Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a liver pathology affecting around 25% of the population worldwide. Excess oxidative stress, inflammation and aberrant cellular signaling can lead to this hepatic dysfunction and eventual carcinoma. Molecular hydrogen has been recognized for its selective antioxidant properties and ability to attenuate inflammation and regulate cellular function. We administered hydrogen-rich water (HRW) to 30 subjects with NAFLD in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled manner for eight weeks. Phenotypically, we observed beneficial trends (p > 0.05) in decreased weight (≈1 kg) and body mass index in the HRW group. HRW was well-tolerated, with no significant changes in liver enzymes and a trend of improved lipid profile and reduced lactate dehydrogenase levels. HRW tended to non-significantly decrease levels of nuclear factor kappa B, heat shock protein 70 and matrix metalloproteinase-9. Interestingly, there was a mild, albeit non-significant, tendency of increased levels of 8-hydroxy-2’-deoxyguanosine and malondialdehyde in the HRW group. This mild increase may be indicative of the hormetic effects of molecular hydrogen that occurred prior to the significant clinical improvements reported in previous longer-term studies. The favorable trends in this study in conjunction with previous animal and clinical findings suggest that HRW may serve as an important adjuvant therapy for promoting and maintaining optimal health and wellness. Longer term studies focused on prevention, maintenance, or treatment of NAFLD and early stages of NASH are warranted.

The paper questions the use of the Pearson chi-square goodness-of-fit test for discrete models in linguistics. It is argued that the stochastic independence, one of necessary conditions for a correct application of the test, is not realistic for linguistic data. Several alternative possibilities (computational and empirical approaches) are suggested. Advantages and drawbacks of the alternatives are discussed.

Menzerath’s law, the tendency of Z (the mean size of the parts) to decrease as X (the number of parts) increases, is found in language, music and genomes. Recently, it has been argued that the presence of the law in genomes is an inevitable consequence of the fact that Z=Y/X, which would imply that Z scales with X as Z∼1/X. That scaling is a very particular case of Menzerath-Altmann law that has been rejected by means of a correlation test between X and Y in genomes, being X the number of chromosomes of a species, Y its genome size in bases and Z the mean chromosome size. Here we review the statistical foundations of that test and consider three non-parametric tests based upon different correlation metrics and one parametric test to evaluate if Z∼1/X in genomes. The most powerful test is a new non-parametric one based upon the correlation ratio, which is able to reject Z∼1/X in nine out of 11 taxonomic groups and detect a borderline group. Rather than a fact, Z∼1/X is a baseline that real genomes do not meet. The view of Menzerath-Altmann law as inevitable is seriously flawed.

The aim of the article is to introduce a new approach to verb valency analysis. This approach – full valency – observes properties of verbs which occur solely in actual language usage. The term “full valency” means that all arguments, without distinguishing complements (obligatory arguments governed by the verb) and adjuncts (optional arguments directly dependent on the predicate verb), are taken into account. Because of an expectation that full valency reflects some mechanism which governs verb behaviour in a language, hypotheses concerning (1) the distribution of full valency frames, (2) the relationship between the number of valency frames and the frequency of the verb, and (3) the relationship between the number of valency frames and verb length were tested empirically. To test the hypotheses, a Czech syntactically annotated corpus – the Prague Dependency Treebank – was used.

The aim of the article is to present the most recent outcomes of investigation into the Menzerath-Altmann law. We have addressed the formula of the law introduced by Gabriel Altmann and we will discuss its limits leading to a formula defined for discrete data. We will also compare the results of the research on the law in Polish syntax while applying the formulae for discrete data and continuous data.