Variación de las realizaciones de /θs/ en el sociolecto bajo de la ciudad de Sevilla: datos de PRESEEA-SE

En la ciudad de Sevilla conviven en la actualidad dos subsistemas consonánticos en los que se combinan la reducción fonológica en /θs/, resultado dialectal originario, de carácter innovador, y la oposición /s/:/θ/, característica de las variedades septentrionales. En este trabajo nos centramos en las realizaciones de /θs/ en hablantes sevillanos con grado de instrucción bajo, utilizando para ello los materiales de PRESEEA-SE. Las variantes localizadas fueron, en orden de frecuencia decreciente: [s] (patrón de seseo), [θ] (patrón de ceceo) y [h] (patrón de jejeo). Su análisis, en contraste con los resultados conservadores de /s/→[s] : /θ/→[θ] y teniendo en cuenta las variables de edad y sexo, nos ha llevado a las siguientes conclusiones: 1) el seseo, modelo de prestigio en el andaluz occidental, es la pauta preferida en este grupo poblacional, especialmente entre los hombres de menor edad; 2) el ceceo es una patrón minoritario y poco prestigioso, sin resultados en el sociolecto alto y con mayor pervivencia en los sujetos del tercer grupo etario; 3) el jejeo, que obtuvo índices de frecuencia bajos, está especialmente asociado a palabras específicas y al habla de los varones.Nowadays there are two consonant subsystems coexisting in Seville city that combine phonological reduction in /θs/, original dialectal result, as an innovative feature; and the opposition /s/:/θ/, characteristic of the northern varieties. This paper focuses on the phonetic realization of /θs/ among a sample of twenty-four Sevillian low-level speakers, taken from PRESEEASE corpus. For this purpose, we considered the variables of age and gender. Three variants were identified, in descending order of frequency: [s] (seseo pattern), [θ] (ceceo pattern) and [h] (jejeo pattern). The analysis of these trends, as opposed to the conservative realizations of /s/→[s]: /θ/→[θ], shows that: 1) seseo, a prestigious parameter in Western Andalusia, was preferred by this population segment, especially younger men; 2) ceceo, a minority and less prestigious pattern, and with no results among the high-level people, was produced by the third age group subjects; 3) jejeo, which obtained low-frequency indices, was mainly related to specific words and male speakers

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference