Neural correlates of semantic and syntactic processes in the comprehension of case marked pronouns: Evidence from German and Dutch

Background  

It is well known that both semantic and syntactic information play a role in pronoun resolution in sentences. However, it is unclear what the relative contribution of these sources of information is for the establishment of a coreferential relationship between the pronoun and the antecedent in combination with a local structural case constraint on the pronoun (i.e. case assignment of a pronoun under preposition governing). In a prepositional phrase in German and Dutch, it is the preposition that assigns case to the pronoun. Furthermore, in these languages different overtly case-marked pronouns are used to refer to male and female persons. Thus, one can manipulate biological/syntactic gender features separately from case marking features.     

Geometric stable laws: Estimation and applications

Geometric stable laws constitute a class of limiting distributions of appropriately normalized random sums of i.i.d. random variables. We consider the problem of estimation of the parameters of univariate and multivariate geometric stable laws. Our estimation technique is based on the method of moments and yields consistent and asymptotically normal estimators. We apply our estimators to a currency exchange data and show that the geometric stable dominates Paretian stable and normal models.     

A Skew Laplace Distribution on Integers

We propose a discrete version of the skew Laplace distribution. In contrast with the discrete normal distribution, here closed form expressions are available for the probability density function, the distribution function, the characteristic function, the mean, and the variance. We show that this distribution on integers shares many properties of the skew Laplace distribution on the real line, including unimodality, infinite divisibility, closure properties with respect to geometric compounding, and a maximum entropy property. We also discuss statistical issues of estimation under this model.     

Anomalous atomic hydrogen shock pattern in a supersonic plasma Jet

A two-photon laser-induced fluorescence study on the transport of ground-state atomic hydrogen in a supersonic plasma jet, generated from an Ar-H (2) mixture, reveals an unexpected shock pattern. Whereas both the axial-velocity profile and the temperature profile of hydrogen atoms along the jet centerline can be interpreted in terms of a supersonic expansion of an Ar-H gas mixture, the H-atom density profiles do not satisfy the well established Rankine-Hugoniot relation leading to a nonconservation of the forward flux. The experimental results show that H atoms escape from the supersonic expansion by a diffusion process due to strong density gradients between the core of the jet and its vicinity.