bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Linguistic tools of empowerment and alienation in the Chinese official press
Authors: Lams Lutgard
Published: February 2015

Attempts at reinvigorating mythical sensations of shared values and cultural identities happen particularly at times of dislocatory events in a community’s history, when ‘the national Self’ is perceived to be threatened by external forces. Such a critical moment for China was the collision between a US surveillance plane and a Chinese F-8 jet fighter on April 1, 2001, and the ensuing diplomatic standoff between the US and China. As the Chinese authorities and the state media viewed this incident in a series of ambiguous incidents involving the US, it was concluded that the collision had been the inevitable outcome of US hegemonism intended to provoke China. It is this concurrence of events, triggering feelings of disempowerment of the Self that causes recurrent flurries of heated anti-Other rhetoric. Boundaries of exclusion/inclusion along cultural, historical and political lines set up the Other as the negative mirror of the Self, which as a consequence is positively reasserted. Informed by insights from Language Pragmatics and Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper sets out to examine linguistic tools of alienation and empowerment in the Chinese official press narratives about the collision, comprising the Chinese-language Renmin Ribao, its English equivalent The People’s Daily and the English-language China Daily. It aims to trace processes of meaning generation, in particular discursive practices of an ideological nature, such as antagonistic portrayals of in- and outgroups, hegemonic exercise of power, as well as naturalized conceptualizations of contingent processes, structures and relations.
Ethnicity in linguistic variation
Authors: Stell Gerald
Published: February 2015

The Afrikaans speech community is characterized by a long-standing rift between Whites and Coloureds, and is for a large part bilingual, with English being increasingly integrated in its stylistic repertoire. Yet, the history of English is different across the White/Coloured divide, as in particular in terms of diffusion and in terms of ideological associations. The question we wish to ask is twofold. First, how far may there be a question of ethnic norms of Afrikaans-English code-switching? Second, if norms of code-switching are different across the ethnic divide, is code-switching used differently in the negotiation of White and Coloured identities? This contribution is organized in three main parts. First, we give an overview of the different norms of Afrikaans-English code-switching encountered across Whites and Coloureds on the basis of a corpus of informal speech data. Then we give an overview of the sequential patterns of Afrikaans-English code-switching following a CA methodology. Finally, we determine with the help of macrosocial knowledge in how far these different forms and functions of Afrikaans-English code-switching are made relevant to the projection of White and Coloured identities in South Africa’s current post-Apartheid context on the basis of select individual examples. The results of our analysis indicate that Afrikaans-English code-switching in the Coloured data displays the features of a ‘mixed code’, which is perceived as a ‘we-code’, where English input tends to be stylistically neutral. By contrast, English input is more syntactically and sequentially salient in the White data, and more visibly serves purposes of identity-negotiation. Despite those differences, there remains a clear correlation in both White and Coloured samples between the use of English monolingual code and affiliation with ‘New South African values’.
Serious games
Authors: García-Sánchez Inmaculada M.
Published: February 2015

This paper examines the situated ways in which Moroccan immigrant children in Spain create imagined, alternative life worlds and explore possible forms of identification through an investigation of these children’s hybrid linguistic practices in the midst of play. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981, 1986) notions of heteroglossia and hybridity, the analysis focuses on the meanings of codeswitching practices that a group of Moroccan immigrant girls deploy in pretend-play sequences involving dolls to construct female identities; identities that they treat as desirable in the context of Spanish idealizations of femininity, but that are considered transgressional by adults in Moroccan diaspora communities in Spain. Neighborhood peer group play affords Moroccan immigrant girls’ transformations and engagement in subversivetactics, in that these activities take place outside the scrutiny of parents and other adults. The rich verbal and sociocultural environment of Moroccan immigrant children’s peer groups provide us with an excellent window to investigate peer language socialization processes in relation to how immigrant children negotiate, transform, and subvert in the midst of play the different, and often incongruous, socio-cultural and linguistic expectations and constraints that they encounter on a daily basis. Use of Moroccan Arabic and Spanish in this pretend play, in particular, results in a heteroglossic polyphony of voices imbued with moral tensions (Bahktin 1981, 1986). This analysis highlights the importance of these hybrid linguistic practices in immigrant girls’ explorations of alternative processes of gendered identification in multilingual, culturally-syncretic environments. Through surreptitious pretend-play, Moroccan immigrant girls explore imagined transgressional possible identities and moral worlds. In this sense, this research also underscores the implications of children’s language use and language choice in pretend-play for larger processes of cultural continuity and transformation in transnational, diasporic communities undergoing rapid change.
Humor in code-mixed airline advertising
Authors: García Vizcaíno María José
Published: February 2015

This article examines how humor works in the code-mixed advertising campaigns of the Spanish airline company Vueling. Drawing on the fetishism approach to multilingual advertising (Kelly-Holmes, 2005) and the theory of incongruity (Raskin, 1985), this paper explores three main types of humorous deviations in Vueling campaigns: structural, phonetic, and visual. The analysis confirms that humor in Vueling ads is produced by deviations at the formal rather than semantic level of language, specifically through the insertion of foreign languages (mainly English and French) into Spanish colloquial expressions. These foreign elements are partially “domesticated” into local Spanish frames by creative code-mixing mechanisms that serve to break readers’ expectations and trigger a comical reaction. Another finding of this analysis is that in most Vueling ads, humor works according to an incongruity-resolution pattern since the subtle humor of many rhymes, puns, and plays on words is only appreciated by a Spanish audience who knows some English and French and is familiarized with certain cultural references and sayings used in Spain.
Framing, stance, and affect in Korean metalinguistic discourse
Authors: Park Joseph Sung-Yul
Published: February 2015

Studies on language and affect have identified displays of emotions and feelings as important means through which speakers negotiate their social relations and cultural positions. Extending the findings of those studies, this paper discusses how affect must be seen as an important building block for framing, a resource that allows participants to construct frames that have specific grounding in identifiable social meaning. I make this point by illustrating how interactional management of affect contributes to the constitution of frames via the work of stancetaking, based on a discussion of several examples from a specific discursive context - Koreans’ metalinguistic talk about English. While Koreans are commonly known to show much ‘anxiety’ or ‘uneasiness’ about their own English language skills, I demonstrate that such display of affect may be understood as part of an interactional frame for speaking (about) English that allows speakers to position themselves in relation to English and to each other in a culturally and socially appropriate way. The analysis shows that the semiotic resources that speakers employ in their affective displays allow participants to negotiate specific stances that they should take, and to jointly construct a frame for interpreting the interactional import of the ongoing talk.
Commentary: Frames and contexts
Authors: Cook-Gumperz Jenny , Gumperz John J.
Published: February 2015

One of the main challenges resulting from the past two decades of shift toward detailed micro-analytic studies of language and interaction has been the awareness of a need to relate microanalysis to wider social-cultural aspects of interactional situations.
Critical discourse analysis and its critics
Authors: Breeze Ruth
Published: February 2015

This article briefly reviews the rise of Critical Discourse Analysis and teases out a detailed analysis of the various critiques that have been levelled at CDA and its practitioners over the last twenty years, both by scholars working within the “critical” paradigm and by other critics. A range of criticisms are discussed which target the underlying premises, the analytical methodology and the disputed areas of reader response and the integration of contextual factors. Controversial issues such as the predominantly negative focus of much CDA scholarship, and the status of CDA as an emergent “intellectual orthodoxy”, are also reviewed. The conclusions offer a summary of the principal criticisms that emerge from this overview, and suggest some ways in which these problems could be attenuated.
Concealment in consultative encounters in Nigerian hospitals
Authors: Odebunmi Akin
Published: February 2015

Although communication in medical practice is reputed for exactitude and objectivity, many doctors in several countries make equivocal, concealing utterances in certain situations when relating with clients. This phenomenon, despite its importance in doctor-client interaction, has received little attention from language scholars who have discussed concealment mainly as a strategy in news delivery. The present study examines concealment items in the interaction between doctors and clients in South-western Nigerian hospitals and their pragmatic implications for medical communication in Nigeria. Fifty (50) conversations between doctors and clients on several ailments were tape-recorded in the six states of South-western Nigeria. Structured and unstructured interviews were conducted with selected doctors and clients. The corpus was examined for the linguistic and pragmatic resources deployed by doctors in concealing information, and was analysed using Jacob Mey’s theory of pragmeme and insights from the literature on news delivery strategies. Concealment was found to take place between doctors and clients in a two-phase mode: Referential and pragmatic. Utterances which have descriptive forms at the referential level assume subjective and divergent shades in the context of concealment at the pragmatic level. Nine concealment strategies (jargonisation, veiling, forecasting, mitigation, stalling, normalisation, dysphemisation, euphemisation and doublespeak) were found to be employed to achieve four broad goals: Preventive, palliative, culture-compliant and confidential with respect to 25 diseases /medical procedures. Concealment in consultative encounters takes into account the socio-psychological security needs of clients and attends positively to clients’ cultural expectations.
Medial deictic demonstratives in Arabic
Authors: Jarbou Samir Omar
Published: February 2015

This paper investigates two different views concerning the number of deictic degrees of demonstratives in Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The first view claims that CA has a medial category of demonstratives in addition to proximals and distals; the second view postulates that there are only proximals and distals in CA. The study examines the dialectal origin of singular and dual CA demonstratives based on writings of ancient grammarians in addition to investigating the Semitic origin of these demonstratives. It is argued that the demonstrative system in CA is the result of a combination of two dialectal demonstrative systems: one of these had been used in Old ?ijaazi, while the other had been used in Old Tamiimi Arabic. Each of these dialects had only proximals and distals but no medials. Demonstratives in these dialects had dissimilar forms for distals. ?ijaazi distals had two suffixes attached to the proximal base, while Tamiimi ones had one suffix only. The presence of these different forms led grammarians representing the first view to the fallacy that demonstratives with one suffix are medials, while those with two suffixes are distals. However, the supposed medials are in fact the distals that were used in Old Tamiimi; their distance value is the same as that of Old Hijaazi distals.
“The guys would like to have a lady:” The co-construction of gender and professional identity in interviews between employers and female engineering students
Authors: Reissner-Roubicek Sophie
Published: February 2015

Gender and professional identity are intertwined particularly in professions where women are underrepresented, making gender identities and professional identities simultaneously relevant. A promising area for inquiry into identity construction (and one where the effect of actions to increase the proportion of women in professions such as engineering can potentially be observed) is graduate recruitment, a process designed to put novice professional identities to the test. This paper takes a social constructionist approach in exploring the discursive negotiation of female engineers’ professional identities and how these are co-constructed dynamically in interaction with gender identities in this important gatekeeping context. The analysis, which draws on examples from a dataset of 20 naturally occurring interviews between employers and final-year undergraduates at a university in New Zealand, focuses particularly on the interplay of gender in the necessary synthesis of personal and institutional discourses in constructing a professional identity. Ways in which gender is oriented to explicitly and/or implicitly in these gatekeeping encounters are shown to resonate with existing gender divisions (technical vs relational) in the androcentric professional context of engineering, undermining a pro-women recruitment stance. Central to the validation of professional identities by interviewers was the demonstration of “passion for engineering” but ways in which it was deemed to be demonstrated, such as through reasons for career choice and outside interests, were arguably gender-circumscribed. This further set of normative expectations, on top of the existing competency-discourse-driven requirement to fit candidates into prescribed categories, contributes invisibly to maintaining the homogeneous identity of the engineering profession. The tension between conflicting requirements for “difference” and “sameness” in the professional identities of female engineers is highlighted in a discussion of the ways gender is made relevant in the co-construction of these identities.
“the older I get the less I trust people” constructing age identities in the workplace
Authors: Angouri Jo
Published: February 2015

In 2006 laws banning age discrimination came into effect in the UK. Even though unions seem to suggest that ‘age’ is a very common form of discrimination, it does not typically attract (at least as yet) the same attention as other more widely discussed cases. Age discrimination is typically associated with discourses around an ‘ageing workforce’, however it affects both younger and older employees.
Looking closer at ‘ageing’ discourses it becomes apparent that the boundaries between ‘old’ and ‘young’ are not as clear cut as a first reading would suggest. Further to this, recent sociolinguistic research has repeatedly shown that (age or other) identity is not something people ‘have’ or ‘are’ but something people ‘do’ (e.g., Holmes 2006; Coupland 2009). Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to discuss and problematise the ways in which employees construct age identities in the complex system of white-collar workplaces.

The paper draws on recordings of real life routine meeting data featuring primarily employees in a small/medium enterprise (SMEs). Special attention is paid here to one member of the team, Cynthia the youngest member of staff. The discussion also draws on interview data in order to further analyse perceptions and representations of ‘age differences’ in this context. The analysis shows the complex process of negotiation of identity where chronological age is related to ‘expertise’ and ‘experience’ and becomes an important resource participants draw upon in the process of self -and other- positioning.
‘you have to be adaptable, obviously’
Authors: Schnurr Stephanie , Zayts Olga
Published: February 2015

In spite of the increasing globalisation of the work domain and the mobilization of the workforce (Wong et al. 2007) only very little attention has been paid to the interplay between culture and professional identities in workplace contexts. This paper addresses this gap by exploring some of the ways through which professionals are required to construct and negotiate their various identities in increasingly multicultural contexts where notions of culture may become particularly salient. We focus on multicultural workplaces where, we believe, the intricate and complex relationship between culture and identity is particularly well reflected: In these contexts members are on a daily basis exposed to culture-specific perceptions, assumptions, expectations, and practices which may ultimately be reflected in workplace communication, and which impact on how professional identities are constructed. Drawing on a corpus of more than 80 hours of authentic workplace discourse and follow-up interviews conducted with professionals we explore how expatriates who work in Hong Kong with a team of local Chinese construct, negotiate and combine aspects of their professional and cultural identities in their workplace discourse. Our particular focus is on two issues that have been identified in participants’ interviews: Sharing decision making responsibilities and negotiating a work-life balance. Our analysis of these two aspects illustrates the complex processes of identity construction from two different but complementary perspectives: i) the ways in which participants portray themselves as adapting to, negotiating or rejecting the new culture in which they work and live; and ii) the ways in which these perceived identity construction processes are actually reflected in participants’ workplace discourse.
The discursive construction of gender, ethnicity and the workplace in second generation immigrants’ narratives the case of moroccan women in belgium
Authors: Van De Mieroop Dorien
Published: February 2015

This article examines the professional identity construction of three young 2nd generation immigrant women of Moroccan descent who have university degrees and high-skilled jobs. More specifically, I focus on how they construct this professional identity in relation to their gender and ethnicity. The data consist of interviews in which the interviewer explicitly probes for the relation between these topics. Interestingly, all the interviewees construct their professional identities in relatively similar ways. Furthermore, they resist the interviewer’s projections of ethno-professional identities and replace these by professional identities, thus making ethnicity irrelevant for the discussion. Finally, when discussing gendered identities, they all orient to the Western hegemonic model of the struggle in finding a work-life balance. As such, these interviewees bracket ethnicity which may be related to the role of the interviewer, interviews as a genre, and the interviewees’ orientation to societal norms.
Global subjects
Authors: Macgilchrist Felicitas
Published: February 2015

What does it mean to represent events from the Holocaust in a graphic novel? And what if this is done not in the stark design of Art Spiegelman’s Maus but in the light ligne claire (known from Tintin)? This paper explores the discursive practices surrounding The Search, a graphic novel produced specifically to teach children and young adults about the Holocaust. It asks how (novel) forms of subjectivation are articulated in the everyday, mundane practices of educational media workers. Drawing on poststructuralist theories of the subject and close micro-analysis of language (and semiotic) practices, the paper presents extracts from ethnographic observations of a team of authors designing teaching and learning materials to accompany The Search. These materials – and their practices of production – are participating in transforming memories of the Holocaust and thus (co)producing forms of globalisation. Findings suggest that while the Holocaust has traditionally been seen as a matter of ‘national’ responsibility, The Search and its teaching materials invite readers to see it as (global/universal) ‘individualised’ responsibility. Students are subjectivated as global subjects: Firstly, as universal-ethical subjects and, secondly, as contingency-tolerant subjects. These materials thus constitute a mundane, everyday element shaping new ways of being.
Children’s formal division of labor in requests
Authors: Chen Yupin
Published: February 2015

This study aims to shed a light on children’s pragmatic development by examining Mandarin-speaking children’s requests in interactions with their parents. It is found that children between 24 and 36 months old appear to use various request forms, primarily with simple imperatives and WANT statements. A closer examination reveals that children prefer to use simple imperatives in activity-based interactions while both primary forms are found in unstructured daily conversations. The findings suggest that children’s preference for simple imperatives may be driven by their awareness of parents’ cooperativeness in interactional situations. It is thus speculated that simple imperatives and WANT statements may be children’s two primal request forms, but they may pivot on one request form when the situation is right.
Evaluation of (im)politeness
Authors: Fukushima Saeko
Published: February 2015

This study explores the evaluation of (im)politeness, which is made by a hearer (or a beneficiary). Although discursive researchers advocate the importance of the evaluation of (im)politeness made by a hearer in politeness research, empirical studies on the evaluation of (im)politeness are still limited. The non-linguistic aspect has not been much researched in previous politeness studies. This study tries to fill these gaps in politeness research, by focusing on evaluation of (im)politeness from the non-linguistic perspective. Among many other things, the evaluation of attentiveness (demonstrator’s preemptive response to a beneficiary’s verbal/non-verbal cues or situations surrounding a beneficiary and a demonstrator, which takes the form of offering) is focused on in this study, making cross-cultural (Japanese and American) and cross-generational (university students and their parents’ age groups) comparisons. The data were collected through a questionnaire, which consisted of six situations, and interviews. 298 people (Japanese university students, Japanese parents and American university students) served as the participants. The results of the questionnaire data show that there were significant differences among the participants in the evaluation of attentiveness in two situations, those of the interview data revealing that most participants evaluated attentiveness positively, except in two situations. This study contributes to further understanding of (im)politeness from the perspective of attentiveness with cross-cultural and cross-generational differences as well as similarities.
Hyperstandardisation in Flanders
Authors: Jaspers Jürgen , Van Hoof Sarah
Published: February 2015

Our intention in this article is to document and analyse an exceptional period in Flemish linguistic history that has not received a lot of attention thusfar, viz., the 1950s through the 1980s. We will argue that these decades mark a period best described as an era of hyperstandardisation, as they involved a large-scale, propagandistic, scientifically supported and highly mediatised linguistic standardisation campaign that has thoroughly ideologised language use in all corners of Flemish society. We will propose that the Flemish ‘intermediate variety’ (tussentaal) ought probably to be seen as an unmistakeable side-effect of this hyperstandardisation process rather than as a transitional stage on the road to full standardisation or the result of a decline in standardisation efforts. In addition to this, we will propose that discourses of declining standardisation efforts are difficult to reconcile with the recruitment of linguistic standardisation in the new global economy.
Constructing a proposal as a thought
Authors: Stevanovic Melisa
Published: February 2015

Drawing on fifteen video-recorded planning meetings as data, and on conversation analysis as a method, I examine the interactional import of the common Finnish practice of constructing a proposal as a thought. As a point of departure, I consider two different types of conditional utterances in which a speaker presents a plan: (1) ‘asking conditionals’ (jos ‘what if’ prefaced declarative conditionals and interrogative conditionals) and (2) ‘stating conditionals’ (declarative conditionals). While asking conditionals mark the plan as contingent on the recipient’s approval and involve a straightforward request for the recipient to engage in joint decision-making about the proposed plan, stating conditionals are regularly treated as informings about plans in which the recipients have actually no word to say. However, when asking and stating conditionals are prefaced with references to the speakers’ thoughts (mä aattelin et ‘I was thinking that’), the projected responses and sequential trajectories are more open-ended: The participants have the opportunity to share the responsibility, not only for what is to be decided with respect to the proposed plan, but also for what is to be jointly decided upon in the first place. Constructing a proposal as a thought seems thus to be a practice with which participants may enable the symmetrical distribution of deontic rights at the very beginning of joint decision-making sequences.
Framing and manipulation of person deixis in Hosni Mubarak’s last three speeches
Authors: Maalej Zouheir A.
Published: February 2015

The “Arab Spring,” as the revolutions in some Arab countries were called by the international media, was triggered by the “Jasmine Revolt” in Tunisia, which provoked a domino effect to some Arab leaders, starting from Tunisia and spreading to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, etc. Using the insights of cognitive-pragmatics, the current article shows how the last three speeches of Husni Mubarak, the demised president of Egypt (DPE), framed the revolution in Egypt and filled person deixis. In particular, the article argues that, from the antepenultimate to the ultimate speech, the DPE, unlike his Tunisian counterpart, made little change to the initial framing of the revolution in Egypt as a strategy to maintain the sociopolitical situation as it was. As transpires from the lexical items environing person deixis, the DPE filled it with cognitive content which prevented him from coming any closer to a pragmatic rapprochement to the Egyptian people.
On the place of turn and sequence in grammar
Authors: Lindström Jan K.
Published: February 2015

This study elaborates the concept of a positionally sensitive grammar with respect to the sequentiality of turns and the turn constructional units in conversation. The linguistic object of the analysis is clausal constructions in Swedish that are initiated by the finite predicate verb: Polar questions, receipt questions (news receipts), conditional protases and pro-drop declaratives. These constructions share potentially the same syntactic surface pattern but are constrained by different sequential conditions of use. The study proposes an integrated interactional linguistic analysis which takes into account both syntactic and sequential aspects of turn construction. A grammatical attribute-value matrix, based on the framework of construction grammar (CxG), is introduced. The analysis shows that regularities of sequential organization may provide robust distinctive constructional features while a pure syntactic analysis remains less distinctive. The decisive constructional features are systematically captured by a notation designed for sequential and syntactic organization.
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis to Estimate Lipid Content in Atlantic Salmon Parr as Influenced by Temperature, PIT Tags, and Instrument Precision and Application in Field Studies
Authors: Vue Sherr , Samways Kurt M. , Cunjak Richard A.
Published: February 2015

The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) in field studies monitoring Atlantic Salmon Salmo salar parr, as related to temperature corrections, instrument precision, and passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags. Currently, BIA studies are restricted to laboratory settings where water temperature is controlled to decrease error in BIA predictions caused by fish body temperature. We compared models of predicted total and percent lipids with and without temperature corrections and found that temperature corrections reduced error caused by temperature. Without temperature corrections, an 8°C increase in temperature increased the predicted total lipids by 55%. After temperature corrections were added, the predicted total lipid only increased by 2.55%. Repeated measurements were collected on 40 salmon parr (56–115 mm FL) in four separate time trials (1 min, 1.5 h, 3 h, and 6 h), and we found that lipid content predictions between measurements were not significantly different; however, the variability within longer time trials was moderate (6.43% error). No significant differences were found in the predicted lipid value before or after PIT tags were removed from the body cavity, suggesting PIT tags do not affect BIA readings. On average, the difference between predicted total lipids after tag removal was 0.0023 and 0.02 g for 12.5‐mm and 22‐mm PIT tags, respectively. We also observed that increases in fish body temperature caused by handing resulted in increased variability in BIA estimates, indicating the need for temperature corrections.

Received March 10, 2014; accepted September 22, 2014
To Know and to Care: How Awareness and Valuation of the Future Jointly Shape Consumer Spending
Authors: Bartels Daniel M. , Urminsky Oleg
Published: February 2015

Reducing spending in the present requires the combination of being both motivated to provide for one’s future self (valuing the future) and actively considering long-term implications of one’s choices (awareness of the future). Feeling more connected to the future self—thinking that the important psychological properties that define your current self are preserved in the person you will be in the future—helps motivate consumers to make far-sighted choices by changing their valuation of future outcomes (e.g., discount factors). However, this change only reduces spending when opportunity costs are considered. Correspondingly, cues that highlight opportunity costs reduce spending primarily when people discount the future less or are more connected to their future selves. Implications for the efficacy of behavioral interventions and for research on time discounting are discussed.
Dolutegravir in HIV-2–Infected Patients With Resistant Virus to First-line Integrase Inhibitors From the French Named Patient Program
Authors: Descamps Diane , Peytavin Gilles , Visseaux Benoit , Tubiana Roland , Damond Florence , Campa Pauline , Charpentier Charlotte , Khuong-Josses Marie-Aude , Duvivier Claudine , Karmochkine Marina , Lukiana Tuna , Matheron Sophie
Published: February 2015

Background.  Dolutegravir has shown in vitro activity against human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2). We report safety and efficacy data of regimens containing dolutegravir (50 mg twice daily) in antiretroviral-experienced, HIV-2–infected patients.

Methods.  HIV-2–infected patients experiencing virological failure to raltegravir received dolutegravir with optimized background antiretroviral combinations within the French Named Patient Program (NPP). Plasma HIV-2 RNA (pVL) was assessed at time of dolutegravir initiation (baseline), month 3, and month 6. Antiretroviral trough plasma concentrations (C12h) were determined using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry.

Results.  Thirteen HIV-2–infected-patients, with a median duration of 15 years’ infection and given 16 previous antiretroviral regimens, were included in NPP. Median follow-up was 9 months (min–max, 3–15 months). Median baseline pVL and CD4 cell count were 9544 copies/mL (inter quartile range [IQR], 3096–23 120 copies/mL) and 100 cells/µL (IQR, 77–171 cells/µL), respectively. Available integrase genotypic resistance patterns were Y143C/G/H/R (n = 5), Q148R/K (n = 2), and N155H (n = 4). Optimized background antiretroviral regimens conferring a genotypic sensitivity score ≤2 in 10 patients included nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors associated with darunavir/ritonavir (n = 12), saquinavir/ritonavir (n = 2), and maraviroc (n = 3). At months 3 and 6, pVL was undetectable in 6 of 13 and 4 of 12 patients, respectively, and median CD4 count was 161 (101–188) cells/µL and 167 (135–1353) cells/µL, respectively. Median dolutegravir C12h was 4086 (1756–5717 ng/mL) ng/mL in 9 patients. No serious events were notified except 1 death from progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy at month 4.

Conclusions.  Optimized dolutegravir-containing antiretroviral regimens supported by good plasma exposure provide a substantial initial efficacy rate for salvage therapy in heavily antiretroviral-experienced HIV-2–infected patients with virus harboring resistance to first-generation integrase inhibitors. Larger numbers of patients and longer follow-up are needed to confirm these findings.
Measurement of Disability-free Survival after Surgery
Authors: Shulman Mark A. , Myles Paul S. , Chan Matthew T. V. , McIlroy David R. , Wallace Sophie , Ponsford Jennie
Published: February 2015

AbstractAbstract

In a multicenter, multinational study of over 500 patients, the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 was shown to be a clinically acceptable, valid, reliable, and responsive instrument for measuring postoperative disability in a diverse surgical population.

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text.

Background:

Survival and freedom from disability are arguably the most important patient-centered outcomes after surgery, but it is unclear how postoperative disability should be measured. The authors thus evaluated the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 in a surgical population.

Methods:

The authors examined the psychometric properties of World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 in a diverse cohort of 510 surgical patients. The authors assessed clinical acceptability, validity, reliability, and responsiveness up to 12 months after surgery.

Results:

Criterion and convergent validity of World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 were supported by good correlation with the 40-item quality of recovery scale at 30 days after surgery (r = −0.70) and at 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery with physical functioning (The Katz index of independence in Activities of Daily Living; r = −0.70, r = −0.60, and rho = −0.47); quality of life (EQ-5D; r = −0.57, −0.60, and −0.52); and pain interference scores (modified Brief Pain Inventory Short Form; r = 0.72, 0.74, and 0.81) (all P < 0.0005). Construct validity was supported by increased hospital stay (6.9 vs. 5.3 days, P = 0.008) and increased day 30 complications (20% vs. 11%, P = 0.042) in patients with new disability. There was excellent internal consistency with Cronbach’s α and split-half coefficients greater than 0.90 at all time points (all P < 0.0005). Responsiveness was excellent with effect sizes of 3.4, 3.0, and 1.0 at 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery, respectively.

Conclusions:

World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 is a clinically acceptable, valid, reliable, and responsive instrument for measuring postoperative disability in a diverse surgical population. Its use as an endpoint in future perioperative studies can provide outcome data that are meaningful to clinicians and patients alike.
Secondary metabolites in floral nectar reduce parasite infections in bumblebees
Authors: Richardson Leif L. , Adler Lynn S. , Leonard Anne S. , Andicoechea Jonathan , Regan Karly H. , Anthony Winston E. , Manson Jessamyn S. , Irwin Rebecca E.
Published: February 2015

The synthesis of secondary metabolites is a hallmark of plant defence against herbivores. These compounds may be detrimental to consumers, but can also protect herbivores against parasites. Floral nectar commonly contains secondary metabolites, but little is known about the impacts of nectar chemistry on pollinators, including bees. We hypothesized that nectar secondary metabolites could reduce bee parasite infection. We inoculated individual bumblebees with
Crithidia bombi
, an intestinal parasite, and tested effects of eight naturally occurring nectar chemicals on parasite population growth. Secondary metabolites strongly reduced parasite load, with significant effects of alkaloids, terpenoids and iridoid glycosides ranging from 61 to 81%. Using microcolonies, we also investigated costs and benefits of consuming anabasine, the compound with the strongest effect on parasites, in infected and uninfected bees. Anabasine increased time to egg laying, and
Crithidia
reduced bee survival. However, anabasine consumption did not mitigate the negative effects of
Crithidia
, and
Crithidia
infection did not alter anabasine consumption. Our novel results highlight that although secondary metabolites may not rescue survival in infected bees, they may play a vital role in mediating
Crithidia
transmission within and between colonies by reducing
Crithidia
infection intensities.
Adaptive responses to cool climate promotes persistence of a non-native lizard
Authors: While Geoffrey M. , Williamson Joseph , Prescott Graham , Horváthová Terézia , Fresnillo Belén , Beeton Nicholas J. , Halliwell Ben , Michaelides Sozos , Uller Tobias
Published: February 2015

Successful establishment and range expansion of non-native species often require rapid accommodation of novel environments. Here, we use common-garden experiments to demonstrate parallel adaptive evolutionary response to a cool climate in populations of wall lizards (
Podarcis muralis
) introduced from southern Europe into England. Low soil temperatures in the introduced range delay hatching, which generates directional selection for a shorter incubation period. Non-native lizards from two separate lineages have responded to this selection by retaining their embryos for longer before oviposition—hence reducing the time needed to complete embryogenesis in the nest—and by an increased developmental rate at low temperatures. This divergence mirrors local adaptation across latitudes and altitudes within widely distributed species and suggests that evolutionary responses to climate can be very rapid. When extrapolated to soil temperatures encountered in nests within the introduced range, embryo retention and faster developmental rate result in one to several weeks earlier emergence compared with the ancestral state. We show that this difference translates into substantial survival benefits for offspring. This should promote short- and long-term persistence of non-native populations, and ultimately enable expansion into areas that would be unattainable with incubation duration representative of the native range.
Sexual conflict over parental care promotes the evolution of sex differences in care and the ability to care
Authors: McNamara John M. , Wolf Max
Published: February 2015

Strong asymmetries in parental care, with one sex providing more care than the other, are widespread across the animal kingdom. At present, two factors are thought to ultimately cause sex differences in care: certainty of parentage and sexual selection. By contrast, we here show that the coevolution of care and the ability to care can result in strong asymmetries in both the ability to care and the level of care, even in the absence of these factors. While the coevolution of care and the ability to care does not predict which sex evolves to care more than the other, once other factors give rise to even the slightest differences in the cost and benefits of care between the sexes (e.g. differences in certainty in parentage), a clear directionality emerges; the sex with the lower cost or higher benefit of care evolves both to be more able to care and to provide much higher levels of care than the other sex. Our findings suggest that the coevolution of levels of care and the ability to care may be a key factor underlying the evolution of sex differences in care.
Ocean acidification induces biochemical and morphological changes in the calcification process of large benthic foraminifera
Authors: Prazeres Martina , Uthicke Sven , Pandolfi John M.
Published: February 2015

Large benthic foraminifera are significant contributors to sediment formation on coral reefs, yet they are vulnerable to ocean acidification. Here, we assessed the biochemical and morphological impacts of acidification on the calcification ofAmphistegina lessoniiandMarginopora vertebralisexposed to different pH conditions. We measured growth rates (surface area and buoyant weight) and Ca-ATPase and Mg-ATPase activities and calculated shell density using micro-computer tomography images. InA. lessonii, we detected a significant decrease in buoyant weight, a reduction in the density of inner skeletal chambers, and an increase of Ca-ATPase and Mg-ATPase activities at pH 7.6 when compared with ambient conditions of pH 8.1. By contrast,M. vertebralisshowed an inhibition in Mg-ATPase activity under lowered pH, with growth rate and skeletal density remaining constant. WhileM. vertebralisis considered to be more sensitive thanA. lessoniiowing to its high-Mg-calcite skeleton, it appears to be less affected by changes in pH, based on the parameters assessed in this study. We suggest difference in biochemical pathways of calcification as the main factor influencing response to changes in pH levels, and thatA. lessoniiandM. vertebralishave the ability to regulate biochemical functions to cope with short-term increases in acidity.
Leaf energy balance modelling as a tool to infer habitat preference in the early angiosperms
Authors: Lee Alexandra P. , Upchurch Garland , Murchie Erik H. , Lomax Barry H.
Published: February 2015

Despite more than a century of research, some key aspects of habitat preference and ecology of the earliest angiosperms remain poorly constrained. Proposed growth ecology has varied from opportunistic weedy species growing in full sun to slow-growing species limited to the shaded understorey of gymnosperm forests. Evidence suggests that the earliest angiosperms possessed low transpiration rates: gas exchange rates for extant basal angiosperms are low, as are the reconstructed gas exchange rates for the oldest known angiosperm leaf fossils. Leaves with low transpirational capacity are vulnerable to overheating in full sun, favouring the hypothesis that early angiosperms were limited to the shaded understorey. Here, modelled leaf temperatures are used to examine the thermal tolerance of some of the earliest angiosperms. Our results indicate that small leaf size could have mitigated the low transpirational cooling capacity of many early angiosperms, enabling many species to survive in full sun. We propose that during the earliest phases of the angiosperm leaf record, angiosperms may not have been limited to the understorey, and that some species were able to compete with ferns and gymnosperms in both shaded and sunny habitats, especially in the absence of competition from more rapidly growing and transpiring advanced lineages of angiosperms.
Role of the ventral tegmental area in methamphetamine extinction: AMPA receptor-mediated neuroplasticity
Authors: Chen Han-Ting , Chen Jin-Chung
Published: February 2015

The molecular mechanisms underlying drug extinction remain largely unknown, although a role for medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) glutamate neurons has been suggested. Considering that the mPFC sends glutamate efferents to the ventral tegmental area (VTA), we tested whether the VTA is involved in methamphetamine (METH) extinction via conditioned place preference (CPP). Among various METH-CPP stages, we found that the amount of phospho-GluR1/Ser845 increased in the VTA at behavioral extinction, but not the acquisition or withdrawal stage. Via surface biotinylation, we found that levels of membrane GluR1 were significantly increased during METH-CPP extinction, while no change was observed at the acquisition stage. Specifically, the number of dendritic spines in the VTA was increased at behavioral extinction, but not during acquisition. To validate the role of the mPFC in METH-CPP extinction, we lesioned the mPFC. Ibotenic acid lesioning of the mPFC did not affect METH-CPP acquisition, however, it abolished the extinction stage and reversed the enhanced phospho-GluR1/Ser845 levels as well as increases in VTA dendritic spines during METH-CPP extinction. Overall, this study demonstrates that the mPFC plays a critical role in METH-CPP extinction and identifies the VTA as an alternative target in mediating the extinction of drug conditioning.
Documenting virtual world cultures
Authors: Sköld Olle
Published: February 2015

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore how virtual world communities employ new media as a repository to record information about their past.

Design/methodology/approach

– Using the notions of documentary practice and memory-making as a framework, a case study of MMORPG City of Heroes’ (CoH) virtual community on Reddit discussion board “/r/cityofheroes” was conducted. The study consists of an interpretative analysis of posts, comments, images, and other materials submitted to /r/cityofheroes during a period of approximately seven months.

Findings

– The principal finding of the study is that the CoH community, with varying levels of intentionality, documented a range of pasts on /r/cityofheroes, relating to CoH as a game world, a site of personal experience, a product, a nexus of narratives, and a game. The analysis also lays bare the community’s memory-making processes, in which the documented conceptions of CoH’s past were put to work in the present, informing community action and viewpoints.

Originality/value

– Games and gaming practices are increasingly prevalent in leisure and professional settings. This trend, which makes virtual environments and online media proxies for or augmentations of “real life”, makes it necessary for information scholars to understand how the full range of human information behaviours, including documenting, and memory-making, emerge or are replicated online. Additionally, few studies have examined the interplay between new media affordances, documentary practices, and memory-making in the context of virtual world communities.