Agreement is a pervasive phenomenon across natural languages. Depending on one’s definition of what constitutes agreement, it is either found in virtually every natural language that we know of, or ...it is at least found in a great many. Either way, it seems to be a core part of the system that underpins our syntactic knowledge. Since the introduction of the operation of Agree in Chomsky (2000), agreement phenomena and the mechanism that underlies agreement have garnered a lot of attention in the Minimalist literature and have received different theoretical treatments at different stages. Since then, many different phenomena involving dependencies between elements in syntax, including movement or not, have been accounted for using Agree. The mechanism of Agree thus provides a powerful tool to model dependencies between syntactic elements far beyond φ-feature agreement. The articles collected in this volume further explore these topics and contribute to the ongoing debates surrounding agreement. The authors gathered in this book are internationally reknown experts in the field of Agreement.
Developing Countries’ Vaccine Manufacturers Network was tasked with the strategic goal of seeking solutions, jointly with manufacturers, for enabling the stable, sustainable supply of quality ...vaccines to developing countries to increase global immunization. As vaccines are given to millions of healthy people, including children, to prevent life-threatening diseases, vaccines must meet high safety standards. Vaccine safety monitoring is of paramount importance to maintain trust in vaccination programs globally. Once a vaccine is licensed and recommended for use, its safety and effectiveness must be monitored during its whole lifecycle, as the safety profile and protective effectiveness may change over time. A well-established safety governance model across the organization with underlying processes for data collection, signal and risk management and communication is essential. A “fit for purpose” pharmacovigilance system may vary as it depends on several factors. However, all vaccine manufacturers strive to achieve a pharmacovigilance system satisfying Good Pharmacovigilance Practices, in compliance with national, international and supranational requirements, as applicable.
A landscape analysis, using a questionnaire covering nine pharmacovigilance key areas related to an effective system, was conducted to understand the existing pharmacovigilance structures, practices and expertise of vaccine manufacturers from emerging countries, on an institutional level. 34 of the 43 contacted manufacturers participated voluntarily. The survey results show that all respondents have established vaccine safety capacity, mainly in collecting and handling adverse events following immunization and implementing standardized processes; the survey also shows differences in the maturity of the manufacturers’ pharmacovigilance system, Quality Management System, signal and risk management, and safety governance. The analysis provides a tool for manufacturers to gain a “bird's-eye” view of the structure of pharmacovigilance key areas and the operational dimensions covered by each area, to benchmarking against international expectations, serving as a basis to further strengthen pharmacovigilance systems, to support accelerated global vaccine supply.
This paper investigates the licensing of infinitival subject relative clauses by clefted constituents. It is claimed that in Italian clefted constituents license infinitival subject relatives because ...in this language clefts function as contrastive foci. This claim is supported by the syntactic analysis of the position of clefted constituents that license infinitival subject relatives in Italian. It is argued that they occupy a left-peripheral Focus position in the clause. On the basis of extraction data, it is argued that the infinitival subject relative itself is a complement. Keywords: cleft; infinitival relative clause; contrastive focus; Italian; left-periphery.
This double-blind, randomized study evaluated the immunogenicity and safety of three production lots of the fully liquid combination DTwP-Hep-Hib vaccine, Quinvaxem
®
(Crucell, The Netherlands) in ...360 healthy infants aged 42-64 d old given at 6, 10 and 14 weeks of age (Core Study). The Core Study was followed by an open-label Booster Phase evaluating immunogenicity and safety of a booster dose of Quinvaxem
®
given with either concomitant or deferred measles vaccine in 227 infants who completed the Core Study. One month after the third dose of Quinvaxem
®
immune responses reflecting seroprotection or seroconversion were observed in more than 90% of infants for all three vaccine lots. Quinvaxem
®
elicited a strong booster response as demonstrated by a large increase in antibodies against all antigens, which appeared to be unaffected by concomitant administration of the measles vaccine. Safety results were in line with previous reports for Quinvaxem
®
with no unexpected adverse events (AEs) being reported. In the Core Study and Booster Phase, Quinvaxem
®
was well tolerated. No study vaccine-related serious AEs were reported. Thus, Quinvaxem
®
was immunogenic and well-tolerated when administered to infants according to a 6-10-14 week vaccination schedule. The three production lots had consistent reactogenicity and immunogenicity profiles. The booster dose of Quinvaxem
®
was also immunogenic and safe, regardless of whether a monovalent measles vaccine was administered concomitantly or one month later.
NOTE: Correction published in April 2013, Volume 9, Issue 4:
www.landesbioscience.com/journals/vaccines/article/24580/
► The pre-processing was arranged in a hierarchical manner. ► A library of pre-processing methods for Raman spectra was set together. ► The influence of pre-processing was checked for calibration and ...classification task. ► A genetic optimization was introduced in order to enhance the pre-processing.
Raman spectroscopy in combination with chemometrics is gaining more and more importance for answering biological questions. This results from the fact that Raman spectroscopy is non-invasive, marker-free and water is not corrupting Raman spectra significantly. However, Raman spectra contain despite Raman fingerprint information other contributions like fluorescence background, Gaussian noise, cosmic spikes and other effects dependent on experimental parameters, which have to be removed prior to the analysis, in order to ensure that the analysis is based on the Raman measurements and not on other effects.
Here we present a comprehensive study of the influence of pre-processing procedures on statistical models. We will show that a large amount of possible and physically meaningful pre-processing procedures leads to bad results. Furthermore a method based on genetic algorithms (GAs) is introduced, which chooses the spectral pre-processing according to the carried out analysis task without trying all possible pre-processing approaches (grid-search). This was demonstrated for the two most common tasks, namely for a multivariate calibration model and for two classification models. However, the presented approach can be applied in general, if there is a computational measure, which can be optimized. The suggested GA procedure results in models, which have a higher precision and are more stable against corrupting effects.
This book investigates two elliptical coordinations in German, Right Node Raising and Gapping. Ellipsis in both constructions is claimed to be the result of a phonological process which is ...conditioned by prosodic and focus semantic constraints. It is convincingly argued that Right Node Raising cannot involve raising to the right periphery: The alleged movement freely violates any of the well-known restrictions on syntactic movement and it does not alter the scope relations within the coordination. Gapping in contrast is more sensitive to syntactic conditions in that its remnants must be major syntactic constituents. The author carefully examines the close connection between focus and ellipsis in the two constructions. A considered discussion of focus structure demonstrates that the conjuncts are informationally dependent on each other. This co-dependence is also reflected in their particular intonational contour which is argued to be responsible for ellipsis in coordination.
Psychological birth trauma and childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder represent a substantial burden of disease with 6.6 million mothers and 1.7 million fathers or co-parents affected by ...childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder worldwide each year. There is mounting evidence to indicate that parents who develop childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder do so as a direct consequence of a traumatic childbirth experience. High-risk groups, such as those who experience preterm birth, stillbirth, or preeclampsia, have higher prevalence rates. The main risks include antenatal factors (eg, depression in pregnancy, fear of childbirth, poor health or complications in pregnancy, history of trauma or sexual abuse, or mental health problems), perinatal factors (eg, negative subjective birth experience, operative birth, obstetrical complications, and severe maternal morbidity, as well as maternal near misses, lack of support, dissociation), and postpartum factors (eg, depression, postpartum physical complications, and poor coping and stress).
The link between birth events and childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder provides a valuable opportunity to prevent traumatic childbirths and childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder from occurring in the first place. Childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder is an extremely distressing mental disorder and has a substantial negative impact on those who give birth, fathers or co-parents, and, potentially, the whole family. Still, a traumatic childbirth experience and childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder remain largely unrecognized in maternity services and are not routinely screened for during pregnancy and the postpartum period. In fact, there are gaps in the evidence on how, when, and who to screen.
Similarly, there is a lack of evidence on how best to treat those affected. Primary prevention efforts (eg, screening for antenatal risk factors, use of trauma-informed care) are aimed at preventing a traumatic childbirth experience and childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder in the first place by eliminating or reducing risk factors for childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Secondary prevention approaches (eg, trauma-focused psychological therapies, early psychological interventions) aim to identify those who have had a traumatic childbirth experience and to intervene to prevent the development of childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Tertiary prevention (eg, trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) seeks to ensure that people with childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder are identified and treated to recovery so that childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder does not become chronic.
Adequate prevention, screening, and intervention could alleviate a considerable amount of suffering in affected families. In light of the available research on the impact of childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder on families, it is important to develop and evaluate assessment, prevention, and treatment interventions that target the birthing person, the couple dyad, the parent-infant dyad, and the family as a whole. Further research should focus on the inclusion of couples in different constellations and, more generally, on the inclusion of more diverse populations in diverse settings. The paucity of national and international policy guidance on the prevention, care, and treatment of psychological birth trauma and the lack of formal psychological birth trauma services and training, highlight the need to engage with service managers and policy makers.
The book contains a collection of articles on focus in the Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic language groups. It investigates focus-related phenomena from different theoretical and methodological ...perspectives: the interaction of focus and prosody, the effect of focus on word order, the inventory of focus-marking devices, and others. The volume enhances the understanding of focus-marking in natural language.
•A first description of a fragment of South Marghi (Central Chadic) is given.•Several Chadic languages are compared with respect to their focus systems.•A cross-Chadic blocking effect between verum ...and constituent focus is described.•The results are compared with German.
This article analyses the grammatical realization of verum in a number of Chadic languages. It shows that the verum operator cannot be expressed in wh-questions, congruent answers, relative clauses or sentences containing a negated constituent. It is argued that this blocking effect follows from a lexical restriction of the verum operator in Chadic languages: it is not able to select an expression that denotes a set of alternatives. This restriction does not hold universally. In German, verum may be expressed in all of the aforementioned cases. The article opts for an analysis of verum as a conversational operator (see Romero and Han, 2004). Based on a number of arguments, it is argued that verum is not a type of focus, at least not in the Chadic languages.
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