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Grammatical Gender and Politics: A Comparison of French and English in Political Discourse

Zhang et al. | Jul 07, 2021

Grammatical Gender and Politics: A Comparison of French and English in Political Discourse

Grammatical gender systems are prevalent across many languages, and when comparing French and English the existence of this system becomes a strong distinction. There have been studies that attribute assigned grammatical gender with the ability to influence conceptualization (attributing gender attributes) of all nouns, thus affecting people's thoughts on a grand scale. We hypothesized that due to the influence of a grammatical gender system, French political discourse would have a large difference between the number of masculine and feminine nouns used. Specifically, we predicted there would be a larger ratio of feminine to masculine nouns in French political discourse than in non-political discourse when compared to English discourse. Through linguistic analysis of gendered nouns in French political writing, we found that there is a clear difference between the number of feminine versus masculine nouns, signaling a preference for a more “effeminate” language.

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Do elders care about eHealth? A correlational study between eHealth consumption and literacy

Liang et al. | Jul 19, 2023

Do elders care about eHealth? A correlational study between eHealth consumption and literacy
Image credit: Liang and Sposa

As digital tools become more prevalent in medicine, the ability for individuals to understand and take actions based on what they read on the internet is crucial. eHealth literacy is defined as as the ability to seek, find, understand, and evaluate health information from electronic sources and apply the knowledge gained to addressing or solving a health problem. In general, Americans have low eHealth literacy rates. However, limited research has been conducted to understand the eHealth literacy level among older Chinese adult immigrants in the U.S. To determine the eHealth literacy of elderly Chinese immigrants, we sent out an eHealth survey and relevant computer skills survey using a modified version of the eHEALS (eHealth Literacy Scale) health literacy test. We hypothesized that elders who consumed more electronic health content would have a higher eHealth literacy score. The results of this survey showed that there was a positive correlation between the frequency of electronic health information consumption and the participant's eHealth literacy rate. In addition, the results of our computer literacy test show that the frequency of consumption and computer literacy are positively correlated as well. There is a strong positive correlation between the level of computer skills and eHealth literacy of participants. These results reveal possible steps individuals can take to reduce health misinformation and improve their own health by attaining, understanding, and taking action on health material on the internet.

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Optimizing airfoil shape for small, low speed, unmanned gliders: A homemade investigation

Lara et al. | Mar 30, 2023

Optimizing airfoil shape for small, low speed, unmanned gliders: A homemade investigation
Image credit: Konrad Wojciechowski

Here, the authors sought to identify a method to optimize the lift generated by an airfoil based solely on its shape. By beginning with a Bernoullian model to predict an optimized wing shape, the authors then tested their model against other possible shapes by constructing them from Styrofoam and testing them in a small wind tunnel. Contrary to their hypothesis, they found their expected optimal airfoil shape did not result in the greatest lift generation. They attributed this to a variety of confounding variables and concluded that their results pointed to a correlation between airfoil shape and lift generation.

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Open Source RNN designed for text generation is capable of composing music similar to Baroque composers

Goel et al. | May 05, 2021

Open Source RNN designed for text generation is capable of composing music similar to Baroque composers

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are useful for text generation since they can generate outputs in the context of previous ones. Baroque music and language are similar, as every word or note exists in context with others, and they both follow strict rules. The authors hypothesized that if we represent music in a text format, an RNN designed to generate language could train on it and create music structurally similar to Bach’s. They found that the music generated by our RNN shared a similar structure with Bach’s music in the input dataset, while Bachbot’s outputs are significantly different from this experiment’s outputs and thus are less similar to Bach’s repertoire compared to our algorithm.

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Defying chemical tagging: inhomogeneities in the wide binary system HIP 34407/HIP 34426

Còdol et al. | Oct 05, 2023

Defying chemical tagging: inhomogeneities in the wide binary system HIP 34407/HIP 34426
Image credit: Pixabay

This assessed the hypothesis that stars in wide binary systems are chemically homogeneous because of their shared origin. Abundances of the HIP 34407/HIP 34426 binary were obtained by analyzing high-resolution spectra of the system. Discrepancies found in the system’s elemental abundances might be an indicator of the presence of rocky planets around this star. Thus, the differences found in chemical composition might demonstrate limitations in the assumptions of chemical tagging.

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Effects of Wi-Fi EMF on Drosophila melanogaster

Anand et al. | Jan 29, 2020

Effects of Wi-Fi EMF on <em>Drosophila melanogaster</em>

While increased access to Wi-Fi has been a great advancement, we have a limited understanding if there are any health effects on animals. In this study, Anand and Anand exposed fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) to different concentrations of Wi-Fi electromagnetic fields, and observed effects on their reproduction and survivability.

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