El tratamiento estético de la figura de la prostituta en la lírica modernista española

This PhD thesis sets out to show, firstly, that Spanish modernist poets are lavish in their sublimation of the figure of the prostitute in their lyrical compositions. It argues that ultimately, they do not do this randomly or arbitrarily, but in response to a series of mechanisms that turn this sublimation into an investigation within the modernist movement. The need for a study such as this one seems indisputable, as not very much work has been done on this topic in Spanish literature, unlike in other literatures (particularly Latin American literature, precisely in the same turn-of-the-century period and in connection with Modernism). What little work has been published on the treatment of the figure of the prostitute in turn-of-the-century Spanish literature refers to narrative prose, notably the realist and naturalist novel, as well as the short story. Also, such work usually lacks a general theoretical framework, as it deals with one novel, one author, or in the case of greater generalisation, a specific type of novel. The study of this figure in literary texts involves studying Modernism itself, as it neatly draws together the panoply of topics so dear to Modernism, namely, the erotic, the marginal, the feminine, the cursed and Culturalism...

"La lagartija de la panza blanca" de Yolanda Oreamuno: una lectura desde la voz narrativa

This article establishes a dialogue between Yolanda Oreamuno´s short story and three of her essays in order to point out the coherence of the costarrican author´s ethic and aesthetic vision.

Ritradurre il fantastico femminile: scelte e pratiche nel panorama editoriale italiano, con uno sguardo alle opere di Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson e Angela Carter

La presente tesi si concentra sulla tendenza, riscontrata nel panorama editoriale italiano, al repêchage e ritraduzione di letteratura fantastica angloamericana femminile. Il corpus di case studies individuati a tale scopo è costituito da una selezione di testi delle autrici Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson e Angela Carter. Di ogni autrice si sono analizzati il romanzo e il racconto con più pubblicazioni editoriali fra lingua inglese e italiana. Di questi testi si sono esaminate le ritraduzioni italiane, che vanno dal 1958 al 2017, con particolare attenzione alle ritraduzioni degli anni Novanta e Duemila pubblicate dagli editori di cultura. Lo studio prende avvio da un apparato teorico sul problema della ritraduzione e sulle teorie formulate in merito alla letteratura fantastica femminile, coadiuvato da una ricerca all’interno dei cataloghi delle case editrici di cultura che hanno pubblicato le ritraduzioni in esame, confrontati con quelli di tre case editrici di riferimento per quanto riguarda il settore fantastico-gotico. Una seconda parte della ricerca è inoltre dedicata agli studi sulla ricezione e sul paratesto, come ulteriore strumento d’analisi del processo di repêchage editoriale quando coadiuvato dalla pratica ritraduttiva. L’apparato teorico è supportato da una ricerca qualitativa in merito all’evoluzione paratestuale dei testi selezionati e della ricezione degli stessi nel loro contesto originario e d’arrivo. La terza e ultima sezione della ricerca è dedicata all’analisi letteraria dei testi in esame. In questo contesto ha infine un suo spazio lo studio traduttologico contrastivo di una casistica di esempi linguistici tratti dai testi. A partire dall’osservazione delle parabole editoriali delle tre autrici, la presente ricerca si propone dunque di fornire uno sguardo d’insieme sul recente fenomeno del repêchage letterario di opere fantastiche femminili nel panorama editoriale italiano, e di investigare il ruolo e la portata socioculturale che la ritraduzione occupa all’interno di questo processo.

Accudire l’umanità. Proposta di traduzione, analisi e commento del racconto breve di fantascienza cinese Shanyang Renlei di Liu Cixin.

The main topic of this thesis is the italian translation from Chinese of the 2005 short science fiction story, Shanyang Renlei 赡养人类 (known as For the Benefit of Mankind/The Wages of Humanity in English), by Liu Cixin 刘慈欣, the leading figure in contemporary Chinese science fiction, and the analysis of the major problems and challenges encountered during the translation. In terms of its internal structure, the thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction both for science fiction enthusiasts and laypersons. Thus, it starts with the very concept of “science fiction”; then it analyzes some of the most relevant definitions of the genre throughout the years, with particular attention to the one proposed by Darko Suvin; lastly, it presents a brief but thorough excursus that goes all the way through the origins and development of science fiction in the West and of kehuan xiaoshuo in China, so that the readers can have a glimpse into their similarities and differ-ences as they evolved. The second chapter focuses on Liu Cixin himself and his works. After a short account of the novels and short stories that are considered the most representative of the three creative phases of his career as a science fiction author, with a section dedicated to his opus magnum, the trilogy Diqiu Wangshi 地球往事 (Remembrance of Earth’s Past), the chapter then goes on to analyze the most characteristic features and themes of his narrative style. The chapter ends with a detailed description of the plot of Shanyang Renlei and an in-depth look at the thematic content of the story. Chapters Three and Four presents, respectively, the Italian translation of the short story, and the thorough analysis of some of the most interesting and challenging issues that have arisen during the translation, along with an illustration of the corresponding strategies and solutions.

Short Cognitive Performance Test: Diagnostic Accuracy and Education Bias in Older Brazilian Adults

The ""Short Cognitive Performance Test"" (Syndrom Kurztest, SKT) is a cognitive screening battery designed to detect memory and attention deficits. The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the SKT as a screening tool for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. A total of 46 patients with Alzheimer`s disease (AD), 82 with MCI, and 56 healthy controls were included in the study. Patients and controls were allocated into two groups according to educational level (< 8 years or > 8 years). ROC analyses suggested that the SKT adequately discriminates AD from non-demented subjects (MCI and controls), irrespective of the education group. The test had good sensitivity to discriminate MCI from unimpaired controls in the sub-sample of individuals with more than 8 years of schooling. Our findings suggest that the SKT is a good screening test for cognitive impairment and dementia. However, test results must be interpreted with caution when administered to less-educated individuals.

Performance of Brazilian long and short IQCODE on the screening of dementia in elderly people with low education

Background: Dementia screening in elderly people with low education can be difficult to implement. For these subjects, informant reports using the long (L) (26 items) and short (C) (16 items) versions of the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE) can be useful. The objective of the present study was to investigate the performance of Brazilian versions of the IQCODE L, S and a new short version (SBr) (15 items) in comparison with the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) for dementia screening in elderly people with low education. Methods: Thirty-four patients with mild to moderate dementia, diagnosed according to ICD-10 criteria, and 57 controls were evaluated and divided into three groups based on their socioeconomic status and level of education. Patients were evaluated using the MMSE and the informants were interviewed using the IQCODE by interviewers blind to the clinical diagnosis. Results: Education was correlated with MMSE results (r = 0.280, p = 0.031), but not with the versions of the IQCODE. The performance of the instruments, evaluated by the ROC curves, was very similar, with good internal consistency (Cronbach`s alpha = 0.97). MMSE correctly classified 85.7% of the subjects while the three IQCODE versions (L, S and SBr) correctly classified 91.2% of the subjects. Conclusions: The long, short and the new short Brazilian IQCODE versions can be useful as a screening tool for mild and moderate patients with dementia in Brazil. The IQCODE is not biased by schooling, and it seems to be an adequate instrument for samples with low levels of education.

Proposal of a short-form version of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale

OBJECTIVE To propose a short version of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale. METHODS Two samples were used to test the results obtained in the analyses in two distinct scenarios. One of the studies was composed of 230 low income families from Pelotas, RS, Southern Brazil, and the other was composed of 15,575 women, whose data were obtained from the 2006 National Survey on Demography and Health. Two models were tested, the first containing seven questions, and the second, the five questions that were considered the most relevant ones in the concordance analysis. The models were compared to the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale, and the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy parameters were calculated, as well as the kappa agreement test. RESULTS Comparing the prevalence of food insecurity between the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale and the two models, the differences were around 2 percentage points. In the sensitivity analysis, the short version of seven questions obtained 97.8% and 99.5% in the Pelotas sample and in the National Survey on Demography and Health sample, respectively, while specificity was 100% in both studies. The five-question model showed similar results (sensitivity of 95.7% and 99.5% in the Pelotas sample and in the National Survey on Demography and Health sample, respectively). In the Pelotas sample, the kappa test of the seven-question version totaled 97.0% and that of the five-question version, 95.0%. In the National Survey on Demography and Health sample, the two models presented a 99.0% kappa. CONCLUSIONS We suggest that the model with five questions should be used as the short version of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale, as its results were similar to the original scale with a lower number of questions. This version needs to be administered to other populations in Brazil in order to allow for the adequate assessment of the validity parameters.

Chagas' disease in the Brazilian Amazon: I - a short review

At least eighteen species of triatominae have been found in the Brazilian Amazon, nine of them naturally infected with Trypanosoma cruzi or "cruzi-like" trypanosomes and associated with numerous wild reservoirs. Despite the small number of human cases of Chagas' disease described to date in the Brazilian Amazon the risk that the disease will become endemic in this area is increasing for the following reasons: a) uncontrolled deforestation and colonization altering the ecological balance between reservoir hosts and wild vectors; b) the adaptation of reservoir hosts of T.cruzi and wild vectors to peripheral and intradomiciliary areas, as the sole feeding alternative; c) migration of infected human population from endemic areas, accompanied by domestic reservoir hosts (dogs and cats) or accidentally carrying in their baggage vectors already adapted to the domestic habitat. In short, risks that Chagas' disease will become endemic to the Amazon appear to be linked to the transposition of the wild cycle to the domestic cycle in that area or to transfer of the domestic cycle from endemic areas to the Amazon.

Ancestry of the Brazilian TP53 c.1010G>A (p.Arg337His, R337H) founder mutation : clues from haplotyping of short tandem repeats on Chromosome 17p

Rare germline mutations in TP53 (17p13.1) cause a highly penetrant predisposition to a specific spectrum of early cancers, defining the Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS). A germline mutation at codon 337 (p.Arg337His, c1010G>A) is found in about 0.3% of the population of Southern Brazil. This mutation is associated with partially penetrant LFS traits and is found in the germline of patients with early cancers of the LFS spectrum unselected for familial his- tory. To characterize the extended haplotypes carrying the mutation, we have genotyped 9 short tandem repeats on chromosome 17p in 12 trios of Brazilian p.Arg337His carriers. Results confirm that all share a common ancestor haplotype of Caucasian/Portuguese-Ibe- ric origin, distant in about 72–84 generations (2000 years assuming a 25 years intergenera- tional distance) and thus pre-dating European migration to Brazil. So far, the founder p. Arg337His haplotype has not been detected outside Brazil, with the exception of two resi- dents of Portugal, one of them of Brazilian origin. On the other hand, increased meiotic recombination in p.Arg337His carriers may account for higher than expected haplotype diversity. Further studies comparing haplotypes in populations of Brazil and of other areas of Portuguese migration are needed to understand the historical context of this mutation in Brazil.

Dinosoma clupeola sp. n. (Hemiuridae) and Pseudoacanthostomum floridensis Nahhas & Short, 1965 (Acanthostomidae), digenetic trematodes in Brazilian Marine fishes

Dinosoma clupeola sp. n. is described from Harengula clupeola, and resembles D. hawaiiense Yamaguti, 1970, from which it differs in the entire, elongate-saccular seminal vesicle, tegument weakly plicated, smaller size of body and internal organs, and slightly larger and narrower eggs. Pseudoacanthostomum floridensis Nahhas & Short, 1965 is referred to Netuma barba, which represents a new host record.

Short and long-term effects of tillage systems and nutrient sources on soil physical properties of a Southern Brazilian Hapludox

Soil tillage promotes changes in soil structure. The magnitude of the changes varies with the nature of the soil, tillage system and soil water content and decreases over time after tillage. The objective of this study was to evaluate short-term (one year period) and long-term (nine year period) effects of soil tillage and nutrient sources on some physical properties of a very clayey Hapludox. Five tillage systems were evaluated: no-till (NT), chisel plow + one secondary disking (CP), primary + two (secondary) diskings (CT), CT with burning of crop residues (CTb), and CT with removal of crop residues from the field (CTr), in combination with five nutrient sources: control without nutrient application (C); mineral fertilizers, according to technical recommendations for each crop (MF); 5 Mg ha-1 yr-1 of poultry litter (wetmatter) (PL); 60 m³ ha-1 yr-1 of cattle slurry (CS) and; 40 m³ ha-1 yr-1 of swine slurry (SS). Bulk density (BD), total porosity (TP), and parameters related to the water retention curve (macroporosity, mesoporosity and microporosity) were determined after nine years and at five sampling dates during the tenth year of the experiment. Soil physical properties were tillage and time-dependent. Tilled treatments increased total porosity and macroporosity, and reduced bulk density in the surface layer (0.00-0.05 m), but this effect decreased over time after tillage operations due to natural soil reconsolidation, since no external stress was applied in this period. Changes in pore size distribution were more pronounced in larger and medium pore diameter classes. The bulk density was greatest in intermediate layers in all tillage treatments (0.05-0.10 and 0.12-0.17 m) and decreased down to the deepest layer (0.27-0.32 m), indicating a more compacted layer around 0.05-0.20 m. Nutrient sources did not significantly affect soil physical and hydraulic properties studied.

Development according to pubertal stage in Brazilian children and adolescents with short-term diabetes

The anthropometric status and metabolic control of 51 recently diagnosed Brazilian schoolchildren with type 1 diabetes (DM1), during the first 5 years of the disease, were compared with those of normal children (60 girls and 132 boys) belonging to the same environmental condition and pubertal stage. Metabolic control was evaluated on the basis of fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and HbA1c levels. The criteria of the National Center for Health Statistics were used for anthropometric evaluation. FPG (205 ± 51 mg/dl for girls vs 200 ± 34 mg/dl for boys) and % above upper normal limit of median HbA1c (1.8% for girls vs 2.5% for boys with diabetes) were not significantly different during follow-up. The Z-score of the last height evaluation was lower in the girls' group (-0.14 vs -0.53, P<0.05). By forward stepwise analysis, the Z-score of the initial height was statistically significant as a determinant factor for height at the end of the study in both girls and boys with DM1. The Z-score of weight at last evaluation was not different from that at diagnosis in either sex. However, analysis according to pubertal stage showed a tendency to a weight increase in the girls. The weight recovery and height loss in girls with DM1 follows the trend of the normal Brazilian population.

Combined effect of short stature and socioeconomic status on body mass index and weight gain during reproductive age in Brazilian women

Short stature, a marker for undernutrition early in life, has been associated with obesity in Brazilian women, but not in men. We tested the hypothesis that weight gain during the reproductive years could explain this gender difference. A national two-stage household survey of mothers with one or more children under five years of age was conducted in Brazil in 1996. The subjects were women aged 20 to 45 years (N = 2297), with last delivery seven months or more prior to the interview. The regions of the country were divided into rural, North/Northeast (urban underdeveloped) and South/Southeast/Midwest (urban developed). The dependent variables were current body mass index (BMI) measured, BMI prior to childbearing (reported), and BMI change. Socioeconomic variables included mother's years of education and family purchasing power score. A secondary analysis was restricted to primiparous women. The prevalence of current overweight and overweight prior to childbearing (BMI > or = 25 kg/m²) was higher among shorter women (<1.50 m) compared to normal stature women only in the urban developed region (P < 0.05). After adjustment for socioeconomic variables, age, parity, BMI prior to childbearing, and age at first birth, current BMI was 2.39 units higher (P = 0.008) for short stature women living in the urban developed area compared with short stature women living in the urban underdeveloped area. For both multiparous and primiparous women, BMI gain compared to the value prior to childbearing was significantly higher among short stature women living in the urban developed region (P <= 0.04). These results provide clear evidence that short stature was associated with a higher BMI and with an increased risk of weight gain/retention with pregnancy in the developed areas of Brazil, but not in the underdeveloped ones.

Prevalence of celiac disease in Brazilian children of short stature

The aim of the present study was to determine the prevalence of celiac disease in children of short stature and to assess whether some of the routine laboratory examinations performed to determine the cause of short stature could suggest the presence of celiac disease. A total of 106 children of short stature and no gastrointestinal symptoms were studied. An extensive endocrine work-up had been negative for all of them and an additional investigation was performed by measuring the concentration of antiendomysial antibody. Patients who were positive for antiendomysial antibody ( > or = 1:10) or who exhibited IgA deficiency (less than 5 mg/dl) were referred for an endoscopic intestinal biopsy. We detected a pathological titer of antiendomysial IgA in six of these patients. Five of them showed histological abnormalities compatible with celiac disease and one had normal histology and was considered to have potential celiac disease. The prevalence of celiac disease in the population studied was 4.7% (with another 0.9% of the subjects being considered to have potential celiac disease). The children with celiac disease did not differ in any of the parameters tested when compared to those without celiac disease, though they showed an improvement in growth velocity after treatment with a gluten-free diet. We conclude that it is important to test all children with short stature for celiac disease by measuring antiendomysial IgA.