This paper presents several new empirical observations regarding some interpretive effects and structural restrictions of modals that occur in sentence-initial positions in Chinese. It provides a new ...analysis of sentence-initial modal sentences in terms of the overt head-movement of a modal to the sentence periphery to value strong focus features and to focus-mark either the proposition or the subject of a sentence. This new proposal helps explain the markedness exhibited by such sentences, correctly predicts the structural and semantic restrictions of modal sentences, and directly explains the scopal interactions observed between modals and various types of focus constructions. It also shows that changes in word order in Chinese are not ascribable simply to an optional or free derivation in syntax but are related to an understudied mechanism in that language, i.e. T-to-C movement, and that the roles of information structure are represented as formal features in syntax. The results shed new light on how Chinese – though profoundly different from Germanic and Romance languages typologically – exemplifies a similarly fine structure in the sentence-internal domain, parallel associations of scope-bearing units with sentences’ left peripheries, and a neat interaction of syntax with discourse configurations.
In Spanish clitic-doubling constructions, the clitic should agree in number with its coreferential doubled noun phrase. However, the present corpus analysis with data from 21 Spanish varieties ...reveals that, under certain structural configurations, number agreement is not always realized on the third-person dative clitic. In fact, the data shows that non-agreement appears to be the norm when the indirect object is a lexical noun phrase (77 vs. 23%). In this paper, I investigate two possible explanations for this phenomenon: (i) a processing account
via
an attraction effect and (ii) a syntactic account based on intervention effects. These two hypotheses make clear and testable predictions that I examine by means of conditional inference trees and Bayesian generalized mixed-effects logistic regression modeling. The results of the statistical analyses are incompatible with an intervention account because this type of phenomenon is not sensitive to semantic features of the intervening element or to the true controller of agreement. Thus, I propose that the data is best analyzed as the interplay between attraction and the morphosyntax of the unmarked. In Spanish, this results in attraction effects from the DO in the unmarked word order and inanimate IOs showing a sort of differential dative marking, where animate IOs show a preference for full agreement. The findings reported herein show evidence of a complex and highly dynamic agreement mechanism of the clitic and highlight the probabilistic nature of morphosyntactic processes.
Hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia have emerged as global health concerns of paramount significance. With the burgeoning popularity of mind-body therapy, cardiovascular patients have ...increasingly exhibited a vested interest in the practice of Tai Chi. The objective of this study seeks to quantitatively assess the impact of Tai Chi interventions on blood pressure, lipid levels, and glucose concentrations among the elderly population, thereby explaining the optimal intervention protocol.
An extensive search was conducted across multiple databases, including Web of Science, PubMed, CNKI, WANFANG DATA, RISS, KISS, and DBPIA, comprising English, Korean, and Chinese literature. The search strategy employed a retrieval method of subject term 1 + subject term 2, which included both full names and abbreviations of the terms. Specifically, "taijiquan" or "Tai Chi" were set as the Term 1, while Term 2 was set as "blood pressure," "BP," "Fasting blood glucose," "FBG," "Triglyceride," and "TG." Thereafter, the retrieved articles were filtered in accordance with the PICOS method. Risk of bias assessment was performed using RoB 2.0, while data analysis was conducted using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis 3.7.
A total of 57 studies, including 3,856 research subjects, were eligible for inclusion. The findings of the primary effect quantitative synthesis demonstrated that Tai Chi exerted an improvement on systolic blood pressure (SBP) (ES = -0.764,
< .001), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (ES = -0.426,
= .001), triglyceride (TG) (ES = -0.452,
< .001), and fasting blood glucose concentrations (FBG) (ES = -0.552,
= .002) among middle-aged and elderly individuals. Subgroup analysis further revealed that the intervention effects were significantly influenced by the characteristics of the research subjects and the specific intervention protocol employed.
Tai Chi, as a gentle form of aerobic exercise, exerts a profound impact on reducing blood pressure, fasting blood glucose levels, and triglyceride concentrations among middle-aged and elderly individuals. Notably, the intervention effect is particularly pronounced among male patients afflicted with hypertension, hyperglycemia, and hyperlipidemia. Based on the collective advantages underscored by this research, we strongly recommend engaging in Tai Chi exercises for a minimum duration of 16 weeks, with each session lasting 30-50 min and conducted 6-7 times per week, without any restrictions on the style employed.
We investigate the syntax of the hitherto understudied phenomenon of first conjunct clitic doubling, with reference to Modern Greek. We argue that it provides crucial evidence against movement-based ...approaches to clitic doubling, which would incorrectly rule out first conjunct clitic doubling as a violation of the Coordinate Structure Constraint. This argument against movement is complemented by evidence from binding, showing that doubled DPs consistently occupy their base positions. The Greek data instead favor an account based purely on feature transmission via Agree. We develop an Agree-based analysis of the Greek facts, and show that existing evidence for movement in Greek clitic doubling (Weak Crossover alleviation, suspension of intervention effects) can be insightfully reanalyzed. The alleviation of Weak Crossover effects receives a more straightforward account compared to movement-based approaches, in that it can be subsumed under the general mitigating effects of information structure (givenness, topicality); the intervention pattern follows once the activity of a DP is related to the involvement of its phi-features in Agree operations; and the distribution of clitic doubling is implemented by means of a licensing approach, assimilating clitic doubling to differential object marking. Finally, we address two morphological aspects of clitic doubling that are often taken to be challenging for an Agree-based account, namely, the syncretism between determiners and clitics, and tense invariance. We show that, upon closer inspection, the former is no less challenging for movement approaches, while the latter cannot be considered a reliable diagnostic to tease apart agreement and clitic doubling.
While interpretation-bias modification (IBM) is an effective intervention for treating anxiety, it is not broadly used in clinical or daily practice. To this end, this study developed and tested a ...smartphone-based IBM application. We adopted the ambiguous situation paradigm as an intervention task in conjunction with robust training materials that broadly covered situations encountered in daily life. We recruited participants with high-trait anxiety and divided them into three groups: (1) positive training; (2) 50% positive-50% negative training; and (3) no-training control. The first two groups completed 28 days of smartphone-based training (IBM in positive cases), and all groups completed six rounds of assessments. The smartphone-based IBM training changed positive and negative endorsements and more specific measures of interpretation bias, thus reducing anxiety. The results also showed that changes in the number of negative interpretations played a mediating role in anxiety reduction. It is notable that the attrition rate was extremely low across the experiment. Our follow-up showed that positive gains persisted throughout the intervening period. Smartphone-based IBM can help individuals with anxiety shift negative biases, broaden their thoughts, enhance their information processing, and effectively target the clinical features of anxiety.
Summary
Background
Although early childhood obesity prevention has become an important issue internationally, little evidence exists regarding longer term effects (i.e., sustainability) of early ...interventions.
Objective
To determine whether intervention benefits at 2 years of age were sustained at 3.5 and 5 years.
Methods
Follow‐up of the Early Prevention of Obesity in Children (EPOCH) individual participant data prospective meta‐analysis of four randomized controlled trials including 2196 mother–child dyads at baseline. Interventions were home‐ or community‐based, commenced within 6 months of birth, ended by 2 years of age, and comprised multiple sessions. Controls received standard care. BMI z‐score (primary outcome), other anthropometric measures and weight‐related behaviours were initially measured at 1.5–2 years and followed up at 3.5 and 5 years.
Results
Positive intervention effects on BMI z‐scores at 1.5–2 years of age were not apparent by 3.5 years (−0.04 adjusted mean difference; 95% CI:−0.14, 0.06; p = 0.424), and 5 years (0.03; 95% CI: −0.08, 0.14; p = 0.60). While prolonged intervention benefits were detected for a few, but not the majority of, weight‐related behaviours at 3.5 years, these effects diminished over time.
Conclusion
This meta‐analysis found that initial positive effects of childhood obesity interventions faded out after interventions ended, pointing toward the importance of a suite of interventions implemented at multiple stages across childhood.
Clefts are understood as biclausal structures involving the movement of a clefted constituent from a lower clause, where it is generated, to a higher clause, where it is interpreted. Though both ...grammatical, subject and object clefts show signs of different acceptability in experimental settings. This degradation is ascribed to the fact that the object needs to cross an intervening subject, thus triggering intervention effects. In this paper, we show that intervention effects are also present in grammatical configurations, and give rise to lower-than-expected frequencies. Based on sets of features that play a role in the syntactic computation of locality, we compare the theoretically expected and the actually observed counts of features in a corpus of thirteen syntactically annotated treebanks for three languages (English, French, Italian). We find the quantitative effects predicted by the theory of intervention locality: object clefts are less frequent than expected in intervention configuration, while subject clefts are roughly as frequent as expected. We also find that the size of the effect is proportional to the number of features that give rise to the intervention effect. These results provide a three-fold contribution. First, they extend the empirical evidence in favour of the feature-based intervention theory of locality. Second, they provide theory-driven quantitative evidence, thus extending in a novel way the sources of evidence used to adjudicate theories. Finally, the paper provides a blueprint for future theory-driven quantitative investigations.
Abstract
Background
The cost of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) for hepatitis C virus (HCV) prompted many payers to restrict treatment to patients who met non–evidence-based criteria. These ...restrictions have implications for survival of people with HCV, especially for people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/HCV coinfection who are at high risk for liver disease progression. The goal of this work was to estimate the effects of DAA access policies on 10-year all-cause mortality among people with HIV.
Methods
The study population included 3056 adults with HIV in the Women’s Interagency HIV Study and Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study from 1 October 1994 through 30 September 2015. We used the parametric g-formula to estimate 10-year all-cause mortality under DAA access policies that included treating (i) all people with HCV; (ii) only people with suppressed HIV; (iii) only people with severe fibrosis; and (iv) only people with HIV suppression and severe fibrosis.
Results
The 10-year risk difference of treating all coinfected persons with DAAs compared with no treatment was –3.7% (95% confidence interval CI, –9.1% to .6%). Treating only those with suppressed HIV and severe fibrosis yielded a risk difference of –1.1% (95% CI, –2.8% to .6%), with 51% (95% CI, 38%–59%) of coinfected persons receiving DAAs. Treating a random selection of 51% of coinfected persons at baseline decreased the risk by 1.9% (95% CI, –4.7% to .3%).
Conclusions
Restrictive DAA access policies may decrease survival compared to treating similar proportions of people with HIV/HCV coinfection with DAAs at random. These findings suggest that lives could be saved by thoughtfully revising access policies.
Restrictive hepatitis C medication access policies may decrease survival compared to treating similar proportions of people with human immunodeficiency virus/hepatitis C coinfection with these medications at random. These findings suggest that lives could be saved by thoughtfully revising these access policies.
Life history analysis has evolved in the last 50 years as a methodology for analyzing processes associated with human health, education, employment, and other areas. The complexity of many processes, ...the difficulty of obtaining complete and accurate data, and the increased use of observational data from registries and administrative sources have posed many recent challenges. We review the evolution of life history analysis, discuss some recent work, and consider three areas currently receiving much attention. A theme we stress is the use of expanded models that include selection and observation processes for studies in addition to the life history process of interest. Examples from health research are presented.
Résumé
L'analyse du cycle de vie a évolué au cours des 50 dernières années en tant que méthodologie pour analyser les processus associés à la santé humaine, à l'éducation, à l'emploi et à d'autres domaines. La complexité de nombreux processus, la difficulté d'obtenir des données complètes et exactes et l'utilisation accrue de données d'observation provenant de registres et de sources administratives ont posé de nombreux défis récents. Les auteurs de cet article passent en revue l'évolution de l'analyse du cycle de vie, discutent de travaux récents et examinent trois domaines qui font actuellement l'objet de beaucoup d'attention. Ils mettent également l'accent sur l'utilisation de modèles étendus qui incluent des processus de sélection et d'observation pour les études en plus du processus de l'histoire de la vie d'intérêt. Des exemples de recherche en santé sont présentés.
We describe five asymptotically unbiased estimators of intervention effects on event rates in nonmatched and matched-pair cluster randomized trials, and we present a bias-corrected version of the ...estimators for use when the number of clusters is small. The estimators are the ratio of mean counts (r
1), ratio of mean cluster-level event rates (r
2), ratio of event rates (r
3), double ratio of counts (r
4), and double ratio of event rates (r
5). r
1, r
2, and r
3 estimate the total effect, which comprises the direct and indirect effects; r
4 and r
5 estimate the direct effect. We describe a new command, crtrest, that provides these ratio estimators and their standard errors in nonmatched and matched-pair cluster randomized trials.
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