This study investigated the effect on worry of biased attentional engagement and disengagement. Variants of a novel attention modification paradigm were developed, designed to induce a group difference either in participants’ tendency to selectively engage with, or disengage from, threatening meanings. An index of threat bias, reflecting relative speeding to process threat word compared to non-threat word content, confirmed that both procedures were effective in inducing differential attentional bias. Importantly, when the induced group difference in attentional bias followed the procedure designed to influence selective engagement with threat meanings, it also gave rise to a corresponding group difference in worry. This was not the case when it was induced by the procedure designed to influence selective disengagement from threat meanings. These findings suggest that facilitated attentional engagement with threat meanings may causally contribute to variability in worry. HeighteThere has been recent debate concerning whether elevated anxiety vulnerability reflects facilitated attentional engagement with, or impaired subsequent disengagement from, threatening information. Some evidence suggests that such vulnerability is associated with speeded attentional engagement with the locus of threatening information . HoweverThough not resolving this specific issue, the recent use of cognitive bias modification procedures has established that biased attention does contribute to worry. Recent studies using moderate and high level worriers  employedWhile these findings suggest that attentional bias makes a causal contribution to worry, they do not reveal whether it is enhanced attentional engagement with threat, impaired attentional disengagement from threat, or both, that exerts this causal impact. To address this issue, it would be necessary to examine whether inducing a group difference in attentional engagement with threat, or inducing a group difference in attentional disengagement from threat, each serve to produce a corresponding group difference in negative thought intrusions, during a subsequent worry assessment task.It is important to note that attention to the spatial locus of a threat stimulus is not necessarily the same as attention to the threatening meaning of this stimulus, and it is selective attention to threat meanings that is assumed to be the critical causal factor in anxiety. Moving attention toward a given spatial locus does not ensure the semantic processing of stimuli in that region, just as moving attention away from a previously attended spatial locus does not preclude the continued semantic processing of information presented there. For example, non-anxious individuals may avoid focusing on the threatening meaning of a spatially attended stimulus, while anxious individuals may not only process the threat meaning but also continue to focus on it even after shifting attention away from the stimulus location. In this way, an external threat cue could trigger worry, involving attention to internally maintained threatening meanings, which then continues long after disengagement from the location of the original cue.To determine the contribution to worry made by biased attention to threat meanings, a methodology is required that can influence the ease with which attention can be shifted selectively towards or away from processing threatening meanings. In the present study, this was achieved using a novel procedure that required participants to switch between two different types of decision concerning the same stimulus word; an affective decision requiring semantic access (good or bad?), and a non-semantic structural decision (upper or lower case letters?).By employing two alternative variants of this procedure, we sought to induce a group difference in selective attention to threat in either one of two quite different ways. One approach was designed to induce such a difference through training biased selective attentional engagement with threat meanings. This involved participants repeatedly switching from structural to affective decisions for one particular valence of stimuli, with some participants being required to consistently make this switch only for threat words (to encourage selective engagement with threat meanings), and others being required to consistently make this switch only for non-threat words (to discourage selective engagement with threat meanings). The other approach was designed to induce a group difference in selective attention to threat through training biased attentional disengagement from threat meanings. This involved participants repeatedly switching from affective to structural decisions for one particular valence of stimuli, with some participants being required to consistently make this switch only for threat words (to encourage selective disengagement from threat meanings), and others being required to consistently make the switch only for non-threat words (to discourage selective disengagement from threat meanings).If group differences in attention to threat can be successfully induced in each of these two ways then, by comparing such groups in terms of subsequently reported negative thought intrusions, it will be possible to determine whether differential attentional engagement with threat, and/or differential attentional disengagement from threat, causally contribute to differential worry.22.1The study involved two consecutive phases: an attentional bias induction phase and a worry assessment phase. Participants were assigned at random either to a training procedure designed to induce a group difference in engagement bias, or to a training procedure designed to induce a group difference in disengagement bias. In each case, half the participants were exposed to a condition intended either to encourage, or to discourage, the selective processing of threatening meanings. Thus, participants were randomly allocated to one of the four attentional bias induction conditions: (1) increase threat processing by encouraging selective engagement with threat meanings; (2) increase threat processing by discouraging selective disengagement from threat meanings; (3) decrease threat processing by discouraging selective engagement with threat meanings; or (4) decrease threat processing by encouraging selective disengagement from threat meanings. In all cases, participants were required to make two consecutive decisions about each target word, either concerning its structure (i.e. upper or lower case of the letters) or its semantic content , but these decisions varied according to attentional bias induction condition see .Following the attention bias induction phase, all participants completed 2.2χ2 = 6.18, ns. Groups also did not differ significantly in scores on the PSWQ  = 2.20, ns.) or State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Trait version . Average age was 19.5 (SD = 2.7), with no significant age difference between groups, F < 1.Sixty-four student participants were selected based on their scores on the Penn State Worry Questionnaire PSWQ; . Due to 2.32.3.1M = 6.44, SD = 0.70), while the non-threat words all had a mean rating below 3.00 . Of the final set of 96 words, 64 were assigned to attention modification trials and 32 to test trials.A set of 96 words (48 threat and 48 non-threat) was selected from an initial pool of 377 words, based on ratings provided by ten independent judges. These judges rated each item on a 7-point scale . The threat words selected for use all had a mean rating above 6.00 , or to its emotional meaning (i.e. whether the word was “positive”/“good” or “negative”/“bad” in meaning).1On each trial a fixation cross appeared in the centre of the screen for 1500 ms, after which the first question appeared . After 1000 ms this was replaced by a target word  that appeared for 400 ms. Participants were instructed to quickly answer the first question correctly, by pressing the corresponding “y” (yes) or “n” (no) key. Incorrect responses were signaled by a short error tone. Immediately following registration of the participant's response, the second question about the word appeared . The next trial commenced 1500 ms after the participant responded to the second question.The exact sequence of events within trials varied according to participant group  was 0.89.Finally, participants were asked to expand on the thought intrusions reported during the breathing focus periods. For each intrusion, the experimenter read aloud the participant's summary, and asked them to describe what was going through their minds at the moment they originally had that thought. Descriptions were recorded for later rating by a psychologist, who assessed the valence of each intrusion. To assess reliability, a psychology student also rated 16 participants’ thought expansions. Neither assessor was informed about group allocation, nor when the intrusion occurred. Inter-rater reliability for assessors’ valence ratings using Cohen's Kappa statistic  or given course credit.33.1Data from the attentional bias induction task was first analyzed for accuracy to determine if there were any group differences. Then the reaction time data from the assessment trials were investigated in the following way. To determine whether the task was successful in inducing differential attentional bias to threat as intended, the median response latencies for the second  decision were calculated for each participant. Then a threat bias index was computed for each participant, reflecting relative speeding to make this content decision on threat words compared to non-threat words (by subtracting median latency on threat words from median latency on non-threat words). A higher score on this threat bias index reflects the facilitated processing of threat word content relative to non-threat word content, consistent with selective attentional bias to threatening information. The threat bias index was analyzed by examining the effects of Modification Type (engagement vs. disengagement) and Modification Direction (increase threat processing vs. decrease threat processing) to determine whether the targeted attentional biases had been induced. Finally the negative thought intrusion data was analyzed to determine the effects of Modification Type and Modification Direction, Time (pre- vs. post-worry induction) and Rater (participant vs. assessor).3.23.2.1SD = 2.8) on training trials, and 96.1% (SD = 2.7) on assessment trials, with no significant difference in accuracy between the four groups  = 1.03, ns). Hence, any group differences on assessment trials could not be attributed to differential speed-accuracy trade-offs.Accurate responses to target words averaged 95.8%  = 15.52, p < .001, f2 = 0.50. This reflected the fact that participants in the decrease threat processing groups obtained lower threat bias index scores than did those in the increase threat processing groups . Therefore, as intended, the bias induction procedure did indeed appear to induce group differences in selective attention to threat meanings. Importantly, Modification Type did not influence attentional bias index scores, either as a main effect F = 1.34, ns., f2 = 0.15, or in an interaction involving Modification Direction, F < 1. Hence the procedures designed to induce a group difference in attentional bias through the manipulation of selective engagement with, and selective disengagement from, threat meanings were equally effective in inducing such a group difference in attentional bias. Indeed, t-tests on threat bias index scores, revealed similar effects of Modification Direction, in terms of the resulting magnitude of group difference in attentional bias, whether the induction procedure targeted engagement bias (t(30) = 2.96, p < .01, d = 1.08) or disengagement bias (t(30) = 2.60, p < .05, d = 0.95).A two-way ANOVA was carried out on these threat bias index scores that considered the between-group factors: Modification Type (Engagement vs. Disengagement); and Modification Direction (increase threat processing vs. decrease threat processing). See 3.3F = 9.89, p < .005, f2 = 0.40, with more negative thought intrusions post- than pre-worry induction (M = 1.95 vs. M = 1.35). There was also a main effect of Rater, F = 4.76, p < .05, f2 = 0.28, with participants themselves identifying more negative thought intrusions than the assessor (M = 1.76 vs. M = 1.55). More critically, a significant interaction now was obtained between Modification Type and Modification Direction, F = 5.15, p < .05, f2 = 0.29, which was the only other significant effect to emerge from the analysis. This interaction was not further qualified by Time  = 1.12, ns.), suggesting that the impact of modifying attentional selectivity was not restricted to the persistence of worry only after it was experimentally induced, but was equally evident on the measure of tendency to worry taken prior to the experimental worry induction. Nor was it modified by Rater (F < 1), indicating that it did not reflect the impact of bias induction on participants’ criteria for classifying the valence of thought intrusions.The number of negative thought intrusions recorded during each breathing focus period, as categorized by participants and assessor, are presented in M = 1.92, SD = 1.38, vs. M = 1.67, SD = 1.76 t < 1). In contrast, for participants exposed to the procedure designed to create differential attentional bias through inducing discrepant patterns of selective engagement with threat, there was a strong effect of Modification Direction on negative thought intrusions. Specifically, the condition designed to decrease threat processing (discourage engagement with threat meanings) now led to fewer negative intrusions than did the condition designed to increase threat processing  = 3.12, p < .01, d = 1.14). Thus, when the bias induction procedure served to induce a group difference in selective attention to threat through a contingency designed to affect attentional engagement with threat, then it also served to create a corresponding group difference in worry symptomatology, which was not the case when differential attention to threat instead was induced through a contingency designed to affect attentional disengagement from threat.The interaction between Modification Type and Modification Direction was investigated further. For participants exposed to the procedure designed to create a group difference in attentional bias through inducing discrepant patterns of selective disengagement from threat, there was no effect of Modification Direction on negative thought intrusions, with a similar number of such negative intrusions being evidenced across the conditions designed to decrease or to increase threat processing (4This study introduces a novel attentional bias modification method, designed to induce group differences in selective attention to threat meaning, rather than only to the spatial location of threat stimuli. Participants who completed attentional induction procedures designed to decrease processing of threat meanings were slower to process the semantic content of threat words relative to non-threat words than were participants assigned to induction procedures designed to increase threat processing. This effect was equally evident whether the bias induction procedure involved training that targeted biased attentional engagement with, or biased attentional disengagement from, threat meanings. However, while these different induction bias procedures were equally effective in inducing differential selective attention to threat meanings, they had quite different effects on subsequent patterns of worry.When the attentional bias induction procedure encouraged selective attentional engagement with threat meanings, the frequency of negative thought intrusions on the worry task was greater than when the procedure was designed to discourage selective engagement with threat meanings. In contrast, no such differences in negative thought intrusions were found between the attentional bias induction procedures designed to encourage or discourage selective attentional disengagement from threat meanings. These findings are not readily attributable to differences in performance accuracy between the alternative attention induction tasks, since groups did not differ in these respects. Rather, this pattern of results indicates that variability in selective attentional engagement with threat, but not variability in attentional disengagement from threat, causally impacts on negative thought intrusions indicative of worry. Consequently we suggest that biased attentional engagement with threat meanings influences the tendency to worry, perhaps by affecting the degree to which selective attention is drawn towards those negative aspects of the situation that serve to trigger negative thoughts.Previous research has yielded evidence that elevated anxiety vulnerability is associated with both biased attentional engagement with, and biased attentional disengagement from, the spatial locus of threatening stimuli. As noted earlier, such patterns of attention to spatial loci need not imply that anxiety vulnerability is characterized by both biased attentional engagement with, and disengagement from, threat meanings. Furthermore, even if anxiety vulnerability is found to be associated with both increased engagement with and impaired disengagement from threat meanings, this would not permit the inference that each form of attentional bias contributes to anxious symptomatology. Addressing this issue requires the development of procedures designed to induce either differential selective engagement with or disengagement from threatening meanings, in order to reveal their respective effects on anxiety symptoms. The present research has adopted this approach and, at least with respect to worry, suggests that biased attentional engagement with threatening meanings may be more critical than biased attentional disengagement from such information in causally contributing to worry-related negative thought intrusions. Future research should examine whether this remains true when people are already engaged in worrying and in clients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.In conclusion, we report the first attempt to induce differences in selective attentional engagement with, and in selective attentional disengagement from, threat meanings, in order to distinguish the causal contributions made by each pattern of attentional selectivity to worry. A procedure designed to induce differential selective attentional engagement with threat meanings served to influence negative thought intrusions, whereas a procedure designed to induce differential attentional disengagement from threat meanings did not, despite the fact that both procedures succeeded equally in inducing differential attentional bias. It would appear that enhanced attentional engagement with threat meanings may causally contribute to negative thought intrusions indicative of worry.


This paper describes the design and implementation of a radiosonde which can measure the meteorological temperature, humidity, pressure, and other atmospheric data. The system is composed of a CPU, microwave module, temperature sensor, pressure sensor and humidity sensor array. In order to effectively solve the humidity sensor condensation problem due to the low temperatures in the high altitude environment, a capacitive humidity sensor including four humidity sensors to collect meteorological humidity and a platinum resistance heater was developed using micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) technology. A platinum resistance wire with 99.999% purity and 0.023 mm in diameter was used to obtain the meteorological temperature. A multi-sensor data fusion technique was applied to process the atmospheric data. Static and dynamic experimental results show that the designed humidity sensor with platinum resistance heater can effectively tackle the sensor condensation problem, shorten response times and enhance sensitivity. The humidity sensor array can improve measurement accuracy and obtain a reliable initial meteorological humidity data, while the multi-sensor data fusion technique eliminates the uncertainty in the measurement. The radiosonde can accurately reflect the meteorological changes. In 1928, in the former Soviet Union Moerqiafu invented the radiosonde, which had the advantages of compact volume, simple observation technique, and the reliable detection results. Its measurement range was from 10 to 15 km. and soon it was widely used to acquire meteorological data. Vaisala, who is the founder of the Vaisala Company, invented the first electromechanical radiosonde. In the 1980s, the production of the analog electronic radiosonde RS80 ocurred, and in recent years, a digitized RS92 radiosonde was developed , when R > 0, meaning that the theoretical humidity data and actual humidity data are related; When R = 1, it means the theoretical humidity data coincide with the actual humidity data; and when the R = 0, it means the theoretical humidity data and actual humidity data are not related.The value of 3.3.1.The platinum resistance wire (99.999% purity), with a diameter of 0.023 mm, is used to get the atmospheric temperature aloft. A photograph of the platinum resistance wire and temperature sensor is shown in A = 3.9083 × 10−3 °C −1, B = −5.775 × 10−7 °C −2, C = −4.183 × 10−12 °C −3, tR is the resistance value at t °C, and R0 is the resistance value at 0 °C. According to IEC751 international standards, the temperature coefficient of the platinum resistance is 0.003851. In a low temperature environment, platinum resistance has better linearity and smaller measurement errors. Furthermore, a platinum resistance wire, with a faster response speed, can be in contact with the external environment.3.2.Temperature sensor performance testing was undertaken in an alcohol trough. The temperature was increased from −20 °C to +50 °C in 25 min. The corresponding regression analysis result is shown in R = 0.9999, SSE = 0.9191. The results show that the actual temperature value is very close to the theoretical one. Such a small error reveals a successful estimation of the temperature data.Putting the data into the regression equation, we obtained 4.γ stands for the volume fraction of water in the polyimide film. This sensing capacitance of this type of sensors is given by [ε0 stands for the vacuum dielectric constant, d refers to the distance between the capacitor plates and A is the capacitor sensing area.The sensitive material of the humidity sensor is polyimide. The dielectric constant for the polyimide film with absorbed water can be given by Looyenga's equation :(13)εs=given by :(14)Cs=4.1.A sandwich plate capacitive humidity sensor, integrated with a platinum resistance heater, was fabricated using micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) technology. It is composed of a silicon substrate, heating electrode, wet film polyimide sensor and porous gold electrodes. The structure of the humidity sensor is shown in 2 on the surface of the Si substrate as the first insulation layer. The snakelike heater electrode is fabricated on the insulation layer using photolithographic lift-off technology. The fabrication flow and planar structure are shown in The Si substrate with a thickness of 150 μm is (100)-oriented. Thermal oxidation technology is used to generate a layer of dense SiOA photograph of the humidity sensor is shown in 4.2.A humidity generator, dew-point instrument and LCR meter were used to measure the performance of the humidity sensor. A dual-pressure method humidity generator is used. It has the advantage that the humidity can be adjusted over a very wide range at different temperatures, and is stable in a short time, so it can be used to study humidity sensor dynamic characteristics. The device block diagram is shown in The experimental results showed that the humidity sensor has small humidity hysteresis. As shown in In accordance with the results in H̄1 and H̄2 are the two sets of weighted average humidity values, 1σ, 2σ are standard deviations, Hs1 stands for the fusion humidity based on formula H̄ stands for the arithmetic average value and SH stands for the multi-sensor data fusion algorithm's value. One of the experimental data sets is shown in In order to obtain the humidity sensor error, a repeatability experiment was carried out from 0 °C to 40 °C, and the humidity sensor error is about 0.3 pF. According to the output characteristics of the sensor, the single shot trigger was used to change the sensor capacitance output into a fixed frequency pulse width output, then, convert the fixed frequency pulse width output into the voltage output according to capacitor charge and dischare. The humidity generator and dew-point instrument were the used to measure the performance of the radiosonde humidity sensor array. The temperature was kept constant around 20 °C and the humidity increases from 10% RH to 90% RH in 50 min. Four humidity sensor outputs are obtained. According to the position of the four sensors placed, the weight of sensors No. 1 and No. 3 is determined to be 1.2, and the weights of sensors No. 2 sensor and No. 4 is 0.8. In accordance with the results in R = 0.9998, SSE = 0.3528, the result means the actual temperature value and the theoretical temperature value are very close, with small, and successful temperature estimation.In order to ensure the good performance of the humidity sensor at different temperatures, its surface temperature must be maintained in the range of +20 °C to +30 °C. A high and low temperature testing instrument was used to get the relationship between environment temperature and Pulse-Width-Modulation (PWM). The results were given in H−60 °C, H−40 °C, H−20 °C, H0 °C and H+20 °C stand for the processing humidity values at different temperatures using the multi-sensor data fusion method.R−60 °C = 0.9986, SSE−60 °C = 5.43, R−40 °C = 0.9999, SSE−40 °C = 4.08, R−20 °C = 0.9992, SSE−20 °C = 3.125, R0 °C = 0.9994, SSE0 °C = 2.252, R+20 °C = 0.9997, SSE+20 °C = 1.202. The result means the actual humidity value and the theoretical humidity value are close. The SSE becomes gradually smaller as the environment temperature rises, humidity data estimation is satisfactory, and continuous. The designed humidity with a platinum resistance heater effectively solves the sensor condensation problem.Putting the data into the regression equation, we obtained 5.Considering the requirements of the pressure sensor such as wide operating temperature range, low power consumption, small package and low cost, the MS5540 digital pressure sensor with a resolution of 0.1 hPa and detect range of 10 hPa–1,100 hPa, was chosen and its supply power was 2.2 V–3.6 V. Furthermore, the interior of sensor has a temperature compensation circuit, which makes the pressure sensor still possess a good performance even in low temperature condition.6.6.1.The system can be divided into two parts, the first part is data acquisition and transmission, and the second part is data reception and processing. The microwave receiver unit block diagram was shown in 6.2.According to the hardware architecture of the designed radiosonde, the tasks of the whole system are to achieve high altitude detection of the humidity, temperature and pressure, wireless data transmission and information component display on a PC. Therefore, software development of the system includes two parts—radiosonde software design and PC software design. The radiosonde software design idea is as follows: first, initialize the DSP and the GPS, collecting the ambient temperature, then, judge whether or not the humidity need to be heated under some temperature conditions, if it needs to be heated, use controlled PWM to regulate the surface of the humidity sensor; secondly, collect the ambient temperature, humidity, pressure, and read the current GPS data; finally, use the multi-sensor fusion method to process humidity data, and use the microwave transmitting unit to send the meteorological data to the ground receiver system.In order to reduce the influence of the microwave signal on the received data, and to avoid data loss, the meteorological data is composed of frame head, node address, valid date bits, checksum bit and frame end. The data structure is shown in PC software design idea is as follows: first, initialization procedure, set up the serial number and baud rate, then, wait to receive data until the data is received. Judge validity of the data. If it is valid data, store it and plot the curve, if not, delete it and wait for the next valid data. The data structure is shown in 7.Dynamic experiments were carried out at one of the meteorological observation stations in the northeast of China, and the meteorological data was collected, including temperature data, humidity data, pressure data, and so on.7.1.7.2.The humidity value changes gently at the altitude between 1,000 m and 3,000 m. When the altitude is about 4,000 m to 15,000 m, the layer of water vapor content gradually decreased with increasing altitude, and the humidity gradually reduced. As the altitude continues to increase, the humidity value is essentially constant, because of the water vapor in the air is less and constant.8.A capacitive humidity sensor with a platinum resistance heater was developed using MEMS technology, the capacitance of the sensor increased from 100 pF to 150 pF. Using PWM to control the heating power of humidity sensor, the sensor operating temperature is at about +20–+30 °C, which allows capacitance and humidity to exhibit a good linearity with a sensitivity of about 0.375 pF/%RH. The radiosonde sensor array was made of four humidity sensors to collect aloft atmospheric humidity, and enhance the credibility of the humidity data accuracy.R approached to 1, and the SSE was small after the humidity data were processed by the multi-sensor data fusion technology. The actual temperature value was very close to the theoretical one. Such a small error indicates a very successful estimation of the temperature data.Since the multi-sensor data fusion technology has the advantages of fault tolerance, complementary real-time, weighted average and batch estimates were used to process the meteorological data. Static experiments show that Dynamic experiments showed that the radiosonde worked properly in a high altitude environment with characteristics of high sensitivity and rapid response and can accurately reflect the changes of atmospheric data. The humidity sensor array with a platinum resistance heater can effectively solve the sensor condensation problem. In future work, we will focus on radiosonde data repeatability and reliability, and high altitude comparative experiments with the RS92 unit will be carried out to optimize the hardware and software design.


The electrical properties  of the transferred graphene as well as the specific contact resistance of metal contacts onto graphene were investigated by using properly designed test patterns. While a sheet resistance Rsh ≈ 1.7 kΩ/sq and a specific contact resistance ρc ≈ 15 kΩ·μm have been measured for graphene transferred onto SiO2, about 2.3× higher Rsh and about 8× higher ρc values were obtained for graphene on PEN. High-resolution current mapping by torsion resonant conductive atomic force microscopy (TRCAFM) provided an insight into the nanoscale mechanisms responsible for the very high ρc in the case of graphene on PEN, showing a ca. 10× smaller “effective” area for current injection than in the case of graphene on SiO2.Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on catalytic metals is one of main approaches for high-quality graphene growth over large areas. However, a subsequent transfer step to an insulating substrate is required in order to use the graphene for electronic applications. This step can severely affect both the structural integrity and the electronic properties of the graphene membrane. In this paper, we investigated the morphological and electrical properties of CVD graphene transferred onto SiO Its ele lattice  of graph lattice , and its lattice .Due to its excellent mobility, graphene has been proposed as a channel material in high-frequency devices operating in the 100 GHz to terahertz range . Thanks 5 cm2·V−1·s−1 have been measured on exfoliated graphene flakes suspended between electrodes [2·V−1·s−1 are obtained for flakes on common dielectric substrates [Currently, the most used method of graphene production for basic studies is the mechanical exfoliation of graphite , which wectrodes , whereasbstrates . As a maOther methods, such as epitaxial graphene growth by controlled graphitization of silicon carbide –15 and bConsidering the case of CVD, the two main catalytic metals used for graphene growth are nickel and copper . In the A commonly used method to transfer graphene grown on copper foil onto the target substrate is the use of a resist film deposited on the graphene surface, which is used as a support during the etching of the underlying Cu foil. After the etching process, the graphene membrane attached to the resist scaffold is mechanically attached to the target substrate and the resist is eliminated. There are two crucial points in this transfer technique: (i) promoting the adhesion of graphene onto the target substrate; and (ii) cleaning the transferred graphene from resist residues.The first issue is especially critical, because a bad compatibility between graphene and the substrate typically causes the formation of macroscopic defects (cracks) or folding of the graphene membrane when placed onto the substrate. Several aspects can influence the surface adhesion between graphene and the substrate, including the substrate roughness and the surface energy. Though a complete understanding of this issue has not yet been achieved, it can be argued that, due to the inherent hydrophobic character of graphene, the adhesion of large-area membranes can be favoured on substrates with a similar hydrophobic character.2/H2 or Ar/H2) ambient conditions [Resist and, more generally, polymeric residues adsorbed onto graphene are known to severely degrade graphene transport properties . Howevernditions . Such hiIn this paper, the transfer and electrical properties of CVD-grown graphene on different substrates have been addressed. In particular, two substrates of interest for electronic applications were taken into consideration:2 (300 nm thick) thermally grown on Si, for its large-scale use in microelectronics;SiOpoly or PEN, a transparent polymer analogue to the more common PET, but with stronger mechanical resistance, higher degradation temperature and higher chemical inertness in acid and alkaline conditions, which can be useful for transparent and flexible electronic applications.The electronic properties of the transferred graphene have been characterized both at the macro- and nanoscale, by using properly fabricated test patterns and conductive atomic force microscopy, respectively. This characterization provided an insight into the different electronic properties of graphene transferred to the two kinds of substrates.4/H2 as precursors. In −1) and 2D peak (at ≈2640 cm−1) of the graphitic material. In particular, the high ratio of the 2D versus G peak and the symmetric character of the 2D peak  indicates the presence of a certain density of defects in the as-grown material. Morphology and phase images of as-grown graphene on Cu, obtained by tapping mode atomic force microscopy (AFM), are also reported in Graphene was grown by CVD on ca. 25 μm thick polycrystalline copper foils at a temperature of 1000 °C by using CH2. This oxide thickness was properly selected because it ensures the best optical contrast between bare SiO2 regions and regions coated by the monoatomic thick membrane, due to an effect of constructive optical interference [The graphene membrane was transferred from the Cu foil onto a Si wafer coated by 300 nm thick thermally grown SiOrference .2 typically exhibits a hydrophilic behaviour , before graphene transfer proper surface treatments were performed to achieve a partially hydrophobic character . The chemical status of the SiO2 surface before graphene transfer was also characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements.Since as-grown SiO2) graphene membrane transferred onto SiO2 is shown. Due to the good optical contrast between the graphene-coated and bare SiO2 areas, a homogenous graphene membrane, free from macroscopic cracks, can be observed. Higher resolution morphological analyses of the graphene layer onto SiO2 were carried out by tapping mode AFM. Two representative AFM images at different magnifications are reported in 2 on a crack region extracted from 2 [In d from 2 . Both crd from 2 .2, which is naturally hydrophilic and requires proper treatments to be converted into a hydrophobic surface, contact-angle measurements on the as-received PEN substrate typically yield high values of the contact angle (≈80°), indicating the highly hydrophobic character of this surface. A representative morphological image of the PEN substrate is reported in In contrast to the case of virgin SiOThe homogeneity of graphene membranes on the transparent PEN substrate can be characterized in a straightforward way by optical transmittance microscopy, since a contrast between graphene-coated and uncoated regions arises from the finite absorbance (≈2.7%) of the graphene monolayer. Optical images (not reported) demonstrate the absence of macroscopic cracks and fractures in the graphene transferred onto PEN, which can be explained as a consequence of a very good compatibility between the two materials.2 is reported in W = 200 μm and length L = 100 μm) and different spacing, d, deposited onto a laterally insulated rectangular graphene area. The current–voltage (I–V) characteristics for different distances between adjacent contacts are reported in R, obtained from the slope of each curve, is plotted versus the contact distance. According to the TLM theory [R is related to the metal/graphene contact resistance Rc and to the graphene sheet resistance Rsh according to the relationThe electronic transport properties of the large-area graphene transferred onto the two different substrates have been characterized on the macroscopic scale by electrical measurements on transmission line model (TLM) test structures. An optical microscopy image of a TLM test pattern fabricated in graphene on SiOM theory , R is reRsh = 1.75 ± 0.04 kΩ/sq) and the contact resistance (Rc = 75 ± 6 Ω) contributions have been determined. Since Rc clearly depends on the pad size, the specific contact resistance ρc = Rc·W normalized to the contact width was also evaluated, obtaining a value ρc = 15.1 ± 1.2 kΩ·μm.By linear fitting of the data in 2(300nm)/Si substrate, the n+-doped Si substrate can be employed as global back-gate  and of the sheet resistance (Rsh) on the gate bias was extracted  [2. This doping can probably be ascribed to the adsorbed resist impurities left after transfer. Furthermore, the measured ρc is almost one order of magnitude higher than in the case of the same nickel–gold contacts on graphene exfoliated onto SiO2 [Compared to the typically ambipolar behaviour observed in back-gated FET devices fabricated in graphene exfoliated from HOPG onto SiOve bias) –11, a p-nto SiO2 .Rsh in graphene is related to the hole mobility μp and density p by the following relationThe hole conductance σ = 1 / p has been expressed as the sum of p0, i.e., the doping at Vg = 0, and of the doping induced by the back-gate bias (Cox·Vg/q), with q being the electron charge and Cox= ε0εox/tox the oxide capacitance per unit area.where Vg data with p = 793 ± 18 cm2·V−1·s−1 and p0 = (4.4 ± 0.1) × 1012 cm−2 have been obtained. It is worth noting that the effect of traps at the graphene/SiO2 interface is not accounted for in the determination of μp from p, which is actually reduced with respect to the value induced by the field effect due to carrier trapping, and, consequently, an underestimation of the carrier mobility. Furthermore, the presence of charged traps at the graphene/substrate interface strongly affects the mobility in graphene due to Coulomb scattering [By linear fitting of the experimental σ versus attering ,26, leadRsh and ρc values for graphene on the two substrates (obtained with a back-gate bias Vg = 0 for graphene on SiO2 and without a back-gate bias for graphene on PEN) is reported in A similar macroscopic electrical characterization using TLM structures was performed also in CVD graphene transferred onto PEN. In this case, the sheet resistance and specific contact resistance only were measured, whereas an estimate of mobility and carrier density was not feasible due to the absence of a back gate. A comparison between the Rsh of graphene on PEN is about 2.3× higher than on SiO2, whereas the ρc is about 8× higher. Since the same CVD graphene was used for both samples and similar transfer quality has been achieved on both substrates, these electrical differences can be ascribed to the different kind of interaction between graphene and SiO2 and graphene and PEN. In fact, a van der Waals interaction occurs between graphene and SiO2, whereas it cannot be excluded that other kind of bonds occur locally between graphene and the polymeric substrate, leading to a partial sp3 hybridization of graphene C atoms and, hence, to a local disruption of graphene electronic properties. This idea is supported by the presence of a certain density of defects in the initial graphene (as shown by Raman measurements), that can represent preferential sites for bonding with the polymeric chains.It is worth noting that the 2 and on PEN were characterized by torsion resonance conductive AFM (TRCAFM).In order to get a deeper insight into the mechanisms leading to the different electronic properties of transferred graphene on the two substrates, and, in particular, to the very different specific contact resistance values, the local electrical properties of graphene on SiOTRCAFM is an evolution of the more widely used contact mode conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM). It is a dynamic scanning probe method based on a conductive tip scanned at close proximity (0.3–3.0 nm) to the sample surface, while oscillating in the torsional mode. The torsion amplitude is used as the feedback signal to measure surface morphology.A dc bias was applied to a macroscopic metal contact deposited onto graphene, and the current locally injected from the nanometric conductive tip into graphene was probed by a high sensitivity (fA) current sensor connected to the tip. In this way, TRCAFM combines the high resolution of dynamic scanning probe microscopy for morphological mapping with the ability for nanoscale-resolution current mapping of CAFM. This operation mode has been demonstrated to be particularly useful to perform high-resolution morphology and current maps in graphene –28.2. In 2 is much flatter than the morphology of graphene on PEN, due to the very different roughness of the substrates. The most interesting aspect is represented by the comparison of the current maps and of the current histograms. Clearly, both histograms exhibit two peaks, but it is worth noting that the integrated percentage of counts under the higher conductivity peak is much higher for graphene on SiO2 (85%) than for graphene on PEN (9%). This striking difference indicates that in the case of graphene on SiO2 most of the area contributes to current injection from the tip to graphene, whereas in the case of graphene on PEN only a small fraction of the area contributes to the current injection. This observation is in close agreement with the difference in the specific contact resistance values obtained from macroscopic TLM measurements. The physical origin of this difference is still the subject of investigation.2 and PEN) and its morphological and electrical properties have been investigated in detail. Using TLM test patterns the electrical properties  of the transferred graphene and the specific contact resistance of metal contacts on graphene were determined. While a sheet resistance Rsh ≈ 1.7 kΩ/sq and a specific contact resistance ρc ≈ 15 kΩ·μm were measured (at Vg = 0 V) for graphene transferred onto SiO2, about 2.3× higher Rsh and about 8× higher ρc values were obtained for graphene on PEN. High-resolution current mapping by torsion resonant conductive atomic force microscopy (TRCAFM) revealed a ca. 10× smaller “effective” area for current injection in the case of graphene on PEN than in the case of CVD graphene transferred on SiO2 ,which is consistent with higher ρc values. These electrical differences could be ascribed also to the different kind of interaction of graphene with SiO2 and PEN. While a van der Waals bond occurs between graphene and SiO2, other kind of bonds can be locally formed between graphene and the polymeric chains of PEN, leading to a partial sp3 hybridization of graphene and, hence, to a local modification of its electronic properties.In conclusion, the transfer of CVD-grown graphene onto different substrates (SiOTapping mode AFM and TRCAFM: Both tapping-mode AFM and torsion resonant conductive atomic force microscopy (TRCAFM) measurements were performed by using a DI3100 microscope with Nanoscope V electronics. For TRCAFM, we used Pt/Ir-coated Si tips with an apex radius of curvature of 10 nm, which were driven in torsional motion at a frequency of 940 kHz.TLM fabrication and electrical characterization: The transmission line model (TLM) test patterns were fabricated on the transferred graphene membranes by using the following procedure. First, rectangular graphene areas were isolated from the external membrane by lithographically defining and opening a rectangular frame in a hard mask resist and by performing graphene etching of the frame by O2 plasma treatments. Subsequently, a set of nickel-gold rectangular contacts were deposited by sputtering and defined by the lift-off method. The contacts had identical geometry (200 µm width and 100 µm length) and the distance between the pairs of adjacent contacts were 20, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 100 µm, respectively. The current–voltage (I–V) characteristics were measured in a Karl-Süss probe station by using a HP 4156B parameter analyzer.Raman spectroscopy: Raman measurements were performed by using a Horiba-Jobin Yvon spectrometer. Spectra were collected in the backscattering configuration with a ≈633 nm laser source and a 100× objective, focusing the excitation light to a ≈1 μm spot.XPS: SiO2 atomic surface composition was determined by X-ray photoelectron analysis (XPS) by using a PHI ESCA/SAM 5600 Multitechnique spectrometer. XPS experiments were carried out with a base pressure of 2 × 10−10 torr. A monochromated Al Kα radiation source (hν = 1486.6 eV) was used, and XPS spectra were collected at various photoelectron angles (relative to the sample surface) in the 20–45° range.


Tuberculosis and sarcoidosis share similarity in histopathologic findings and clinically occur in association with each other occasionally. Tuberculosis should always be ruled out before the diagnosis of sarcoidosis. But, the diagnosis is often complicated, especially in extrapulmonary cases. Here we present a case of bilateral vitreous hemorrhage with uveitis. Ocular sarcoidosis was initially diagnosed based on the characteristic ocular findings, negative results on chest radiography, tuberculosis culture, and polymerase chain reaction of aqueous, as well as simultaneous presence of panda and lambda sign on gallium-67 scans. The ocular condition improved after pars plana vitrectomy and systemic steroid therapy. However, TB lymphadenopathy but no recurrent ocular inflammation was found 6 years later. The patient received anti-TB treatment for 6 months thereafter. The eyes remained silent except cataract progression and glaucoma under two medications during this period. In conclusion, TB could occur coincidently or in association with sarcoidosis, continued follow-up is important for patients with ocular sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic, granulomatous disease of unknown etiology that may affect any organ system. It is characterized by the accumulation of T lymphocytes and mononuclear phagocytes with the formation of noncaseating epithelioid granulomas in affected organs . The triA 35-year-old female was referred to our department with severe visual impairment for months. She was quite healthy until 1 year ago when she began to suffer recurrent episodes of uveitis with mutton fat keratic precipitates (KPs) in both eyes. On presentation, visual acuity was counting finger in right eye and hand motion in left eye. Ocular examination showed mild anterior uveitis with mutton fat KPs and dense vitreous hemorrhage in both eyes. Systemic workup including general physical examination, complete blood counting, differential classification, blood biochemical tests, rheumatic factor, antinuclear antibody, human immunodeficiency virus, venereal disease research laboratory test, anticardiolipin antibody, and chest radiography were within normal ranges. Due to persistent vitreous hemorrhage and disabled vision, pars plana vitrectomy was performed in the left eye and then the right eye 2 months later. Sign of peripheral vasculitis with nodular choroid infiltration was noted during operation in both eyes. Aqueous for TB culture and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was negative. Angiotensin-converting enzyme was not done due to the unavailability in our hospital. Gallium-67 scans showed panda sign of increased uptake in lacrimal glands and lambda sign of lymph nodes in the mediastinum  established an international criteria for the diagnosis of ocular sarcoidosis . The conMycobacterium tuberculosis catalase–peroxidase have renewed interest in mycobacteria as a causative agent in sarcoidosis [Despite the increasing understanding of the immune responses behind the formation and maintenance of the granulomatous process in sarcoidosis, its etiology remained elusive. Mycobacteria have been implicated as a cause of sarcoidosis, although the demonstration of mycobacterial DNA was inconsistent in different reports , 7. Rececoidosis , 3. In oTB could occur coincidently or in association with sarcoidosis, continued follow-up is important for patients with ocular sarcoidosis, even in silent case.


Novel approaches are needed to define subgroups of patients with Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) at risk for acute exacerbations and/or accelerated progression of this generally fatal disease. Progression of disease is an integral component of IPF with a median survival of 3 to 5 years. Conversely, a high degree of variability in disease progression has been reported among series. The characteristics of patients at risk of earlier death predominantly rely on baseline HRCT appearance, but this concept that has been challenged. Disparate physiological approaches have also been taken to identify patients at risk of mortality, with varying results. We hypothesized that the rapid decline in lung function in IPF may be a consequence of an abnormal host response to pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), leading to aberrant activation in fibroblasts and fibrosis. Analysis of upper and lower lobe surgical lung biopsies (SLBs) indicated that TLR9, a hypomethylated CpG DNA receptor, is prominently expressed at the transcript and protein level, most notably in biopsies from rapidly progressive IPF patients. Surprisingly, fibroblasts appeared to be a major cellular source of TLR9 expression in IPF biopsies from this group of progressors. Further, CpG DNA promoted profibrotic cytokine and chemokine synthesis in isolated human IPF fibroblasts, most markedly again in cells from patients with the rapidly progressive IPF phenotype, in a TLR9-dependent manner. Finally, CpG DNA exacerbated fibrosis in an in vivo model initiated by the adoptive transfer of primary fibroblasts derived from patients who exhibited rapidly progressing fibrosis. Together, these data suggested that TLR9 activation via hypomethylated DNA might be an important mechanism in promoting fibrosis particularly in patients prone to rapidly progressing IPF. IPF patients exhibit heterogeneous longitudinal behavior that is best defined by using a combination of physiological progression and clinical events. Identifying rapid progression over the first year of follow-up is clinically relevant given ongoing and planned therapeutic trials, which are of approximately one-year duration. Identifying which patients who are likely to experience rapid progression over such a time frame would provide key data in clinical decision-making and in the design of future therapeutic trials, providing an opportunity for personalized approaches to therapy. Unfortunately, baseline clinical, physiological and radiological differences, which identify these subgroups, have been difficult to identify.Identifying biologically relevant differences between IPF patients that remain stable or show slow progression compared to those who rapidly progress is an active area of investigation but to date a detailed understanding of the gene expression pattern in IPF patients segregated into stable or rapidly progressive groups using standard methodology is lacking. Our studies to date suggest this is a promising avenue of investigation given that we have identified a host response gene, TLR9, which is uniquely upregulated in biopsies from rapidly progressing, but not slowly progressing, IPF patients relative to normal biopsies . More imCO or six minute walk performance stratified by baseline six-minute walk desaturation. An FVC decrease > 10% or a DLCO decrease of at least 15% was shown to strongly predict subsequent mortality or rapidly progressing IPF. Those patients who did not show these changes in lung function appeared to have a slower progressing IPF. Together, these data support that longitudinal physiological behavior can be used to segregate IPF patients into groups with differing long-term mortality, and physiological heterogeneity is a strong predictor of longitudinal disease course.A high degree of heterogeneity in longitudinal physiological behavior is noted. In a group of 80 patients with IPF we examined the predictive ability of serial change in FVC over six or twelve months to predict subsequent survival . At six In the placebo arm of a large therapeutic trial, we reported that 36 21.4%) IPF patients died during 72 weeks of follow-up [.4% IPF pCO), acute exacerbation or mortality  and in the interstitial areas of the IPF biopsies. TLR9 expression was present only in morphologically distinct immune cells but was not detected in interstitial areas of histologically normal lung tissue. Thus, these data confirmed that TLR9 protein was prominently expressed in IPF biopsy material, and provided evidence that the increase in TLR9 transcript expression in IPF was due to the expression of this receptor by cell types not normally positive for TLR9.Based on the observation that TLR9 expression was remarkably enhanced in the interstitial areas of biopsies collected from patients affected by IPF, we have further investigated the expression of TLR9 protein in cultured IPF fibroblasts . Using cTo explore whether CpG ODN altered fibrosis in a model of IPF in SCID mice developed in our laboratory ,8, we inIt is becoming increasingly clear that IPF is a designation applied to a group of patients with heterogeneous longitudinal courses. Nearly half of all deaths are due to acute exacerbations superimposed on a chronic, more slowly progressive disease course. Our findings suggest that: 1) IPF patients exhibit variable longitudinal behavior both physiologically and clinically; 2) serial pulmonary function testing in combination with clinically relevant events  can be used to define clinically distinct subgroups of IPF patients; 3) TLR9 is strongly upregulated in IPF biopsies and expressed by IPF fibroblasts (most prominently in rapidly progressive patients); and 4) CpG ODN drives pro-fibrotic cytokines and chemokines in a TLR9-dependent manner strongly supporting the connection between host-environment interactions in pulmonary fibrosis.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.


To fully define the grammar of American Sign Language (ASL), a linguistic model of its nonmanuals needs to be constructed. While significant progress has been made to understand the features defining ASL manuals, after years of research, much still needs to be done to uncover the discriminant nonmanual components. The major barrier to achieving this goal is the difficulty in correlating facial features and linguistic features, especially since these correlations may be temporally defined. For example, a facial feature  occurring at the end of the movement of another facial feature , may specify a Hypothetical conditional, but only if this time relationship is maintained. In other instances, the single occurrence of a movement  can be indicative of the same grammatical construction. In the present paper, we introduce a linguistic–computational approach to efficiently carry out this analysis. First, a linguistic model of the face is used to manually annotate a very large set of 2,347 videos of ASL nonmanuals (including tens of thousands of frames). Second, a computational approach is used to determine which features of the linguistic model are more informative of the grammatical rules under study. We used the proposed approach to study five types of sentences – Hypothetical conditionals, Yes/no questions, Wh-questions, Wh-questions postposed, and Assertions – plus their polarities – positive and negative. Our results verify several components of the standard model of ASL nonmanuals and, most importantly, identify several previously unreported features and their temporal relationship. Notably, our results uncovered a complex interaction between head position and mouth shape. These findings define some temporal structures of ASL nonmanuals not previously detected by other approaches. Sign languages provide a window for the study of what formal, highly abstract and minimally required properties constitute human linguistic knowledge e.g., e.g., head, brows, eye lids, eye gaze, nose, mouth, cheeks, chin, shoulders), the options available to each , and the multiple combinations in which they interact.. Thus, sorting through all the possibilities and testing each for what may be subtle differences in meaning is a complex problem with many variables. While it is well known how the handshape, hand movement and palm orientation form the fundamental building blocks of the manual component of the sign The sign language literature has made it clear that although affective and linguistic expressions may co-occur, they are nonetheless easily distinguished by their articulation onsets and offsets with respect to the signs made on the hands, with linguistic expressions tightly coordinated with the syntactic constituents that they relate to To better understand the need of computational tools for the linguistic analysis of nonmanuals, let us review their use in sign languages. The nonmanuals used in sign languages serve a variety of functions similar to those performed by intonation or word order changes in a spoken language like English. For example, to make a question from the English statement “Sarah is having a party this weekend,” the intonation pattern can be changed from falling at the end to rising at the end “Sarah is having a party this weekend?” (an echo question) or the word order can be changed to give “Is Sarah having a party this weekend?” (a yes/no question). To make similar questions, American Sign Language (ASL), like some spoken languages, does not use the option of changing the word order but instead adds nonmanual markers. In this example, the nonmanual marker is that of a “Yes/no question.” Such a marker is used to denote questions that can be readily answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” This is in contrast, for instance, to “Wh-questions” which start with a “wh”-word  such as “which,” “when,” “how,” etc; in ASL Wh-questions are made with both the addition of nonmanual markers and optional word order changes. But each of these markers, for “Yes/no question” or “Wh-question,” may consist of multiple articulations, the most prominent being the position of the eyebrows, but with secondary articulations that may turn out to have their own meanings which combine with the primary meaning, or that may have emphasizer effects on the primary meaning, or that may be signer-specific, or even accidental and irrelevant To identify nonmanual markers, sign language researchers will typically manually annotate head movements and facial expression changes observed in a large number of video sequences. Tools such as ELAN e.g., for conditionals, a sign with the meaning ‘if’ may be used but is not required) i.e., positive versus negative) seems to be marked with nonmanuals; there is no regular sign for indicating positive polarity as this is the default interpretation in all languages, and negative signs for negative polarity are optional if the nonmanual for negation is present To date, research in ASL has identified that Hypothetical conditionals, Yes/no questions and Wh-questions are marked primarily by nonmanuals and secondarily by optional signs , and first-order co-occurrences , as, for example, one facial or head articulation occurring before another . Note that the term “discriminant” goes beyond a characterization of the nonmanual. While characterization defines the production of a nonmanual, discriminant features are those produced during one grammatical construction  but absent elsewhere. This proposed approach will thus be used to test the hypothesis that nonmanual markers discriminate among the following nine classes of sentences: Hypothetical conditionals, Yes/no questions, Wh-questions, Wh-questions postposed, Assertions and their polarities (positive and negative).The present paper describes a linguistic-computational approach to This proposed approach not only validates some known nonmanuals but, most importantly, identifies a large variety of previously unsuspected nonmanual markers for each of the nine sentence types of ASL considered in the present paper. For example, as expected, our results show a systematic relationship between eyebrow position and grammatical constructions. As predicted by previous literature, ‘brows move up’ is prominent in Hypothetical conditionals (89.1%) and Yes/no questions (92.3%). Similarly, ‘brows move down’ occurs systematically in Wh-questions (89.5%) and Wh-questions with the Wh-sign postposed (99.2%). However, our results reveal a complex interaction between head position and mouth shape that has not been previously reported in the literature. This finding is extremely relevant because it shows how co-articulations of facial components are employed as grammatical constructions and hence emphasizes the importance of complex interaction of nonmanual markers in sign language.The results summarized in the preceding paragraph would have been difficult to attain using a visual analysis of manual annotations. In contrast, the proposed computational approach can search for all possible first-order feature relationships and calculate which consistently co-occur in a given grammatical construct but rarely happen elsewhere. The approach and algorithms described in this paper have been incorporated into ELAN and can hence be readily used by other researchers to replicate and expand on the results reported herein.e.g., spoken English and Turkish Sign Language both allow negative Yes/no questions We investigate the role of nonmanuals in five (5) types of sentences: Hypothetical conditionals, Yes/no questions, Wh-questions, Wh-questions postposed and Assertions; in addition we consider their polarities: positive and negative. This yields a total of 9 classes because Yes/no-questions are neutral, meaning they cannot be associated with a specific polarity , for a total of We recorded fifteen (15) Deaf native users of ASL signing more than The signers were recorded using two high quality Sony DCR-VX2100 cameras. These cameras are equipped with 3 1/3″ CCDs for fast capture of color images in our studio conditions. All human subjects signed a consent form, granting permission for the use of their video sequences in research and the replication of these in scientific articles. The research and consent forms were approved by the IRB boards at The Ohio State University and Purdue University.The first camera recorded the upper-body (including the head) of the signer. The second camera captured a close-up of the face. This second camera provides high-quality video of the nonmanuals, For consistency check, the annotations of each recorded sentence were visually validated by a native Deaf ASL signer and an experienced sign language researcher who were members of the American Sign Language Linguistics Laboratory at Purdue University. In particular, we made sure all video clips in the database correctly expressed its target sentence and that it was clearly visible and understood. Video clips not passing this test were eliminated from the database.The video clips and manual annotations described in this section will be made publicly available to those wishing to extend on the results reported herein.e.g., nose on top of the mouth), while second-order specify between-feature distances. Shape features means that facial features are in a specified position . These descriptions are correlated with facial movement that may also be defined using other coding systems Research in face perception has demonstrated that facial expressions are coded and recognized by the cognitive system using configural Similarly, sign language research has shown that such options as brow position, closed/open mouth and flat/round lips, teeth showing, and head turns are potential building blocks of nonmanual markers All video clips are displayed with the ELAN discriminative facial features. A possible solution is to treat a feature as a time varying function, where each category has some numerical value e.g., headshakes, left to right turns, etc. We resolve these problems using Allen's Temporal Logic (ATL).The qualitative manual annotations described above must then be quantified in order to determine the most event A happens before event Bbefore, meets, overlaps, equals, starts, during and finishes. To show the use of the above defined propositions, consider the examples in A and B. A is said to be before B, when A happens disjointly before B, A could be head turns right and B head turns left. Here, we would write head turns right before head turns left. This could be the case when a subject is signing a negative statement with negation marked with a headshake.ATL is a framework that allows us to analyze relative temporal information, such as A happens immediately before B, then A is said to meet B, before and meets is that before requires a non-empty time interval between both events. For example, when nodding, the head moves up and down without a visual pause, which could be written as, A meets B. Obviously, in practice, two events involving different articulations would only perfectly follow one another by chance. To accommodate for small natural variabilities , we define meets as B occurring after a very brief interval A. The value of In the case that A is said to overlap B when A starts before B and A finishes during B, equals means that both events, A and B, share the same time interval, e.g., to indicate that the brows move up once, as in Yes/no questions A finishes before B, then A is said to start with B, A and B finish at the same time but A starts after B, then A is said to finish at B, during means that A's time interval happens within B's time interval, When both events start at the same time but i.e., “Brad is cooking/cooks fish on the grill”). The resulting coding using ATL relations is shown in e.g., In summary, the Allen's Temporal Logic defined above is composed of a set of binary propositions. Formally, we denote this set as e.g., brows move up equals brows move down) giving a total The 17 feature categories  form a se.g., while a single headshake may not carry any grammatical meaning, multiple headshakes can be a marker of negation or Wh-questions It is also important to encode the number of consecutive occurrences for a given ATL relation. This might be important for some discriminant features, Formally, we represent a sentence as e.g., Yes/no-questions versus the others), we need to use a feature extraction algorithm that uncovers the features or combinations of them that best discriminate between sentence types. In pattern recognition, such approaches are called discriminant analysis The histogram representation of the ALT described thus far provides a convenient numerical representation of the nonmanual events we wish to study. To determine the time relations that best discriminate a grammatical structure from the rest .Formally, RLDA finds the projection vector Solving for (1) yields, discriminative if its corresponding absolute magnitude in i.e., i.e., An ATL relation is hence defined as hypothesis is that nonmanual markers can be used to discriminate among the nine classes of sentences described above. More specifically, we hypothesize that first-order temporal relations of facial movements are sufficient to code for such grammatical structure. To test this hypothesis, we use all the video sequences in our database except one to find the discriminant facial features (as described in the Methods section) and test whether the resulting model correctly classifies the left out sentence. This approached is known as Leave-One-Sentence-Out (LOSO) test.Our i.e., Classification of the left out (test) sample In addition to the above, we included the commonly used sensitivity index d′ to measure the distance between signal and noise for the most discriminative features. Here, d′ measures the performance of a single feature in isolation and, hence, does not provide information on co-occurring features or their temporal structures.i.e., the discriminant features. To achieve this, we run a one-versus-all experiment. This means that, for each class , we use the linguistic-computational approach described in the Methods section to find the discriminant features that are common to that class but are not descriptive of the other classes.First, we wish to determine the nonmanuals that best discriminate each structure, The resulting discriminant features need to distinguish between the grammatical structures under study. These features are those providing the highest classification accuracies in the LOSO test described above. They are in i.e., i.e., i.e., In discriminant the feature is. Some discriminant features will of course be more common and, hence, will successfully discriminate more samples of finishes brows move up” in not a Hypothetical conditional (with classification accuracy at 97.6%). In comparison, “Brows move up” is a better nonmanual marker of conditionals , but is also employed elsewhere . Thus, this second nonmanual is not as robust as the previous one. As expected, the result of averaging the last two columns in The numbers in these last two columns (labeled “% Classification”) specify how many of our sentences can be correctly classified using each single feature Additionally, we tested for the statistical significance of our results. This was done by comparing our results with those given by a randomization of the class labels. That is, we compare the results obtained with the proposed approach to the results one observes when the class labels for each of the samples Let us now describe the results of this study in detail for each of the 5 classes under consideration.With respect to the Hypothetical conditionals , the higfinishes brows move up” in 19% of the Hypothetical conditionals suggests a head thrust at the end of the conditional clause Most notably, during brows move up,” which may reflect the establishment of a space to the left of the signer at head level to mark clauses containing content that is uncertain, hypothetical, or otherwise irrealis. The use of space for linguistic pragmatic functions has been recently reported for Catalan Sign Language (LSC) during brows move up” in Hypothetical conditionals is Lackner's observation of the signers' reference to a “mental” space or “space of thoughts,” which may be coded by pointing, gazing up, or moving the chin up.Another frequent head behavior is “head turns left during brows move up” occurs very frequently in clauses containing negation (negative polarity), as part of the negative headshake  teeth touch the (bottom) lip at the end of the articulation of “if.” In contrast, the high frequency of “teeth open” in non-Hypotheticals is not accompanied by high occurrence of “teeth touch lip during brows move up” and “teeth touch lip during mouth open.” Instead, “teeth open” is the result of the inclusion of lexical items such as FISH in the stimuli. As reported in e.g., pronouns, verbs). Thus, it is not unusual that a noun sign like FISH would be accompanied by the articulation of “fish” or at least the first part of it that involves articulation of “f” or “fi.” Both Hypothetical conditionals and non-Hypotheticals have a high occurrence of “teeth open” in From In contrast, “brows move up” occurs in few Wh-questions (10.6%) but is very frequent in other constructions (70.5%), which includes the Hypothetical conditionals discussed above and Yes/no questions (discussed below), both of which are associated with raised brows. “Brow move up” may also be associated with some occurrences of Wh-questions with Wh-sign postposed. This allows for very high classification rates of Wh-questions and other constructions even when they are using this single feature.starts brows move down,” which occurs frequently in Wh-questions (43.1%) but not in other constructions (0.5%). This cue is likely associated with the presence of mouthing of “who” at the beginning of some Wh-questions. This is also the case for “mouth shape round.”The remaining discriminative cue is “mouth shape round starts brows move down” for Wh-questions.From the results in meets brows move down,” with the brows up on the non-question part and the brows down on the Wh-word. This “brows up meets brows down” pattern in ASL Wh-questions postposed is noted in A “Wh-question postposed” is one in which the Wh-word has been produced at the end of the question instead of at the beginning  in Wh-questions postposed, and may be related to mouthing of other Wh-words, such as “which,” “why,” and “where.” Note the classification rate, for Wh-questions postposed and others is 94% when combining the features.The mouth is also active in relation to “brows move down,” with “mouth shape round overlaps brows move down” occurred in 16.9% of these as compared to only 2.5% in other constructions. Periodic blinks, the kind that are associated with eye-wetting, are well-known as a marker of the end of intonational phrases and syntactic constituents in ASL inside the clause. This supports the suggestion that they are deliberate blinks, which are used to emphasize a sign, because signs in final position in a clause are already emphasized/stressed One articulation in Wh-questions postposed that did not show up in other constructions is the occurrence of blinks. “Blink Yes/no questions are distinguished primarily by “brows move up,” although this cue also occurs frequently in other constructions, which include Hypothetical conditionals  and Assebefore brows move down” does not occur in Yes/no questions, since the brow raise is expected to span the entire question before brows move down” does occur in other constructions, namely those in which a Topic or Hypothetical conditional clause (brows up) precedes a Wh-question.Note that, as expected, “brows move up starts brows move up” occurs in 33.5% of Yes/no questions but only 6.9% of other constructions. Half of the Yes/no questions are preceded by a topic; according to “Head moves up finishes brows move up” occurs in 32.9% of the Yes/no questions as compared to only 3.4% of the other constructions, with a clear classification accuracy for the latter (97.2%). This is a truly surprising result which undoubtedly suggests further investigations in this direction as, to our knowledge, no function for flat mouth in ASL has been assigned in the existing literature. Since it spans the full duration of brows up  and ends when the brows up ends, these results suggest that this is a question mouth marker, although the issue is then raised as to why it is only not more frequent.“Mouth shape flat Assertions have been traditionally viewed as not marked by specific nonmanuals, leaving the articulators free to reflect ones that accompany nonmanually marked lexical signs as well as to reflect the signer's emotional status. The cues identified as distinctive in i.e., Hypothetical conditionals, Wh-questions, Wh-questions postposed and Assertions.The study of polarity follows the same procedure described above. The discriminant features selected by the LOSO approach are given in Here, we also performed the statistical significant analysis described in Experiment 1 section. All our results were again statistically significant with: Let us look at each of these results in more detail.From When we dig into the details of the temporal behavior of head turns, we identify linguistic interactions that have not been available to impressionistic analysis so far. We believe this is an improvement our algorithm has made possible for sign language research. In this sense, the findings with the ordering and the relation of head turns alert us to two previously unrealized findings about negative polarity in ASL.meets the opposite head turn” which kinematically correlates to a fast paced headshake. That the defining relation is “meets” rather than a head turn preference on either side of the relation is proved when we compare meets head turns right” discriminant feature. On the other hand, what gives us the fast paced headshake in meets head turns left” discriminant feature. The commonality turns out to be the abstract linguistic relation “a head turn meets the opposite head turn.” The kinematic realization of this abstract linguistic property is a fast paced headshake.The first finding is that the defining relation for negative polarity is “a head turn meets the opposite head turn.” There is a widespread linguistic assumption that Assertions are the most basic, simplest clause type, and this is where we see the negative headshake start with “head turns right.”The second finding is that we can generalize that negation normally begins with “head turns right.” Because this does not always occur, we state the general nonmanual marking as “a head turn during brows move up” is the discriminant feature for conditionals. As we will see in discriminant features for polarity in assertions, the primary indicator of fast paced negative headshake “head turns right meets head turns left” in Assertions, the most basic clause, starts with head turn to the right. In Hypothetical conditionals, the “head turns left” dominates the negative, and the fast paced negative headshake is modified to start on the left, yielding “head turns left meets head turns right”, the most active nonmanual marker in negative Hypothetical conditions , leading to In addition to these two findings we also need to note that the headshakes reflected by “head turns right/left Beyond the results above, our results further highlight the role of the mouth in nonmanuals. Note the frequency of “mouth shape other”  during (overlapping with) “head turns right” in a large number of negative Hypothetical conditionals.meets head turns right” gives us a strong cue for differentiating negative polarity from positive polarity in the conditional sentences. When this result is evaluated with “head turns right overlaps mouth shape other,” we come up with the pattern in As we noted above, the fast paced “head turns left Next, note that the percentage of “mouth shape other” (46.3% vs. 17.9%) is strong enough not to be associated with a combined effect of lexical mouth-shapes of random signs in negative sentences. The contrast in discriminant percentages indicates that the mouth is actively involved in the expression of negation in ASL. This finding  is consistent with results reported in The fact that “mouth shape other” is not as frequent as headshake is another interesting finding. There are two ways to interpret this finding. First, although “mouth shape other” is present for almost half of the negative sentences, it could be a redundant or secondary prosodic cue, similar to the findings in The discriminant features that distinguish negative and positive polarity in Wh-questions are more varied than those of Hypothetical conditionals and seem to be less clearly reflective of general negative marking. That is, they generally do not indicate head turns. Instead, a number of the features relate to mouth and teeth positions. In addition, there is no clear pattern of occurrence such as that seen with Hypothetical conditionals, where strong markings were seen for negatives as compared to positives. Here, sometimes a mouth or teeth feature is more prevalent in negatives and sometimes the reverse is true. This suggests that while Wh-questions can be clearly marked by brows down, when Wh-questions are negative, nonmanuals alone may not be able to carry both semantic functions. Such a conclusion is in keeping with two other observations in the literature. One is that both Wh-marking and negation use headshakes; the negative headshake is somewhat larger and slower starts mouth open” is highly classificatory (91.9%) for positive Wh-questions by its absence. While “brows move down” is clearly related to Wh-questions, mouth open could be related to some of the Wh-words being mouthed  and given the higher occurrence in negatives, possibly also ‘not.’ Another mouth cue with a high classification value (89%) for positives by its absence, “teeth open overlaps head turns right,” is almost three times more prevalent in negatives than in positives. Similarly, “mouth closed meets teeth open” is twice as prevalent in negatives as in positives and has a high classification value – its absence from positives yields correct classification 90.2% of the time despite its rare occurrence in Wh-questions in general. When such negative evidence (9.8%) is combined with positive evidence (30.8%), we may thus suggest that “mouth closed meets teeth open” is a candidate to discriminate between negative and positive polarity in Wh-questions. The computational model of this interaction is given in Moreover, the current results define several interesting interactions in Wh-questions and polarity. “Brows move down As we have discussed in the section above regarding negative conditionals, there is evidence of “mouth closed” as a marker of negation. The fact that it meets “teeth open” 30.8% of the time suggests that this cue may be interrupted by some lexical interference (mouthing of English words) tucked into the flow of prosody due to certain lexical items.Another mouth feature that has a high classification value for negative Wh-questions is “teeth touch lip,” which occurs in 25.2% of positives versus only 6.7% of negatives. This is likely the result of three of the positive Wh-questions containing signs that can be accompanied by mouthing of English words beginning with ‘f’ .In contrast to regular Wh-questions, there is a clearer pattern to negative marking for Wh-questions postposed, with discriminant features all occurring more frequently in the negatives than in the positives. This pattern seems to support the argument above concerning regular Wh-questions. The basic difference between Wh-questions with and without Wh-sign postposing is that when the Wh-sign occurs at the end of the question, the material that occurs before the Wh-sign does not have to be covered by Wh-marking. As discussed in discriminant features for polarity in Wh-questions, the material prior to the Wh-sign can sometimes be considered an Assertion, meaning that Wh-marking and negation marking would not come into conflict. Hence, Like regular Wh-questions, we see increased prominence of mouth and teeth positions which will require further research to explain, such as the interaction of mouth gestures with mouthing the English words when certain signs are produced The results for polarity marking of Assertions also show clear nonmanual marking of negation, as all discriminant features occur more often in negatives than in positives. The primary cue in all discriminant features is head turn, reflecting negative headshakes. The only other discriminant cue is “brows move up,” which occurs before “head turns right;” this is the result of those Assertions that begin with a topic or are preceded by a conditional clause, both of which are marked with brows up, followed by a negative Assertion marked with headshake.In sum, with the exception of Wh-questions, the marking of negative polarity is clear on the constructions included in this study, and Wh-questions themselves are known to differ from the other constructions in needing a manual Wh-sign most of the time. The surprises in the data are related to mouth and teeth positions, which seem to gain prominence as nonmanual marking becomes more complex when multiple semantic functions are expressed simultaneously.Uncovering the discriminant features of the linguistic model governing nonmanuals in sign languages has proven to be an extremely hard problem. The present paper shows how this can be resolved using a linguistic-computational approach. In this approach a linguistic representation of the face is first obtained. A computational approach is then employed to determine the combination of these features consistently observed in each class but not with others. The resulting linguistic model proves to be able to discriminate between nine different classes of sentences – Hypothetical conditionals, Wh-questions, Wh-questions postposed and Assertions in their two polarities and Yes/no questions in positive polarity.The analyses described above strongly suggest that there are discriminant features that can be used to separate conditionals from non-conditionals, Yes/no questions from non-Yes/no-questions, Wh-questions and Wh-questions with postposed Wh-signs from non-Wh-questions, and Assertions from non-Assertions. In addition, for each of these except Yes/no questions which do not form negative in ASL, the discriminant features separate the negative structures from their positive counterparts. From the model , the resi.e., a faster paced headshake.In addition, the algorithm gives temporal relations that are striking with respect to head turns, where there are both expected and important novel results. The use of multiple head turns as headshakes has been well-documented for ASL and other sign languages as a major nonmanual marker of negation i.e., headshake, may very well be instantiated in more than one articulatory combination given the left and right directions of articulation, as well as temporal possibilities; a priori there is no reason to expect other sign languages which employ “headshake” as the major nonmanual cue to behave the same way as ASL does. On the big picture, this path also opens up an exciting agenda, both for ASL and cross-linguistic research, for quantitatively detecting nuances in the behavior of certain nonmanual markers which look the same on the surface even to the eye of an experienced sign language annotator.This opens a new venue for the study of headshakes. For instance, with regard to negative head turns it will be important to determine whether all negative headshakes are faster under all conditions across multiple sign languages. This possibility is raised in observations on Austrian Sign Language In addition to the insights about negation reported here, the approach presented in the present work also revealed that head turn left is a discriminant feature in conditionals. Again, work on Austrian Sign Language Lastly, the results also highlight the important role that the mouth and teeth play in negation. It is noted in As a final note, it should be noted that the methodology described herein  will most probably find applications beyond the studies of sign language. Elan is a generic tool used in several disciplines and the statstistical analysis described in the present paper is equally valid in these studies.Appendix S1Supporting Tables S1–S5.(TEX)Click here for additional data file.


Sarcoidosis is a multisystem disease which is most commonly manifested in the pulmonary system. However, extrapulmonary manifestations have also been frequently reported. Isolated occurrence of sarcoidosis in the genital system is rare and poses a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma. Uterine sarcoidosis can present with cervical erosions, endometrial polypoid lesions, and recurrent serometra. In majority of cases, it is diagnosed by endometrial curettage, but it has also been detected by examination of hysterectomy, polypectomy, and autopsy specimens. Nonnecrotizing granulomas are the characteristic pathologic finding of sarcoidosis. However, many infectious and noninfectious etiologies including certain neoplasms can produce similar granulomatous reactions in the female genital tract. These conditions affect the female genital tract more commonly than sarcoidosis, and therefore it is important to rule out these conditions first before making a diagnosis of sarcoidosis. Treatment of sarcoidosis is different from treating these other conditions and the most commonly used systemic or local corticosteroids can be hazardous if the underlying cause is infection. In this case report, the clinical presentation, histopathology, clinical course, and treatment of a patient with isolated uterine sarcoidosis are described, and a brief literature review of sarcoidosis of the female genital tract is provided. Sarcoidosis is a multisystem disease of unclear etiology. Any organ system in the body can be affected by sarcoidosis, and the classic pathologic finding is the presence of noncaseating granulomas in the involved organs. Pulmonary sarcoidosis is the most common manifestation of the disease, accounting for 90 percent of the cases . Extra p3 with an endometrial thickness of 6 mm. It also revealed an anterior body mural fibroid with a submucosal component measuring 4.3 × 3.7 × 4.4 cm3 and a fundal fibroid measuring 2.9 × 2.7 × 2.9 cm3; her ovaries were normal. She received a short course of high dose oral contraceptive pills. Punch biopsies from the vulvar lesions revealed high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions with features of human papillomavirus infection. Therapeutic endometrial curettage was performed, and the histopathological examination of the endometrial tissues revealed menstrual phase changes, strands of smooth muscles suggestive of uterine myoma, and numerous nonnecrotizing epithelioid giant cell granulomas , and with a past medical history significant for schizophrenia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease presented to our facility with menorrhagia. She was recently treated for latent syphilis with penicillin, and she also has genital warts and herpes virus 2 infections. Three years prior, she presented with mediastinal adenopathy and thick walled pulmonary cavities involving both the upper lobes. Flexible bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage and transbronchial biopsies from the right upper lobe revealed nonnecrotizing granulomas consistent with sarcoidosis. They were negative for AFB and fungal stains. A diagnosis of primary cavitary pulmonary sarcoidosis was made, and she was treated with systemic steroids for twelve months. She responded well to steroids with complete clinical and radiographic resolutions Figures . Fourtee Figures . Stains Sarcoidosis of the female genital tract is probably the rarest form of all the extra pulmonary sarcoidosis, accounting for less than 1% of cases . Based oOvarian sarcoidosis is probably the second most common manifestation of female genital tract sarcoidosis. Winslow and Funkhouser in 1968 described a case of a 28-year-old female who underwent total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingoophorectomy for a cervical lesion . HistopaInvolvement of the fallopian tubes commonly occurs in conjunction with sarcoidosis of the other parts of female genital tract. In 1954, Cowdell described an autopsy finding of sarcoidosis involving the fallopian tubes of a 21-year-old female who died of cardiac sarcoidosis , 38. SubNonnecrotizing granulomas are the characteristic pathologic finding of sarcoidosis. However, this finding is not pathognomic of sarcoidosis and many infectious and noninfectious etiologies including certain neoplasms can produce similar granulomatous reactions in the female genital tract. Infectious etiologies include tuberculosis, atypical mycobacteria, endemic mycosis, actinomycosis, and parasites. Noninfectious causes like foreign body reaction, Crohn's disease, medications, lymphoma, and other neoplastic conditions and postprocedure or postsurgical granulomas can also mimic sarcoid granulomas –48. ThesIn conclusion, female genital tract sarcoidosis is rare and its presentation can mimic other conditions that commonly affect the female genital tract. Diagnosis is mainly based on identification of noncaseating granulomas in the involved organs and ruling out other conditions that can have a similar histopathology finding. It can affect any age group but usually occurs in the reproductive age group. Like other extra pulmonary manifestations of sarcoidosis, the majority of the patients have pulmonary involvement and the Black population seems to be affected more frequently than other races. Increased incidence of uterine sarcoidosis may just reflect a sampling bias as most of these cases had concomitant involvement of other structures of the female genital tract. Endometrial curettage or even pap smear may be sufficient to make the diagnosis of uterine sarcoidosis; involvement of other structures will need a biopsy. Isolated cases may just require observation but systemic and symptomatic patients may be given a trial of systemic steroids.