Intermediate Language Research Articles

Abstract 15459: Statin Twitter: Human and "Bot" Contributions, 2010-2022

Background: Half of patients with ASCVD do not take statin medications despite proven efficacy and safety. Misinformation about statins drives skepticism about their use. Social media “bots” are known to proliferate misinformation, but involvement in statin-related discourse is unknown. Objectives: 1) to examine temporal trends in volume and sentiment of statin-related Twitter posts (tweets); 2) to compare statin-related content generated by humans and bots Methods: We queried Twitter for all tweets with statin-related terms from 2010-2022. We used a machine learning-derived classifier to determine tweet authorship as bot, human, or intermediate, and natural language processing to assign a sentiment score to each tweet. Manual qualitative analysis was performed on a randomly selected sample of all tweets and highly influential tweets to quantify statin skepticism. Results: We identified 1,155,735 original tweets (excluding retweets) with statin-related terms, the most common being “statin” (n=832,627, 72%) and “Lipitor” (n=197,015, 17%). Bots produced 333,689 (29%), humans produced 699,876 (61%), and intermediate accounts produced 104,966 (9.1%). Over the study period, the proportion of bot tweets decreased from 48% to 11%, human tweets increased from 44% to 80%, and intermediate tweets decreased from 7.7% to 6.7%. The proportion of negative sentiment tweets increased from 28% to 43% for bots, 31% to 38% for humans, and 29% to 40% for intermediate accounts. Including retweets, negative sentiment increased from 30% to 45% across all tweets. In a qualitative analysis of highly influential tweets, statin skepticism increased from 7% to 29% for bots and 25% to 36% for humans. Conclusions: Since 2010, humans have overtaken bots as generators of statin-related content on Twitter. Negative sentiment and statin skepticism have increased, especially among highly influential tweets. Misinformation interventions should focus on human users and influential bots.

The Effectiveness of Instagram "Studyin.Japanese" to Improve Japanese Vocabulary Skills of Intermediate Level Japanese Language Department UMY'S Students

This study aimed to measure the effectiveness of the "studyin.japanese" Instagram account as a learning medium for improving Japanese vocabulary skills. This research uses quantitative methods with a purely experimental research design. The sample of this study was 30 students of the PBJ UMY Study Program level 2 for the 2021/2022 academic year. Data is collected through questionnaires and tests. The test results showed that the average value of the experimental control group was smaller than the average value of the control groTherehere was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups' learning outcomes. Furthermore, the results of calculating the effectiveness of learning in the experimental group with the N-gain formula were obtained at 0.116, which means that using the Instagram media "studyin.japanese" is not practical in learning Japanese Vocabulary. While the N-Gain control class is 0.512 which means the use of PowerPoint media is effective in learning Japanese Vocabulary. So it can be concluded that using conventional media is still more effective than using Instagram media "studyin.japanese" in learning Japanese Vocabulary. However, based on the results of the questionnaire, students gave a positive response. All respondents strongly agreed that "studyin.japanese" media in learning Japanese Vocabulary can be an alternative medium for learning Japanese Vocabulary. Students feel motivated and easy to memorize Japanese Vocabulary.

Compiling Structured Tensor Algebra

Tensor algebra is essential for data-intensive workloads in various computational domains. Computational scientists face a trade-off between the specialization degree provided by dense tensor algebra and the algorithmic efficiency that leverages the structure provided by sparse tensors. This paper presents StructTensor, a framework that symbolically computes structure at compilation time. This is enabled by Structured Tensor Unified Representation (STUR), an intermediate language that can capture tensor computations as well as their sparsity and redundancy structures. Through a mathematical view of lossless tensor computations, we show that our symbolic structure computation and the related optimizations are sound. Finally, for different tensor computation workloads and structures, we experimentally show how capturing the symbolic structure can result in outperforming state-of-the-art frameworks for both dense and sparse tensor algebra.

A Deductive Verification Infrastructure for Probabilistic Programs

This paper presents a quantitative program verification infrastructure for discrete probabilistic programs. Our infrastructure can be viewed as the probabilistic analogue of Boogie: its central components are an intermediate verification language (IVL) together with a real-valued logic. Our IVL provides a programming-language-style for expressing verification conditions whose validity implies the correctness of a program under investigation. As our focus is on verifying quantitative properties such as bounds on expected outcomes, expected run-times, or termination probabilities, off-the-shelf IVLs based on Boolean first-order logic do not suffice. Instead, a paradigm shift from the standard Boolean to a real-valued domain is required. Our IVL features quantitative generalizations of standard verification constructs such as assume- and assert-statements. Verification conditions are generated by a weakest-precondition-style semantics, based on our real-valued logic. We show that our verification infrastructure supports natural encodings of numerous verification techniques from the literature. With our SMT-based implementation, we automatically verify a variety of benchmarks. To the best of our knowledge, this establishes the first deductive verification infrastructure for expectation-based reasoning about probabilistic programs.

MATLAB-Based Vibration Signal Processing for Fault Diagnosis

Traditionally, vibration signal processing has been performed using analog and digital signal analyzers or writing code in intermediate and high-level computer languages. However, the advent of higher-level interpretive-based signal processing software products such as MATLAB has added a new dimension to vibration signal processing. This paper presents a method for analyzing motor vibration data using MATLAB. The method first pre-processes the vibration data to remove noise and baseline wander. Then, the frequency spectrum of the vibration signal is calculated using the Fourier transform. The frequency spectrum is then used to identify the dominant frequencies in the vibration signal. These dominant frequencies can be used to identify potential problems with the motor, such as bearing defects or misalignment. The method was studied on a set of vibration data collected from open source online data of a real motor. The results showed that the method was able to identify the dominant frequencies in the vibration signal accurately. The method was also able to identify the potential problems with the motor. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of using MATLAB for analyzing motor vibration data. The method presented in this paper can be used to improve the reliability and efficiency of motor maintenance.

Variation of the Intermediate Language in Flanders

Introduction. At this time the language continuum of Dutch on the territory of Flanders undergoes significant changes and develops in the direction of three-part paradigm, which consists of the standard Dutch language, intermediate (tussentaal) and various dialects which explains the actuality of the studies of the intermediate language. The purpose of the study is to analyze the variety of the intermediate language, its components, combinations and correlation between the dialect features and the features of the standard language, as well as to analyze the problem of distinguishing the dialects and the intermediate language which explains the novelty of the study.Methodology and sources. The study of conducted using the publications and articles in Dutch (Flanders), TV series, talk-show on the Flemish TV, interviewing some informants. The data was collected and analyzed using the method linguistic observations, questioning and comparative analysis. The theoretical basis of the research is language variation.Results and discussion. In the intermediate language of the language continuum of Flanders there are different variants which are formed due to the interference of the primary, secondary and tertiary dialect features, as well as due to the interference of the elements of the standard language in different degrees. There are general features of the intermediate language typical for all territory of Flanders on the one side and on the other side local differences. The intermediate language gains strong positions in the media, culture and advertising.Conclusion. Some dialect features have a high degree of interference in all variants of the intermediate language in Flanders, they become an integral part of the intermediate language and don’t prevent the speakers from understanding each other. Due to the dominant regional character of the variants of the intermediate language native speakers can easily identify the origin of the respondent.

Migrant-Native Disparities in Obstetric Neuraxial Analgesia Use: The Role of Host-Country Language Proficiency.

Neuraxial analgesia (NA) is the most effective modality in managing labor pain with widespread availability in high-income countries. Previous research has reported a differential obstetric NA use among migrant and native women, but the contribution of language barriers is not well understood. We aimed to investigate whether host-country language proficiency among migrant women influences NA use and satisfaction with pain management during labor, when compared to natives. We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected from 1024 native and 1111 migrant women who had singleton vaginal deliveries between 2017 and 2019 and were enrolled in the nationwide Portuguese baMBINO prospective cohort study. Obstetric NA use, satisfaction with labor pain management, and migrants' Portuguese language proficiency were self-reported. Data were analyzed using robust multilevel Poisson regression, adjusted for maternal region of birth (characterized by the Human Development Index), age, and education. Overall, 84.4% of native women gave birth with NA, compared to 81.6%, 71.3%, and 56.9% of migrant women with full, intermediate, and limited language proficiency, respectively. Compared to native women, migrants with intermediate (adjusted risk ratio [aRR] = 0.91 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 0.82-0.99]) and limited (aRR = 0.73 [95% CI, 0.56-0.94]) proficiency were less likely to receive NA. However, no significant differences were observed in pain management satisfaction by language proficiency level. Compared to native women, we observed a differential obstetric NA use across migrant women with different host-country language proficiency levels in Portugal, without affecting satisfaction with labor pain management. Although defining the mechanisms underlying NA use discrepancies requires further research, our findings support systematically evaluating pregnant migrant women's linguistic skills and ensuring their access to adequate obstetric analgesia-related information and interpretation services.

The Reasoning Engine: A Satisfiability Modulo Theories-Based Framework for Reasoning About Discrete Biological Models.

We present a framework called the Reasoning Engine, which implements Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT)-based methods within a unified computational environment to address diverse biological analysis problems. The Reasoning Engine was used to reproduce results from key scientific studies, as well as supporting new research in stem cell biology. The framework utilizes an intermediate language for encoding partially specified discrete dynamical systems, which bridges the gap between high-level domain-specific languages and low-level SMT solvers. We provide this framework as open source together with various biological case studies, illustrating the synthesis, enumeration, optimization, and reasoning over models consistent with experimental observations to reveal novel biological insights.

Особенности обучения иностранных студентов «патофизологии – патофизиологии головы и шеи» на английском языке

In this article the generalized experience of teaching the discipline “Morbid Physiology – Pathophysiology of the Head and Neck” in the intermediate language (English) to foreign students studying at the Pyatigorsk Medical and Pharmaceutical Institute in the specialty “Dentistry” is reflected in order to identify the peculiarities, as well as to find possible solutions to eliminate the difficulties arising in the process of teaching the specified disci-pline. To achieve this goal, the authors solved the following tasks: to summarize the experience of teaching this discipline; to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the methodological component of the educational process; to propose possible solutions for emerging problematic situations. Methods of the research conducted by the authors: empirical, theoretical (method of critical analysis of available documentary material, analysis of pedagogical literature sources), analysis and synthesis; forecasting. As a result of the study the peculiarity of the application of the competence based approach during the educational process is emphasized. The tech-niques contributing to the effective study of the discipline “Morbid Physiology – Pathophysiology of the Head and Neck” are described in detail – the technique of business medical game, round table method. Examples of tasks from teaching aids offered to students in practical classes and in the course of independent work are giv-en. It is shown that the educational process organized by the faculty of the Department of Pathology fully con-tributes to the training of qualified specialists who are able to professionally and competently solve complex problem situations that arise.

The Actual Level of Applying the Flipped Classroom Strategy Among English Language Teachers at the Intermediate School in Qassim Region

The study aimed to identify the reality of the flipped classroom strategy application among English teachers at the intermediate school at Buraydah, Qassim University, Saudi Arabia. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher used the descriptive survey method with a view to describing reality in terms of its nature and degree. The questionnaire was used as a data collection tool which includes (29 items) divided into two axes: the degree of applying the flipped classroom strategy among English language teachers at the intermediate school at Buraydah, and the difficulties that English language teachers face when applying the flipped classroom strategy to the intermediate school at Buraydah from their point of view in light of some variables. The variables include educational qualification, years of service, and the number of training courses on the flipped classroom. The study was applied to a sample of English language teachers at the intermediate school at Buraidah, who numbered (82) teachers. After analyzing the results statistically, the current study came up with the following results. The axis of the degree of applying the flipped classroom strategy among English language teachers at the intermediate school at Buraydah got a large score, with a total average weight at 3.506 and a standard deviation of (1.182). The axis the difficulties that English language teachers face when applying the flipped classroom strategy to the intermediate school at Buraydah from their point of view got a large score, with a total average weight at 3.719 and a standard deviation of (0.950). The results also showed there are no statistically significant differences at the level of (α≤0.05) between the responses of the intermediate school English Language teachers in the application of the flipped classroom strategy at Buraydah, according to the differences of the qualification (Bachelor – Master and above), and (years of experiences), as well as (the number of courses in flipped classroom strategy). There are number of recommendations and suggestions based on the results.

Interactive Alignment in L2 Learning: The Link between Social Interaction and Psycholinguistic Phenomena

To engage successfully in conversational activities, participants need to coordinate and synchronise their talk with the talk of their interlocutors. Apart from a set of social strategies and natural routines involved in sequence organisation, a significant contributor to this goal is a psycholinguistic mechanism identified as interactive alignment. The present study set out to examine whether interactive alignment occurs in L2 speech of upper intermediate second language users who have been learning English at school for around 11 years. The participants were a group of twenty Croatian students in their second year of university study, majoring in English. They worked on two collaborative tasks: one carried out in dialogues and the other one in groups of four. Their interactions were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively, to closely examine how interaction evolves in unscripted task-based L2 production. With a significantly larger number of alignment occurrences recorded in dialogues than in groups of four, both between speaker and within speaker, this study demonstrates that processes in L2 learning and use are interconnected and interdependent at all levels, involving cognitive, psychological, psycholinguistic, and social dimensions.

Text‐centered “talk” in foreign language classrooms: Comparing the affordances of face‐to‐face and digital social annotated reading

AbstractThis quasi‐experimental study compares text‐centered dialogs between two groups of intermediate second language (L2) French learners: traditional face‐to‐face (FTF) discussion groups; and groups who annotated and discussed texts through the digital social annotated reading (DSAR) platform, Hypothes.is. All participants read the same articles, with discussions guided by the same reading questions. Participants' dialogs in both conditions were coded based on types of discursive moves, then analyzed through a framework of social, textual, and linguistic affordances. Findings revealed that social affordances emerged significantly more frequently than other affordances among FTF groups while textual affordances emerged significantly more frequently than other affordances among DSAR groups. Findings support the benefits of DSAR tools for more anchored discussions over traditional FTF classroom discussions, with the caution that DSAR tools alone do not necessarily promote deep discussion of foreign language texts. Beyond pedagogical implications, this study suggests an expansion of theoretical frameworks of affordances in future DSAR research.

Perceptions of ZEP Teachers towards Parental Involvement of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families: Promoting School–Family Cooperation

Parental involvement of super-diverse families in the educational process is an integral part of the integration of emergent bilingual students, which, however, entails obstacles to its implementation in Greek schools and worldwide. Τhe present study investigates, through a qualitative case study, the perceptions of eight primary school teachers who had worked in zones of educational priority (ZEPs) in Greek public education, which are also called reception classes, towards the involvement of immigrant and refugee parents in the educational process as well as the barriers that influence it. The methodological tool of semi-structured interviews was used, while the sample was selected with both the convenience and snowball sampling techniques. Some important results reveal the usefulness of parental involvement for all involved persons in the school–family partnership as well as the multiple obstacles to its implementation. The main difficulties encountered by the participants were the parents’ lack of competence in Greek or in an intermediate language as well as their unfamiliarity with a culturally different education system. In response to this reality, the establishment of translation services at school with language and cultural interpreters that could bridge theses distances while recognizing families’ differences as an asset rather as an obstacle emerges as a necessity.

Visual Low-Code Language for Orchestrating Large-Scale Distributed Computing

Distributed, large-scale computing is typically performed using textual general-purpose programming languages. This requires significant programming skills associated with the parallelisation and distribution of computations. In this paper, we present a visual (graphical) programming language called the Computation Application Language (CAL) to raise abstraction in distributed computing. CAL programs define computation workflows by visualising data flowing between computation units. The goal is to reduce the amount of traditional code needed and thus facilitate development even by non-professional programmers. The language follows the low-code paradigm, i.e. its implementation (the editor and the runtime system) is available online. We formalise the language by defining its syntax using a metamodel and specifying its semantics using a two-step approach. We define a translation of CAL into an intermediate language which is then defined using an operational approach. This formalisation was used to develop a programming and execution environment. The environment orchestrates computations by interpreting the intermediate language and managing the instantiation of computation modules using data tokens. We also present an explanatory case-study example that shows a practical application of the language.

An Intermediate Language for General Sparse Format Customization

The inevitable trend of hardware specialization drives an increasing use of custom data formats in processing sparse workloads, which are typically memory-bound. These formats facilitate the automated generation of target-aware data layouts to improve memory access latency and bandwidth utilization. However, existing sparse tensor programming models and compilers offer little or no support for productively customizing the sparse formats. Moreover, since these frameworks adopt an attribute-based approach for format abstraction, they cannot easily be extended to support general format customization. To overcome this deficiency, we propose UniSparse, an intermediate language that provides a unified abstraction for representing and customizing sparse formats. More concretely, we express a sparse format as a map from dense coordinates to a layout tree using a small set of well-defined query and mutation primitives. We also develop a compiler leveraging the MLIR infrastructure, which supports adaptive customization of formats, and automatic code generation of format conversion and compute operations for heterogeneous architectures. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach through experiments running commonly-used sparse linear algebra operations with hybrid formats on multiple different hardware targets, including an Intel CPU, an NVIDIA GPU, and a simulated processing-in-memory (PIM) device.

The benefits of English-speaking group for speaking fluency: Acehnese EFL students� perceptions

As speaking is essential to be mastered, various strategies are applied, one of them is through English-speaking group. The objective of this study is to explore more about the students point of view regarding the beneficial impact of English-speaking group for speaking fluency. Interview was selected as the data collection procedure in this study, in which five female students from Intermediate Language Skill class were participated in this study as the respondents. They were the second semester students at English Language Education Department of Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh. The results of this study revealed that the participants showed positive responses toward forming English-speaking group as it gave great effects on their speaking fluency. They stated that this speaking group provided supportive environment for speaking activity, increased their confidence, improved self-evaluation, and strengthened the relationship among the members of the group.

SYNTAX IN TEACHING THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: TOWARDS THE PROBLEM OF WRITING THE COURSE CONTENT

The article analyzes the problem of writing the content for the course on the methodology of teaching the syntax of the Ukrainian language as a foreign language for philology students. The course is an essential element in the respective educational program for training future teachers of Ukrainian as a foreign language. The theoretical framework of the research is based on linguists’ works dedicated to syntactic topics. However, the basic language competencies in syntax, which are presented in «Standardized requirements: levels of proficiency in Ukrainian as a foreign language», are core for this course. The article also substantiates the need to expand on and detail some topics, taking into account the goals of student learning and practical challenges (word order in a sentence, stylistic means of syntax, syntactic synonymy, etc.). One of the frequent causes of errors in syntactic structures, already at the initial stages, is the imposition of the grammatical system of the native language, or the intermediary language, on the Ukrainian language. Cross-language analogies will facilitate learning and help avoid mistakes. Syntactic structures are not viewed as learning objectives, but rather serve as resources and models that can be used to express a certain meaning. The training aims to develop the ability to use these communicative constructions. At a high level, it is recommended to intensify and diversify the repertoire of syntactic structures with which a foreigner can express their thoughts and emotions, to provide alternative grammatical forms to express the same meaning. The communicative and functional syntax is considered a priority in the methodology of teaching the syntax of the Ukrainian language as a foreign language, since the ability and skills to verbalize thoughts are formed in the process of active use of constructions. Dialogue-centric and text-centric approaches are also efficient at various stages of learning. In teaching the syntax of the UFL (Ukrainian as a foreign language), we suggest combining different levels of analysis of syntactic units: formal-and-grammatical, semantic-and-syntactic, as well as communicative. As the analysis demonstrates, they are not opposed, but mutually complement each other. The perspective of this study is the development of a system of communicative exercises that will help students improve and enrich their speech. Key words: syntax, syntactic unit, method of teaching syntax, Ukrainian language as a foreign language, content language competence.

An Automation Script Generation Technique for the Smart Home

A home automation system means monitoring and controlling various kinds of devices in the home remotely using the Internet of things (IoT). Technologies such as natural language processing techniques, user-friendly visual programming, and machine intelligence programming are already available for home automation. For such systems, the increase in the number of devices often makes users focused on the system’s ability to perform complex or composing tasks. However, some existing natural language processing systems can only perform simple tasks and cannot meet users’ needs. Thus, it is difficult for users to develop the home automation systems they need using visual programming systems because of the large amount of programming knowledge required. Meanwhile, automatic programming without user action can only write a few lines of code and implement little functionality. There are relatively few tools available for generating home automation scripting languages. To address this problem, we propose a practical method for generating executable home automation scripts using Chinese texts. Our method includes the following steps: it extracts critical information from the command sentences in Chinese; it uses first-order logic to check the validity of the extracted information; based on the validation, the correct sentences are mapped into the intermediate language scripts, which can interface with different home platforms. We conducted experiments on Home Assistant, converted intermediate scripts to Home Assistant, and collected 600 scenario descriptions. The experimental results show that the method can automatically generate executable scripts for the Home Assistant platform, and the correct rate was 93.66%.

ЛОГИКО-АНАЛИТИЧЕСКИЕ МЕТОДЫ ОБУЧЕНИЯ НА ЗАНЯТИЯХ ПО РУССКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ ДЛЯ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ЯЗЫКОВОЙ ЛИЧНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННЫХ СТУДЕНТОВ-МЕДИКОВ

The aim of his article is to consider the problems of formation of linguistic (speech) personality of international students learning the subjects of a medical University in the intermediary language who in the future will be able to comprehend adequately theoretical and practical educational material of medical science when working with patients during training practice in hospitals and clinics. The use of logical and analytical methods of teaching at the Russian language classes is effective. They develop logic, thinking, ability of analyze and synthesize learning material.

Given names of Spanish origin in the Hungarian personal name system

In the present-day Hungarian given name stock, there are probably less than a hundred names of Spanish origin, as interpreted in terms of etymology, intermediary languages and cultural sources. This short paper outlines the category of these names, its composition, background and main characteristics, accompanied by relevant examples.