Rationale and design of a randomized, double-blind, parallel-group study of terutroban 30 mg/day versus aspirin 100 mg/day in stroke patients: the prevention of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular events of ischemic origin with terutroban in patients with a history of ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack (PERFORM) study.

BACKGROUND: Ischemic stroke is the leading cause of mortality worldwide and a major contributor to neurological disability and dementia. Terutroban is a specific TP receptor antagonist with antithrombotic, antivasoconstrictive, and antiatherosclerotic properties, which may be of interest for the secondary prevention of ischemic stroke. This article describes the rationale and design of the Prevention of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular Events of ischemic origin with teRutroban in patients with a history oF ischemic strOke or tRansient ischeMic Attack (PERFORM) Study, which aims to demonstrate the superiority of the efficacy of terutroban versus aspirin in secondary prevention of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular events. METHODS AND RESULTS: The PERFORM Study is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, parallel-group study being carried out in 802 centers in 46 countries. The study population includes patients aged > or =55 years, having suffered an ischemic stroke (< or =3 months) or a transient ischemic attack (< or =8 days). Participants are randomly allocated to terutroban (30 mg/day) or aspirin (100 mg/day). The primary efficacy endpoint is a composite of ischemic stroke (fatal or nonfatal), myocardial infarction (fatal or nonfatal), or other vascular death (excluding hemorrhagic death of any origin). Safety is being evaluated by assessing hemorrhagic events. Follow-up is expected to last for 2-4 years. Assuming a relative risk reduction of 13%, the expected number of primary events is 2,340. To obtain statistical power of 90%, this requires inclusion of at least 18,000 patients in this event-driven trial. The first patient was randomized in February 2006. CONCLUSIONS: The PERFORM Study will explore the benefits and safety of terutroban in secondary cardiovascular prevention after a cerebral ischemic event.

India in Translation through Hindi Literature. A Plurality of Voices

What role have translations from Hindi literary works played in shaping and transforming our knowledge about India? In this book, renowned scholars, translators and Hindi writers from India, Europe, and the United States offer their approaches to this question. Their articles deal with the political, cultural, and linguistic criteria germane to the selection and translation of Hindi works, the nature of the enduring links between India and Europe, and the reception of translated texts, particularly through the perspective of book history. More personal essays, both on the writing process itself or on the practice of translation, complete the volume and highlight the plurality of voices that are inherent to any translation. As the outcome of an international symposium held at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2008, India in Translation through Hindi Literature engages in the building of critical histories of the encounter between India and the «West», the use and impact of translations in this context, and Hindi literature and culture in connection to English (post)colonial power, literature and culture.

Improved SNR efficiency in gradient echo coronary MRA with high temporal resolution using parallel imaging.

Contemporary coronary magnetic resonance angiography techniques suffer from signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constraints. We propose a method to enhance SNR in gradient echo coronary magnetic resonance angiography by using sensitivity encoding (SENSE). While the use of sensitivity encoding to improve SNR seems counterintuitive, it can be exploited by reducing the number of radiofrequency excitations during the acquisition window while lowering the signal readout bandwidth, therefore improving the radiofrequency receive to radiofrequency transmit duty cycle. Under certain conditions, this leads to improved SNR. The use of sensitivity encoding for improved SNR in three-dimensional coronary magnetic resonance angiography is investigated using numerical simulations and an in vitro and an in vivo study. A maximum 55% SNR enhancement for coronary magnetic resonance angiography was found both in vitro and in vivo, which is well consistent with the numerical simulations. This method is most suitable for spoiled gradient echo coronary magnetic resonance angiography in which a high temporal and spatial resolution is required.

Identification of cancer/testis-antigen genes by massively parallel signature sequencing.

Massively parallel signature sequencing (MPSS) generates millions of short sequence tags corresponding to transcripts from a single RNA preparation. Most MPSS tags can be unambiguously assigned to genes, thereby generating a comprehensive expression profile of the tissue of origin. From the comparison of MPSS data from 32 normal human tissues, we identified 1,056 genes that are predominantly expressed in the testis. Further evaluation by using MPSS tags from cancer cell lines and EST data from a wide variety of tumors identified 202 of these genes as candidates for encoding cancer/testis (CT) antigens. Of these genes, the expression in normal tissues was assessed by RT-PCR in a subset of 166 intron-containing genes, and those with confirmed testis-predominant expression were further evaluated for their expression in 21 cancer cell lines. Thus, 20 CT or CT-like genes were identified, with several exhibiting expression in five or more of the cancer cell lines examined. One of these genes is a member of a CT gene family that we designated as CT45. The CT45 family comprises six highly similar (>98% cDNA identity) genes that are clustered in tandem within a 125-kb region on Xq26.3. CT45 was found to be frequently expressed in both cancer cell lines and lung cancer specimens. Thus, MPSS analysis has resulted in a significant extension of our knowledge of CT antigens, leading to the discovery of a distinctive X-linked CT-antigen gene family.

Shallow-transfer rule-based machine translation for Czech to Polish

This article describes the developmentof an Open Source shallow-transfer machine translation system from Czech to Polish in theApertium platform. It gives details ofthe methods and resources used in contructingthe system. Although the resulting system has quite a high error rate, it is still competitive with other systems.

Automatic acquisition of Named Entities for Rule-Based Machine Translation

This paper proposes to enrich RBMTdictionaries with Named Entities(NEs) automatically acquired fromWikipedia. The method is appliedto the Apertium English-Spanishsystem and its performance comparedto that of Apertium with and withouthandtagged NEs. The system withautomatic NEs outperforms the onewithout NEs, while results vary whencompared to a system with handtaggedNEs (results are comparable forSpanish to English but slightly worstfor English to Spanish). Apart fromthat, adding automatic NEs contributesto decreasing the amount of unknownterms by more than 10%.

Taking on new challenges in multi-word unit processing for Machine Translation

This paper discusses the qualitativecomparative evaluation performed on theresults of two machine translation systemswith different approaches to the processing ofmulti-word units. It proposes a solution forovercoming the difficulties multi-word unitspresent to machine translation by adopting amethodology that combines the lexicongrammar approach with OpenLogos ontologyand semantico-syntactic rules. The paper alsodiscusses the importance of a qualitativeevaluation metrics to correctly evaluate theperformance of machine translation engineswith regards to multi-word units.

A Widely Used Machine Translation Service and its Migration to a Free/Open-Source Solution : the Case of Softcatalà

Softcatalà is a non-profit associationcreated more than 10 years ago to fightthe marginalisation of the Catalan languagein information and communicationtechnologies. It has led the localisationof many applications and thecreation of a website which allows itsusers to translate texts between Spanishand Catalan using an external closed-sourcetranslation engine. Recently,the closed-source translation back-endhas been replaced by a free/open-sourcesolution completely managed by Softcatalà: the Apertium machine translationplatform and the ScaleMT web serviceframework. Thanks to the opennessof the new solution, it is possibleto take advantage of the huge amount ofusers of the Softcatalà translation serviceto improve it, using a series ofmethods presented in this paper. In addition,a study of the translations requestedby the users has been carriedout, and it shows that the translationback-end change has not affected theusage patterns.

Ornament of Reason : an annoted english translation of rMa bya Byang chub brtson 'grus's : commentary to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā

The present work contains an English translation of the Ornament of Reason (Tib. dBu ma'i rtsa ba shes rab kyi 'grel ba thad pa'i rgyan), an influential 12th century Tibetan commentary to a classic of Indian Buddhism, Nàgàrjuna's Root of the Middle Way (Skt. Mûlamadhyamaka-kârikâ Tib. dBu ma'i rtsa ba shes rab ces bya ba). The author, rMa bya byang chub brtson 'grus's, was among the first Tibetans to explicitly align themselves with the philosophical project of the 7th century Indian Madhyamaka teacher, CandrakTrti. With his stern revision and transformative re-employment of the epistemological framework that CandrakTrti otherwise scorns, rMa bya was however to develop an original and highly influential Madhyamaka interpretation.¦rMa bya's "topical outline" (Tib. sa bead) of his commentary is contained in the first appendix to the translation. The second appendix contains a digitalized version of the Rumtek edition of rMa bya's commentary, cross-referenced to the page numbers of the translation. The annotations contain concise explanatory remarks and suggestions for further reading, as well as identifications of the passages that rMa bya cites.

C4 Photosynthesis evolved in grasses via parallel adaptive genetic changes.

Phenotypic convergence is a widespread and well-recognized evolutionary phenomenon. However, the responsible molecular mechanisms remain often unknown mainly because the genes involved are not identified. A well-known example of physiological convergence is the C4 photosynthetic pathway, which evolved independently more than 45 times [1]. Here, we address the question of the molecular bases of the C4 convergent phenotypes in grasses (Poaceae) by reconstructing the evolutionary history of genes encoding a C4 key enzyme, the phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC). PEPC genes belong to a multigene family encoding distinct isoforms of which only one is involved in C4 photosynthesis [2]. By using phylogenetic analyses, we showed that grass C4 PEPCs appeared at least eight times independently from the same non-C4 PEPC. Twenty-one amino acids evolved under positive selection and converged to similar or identical amino acids in most of the grass C4 PEPC lineages. This is the first record of such a high level of molecular convergent evolution, illustrating the repeatability of evolution. These amino acids were responsible for a strong phylogenetic bias grouping all C4 PEPCs together. The C4-specific amino acids detected must be essential for C4 PEPC enzymatic characteristics, and their identification opens new avenues for the engineering of the C4 pathway in crops.

Priorities and hierarchical accounts of translation

This paper is a study of the concept of priority and its use together with the notion of hierarchy in academic writing and theoretical models of translation. Hierarchies and priorities can be implicit or explicit, prescribed, suggested or described. The paper starts, chronologically, wtih Nida and Levý’s hierarchical accounts of translation and follows their legacy in scholars as different as Newmark and Gutt. The concept of priorities is hinted at also in didactic models (Nord) as well as in norm-theoretical and accounts of translation (Toury and Chesterman) within Descriptive Translation Studies. All of these authors are analyzed and commented. The paper calls for a more systematic and straightforward account of translational priorities, and proposes a few conceptual tools that stem from this research model, including the concepts of ambition and richness of a translation. Finally, the paper concludes with an adaptation of Lakoff and Johnson’s view of prototypicality and its potential usefulness in research into and the understanding of translation.

How Spanish in an American film is rendered in translation: dubbing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Spain

This is a case study of the Spanish dubbed version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill 1969) to illustrate and further develop the concept of L3 as a language that appears in source texts and their translations. L3 is distinguishable from the main language(s), L1 for the source text and L2 for the translation, based on a model proposed by Corrius and Zabalbeascoa 2011, and Corrius 2008. The study reveals various possible ways of rendering L3 in translation, in particular when L3 happens to coincide with L2. It also looks into the effect that certain translation solutions may have on intratextual translation and metatranslation.