Nonexistence and multiplicity of solutions to elliptic problems with supercritical exponents

We consider the supercritical problem -\Delta u = |u|^{p-2}u in \Omega, u=0 on \partial\Omega, where $\Omega$ is a bounded smooth domain in $\mathbb{R}^{N},$ $N\geq3,$ and $p\geq2^{*}:= 2N/(N-2).$ Bahri and Coron showed that if $\Omega$ has nontrivial homology this problem has a positive solution for $p=2^{*}.$ However, this is not enough to guarantee existence in the supercritical case. For $p\geq 2(N-1)/(N-3)$ Passaseo exhibited domains carrying one nontrivial homology class in which no nontrivial solution exists. Here we give examples of domains whose homology becomes richer as $p$ increases. More precisely, we show that for $p> 2(N-k)/(N-k-2)$ with $1\leq k\leq N-3$ there are bounded smooth domains in $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ whose cup-length is $k+1$ in which this problem does not have a nontrivial solution. For $N=4,8,16$ we show that there are many domains, arising from the Hopf fibrations, in which the problem has a prescribed number of solutions for some particular supercritical exponents.Comment: Published online in Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equation

L’« humanisation de l’accouchement et de la naissance au Brésil » : de nouveaux dispositifs de régulation des corps des femmes pauvres ?

Cet article rend compte de la mise en place de politiques publiques dans la sphère de la santé, identifiées sous le nom d’« humanisation de l’accouchement et de la naissance » et de leur emprise sur l’expérience de la maternité des femmes de milieux populaires urbains au Brésil du Nord-Est (Nordeste). Nous nous pencherons sur celle qui nous semble la plus représentative du vaste ensemble de politiques publiques issues de ce processus : la promotion de l’allaitement maternel. Les données ethnographiques, collectées lors de notre travail de terrain au sein de trois maternités publiques ainsi que dans un quartier populaire de la ville de Recife, seront analysées dans le but d’enrichir la discussion sur la régulation du corps des femmes pauvres à travers les dispositifs de santé publique. L’approche analytique tente de ne pas succomber à une vision déterministe de la relation système de santé/actrice-mère, en essayant d’engager une réflexion sur l’articulation entre les dispositifs et les expériences des parturientes.This article considers public policies in the health domain that are labelled “humanisation of labour and childbirth” and their impact on the experience of childbirth among urban working-class women in Northeast Brazil. It analyses a paradigmatic example from the array of programmes: breast-feeding. Ethnographic data, collected during field research in three public childbirth centres in a neighbourhood in the city of Recife, provides evidence about the use of public health instruments to control poor women’s bodies. Avoiding a deterministic vision of the relation between the health system and mothers as actors, the article develops a reflection on the links between the programmes and the experience of breast-feeding mothers

Medical Brochures Translated into English and Their Comparison with Source English and Spanish Medical Brochures

AbstractDespite the high number of publications concerning medical texts, there is a considerable gap in research regarding an important element: medical brochures (Mayor Serrano, 2003). These texts are more and more frequent in health centres to transmit specialised information to the general public (Busch Lauer 1995).Knowing the behaviour of a genre in two different languages is important for translation (García Izquierdo, 2002). Our work is based on a previous contrastive analysis about the genre of medical brochures both in English and in Spanish (Faya Ornia, 2015). Here we will observe if medical brochures translated into English in Spain comply with the features of Spanish brochures, or if a functionalist approach has been adopted and therefore suitable adaptations have been made according to the English source brochures.In order to carry out our analysis, we worked with three corpora: source medical brochures in English (collected in the UK), source medical brochures in Spanish (collected in Spain) and medical brochures translated into English and published in Spain. The analysis is based on Nord's functional model (2005), which has been completed with Kress and van Leeuwen's contributions (2006) regarding visual material.To conclude, we will mention the possible reasons that make Spanish brochures more shocking and varied than English ones, as well as address the fact that translated brochures are similar to the Spanish brochures in some aspects but similar to the English brochures in others

Courtesy markers in requests: The case of pray and please in Late Modern English

This PhD dissertation focuses on the study of the two main courtesy markers in requests in the Late Modern English period, namely please and pray. Both of them are borrowings from French and came to replace native strategies (e.g. the Old English parenthetical ic bidde) in this pragmatic function. Pray had been the major courtesy marker in requests since the Early Modern English period, but it started to fall into disuse during the Late Modern English period, when a new form, please, started to gain ground. A preliminary analysis of the pragmatic markers please and pray in the multigenre corpus ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers) showed that these features are only available in fiction, drama and letters. Following these results, I proceeded to the analysis of several single-genre corpora. As regards fiction, I resorted to a selection from Chadwyck Healey’s Eighteenth-Century Fiction (1700-1780) and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1782-1903). For drama I used the drama section in A Corpus of Irish English. Finally, I paid attention to correspondence, and studied two epistolary corpora covering different periods within Late Modern English (the Corpus of Late Eighteenth-Century Prose (1761-1790) and A Corpus of Late Modern English Prose (1860-1919)) and a selection of letter-writing manuals extracted from ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) database. My study relies on corpus linguistics methodology, and gets insights from Historical Pragmatics, Politeness Theory and Speech-Act Theory, while the origin and development of the courtesy marker please is accounted for in terms of grammaticalisation. The thesis includes a revision of the literature on the different theoretical approaches and provides the accounts and descriptions of these two courtesy markers in the literature, both for Present-day English and for earlier periods. I also looked at Late Modern English reference works in order to gain insight as to how the speech act of requests was apprehended in the period. In my corpus analysis I explore the different sources which have been proposed in the literature as the origin of the courtesy marker please. In addition to conditional structures of the type if you please, in my study I draw special attention to imperative structures such as be pleased to, and please to, which constitute in my opinion the major source of the Present-day courtesy marker please. The process of grammaticalisation of please from these imperative structures would be as follows: Be pleased to > please to > please (verb) > please (courtesy marker). Thus, the courtesy marker please would have originated in a full matrix clause rather than in an already parenthetical conditional form. The grammaticalisation of please follows similar patterns to those identified in the development of other pragmatic markers, not only in English, but also cross-linguistically