Dialects and Borders: Face-to-Face and Back-to-Back in Latin American Spanish

This essay explores a relatively underrepresented facet of Latin American Spanish, namely dialect contact along national borders. It is well known that Spanish American dialect zones rarely coincide with national boundaries, but also that prevailing dialectal traits often evoke nationalistic sentiments. The extent to which these tendencies interact is explored through a series of vignettes involving speech communities along the borders between nations whose principal (e.g. capital city) dialect traits differ substantially. Among the proposed factors that influence linguistic behavior in border communities are physical and political ease of border crossing, inter-nation economic imbalances, proximity of major urban areas, trans-border indigenous communities, relative proportion of locally-born residents, and historical rivalries and conflicts. In each of the scenarios, variations in the relative importance of these factors yields a different sociolinguistic configuration

¿EXISTE UN DIALECTO “ECUATOGUINEANO” DEL ESPAÑOL?

Guinea Ecuatorial como pregunta abierta: hacia el diálogo entre nuestras otredade

Armin Schwegler y Graciela Maglia, eds. Palenque (Colombia): oralidad, identidad y resistencia. Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana e Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 2012.

Otros caribes: de las Antillas al continente (sudamérica, centroamérica y norteamérica

El español de Malabo : procesos fonéticos/fonológicos e implicaciones dialectológicas

En port.: Editado en el marco de la Cooperación Española con Guinea EcuatorialBibliografía: p. [161]-17

Identification of Burkholderia mallei and Burkholderia pseudomallei adhesins for human respiratory epithelial cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Burkholderia pseudomallei </it>and <it>Burkholderia mallei </it>cause the diseases melioidosis and glanders, respectively. A well-studied aspect of pathogenesis by these closely-related bacteria is their ability to invade and multiply within eukaryotic cells. In contrast, the means by which <it>B. pseudomallei </it>and <it>B. mallei </it>adhere to cells are poorly defined. The purpose of this study was to identify adherence factors expressed by these organisms.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Comparative sequence analyses identified a gene product in the published genome of <it>B. mallei </it>strain ATCC23344 (locus # BMAA0649) that resembles the well-characterized <it>Yersinia enterocolitica </it>autotransporter adhesin YadA. The gene encoding this <it>B. mallei </it>protein, designated <it>boaA</it>, was expressed in <it>Escherichia coli </it>and shown to significantly increase adherence to human epithelial cell lines, specifically HEp2 (laryngeal cells) and A549 (type II pneumocytes), as well as to cultures of normal human bronchial epithelium (NHBE). Consistent with these findings, disruption of the <it>boaA </it>gene in <it>B. mallei </it>ATCC23344 reduced adherence to all three cell types by ~50%. The genomes of the <it>B. pseudomallei </it>strains K96243 and DD503 were also found to contain <it>boaA </it>and inactivation of the gene in DD503 considerably decreased binding to monolayers of HEp2 and A549 cells and to NHBE cultures.</p> <p>A second YadA-like gene product highly similar to BoaA (65% identity) was identified in the published genomic sequence of <it>B. pseudomallei </it>strain K96243 (locus # BPSL1705). The gene specifying this protein, termed <it>boaB</it>, appears to be <it>B. pseudomallei</it>-specific. Quantitative attachment assays demonstrated that recombinant <it>E. coli </it>expressing BoaB displayed greater binding to A549 pneumocytes, HEp2 cells and NHBE cultures. Moreover, a <it>boaB </it>mutant of <it>B. pseudomallei </it>DD503 showed decreased adherence to these respiratory cells. Additionally, a <it>B. pseudomallei </it>strain lacking expression of both <it>boaA </it>and <it>boaB </it>was impaired in its ability to thrive inside J774A.1 murine macrophages, suggesting a possible role for these proteins in survival within professional phagocytic cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The <it>boaA </it>and <it>boaB </it>genes specify adhesins that mediate adherence to epithelial cells of the human respiratory tract. The <it>boaA </it>gene product is shared by <it>B. pseudomallei </it>and <it>B. mallei </it>whereas BoaB appears to be a <it>B. pseudomallei</it>-specific adherence factor.</p

Hippocampal morphology and cognitive functions in community-dwelling older people:the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Structural measures of the hippocampus have been linked to a variety of memory processes and also to broader cognitive abilities. Gross volumetry has been widely used, yet the hippocampus has a complex formation, comprising distinct subfields which may be differentially sensitive to the deleterious effects of age, and to different aspects of cognitive performance. However, a comprehensive analysis of multidomain cognitive associations with hippocampal deformations among a large group of cognitively normal older adults is currently lacking. In 654 participants of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (mean age = 72.5, SD = 0.71 years), we examined associations between the morphology of the hippocampus and a variety of memory tests (spatial span, letter-number sequencing, verbal recall, and digit backwards), as well as broader cognitive domains (latent measures of speed, fluid intelligence, and memory). Following correction for age, sex, and vascular risk factors, analysis of memory subtests revealed that only right hippocampal associations in relation to spatial memory survived type 1 error correction in subiculum and in CA1 at the head (β = 0.201, p = 5.843 × 10(−4), outward), and in the ventral tail section of CA1 (β = −0.272, p = 1.347 × 10(−5), inward). With respect to latent measures of cognitive domains, only deformations associated with processing speed survived type 1 error correction in bilateral subiculum (β(absolute) ≤ 0.247, p < 1.369 × 10(−4), outward), bilaterally in the ventral tail section of CA1 (β(absolute) ≤ 0.242, p < 3.451 × 10(−6), inward), and a cluster at the left anterior-to-dorsal region of the head (β = 0.199, p = 5.220 × 10(−6), outward). Overall, our results indicate that a complex pattern of both inward and outward hippocampal deformations are associated with better processing speed and spatial memory in older age, suggesting that complex shape-based hippocampal analyses may provide valuable information beyond gross volumetry