify word meaning, sentiment, and psycholinguistic constructs in nineteenth-century sources. By augmenting its dictionary with nineteenth-century language and cross-checking meaning, we show that the software can code with 97% accuracy. We then demonstrate the tool’s potential to explore genres of colonial writing, and to locate emotive language and language relating to power differentials in commission reports, a function we argue may provide a “way in” to assessing how commissioners treated different kinds of British subjects and their testimony in the reports.

This study investigates the impact of same-language subtitles on the immersion into audiovisual narratives as a function of the viewer's language (native or foreigner). Students from two universities in Australia and one in Spain were assigned randomly to one of two experimental groups, in which they saw a drama with the original English soundtrack either with same-language English subtitles (n = 81) or without subtitles (n = 92). The sample included an English native control group, and Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Spanish groups with English as a foreign language. Participants used post-hoc Likert scales to self-report their presence, transportation to the narrative world, perceived realism, identification with the characters, and enjoyment. The main results showed that subtitles did not significantly reduce these measures of immersion. However, subtitles produced higher transportation, identification with the characters, and perceived realism scores, where the first language of viewers and their viewing habits accounted for most of this variance. Moreover, presence and enjoyment were unaffected by either condition or language. Finally, the main results also revealed that transportation to the narrative world appears to be the most revealing measure of immersion in that it shows the strongest and most consistent correlations, and is a significant predictor of enjoyment.

BACKGROUND Advanced care planning (ACP) is considered an essential component of medical care in the United States, especially in patients with incurable diseases. However, little is known about clinical practices in outpatient oncology settings related to discussing end-of-life care and documenting code status preferences in ambulatory medical records. OBJECTIVE To assess the rate of documentation of code status in the electronic longitudinal medical records (LMR) of patients with metastatic cancer. DESIGN Retrospective review of 2,498 patients with metastatic solid tumors at an academic cancer center. An electronic patient database and the LMR were queried to identify demographic information, cancer type, number of clinic visits, and documentation of code status. PARTICIPANTS The sample consisted of adult patients with metastatic prostate, breast, ovarian, bladder kidney, colorectal, non-colorectal gastrointestinal (GI), and lung cancers. MEASUREMENTS Primary outcome was the percentage of documented code status in the LMR. MAIN RESULTS Among the 2,498 patients, 20.3% had a documented code status. Code status was designated most frequently in patients with non-colorectal GI (193/609, 31.7%) and lung (179/583, 30.7%) cancers and least frequently in patients with genitourinary malignancies [bladder/kidney (4/89, 4.5%), ovarian (4/93, 4.3%), and prostate (7/365, 1.9%) cancers]. Independent predictors of having documented code status included religious affiliation, cancer type, and a greater number of visits to the cancer center. Younger patients and black patients were less likely to be designated as DNR/DNI. CONCLUSIONS Despite the incurable nature of metastatic cancer, only a minority of patients had a code status documented in the electronic medical record.