Reconstruction or collapse of the fantasy world: Translation of the place names in Journey to the West

Nouns are a characteristic feature that distinguishes one culture from another. Onomatology in general –and toponymy in particular– denotes culture and is affected by specific morals, religions, and ways of thinking, typical of a society. Likewise, it also embodies a varied range of extralinguistic information. In Chinese culture, toponomy is used to display an aesthetic symbolism, as well as a wide variety of connotations that are absent from Hispanic culture. Moreover, if we account for the use of different calligraphy, the translation of Chinese place nouns into Spanish implies a real challenge, a task that becomes more difficult if we deal with translating more than six-hundred-year-old nouns. Translators not only face problems regarding translating from traditional Mandarin Chinese, but also the challenge of translating a text full of religious concepts with no translation equivalents in our mother tongue. In this article, we analyze the translation of place names in Journey to the West in the two translations available in Spanish. Utilizing a corpus containing the original text and the two complete translations into Spanish, we focus on analyzing the techniques used during the translation process, taking into consideration whether the translators were able to identify and keep the harmony and aesthetics –typical features of the Mandarin Chinese– in the Spanish language.Los nombres son una de las características que distinguen una cultura de otra. La onomatología en general (y la toponimia en particular) denota una cultura y esta se ve influenciada por normas morales, religiosas y formas de pensar típicas de una sociedad en concreto. De igual modo, transporta una variada gama de información extralingüística. En la cultura china, la toponimia se emplea para describir el simbolismo estético, así como un amplio espectro de connotaciones ausentes en la cultura hispana. Si a ello le añadimos el uso de una caligrafía diferente, la translación de los topónimos chinos al español supone todo un reto, empresa que harto complicada cuando se trata de verter nombres de más de seiscientos años de antigüedad. Los traductores no solo afrontan el problema de trasladar del chino clásico, sino de hacer su labor con un texto profuso de conceptos religiosos de los que no existen equivalencias en la lengua meta. En este artículo se analiza la traslación de los topónimos de Viaje al Oeste en las dos traducciones existentes en español. Por medio de un corpus compilado con el texto original y las dos versiones completas disponibles en nuestro idioma, el estudio se enfoca en analizar las técnicas empleadas en el proceso de traducción teniendo en cuenta si los traductores fueron capaces de identificar y mantener la harmonía y la estética (características propias del chino mandarín) en español

Ante los títulos de los capítulos en las novelas clásicas chinas: análisis y comparación de las traducciones chino-español de Viaje al Oeste

In this research, we have studied the headings of the one hundred chapters of Journey to the West, and two of its translations in Spanish. By building up a corpus with these texts, we analyzed the main features and the differences among them -in particular, at the syntactic, semantic, and lexical/terminological levels-, as well as the different ways in which linguists translated the original text, and the resources they used to carry out their task. Likewise, we confirm the difficulty of translating into Castilian a book written in Mandarin Chinese, and the loss of relevant information during the translation process, due to the difficulty of keeping the style, the rhythm, capturing the cross-cultural aspects in Spanish, and of translating correctly the terminological items of the eastern religions.En este trabajo hemos procedido a analizar los títulos de los cien capítulos que conforman el original y dos traducciones de la obra Viaje al Oeste en español. Mediante la construcción de un corpus con dichos textos analizamos las principales características y diferencias existentes entre ellos (en particular, a nivel sintáctico, semántico y léxico/terminológico), al igual que los distintos modos de verter el libro original y los diferentes recursos que emplean los traductores en los textos meta. De igual modo, constatamos la dificultad de verter al castellano una obra escrita en chino mandarín y la pérdida de información relevante en el proceso de traslación, debido a la dificultad de mantener el estilo, la rima, plasmar los aspectos interculturales en castellano y traducir correctamente las unidades terminológicas de las religiones orientales

Prevalence and determinants of human papillomavirus genital infection in men

Four-hundred-forty-five husbands of women with invasive cervical carcinoma, 165 of women with in situ cervical cancer, and 717 of control women (age range 19–82 years) were interviewed and a sample of exfoliated cells from the penis obtained in seven case–control studies conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The characteristics of human papillomavirus-positive and human papillomavirus-negative husbands were compared using odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Thirteen per cent of the husbands of control women, 18% of the husbands of women with invasive cervical carcinoma, and 21% of the husbands of in situ cervical carcinoma women were positive for penile human papillomavirus DNA. Human papillomavirus 16 was detected in 45 husbands, human papillomavirus 18, 31 or 33 in 19, and human papillomavirus 6/11 in 6, but the majority of human papillomavirus infection (158) was with other or unspecified human papillomavirus types. The same human papillomavirus type was seldom identified in both husband and wife. The strongest variation in penile human papillomavirus infection was by country, with percentages among the husbands of control women ranging between 3% in Spain and 39% in Brazil. Having had over 50 lifetime sexual partners, compared with only one, was associated with an odds ratio of 2.3

The Progression of the Stargardt Disease Type 4 (ProgStar-4) Study: Design and Baseline Characteristics (ProgStar-4 Report No. 1)

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To describe the design and baseline characteristics of patients enrolled in the multicenter, prospective natural history study of Stargardt disease type 4. METHODS: Fifteen eligible patients aged 6 years and older at baseline, harboring disease-causing variants in the PROM1 gene, and with specified ocular lesions were enrolled. They were examined at baseline using a standard protocol, with 6 monthly follow-up visits for a 2-year period including best-corrected ETDRS visual acuity, spectral-domain optical coherence tomography, fundus autofluorescence (FAF), mesopic and scotopic microperimetry (MP). Areas of definitely decreased FAF (DDAF) and questionably decreased FAF were outlined and quantified on FAF images. RESULTS: Amongst the 15 patients (29 eyes) that were enrolled at 5 centers in the USA and Europe, 10 eyes (34.5%) had areas of DDAF with an average lesion area of 3.2 ± 3.5 mm2 (range 0.36-10.39 mm2) at baseline. The mean retinal sensitivity of the posterior pole derived from mesopic MP was 8.8 ± 5.8 dB. CONCLUSIONS: Data on disease progression in PROM1-related retinopathy from this study will contribute to the characterization of the natural history of disease and the exploration of the utility of several modalities to track progression and therefore to potentially be used in future interventional clinical trials

Scotopic Microperimetric Assessment of Rod Function in Stargardt Disease (SMART) Study: Design and Baseline Characteristics (Report No. 1)

PURPOSE: To describe the study design and characteristics at first visit of participants in the longitudinal Scotopic Microperimetric Assessment of Rod Function in Stargardt Disease (SMART) study. METHODS: Scotopic microperimetry (sMP) was performed in one designated study eye in a subset of participants with molecularly proven ABCA4-associated Stargardt disease (STGD1) enrolled in a multicenter natural history study (ProgStar). Study visits were every 6 months over a period ranging from 6 to 24 months, and also included fundus autofluorescence (FAF). RESULTS: SMART enrolled 118 participants (118 eyes). At the first visit of SMART, the mean sensitivity in mesopic microperimetry was 11.48 (±5.05; range 0.00-19.88) dB and in sMP 11.25 (±5.26; 0-19.25) dB. For FAF, all eyes had a lesion of decreased autofluorescence (mean lesion size 3.62 [±3.48; 0.10-21.46] mm2), and a total of 76 eyes (65.5%) had a lesion of definitely decreased autofluorescence with a mean lesion size of 3.46 (±3.60; 0.21-21.46) mm2. CONCLUSIONS: Rod function is impaired in STGD1 and can be assessed by sMP. Testing rod function may serve as a potential outcome measure for future clinical treatment trials. This is evaluated in the SMART study

The efficacy of chemotherapy is limited by intratumoral senescent cells expressing PD-L2

Chemotherapy often generates intratumoral senescent cancer cells that strongly modify the tumor microenvironment, favoring immunosuppression and tumor growth. We discovered, through an unbiased proteomics screen, that the immune checkpoint inhibitor programmed cell death 1 ligand 2 (PD-L2) is highly upregulated upon induction of senescence in different types of cancer cells. PD-L2 is not required for cells to undergo senescence, but it is critical for senescent cells to evade the immune system and persist intratumorally. Indeed, after chemotherapy, PD-L2-deficient senescent cancer cells are rapidly eliminated and tumors do not produce the senescence-associated chemokines CXCL1 and CXCL2. Accordingly, PD-L2-deficient pancreatic tumors fail to recruit myeloid-derived suppressor cells and undergo regression driven by CD8 T cells after chemotherapy. Finally, antibody-mediated blockade of PD-L2 strongly synergizes with chemotherapy causing remission of mammary tumors in mice. The combination of chemotherapy with anti-PD-L2 provides a therapeutic strategy that exploits vulnerabilities arising from therapy-induced senescence. © 2024, The Author(s)

Properties of Graphene: A Theoretical Perspective

In this review, we provide an in-depth description of the physics of monolayer and bilayer graphene from a theorist's perspective. We discuss the physical properties of graphene in an external magnetic field, reflecting the chiral nature of the quasiparticles near the Dirac point with a Landau level at zero energy. We address the unique integer quantum Hall effects, the role of electron correlations, and the recent observation of the fractional quantum Hall effect in the monolayer graphene. The quantum Hall effect in bilayer graphene is fundamentally different from that of a monolayer, reflecting the unique band structure of this system. The theory of transport in the absence of an external magnetic field is discussed in detail, along with the role of disorder studied in various theoretical models. We highlight the differences and similarities between monolayer and bilayer graphene, and focus on thermodynamic properties such as the compressibility, the plasmon spectra, the weak localization correction, quantum Hall effect, and optical properties. Confinement of electrons in graphene is nontrivial due to Klein tunneling. We review various theoretical and experimental studies of quantum confined structures made from graphene. The band structure of graphene nanoribbons and the role of the sublattice symmetry, edge geometry and the size of the nanoribbon on the electronic and magnetic properties are very active areas of research, and a detailed review of these topics is presented. Also, the effects of substrate interactions, adsorbed atoms, lattice defects and doping on the band structure of finite-sized graphene systems are discussed. We also include a brief description of graphane -- gapped material obtained from graphene by attaching hydrogen atoms to each carbon atom in the lattice.Comment: 189 pages. submitted in Advances in Physic

Innovative Crop Productions for Healthy Food: The Case of Chia (Salvia hispanica L.)

Chia (Salvia hispanica L.) is an ancient crop from Central America which has been recently rediscovered as a source of ω-3 and nutraceuticals in seeds. Besides traditional seed consumption, innovative uses of the plant seeds and leaves have been proposed based on the high protein content and the production of mucilage which lends itself to a range of applications. This chapter reviews research on the plant’s genetics and breeding, quality, and uses. Agronomic studies which have only recently started worldwide are also presented along with results from case studies in Basilicata

Development of a Mesoamerican intra-genepool genetic map for quantitative trait loci detection in a drought tolerant × susceptible common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) cross

Drought is a major constraint to common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) production, especially in developing countries where irrigation for the crop is infrequent. The Mesoamerican genepool is the most widely grown subdivision of common beans that include small red, small cream and black seeded varieties. The objective of this study was to develop a reliable genetic map for a Mesoamerican × Mesoamerican drought tolerant × susceptible cross and to use this map to analyze the inheritance of yield traits under drought and fully irrigated conditions over 3 years of experiments. The source of drought tolerance used in the cross was the cream-seeded advanced line BAT477 crossed with the small red variety DOR364 and the population was made up of recombinant inbred lines in the F5 generation. Quantitative trait loci were detected by composite interval mapping for the traits of overall seed yield, yield per day, 100 seed weight, days to flowering and days to maturity for each field environment consisting of two treatments (irrigated and rainfed) and lattice design experiments with three repetitions for a total of six environments. The genetic map based on amplified fragment length polymorphism and random amplified polymorphic DNA markers was anchored with 60 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers and had a total map length of 1,087.5 cM across 11 linkage groups covering the whole common bean genome with saturation of one marker every 5.9 cM. Gaps for the genetic map existed on linkage groups b03, b09 and b11 but overall there were only nine gaps larger than 15 cM. All traits were inherited quantitatively, with the greatest number for seed weight followed by yield per day, yield per se, days to flowering and days to maturity. The relevance of these results for breeding common beans is discussed in particular in the light of crop improvement for drought tolerance in the Mesoamerican genepool

Characterization of Phosphofructokinase Activity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Reveals That a Functional Glycolytic Carbon Flow Is Necessary to Limit the Accumulation of Toxic Metabolic Intermediates under Hypoxia

10.1371/journal.pone.0056037PLoS ONE82