A corpus-assisted study of the discourse marker well as an indicator of judges' institutional roles in court cases with litigants in person

In this paper, I concentrate on court cases with litigants in person (lay people who act on their own behalf in legal proceedings without a counsel or solicitor) and discuss the challenges of building a corpus of courtroom discourse where it is crucial to distinguish between speakers due to their distinct institutional roles. The corpus incorporates seven sub-corpora of verbatim transcripts from different court cases with litigants in person and comprises over eleven-million tokens. The focus of this paper is on the interplay between the legal and lay discourse types and how judges project their institutional roles through well-initiated turns directed at litigants in person and counsels. As a versatile discourse marker, well provides a good opportunity to explore how judges have to adapt their roles to ensure lay litigants in person receive the necessary support and that their lack of competence does not impede on the fairness of the proceedings. Given the breadth and importance of the topic of litigation in person, I discuss how the tools and approaches of corpus linguistics can be helpful in this multi-disciplinary area where multiple functions and uses of individual linguistic features need to be explored in depth

When a Palearctic bacterium meets a Nearctic insect vector: Genetic and ecological insights into the emergence of the grapevine Flavescence dorée epidemics in Europe

Flavescence dorée (FD) is a European quarantine grapevine disease transmitted by the Deltocephalinae leafhopper Scaphoideus titanus. Whereas this vector had been introduced from North America, the possible European origin of FD phytoplasma needed to be challenged and correlated with ecological and genetic drivers of FD emergence. For that purpose, a survey of genetic diversity of these phytoplasmas in grapevines, S. titanus, black alders, alder leafhoppers and clematis were conducted in five European countries. Out of 132 map genotypes, only 11 were associated to FD outbreaks, three were detected in clematis, whereas 127 were detected in alder trees, alder leafhoppers or in grapevines out of FD outbreaks. Most of the alder trees were found infected, including 8% with FD genotypes M6, M38 and M50, also present in alders neighboring FD-free vineyards and vineyard-free areas. The Macropsinae Oncopsis alni could transmit genotypes unable to achieve transmission by S. titanus, while the Deltocephalinae Allygus spp. and Orientus ishidae transmitted M38 and M50 that proved to be compatible with S. titanus. Variability of vmpA and vmpB adhesin-like genes clearly discriminated 3 genetic clusters. Cluster Vmp-I grouped genotypes only transmitted by O. alni, while clusters Vmp-II and -III grouped genotypes transmitted by Deltocephalinae leafhoppers. Interestingly, adhesin repeated domains evolved independently in cluster Vmp-I, whereas in clusters Vmp-II and-III showed recent duplications. Latex beads coated with various ratio of VmpA of clusters II and I, showed that cluster II VmpA promoted enhanced adhesion to the Deltocephalinae Euscelidius variegatus epithelial cells and were better retained in both E. variegatus and S. titanus midguts. Our data demonstrate that most FD phytoplasmas are endemic to European alders. Their emergence as grapevine epidemic pathogens appeared restricted to some genetic variants pre-existing in alders, whose compatibility to S. titanus correlates with different vmp gene sequences and VmpA binding properties

CANELC: constructing an e-language corpus

This paper reports on the construction of CANELC: the Cambridge and Nottingham e-language Corpus.3 CANELC is a one million word corpus of digital communication in English, taken from online discussion boards, blogs, tweets, emails and SMS messages. The paper outlines the approaches used when planning the corpus: obtaining consent; collecting the data and compiling the corpus database. This is followed by a detailed analysis of some of the patterns of language used in the corpus. The analysis includes a discussion of the key words and phrases used as well as the common themes and semantic associations connected with the data. These discussions form the basis of an investigation of how e-language operates in both similar and different ways to spoken and written records of communication (as evidenced by the BNC - British National Corpus). 3 CANELC stands for Cambridge and Nottingham e-language Corpus. This corpus has been built as part of a collaborative project between The University of Nottingham and Cambridge University Press with whom sole copyright of the annotated corpus resides. CANELC comprises one-million words of digital English taken from SMS messages, blogs, tweets, discussion board content and private/business emails. Plans to extend the corpus are under discussion. The legal dimension to corpus ‘ownership’ of some forms of unannotated data is a complex one and is under constant review. At the present time the annotated corpus is only available to authors and researchers working for CUP and is not more generally available

ROBITT: a tool for assessing the risk-of-bias in studies of temporal trends in ecology

1. Aggregated species occurrence and abundance data from disparate sources are increasingly accessible to ecologists for the analysis of temporal trends in biodiversity. However, sampling biases relevant to any given research question are often poorly explored and infrequently reported; this can undermine statistical inference. In other disciplines, it is common for researchers to complete ‘risk-of-bias’ assessments to expose and document the potential for biases to undermine conclusions. The huge growth in available data, and recent controversies surrounding their use to infer temporal trends, indicate that similar assessments are urgently needed in ecology. 2. We introduce ROBITT, a structured tool for assessing the ‘Risk-Of-Bias In studies of Temporal Trends in ecology’. ROBITT has a similar format to its counterparts in other disciplines: it comprises signalling questions designed to elicit information on the potential for bias in key study domains. In answering these, users will define study inferential goal(s) and relevant statistical target populations. This information is used to assess potential sampling biases across domains relevant to the research question (e.g. geography, taxonomy, environment), and how these vary through time. If assessments indicate biases, then users must clearly describe them and/or explain what mitigating action will be taken. 3. Everything that users need to complete a ROBITT assessment is provided: the tool, a guidance document and a worked example. Following other disciplines, the tool and guidance document were developed through a consensus-forming process across experts working in relevant areas of ecology and evidence synthesis. 4. We propose that researchers should be strongly encouraged to include a ROBITT assessment when publishing studies of biodiversity trends, especially when using aggregated data. This will help researchers to structure their thinking, clearly acknowledge potential sampling issues, highlight where expert consultation is required and provide an opportunity to describe data checks that might go unreported. ROBITT will also enable reviewers, editors and readers to establish how well research conclusions are supported given a dataset combined with some analytical approach. In turn, it should strengthen evidence-based policy and practice, reduce differing interpretations of data and provide a clearer picture of the uncertainties associated with our understanding of reality

Increased immunogenicity of surviving tumor cells enables cooperation between liposomal doxorubicin and IL-18

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Liposomal doxorubicin (Doxil) is a cytotoxic chemotherapy drug with a favorable hematologic toxicity profile. Its active drug, doxorubicin, has interesting immunomodulatory properties. Here, the effects of Doxil on surviving tumor cell immunophenotype were investigated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using ID8 murine ovarian cancer cells, the immunomodulatory effects of Doxil were studied by measuring its impact on ovarian cancer cell expression of MHC class-I and Fas, and susceptibility to immune attack <it>in vitro</it>. To evaluate the ability of Doxil to cooperate with cancer immunotherapy, the interaction between Doxil and Interleukin 18 (IL-18), a pleiotropic immunostimulatory cytokine, was investigated <it>in vivo </it>in mice bearing ID8-Vegf tumors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>While Doxil killed ID8 tumor cells in a dose-dependent manner, tumor cells escaping Doxil-induced apoptosis upregulated surface expression of MHC-I and Fas, and were sensitized to CTL killing and Fas-mediated death <it>in vitro</it>. We therefore tested the hypothesis that the combination of immunotherapy with Doxil provides positive interactions. Combination IL-18 and Doxil significantly suppressed tumor growth compared with either monotherapy <it>in vivo </it>and uniquely resulted in complete tumor regression and long term antitumor protection in a significant proportion of mice.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data demonstrate that Doxil favorably changes the immunophenotype of a large fraction of the tumor that escapes direct killing thus creating an opportunity to expand tumor killing by immunotherapy, which can be capitalized through addition of IL-18 <it>in vivo</it>.</p

Expansion of Cord Blood CD34+ Cells in Presence of zVADfmk and zLLYfmk Improved Their In Vitro Functionality and In Vivo Engraftment in NOD/SCID Mouse

BACKGROUND: Cord blood (CB) is a promising source for hematopoietic stem cell transplantations. The limitation of cell dose associated with this source has prompted the ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). However, the expansion procedure is known to exhaust the stem cell pool causing cellular defects that promote apoptosis and disrupt homing to the bone marrow. The role of apoptotic machinery in the regulation of stem cell compartment has been speculated in mouse hematopoietic and embryonic systems. We have consistently observed an increase in apoptosis in the cord blood derived CD34(+) cells cultured with cytokines compared to their freshly isolated counterpart. The present study was undertaken to assess whether pharmacological inhibition of apoptosis could improve the outcome of expansion. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: CB CD34(+) cells were expanded with cytokines in the presence or absence of cell permeable inhibitors of caspases and calpains; zVADfmk and zLLYfmk respectively. A novel role of apoptotic protease inhibitors was observed in increasing the CD34(+) cell content of the graft during ex vivo expansion. This was further reflected in improved in vitro functional aspects of the HSPCs; a higher clonogenicity and long term culture initiating potential. These cells sustained superior long term engraftment and an efficient regeneration of major lympho-myeloid lineages in the bone marrow of NOD/SCID mouse compared to the cells expanded with growth factors alone. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our data show that, use of either zVADfmk or zLLYfmk in the culture medium improves expansion of CD34(+) cells. The strategy protects stem cell pool and committed progenitors, and improves their in vitro functionality and in vivo engraftment. This observation may complement the existing protocols used in the manipulation of hematopoietic cells for therapeutic purposes. These findings may have an impact in the CB transplant procedures involving a combined infusion of unmanipulated and expanded grafts