ABSTRACT Differential Object Marking (DOM) is a linguistic phenomenon of many languages like Spanish, in which the preposition ‘a’ appears before direct objects. Current theory states that this phenomenon is ruled by the tension between iconicity (markedness) and economy (omission), In order to test this hypothesis, a 218-million tweets corpora representing all varieties of Spanish was used. 4,967 DOM cases showing marking, omission and optional marking were found in the Colombian Spanish corpus, which were tagged manually with 12 binary features and used to study other varieties. Through statistical analysis, it was discovered that this phenomenon is ruled by two highly correlated (r=0,92) tensions that can be associated with iconicity (13,47%) and economy (86,53%). This finding suggests that these tensions are not independent but rather controlled by a common factor named, in this study, as harmonic tension. This study provides the degree of importance of the features analyzed, which is used to propose a new feature hierarchy that confirms empirically other small ones proposed before. It can be concluded that this harmonic tension is an empirical plausible model to demonstrate the percentage of DOM in Spanish.

RESUMEN La marcación diferencial del objeto es un fenómeno gramatical de varias lenguas como el español, en la cual el morfema ‘a’ aparece ante ciertos objetos directos. La teoría actual plantea que este fenómeno está dominado por la tensión entre: la iconicidad (marcación) y la economía (omisión). Para probar esta hipótesis, se utilizó un corpus de 218 millones de tuits de distintas variedades del español. Se encontraron 4.967 casos de marcación, opcionalidad y omisión de la MDO del español de Colombia que se caracterizaron manualmente con 12 rasgos semánticos binarios y que fueron utilizados para estudiar las demás variedades. El análisis estadístico arrojó que el fenómeno está gobernado por dos fuerzas altamente correlacionadas (r=0,92) que se pueden asociar a la iconicidad (13,47%) y la economía (86,53%). Estas fuerzas no son independientes; están controladas por un factor común, el cual se nombra en este estudio como tensión armónica. Se reporta el grado de importancia de los 12 rasgos para proponer una nueva jerarquía que confirma empíricamente otras antes propuestas. Se concluye que la tensión armónica es un modelo plausible con soporte empírico para modelar el porcentaje de la MDO del español.

Resumen Antecedentes: la craniectomía Descompresiva (CD) se ha utilizado para el tratamiento del aumento de la presión intracraneal en pacientes con traumatismo cerebral y accidente cerebrovascular; su papel beneficioso sigue siendo un tema de debate. Poco se ha escrito sobre el papel de la CD en el contexto de pacientes con tumores intracraneales. Métodos: Revisamos retrospectivamente nuestro registro institucional de tumores para todos los pacientes adultos tratados con craniectomía descompresiva como tratamiento de emergencia entre enero de 2012 y junio de 2019. Resultados: Un total de 61 pacientes fueron llevados a cirugía por una CD secundaria a elevación de ICP secundario a un tumor del sistema nervioso central. Las curvas de Kaplan-Meyer mostraron que 18.9 meses fue el tiempo medio de supervivencia de la población global, 40 pacientes murieron (65.5%) durante el período de seguimiento. Los pacientes del grupo de más de 60 años tuvieron un peor tiempo de supervivencia que los pacientes menores (p = 0,01). Los pacientes con hemorragia intracerebral tuvieron la peor sobrevida en comparación con los pacientes con otras etiologías (p = 0,04). Conclusión: Nuestros datos muestran que en algunos casos seleccionados, la CD es una opción viable como tratamiento de rescate para pacientes con tumores intracraneales.

Abstract Background: Decompressive craniectomy (DC) has been used for the treatment of refractory increased intracranial pressure (ICP) in patients with brain trauma and stroke; its beneficial role is still a matter of debate. Little has been written on the role of DC in the setting of patients with intracranial tumors. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed our institutional tumor registry for all adult patients treated with a DC as an emergency treatment between January 2012 and June 2019. Results: A total of 61 patients were taken into surgery for a DC secondary to raised ICP related to a central nervous system tumor. The Kaplan-Meier curves in the study showed that 18.9 months was the mean survival time (MST) of the global population, 40 patients died (65.5%) during the follow-up period. Patients in the group of over 60 years had a worst survival time than younger patients (p = 0.01). Patients with intracerebral hemorrhage had the worst MST compared with the patients with other etiologies (p = 0.04). Conclusion: Our data show that in some selected cases DC is a viable option as a salvage treatment for patients with intracranial tumors.

Differential Object Marking (DOM) is a linguistic phenomenon of many languages like Spanish, in which the preposition ‘a’ appears before direct objects. Current theory states that this phenomenon is ruled by the tension between iconicity (markedness) and economy (omission), In order to test this hypothesis, a 218-million tweets corpora representing all varieties of Spanish was used. 4,967 DOM cases showing marking, omission and optional marking were found in the Colombian Spanish corpus, which were tagged manually with 12 binary features and used to study other varieties. Through statistical analysis, it was discovered that this phenomenon is ruled by two highly correlated (r=0,92) tensions that can be associated with iconicity (13,47%) and economy (86,53%). This finding suggests that these tensions are not independent but rather controlled by a common factor named, in this study, as harmonic tension. This study provides the degree of importance of the features analyzed, which is used to propose a new feature hierarchy that confirms empirically other small ones proposed before. It can be concluded that this harmonic tension is an empirical plausible model to demonstrate the percentage of DOM in Spanish.

La marcación diferencial del objeto es un fenómeno gramatical de varias lenguas como el español, en la cual el morfema ‘a’ aparece ante ciertos objetos directos. La teoría actual plantea que este fenómeno está dominado por la tensión entre: la iconicidad (marcación) y la economía (omisión). Para probar esta hipótesis, se utilizó un corpus de 218 millones de tuits de distintas variedades del español. Se encontraron 4.967 casos de marcación, opcionalidad y omisión de la MDO del español de Colombia que se caracterizaron manualmente con 12 rasgos semánticos binarios y que fueron utilizados para estudiar las demás variedades. El análisis estadístico arrojó que el fenómeno está gobernado por dos fuerzas altamente correlacionadas (r=0,92) que se pueden asociar a la iconicidad (13,47%) y la economía (86,53%). Estas fuerzas no son independientes; están controladas por un factor común, el cual se nombra en este estudio como tensión armónica. Se reporta el grado de importancia de los 12 rasgos para proponer una nueva jerarquía que confirma empíricamente otras antes propuestas. Se concluye que la tensión armónica es un modelo plausible con soporte empírico para modelar el porcentaje de la MDO del español.

Abstract: Most NLP applications assume that a particular language is homogeneous in the regions where it is spoken. However, each language varies considerably throughout its geographical distribution. To make NLP sensitive to dialects, a reliable, representative and up-to-date source of information that quantitatively represents such geographical variation is necessary. However, some of the current approaches have disadvantages such as the need for parameters, the disregard of the geographical coordinates in the analysis, and the use of linguistic alternations that presuppose the existence of specific dialectal varieties. Detection of “ecotones” is an analogous problem in the field of ecology that focuses on the identification of boundaries, instead of regions, in ecosystems facilitating the construction of statistical tests. We adapted the concept of “ecotone” to “dialectone” for the detection of dialectal boundaries by using two non-parametric statistical tests: the Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion (HSIC) and the Wilcoxon signed-rank. The proposed method was applied to a large corpus of Spanish tweets produced in 160 locations in Colombia through the analysis of unigram features. The resulting dialectones showed to be meaningful but difficult to compare against regions identified by other authors using classical dialectometry. We concluded that the automatic detection of dialectones is convenient alternative to classical methods in dialectometry and a potential source of information for automatic language applications.

ABSTRACT The aim of the present work was to evaluate the effect of different doses of chemical fertilizer and worm humus, on growth and development of Capsicum annuum L. cv. Magistral. As chemical fertilizer was used the 10-20-10 formulation and as organic fertilizer the earthworm humus was used. Five treatments were applied: chemical fertilization 100 %, 2, 4 and 6 t ha-1 of humus + chemical fertilization (75 %) and 4 t ha-1 of humus only. Different indicators of growth, reproductive and crop yields were evaluated. The data were analyzed by variance of simple classification and Tukey Test was used for comparison among media of treatments. The best results were obtained with the application of chemical fertilizer 100 % in the first harvest in relation to height, number of leaves, flowers, fruits per plants and fruit weigh. The effect of humus application combined with chemical fertilizer improved the reproductive parameter in the second harvest. The yield obtained was higher with the application of chemical fertilizer in the first harvest; however in the second harvest the results achieved were similar to that the yield after the application of chemical fertilizer 75 % + humus 4 and 6 t ha-1, which showed the positive effect of humus on the parameter evaluated. The results obtained showed the potentiality of the worm humus to reduce the application of chemical fertilizer without affecting yield of C. annuum

RESUMEN El aumento de la calidad y los rendimientos de las especies hortícolas constituyen objetivos importantes para satisfacer las demandas del mercado. La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo evaluar el efecto de diferentes combinaciones de fertilizantes químicos y humus de lombriz, sobre indicadores de crecimiento y desarrollo de Capsicum annuum L. cv. Magistral. Se utilizó como fertilizante químico la formulación 10-20-10 y como abono orgánico humus de lombriz procedente de estiércol vacuno. Se aplicaron cinco tratamientos: fertilización química 100 %, fertilización química al 75 % combinada con 2, 4 y 6 t ha-1 de humus y uno con 4 t ha-1 de humus solamente. Se evaluaron diferentes indicadores de crecimiento, reproductivos y el rendimiento por cosechas. Se realizó un análisis de varianza de clasificación simple y la prueba de Tukey para la comparación de medias entre tratamientos. Los mejores resultados en la primera cosecha fueron obtenidos con la aplicación de fertilizante químico 100 % respecto a la altura, número de hojas, flores, frutos por planta y peso de frutos. El efecto de la aplicación de humus junto a fertilizantes químicos mejoró los indicadores reproductivos en la segunda cosecha. El rendimiento obtenido en la primera cosecha fue superior con la aplicación de fertilizante químico, pero en la segunda cosecha fue similar al tratamiento fertilizante químico 75 % + humus 4, 6 t ha-1, lo que evidencia un efecto positivo de la aplicación de humus sobre dichos indicadores. Los resultados obtenidos evidencian las potencialidades que tiene el humus de lombriz para reducir el uso de fertilizante químico sin afectar el rendimiento de C. annuum

Soft cardinality is a generalization of the classic set cardinality (i.e., the number of elements in a set), which exploits similarities between elements to provide a "soft" counting of the number of elements in a collection. This model is so general that can be used interchangeability as cardinality function in resemblance coefficients such as Jaccard's, Dice's, cosine and others. Beyond that, cardinality-based features can be extracted from pairs of objects being compared to learn adaptive similarity functions from training data. This approach can be used for comparing any object that can be represented as a set or bag. We and other international teams used soft cardinality to address a series of natural language processing (NLP) tasks in the recent SemEval (semantic evaluation) competitions from 2012 to 2014. The systems based on soft cardinality have always been among the best systems in all the tasks in which they participated. This paper describes our experience in that journey by presenting the generalities of the model and some practical techniques for using soft cardinality for NLP problems.