Special Link Research Articles

Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Education in a Joint Medical Program from the Students’ Perspective

Aim: In the 21st century, despite advanced technology, pandemics and natural disasters have forced universities to evacuate their classrooms. As a result, there has been a shift from conventional to online education. This study aimed to examine the advantages and disadvantages of online education for preclinical medical students. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between November 2020 and May 2021. The study population comprised preclinical medical students of the Marmara University–Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) Joint Medical Program. The survey form used in the study was prepared using Google Forms, and a special link was sent to all students via the Microsoft Teams platform used for distance education. The survey included four sections, namely, demographic characteristics, advantages of online education, disadvantages of online education, and references of students. Results: The survey was sent to all students (n = 155) enrolled in the preclinical program, and 112 students (72%) participated in the study. Of the participants, 63.4% were women; moreover, 38.4% were Turkish, 31.3% were Turkish Cypriot, and 30.3% were international students. The number of students in the first, second, and third years were 35, 51, and 26, respectively. The most common advantages of online education were a chance to review missed parts of the lesson (97.3%), an opportunity to plan the study time (59.8%), and increased comfort (54.5%). The majority of the students indicated that they faced numerous challenges during online education. The most common issues were the difficulty in learning practical lessons, lack of socializing, ineffective communication, technical issues during online classes, less interactive lectures that resulted in concentration loss, and difficulty in obtaining answers from lecturers. Of the surveyed students, 48.2% preferred conventional education, only 9.8% favored online education, and 42% preferred hybrid education. Conclusions: Preclinical students at Marmara University–EMU Joint Medical Program prefer conventional education over online education. Although rewatching a lecture is a key advantage of online education, it is associated with several disadvantages for medical students. However, distance education seems to have become inevitable owing to factors such as diseases, natural disasters, and wars in the region as well as advancements in information technology. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct further research to overcome the limitations.

The Role of Nyakyusa Proverbs in Behavioural Development

This article examines the role of sayings in developing human behaviour in the Nyakyusa community in Tanzania. The primary data for this article were obtained by interview method in Luteba (Ipuguso), Kandete (Ipelo) and Mpombo (Lulasi) wards in Rungwe district, Mbeya region. Those areas met the data requirements presented in this article. The Sociological Theory was used in the analysis and discussion of data by looking at literature as a special unit that reflects both the science and culture of the society. Selected community sayings were examined as a special link to social relations. This article has revealed that the sayings of the selected community are a special link of social relations considering its history, philosophy, culture and economy. The sayings serve as a specific reference library for social issues, and a strong indigenous link that builds a system to train, strengthen and keep the community together in the foundations of culture and the whole philosophy of life from tradition until now. This article concludes that sayings are used as a special warehouse for reference to social issues that keep the community together in the foundations of culture and the whole philosophy of life from ancient times until now.

Design of a multi-epitope vaccine against brucellosis fused to IgG-fc by an immunoinformatics approach.

Brucella, a type of intracellular Gram-negative bacterium, has unique features and acts as a zoonotic pathogen. It can lead to abortion and infertility in animals. Eliminating brucellosis becomes very challenging once it spreads among both humans and animals, putting a heavy burden on livestock and people worldwide. Given the increasing spread of brucellosis, it is crucial to develop improved vaccines for susceptible animals to reduce the disease's impact. In this study, we effectively used an immunoinformatics approach with advanced computer software to carefully identify and analyze important antigenic parts of Brucella abortus. Subsequently, we skillfully designed chimeric peptides to enhance the vaccine's strength and effectiveness. We used computer programs to find four important parts of the Brucella bacteria that our immune system recognizes. Then, we carefully looked for eight parts that are recognized by a type of white blood cell called cytotoxic T cells, six parts recognized by T helper cells, and four parts recognized by B cells. We connected these parts together using a special link, creating a strong new vaccine. To make the vaccine even better, we added some extra parts called molecular adjuvants. These included something called human β-defensins 3 (hBD-3) that we found in a database, and another part that helps the immune system called PADRE. We attached these extra parts to the beginning of the vaccine. In a new and clever way, we made the vaccine even stronger by attaching a part from a mouse's immune system to the end of it. This created a new kind of vaccine called MEV-Fc. We used advanced computer methods to study how well the MEV-Fc vaccine interacts with certain receptors in the body (TLR-2 and TLR-4). In the end, Immunosimulation predictions showed that the MEV-Fc vaccine can make the immune system respond strongly, both in terms of cells and antibodies. In summary, our results provide novel insights for the development of Brucella vaccines. Although further laboratory experiments are required to assess its protective effect.

Retail pricing, cashback and refund decisions in a supply chain with e-shop and direct channels

In this research, we are trying to design a model using incentive policies in a supply chain in which a store can sell either directly or through cash-back websites. The cash-back website returns a percentage of the paid price to the customer by sending a special link, created by this website based on the incentive policy. Although the extent of the impact of these websites on the sale rate, empirically or theoretically, is still uncertain, we know that this policy can have a positive impact on the online shopping and there are many customers who are sensitive to the price. The store’s website, in addition to the incentive policies, considers refund. Empirically, the refund policy provides a psychological comfort for customers. The use of incentive policies usually attracts more customers, but on the other hand, it reduces profits. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the use of incentive policies and how these policies apply to the e-shop and other players in supply chain. Another goal of this study is to examine the behavior of the e-shop to create a cash-back website. This study examines the centralized and decentralized states.

Machine-learning-based method for fiber-bending eavesdropping detection.

In this Letter, we present a scheme for detecting fiber-bending eavesdropping based on feature extraction and machine learning (ML). First, 5-dimensional features from the time-domain signal are extracted from the optical signal, and then a long short-term memory (LSTM) network is applied for eavesdropping and normal event classification. Experimental data are collected from a 60 km single-mode fiber transmission link with eavesdropping implemented by a clip-on coupler. Results show that the proposed scheme achieves a 95.83% detection accuracy. Furthermore, since the scheme focuses on the time-domain waveform of the received optical signal, additional devices and a special link design are not required.

Odor-evoked memories: The importance of choosing the right odor

Odors are known to entertain a special link with memory. However, the scientific literature investigating odors as powerful reminders of past experiences shows mixed results. This can be partly due to poor consistency in methodological approaches, especially concerning stimuli choice. Here, we presented 64 odorants to 130 young adults and asked them to freely report what each odor evoked to them. Responses were sorted in 1) mere odors' identification attempts and 2) any other memory-based verbal content, whose phenomenological properties were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. As expected, only a limited number of odors managed to spontaneously trigger high-quality autobiographical memories. In most cases, people engage in an odor identification task or evoke unspecific memory contents. We finally selected a pool of 20 odors as a function of the memory contents they're more likely to trigger. This enabled us to formulate recommendations for professionals (researchers or practitioners) performing olfactory-based memory stimulation.

Spermidine Synthase and Saccharopine Reductase Have Co-Expression Patterns Both in Basidiomycetes with Fusion Form and Ascomycetes with Separate Form

Gene fusion is a process through which two or more distinct genes are fused into a single chimeric gene. Unlike most harmful fusion genes in cancer cells, in this study, we first found that spermidine synthetase- (SPDS, catalyst of spermidine biosynthesis) and saccharopine reductase- (SR, catalyst of the penultimate step of lysine biosynthesis) encoding genes form a natural chimeric gene, FfSpdsSr, in Flammulina filiformis. Through the cloning of full-length ORFs in different strains and the analysis of alternative splicing in developmental stages, FfSpdsSr has only one copy and unique transcript encoding chimeric SPDS-SR in F. filiformis. By an orthologous gene search of SpdsSr in more than 80 fungi, we found that the chimeric SpdsSr exists in basidiomycetes, while the two separate Spds and Sr independently exist in ascomycetes, chytridiomycetes, and oomycetes. Further, the transcript level of FfSpdsSr was investigated in different developmental stages and under some common environmental factors and stresses by RT-qPCR. The results showed that FfSpdsSr mainly up-regulated in the elongation stage and pileus development of F. filiformis, as well as under blue light, high temperature, H2O2, and MeJA treatments. Moreover, a total of 15 sets of RNA-Seq data, including 218 samples of Neurospora crassa, were downloaded from the GEO database and used to analyze the expression correlation of NcSpds and NcSr. The results showed that the separate NcSpds and NcSr shared highly similar co-expression patterns in the samples with different strains and different nutritional and environmental condition treatments. The chimeric SpdsSr in basidiomycetes and the co-expression pattern of the Spds and Sr in N. crassa indicate the special link of spermidine and lysine in fungi, which may play an important role in the growth and development of fruiting body and in response to the multiple environmental factors and abiotic stresses.

Web Application as a Link Organizer for Educators, Staffs, and Students

Current digital transformation encourages the improvement of online learning process development through the internet networks with social media platforms, learning applications, and websites. The evolution of creativities and innovations in various fields support the creation of various new learning applications that must be known and used by educators, staffs, and students in a university. In addition, online webinars and online learnings have also started to become a new routine or daily activity in the world of education. Every learning application, online webinar, online learning, and other online media generally has a special link where each user must at least remember, record, save, or search for the link through search engines or copy from email or social media chat so that at any time they can access it. The problem is that sometimes due to busy work and age, we often forget to remember these links. Sometimes we remember and record it, but need more time to type it in its long sentence or URL. There are even special links that cannot be searched using the search engines Google, Yahoo, and so on. This will certainly be an obstacle and quite a hassle for educators and education staff, especially if the links that must be accessed are very large, tens or even hundreds of them. This research provides a solution to the above problems by designing a web application that functions as a link organizer that makes it easier for educators, staffs, and students to store learning application links and other important links so that when needed, they just open the web and click the link. which has been saved. This study method such as observation, system design, interface design, application design, and testing of a web application as a link organizer. The results provide positive future works that can be further developed and refined.

Iconographic and special links of Uherské Hradiště tiles from the end of the 15th and the mid-16th century

The presented iconographic-iconological and technological analyses of relief-decorated tiles from Uherské Hradiště set this stove production in a historical context and contribute to a better understanding of the issue of tile creation and production in the late Middle Ages and the early modern age. In the area of interest located on the historical Moravian-Hungarian border, we note anumber of influences from Slovakia and Hungary. In addition to these influences, we can also find analogies in finds from the surrounding area (for example, from Strážnice, Veselí nad Moravou, Uherský Brod, Lukov, Buchlov and Cimburk Castles, etc.), but also in finds from much more distant locations (Prague, Central Bohemia, Moravská Třebová). In addition to the cultural-historical analysis, specimens from Uherské Hradiště and its surroundings are also analysed technologically (x-ray fluorescence and petrography analysis), in order to determine the material composition and thus the possible material compatibility of analogical tiles from different locations. The results of the analysis of tiles from Uherské Hradiště, Uherský Brod and Cimburk Castle are published in the text. The aim is to document regional and supra-regional links, contribute to the localization of production centers of the late 15th to middle 16th centuries and to the identification of mutual contacts during the production process.

The Jones Polynomials of the Special Alternative Links

The Jones Polynomials of the Special Alternative Links

Friend or Foe: The Relativity of (Anti)oxidative Agents and Pathways.

An element, iron, a process, the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and a molecule, ascorbate, were chosen in our study to show their dual functions and their role in cell fate decision. Iron is a critical component of numerous proteins involved in metabolism and detoxification. On the other hand, excessive amounts of free iron in the presence of oxygen can promote the production of potentially toxic ROS. They can result in persistent oxidative stress, which in turn can lead to damage and cell death. At the same time, ROS—at strictly regulated levels—are essential to maintaining the redox homeostasis, and they are engaged in many cellular signaling pathways, so their total elimination is not expedient. Ascorbate establishes a special link between ROS generation/elimination and cell death. At low concentrations, it behaves as an excellent antioxidant and has an important role in ROS elimination. However, at high concentrations, in the presence of transition metals such as iron, it drives the generation of ROS. In the term of the dual function of these molecules and oxidative stress, ascorbate/ROS-driven cell deaths are not necessarily harmful processes—they can be live-savers too.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ВОКАЛЬНОЇ МУЗИКИ В АСПЕКТІ ВИКОНАВСТВА

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of Ukrainian vocal music in the performing aspect. Ukrainian vocal music attracts more attention from both viewers and scientists. Such interest is connected primarily with the talent of Ukrainian singers, with unsurpassed timbres of voices, with the charisma of individual features. Therefore, the study of the peculiarities of Ukrainian vocal art in the performance aspect becomes relevant. The author of the article considers Ukrainian vocal performance to be a treasure in the European cultural space. On the basis of modern scientific literature, the methods of content analysis, observation and synthesis revealed that this is a unique field of academic vocals together with the interpenetration of performance techniques of traditional Ukrainian singing. Vocal music is one that intended for singing. This is a special link of the general musicological context. Thanks to the vocal performance, the awareness of the meaning of the human voice is revealed, which acts as an instrument with superpowers that captures the human soul. The artistic image of a vocal work is conveyed through the presence of physical features of the human vocal apparatus. A professional singing voice is the result of vocal apparatus special training. The voice delivered in an academic manner is characterized by ringing and roundness of vowels and a timbre beauty. It has a two-octave range and dynamic capabilities, with a singing character. The singer must also have clear diction, clearly and distinctly pronounce the poetic text when singing. There is a distinction between pop performance and academic performance. In the context of global vocal performance, we have singers who raise the glory of Ukrainian vocal art in the 21st century. In general, Ukrainian vocal music in terms of performance is a unique phenomenon of world musical culture.

Communicative Coping and Friendship Among Persons Living With Dementia: Findings From Long-Term Care

The study of identity is central to many disciplines, however there is a special link that connects language and discourse to identities. The way people speak reveals a lot about who they are. Through discourse and communication individuals convey and negotiate their sense of self (de Fina, 2020). Regardless of cognitive status, persons living with dementia (PLWD) use language to construct for themselves a social identity of being included in friendship networks (de Medeiros et al., 2011). This paper uses data from the Friendship Study to examine the use of such communicative coping behavior (CCB) for friendship formation. Ethnographic observations of PLWD were conducted in a Long-Term Care residential setting. Sociolinguistic discourse analysis of verbatim transcripts with reference to the CCB Checklist (Saunders et al., 2016) reveal evidence of CCB use. Results suggest that different types of CCBs were used to construct identity and negotiate friendship challenges in different contexts.

Elevated levels of hoarding in ADHD: A special link with inattention

Hoarding Disorder (HD) is under recognised and under-treated. Though HD develops by early adulthood, patients present only later in life, resulting in research based largely on samples of predominantly older females. Whilst formerly associated with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), it is now recognised that individuals with HD often have inattention symptoms reminiscent of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Here, we investigated HD in adults with ADHD. Patients in an ADHD clinic (n = 88) reported on ADHD, HD and OCD-related symptoms, and compared with age, gender and education matched controls (n = 90). Findings were assessed independently in an online UK sample to verify replication using a dimensional approach (n = 220). Clinically significant hoarding symptoms were found in ∼20% versus 2% of ADHD and control groups, respectively, with those with hoarding being on average in their thirties and with approximately half being male. Greater hoarding severity was noted even in the remaining patients compared with controls (d = 0.89). Inattention was the only significant statistical predictor of hoarding severity in patients. Similarly, inattention, alongside depression and anxiety were the greatest predictors of hoarding in the independent sample where 3.2% identified as having clinically significant hoarding. Patients with ADHD had a high frequency of hoarding symptoms, which were specifically linked to inattention. HD should be routinely assessed in individuals with ADHD, as they do not typically disclose associated difficulties, despite these potentially leading to impaired everyday functioning. Research in HD should also investigate adults with ADHD, who are younger and with a greater prevalence of males than typical HD samples.

I commerci adriatici e mediterranei di Ancona nel XV secolo

Ancona, located two hundred kilometers south of Venice on the western coast of the Adriatic Sea, is one of Italy’s main ports, especially for the international traffic of vehicles and passengers. Its fortunes began in the Middle Ages, when it became a shipping port for western goods headed east and a gateway for eastern products to the west. Although some scholars hesitate to call it a “maritime republic” because of its subjection to the pope, Ancona was a fierce economic rival of Venice for centuries, challenging—just like Ragusa (Dubrovnik) on the Dalmatian coast—Venetian thalassocracy in the Adriatic.1Giulia Spallacci’s book, derived from her PhD thesis at the University of Bologna, reconstructs Ancona’s trade history during a “long fifteenth century” (1345–1514), a period of buoyant economic growth for the city. Based on sources conserved in Italian and Croatian archives and on a rich bibliography, Spallacci first examines the political reality of Ancona, its maritime legislation, the distinctive features of its commercial treaties, and Venetian influence on its business development. She then analyzes the evolution of trade relations between Ancona and other Adriatic centers on both the western (Fermo, Recanati, Ravenna, Rimini) and the eastern side (Trieste, Senj, Split, Trogir, Zadar, Ragusa, Kotor, Durrës). Finally, she focuses on its commerce with Turks—to whom the Anconitans sold weapons to fight the Venetians—and on the products traded in the city’s market.The chapter concerning relations with Ragusa is particularly long and multifaceted due to the special links between the cities. “Ancona needed easy access to Balkan raw materials, while Ragusa needed food products, which it obtained through the port of Ancona,” writes Spallacci.2 More precisely, under a commercial treaty signed in 1292, Ancona exported wheat, wine, and salt to Ragusa, and Ragusan merchants brought hides, wax, furs, barrel staves, and grana (a brilliant red dye made from kermes) to Ancona. The document specifies that hides, wax, furs, and staves came from Byzantine territories in Europe (Romania) and the red dye from both Dalmatia (Sclavonia) and Byzantium (Romania).3 Later, with the growth of Ragusan trades in the Balkans and the Lower Danube, part of the hides and wax would arrive in Ancona from Wallachia, as stated in the Memoir by the Genoese Franco Sivori.4 Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century agreements greatly expand this scenario. According to the treaty of 1372 (renewed in 1397 and 1440), Anconitans traded grain, legumes, wine, salt, soap, oil, cheese, salted meats, livestock, and clothes in Ragusa; in Ancona, Ragusans sold hooded cloaks from Dalmatia and spices, sugar, cotton, and silks from the Peloponnese (Morea), Tartary, and the Crimea (Gazaria), not to mention gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones.5 The situation evolved further from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century: the granting of equal customs facilities to the Ragusans and to the Florentine, Sienese, and Lucchese merchants operating in the city made Ancona the preferred shipping port for Tuscan woolens directed to Constantinople and the Levant.6In addition to the historical essay, the book contains a complete transcription of sixty documents, including treaties between Ancona and Alexandria (Egypt), Kotor, Ragusa, Trogir, Venice, and Zadar, as well as summaries of 436 commercial agreements drawn up by Anconitan notaries and a short dictionary of medieval mercantile terms.With its impressive documentary apparatus and meticulous historical reconstruction, Ancona and Adriatic and Mediterranean Trading in the Fifteenth Century is a key resource for the analysis of commercial relations between Italy and the Balkans from a non-Venetian, but still significant, perspective.

Multiplex network embedding for implicit sentiment analysis

As one of the hot research directions in natural language processing, sentiment analysis has received continuous and extensive attention. Different from explicit sentiment words indicating sentiment polarity, implicit sentiment analysis is a more challenging problem due to the lack of sentiment words, which makes it inadequate to use traditional sentiment analysis method to judge the polarity of implicit sentiment. This paper takes sentiment analysis as a special sign link prediction problem, which is different from traditional text-based method. In particular, by performing the word graph-based text level information embedding and heterogeneous social network information embedding (i.e. user social relationship network embedding, and user-entity sentiment network embedding), the proposed scheme learns the highly nonlinear representations of network nodes, explores early fusion method to combine the strength of these two types of embedding modeling, optimizes all parameters simultaneously and creates enhanced context representations, leading to better capture of implicit sentiment polarity. The proposed method has been examined on real-world dataset, for implicit sentiment link prediction task. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art schemes, including LINE, node2vec, and SDNE, by 20.2%, 19.8%, and 14.0%, respectively, on accuracy, and achieves at least 14% gains on AUROC. For sentiment analysis accuracy, the proposed method achieves AUROC of 80.6% and accuracy of 78.3%, which is at least 31% better than other models. This work can provide useful guidance on the implicit sentiment analysis.

Topological polarization singularities in metaphotonics

AbstractPolarization singularities of vectorial electromagnetic fields locate at the positions where properties of polarization ellipses are not defined. First observed for conical diffraction in 1830s, polarization singularities have been studied systematically with the underlying concepts being reshaped and deepened by many pioneers of wave optics. Here we review the recent results on the generation and observation ofpolarization singularities in metaphotonics. We start with the discussion of polarization singularities in the Mie theory, where both electric and magnetic multipoles are explored from perspectives of local and global polarization properties. We then proceed with the discussion of various photonic-crystal structures, for which both near- and far-field patterns manifest diverse polarization singularities characterized by the integer Poincaré or more general half-integer Hopf indices (topological charges). Next, we review the most recent studies of conversions from polarization to phase singularities in scalar wave optics, demonstrating how bound states in the continuum can be exploited to generate directly optical vortices of various charges. Throughout our paper, we discuss and highlight several fundamental concepts and demonstrate their close connections and special links to metaphotonics. We believe polarization singularities can provide novel perspectives for light-matter manipulation for both fundamental studies and their practical applications.

IN A MODERN BUSINESS STRUCTURE, A RISK MANAGEMENT SERVICE IS PREFERRED

If we could identify a business risk in advance and solve it easily, business would probably lose its main charm. Risk is one of the essential components of business. Only proper identification of risks, their measurement - evaluation and selection of an effective method of reduction are not enough to improve risk management; It is necessary to develop an optimal organizational structure, develop an organizational culture and properly manage the risk management control process. In developed countries, almost all large and medium-sized organizations have a special link in the management system. "Risk Management Center", (Corporate governance) which helps accountable entities assess risks, develop and implement manipulation measures. The researches have proved that in some cases it is still strange to the Georgian business reality to take measures to evaluate risks and ways of their solution, which in some cases raises problems that lead to crucial results. Bankruptcy of foreign enterprises is not strange for the Georgian market, because in most cases they are unprepared to take risks and fail to take measures to solve them. Possible risks should be identified at an early stage of business formation to avoid unintended consequences. Modern tendencies show that it is desirable for companies to have a risk management service whose function will be to identify the expected risks, evaluate and offer anti-risk measures to managers. It is such companies that will show fewer losses from crisis.

Three dimensional nonlinear BEM formulations for the mechanical analysis of nonhomogeneous reinforced structural systems

This study presents a coupling formulation for the mechanical modelling of nonhomogeneous reinforced 3D structural systems. The coupling of dissimilar reinforced materials and components provides efficient designs. Particularly, it enables high stiffness and low weight mechanical components, which are largely desired in several engineering applications. In the present study, the Boundary Element Method (BEM) mechanically represents 3D solids through elastic and viscoelastic approaches. The 1D truss BEM elements represent the reinforcements, which allow for elastoplastic behaviour. The sub-region BEM technique models the nonhomogeneous systems whereas connection 1DBEM elements allow for crossing reinforcements along materials interfaces. Bond-slip behaviour has been accounted in the formulation by a nonlinear scheme without special link elements. Different bond-slip laws can be accounted, which enables the mechanical modelling of different adherence behaviours. The proposed formulations are applied in the mechanical analysis of four complex 3D applications. The results achieved by the proposed formulations are compared against the responses of equivalent numerical methods and experimental results available in the literature. The proposed formulations lead to accurate and stable results. Besides, the applications complexity demonstrates it.

Musical ability, music training, and language ability in childhood.

We tested theories of links between musical expertise and language ability in a sample of 6- to 9-year-old children. Language ability was measured with tests of speech perception and grammar. Musical expertise was measured with a test of musical ability that had 3 subtests (melody discrimination, rhythm discrimination, and long-term memory for music) and as duration of music training. Covariates included measures of demographics, general cognitive ability (IQ, working memory), and personality (openness-to-experience). Music training was associated positively with performance on the grammar test, musical ability, IQ, openness, and age. Musical ability predicted performance on the tests of speech perception and grammar, as well as IQ, working memory, openness, and age. Regression analyses-with other variables held constant-revealed that language abilities had significant partial associations with musical ability and IQ but not with music training. Rhythm discrimination was a better predictor of language skills compared with melody discrimination, but memory for music was equally good. Bayesian analyses confirmed the results from the standard analyses. The implications of the findings are threefold: (a) musical ability predicts language ability, and the association is independent of IQ and other confounding variables; (b) links between music and language appear to arise primarily from preexisting factors and not from formal training in music; and (c) evidence for a special link between rhythm and language may emerge only when rhythm discrimination is compared with melody discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).