Explore the vast range of titles available.

In Grammatical Gender in Interaction: Cultural and Cognitive Aspects Angeliki Alvanoudi explores the relation between grammatical gender in person reference, culture and cognition in Modern Greek conversation. The author investigates the cultural and cognitive aspects of grammatical gender, by drawing on feminist sociolinguistic and non-linguistic approaches, cognitive linguistics, research on linguistic relativity, studies on person reference in interaction and conversation analysis. The study presented in this book shows that the use of grammatical gender contributes to the routine achievement of sociocultural gender in interaction and that grammatical gender guides speakers' thinking of referents as female or male at the time of speaking.

Purpose: The Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989) was used to compare Italian and English lexical development. The authors addressed the issue of universal versus language-specific aspects of lexical development by testing language, age, and gender effects on vocabulary scores and by comparing vocabulary composition across languages. They addressed the issue of delay versus deviance by comparing vocabulary composition in late talkers and younger vocabulary-size-matched children. Method: Participants were 398 Italian and 206 U.S. children ages 18-35 months. Results: Vocabulary size did not differ significantly by language, and age and gender effects on vocabulary size were not moderated by language. The Italian-English Q correlation for percentage word use scores was 0.55, lower than the within-language concordance of 0.90 and above. Cross-linguistic concordance declined as age and vocabulary size increased. Many cross-linguistic word matches (63 words) were found among the top 100 words. Italian late talkers were similar to younger vocabulary-size-matched Italian children in vocabulary composition, consistent with findings for English, Greek, and Korean. Conclusions: In both languages, the early lexicons of late talkers and typical talkers contained many of the same words, indicating considerable universality in young children's lexical development. These common words are therefore good targets for clinical intervention.

Sex estimation is one of the primary steps for constructing the biological profile of skeletal remains leading to their identification in the forensic context. While the pelvis is the most sex diagnostic bone, the cranium and other post-cranial elements have been extensively studied. Earlier research has also focused on the vertebral column with varying results regarding its sex classification accuracy as well as the underlying population specificity. The present study focuses on three easily identifiable vertebrae, namely T1, T12, and L1, and utilizes two modern European populations, a Greek and a Danish, to evaluate their forensic utility in sex identification. To this end, 865 vertebrae from 339 individuals have been analyzed for sexual dimorphism by further evaluating the effects of age-at-death and population affinity on its expression. Our results show that T1 is the best sex diagnostic vertebra for both populations reaching cross-validated accuracy of almost 90%, while age-at-death has limited effect on its sexual dimorphism. On the contrary, T12 and L1 produced varying results ranging from 75 to 83% accuracy with the Greek population exhibiting distinctively more pronounced sexual dimorphism. Additionally, age-at-death had significant effect on sexual dimorphism of T12 and L1 and especially in the Greek female and Danish male groups. Our results on inter-population comparison suggest that vertebral sex discriminant functions, and especially those utilizing multiple measurements, are highly population specific and optimally suitable only for their targeted population. An open-source software tool to facilitate classifying new cases based on our results is made freely available to forensic researchers.

With the continued circulation and emergence of new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants, understanding differences in the effects between the initial infection and a subsequent reinfection on disease pathogenesis is critical and highly relevant. This study characterizes Syrian hamsters as an animal model to study reinfection with SARS-CoV-2. Previous infection reduced the disease severity of reinfection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19, has evolved into multiple variants. Animal models are important to understand variant pathogenesis, particularly for variants with mutations that have significant phenotypic or epidemiological effects. Here, cohorts of naive or previously infected Syrian hamsters ( Mesocricetus auratus ) were infected with variants to investigate viral pathogenesis and disease protection. Naive hamsters infected with SARS-CoV-2 variants had consistent clinical outcomes, tissue viral titers, and pathology, while hamsters that recovered from initial infection and were reinfected demonstrated less severe clinical disease and lung pathology than their naive counterparts. Males had more frequent clinical signs than females in most variant groups, but few sex variations in tissue viral titers and lung pathology were observed. These findings support the use of Syrian hamsters as a SARS-CoV-2 model and highlight the importance of considering sex differences when using this species. IMPORTANCE With the continued circulation and emergence of new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants, understanding differences in the effects between the initial infection and a subsequent reinfection on disease pathogenesis is critical and highly relevant. This study characterizes Syrian hamsters as an animal model to study reinfection with SARS-CoV-2. Previous infection reduced the disease severity of reinfection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Sex estimation is the grounds for an accurate identification of unknown human skeletal elements. The need for reliable methods distinguishing males from females based upon various skeletal elements is evident in cases of commingled, eroded and/or missing remains. The aim of this work lays on establishing criteria for sex estimation from the scapula and the clavicle in modern Greeks. A total of 147 left scapulae and 147 clavicles (66 females and 81 males) were used in the study. Eight and six measurements were taken on the scapula and clavicle respectively and data were subjected to principal components analysis (PCA) and discriminant function analysis (DFA). Posterior probabilities for the classification of each individual are also calculated. Statistical analysis was carried out using the software PAST (Paleontological Statistics) and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 18. The results supported the existence of pronounced sexual dimorphism, which was mainly attributed to size differences among the two groups. Univariate and multivariate methods of statistical classification showed high accuracy for all scapular and most clavicular measurements, verifying their value as sex indicators in the under study population. We recommend the use of this method for sex assessment from the scapula and the clavicle in cases exhibiting over 95% probability of correct classification. This is regardless of the overall high degree of accuracy reported here, as the method of choice in forensic contexts should always be case-driven.

Identification of unknown remains recovered from marine and terrestrial locations is a significant humanitarian problem. This investigation proposes a simple method applicable to fragmentary femora for a more refined level of ancestry and/or sex estimation. To that end, we re-examined Purkait's triangle which involves three inter-landmark distances between the traction epiphyses and the articular rim of femoral head. A large sample (n = 584) from geographically diverse (Egyptian, Indian and Greek) populations was compiled. Additionally, shape (n = 3) and trigonometrically derived variables and ratios (n = 9 variables) were employed to detect any geographically-clustered morphological differences between these populations. Random forest modelling (RFM) and linear discriminant function analysis (LDA) were employed to create classification models in instances where sex was known or unknown. The sample was apportioned into training and test sets with a ratio 70/30. The classification accuracies were evaluated by means of k fold cross-validation procedure. In sex estimation, RFM showed similar performance to LDA. However, RFM outperformed LDA in ancestry estimation. Ancestry estimation was satisfactory in the Indian and Egyptian samples albeit the Greek sample was problematic. The Greek samples presented greater morphological overlap with the Indian sample due to high within-group variation. Test samples were accurately assigned to their ancestral category when sex was known. Generally, higher classification accuracies in the validation sample were obtained in the sex-specific model of females than in males. Using RFM and the linear variables, the overall accuracy reached 83% which is distributed as 95%, 71% and 86% for the Egyptian, Indian and Greek females, respectively; whereas in males, the overall accuracy is 72% and is distributed as 58%, 87% and 50% for the Egyptian, Indian and Greek males, respectively. Classification accuracies were also calculated per group in the test data using the 12 derived variables. For the females, the accuracies using the medians model was comparable to the linear model whereas in males the angles model outperformed the linear model for each group but with similar overall accuracy. The classification rates of male specific ancestry were 82%, 78% and 56% for the Egyptian, Indian and Greek males, respectively. In conclusion, Purkait's triangle has potential utility in ancestry and sex estimation albeit it is not possible to separate all groups successfully with the same efficiency. Intrapopulation variation may impact the accuracy of assigned group membership in forensic contexts. Key pointsPurkait's method is a possible ancestry group indicator applicable to fragmentary femora.Random forest model surpassed linear discriminant function analysis in multi-group ancestry classification.Ancestry is more accurately assessed in females than males.The intertrochanteric distance is the most important feature in discrimination of sex whereas in ancestry it was the head to lesser trochanter distance.Sex differences override ancestry due to the tendency of misclassification into same sex but different group rather than the opposite sex of the same ancestry.

This study aimed to develop the Greek versions of the Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire and Mini-Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire for adult and pediatric populations, discuss their differences and detect the impact of age and gender on quality of life questionnaire results. Ninety-eight patients with allergic rhinitis participated. Quality of Life evaluation was made by two generic (Short Form-36 and Beck Depression Inventory) and two disease-specific questionnaires (Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire and Mini-Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire). Symptom evaluation was made by the Total 5 Symptoms Score assessment. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability of both questionnaires was high. Convergent validity showed statistically significant negative correlations of total Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire and Mini-Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire with overall Short Form-36 Health Survey score and positive correlations with Beck Depression Inventory and Total 5 Symptoms Score. Discriminative validity demonstrated statistically significant improvement for all instruments and all domains after treatment. Females presented highly significant increased scores. Patient age was positively correlated with total scores of Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire and Mini-Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire. The clinically significant improvement after treatment was higher among females than males, while it was independent of patient age. Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire and Mini-Rhinoconjunctivitis Quality of Life Questionnaire proved to be valid and reliable methods of assessment of allergic rhinitis-related quality of life in children, adolescents and adults.

This study presents a preliminary psychometric evaluation of the Greek version of the Perceptions of Sex Offenders scale (PSO) in a community sample in Greece and examines the sociodemographic differences in its score. The participants were 452 people between 18 and 74 years old (mean age: 38). There were 141 men (31.27%) and 310 women (68.73%). The results supported a two-factor structure for the Greek PSO (factor I = Sentencing and Management and factor II = Stereotype Endorsement), while the third factor of the original PSO (“Risk Perception”) was not supported. These subscales demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha was .88 for the full scale with 18 retained items, .90 for the Sentencing and Management subscale and .83 for the Stereotype Endorsement subscale). There was also preliminary evidence for adequate construct validity. The older participants and those with lower educational levels asked for harsher managing and sentencing of sex offenders and had more stereotypes. The Greek version of the PSO is reliable, easy to administer and can be used for research and clinical purposes in men and women. This highlights the necessity for the cultural adaptation of the PSO in many other languages and countries. Future studies could use the PSO in specific samples like students, social workers, psychologists, correctional or judicial employees, police officers etc. to evaluate the possible differences between these groups.

We assessed 300 healthy adults in Greece on measures of semantic and phonemic verbal fluency in order to develop norms for the Greek population. We also evaluated the strategies that the participants used spontaneously in order to maximize word production, namely clustering and switching techniques. Our tasks comprised three semantic and three phonemic categories. Consistent with previous investigations of English-speaking samples, we found a contribution of demographic variables to word fluency. Specifically, level of education contributed to total word production, number of switches, and number of repetitive responses on both semantic and phonemic tasks, and the average cluster size only on the phonemic task. Age contributed to total word production and cluster size on the semantic task, and to number of switches on both semantic and phonemic tasks. Sex contributed only to total word production on the semantic task. In our sample, clustering and switching strategies were related to total word production on both tasks, suggesting that these strategies were used effectively. We present tables of normative data stratified by age and level of education. We have also included detailed guidelines for scoring clusters relevant to the Greek population. (JINS, 2004, 10, 164–172.)