Novel metaphors in emotive talk

The aim of this paper is to identify the novel metaphors that occur within the collocates of the Greek lexical units συναίσθημα ‘emotion’ and αίσθημα ‘feeling’ and examine their relevance in expressing subjects’ emotional experiences. The corpus-based qualitative and quantitative investigation makes implications regarding not only the distinction of novel and conventional metaphors, but also the different status of novel and creatively used metaphorical expressions and the relevance of the latter aspect in reflecting the communicative function of metaphor

Η ανάγνωση / κατανόηση των μύθων στο νηπιαγωγείο μέσω παιγνιώδους διδακτικής παρέμβασης

Please note: this article is in Greek. Reading and understanding myths through play in pre-school education: The present paper aims at evaluating the contribution of play to the procedure of reading and understanding myths in Greek pre-school education. Specifically, it describes the results of a pilot study that took place in kindergartens of Thessaloniki over a period of three months in 2006. Fifty pre-school children were involved in the study, forming two groups: a control-group and a group under experimentation. The research was carried out in two stages separated by a teaching intervention based on a game. In the first stage the two groups were given a pre-test, then the intervention took place and during the second stage both groups were given a meta-test. Statistical analysis of the test results yielded valuable conclusions concerning the extent to which, the aforementioned teaching intervention, contributed to the pre-schoolers’ reading and understanding of myths

Increased monocyte count and red cell distribution width as prognostic biomarkers in patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Background: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) represents a chronic lung disease with unpredictable course. Methods: We aimed to investigate prognostic performance of complete blood count parameters in IPF. Treatment-naïve patients with IPF were retrospectively enrolled from two independent cohorts (derivation and validation) and split into subgroups (high and low) based on median baseline monocyte count and red cell distribution width (RDW). Results: Overall, 489 patients (derivation cohort: 300, validation cohort: 189) were analyzed. In the derivation cohort, patients with monocyte count ≥ 0.60 K/μL had significantly lower median FVC%pred [75.0, (95% CI 71.3–76.7) vs. 80.9, (95% CI 77.5–83.1), (P = 0.01)] and DLCO%pred [47.5, (95% CI 44.3–52.3) vs. 53.0, (95% CI 48.0–56.7), (P = 0.02)] than patients with monocyte count < 0.60 K/μL. Patients with RDW ≥ 14.1% had significantly lower median FVC%pred [75.5, (95% CI 71.2–79.2) vs. 78.3, (95% CI 76.0–81.0), (P = 0.04)] and DLCO%pred [45.4, (95% CI 43.3–50.5) vs. 53.0, (95% CI 50.8–56.8), (P = 0.008)] than patients with RDW < 14.1%. Cut-off thresholds from the derivation cohort were applied to the validation cohort with similar discriminatory value, as indicated by significant differences in median DLCO%pred between patients with high vs. low monocyte count [37.8, (95% CI 35.5–41.1) vs. 45.5, (95% CI 41.9–49.4), (P < 0.001)] and RDW [37.9, (95% CI 33.4–40.7) vs. 44.4, (95% CI 41.5–48.9), (P < 0.001)]. Patients with high monocyte count and RDW of the validation cohort exhibited a trend towards lower median FVC%pred (P = 0.09) and significantly lower median FVC%pred (P = 0.001), respectively. Kaplan–Meier analysis in the derivation cohort demonstrated higher all-cause mortality in patients with high (≥ 0.60 K/μL) vs. low monocyte count (< 0.60 K/μL) [HR 2.05, (95% CI 1.19–3.53), (P = 0.01)]. Conclusions: Increased monocyte count and RDW may represent negative prognostic biomarkers in patients with IPF. © 2021, The Author(s)