Investigating language policy in social media: translation practices on Facebook

This chapter is concerned with the Facebook Translations application (app) through which the social network site has internationalised its website. Despite its international reach, with over 70% of Facebook users being from outside the United States of America, the site was only available in English until February 2008. Following the development of the Translations app, the site was first opened to Spanish, and was quickly followed by French, German and another 21 languages in 2008 (Facebook, 2012). Since then the Translations app has continued to be ‘released’ to more languages and, at the time of writing (November 2012), is available in 110 languages including minority or regional languages, such as Irish and Welsh; the national varieties of US English and UK English1; and other languages and varieties such as Leet Speak, Esperanto and Pirate English

Mitogen-activated protein kinases as therapeutic targets for rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease in which imbalances in pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines promote the induction of autoimmunity, inflammation and joint destruction. Methotrexate, the standard disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD), has shown a gradual loss of efficacy in a significant proportion of patients, probably due to the onset of drug resistance, and thus it was hoped that the development of biologics would revolutionise RA management. Even though biologics have improved the therapy of patients refractive to DMARDs, they require parenteral administration and may leave patients open to serious infection and cancer. Therefore, attention has also been focused on inhibitors of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), signalling enzymes that play key roles in pathogenic cytokine production, and their downstream effector pathways, in order to create safe and effective oral drugs. This article therefore provides an overview of the structure and function of MAPKs and their role in the pathogenesis of RA as context to describing the advances in the development of specific, druggable MAPK inhibitors. Their potential as therapies in the management of RA is also discussed