This paper investigates the underlying cognitive processes of sound-color associations by connecting perceptual evidence from research on cross-modal correspondences to sound symbolic patterns in the words for colors in natural languages. Building upon earlier perceptual experiments, we hypothesized that sonorous and bright phonemes would be over-represented in the words for bright and saturated colors. This hypothesis was tested on eleven color words and related concepts (red-green, yellow-blue, black-white, gray, night-day, dark-light) from 245 language families. Textual data was transcribed into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and each phoneme was described acoustically using high-quality IPA recordings. These acoustic measurements were then correlated with the luminance and saturation of each color obtained from cross-linguistic color-naming data in the World Color Survey. As expected, vowels with high brightness and sonority ratings were over-represented in the words for colors with high luminance, while sonorous consonants were more common in the words for saturated colors. We discuss these results in relation to lexicalization patterns and the links between iconicity and perceptual cross-modal associations.

Abstract The European Commission asked EFSA for a scientific evaluation on the risks to human health related to the presence of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in food. Based on several similar effects in animals, toxicokinetics and observed concentrations in human blood, the CONTAM Panel decided to perform the assessment for the sum of four PFASs: PFOA, PFNA, PFHxS and PFOS. These made up half of the lower bound (LB) exposure to those PFASs with available occurrence data, the remaining contribution being primarily from PFASs with short half‐lives. Equal potencies were assumed for the four PFASs included in the assessment. The mean LB exposure in adolescents and adult age groups ranged from 3 to 22, the 95th percentile from 9 to 70 ng/kg body weight (bw) per week. Toddlers and ‘other children’ showed a twofold higher exposure. Upper bound exposure was 4‐ to 49‐fold higher than LB levels, but the latter were considered more reliable. ‘Fish meat’, ‘Fruit and fruit products’ and ‘Eggs and egg products’ contributed most to the exposure. Based on available studies in animals and humans, effects on the immune system were considered the most critical for the risk assessment. From a human study, a lowest BMDL 10 of 17.5 ng/mL for the sum of the four PFASs in serum was identified for 1‐year‐old children. Using PBPK modelling, this serum level of 17.5 ng/mL in children was estimated to correspond to long‐term maternal exposure of 0.63 ng/kg bw per day. Since accumulation over time is important, a tolerable weekly intake (TWI) of 4.4 ng/kg bw per week was established. This TWI also protects against other potential adverse effects observed in humans. Based on the estimated LB exposure, but also reported serum levels, the CONTAM Panel concluded that parts of the European population exceed this TWI, which is of concern.

In the era of Industry 4.0, researchers have begun to more thoroughly examine digital maintenance, i.e., eMaintenance, as digitization is increasingly affecting today's society. This area is particularly interesting in the case of long-life components such as those used in the mining and transport industries. With eMaintenance, the correct type of maintenance can be utilized and the frequency for device maintenance can be reduced through real-time diagnosis. This leads to reduced costs for companies that implement eMaintenance as well as environmental benefits through improved resource utilization. Advantages of eMaintenance have been described in the literature; however, the capabilities necessary to implement eMaintenance lack proper research. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework that presents the required capabilities and their connection when an organization wants to implement eMaintenance, as well as to identify the outcomes of the transition to eMaintenance. The study is based on an exploratory case study that includes 26 interviews with a digital railway maintenance development company and its main customer, the traffic agency. The study findings are presented in a framework, including five main capabilities for implementing eMaintenance and its relationship within the noted industries. The required capabilities are, namely, digital technology development, organizational development, change of work routines, compliance with regulations, and assuring information security. The framework also analyzes the outcomes of implementing digital maintenance, which demonstrate a variety of economic, environmental, and social benefits.

We report a series of 22 experiments in which the implicit associations test (IAT) was used to investigate cross-modal correspondences between visual (luminance, hue [R-G, B-Y], saturation) and acoustic (loudness, pitch, formants [F1, F2], spectral centroid, trill) dimensions. Colors were sampled from the perceptually accurate CIE-Lab space, and the complex, vowel-like sounds were created with a formant synthesizer capable of separately manipulating individual acoustic properties. In line with previous reports, the loudness and pitch of acoustic stimuli were associated with both luminance and saturation of the presented colors. However, pitch was associated specifically with color lightness, whereas loudness mapped onto greater visual saliency. Manipulating the spectrum of sounds without modifying their pitch showed that an upward shift of spectral energy was associated with the same visual features (higher luminance and saturation) as higher pitch. In contrast, changing formant frequencies of synthetic vowels while minimizing the accompanying shifts in spectral centroid failed to reveal cross-modal correspondences with color. This may indicate that the commonly reported associations between vowels and colors are mediated by differences in the overall balance of low- and high-frequency energy in the spectrum rather than by vowel identity as such. Surprisingly, the hue of colors with the same luminance and saturation was not associated with any of the tested acoustic features, except for a weak preference to match higher pitch with blue (vs. yellow). We discuss these findings in the context of previous research and consider their implications for sound symbolism in world languages.

This article investigates the evolutionary and spatial dynamics of typological characters in 117 Indo-European languages. We partition types of change (i.e., gain or loss) for each variant according to whether they bring about a simplification in morphosyntactic patterns that must be learned, whether they are neutral (i.e., neither simplifying nor introducing complexity) or whether they introduce a more complex pattern. We find that changes which introduce complexity show significantly less areal signal (according to a metric we devise) than changes which simplify and neutral changes, but we find no significant differences between the latter two groups. This result is compatible with a scenario where certain types of parallel change are more likely to be mediated by advergence and contact between proximate speech communities, while other developments are due purely to drift and are largely independent of intercultural contact.

Abstract The European Commission asked EFSA for a scientific evaluation on the risks to human health related to the presence of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in food. Regarding PFOS and PFOA occurrence, the final data set available for dietary exposure assessment contained a total of 20,019 analytical results (PFOS n = 10,191 and PFOA n = 9,828). There were large differences between upper and lower bound exposure due to analytical methods with insufficient sensitivity. The CONTAM Panel considered the lower bound estimates to be closer to true exposure levels. Important contributors to the lower bound mean chronic exposure were ‘Fish and other seafood’, ‘Meat and meat products’ and ‘Eggs and egg products’, for PFOS, and ‘Milk and dairy products’, ‘Drinking water’ and ‘Fish and other seafood’ for PFOA. PFOS and PFOA are readily absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract, excreted in urine and faeces, and do not undergo metabolism. Estimated human half‐lives for PFOS and PFOA are about 5 years and 2–4 years, respectively. The derivation of a health‐based guidance value was based on human epidemiological studies. For PFOS, the increase in serum total cholesterol in adults, and the decrease in antibody response at vaccination in children were identified as the critical effects. For PFOA, the increase in serum total cholesterol was the critical effect. Also reduced birth weight (for both compounds) and increased prevalence of high serum levels of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT) (for PFOA) were considered. After benchmark modelling of serum levels of PFOS and PFOA, and estimating the corresponding daily intakes, the CONTAM Panel established a tolerable weekly intake (TWI) of 13 ng/kg body weight (bw) per week for PFOS and 6 ng/kg bw per week for PFOA. For both compounds, exposure of a considerable proportion of the population exceeds the proposed TWIs.

Feature stability, time and tempo of change, and the role of genealogy versus areality in creating linguistic diversity are important issues in current computational research on linguistic typology. This paper presents a database initiative, DiACL Typology, which aims to provide a resource for addressing these questions with specific of the extended Indo-European language area of Eurasia, the region with the best documented linguistic history. The database is pre-prepared for statistical and phylogenetic analyses and contains both linguistic typological data from languages spanning over four millennia, and linguistic metadata concerning geographic location, time period, and reliability of sources. The typological data has been organized according to a hierarchical model of increasing granularity in order to create datasets that are complete and representative.

Sound symbolism is a universal component of language (Samarin 1978;Blasi et al. 2016), but it can also adapt to language-specific constraints such as phoneme inventories, since different languages often use various, albeit phonetically similar, types of sounds for the same sound symbolic association.It is thus natural to investigate the phenomenon from a bottom-up perspective without any initial assumptions other than that it is a universal, non-arbitrary and flexible association between sound and meaning.However, most previous crosslinguistic studies have been small in scope, and larger-scale studies (Wichmann et al. 2010;Blasi et al. 2016) have not captured many phonetic distinctions important for sound symbolism, e.g.voicing (Ohala 1994;Johansson 2017).Furthermore, experiments have usually focused on matching ready-made sound symbolic words to different stimuli (cf.Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001), rather than investigating how sound symbolic associations develop among language users.The present study attempts to amend these issues by focusing on how sound symbolism operates through a more thorough examination of the phonetic and semantic features involved, both cross-linguistically and experimentally.First, 344 concepts with claimed universal tendencies (e.g.Swadesh 1971; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002) were investigated in 245 language families and the phonemes of the linguistic forms were systematically grouped according to phonetically salient parameters to pinpoint the features responsible for each sound symbolic association.178 statistically significant sound-meaning associations were found based on the standard scores calculated for the occurrence of each sound group in each concept, and their occurrence in all of six geographical macro-areas.In addition, these associations could in turn be correlated with at least 45 out of the 100 items of the regular Swadesh-list (Swadesh 1971), raising several questions about the validity of the list as a tool for establishing genetic relationships.Secondly, 42 macro-concepts were

This paper investigates how cross-linguistic phoneme distributions of 56 fundamental oppositional concepts can reveal semantic relationships by looking into the linguistic forms of 75 genetically and areally distributed languages. Based on proposals of semantic primes (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2002), reduced Swadesh lists (Holman et al. 2008), presumed ultraconservative words (Pagel et al. 2013), attested basic antonyms (Paradis, Willners & Jones 2009) and sense perception words, semantic oppositional pairs were selected. Phonemes were divided according to: the frequency of vowels’ second formant and consonants’ energy accumulation, sonority, a combination of the aforementioned two, and general phonetic traits, e.g. voicing. Using a biplot, the phonological relatedness between the investigated concepts was illustrated graphically, and the phoneme distributions’ over- and underrepresentation from the average was calculated for each concept. Salient semantic groupings and relations based solely on phonological contrasts were found for most investigated concepts, including the semantic domains: Small, Intense Vision-Touch, Large, Organic, Horizontal-Vertical Distance, Deictic, Containment, Gender, Parent and Diurnal, and the sole concept old. The most notable relations found were: mother/i vs. father, a three-way deictic distinction and a dimensional tripartite oppositional relationship. Embodiment, oppositional thinking and evidence for more general concepts to precede complex concepts were proposed as explanations for the results.

The Super ADAM reflectometer—a part of Collaborative Research Group at ILL—is modern competitive neutron research platform which is destined primarily for Swedish use (70% of total beam time). Supe...

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are widely used as a class of brominated flame-retardants. As a congener of PBDEs, 2,2′,4,4′-tetrabromodiphenylether (BDE 47) is the most toxic congener to animals. In this study, we applied metabolomics to characterize the gender-specific metabolic responses in mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis exposed to BDE 47 for 30 days. Results indicated the apparent gender-specific responses in M. galloprovincialis with BDE 47 exposures (1 and 10 μg/L) at metabolite level. Basically, BDE 47 induced disruption in osmotic regulation and altered energy metabolism in mussels, via differential metabolic pathways. In addition, the hormesis phenomenon was observed in both male and female mussel samples exposed the two concentrations of BDE 47, indicated by the contrarily altered metabolites from two BDE 47 treatments (1 and 10 μg/L), respectively. Overall, this study confirmed the gender-specific responses to BDE 47 exposures in mussels and suggested the gender differences should be considered in marine ecotoxicology.

This paper investigates iconicity as a possible driving force behind the rebuilding of deictic systems and forms in individual languages. A comparison of a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European deictic system (based mainly on Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, 1995) compared with the systems of attested Indo-European languages makes it clear that both systems and forms have undergone change, may it be through sound change, analogy, and/or semantic change. Based on the assumptions by Ultan (Universals of Human Language 2, Phonology, 1978), Woodworth (1991), Traunmüller (Tongues and Texts Unlimited. Studies in Honour of Tore Jansson on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Anniversary, 1994), and Johansson and Zlatev (Motivations for Sound Symbolism in Spatial Deixis: A Typological Study of 101 languages. The Public Journal of Semiotics, 2013), iconicity obviously plays a role in the synchronic systems of spatial deixis, which in turn indicates the iconicity has played a role on the process of change, both of the forms themselves and the systems as such. Data from 13 contemporary and 17 historical languages, belonging to 12 Indo-European branches was used. Vowels and consonants were divided into voiceless sounds as being more proximal, and voiced sounds being more distal (see the explanation below). The voiced sounds were divided according to the frequency of their f2, with [i] and voiced palatal consonants as more proximal and [u] as more distal (Ohala, Sound Symbolism, 1994). Results were divided into motivated (fulfilling the expected relation between deictic form and sound value), non-motivated (arbitrary), and reversed-motivated (the reverse of motivated). Five strategies of rebuilding deictic systems and forms were identified. None of the languages investigated have used a system identical to the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed system. Mostly internal material from the Proto-Indo-European deictic system was used in the forms of the systems of the daughter languages. Generally, a statistically significant motivated support was found: 70.2% of the forms of the languages used were identified as motivated, 9.2–10.4% were non-motivated and 19.4–20.7% reversed-motivated. Due to the different strategies of rebuilding systems and forms, generative explanations for the motivated support should be excluded. Hence, iconicity seemed to be reintroduced after the decay, by means of language change, of a former (motivated) deictic system. Therefore, it turned out as a very likely conclusion that iconicity has been and is involved in the rebuilding of deictic material, relating to the systems as such.

This paper takes its basis in onomatopoeia and sound symbolism and investigates the processes of language change that create these phenomena. Data have mainly been taken from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family in which the origin of onomatopoeic expressions, as well as sound symbolic clusters, or phonaesthemes, can be traced historically to Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European. Two main types of motivated connections between expression and content are distinguished: iconic and indexical. Iconic connections basically embrace onomatopoeic expression, in which there is an attempt towards creating a likeness between the sound created by the content and the linguistic form of the expression. These types of motivated expressions behave differently from the indexical, even though the boundaries to some extent are floating. Phonaesthemes are regarded as predominantly indexically motivated and analysed synchronically in the Germanic languages, in which there is considerable agreement on the meaning connected to some of them, e.g. fl-, gl-, bl- which are connected to light and similar semantic associations. Other phonaesthemes, such as fj-, are restricted to individual languages only. The all-Germanic phonaesthemes are traced back historically as well as into reconstructed stages of the proto-language, and the origin of words and groups of words are taken into consideration. The later phonaesthemes, occurring in individual languages only, are traced back historically, taking older sources and first occurrences into consideration. The study shows that a number of different mechanisms of change, both on the form and the meaning side, are involved when sound symbolic clusters grow in a language. This shows that the general principles of change are disrupted or distorted by synchronically operative linguistic mechanisms, involving iconicity and indexicality. Finally, motivated language change is compared to other similar changes such as analogical change, and the consequences for the classification of various types of iconicity are discussed.

This thesis investigates how cross-linguistic phoneme distributions of 56 fundamental oppositional concepts can reveal semantic relationships by looking into the linguistic forms of 75 genetically and areally distributed languages. Based on proposals of semantic primes (Goddard 2002), reduced Swadesh lists (Holman et al. 2008), presumed ultraconservative words (Pagel et.al. 2013), attested basic antonyms (Paradis, Willners & Jones 2009) and sense perception words, a number of semantic oppositional pairs were selected. Five different types of sound groupings were used dividing phonemes according to; the frequency of vowels' second formant and consonants' energy accumulation (Frequency), sonority (Sonority), a combination of the aformentioned two (Combination), general phonetic traits, e.g. voicing (General), and lastly incorporating all traits of the four presented groupings (All). These were analyzed by means of cluster analyses creating biplots, illustrating the phonological relatedness between the investigated concepts. Also, the phoneme distributions' over- and underrepresentation from the average was calculated defining which sounds represented and were lacking for each concept. Significant semantic groupings and relations based solely on phonological contrasts were found for most investigated concepts, including the semantic domains; Small, Intense Vision-Touch, Large, Organic, Horizontal-Vertical Distance, Deictic, Containment, Gender, Parent and Diurnal, and the sole concept OLD. The most notable relations found were; MOTHER/I vs. FATHER, a three-way deictic distinction between I, indicatory deictic concepts and THERE, and a dimensional tripartite oppositional relationship between Small and (possibly with Intense Vision-Touch), Large-Organic and Horizontal-Vertical Distance. Embodiment, benefits of oppositional thinking and evidence for more general concepts to precede complex concepts were proposed as explanations for the results.

We propose Lobachevsky boundary conditions that lead to asymptotically \( {{\mathbb{H}}^2}\times \mathbb{R} \) solutions. As an example we check their consistency in conformal Chern-Simons gravity. The canonical charges are quadratic in the fields, but nonetheless integrable, conserved and finite. The asymptotic symmetry algebra consists of one copy of the Virasoro algebra with central charge c = 24k, where k is the Chern-Simons level, and an affine û(1). We find also regular non-perturbative states and show that none of them corresponds to black hole solutions. We attempt to calculate the one-loop partition function, find a remarkable separation between bulk and boundary modes, but conclude that the one-loop partition function is ill-defined due to an infinite degeneracy. We comment on the most likely resolution of this degeneracy.

We compute holographic one- and two-point functions of critical highercurvature gravity in four dimensions. The two most important operators are the stress tensor and its logarithmic partner, sourced by ordinary massless and by logarithmic nonnormalisable gravitons, respectively. In addition, the logarithmic gravitons source two ordinary operators, one with spin-one and one with spin-zero. The one-point function of the stress tensor vanishes for all Einstein solutions, but has a non-zero contribution from logarithmic gravitons. The two-point functions of all operators match the expectations from a three-dimensional logarithmic conformal field theory.

We discuss a fine-tuning of rather generic 3-dimensional higher-curvature gravity actions that leads to gauge symmetry enhancement at the linearized level via partial masslessness. Requiring this gauge symmetry to be present also nonlinearly reduces such actions to conformal Chern-Simons gravity. We perform a canonical analysis of this theory and construct the gauge generators and associated charges. We provide and classify admissible boundary conditions. The boundary conditions on the conformal equivalence class of the metric render one chirality of the partially massless Weyl gravitons normalizable and the remaining one non-normalizable. There are three choices-trivial, fixed, or free-for the Weyl factors of the bulk metric and of the boundary metric. This proliferation of boundary conditions leads to various physically distinct scenarios of holography that we study in detail, extending considerably the discussion initiated in Ref. [1]. In particular, the dual CFT may contain an additional scalar field with or without background charge, depending on the choices above.

Various massive gravity theories in three dimensions are conjecturally dual to logarithmic conformal field theories (LCFTs). We summarise the status of these conjectures. LCFTs are characterised by the values of the central charges and the so-called “new anomalies”. We employ a short-cut to calculate these new anomalies in generalised massive gravity and in the recently proposed higher-derivative gravity theories with holographic c-theorem. Both cases permit LCFTs exhibiting intriguing features, like rank three Jordan cells or non-zero central charges. Finally, as an example we discuss in some detail the partially massless version of new massive gravity, a theory with several special properties that we call “partially massless gravity”.