224 research outputs found
Corpus-Based Approaches to Figurative Language: Metaphor and Austerity
Austerity is a by-product of the ongoing financial crisis. As Kitson et al (2001) explain, what was a \u201cNICE\u201d (\u2018non-inflationary consistent expansion\u2019) economy has turned \u201cVILE\u201d (\u2018volatile inflation, little expansion\u2019), and the economic and social fall-out is now becoming visible. Unemployment, redundancy, inflation, recession, insecurity, and poverty all loom, causing governments, businesses and individuals to reevaluate their priorities.
A changing world changes attitudes, and the earliest manifestations of such change can often be found in figurative language. Political rhetoric attempts to sweeten the bitter pill that nations have no choice but to swallow; all are invited to share the pain, make sacrifices for the common good, and weather the storm. But more sinister undertones can also be perceived. In times of social and financial dire straits, scapegoats are sought and mercilessly pursued in the press. The elderly, unemployed, and disabled are under fire for \u201csponging off the state\u201d; and as jobs become scarcer and the tax bill rises, migrant populations and asylum seekers are viewed with increasing suspicion and resentment. Calls for a \u201cbig society\u201d fall on deaf ears. Society, it seems, is shrinking as self-preservation takes hold.
Austerity is a timely area of study: although austerity measures have been implemented in the past, most of the contributions here address the current political and economic situation, which means that some of the studies reported are work in progress while others look at particular \u201cwindows\u201d of language output from the recent past. Whichever their focus, the papers presented here feature up-to-the-minute research into the metaphors being used to comment upon our current socioeconomic situation. The picture of austerity that emerges from these snapshots is a complex one, and one which is likely to be developed further and more widely in the coming future
Drift-induced deceleration of Solar Energetic Particles
We investigate the deceleration of Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) during their propagation from the Sun through interplanetary space, in the presence of weak to strong scattering in a Parker spiral configuration, using relativistic full orbit test particle simulations. The calculations retain all three spatial variables describing particlesâ trajectories, allowing to model any transport across the magnetic field. Large energy change is shown to occur for protons, due to the combined effect of standard adiabatic deceleration and a significant contribution from particle drift in the direction opposite to that of the solar wind electric field. The latter drift-induced deceleration is found to have a stronger effect for SEP energies than for galactic cosmic rays. The kinetic energy of protons injected at 1 MeV is found to be reduced by between 35 and 90% after four days, and for protons injected at 100 MeV by between 20 and 55%. The overall degree of deceleration is a weak function of the scattering mean free path, showing that, although adiabatic deceleration plays a role, a large contribution is due to particle drift. Current SEP transport models are found to account for drift-induced deceleration in an approximate way and their accuracy will need to be assessed in future work
Two analogy strategies: The cases of mind metaphors and introspection
Analogical reasoning is often employed in problem-solving and metaphor interpretation. This paper submits that, as a default, analogical reasoning addressing these different tasks employs different mapping strategies: In problem-solving, it employs analogy-maximising strategies (like structure mapping, Gentner & Markman 1997); in metaphor interpretation, analogy-minimising strategies (like ATT-Meta, Barnden 2015). The two strategies interact in analogical reasoning with conceptual metaphors. This interaction leads to predictable fallacies. The paper supports these hypotheses through case-studies on âmindâ-metaphors from ordinary discourse, and abstract problem-solving in the philosophy of mind, respectively: It shows that (1) default metaphorical interpretations for vision- and space-cognition metaphors can be derived with a variant of the analogy-minimising ATT-Meta approach, (2) philosophically influential introspective conceptions of the mind can be derived with conceptual metaphors only through an analogy-maximising strategy, and (3) the interaction of these strategies leads to hitherto unrecognised fallacies in analogical reasoning with metaphors. This yields a debunking explanation of introspective conceptions
Metaphoric coherence: Distinguishing verbal metaphor from `anomaly\u27
Theories and computational models of metaphor comprehension generally circumvent the question of metaphor versus âanomalyâ in favor of a treatment of metaphor versus literal language. Making the distinction between metaphoric and âanomalousâ expressions is subject to wide variation in judgment, yet humans agree that some potentially metaphoric expressions are much more comprehensible than others. In the context of a program which interprets simple isolated sentences that are potential instances of crossâmodal and other verbal metaphor, I consider some possible coherence criteria which must be satisfied for an expression to be âconceivableâ metaphorically. Metaphoric constraints on object nominals are represented as abstracted or extended along with the invariant structural components of the verb meaning in a metaphor. This approach distinguishes what is preserved in metaphoric extension from that which is âviolatedâ, thus referring to both âsimilarityâ and âdissimilarityâ views of metaphor. The role and potential limits of represented abstracted properties and constraints is discussed as they relate to the recognition of incoherent semantic combinations and the rejection or adjustment of metaphoric interpretations
Ex Vivo
The measurement of vaccine-induced humoral and CD4+ and CD8+ cellular immune responses represents an important correlate of vaccine efficacy. Accurate and reliable assays evaluating such responses are therefore critical during the clinical development phase of vaccines. T cells play a pivotal role both in coordinating the adaptive and innate immune responses and as effectors. During the assessment of cell-mediated immunity (CMI) in subjects participating in a large-scale influenza vaccine trial, we identified the expansion of an IFN-γ-producing CD3+CD4-CD8-γΎ+
T cell population in the peripheral blood of 90/610 (15%) healthy subjects. The appearance of CD3+CD4-CD8-γΎ+ T cells in the blood of subjects was transient and found to be independent of the study cohort, vaccine group, subject gender and ethnicity, and ex vivo restimulation conditions. Although the function of this population and relevance to vaccination are unclear, their inclusion in the total vaccine-specific T-cell response has the potential to confound data interpretation. It is thus recommended that when evaluating the induction of IFN-γ-producing CD4+ and CD8+ immune responses following vaccination, the CD3+CD4-CD8-γΎ+ T cells are either excluded or separately enumerated from the overall frequency determination
Peptide exchange on MHC-I by TAPBPR is driven by a negative allostery release cycle.
Chaperones TAPBPR and tapasin associate with class I major histocompatibility complexes (MHC-I) to promote optimization (editing) of peptide cargo. Here, we use solution NMR to investigate the mechanism of peptide exchange. We identify TAPBPR-induced conformational changes on conserved MHC-I molecular surfaces, consistent with our independently determined X-ray structure of the complex. Dynamics present in the empty MHC-I are stabilized by TAPBPR and become progressively dampened with increasing peptide occupancy. Incoming peptides are recognized according to the global stability of the final pMHC-I product and anneal in a native-like conformation to be edited by TAPBPR. Our results demonstrate an inverse relationship between MHC-I peptide occupancy and TAPBPR binding affinity, wherein the lifetime and structural features of transiently bound peptides control the regulation of a conformational switch located near the TAPBPR binding site, which triggers TAPBPR release. These results suggest a similar mechanism for the function of tapasin in the peptide-loading complex
MHCII-mediated dialog between group 2 innate lymphoid cells and CD4+ T cells potentiates type 2 immunity and promotes parasitic helminth expulsion
Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) release interleukin-13 (IL-13) during protective immunity to helminth infection and detrimentally during allergy and asthma. Using two mouse models to deplete ILC2s in vivo, we demonstrate that T helper 2 (Th2) cell responses are impaired in the absence of ILC2s. We show that MHCII-expressing ILC2s interact with antigen-specific T cells to instigate a dialog in which IL-2 production from T cells promotes ILC2 proliferation and IL-13 production. Deletion of MHCII renders IL-13-expressing ILC2s incapable of efficiently inducing Nippostrongylus brasiliensis expulsion. Thus, during transition to adaptive T cell-mediated immunity, the ILC2 and T cell crosstalk contributes to their mutual maintenance, expansion and cytokine production. This interaction appears to augment dendritic-cell-induced T cell activation and identifies a previously unappreciated pathway in the regulation of type-2 immunity
Rapid Reactivation of Extralymphoid CD4 T Cells during Secondary Infection
After infection, extralymphoid tissues are enriched with effector and memory T cells of a highly activated phenotype. The capacity for rapid effector cytokine response from extralymphoid tissue-memory T cells suggests these cells may perform a âsentinelâ function in the tissue. While it has been demonstrated that extralymphoid CD4+ T cells can directly respond to secondary infection, little is known about how rapidly this response is initiated, and how early activation of T cells in the tissue may affect the innate response to infection. Here we use a mouse model of secondary heterosubtypic influenza infection to show that CD4+ T cells in the lung airways are reactivated within 24 hours of secondary challenge. Airway CD4+ T cells initiate an inflammatory cytokine and chemokine program that both alters the composition of the early innate response and contributes to the reduction of viral titers in the lung. These results show that, unlike a primary infection, extralymphoid tissue-memory CD4+ T cells respond alongside the innate response during secondary infection, thereby shaping the overall immune profile in the airways. These data provide new insights into the role of extralymphoid CD4+ T cells during secondary immune responses
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Expression of the receptor tyrosine kinase ephb2 on dendritic cells is modulated by toll-like receptor ligation but is not required for t cell activation
The Eph receptor tyrosine kinases interact with their ephrin ligands on adjacent cells to facilitate contact-dependent cell communication. Ephrin B ligands are expressed on T cells and have been suggested to act as co-stimulatory molecules during T cell activation. There are no detailed reports of the expression and modulation of EphB receptors on dendritic cells, the main antigen presenting cells that interact with T cells. Here we show that mouse splenic dendritic cells (DC) and bone-marrow derived DCs (BMDC) express EphB2, a member of the EphB family. EphB2 expression is modulated by ligation of TLR4 and TLR9 and also by interaction with ephrin B ligands. Co-localization of EphB2 with MHC-II is also consistent with a potential role in T cell activation. However, BMDCs derived from EphB2 deficient mice were able to present antigen in the context of MHC-II and produce T cell activating cytokines to the same extent as intact DCs. Collectively our data suggest that EphB2 may contribute to DC responses, but that EphB2 is not required for T cell activation. This result may have arisen because DCs express other members of the EphB receptor family, EphB3, EphB4 and EphB6, all of which can interact with ephrin B ligands, or because EphB2 may be playing a role in another aspect of DC biology such as migration
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