Training statistical models to detect nonnative sentences requires a large corpus of non-native writing samples, which is often not readily available. This paper examines the extent to which machinetranslated (MT) sentences can substitute as training data. Two tasks are examined. For the native vs non-native classification task, nonnative training data yields better performance; for the ranking...

Studies highlighting the colonization and plant growth-promoting ability of endophytic bacteria inoculated into nonnative plant hosts reviewed and presented in this chapter. Endophytic bacteria, especially those related to the genus Bacillus, Burkholderia, Enterobacter, Gluconacetobacter, Herbaspirillum, Paenibacillus, Pseudomonas have been reported to form endophytic colonies in roots and shoo...

—Flooding can benefit native fishes in southwestern streams by disproportionately displacing nonnative fishes. We examined how the presence of an upstream impoundment affected this relationship in lower Sonoita Creek, Arizona. Nonnative species not found in the reservoir decreased in abundance in lower Sonoita Creek after flooding. The catch and relative abundance of some nonnative species foun...

We are interested in automatically detecting specific phone segments that have been mispronounced by a nonnative student of a foreign language. The phone-level information allows a language instruction system to provide the student with feedback about specific pronunciation mistakes. Two approaches were evaluated; in the first approach, log-posterior probability-based scores [1] are computed fo...

This study evaluated how hearing-impaired listeners perceive native (Swedish) and nonnative (English) speech in the presence of noise- and speech maskers. Speech reception thresholds were measured for four different masker types for each target language. The maskers consisted of stationary and fluctuating noise and two-talker babble in Swedish and English. Twenty-three hearing-impaired native S...

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that is transmissible to humans and that is currently incurable. BSE is caused by the prion protein (PrP), which adopts two conformers; PrPC is the native innocuous form, which is α-helix rich; and PrPSc is the β-sheet rich misfolded form, which is infectious and forms neurotoxic species. Acidic pH ...

The evolution of competitive ability of invasive plant species is generally studied in the context of adaptive responses to novel biotic environments (enemy release) in introduced ranges. However, invasive plants may also respond to novel abiotic environments. Here we studied differences in competitive ability between Chromolaena odorata plants of populations from nonnative versus native ranges...

We have captured the binding of a peptide to a PDZ domain by unbiased molecular dynamics simulations. Analysis of the trajectories reveals on-pathway encounter complex formation, which is driven by electrostatic interactions between negatively charged carboxylate groups in the peptide and positively charged side chains surrounding the binding site. In contrast, the final stereospecific complex,...

We present an articulatory-based method for real-time accent conversion using deep neural networks (DNN). The approach consists of two steps. First, we train a DNN articulatory synthesizer for the non-native speaker that estimates acoustics from contextualized articulatory gestures. Then we drive the DNN with articulatory gestures from a reference native speaker –mapped to the nonnative articul...

In cross-language speech production, nonnative consonant clusters are often modified by epenthetic or transitional vocoids. Focusing on English speakers’ productions of nonnative stop-initial clusters (e.g., /bn/, /bd/), the present study identified several acoustic characteristics that distinguish cases of epenthesis from accurate cluster realizations. Both modified and accurate productions co...