In speech production, high-frequency words are more likely than low-frequency words to be phonologically reduced. We tested in an eye-tracking experiment whether listeners can make use of this correlation between lexical frequency and phonological realization of words. Participants heard prefixed verbs in which the prefix was either fully produced or reduced. Simultaneously, they saw a high-fre...

Thus the systems studied by CCGS do seem to be examSandslide or avalanche models were introduced in the work of Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld [1]. They looked at the process of adding grains of sand arbitrarily slowly to a model sandpile, and studied the spectrum of avalanches produced by the individual addition events. They suggested that the pile would adjust its slope to a critical value in whic...

Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890-1905), collaboration (1905-1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics de...

The autumn of 2014 saw public debate about the appropriate threshold for abortion and gestational age. Gestational age can be determined in a number of ways and ultrasound examination represents an important contribution. In Norway, two methods are in use: the Terminhjulet obstetric wheel, developed in Bergen (the Bergen method) by a group that includes some of the authors of this article, and ...

Adults rate average faces as more attractive than most of the faces used in the creation of the average. One explanation for this is that average faces appear as both more familiar and more attractive because they resemble internal face prototypes formed from experience. Here we evaluated that explanation by examining the influence of recent experience on participants' subsequent judgments of a...

Following the 1900 congress in Paris, the beginning of the 20th century saw comparative law emerge as a significant discipline. This paper suggests that the early 21st century is seeing the decline, or maybe even the ‘end’, of comparative law. In contrast to other claims which see the 21st century as the ‘era of comparative law’, there are at least four trends which give rise to pessimism: ‘the...

In this letter in the framework of a simple see-saw scenario with two (or three) quasi degenerate Majorana neutrinos we propose that one of these neutrinos can be very weakly coupled, yet there is a mechanism of the generation of the abundance of such ”dark” neutrino in the early universe. The mechanism of production is due to oscillations between ”dark” Majorana neutrino and one of the Majoran...

Evolutionary psychologists have proposed that humans possess cognitive mechanisms for social exchange, but have perhaps focused overmuch on "cheating", because avoiding exploitation in reciprocal exchange could be accomplished either by avoidance of defectors or by attraction to cooperators. Past studies that have claimed to support the existence of a "cheater-detection module" by finding enhan...

Biology and the particular gun culture of the United States come together to explain the persistent and powerful attraction of American boys to both real guns and toy guns. The 1990s saw adults begin to conflate “the gun problem” with “the boy problem,” sparking attempts (largely failed) to banish toy guns from homes and schools. Following the approach of play scholar Gregory Bateson, this arti...

South Africa going to second democratic elections saw two path-breaking works exploring disgraceful crimes and emotional commotions in an intriguing era. One is J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) and Andre Brink's The Rights of Desire (2000). The Protagonists of both the works are middle-aged caught in the noose of Eros and are seen resisting the change of tides and resigned to the fateful happenin...