Orientaciones para políticas futuras complementarias al Plan de Acción Regional para América Latina y el Caribe en relación con el Año Internacional de la Juventud = Guidelines for future policies to complement the Regional Plan of Action for Latin America and the Caribbean for the International Youth Year

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Motivações funcionais da gradação entre construções encaixadas nominais e verbais

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Orações subordinadas substantivas sob uma perspectiva funcionalista-cognitivista: uma proposta de descrição e ensino

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Effect of soybean yoghurt supplemented with isoflavones on the haemolytic activity of serum complement in mice with experimental lung metastasis of murine mammary and pulmonary adenocarcinoma

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

The expressibility of modality in representational complement clauses in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper deals with the (im)possibility of expressing a variety of modal categories within the context of the layering approach to complementation in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG).Our hypothesis is that modal expressions in complement clauses only pertain to operator or modifier classes of the highest layer relevant for that type of embedded construction and for all lower levels. In order to test this hypothesis, occurrences of complement clauses in two databases of spoken Brazilian Portuguese are analyzed. The investigation of this hypothesis is restricted to representational complement clauses.

Variação e gramaticalização no uso de preposições em contextos de verbos de movimento no português brasileiro

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Um estudo sintático-semântico das preposições em complementos verbais de webjornais paulistas

The main goal of this work is to evaluate the realization of the linguistic phenomenon of preposition and also to investigate how current normative pressures influence the production and the perception of processes of variation and change in Brazilian Portuguese. We analyze the use of prepositions a and para in verbal complementation contexts in contemporary journalistic texts from São Paulo’s press – the web newspapers. The contexts considered are constructions with complements of direction, movement with transference, material transference, and verbal/perceptual predicators (Berlinck, 1996; Corrêa, Cançado, 2006). Because written texts tend to be more conservative (i.e. more normative) this research provides an important linguistic investigation that contributes to the sociolinguistic knowledge of the language. However, the newspapers also tend to reflect the use, so they constitute a privileged place for us to understand the conflicting relationship between ‘norm’ and ‘use’. Besides this, the research is relevant for General Linguistics for considering linguistic and extralinguistic factors which determine the use and frequency of the prepositions, like syntactic-semantic relations between the preposition, the verb, the complement, and the text genre. We collected data from web newspapers from Araraquara, with small and medium circulation. Based on previous results, we have ascertained the predominance of the use of the preposition a in the newspapers from São Paulo in the 20th century. However, we have also ascertained representative records of variation... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Percurso diacrônico de completivas introduzidas por 'como' no português

As a more extensive issue, this paper deals with the polysemy attested in all Romance languages between interrogative pronouns and subordination markers in complex sentences. It investigates, specifically, the behavior of objective complement clauses introduced by “como” (“how”) in constructions in which they occur as equivalent to the meaning of prototypical declarative complement clause introduced by the conjunction “que” (“that”). It analyzes complement clauses introduced by “como” and “que” occurring in representative Portuguese texts from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. The results of the comparative analysis between the two forms of clausal complement show that in archaic Portuguese “como” was used primarily to introduce complement clauses of factive verbs. When the complement clause is introduced by “como”, the content that is presupposed as true due to the meaning of matrix verb has reinforced this factuality. In the passage from the archaic to the modern period, there was a drastic decrease in the frequency of occurrences of complement clauses with “como”, which are replaced by the form of completive introduced by the conjunction “que” in the context of factual constructions. In contemporary Portuguese, this replacement is fully established. Complement clauses with “como” remain rare and limited to specific contexts in which “como” maintains its reinforcement function of factual meaning.

O caso comitativo

Comitative is a semantic case not much studied. Traditional grammar includes it sometimes as Indirect Object, sometimes as Adverbial Adjunct of Company. In this paper, we show that it is a nuclear element, therefore it is a Complement not an Adjunct; in other words, being a deep semantic case, it constitutes an Argument selected by the verb in the sentence organization.

The Chromosomal Complement of the Yellow-Cheeked Vole

The karyotype of Microtus xanthognathus (Leach) is described, based on material from one female and one male vole. The diploid chromosomal number was found to be 54, and the fundamental number 62. The metacentric X-chromosome was of medium size and averaged 6.6% of the haploid complement. The designated Y-chromosome was near acrocentric. The specific distinction of M. xanthognathus and Microtus chrotorrhinus (Miller) was confirmed by the recognition of major differences in karyotype and differences in fundamental number. The distributional history of M. xanthognathus is briefly discussed.

Plasma levels of complement proteins from the alternative pathway in patients with age-related macular degeneration are independent of Complement Factor H Tyr(402)His polymorphism

Purpose: To investigate the influence of the Factor H (CFH) Tyr(402)His polymorphism on the plasma levels of the alternative pathway proteins CFH, C3, Factor B (FB), Factor D (FD), and Factor I (FI) and the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP) in 119 patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and 152 unrelated control individuals. Methods: Patients with AMD and the control group were separated according to CFH polymorphism, age, and gender. Plasma complement proteins and CRP concentrations were determined with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, immunodiffusion, or nephelometry. Results: Significant differences in the concentrations of FD and FI were observed between the patients with AMD and the control individuals. We observed significantly reduced FD plasma levels in patients with AMD. We also identified a significant decrease in CFH plasma levels in female patients with AMD in relation to female controls. Plasma FI levels were significantly increased in patients with AMD compared to the control group. Regarding gender, a significant increase in FI plasma levels was observed in male patients. Finally, we found no significant correlation between the CFH Tyr(402)His polymorphism and the CFH, C3, FB, FD, FI, and CRP plasma levels. Conclusions: Patients with AMD present altered levels of FD and FI in a manner independent of this CFH polymorphism, and gender apparently contributes to the plasma levels of these two proteins in patients with AMD and control individuals.

Study of quercetin-loaded liposomes as potential drug carriers: in vitro evaluation of human complement activation

Liposomes have been employed as potential drug carriers. However, after their in vivo administration, they can be destabilized by proteins of complement system, contributing to the clearance of vesicles from blood circulation. Antioxidant flavonoids such as quercetin have been reported to be beneficial to human health, but their low water solubility and bioavailability limit their enteric administration. Therefore, the development of appropriate flavonoid-carriers could be of great importance to drug therapy. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the activation of human complement system proteins by liposomes composed of soya phosphatidylcholine (SPC) and cholesterol (CHOL) or cholesteryl ethyl ether (CHOL-OET) loaded with quercetin or not. The consumption of complement, via classical (CP) and alternative (AP) pathways, by different vesicles was evaluated using a hemolytic assay and quantitative determination of iC3b and natural antibodies deposited on empty liposomal surfaces by ELISA. The main results showed that empty liposomes composed of large amounts of CHOL consumed more complement components than the others for both CP and AP. Furthermore, replacement of CHOL with CHOL-OET reduced complement consumption via both CP and AP. Incorporation of quercetin did not change CP and AP consumption. Deposition of iC3b, IgG and IgM in vesicles composed of SPC: CHOL-OET at a molar ratio of 1.5:1 was lower compared to the others. Taken together, these observations suggest that liposomes composed of SPC: CHOL-OET at a molar ratio of 1.5:1 are the most appropriate among the vesicles studied herein to be used as a drug carrier system in further investigations.

Lsa30, a novel adhesin of Leptospira interrogans binds human plasminogen and the complement regulator C4bp

Pathogenic Leptospira is the etiological agent of leptospirosis, a life-threatening disease that affects populations worldwide. Surface proteins have the potential to promote several activities, including adhesion. This work aimed to study the leptospiral coding sequence (CDS) LIC11087, genome annotated as hypothetical outer membrane protein. The LIC11087 gene was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coil BL21 (DE3) strain by using the expression vector pAE. The recombinant protein tagged with N-terminal 6XHis was purified by metal-charged chromatography and characterized by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. The recombinant protein has the ability to mediate attachment to the extracellular matrix (ECM) components, laminin and plasma fibronectin, and was named Lsa30 (Leptospiral surface adhesin of 30 kDa). Lsa30 binds to laminin and to plasma fibronectin in a dose-dependent and saturable manner, with dissociation equilibrium constants (K-D) of 292 +/- 24 nM and 157 +/- 35 nM, respectively. Moreover, the Lsa30 is a plasminogen (PLC) receptor, capable of generating plasmin, in the presence of activator. This protein may interfere with the complement cascade by interacting with C4bp regulator. The Lsa30 is probably a new surface protein of Leptospira as revealed by immunofluorescence assays with living organisms and the reactivity with antibodies present in serum samples of experimentally infected hamsters. Thus, Lsa30 is a novel versatile protein that may play a role in mediating adhesion and may help pathogenic Leptospira to overcome tissue barriers and to escape the immune system. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.