Blue Category Research Articles

Active Language Modulates Color Perception in Bilinguals

AbstractColor terms divide the color spectrum differently across languages. Previous studies have reported that speakers of languages that have different words for light and dark blue (e.g., Russian siniy and goluboy) discriminate color chips sampled from these two linguistic categories faster than speakers of languages that use one basic color term for blue (e.g., English blue). This effect has been reported to be disrupted when participants engaged in a verbal interference task, suggesting that active language use can modulate the linguistic category effect. The current study provided a stringent test of this hypothesis by examining color discrimination under verbal interference in bilinguals speaking Lithuanian (two blue categories) and Norwegian (one blue category). The results revealed that the language activated during verbal interference had a significant impact on bilinguals’ color discrimination. Specifically, Lithuanian–Norwegian bilinguals exhibited a color category effect only when performing the task under verbal interference in Lithuanian but not in Norwegian. This demonstrated, within the same individuals, the momentary effect of active language processing on color perception.

The Environment in the Lead: A Scorecard System to Assess Adaptation Measures and Score Ecosystem Services at the Street Level

Currently, there is no method available that can systematically score the available ecosystem services in streets or street segments in suburban districts. In this study, different climate adaptation measures and their ecosystem services were categorized into green, blue, and grey categories and weight was given to each category based on their impact on the microclimate. This study took place in the Hillesluis district in the city of Rotterdam and the Paddepoel district in the city of Groningen. In Rotterdam, 21 streets, composed of 42 street segments, were assessed. In Groningen, 17 streets, composed of 45 street segments, were assessed. The available ecosystem services of each street segment were scored from 0–100. The scorecard method that was developed and tested during this study provided insight in the variation of available ecosystem services of streets and street segments. Individual street scores were very low in the city of Rotterdam and ranged between 3 and 50, with the average score for the street segments of 29. In Groningen, the scores were considerably higher with a range between 23 and 70, with an average score of 47 per street segment. The presence of larger green trees, front yards, and façade gardens in the green category are the most distinctive variable, while adaptation measures in the blue category were absent in both cities. The scorecard proved to be very useful in the adaptation labeling of street segments and entire streets. After assessing a neighborhood, the least adaptive streets can be identified relatively easy. Based on the score a label can be given between A+++ and G. The scorecard informs residents and decision makers about which streets are most adaptive and which streets have an adaptation potential. The method can easily be duplicated and used by local governments and community groups to have better insight in the level of climate adaptation of their street. Labels for entire streets can be used to create awareness and encourage residents to take action and expand the number of climate adaptation measures in their street.

An Evaluation of a Modified CTAS at an Accident and Emergency Department in a Developing Country.

Objectives To review the modified Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale used in an accident and emergency department in Trinidad and Tobago. Design and Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out. Times from assignment of triage category to being seen by a physician were collected from the patient notes on the days of presentation and compared to the reference standards. Times from decision to admit to obtaining a bed were also recorded. Results 200 patients were included in the study. The median waiting time for patients in the immediate/blue category was 3 minutes (range = 3); for the red category, it was 31.2 minutes (range = 121.8); in the yellow category, it was 61.8 minutes (range = 805.2). The overall admission rate was 30.5%, with an admission rate of 25% for the blue category; 20% of patients in the red category waited more than 4 hours for a hospital bed. Conclusion The patients assigned to the blue category were being seen almost immediately. Less critical persons wait longer than the reference times and this may be due to structural factors such as staffing. The admission rates per category highlighted a low admission rate for the blue category (25%), which is unusual. This study highlights the need for a further study to review clinical presentation, assignment to triage category, and outcomes.

Healthcare waste management scenario: A case of Himachal Pradesh (India)

ObjectiveTo explore healthcare waste management scenario in Himachal Pradesh (India). MethodData has been collected through a survey questionnaire and accordingly analyses have been carried out by applying appropriate statistical techniques with the help of commonly acknowledged SPSS software. ResultsResults highlight that private hospitals are generating more healthcare waste (yellow and red category of healthcare waste) as compared to public hospitals in the given context. However, in blue category of healthcare waste public hospitals are generating more waste than private ones. ConclusionBy considering number of beds, doctors, and staff as independent variables, the present study analyses healthcare waste management from the perspective of Human Resources and consequently marks some managerial and policy implications.

Workflow Development for an Institutional Repository in an Emerging Research Institution

INTRODUCTION This paper describes the process librarians in the Albert B. Alkek Library at Texas State University undertook to increase the amount of faculty publications in their institutional repository, known as the Digital Collections. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM Digital Collections at Texas State University is built on a DSpace platform and serves as the location for electronic theses and dissertations, faculty publications, and other digital Texas State University materials. Despite having launched the service in 2005, the amount of faculty work added to the repository has never been at the levels initially hoped for on launch. DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE WORKFLOW Taking a proactive and cooperative approach, a team of librarians developed and piloted a workflow, in which library staff would retain the already established protocol of gaining faculty permissions prior to uploading material while respecting publisher copyright policies. RESULTS Prior to the vita project, the repository archived 305 faculty publications total. Fifty-seven were added during the pilot, which represents an 18.5% increase. Of a total of 496 articles, seventeen titles were found in the blue category, which allows publisher pdfs to be archived. The majority of articles (233) were found in the green category, which allows either a pre- or a post-print copy of an article to be archived. One hundred ten of the identified titles were in the yellow and white journal categories, representing 22% of our total, and the team was able to archive only five of these. Finally, 16% (81) were not found in the SHERPA/ RoMEO database (color-coded beige). Only 18 of these articles were archived. ASSESSMENT We discovered that our faculty retain nearly none of their pre-print or post-print versions of their published articles, and so we are unable to archive those titles in the repository. Nearly 47% of the articles found were in green journals that allow only pre- or post-print copies. Most faculty were unable to produce versions of their work other than the publisher’s PDF, which many publishers restrict from upload into a repository.

Categorical facilitation with equally discriminable colors

This study investigates the impact of language on color perception. By categorical facilitation, we refer to an aspect of categorical perception, in which the linguistic distinction between categories affects color discrimination beyond the low-level, sensory sensitivity to color differences. According to this idea, discrimination performance for colors that cross a category border should be better than for colors that belong to the same category when controlling for low-level sensitivity. We controlled for sensitivity by using colors that were equally discriminable according to empirically measured discrimination thresholds. To test for categorical facilitation, we measured response times and error rates in a speeded discrimination task for suprathreshold stimuli. Robust categorical facilitation occurred for five out of six categories with a group of inexperienced observers, namely for pink, orange, yellow, green, and purple. Categorical facilitation was robust against individual variations of categories or the laterality of target presentation. However, contradictory effects occurred in the blue category, most probably reflecting the difficulty to control effects of sensory mechanisms at the green-blue boundary. Moreover, a group of observers who were highly familiar with the discrimination task did not show consistent categorical facilitation in the other five categories. This trained group had much faster response times than the inexperienced group without any speed-accuracy trade-off. Additional analyses suggest that categorical facilitation occurs when observers pay attention to the categorical distinction but not when they respond automatically based on sensory feed-forward information.

Prediction of 7 days mortality in a general population admitted to Emergency Department

Methods The Hillerod Acute Process Triage (HAPT) is inspired by the Swedish Adaptive Process Triage (ADAPT) and ranks patients into 5 level colour-coded triage, ranging from red (most urgent) through orange, yellow, green and blue (least urgent). Patients are assigned a triage category for each of the to main descriptors 1) vital signs and 2) presenting complaint. The variable of the two associated with the most urgent triage category, will determine the final colour-coded triage category, which determines the level of patient observation and treatment. Data from admission including final triage category, vital signs triage category and presenting complaint triage category were prospectively registered and merged with the outcome measure: mortality within 7 days after admission. Patients in blue triage category were not admitted and therefore not included in this study.

Prioritising care in a community palliative care setting using a dependency scoring tool

With increasing referral rates to the Specialist Palliative Care community team, it became necessary to analyse the dependency of the caseload. A review showed a lack of available tools that...

Re-locating colors in the OSA space

A monolexemic color-naming experiment in the Italian language was performed on a sample of 1,014 colors obtained extending the OSA-UCS color system (E-OSA). Colors were rendered on a Mitsubishi Diamond pro 2070 monitor as patches subtending 10° of visual angle in a completely dark room. The 11 universal categories proposed by Berlin and Kay (Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution, 1969) were considered. Consensus, consistency and focal colors were determined for each category. Comparisons were performed among the results obtained using Boynton & Olson (B&O), the extended OSA (E-OSA), a subset of it covering almost all the B&O sample (R-OSA) and the Sturges & Whitfield (S&W) sample sets. A good overlap could be observed among the locations of the consensus colors in the {L, j, g} color model between B&O and R-OSA, as well as a close proximity among the centroids of homologue regions for the majority of the classes. The analysis of the location of focal colors versus the centroids suggests that an additional basic term could be missing for the Italian language in the blue category.

An Assessment of the Effect of Industrial and Sewage Effluent on Aquatic Invertebrates: A Case Study of A Southern Urban Stream, Zimbabwe

The impact of industrial effluent discharged in Mazai stream was assessed through physical-chemical parameters and also by bio-monitoring of benthic macro-invertebrates. Samples were collected at three sites, one before the effluent discharge point into the stream (site 3) and two sites which were located downstream after the discharge points (sites 1 and 2). High levels of chemical pollutants were recorded at sites 1 and 2 (ZINWA red category) whereas site 3 (reference site) consisted of relatively clean water (ZINWA blue category). This was confirmed by the biological evaluation process. The SASS4 scores at sites 1 and 2 indicated a deterioration of water quality while site 3 there was good water quality with high species diversity. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) showed that pollution sensitive taxa such as Hemiptera, Trichoptera, Coleoptera and Odonata were dominant at site 3 whilst the other sites were dominated by pollution tolerant species such Chironomids. Continuous discharge of effluent could lead to extreme degradation of Mazai stream hence loss of biodiversity of macro-invertebrates.

A retrospective cohort pilot study to evaluate a triage tool for use in a pandemic

IntroductionThe objective of this pilot study was to assess the usability of the draft Ontario triage protocol, to estimate its potential impact on patient outcomes, and ability to increase resource availability based on a retrospective cohort of critically ill patients cared for during a non-pandemic period.MethodsTriage officers applied the protocol prospectively to 2 retrospective cohorts of patients admitted to 2 academic medical/surgical ICUs during an 8 week period of peak occupancy. Each patient was assigned a treatment priority (red -- 'highest', yellow -- 'intermediate', green -- 'discharge to ward', or blue/black -- 'expectant') by the triage officers at 3 separate time points (at the time of admission to the ICU, 48, and 120 hours post admission).ResultsOverall, triage officers were either confident or very confident in 68.4% of their scores; arbitration was required in 54.9% of cases. Application of the triage protocol would potentially decrease the number of required ventilator days by 49.3% (568 days) and decrease the total ICU days by 52.6% (895 days). On the triage protocol at ICU admission the survival rate in the red (93.7%) and yellow (62.5%) categories were significantly higher then that of the blue category (24.6%) with associated P values of < 0.0001 and 0.0003 respectively. Further, the survival rate of the red group was significantly higher than the overall survival rate of 70.9% observed in the cohort (P < 0.0001). At 48 and 120 hours, survival rates in the blue group increased but remained lower then the red or yellow groups.ConclusionsRefinement of the triage protocol and implementation is required prior to future study, including improved training of triage officers, and protocol modification to minimize the exclusion from critical care of patients who may in fact benefit. However, our results suggest that the triage protocol can help to direct resources to patients who are most likely to benefit, and help to decrease the demands on critical care resources, thereby making available more resources to treat other critically ill patients.

Preparation and characterisation of some new Mo/O/XR (X = P or As) heteropoly blue complexes

A new series of molybdenum organophosphonates with a Mo∶P ratio of 1∶1 have been isolated. The proposed formulation for these compounds is (MoV2MoVI4O12)(O3XR)4[O2(OH)XR]2(EtOH)x [when X = P, R = C6H5, C6H5CH2, CH3 or C2H5; when X = As, R = C6H5; x = 5 (for R = C6H5 or CH2C6H5) or 4 (for R = CH3 or C2H5)]. These compounds are intensely blue in colour, as expected for compounds of the heteropoly blue category. XPS data indicate a Mo(V)∶Mo(VI) ratio of 1∶2 in these compounds, and the FTIR, solid-state and solution NMR, TGA, UV/Vis, magnetic and electrochemical data are consistent with the proposed formulations.

One basic or two? A rhapsody in blue

The controversial status of goluboi as a basic color term is discussed. Fuzzy logic alone cannot reliably attribute basic status to goluboi. Recent linguistic studies support a single basic blue category. Psychophysical data on color-space distances and color naming are currently ambiguous in this regard.