THE CAPITAL OF DYING LANGUAGES

- Headline The Capital of Dying Languages - Reporter Masa Oga - Abstract While there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages. New York City is definitely the capital of language density in the world, says Daniel Kaufman, an adjunct professor of linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. However, he predicts that half of those 800 languages will be extinct in the near future. “We’re sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around even in 20 or 30 years,” Kaufman said. Linguists, activists, and community members – concerned that New York City’s linguistic and cultural diversity have undergone a rapid decline – have been trying to save those rare languages. Hawaiian language is one example. The language was prohibited from speaking for almost four generations of students who had grown up learning English. As a result, today only about 1,000 native Hawaiian speakers and 8,000 others can speak and understand the language fluently, according to the UCLA Language Materials Project. However, in New York City, native Hawaiian language educators have been trying to revitalize it. The effort also helped Hawaiian community members in New York City feel the unity of the community has become strong. Garifuna language is also an interesting case. Descended from indigenous people in Caribbean region and Central America, Garifuna people in the Bronx still keep their cultural practice. As like people in other communities do, Garufuna parents agree that a small number of ethnic Garifuna continue to have command of the culture, especially language in recent years. However, those older generations’ tireless efforts have induced Garifuna millennials to join traditional cultural events, resulting in the increase in young population who start learning the language. To take Hawaii and Garifuna cases as examples, this article tells how those people regard their languages and cultures, how to maintain those, and what their identities are. - Website Link http://failuretoyield.nycitynewsservice.com/elny-main/ http://failuretoyield.nycitynewsservice.com/elny-hawaii/ http://failuretoyield.nycitynewsservice.com/elny-garifuna/ Pass - mas

Recent Synthetic Studies Leading to Structural Revisions of Marine Natural Products

Because of the highly unique structures of marine natural products, there are many examples of structures that were originally proposed based on spectral analyses but later proven incorrect. In many cases, the total syntheses of the originally proposed structures of marine natural products has confirmed their incorrectness and the subsequent total syntheses of the newly proposed structures proved the revised structures. This review will show such cases appearing after 2005 and demonstrate how the true structures were elucidated

A phospho-switch controls RNF43-mediated degradation of Wnt receptors to suppress tumorigenesis.

Funder: Japan Foundation for Applied Enzymology; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/100008695Funder: Pancreas Research Foundation of Japan Collaborative Research Project Program of the Medical Institute of Bioregulation, Kyushu University, Japan Joint Research Program of the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Regulation, Gunma University, Japan Grant for Joint Research Project of the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases Osaka UniversityFunder: European Research Council (ERC (639050) and the Interpark Bio-Convergence Center Grant Program.Frequent mutation of the tumour suppressor RNF43 is observed in many cancers, particularly colon malignancies. RNF43, an E3 ubiquitin ligase, negatively regulates Wnt signalling by inducing degradation of the Wnt receptor Frizzled. In this study, we discover that RNF43 activity requires phosphorylation at a triplet of conserved serines. This phospho-regulation of RNF43 is required for zebrafish development and growth of mouse intestinal organoids. Cancer-associated mutations that abrogate RNF43 phosphorylation cooperate with active Ras to promote tumorigenesis by abolishing the inhibitory function of RNF43 in Wnt signalling while maintaining its inhibitory function in p53 signalling. Our data suggest that RNF43 mutations cooperate with KRAS mutations to promote multi-step tumorigenesis via the Wnt-Ras-p53 axis in human colon cancers. Lastly, phosphomimetic substitutions of the serine trio restored the tumour suppressive activity of extracellular oncogenic mutants. Therefore, harnessing phospho-regulation of RNF43 might be a potential therapeutic strategy for tumours with RNF43 mutations

A framework to predict binary liquidus by combining machine learning and CALPHAD assessments

International audienceKnowledge of the liquidus is important for the design and processing of many materials. For instance, deep eutectics are important for the design of metallic glasses, and recently multi-principal element alloys have been designed based on eutectic compositions or melting temperatures extrapolated from binary liquidus data. In this study, we provide a general framework for predicting binary liquidus only from the properties of the pure elements and thermodynamic properties calculated by Miedema’s model. Our framework combines three machine learning models that are trained and evaluated on liquidus data collected from 466 CALPHAD assessments of binary phase diagrams. The first model predicts the formation of liquid miscibility gaps with a prediction accuracy of 95.3%, outperforming the empirical Mott model. The second and third models predict the equilibrium onset temperature of solidification and the critical temperature of liquid miscibility gaps, respectively. An important feature of our models is that they can give indications of the presence of congruent melting phases and eutectics. Using our framework, we predict the liquidus in 1563 binary systems not included in our CALPHAD dataset, many of which are unknown. By collecting more data, our framework will continue to grow towards better liquidus prediction