Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical manual signs in German Sign Language (DGS)

Sign languages provide researchers with an opportunity to ask empirical questions about the human language faculty that go beyond considerations specific to speech and writing. Whereas psycholinguists working with spoken and written language stimuli routinely control their materials for parameters such as lexical frequency and age of acquisition (AoA), no such information or normed stimulus sets are currently available to researchers working with German Sign Language (DGS). Our contribution presents the first norms for iconicity, familiarity, AoA, and transparency for DGS. The normed stimulus set consists of more than 300 clips of manual DGS signs accom- panied by mouthings and non-manual components. Norms for the signs in the clips are derived from ratings by a total of 30 deaf signers in Leipzig, Göttingen, and Hamburg, as well as 30 hearing non-signers and native speakers of German in Leipzig. The rating procedure was implemented in a browser to ensure functionality and a similar procedure across locations and participants (Figure 1a), yet all participants performed the ratings on site in the presence of an experimenter. Deaf signers performed a total of three tasks in which they rated stimulus clips for iconicity, AoA, and familiarity. Such subjective measures of AoA and familiarity have been shown to be good proxies for corpus measures in studies of other spoken and sign languages (Vinson, Cormier, Denmark, Schembri, & Vigliocco, 2008). Hearing non-signers performed two tasks in which they first guessed the meaning of the signs in the clips to determine transparency and in the second task rated iconicity given the meaning. In addition to empirical norming data (e.g., Figure 1b), we provide information about German and English correspondences of signs. The stimulus set has been annotated in machine-readable form with regard to lexico-semantic as well as phonological properties of signs: one-handed vs. two-handed, place of articulation, path movement, symmetry, most likely lexical class, animacy, verb type, (potential) homonymy, and potential dialectal variation. Information about sign on- and offset for all stimulus clips and a number of quantitative measures of movement are also available. These were derived from automated motion tracking by fitting a pose-estimation model (Figure 1c) to the clips using OpenPose (Wei, Ramakrishna, Kanade, & Sheikh, 2016) which allows us to quantify and automatically track movement (velocity and acceleration) beyond annotation (Figure 1d). In this presentation, we will focus on providing an overview of the derived norms and attempt to put them in perspective of published empirical norms for other sign languages, for example, ASL and BSL (Vinson et al., 2008; Caselli, Sehyr, Cohen-Goldberg, & Emmorey, 2017), as well as comparable information for spoken languages. This includes a comparison of our subjective rating data with regard to frequency and AoA obtained using DGS signs with norms for other sign languages as well as with similar measures for German and English. We also discuss the relationship of mean iconicity ratings between deaf signers and hearing non-signers, as well as the relation of iconicity and transparency. Our norms and stimulus set are intended to control for psychologically relevant param- eters in future psycho- and neurolinguistic studies of DGS beyond the work of our own labs. Consequently, the norms, stimulus clips, cleaned raw data, and the R scripts used for analysis will be made available for download through the Open Science Framework. References Caselli, N. K., Sehyr, Z. S., Cohen-Goldberg, A. M., & Emmorey, K. (2017). ASL-LEX: A lexical database of American Sign Language. Behavior Research Methods, 49(2), 784-801. doi: 10.3758/ s13428-016-0742-0 Vinson, D. P., Cormier, K., Denmark, T., Schembri, A., & Vigliocco, G. (2008). The British Sign Language (BSL) norms for age of acquisition, familiarity, and iconicity. Behavior Research Methods, 40(4), 1079-1087. doi: 10.3758/BRM.40.4.1079 Wei, S.-E., Ramakrishna, V., Kanade, T., & Sheikh, Y. (2016). Convolutional pose machines. arXiv:1602.00134 [cs]

Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS)

Sign language offers a unique perspective on the human faculty of language by illustrating that linguistic abilities are not bound to speech and writing. In studies of spoken and written language processing, lexical variables such as, for example, age of acquisition have been found to play an important role, but such information is not as yet available for German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). Here, we present a set of norms for frequency, age of acquisition, and iconicity for more than 300 lexical DGS signs, derived from subjective ratings by 32 deaf signers. We also provide additional norms for iconicity and transparency for the same set of signs derived from ratings by 30 hearing non-signers. In addition to empirical norming data, the dataset includes machine-readable information about a sign’s correspondence in German and English, as well as annotations of lexico-semantic and phonological properties: one-handed vs. two-handed, place of articulation, most likely lexical class, animacy, verb type, (potential) homonymy, and potential dialectal variation. Finally, we include information about sign onset and offset for all stimulus clips from automated motion-tracking data. All norms, stimulus clips, data, as well as code used for analysis are made available through the Open Science Framework in the hope that they may prove to be useful to other researchers: https://osf.io/mz8j4

The Effect of Latino Immigration and Settlement Patterns on Neighborhood Homicide Rates in Philadelphia: 1990-2000

Since the year 2000, the Latino population in the United States has increased by over 25%. In Philadelphia, the nation's sixth-largest city, census data reveals immigrants from Latin America comprise the largest growing population in the city. Despite this surge in population, little attention in the research literature has been paid to the effect of Latino immigration on neighborhood crime rates. It remains unclear whether new immigrants destabilize inner-city neighborhoods or cause an increase in collective efficacy and a decrease in crime rates. This study examines the association between neighborhood crime rates and Latino immigration over a 10-year period (1990-2000) through the use of data from the U.S. Census and the Philadelphia Police Department. Latino immigration was found to be positively related to homicide in Latino ethnic enclaves, and had little to no effect on homicide in non-enclave neighborhoods

How do signers mark conditionals in German Sign Language? Insights from a Sentence Reproduction Task on the use of nonmanual and manual markers

This paper presents the results of a Sentence Reproduction Task (SRT) investigating conditional sentences in German Sign Language (DGS). We found that participants mark conditional sentences in DGS by systematically using different non-manual markers on the antecedent and the consequent. In addition, these non-manual markers were frequently used in combination with one or two manual signs. However, the manual markers were omitted in the test sentences, i.e., the input stimuli the participants were asked to reproduce. The results of our experimental study are, on the one hand, consistent with descriptions of manual and non-manual strategies used to mark conditional sentences in different unrelated sign languages. On the other hand, our findings provide new insights on the multi-layered marking of conditional sentences in DGS

Tuberculosis among the homeless and inmates kept in custody and in penitentiary institutions in the Silesia region

Wstęp: W skali globalnej w więzieniach przebywa równocześnie więcej niż 10 milionów osób. Częstość występowania gruźlicy u więźniów jest 10−100 razy wyższa niż w ogólnej populacji. Osadzeni kontaktują się pomiędzy sobą oraz z pracownikami i odwiedzającymi, co stwarza ryzyko zarażenia ich gruźlicą. Po odbyciu kary więźniowie mogą być źródłem gruźlicy dla osób z otoczenia. Celem pracy było określenie częstości występowania aktywnej gruźlicy u osób bezdomnych, aresztantów i więźniów w województwie śląskim.Materiał metody: Badaniami objęto 897 osób, w tym 177 podopiecznych Miejskiego Ośrodka Pomocy Społecznej (MOPS) i 720 osadzonych w zakładach penitencjarnych. W diagnostyce gruźlicy wykorzystano metody: BACTEC MGIT, MGIT TBc Identification Test i GenoType Mycobacteria Direct. Do określenia lekooporności prątków zastosowano zestawy SIRE KIT i PZA KIT.Wyniki: Gruźlicę rozpoznano u 13 spośród 897 osób (1,45%): u jedenastu osób na 720 (1,53%) osadzonych w śląskich zakładach penitencjarnych oraz u dwóch osób na 177 (1,13%) podopiecznych MOPS. Dane dotyczące lekooporności szczepów uzyskano w 11 przypadkach. Szczepy prątków gruźlicy wyhodowane od ośmiu chorych były wrażliwe na podstawowe leki przeciwprątkowe (streptomycyna, izoniazyd, rifampicyna, etambutol), natomiast trzy szczepy uzyskane od kolejnych chorych były oporne na leki: jeden — na etambutol, drugi — na streptomycynę i pirazynamid, a trzeci — na izoniazyd i etambutol. Uzyskane dane przemawiają za tym, że częstość gruźlicy płuc potwierdzonej badaniem bakteriologicznym była w badanej grupie osób 100 razy wyższa niż w populacji województwa śląskiego w tym samym okresie czasu.Wnioski: Realizowany program zdrowotny pozwala na efektywne wykrywanie przypadków gruźlicy w grupach ryzyka i dlatego powinien być kontynuowany w kolejnych latach. Zastosowany zestaw diagnostycznych metod laboratoryjnych umożliwił wykrycie w badanych subpopulacjach osób chorych na gruźlicę. Chorzy zostali poddani leczeniu przeciwprątkowemu, co zatrzyma dalsze rozprzestrzenianie się zakażenia za ich pośrednictwem.Introduction: There are more than 10 million prisoners in the world. Tuberculosis incidence is 10−100 times higher in prisoners than in the general population. Inmates have close contact with other prisoners and with prison workers and visitors, so tubercle bacilli may be easily spread. Most of the inmates come back to normal life and contact with the general population. The aim of the study was to assess active tuberculosis incidence among prisoners and homeless persons in the Silesia region.Material and methods: In total 897 people entered the study, of whom 720 were Silesian penitentiary system inmates, and 177 were homeless. BACTEC MGIT fast TB detection system and GenoType Mycobacteria Direct test were used. Drug susceptibility testing was done using SIRE KIT and PZA KIT.Results: Tuberculosis was diagnosed in 13 out of 897 persons (1.45%): in 11 out of 720 inmates (1.53%) and in 2 out of 177 homeless persons (1.13%). Data concerning drug susceptibility were obtained for 11 persons. M. tuberculosis strains isolated from eight persons were susceptible to four first-line antituberculosis drugs (streptomycin, isoniazid, rifampin, ethambutol), while M. tuberculosis strains isolated from three persons were drug-resistant. One out of three isolated strains was resistant to ethambutol, but susceptible to streptomycin, isoniazid, rifampin, and pirazynamide. The second strain was resistant to streptomycin and pyrazinamide but susceptible to isoniazid, rifampin, and ethambutol. The third strain was susceptible to rifampin but resistant to the other four tested drugs. According to the obtained data, culture-positive pulmonary tuberculosis was 100 times more frequent in the examined population than in the general population of the Silesia region in the same period of time.Conclusions: The health project enabled effective detection of tuberculosis in risk groups and should be continued in the following years. The set of the applied diagnostic methods allowed the detection of in the studied subpopulations people suffering from tuberculosis. Patients were treated with antituberculosis drugs that would stop them from spreading the disease to other people

Conflict Management for Multiple Resource Users in Pastoralist and Agro-Pastoralist Contexts

Livelihood systems in rural social formations often involve the utilization of natural resources for multiple purposes (e.g. wetlands which are used for both cropping and for grazing) or by more than one user (as when rangelands are grazed by different herdowners or groups of herdowners). Disputes or conflicts are common in these situations, and institutional frameworks for resolving disputes and managing conflict have usually evolved in response.European Research Council (ERC