Macquarie University

About: Macquarie University is a education organization based out in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 14075 authors who have published 47673 publications receiving 1416184 citations. The organization is also known as: Macquarie uni.

Identical Words are Read Differently in Different Languages

Abstract: It is hypothesized that written languages differ in the preferred grain size of units that emerge during reading acquisition. Smaller units (graphemes, phonemes) are thought to play a dominant role in relatively consistent orthographies (e.g., German), whereas larger units (bodies, rhymes) are thought to be more important in relatively inconsistent orthographies (e.g., English). This hypothesis was tested by having native English and German speakers read identical words and nonwords in their respective languages (zoo-Zoo, sand-Sand, etc.). Although the English participants exhibited stronger body-rhyme effects, the German participants exhibited a stronger length effect for words and nonwords. Thus, identical items were processed differently in different orthographies. These results suggest that orthographic consistency determines not only the relative contribution of orthographic versus phonological codes within a given orthography; but also the preferred grain size of units that are likely to be functional during reading.

Anxiety in Adolescents With Asperger Syndrome: Negative Thoughts, Behavioral Problems, and Life Interference:

Abstract: This study examined anxiety symptoms in 29 adolescents With Asperger syndrome (AS) aged 12 to 16 years, compared to 30 nonclinical (NC) adolescents and 34 adolescents With anxiety disorders (AD). C...

Instagram use and young women’s body image concerns and self-objectification: Testing mediational pathways.

Abstract: This study examined the relationship between Instagram use (overall, as well as specifically viewing fitspiration images) and body image concerns and self-objectification among women between the ag...

Evolutionary consequences of antibiotic use for the resistome, mobilome and microbial pangenome.

Abstract: The widespread use and abuse of antibiotic therapy has evolutionary and ecological consequences, some of which are only just beginning to be examined. One well known consequence is the fixation of mutations and lateral gene transfer events that confer antibiotic resistance. Sequential selection events, driven by different classes of antibiotics, have resulted in the assembly of diverse resistance determinants and mobile DNAs into novel genetic elements of ever-growing complexity and flexibility. These novel plasmids, integrons and genomic islands have now become fixed at high frequency in diverse cell lineages by human antibiotic use. Consequently they can be regarded as xenogenetic pollutants, analogous to xenobiotic compounds, but with the critical distinction that they replicate rather than degrade when released to pollute natural environments. Antibiotics themselves must also be regarded as pollutants, since human production overwhelms natural synthesis, and a major proportion of ingested antibiotic is excreted unchanged into waste streams. Such antibiotic pollutants have non-target effects, raising the general rates of mutation, recombination and lateral gene transfer in all the microbiome, and simultaneously providing the selective force to fix such changes. This has the consequence of recruiting more genes into the resistome and mobilome, and of increasing the overlap between these two components of microbial genomes. Thus the human use and environmental release of antibiotics is having second order effects on the microbial world, because these small molecules act as drivers of bacterial evolution. Continued pollution with both xenogenetic elements and the selective agents that fix such elements in populations has potentially adverse consequences for human welfare.