“You understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars”:comparing how William Shakespeare and Taylor Swift use figurative language when writing about love

Abstract. This thesis studies and compares William Shakespeare’s sonnets with the song lyrics of the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The aim is to observe the differences and similarities in their use of figurative language, specifically metaphors and metonymies when referring to romantic love and relationships. The 400-year-gap between them alone means that the language, as it is constantly evolving, will be different and so will be the metaphors and metonymies. This study examines what kind of differences there are and what has remained the same. The materials for this study are a selection of songs from Taylor Swift’s complete discography (2006–2020) as well as selected sonnets by William Shakespeare (1609).Tiivistelmä. Tässä tutkielmassa etsin ja vertailen kuvaannollisen kielen käyttöä William Shakespearen soneteissa ja amerikkalaisen laulaja-lauluntekijä Taylor Swiftin kappaleiden sanoituksissa. Tutkielman tavoite on tutkia eroja ja yhtäläisyyksiä siinä, miten he käyttävät kuvaannollista kieltä, eritoten metaforia ja metonymioita, kirjoittessaan romanttisesta rakkaudesta ja ihmissuhteista. Heidän elinaikojensa välillä oleva 400 vuoden väli itsessään takaa sen, että alati muuttuva ja kehittyvä kieli on erilaista heidän teksteissään ja siten myös heidän käyttämissään metaforissa ja metonymioissa. Tarkastelen tutkielmassa kappaleita Taylor Swiftin koko tuotannosta vuosilta 2006–2020 sekä valikoituja sonetteja William Shakespearen sonettikokoelmasta vuodelta 1609

Short GSM mobile phone exposure does not alter human auditory brainstem response

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There are about 1.6 billion GSM cellular phones in use throughout the world today. Numerous papers have reported various biological effects in humans exposed to electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phones. The aim of the present study was to advance our understanding of potential adverse effects of the GSM mobile phones on the human hearing system.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) was recorded with three non-polarizing Ag-AgCl scalp electrodes in thirty young and healthy volunteers (age 18–26 years) with normal hearing. ABR data were collected before, and immediately after a 10 minute exposure to 900 MHz pulsed electromagnetic field (EMF) emitted by a commercial Nokia 6310 mobile phone. Fifteen subjects were exposed to genuine EMF and fifteen to sham EMF in a double blind and counterbalanced order. Possible effects of irradiation was analyzed by comparing the latency of ABR waves I, III and V before and after genuine/sham EMF exposure.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Paired sample t-test was conducted for statistical analysis. Results revealed no significant differences in the latency of ABR waves I, III and V before and after 10 minutes of genuine/sham EMF exposure.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The present results suggest that, in our experimental conditions, a single 10 minute exposure of 900 MHz EMF emitted by a commercial mobile phone does not produce measurable immediate effects in the latency of auditory brainstem waves I, III and V.</p

Interstitial cystitis: a rare manifestation of primary Sjögren’s syndrome, successfully treated with low dose cyclosporine

Chronic interstitial cystitis (IC), mostly affecting middle-aged women, is a very rare manifestation of primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS). Hereby, we report a 42-year-old woman with pSS, presenting with dysuria, urinary frequency, and suprapubic pain. She was diagnosed to have chronic IC, based upon the cystoscopic biopsy finding of chronic inflammation in the bladder wall. Systemic corticosteroid and azathioprine treatments together with local intravesical therapies were not effective. Therefore, cyclosporine (CSA) therapy was initiated. Initial low dose of CSA (1.5 mg/kg/d) improved the symptoms of the patient, with no requirement for dose increment. After 4 months of therapy, control cystoscopic biopsy showed that bladder inflammation regressed and IC improved. This case suggests that even low doses of CSA may be beneficial for treating chronic IC associated with pSS syndrome

Assessment of potential effects of the electromagnetic fields of mobile phones on hearing

BACKGROUND: Mobile phones have become indispensable as communication tools; however, to date there is only a limited knowledge about interaction between electromagnetic fields (EMF) emitted by mobile phones and auditory function. The aim of the study was to assess potential changes in hearing function as a consequence of exposure to low-intensity EMF's produced by mobile phones at frequencies of 900 and 1800 MHz. METHODS: The within-subject study was performed on thirty volunteers (age 18–30 years) with normal hearing to assess possible acute effect of EMF. Participants attended two sessions: genuine and sham exposure of EMF. Hearing threshold levels (HTL) on pure tone audiometry (PTA) and transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE's) were recorded before and immediately after 10 min of genuine and/or sham exposure of mobile phone EMF. The administration of genuine or sham exposure was double blind and counterbalanced in order. RESULTS: Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences in the mean HTLs of PTA and mean shifts of TEOAE's before and after genuine and/or sham mobile phone EMF 10 min exposure. The data collected showed that average TEOAE levels (averaged across a frequency range) changed less than 2.5 dB between pre- and post-, genuine and sham exposure. The greatest individual change was 10 dB, with a decrease in level from pre- to post- real exposure. CONCLUSION: It could be concluded that a 10-min close exposure of EMFs emitted from a mobile phone had no immediate after-effect on measurements of HTL of PTA and TEOAEs in young human subjects and no measurable hearing deterioration was detected in our study

Is Human Cytomegalovirus Infection Associated with Hypertension? The United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2002

PURPOSE: Recent studies have implicated the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) as a possible pathogen for causing hypertension. We aimed to study the association between HCMV infection and hypertension in the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). METHODS: We analyzed data on 2979 men and 3324 women in the NHANES 1999-2002. We included participants aged 16-49 years who had valid data on HCMV infection and hypertension. RESULTS: Of the participants, 54.7% had serologic evidence of HCMV infection and 17.5% had hypertension. There were ethnic differences in the prevalence of HCMV infection (P<0.001) and hypertension (P<0.001). The prevalence of both increased with age (P<0.001). Before adjustment, HCMV seropositivity was significantly associated with hypertension in women (OR = 1.63, 95% CI = 1.25-2.13, P = 0.001) but not in men. After adjustment for race/ethnicity, the association between HCMV seropositivity and hypertension in women remained significant (OR = 1.55, 95% CI = 1.20-2.02, P = 0.002). Further adjustment for body mass index, diabetes status and hypercholesterolemia attenuated the association (OR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.10-1.90, P = 0.010). However, after adjusting for age, the association was no longer significant (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 0.91-1.67, P = 0.162). CONCLUSIONS: In this nationally representative population-based survey, HCMV seropositivity is associated with hypertension in women in the NHANES population. This association is largely explained by the association of hypertension with age and the increase in past exposure to HCMV with age.published_or_final_versio

Electromagnetic Treatment to Old Alzheimer's Mice Reverses β-Amyloid Deposition, Modifies Cerebral Blood Flow, and Provides Selected Cognitive Benefit

Few studies have investigated physiologic and cognitive effects of “long-term" electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure in humans or animals. Our recent studies have provided initial insight into the long-term impact of adulthood EMF exposure (GSM, pulsed/modulated, 918 MHz, 0.25–1.05 W/kg) by showing 6+ months of daily EMF treatment protects against or reverses cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's transgenic (Tg) mice, while even having cognitive benefit to normal mice. Mechanistically, EMF-induced cognitive benefits involve suppression of brain β-amyloid (Aβ) aggregation/deposition in Tg mice and brain mitochondrial enhancement in both Tg and normal mice. The present study extends this work by showing that daily EMF treatment given to very old (21–27 month) Tg mice over a 2-month period reverses their very advanced brain Aβ aggregation/deposition. These very old Tg mice and their normal littermates together showed an increase in general memory function in the Y-maze task, although not in more complex tasks. Measurement of both body and brain temperature at intervals during the 2-month EMF treatment, as well as in a separate group of Tg mice during a 12-day treatment period, revealed no appreciable increases in brain temperature (and no/slight increases in body temperature) during EMF “ON" periods. Thus, the neuropathologic/cognitive benefits of EMF treatment occur without brain hyperthermia. Finally, regional cerebral blood flow in cerebral cortex was determined to be reduced in both Tg and normal mice after 2 months of EMF treatment, most probably through cerebrovascular constriction induced by freed/disaggregated Aβ (Tg mice) and slight body hyperthermia during “ON" periods. These results demonstrate that long-term EMF treatment can provide general cognitive benefit to very old Alzheimer's Tg mice and normal mice, as well as reversal of advanced Aβ neuropathology in Tg mice without brain heating. Results further underscore the potential for EMF treatment against AD

Mathematical Programming manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor)

Globally convergent limited memory bundle method for large-scale nonsmooth optimization Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract Many practical optimization problems involve nonsmooth (that is, not necessarily differentiable) functions of thousands of variables. In the paper [Haarala, Miettinen, Mäkelä, Optimization Methods and Software, 19, (2004), pp. 673–692] we have described an efficient method for large-scale nonsmooth optimization. In this paper, we introduce a new variant of this method and prove its global convergence for locally Lipschitz continuous objective functions, which are not necessarily differentiable or convex. In addition, we give some encouraging results from numerical experiments

Limited memory bundle algorithm for large bound constrained nonsmooth minization problems

Typically, practical optimization problems involve nonsmooth functions of hundreds or thousands of variables. As a rule, the variables in such problems are restricted to certain meaningful intervals. In this paper, we propose an efficient adaptive limited memory bundle method for large-scale nonsmooth, possibly nonconvex, bound constrained optimization. The method combines the nonsmooth variable metric bundle method and the smooth limited memory variable metric method, while the constraint handling is based on the projected gradient method and the dual subspace minimization. The preliminary numerical experiments to be presented confirm the usability of the method