Search results for "Variation"
showing 10 items of 2124 documents
Influence of fetal glutathione S-transferase copy number variants on adverse reproductive outcomes
2012
A nested case-control association study was designed to investigate the influence of maternal and fetal copy number variants (CNVs) on reproductive outcomes. Genotypes of ten CNVs encompassing GST and CYP genes were assessed. Significant associations were only found for child CNV genotypes. In particular, the child GSTM1 insertion allele was associated with prematurity protection (odds ratio, 95% CI: 0.67, 0.51-0.89; P < 0.01), whereas the child GSTT2B insertion allele was associated with an increased risk of being small for gestational age (odds ratio, 95% CI: 1.33, 1.07-1.67; P = 0.01). The study highlights the role of the fetal genome in prenatal development and also the need to analyse …
Molecular characterisation of k-casein gene in Girgentana dairy goat breed and identification of two new alleles
2015
The k-casein fraction plays an important role in the formation, stabilisation and aggregation on casein micelles and thus affects technological and nutritional properties of milk. In this study, exon 4 of k-casein (CSN3) gene was sequenced and analysed in Girgentana goat breed. Analyses of the obtained sequences showed the presence of A, B, D, and G known alleles and two new genetic variants, named D’ and N. The new D’ allele differs from D in one transition, G284→A284, which did not cause amino acid change. The new N allele differs from A in five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): T245/C245, G284/A284, G309/A309, G471/A471 and T591/C591, while it differs from C in one transition, i.e.…
Assessing Teacher’s Discourse Effect on Students’ Learning: A Keyword Centrality Approach
2020
The way that content-related keywords co-occur along a lesson seems to play an important role in concept understanding and, therefore, in students’ performance. Thus, network-like structures have been used to represent and summarize conceptual knowledge, particularly in science areas. Previous work has automated the process of producing concept networks, computed different properties of these networks, and studied the correlation of these properties with students’ achievement. This work presents an automated analysis of teachers’ concept graphs, the distribution of relevance amongst content-related keywords and how this affects students’ achievement. Particularly, we automatically extracted…
Is «Social language variation» an operational category for language corpus planning?
2019
Hem constatat les dificultats d’aprofundir les relacions conceptuals entre la variació social i la funcional, que comencen quan ens preguntem quins factors socials són pertinents per descriure el col·loquial. Creiem que cal tenir en compte, en ordre decreixent, les «adscripcions identitàries» que Block (2014) analitza: capital lingüístic, capital cultural, edat, gènere, activitat habitual, «habitus/ideologia/actituds», «classe social», ètnia i religió. En aquest context d’incertesa conceptual, no és estrany que la variació social sigui una dimensió sociolingüística tractada inadequadament en la normativa catalana: Badia (1994) confon els termes diastràtic i diafàsic i llegint els textos nor…
The effects of 8-weeks Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program on cognitive control: an EEG study
2019
Objectives: Mindfulness practice can enhance different aspects of attentional functions, such as the ability to sustain the attentional focus over time. However, it is still unclear whether this practice might indeed impact higher cognitive functions, such as control mechanisms that allow the appropriate and flexible allocation of attentional resources. In this longitudinal study, changes associated with a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program were investigated, with a focus on proactive and reactive cognitive control mechanisms, namely, the ability to maintain task-relevant information and to prepare in advance the response, and the ability to promptly adjust overlearned behavi…
Support for end-weight as a determinant of linguistic variation and change
2016
The term end-weight refers to the tendency for bulkier constituents to occur at the end of sentences. While end-weight has occasionally been analysed as a more general short-before-long principle in the sense of Behaghel's (1909–10) Law of Growing Constituents, the operation of end-weight in absolute sentence-final position has until recently lacked empirical verification. This article shows that end-weight effects can be observed in grammatical variation contexts in which language users have a choice between variants that differ in terms of length and degree of explicitness. Using two variation phenomena as a testing ground, we empirically investigate the hypothesis that the more explicit …
Discursive construction of a high-stakes test: the many faces of a test-taker
2006
As part of a larger project, we studied how a foreign language test got discursively constructed in the talk of upper-secondary-school leavers. A group of students were asked to keep an oral diary to record their ideas, feelings and experiences of preparing for and taking the test over the last spring term of school, as part of a high-stakes national examination. In addition, they took part in discussions either in pairs or groups of three after having learned about the final test results. After transcribing the data, drawing on a form of discourse analysis originally launched by a group of social psychologists, we identified (at least) four interpretative repertoires in the students’ acco…
Analysing metaphor in the family register through scripted sitcom conversations
2017
Abstract This study looks into the patterns of metaphor use in the family register of scripted sitcom conversations. Previous studies of metaphor in conversation adopted different approaches to the concept of register, resulting in a rich but complex picture (Cameron, 2003, 2007, 2008; Deignan, Littlemore & Semino, 2013; Kaal, 2012). This research attempts to reduce such complexity by using an approach to register based on closely defining communicative settings and the participants’ roles (Giménez-Moreno, 2006). In this way, we were able to focus on the register used by family members and close friends and the contexts of private oral communication, as opposed to other possible registe…
ROLES AND REGISTERS IN DIGITAL FORUM INTERACTION: DEVELOPING A COMMUNICATIVE IDENTITY-BASED APPROACH TO REGISTER VARIATION
2017
espanolEl presente articulo estudia como los roles y registros comunicativos se expresan de forma interdependiente, influenciandose mutuamente en los actuales foros digitales. En la primera parte, y a partir de la combinacion de estudios previos sobre variacion de registros comunicativos, la teoria de la identidad social y la linguistica cognitiva, se proponen tres nuevos conceptos para el analisis discursivo: ‘Rol Modulador de Registro’ (RMR), ‘brujula del registro’ y ‘registro-pivote’. La forma en la que funcionan en el discurso digital se ilustra en la segunda parte, con el analisis de un corpus de foros de discusion. Los resultados demuestran que cada perfil de foro despliega una gama d…
Does the source matter?
2018
Abstract This article provides an insight into the expression of reportative evidentiality in Spanish scientific articles published between 1799 and 1920. Central to the discussion is the presence and specificity of sources in reportative constructions. While contemporary scientific discourse prioritizes the use of specific, reportative-quotative evidentials, this is not a constant feature of articles analyzed in this study. In order to trace this historical variation, we established a classification of reportative constructions according to the specificity of the evidence they convey and we conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses. According to our results, different specificit…