The relation of spatial language and spatial cognition is central to the debate over language and thought. Recent findings move this debate beyond the standard opposition between universalist and relativist (Whorfian) stances. Two such studies suggest that spatial language (Khetarpal et al., 2009) and the spatial cognition underlying it (Khetarpal et al., 2010) both reflect universal tendencies...

Many theories hold that semantic variation in the world’s languages can be explained in terms of a universal conceptual space that is partitioned differently by different languages. Recent work has supported this view in the semantic domain of containers (Malt et al., 1999), and assumed it in the domain of spatial relations (Khetarpal et al., 2009), based in both cases on similarity judgments d...

BACKGROUND Pneumonia heavily contributes to global under-five mortality. Many countries use community case management to detect and treat childhood pneumonia. Community health workers (CHWs) have limited tools to help them assess signs of pneumonia. New respiratory rate (RR) counting devices and pulse oximeters are being considered for this purpose. OBJECTIVE To explore perspectives of CHWs a...

When English speakers successively pile-sort colors, their sorting recapitulates an independently proposed hierarchy of color category evolution during language change (Boster, 1986). Here we extend that finding to the semantic domain of spatial relations. Levinson et al. (2003) have proposed a hierarchy of spatial category evolution, and we show that English speakers successively pile-sort spa...

Understanding gender norms, power and equity is important for developing successful sexual and reproductive health interventions. However, little attention has been given to how to capture the gender ideals and imbalances that inform these relationships in low resource settings. Pile sorting exercises were conducted in four gender-segregated focus groups in Ethiopia and Kenya. Each group receiv...

Using a series of model tests, this study investigated the effect of a passive pile on 3D ground deformation around a laterally loaded pile and on that laterally loaded pile's response in sand. The active pile head was subjected to lateral loads, and the passive pile was arranged in front of the active pile. In the model tests, the distance between the two pile centers was set to zero (i.e., a ...

We study the evolution of a one-dimensional pile, empty at rst, which receives a grain in its rst stack at each iteration. The nal position of grains is singular: grains are sorted according to their parity. They are sorted on trapezoidal areas alternating on both sides of a diagonal line of slope p 2. This is explained and proved by means of a local study. Each generated pile, encoded in heigh...

A new efficient and accurate hybrid reliability method is proposed to estimate risk of an axially loaded single pile considering pile-soil interaction effect. Uncertainties associated with all the design variables are considered appropriately. It intelligently integrates the concepts of the response surface method, the finite difference method, the first-order reliability method, and an iterati...