The role of mundane mobility and contact in dialect death and dialect birth

Urry begins his 2007 book, Mobilities, by throwing some quite stunning statistics at his readers: in 2010, there were one billion legal international arrivals at ports and airports; in 1800 people in the US travelled on average 50 metres per day, today it is 50 kilometres per day; 8.7% of world employment is in tourism; and, at any one time, there are 360,000 passengers in flight above the United States (2007: 3-4). But very many of these mobilities for the individuals concerned are or have become rather unexceptional – a flight to a holiday in Majorca or Florida, a journey on a crowded commuter train into Madrid or Tokyo, a cross-Channel ferry to Calais in France to pick up some cheap wine and a camembert. Whilst much of the theoretically influential dialectological literature on mobility reports on long-distance, often permanent, often dangerous migrations, I turn our attention here to the dialectological consequences of this unexceptional everyday movement. I will argue here that, just as more dramatic and long-distance mobilities can trigger linguistic change, so too can the much more mundane movements we engage in in everyday life. I demonstrate that the linguistic consequences of that contact are similar if not the same – perhaps less dramatic, perhaps involving the convergence of an initially less divergent array of variants – but typologically of the same ilk. And I demonstrate that because these mobilities have been long-term, intensive and ongoing, their consequences on the dialect landscape have been highly significant. Important to remember, however, is that these mobilities are socially stratified and unevenly distributed. As Wolff put it: “the suggestion of free and equal mobility is … a deception, since we don’t all have the same access to the road” (1993: 253).

Language lateralization correlates with verbal memory performance in children with focal epilepsy

PURPOSE: Assessment of language dominance with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neuropsychological evaluation is often used prior to epilepsy surgery. This study explores whether language lateralization and cognitive performance are systematically related in young patients with focal epilepsy. METHODS: Language fMRI and neuropsychological data (language, visuospatial functions, and memory) of 40 patients (7-18 years of age) with unilateral, refractory focal epilepsy in temporal and/or frontal areas of the left (n = 23) or right hemisphere (n = 17) were analyzed. fMRI data of 18 healthy controls (7-18 years) served as a normative sample. A laterality index was computed to determine the lateralization of activation in three regions of interest (frontal, parietal, and temporal). RESULTS: Atypical language lateralization was demonstrated in 12 (30%) of 40 patients. A correlation between language lateralization and verbal memory performance occurred in patients with left-sided epilepsy over all three regions of interest, with bilateral or right-sided language lateralization being correlated with better verbal memory performance (Word Pairs Recall: frontal r = -0.4, p = 0.016; parietal r = -0.4, p = 0.043; temporal r = -0.4, p = 0.041). Verbal memory performance made the largest contribution to language lateralization, whereas handedness and side of seizures did not contribute to the variance in language lateralization. DISCUSSION: This finding reflects the association between neocortical language and hippocampal memory regions in patients with left-sided epilepsy. Atypical language lateralization is advantageous for verbal memory performance, presumably a result of transfer of verbal memory function. In children with focal epilepsy, verbal memory performance provides a better idea of language lateralization than handedness and side of epilepsy and lesion.

Autophagy: in: Cell Death

Autophagy is a conserved proteolytic mechanism that degrades cytoplasmic material including cell organelles. Although the importance of autophagy for cell homeostasis and survival has long been appreciated, our understanding of how autophagy is regulated at a molecular level just recently evolved. The importance of autophagy for the quality control of proteins is underscored by the fact that many neurodegenerative and myodegenerative diseases are characterized by an increased but still insufficient autophagic activity. Similarly, if the cellular stress, leading to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage, mitochondrial damage and/or damaged proteins, does not result in sufficient autophagic repair mechanisms, cells seem to be prone to transform into tumour cells. Therefore, autophagy has multiple roles to play in the causation and prevention of human diseases.

Mild hypothermia during global cardiac ischemia opens a window of opportunity to develop heart donation after cardiac death

Although heart donation after cardiac death (DCD) could greatly improve graft availability, concerns regarding warm ischemic damage typically preclude transplantation. Improving tolerance to warm ischemia may thus open a window of opportunity for DCD hearts. We investigated the hypothesis that, compared with normothermia, mild hypothermia (32° C) initiated after ischemic onset improves cardiac functional recovery upon reperfusion. Isolated, working hearts from adult, male Wistar rats underwent global, no-flow ischemia, and reperfusion (n = 28). After ischemic onset, temperature was maintained at either 37° C for 20 or 30 min or reduced to 32° C for 40, 50, or 60 min. Recovery was measured after 60-min reperfusion. Following normothermic ischemia, recovery of rate-pressure product (RPP; per cent of preischemic value) was almost complete after 20-min ischemia (97 ± 9%), whereas no recovery was detectable after 30-min ischemia. After mildly hypothermic ischemia (32° C), RPP also recovered well after 40 min (86 ± 4%). Markers of metabolism and necrosis were similar in 37° C/20 min and 32° C/40 min groups. Simple reduction in cardiac temperature by a few degrees after the onset of global ischemia dramatically prolongs the interval during which the heart remains resistant to functional deterioration. Preservation of hemodynamic function is associated with improved metabolic recovery and reduced necrosis. The application of mild hypothermia may be a simple first step towards development of clinical protocols for DCD heart recovery.