Vocal development in a large‐scale crosslinguistic corpus

This study evaluates whether early vocalizations develop in similar ways in children across diverse cultural contexts. We analyze data from daylong audio recordings of 49 children (1–36 months) from five different language/cultural backgrounds. Citizen scientists annotated these recordings to determine if child vocalizations contained canonical transitions or not (e.g., “ba” vs. “ee”). Results revealed that the proportion of clips reported to contain canonical transitions increased with age. Furthermore, this proportion exceeded 0.15 by around 7 months, replicating and extending previous findings on canonical vocalization development but using data from the natural environments of a culturally and linguistically diverse sample. This work explores how crowdsourcing can be used to annotate corpora, helping establish developmental milestones relevant to multiple languages and cultures. Lower inter‐annotator reliability on the crowdsourcing platform, relative to more traditional in‐lab expert annotators, means that a larger number of unique annotators and/or annotations are required, and that crowdsourcing may not be a suitable method for more fine‐grained annotation decisions. Audio clips used for this project are compiled into a large‐scale infant vocalization corpus that is available for other researchers to use in future work

The Parraguirre ice–rock avalanche 1987, semi-arid Andes, Chile – a holistic revision

Chile is particularly exposed to mountain hazards along the Andean Cordillera. The impact and frequency of devastating debris flows are expected to increase in the future under climatic warming and urban expansion. To inform monitoring, mitigation and adaptation measures, it is crucial to understand the characteristics of past events in this region. The Parraguirre rock avalanche of 29 November 1987 is a prominent example as it developed into a devastating debris flow, reaching 50 km downvalley and causing severe damage and loss of human lives. Its destructive power is related to the large water volume involved. The origin of this water is largely unknown – so is the initial trigger volume and the total mass transfer downvalley. We therefore retrace the past event using data and techniques that are now at hand. These include historic topographic maps, aerial imagery, meteorological and hydrological records, and multi-phase mass-flow modelling. We find a trigger volume of 17.0±1.4×106 m3 and a total fluid flood volume of 16.0×106 m3 – both significantly larger than previous estimates. Moreover, a first estimate of the solid mass transfer exported from the Parraguirre catchment of 38.1±15.2×106 m3 is presented. The high water content cannot be explained by entrainment of soil water and snow cover alone but requires a substantial contribution from glacier ice. Furthermore, our simulations corroborate the damming hypothesis of Río Colorado and, thereby, reconcile the observed wave pulses, arrival times and run-out distance. Apart from the geo-tectonic preconditioning, we define the Parraguirre rock avalanche as a meteorological compound event. The reason for this is that the spring of 1987 was outstanding in terms of the snowpack height, which preconditioned high snowmelt rates during particularly anomalous warm days at the end of November. Such preconditioning can be readily accounted for in monitoring and early warning procedures for mountain hazards.</p

HTLV-I associated myelopathy in Brazil: a preliminary report

In this preliminary report the authors present the finding of a high prevalence (37.5%) of seropositivity of antibodies to HTLV-I tested by Western blotting in a sample of 16 Brazilian patients with chronic myelopathies of undetermined origin

Mortality among over 6 million internal and international migrants in Brazil: a study using the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort

BACKGROUND: To understand if migrants living in poverty in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) have mortality advantages over the non-migrant population, we investigated mortality risk patterns among internal and international migrants in Brazil over their life course. METHODS: We linked socio-economic and mortality data from 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2018 in the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort and calculated all-cause and cause-specific age-standardised mortality rates according to individuals' migration status for men and women. Using Cox regression models, we estimated the age- and sex-adjusted mortality hazard ratios (HR) for internal migrants (i.e., Brazilian-born individuals living in a different Brazilian state than their birth) compared to Brazilian-born non-migrants; and for international migrants (i.e., people born in another country) compared to Brazilian-born individuals. FINDINGS: The study followed up 45,051,476 individuals, of whom 6,057,814 were internal migrants, and 277,230 were international migrants. Internal migrants had similar all-cause mortality compared to Brazilian non-migrants (aHR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.98-0.99), marginally higher mortality for ischaemic heart diseases (aHR = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.03-1.05) and higher for stroke (aHR = 1.11, 95% CI = 1.09-1.13). Compared to Brazilian-born individuals, international migrants had 18% lower all-cause mortality (aHR = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.80-0.84), with up to 50% lower mortality from interpersonal violence among men (aHR = 0.50, 95% CI = 0.40-0.64), but higher mortality from avoidable causes related to maternal health (aHR = 2.17, 95% CI = 1.17-4.05). INTERPRETATION: Although internal migrants had similar all-cause mortality, international migrants had lower all-cause mortality compared to non-migrants. Further investigations using intersectional approaches are warranted to understand the marked variations by migration status, age, and sex for specific causes of death, such as elevated maternal mortality and male lower interpersonal violence-related mortality among international migrants. FUNDING: The Wellcome Trust