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The microbial community populating the human digestive tract has been linked to the development of obesity, diabetes and liver diseases. Proposed mechanisms on how the gut microbiota could contribute to obesity and metabolic diseases include: (1) improved energy extraction from diet by the conversion of dietary fibre to SCFA; (2) increased intestinal permeability for bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in response to the consumption of high-fat diets resulting in an elevated systemic LPS level and low-grade inflammation. Animal studies indicate differences in the physiologic effects of fermentable and non-fermentable dietary fibres as well as differences in long-and short-term effects of fermentable dietary fibre. The human intestinal microbiome is enriched in genes involved in the degradation of indigestible polysaccharides. The extent to which dietary fibres are fermented and in which molar ratio SCFA are formed depends on their physicochemical properties and on the individual microbiome. Acetate and propionate play an important role in lipid and glucose metabolism. Acetate serves as a substrate for de novo lipogenesis in liver, whereas propionate can be utilised for gluconeogenesis. The conversion of fermentable dietary fibre to SCFA provides additional energy to the host which could promote obesity. However, epidemiologic studies indicate that diets rich in fibre rather prevent than promote obesity development. This may be due to the fact that SCFA are also ligands of free fatty acid receptors (FFAR). Activation of FFAR leads to an increased expression and secretion of enteroendocrine hormones such as glucagon-like-peptide 1 or peptide YY which cause satiety. In conclusion, the role of SCFA in host energy balance needs to be re-evaluated.
Although morphosyntax has been identified as a major source of difficulty for adult (nonnative) language learners, most previous studies have examined a limited set of largely affix-based phenomena. Little is known about word-based morphosyntax in late bilinguals and of how morphosyntax is represented and processed in a nonnative speaker's lexicon. To address these questions, we report results from two behavioral experiments investigating stem variants of strong verbs in German (which encode features such as tense, person, and number) in groups of advanced adult learners as well as native speakers of German. Although the late bilinguals were highly proficient in German, the results of a lexical priming experiment revealed clear native-nonnative differences. We argue that lexical representation and processing relies less on morphosyntactic information in a nonnative than in a native language.
This article investigates a public debate in Germany that put a special spotlight on the interaction of standard language ideologies with social dichotomies, centering on the question of whether Kiezdeutsch, a new way of speaking in multilingual urban neighbourhoods, is a legitimate German dialect. Based on a corpus of emails and postings to media websites, I analyse central topoi in this debate and an underlying narrative on language and identity. Central elements of this narrative are claims of cultural elevation and cultural unity for an idealised standard language High German', a view of German dialects as part of a national folk culture, and the construction of an exclusive in-group of German' speakers who own this language and its dialects. The narrative provides a potent conceptual frame for the Othering of Kiezdeutsch and its speakers, and for the projection of social and sometimes racist deliminations onto the linguistic plane.
Abstract gringo
(2015)
This paper defines the syntax and semantics of the input language of the ASP grounder gringo. The definition covers several constructs that were not discussed in earlier work on the semantics of that language, including intervals, pools, division of integers, aggregates with non-numeric values, and lparse-style aggregate expressions. The definition is abstract in the sense that it disregards some details related to representing programs by strings of ASCII characters. It serves as a specification for gringo from Version 4.5 on.
Based on niche theory, closely related and morphologically similar species are not predicted to coexist due to overlap in resource and habitat use. Local assemblages of bats often contain cryptic taxa, which co-occur despite notable similarities in morphology and ecology. We measured in two different habitat types on Madagascar levels of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in hair (n = 103) and faeces (n = 57) of cryptic Vespertilionidae taxa to indirectly examine whether fine-grained trophic niche differentiation explains their coexistence. In the dry deciduous forest (Kirindy), six sympatric species ranged over 6.0% in delta N-15, i.e. two trophic levels, and 4.2% in delta C-13 with a community mean of 11.3% in delta N-15 and - 21.0% in delta C-13. In the mesic forest (Antsahabe), three sympatric species ranged over one trophic level (delta N-15: 2.4%, delta C-13: 1.0%) with a community mean of 8.0% delta N-15 and - 21.7% in delta C-13. Multivariate analyses and residual permutation of Euclidian distances in delta C-13- delta N-15 bi-plots revealed in both communities distinct stable isotope signatures and species separation for the hair samples among coexisting Vespertilionidae. Intraspecific variation in faecal and hair stable isotopes did not indicate that seasonal migration might relax competition and thereby facilitate the local co-occurrence of sympatric taxa.
aspeed
(2015)
Although Boolean Constraint Technology has made tremendous progress over the last decade, the efficacy of state-of-the-art solvers is known to vary considerably across different types of problem instances, and is known to depend strongly on algorithm parameters. This problem was addressed by means of a simple, yet effective approach using handmade, uniform, and unordered schedules of multiple solvers in ppfolio, which showed very impressive performance in the 2011 Satisfiability Testing (SAT) Competition. Inspired by this, we take advantage of the modeling and solving capacities of Answer Set Programming (ASP) to automatically determine more refined, that is, nonuniform and ordered solver schedules from the existing benchmarking data. We begin by formulating the determination of such schedules as multi-criteria optimization problems and provide corresponding ASP encodings. The resulting encodings are easily customizable for different settings, and the computation of optimum schedules can mostly be done in the blink of an eye, even when dealing with large runtime data sets stemming from many solvers on hundreds to thousands of instances. Also, the fact that our approach can be customized easily enabled us to swiftly adapt it to generate parallel schedules for multi-processor machines.
Background: Continuous treatment is an important indicator of medication adherence in dementia. However, long-term studies in larger clinical settings are lacking, and little is known about moderating effects of patient and service characteristics.
Methods: Data from 12,910 outpatients with dementia (mean age 79.2 years; SD = 7.6 years) treated between January 2003 and December 2013 in Germany were included. Continuous treatment was analysed using Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank tests. In addition, multivariate Cox regression models were fitted with continuous treatment as dependent variable and the predictors antidementia agent, age, gender, medical comorbidities, physician specialty, and health insurance status.
Results: After one year of follow-up, nearly 60% of patients continued drug treatment. Donezepil (HR: 0.88; 95% CI: 0.82-0.95) and memantine (HR: 0.85; 0.79-0.91) patients were less likely to be discontinued treatment as compared to rivastigmine users. Patients were less likely to be discontinued if they were treated by specialist physicians as compared to general practitioners (HR: 0.44; 0.41-0.48). Younger male patients and patients who had private health insurance had a lower discontinuation risk. Regarding comorbidity, patients were more likely to be continuously treated with the index substance if a diagnosis of heart failure or hypertension had been diagnosed at baseline.
Conclusions: Our results imply that besides type of antidementia agent, involvement of a specialist in the complex process of prescribing antidementia drugs can provide meaningful benefits to patients, in terms of more disease-specific and continuous treatment.
Dual-normal logic programs
(2015)
Disjunctive Answer Set Programming is a powerful declarative programming paradigm with complexity beyond NP. Identifying classes of programs for which the consistency problem is in NP is of interest from the theoretical standpoint and can potentially lead to improvements in the design of answer set programming solvers. One of such classes consists of dual-normal programs, where the number of positive body atoms in proper rules is at most one. Unlike other classes of programs, dual-normal programs have received little attention so far. In this paper we study this class. We relate dual-normal programs to propositional theories and to normal programs by presenting several inter-translations. With the translation from dual-normal to normal programs at hand, we introduce the novel class of body-cycle free programs, which are in many respects dual to head-cycle free programs. We establish the expressive power of dual-normal programs in terms of SE- and UE-models, and compare them to normal programs. We also discuss the complexity of deciding whether dual-normal programs are strongly and uniformly equivalent.
40Ar/39Ar in situ UV laser ablation of white mica, Rb–Sr mineral isochrons and zircon fission track dating were applied to determine ages of very low- to low-grade metamorphic processes at 3.5±0.4 kbar, 280±30°C in the Avalonian Mira terrane of SE Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia). The Mira terrane comprises Neoproterozoic volcanic-arc rocks overlain by Cambrian sedimentary rocks. Crystallization of metamorphic white mica was dated in six metavolcanic samples by 40Ar/39Ar spot age peaks between 396±3 and 363±14 Ma. Rb–Sr systematics of minerals and mineral aggregates yielded two isochrons at 389±7 Ma and 365±8 Ma, corroborating equilibrium conditions during very low- to low-grade metamorphism. The dated white mica is oriented parallel to foliations produced by sinistral strike-slip faulting and/or folding related to the Middle–Late Devonian transpressive assembly of Avalonian terranes during convergence and emplacement of the neighbouring Meguma terrane. Exhumation occurred earlier in the NW Mira terrane than in the SE. Transpression was related to the closure of the Rheic Ocean between Gondwana and Laurussia by NW-directed convergence. The 40Ar/39Ar spot age spectra also display relict age peaks at 477–465 Ma, 439 Ma and 420–428 Ma attributed to deformation and fluid access, possibly related to the collision of Avalonia with composite Laurentia or to earlier Ordovician–Silurian rifting. Fission track ages of zircon from Mira terrane samples range between 242±18 and 225±21 Ma and reflect late Palaeozoic reburial and reheating close to previous peak metamorphic temperatures under fluid-absent conditions during rifting prior to opening of the Central Atlantic Ocean.
The Strange-tailed Tyrant Alectrurus risora (Aves: Tyrannidae) is an endemic species of southern South American grasslands that suffered a 90% reduction of its original distribution due to habitat transformation. This has led the species to be classified as globally Vulnerable. By the beginning of the last century, populations were partially migratory and moved south during the breeding season. Currently, the main breeding population inhabits the Ibera wetlands in the province of Corrientes, north-east Argentina, where it is resident all year round. There are two remaining small populations in the province of Formosa, north-east Argentina, and in southern Paraguay, which are separated from the main population by the Parana-Paraguay River and its continuous riverine forest habitat. The populations of Corrientes and Formosa are separated by 300 km and the grasslands between populations are non-continuous due to habitat transformation. We used mtDNA sequences and eight microsatellite loci to test if there were evidences of genetic isolation between Argentinean populations. We found no evidence of genetic structure between populations (Phi(ST) = 0.004, P = 0.32; Fst = 0.01, P = 0.06), which can be explained by either retained ancestral polymorphism or by dispersal between populations. We found no evidence for a recent demographic bottleneck in nuclear loci. Our results indicate that these populations could be managed as a single conservation unit on a regional scale. Conservation actions should be focused on preserving the remaining network of areas with natural grasslands to guarantee reproduction, dispersal and prevent further decline of populations.