Converse Question Research Articles

Questioning and responding in Italian

Questions are design problems for both the questioner and the addressee. They must be produced as recognizable objects and must be comprehended by taking into account the context in which they occur and the local situated interests of the participants. This paper investigates how people do ‘questioning’ and ‘responding’ in Italian ordinary conversations. I focus on the features of both questions and responses. I first discuss formal linguistic features that are peculiar to questions in terms of intonation contours ( e.g. final rise), morphology ( e.g. tags and question words) and syntax ( e.g. inversion). I then show additional features that characterize their actual implementation in conversation such as their minimality (often the subject or the verb is only implied) and the usual occurrence of speaker gaze towards the recipient during questions. I then look at which social actions ( e.g. requests for information, requests for confirmation) the different question types implement and which responses are regularly produced in return. The data shows that previous descriptions of “interrogative markings” are neither adequate nor sufficient to comprehend the actual use of questions in natural conversation.

Questions and responses in Korean conversation

This study examines the question and response system in Korean conversation as part of a comparative project across 10 languages. Using conversation analysis as the primary methodology, this particular study analyzes 352 questions drawn from eight sets of naturally occurring conversations. Based on the analysis of these questions, this study provides an overview of the question and response system in Korean conversation; more specifically, various types of linguistic resources for questions, actions performed through questions, and types of responses to questions. It also discusses noteworthy aspects of actions and sequences compared to the other languages presented in this volume.

The effects of everyday concurrent tasks on overground minimum toe clearance and gait parameters

Deaths and injuries resulting from falls are a significant problem for older adults. Over half of falls during walking result from a trip, and these are likely to begin when the foot contacts the ground at the point of minimum toe clearance (MTC) during the swing phase where the foot most closely approaches the ground. MTC is commonly investigated using a limited number of points and on a treadmill, which cannot account for flooring irregularities, speed changes, and direction changes of overground gait. This paper presents a new method of calculating 3D overground MTC that accounts for flooring variations and utilizes hundreds of points on each shoe. These methods are applied to 10 unimpaired adults during habitual gait: (1) without a concurrent task, (2) while carrying a 9-kg laundry basket, (3) while carrying a tray with a full glass of water on it, and (4) while answering standardized conversational questions. Results indicated that steps were slower and shorter during concurrent tasks while MTC changes were dependent on task type (higher for basket, lower for questions, and unchanged for water). Task-related MTC changes were independent of spatiotemporal gait changes. Thus, MTC during overground gait, particularly while concurrent tasks are being performed, may be an independent fall risk factor that merits further investigation in subjects at-risk of falls. The relationships between MTC, gait parameters, and older age or fall risk should be explored further in at-risk subjects and circumstances to elucidate potential tripping mechanisms.

Redheffer Representations and Relaxed Commutant Lifting

It is well known that the solutions of a (relaxed) commutant lifting problem can be described via a linear fractional representation of the Redheffer type. The coefficients of such Redheffer representations are analytic operator-valued functions defined on the unit disc D of the complex plane. In this paper we consider the converse question. Given a Redheffer representation, necessary and sufficient conditions on the coefficients are obtained guaranteeing the representation to appear in the description of the solutions to some relaxed commutant lifting problem. In addition, a result concerning a form of non-uniqueness appearing in the Redheffer representations under consideration and an harmonic maximal principle, generalizing a result of A. Biswas, are proved. The latter two results can be stated both on the relaxed commutant lifting as well as on on the Redheffer representation level.

Antikoagulation in der Schwangerschaft nach künstlichem Herzklappenersatz

A 23-year-old woman had received a mechanical bileaflet mitral valve prosthesis because of severe mitral valve insufficiency caused by an acute bacterial endocarditis with vegetations. One year after the operation the patient suffered on two miscarriages under oral anticoagulation by phenprocoumon. Present, she was referred to our center with the question of conversion to low molecular weight heparine because of continued yearning for a baby. At admission the woman was in good general and nutritional condition. Echocardiography showed a regular prosthetic function. Blood analysis, electrolyte parameters and enzyme values were normal, further laboratory investigations revealed a factor-V-Leiden-mutation. A chromosomal analysis detected no aberrations. The oral anticoagulation by phenprocoumon was switched to subcutaneous low molecular weight heparine in therapeutical dosage. Anti-factor-Xa-activity was controlled at regular intervals. Further pregnancy was uneventful for both, mother and child. A healthy infant was born by caesarean section at 40 (th) week of gestation. Treatment with anticoagulation by phenprocoumon is indispensable for mechanical heart valve protheses. Conversion to low molecular weight heparine is possible in patients who insistent request to conceive. The anticoagulation by low molecular weight heparine avoids teratogenic effects during pregnancy because the placenta is impermeable to that heparin. Furthermore, prophylaxis of thromoses by low molecular weight heparine is probably in almost the same manner as by phenprocoumon.

Entrenching the Status‐Quo: Religion and State in Israel's Constitutional Proposals

The article aims at analyzing the proposed constitutional solutions for the most disputed issues in the religious-secular conflict in Israel. It focuses on the three complete constitutional drafts published between 2005-2006. The article shows how the three constitutional proposals not only refrained from reforming the existing religious arrangements in the area of personal law, observance of Sabbath, and the question of conversion or “who is a Jew?” In addition, all three proposals limit potential future reforms of the religious status quo by the Supreme Court, which is perceived as representing a liberal-secular worldview. The proposed constitutions limit the court’s authority through various constitutional tools which are geared to maintaining parliamentary supremacy in regulating controversial issues of religion-state relations. Thus, the article argues, the debate over the future of the constitutional arrangements in the religious sphere in Israel is a conflict not only between two opposing views of the appropriate relationship between religion and state institutions, but also involves a clash between fundamentally different views of the role of constitutions and constitutional law under conditions of deep societal disagreement. On the one hand advocates of Israel’s secularization hold a liberal understanding of the role of constitutions as vehicles for the introduction of principles of constitutionalism. On the other hand, the authors of the proposed drafts expect constitutions to serve as the basic charter of the state’s identity, and therefore to rest on a broad consensus, reflecting the common vision and shared basic norms of society as a whole. At present the broad consensus of Israeli society seems to prefer the preservation of the religious status quo.

The molecular programme of tumour reversion: the steps beyond malignant transformation

How cells become malignant has preoccupied scientists for over a century. However, the converse question is also valid: are tumour cells capable of reverting from their malignant state? Askanazy's studies in 1907 indicated that teratoma cells could differentiate into normal somatic tissues and current evidence indicates that some tumour cells have acquired the molecular circuitry that results in the negation of chromosomal instability, translocations, oncogene activation and loss of tumour suppressor genes. Studying these extremely rare events of tumour reversion and deciphering these pathways, which involve SIAH1, presenilin 1, TSAP6 and translationally controlled tumour protein (TCTP), could lead to new avenues in cancer treatment.

Gibbon et Constantin

The purpose of this study is not to define the way Gibbon considers Constantine, but to examine how he proceeds as an historian and writer when conceiving and writing his chapters on the first Christian emperor in Decline and Fall. The study analyses the structure of those pages, which strangely remind us of the pagan historian, Zosimus, whose arguments Gibbon nevertheless rejects, considering them as excessively par tial. Among the more specific details dealt with there are the way Gibbon exploits the Histoire des Empereurs by Le Nain de Tillemont; how he resorts to Lactantius' De mor tibus persecutorum; how he presents the foundation of Contantinople, Constantine's in stitutional reforms, the battle at the Milvian Bridge, and the questions of Constantine's conversion.

Adaptation across the Cortical Hierarchy: Low-Level Curve Adaptation Affects High-Level Facial-Expression Judgments

Adaptation is ubiquitous in sensory processing. Although sensory processing is hierarchical, with neurons at higher levels exhibiting greater degrees of tuning complexity and invariance than those at lower levels, few experimental or theoretical studies address how adaptation at one hierarchical level affects processing at others. Nevertheless, this issue is critical for understanding cortical coding and computation. Therefore, we examined whether perception of high-level facial expressions can be affected by adaptation to low-level curves (i.e., the shape of a mouth). After adapting to a concave curve, subjects more frequently perceived faces as happy, and after adapting to a convex curve, subjects more frequently perceived faces as sad. We observed this multilevel aftereffect with both cartoon and real test faces when the adapting curve and the mouths of the test faces had the same location. However, when we placed the adapting curve 0.2 degrees below the test faces, the effect disappeared. Surprisingly, this positional specificity held even when real faces, instead of curves, were the adapting stimuli, suggesting that it is a general property for facial-expression aftereffects. We also studied the converse question of whether face adaptation affects curvature judgments, and found such effects after adapting to a cartoon face, but not a real face. Our results suggest that there is a local component in facial-expression representation, in addition to holistic representations emphasized in previous studies. By showing that adaptation can propagate up the cortical hierarchy, our findings also challenge existing functional accounts of adaptation.

Trends in Mathematical Imaging and Surface Processing

In the area of image and surface processing a real interplay between engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians has been occuring over the last decade. Even though the application areas differ significantly, the methodological overlap is enormous. Contributions to the field come from almost any discipline of mathematics. A major role is played by partial differential equations and in particular by geometric and variational modeling. We see increasing numbers of examples of work in imaging and computer graphics which significantly improve the state of the art techniques developed in traditional disciplines and in particular inspire novel work in mathematics. Some of the many examples discussed during the workshop include the global minimization of new functionals based on methods from discrete optimization theory, the modeling and treatment of manifold topology based on projections, or subtle subdivision techniques to ensure curvature continuity in surface modeling. The intention of this workshop was to further stimulate the exchange of new methodology and ideas. The workshop brought together mathematicians working on the calculus of variations, on differential and discrete geometry, on partial differential equations, and on numerical analysis with leading experts in computer graphics, image processing and computer vision. In addition about ten junior researchers joined the workshop in a lively interplay with more senior participants. The role of geometry, analysis and numerical analysis for PDE-based image and surface models is of central importance. Many of the models involve minimizing geometric functionals of first (area) or second order (Willmore-functional). The role of analysis is to predict the qualitative behaviour of solutions of the resulting highly nonlinear partial differential equations. Lectures on thresholding approaches, level set methods and max flow - min cut algorithms were dealing with this topic. Numerical analysis plays a decisive role in the derivation and construction of efficient and robust algorithms. For instance, efficient numerical schemes for the restoration of destroyed or missing areas in images and the error control for discretization of total variation functionals in imaging were addressed in lectures during the workshop. A particular focus was on the solution of geometric partial differential equations and the minimization of geometric functionals and their discretization, which leads directly into extremely difficult analytic problems and questions of convergence of the corresponding discrete schemes. Extensive discussions occurred regargind the question of conversion of analytical and geometric insights into fast and effective algorithms for challenging applications such as the design of glass roofs, the extraction of motion fields from image sequences, the similarity analysis of shapes or the topological persistent fairing of surfaces from 3D scanning devices, and many others. Aside from 20 main lectures, junior participants presented their own work in a special two hour session through a series of short presentations:

The Development of Pragmatic Skills in Children Who are Severely and Profoundly Deaf

The present study investigated the conversational skills of a group of 18 children (aged 6 to 16 years) with severe and profound hearing loss. Participants included both hearing aid users and cochlear implant users. All the children relied upon spoken English and were included in regular classroom settings for at least part of each school day. They were videotaped in conversation with their supporting teacher of the deaf. Results indicated that very few conversational breakdowns occurred in these dyads. Older students were more likely to evenly share the conversational talk time and to initiate conversational turns with their teachers. The youngest participants relied heavily upon simple responses to teacher questions while all participants asked few questions in conversation with their teachers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Contested Meanings, Democracy Assessment and the European Union

Much has been written on what contested meanings of democracy imply for attempts to evaluate the democratic performance of the European Union. But the converse question of what surveys of the democratic performance of the Union have to tell us about contested expectations of what would count as a democratic Union is also important. This article demonstrates why this is so using insights from the wider contested meanings project represented in this journal edition. It shows, in other words, that once it is accepted that normative and empirical claims are tightly coupled together in practice, and that this, in turn, plays itself out in contested standards, any evaluation of democratic performance requires the assessor to double back to a re-examination of the criteria from which the assessment started.

Conversion in Ottoman Balkans: A Historiographical Survey

AbstractThis article surveys the Islamization of South‐eastern Europe under the Ottoman rule. In Balkan history writing the question of conversion to Islam was, and still is, a highly charged political issue. It is intrinsically linked to the issues of formation of national identities and rival territorial claims of the Balkan states. The nationalist discourse of the current Balkan historiography defines all forms of Islamization as results of the Ottoman government's centrally organized policy of forced conversion. This study argues against this position and maintains that Islamization in each Balkan country took place in the course of many centuries and its nature and phase was determined not by the Ottoman government but by the specific conditions of each locality.

The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe by Steven F. Kruger

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Romance as History, means that some texts, most notably the Bridlington Prophecy, do not receive as clear an analysis as they may have otherwise. I trust, however, that this will be rectified in that project, and I particularly look forward to the promised expansion of the discussion of the relationship between romance and historiographic discourses. A short review, however, cannot do justice to the depth of Ingledew’s scholarship . His careful reading will enrich our understanding of the penitential and liturgical aspects of the poem and renew debate about its historical context and references. Richard J. Moll University of Western Ontario Steven F. Kruger. The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Pp. xxx, 320. $26.00 paper, $78.00 cloth. Steven Kruger has been writing important and innovative articles on the topic of representations of Jews in the Middle Ages for over a decade now. This background shows in the breadth and erudition of this book, which is not simply a reprinting of earlier articles, but a significant and thoughtful expansion of this earlier work. The study draws upon an unusually wide range of sources and locations and thereby fulfills its goal of presenting changes and continuities over time and geographical region. Kruger opens with a reading of a visual representation of ‘‘The Living Cross,’’ engaging questions of gender as well as religious difference. This is a real strength of the book; although the title focus is on Jews, Kruger never loses sight of the intersection of this category not only with gender but also with sexuality and with other forms of religious difference, including representations of Islam and of heresy. This opening reading is later echoed by an equally compelling reading of Chagall’s White Crucifixion . Kruger’s readings maintain a firm basis in specific historical times and settings, but he also never loses sight of the relevance of his readings to contemporary issues and debates. The book’s title concept, ‘‘spectrality,’’ is a very effective tool for understanding what Kruger rightly terms the ‘‘strong ambivalence’’ in PAGE 502 502 ................. 16596$ CH13 11-01-10 14:08:29 PS REVIEWS medieval Christian representations of and treatment of Jews and Judaism (p. 5). Kruger’s theoretical frame draws primarily on Derrida’s Specters of Marx, but it is also influenced by work on sexuality (Terry Castle) and race (Kathleen Brogan). Kruger begins by examining the importance of temporality to Christian formulations of the role of Jews and Judaism; the notion of supersession posits that Judaism is the Old Law, but this ancestor cannot be completely discarded, since it is upon this Jewish foundation that Christianity’s claims to truth lie. In order to deal with this paradox, Kruger argues, Christianity attempts to ‘‘conjure’’ away the Jewish past, but this very conjuring perpetuates a haunting Jewish presence. As Kruger observes, ‘‘In being summoned up for burial, Jewish corporeality is also paradoxically preserved and invested with a transgressive, polluting power’’ (p. 13). In describing this phenomenon of an ‘‘absent presence,’’ Kruger takes care not to erase actual Jews from his argument. The book continually attempts to take into the account the impact of their spectral representational role on actual Jews, particularly through focusing on the debate genre and the question of conversion, which, as Kruger shows, are often interrelated historically and textually. Chapter 2 focuses on what Kruger calls the ‘‘long twelfth century,’’ a period marked by increased and significant cultural and intellectual exchange between Christians and Jews as well as a significant negative shift in the nature, tone, and magnitude of polemic against Jews and Judaism. Focusing on the writings of Guibert de Nogent, Kruger shows the ways in which the new formulations of Christian identity developed in the ‘‘twelfth-century Renaissance’’ were dependent on conceptions of Jews and particularly of Jewish bodies as a site through and against which Christian identity was defined. Kruger also demonstrates how the figure of the Muslim was seen as a different, but related, form of threat and reads Guibert against contemporary Jewish writings, specifically responses to the pogroms of the first Crusade, which constructed models of martyrdom in response to...

The development of pragmatic skills in children who are severely and profoundly deaf

The present study investigated the conversational skills of a group of 18 children (aged 6 to 16 years) with severe and profound hearing loss. Participants included both hearing aid users and cochlear implant users. All the children relied upon spoken English and were included in regular classroom settings for at least part of each school day. They were videotaped in conversation with their supporting teacher of the deaf. Results indicated that very few conversational breakdowns occurred in these dyads. Older students were more likely to evenly share the conversational talk time and to initiate conversational turns with their teachers. The youngest participants relied heavily upon simple responses to teacher questions while all participants asked few questions in conversation with their teachers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Why Can’t Biologists Read Poetry? Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love

Since reinvention of social Darwinism as sociobiology in 1970s, and particularly since reinvention of sociobiology as evolutionary psychology in 1990s, deployment of Darwinian ideas and models has been steadily on rise in a wide variety of academic fields--Brian Boyd offers a list that includes ethology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, neurophysiology, anthropology, analytic philosophy, and psychology (2). (1) Yet literary study has been curiously reticent in engaging this intellectual trend. A recent review of prominent journal of theory Critical Inquiry reveals that while Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud vie for position with Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault among journal's most frequently footnoted thinkers, Darwin is, apparently, nowhere to be found (Stevens and Williams 217). To be sure, a small and determined group of scholars has attempted to ground study of literature in evolutionary psychology, and others have investigated Darwin's impact on, and debts to, literature and culture of his own era. (2) But literary criticism--in part because of its investments in historicizing and relativizing cultural norms, in part because of a healthy suspicion of ways in which Darwin's has been used to justify reactionary views on race, class, and gender--remains wary of neo-Darwinian vogue, with its axiom, taken from entomologist Edward O. Wilson, that the genes hold culture on a leash (167). Barbara Herrnstein Smith's recent discussions of human-animal relations, for example, are so trenchant in their attacks on neo-Darwinist linguist Steven Pinker--for his reckless application of metaphors from human realm to animal, for his apparent disdain for literature and arts--that her reader might fail to notice that she is, in fact, arguing for recognition of neo-Darwinian insights about permeability of human-animal divide. Similarly, although Marjorie Garber challenges neo-Darwinists, most notably her Harvard colleague Wilson, for their reduction of human nature to the level of gene (21), she does not dispute Wilson's arguments so much as simply dislike them. Rebuking Wilson for his relegation of literary to a purely ornamental or decorative function, she points out that he quotes endorsement of good name as evidence for evolutionary hazards of sexual infidelity but utterly neglects Iago's position as most arrant hypocrite in all of Shakespeare, [and] his own contempt for 'good name' as compared to more material and vengeful rewards (28). It may be accidental that a question of sexual jealousy underlies example over which Wilson and Garber skirmish, but Garber's response to Wilson, and Smith's to Pinker, partake, I suggest, of a slightly different sort of jealousy, a possessiveness about realm of literary. Thus in asking why biologists can't read poetry, I want to address both senses of question--I want to ask not only why masterly scientists like Wilson prove to be clumsy and undergraduate-sounding when they talk about Shakespeare but also why literary critics like Garber and Smith (and myself) want them to be bad readers. Why can't biologists read poetry? At same time, however, I pose converse question: Why can't poets (or literary critics, or humanists) read science? What cultural strictures or habits of thought make us regard invocation of Darwin's name--especially when it comes to explanations of culture--with suspicion? In answering these questions I do not propose to stake out a position on exactly how far Darwinian thinking can usefully be extended to social sciences and humanities. My inquiry into both new Darwinism and resistance to it will remain largely within my own disciplinary territory--literary criticism. In short, I aim to offer less a Darwinian reading of culture than a cultural reading of Darwinism. This reading will proceed through a detailed analysis of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love--a novel that engages contemporary debates about neo-Darwinism by representing a series of interrelated conflicts between scientific, literary, and religious worldviews. …

A Macromolecular Complex Formed by a Pilin-like Protein in Competent Bacillus subtilis

In competent Bacillus subtilis, the ComG proteins are required to allow exogenous DNA to access to membrane-bound receptor ComEA during transformation. Here we describe a multimeric complex containing the pilin-like protein ComGC. Due to similarities to the type 4 pilus and the type 2 secretion system pseudopilus, we have tentatively named it the "competence pseudopilus." The ComGC multimer is released from cells upon digestion of the cell wall with lysozyme and has a heterogeneous size, estimated to range between 40 and 100 monomers, covalently linked by disulfide bonds. We determined that the prepilin peptidase ComC, the thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase pair BdbDC, and all seven ComG proteins are necessary to form the pseudopilus. Furthermore, these proteins are also sufficient to form a functional complex, i.e. able to facilitate binding of exogenous DNA to ComEA. The initial steps of pseudopilus biogenesis include the processing of ComGC in the cytoplasmic membrane and consist of two independent events, proteolytic cleavage by ComC and formation of an intramolecular disulfide bond by BdbDC. The other ComG proteins are required to assemble the mature ComGC monomers in the membrane into a multimeric complex proposed to span the cell envelope. We discuss the possible role of the competence pseudopilus in DNA binding and uptake during transformation.

Present at the Flood: A First Person Guided Tour through the Early Literature in Structural Biology

Present at the Flood: A First Person Guided Tour through the Early Literature in Structural Biology

Zombies and microtubules

Conversations on Consciousnessby Susan BlackmoreOxford University Press, Oxford, UK288 pp, $23/£19ISBN 019280622X ![][1] One remarkable aspect of the consciousness research field is the lack of agreement on what the key subject matter should be. What is the phenomenon for which we need an explanation? Susan Blackmore begins with these questions in Conversations on Consciousness , a collection of interviews with 21 prominent scientists and philosophers. Their answers introduce the reader to some of the concepts and puzzles at the centre of this field. For some researchers, the most baffling phenomenon is that of qualia —the subjective qualities that accompany mental states such as perception. Although a laboratory instrument might perform as well as a human in identifying coffee, the instrument cannot ‘taste’ it. Only conscious beings have that sort of sensation or feeling. Could the things that look red to you look green to someone else? If so, the difference would not be in the physical objects, it would be in the perceptual experiences—the way things looked for the perceivers. Their qualia … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

DNA Binding Selectivity of MeCP2 Due to a Requirement for A/T Sequences Adjacent to Methyl-CpG

DNA methylation is interpreted by a family of methyl-CpG binding domain (MBD) proteins that repress transcription through recruitment of corepressors that modify chromatin. To compare in vivo binding of MeCP2 and MBD2, we analyzed immunoprecipitated chromatin from primary human cells. Genomic sites occupied by the two MBD proteins were mutually exclusive. As MeCP2 was unable to colonize sites vacated by depletion of MBD2, we tested the hypothesis that methyl-CpG alone is insufficient to direct MeCP2 binding. In vitro selection for MeCP2 bound DNA-enriched fragments containing A/T bases ([A/T] > or = 4) adjacent to methyl-CpG. [A/T] > or = 4 was found to be essential for high-affinity binding at selected sites and at known MeCP2 target regions in the Bdnf and Dlx6 genes. MBD2 binding, however, did not require an A/T run. The unexpected restriction of MeCP2 to a defined subset of methyl-CpG sites will facilitate identification of genomic targets that are relevant to Rett Syndrome.