Nicholas A. Carlisle, Peyton Miller, Gregory Pavela
et al.
Purpose: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people experience a higher prevalence of adverse health outcomes compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts due, in part, to shame related to sexual orientation and gender identity. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify and synthesize empirical evidence of the effects of shame on SGM populations in the United States. Methods: Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we systematically searched for studies that were (1) peer-reviewed; (2) original research; (3) written in English; (4) quantitatively measuring shame; (5) among groups identifying as sexual minority, gender minority, or both; (6) within the United States. Results: We identified 22 studies meeting inclusion criteria, most of which were cross-sectional and focused on sexual minority men. Across studies, shame was consistently associated with exposure to distal and proximal stressors, general psychological processes (e.g., affective, social, and cognitive), health-compromising behaviors (e.g., substance use, sexual compulsivity), and adverse health outcomes. Notably, few studies focused on gender minority individuals, and subgroup or intersectional analyses were uncommon. Conclusion: The literature supports shame as an important correlate of health-related outcomes among SGM populations, but is limited by cross-sectional designs, heterogenous measurement approaches, and limited attention to subgroup differences. Future research should prioritize longitudinal and mechanistic studies, improve measurement harmonization, and evaluate established shame-reduction approaches with SGM-affirming adaptations and scalable delivery strategies to improve reach and advance health equity.
Women’s confidence can be represented in modern pop music through the selection of language style to overturn the traditional gender expectations in society. For all this time, women have been frequently haunted by beauty standards framed by media and culture that limit their courage to express themselves. This study investigates how women’s confidence is interpreted in the song lyrics of Mantra by Jennie Kim, using semiotics theory to unearth hidden meanings. This research aims to uncover the depiction of women expressing themselves in the song lyrics through the analysis of denotation, connotation, and myth. The discussion focuses on the portrayal of women’s confidence, delivered in certain choices of expressions. The results of this study seem to indicate that the song’s lyrics employ a number of strong images to express women’s self-reliance and courage. Moreover, domination and women's power are also emphasized, successfully opposing the gender expectations that have grown to be the basis of society’s mindsets. Through semiotics, the song Mantra serves as a spell that validates women’s self-confidence as a part of their empowerment. The lyrics’ use of styles in language attempts to generate and convey the meanings to the listeners.
ObjectiveTo systematically evaluate the diagnostic value of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) based on Meta-analysis.Materials and methodsDatabases including PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang and VIP database were searched for literature on the use of DTI in studying MCI. The search was conducted from the inception of each database up to February 20, 2024. Literature was screened based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, relevant data were extracted, and the quality of the included studies was assessed using the QUADAS-2 tool. Heterogeneity was evaluated using the Q-test and I2 statistics. Fractional anisotropy (FA) values for different brain regions (frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, occipital lobe, fornix, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, posterior cingulum, posterior limb of the internal capsule, uncinate fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, genu and splenium of the corpus callosum) were extracted from the MCI and normal control (NC) groups. Meta-analysis software (Review Manager 5.4) was used to perform a pooled analysis of the eligible studies to obtain the weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI).ResultsA total of 76 studies were included (41 in English and 35 in Chinese). The overall pooled WMD and its 95% CI were −0.03 [−0.04, −0.03], with statistically significant differences in all brain regions except for the occipital lobe and the posterior limb of the internal capsule.ConclusionDTI technology can identify microstructural damage in the brain white matter of MCI patients, which holds significant implications for early diagnosis and intervention.
Picaresque Games’ 2018 video game Nantucket acts as something of a spiritual successor to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Nantucket provides an Oregon Trail-like simulation of nineteenth-century American whaling with the themes and characters of Moby-Dick. In tackling the real history of American whaling and Melville’s fiction, Nantucket provides an opportunity for players to expand and explore themes of agency, choice, and disempowerment. This essay asks how the medium of video games alters, enhances, and diminishes Moby-Dick and what potential insights video games can provide in adapting classic American narratives. Nantucket is uniquely suited to exploring the themes of agency, freedom, and power present in Moby-Dick because of its nature as a video game. Both Moby-Dick and Nantucket center their narratives on a character’s inability to fully comprehend or reckon with the truth and power of what they pursue. By exploring the narrative and themes of Nantucket and how they relate to Moby-Dick, I argue that a video game can engage one of the great American narratives not only through traditional methods of text and visuals, but also by combining these traditional methods with game systems.
History (General) and history of Europe, English literature
Nowadays, literacy is very important and critical thinking should be added in the teaching and learning. Therefore, this research is aimed at developing Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) Based Inferential Reading Module which is suitable and practical for students of English Education Study Program. This was developmental research which used ADDIE model that consisted of five stages: analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate. Based on the result of validity test by two expert validators, it gained mean percentage 84.24% categorized as very valid in term of content eligibility, linguistics, presentation, and graphics components. Besides, based on the result of students’ practicality in terms of ease of use, efficiency of learning time and benefits, it was found percentage 81.13% categorized as very practical. It could be concluded that Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) Based Inferential Reading Module is suitable, practical, and beneficial for the students of English Education Study Program UIN Sulthan Thaha Saifuddin Jambi.
Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar, English language
Fatemeh Soltanzadeh, Azadeh Mirzaei, Mohammad Bahrani
et al.
Automated author identification is one of the important fields in forensic linguistics. In this study, the effectiveness of systemic functional grammar (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014) features in Persian authorship attribution was compared with that of function words. First, a corpus composed of documents written by seven contemporary Iranian authors was collected. Second, a list of function words was extracted from the corpus. Moreover, conjunction, modality and comment adjunct system networks were applied to form a lexicon using linguistics resources. Then, the relative frequency of function words in addition to systemic functional features were calculated in each document. Multilayer perceptron classifier, a type of neural network, was used for learning phase which resulted in a desirable accuracy in evaluation phase. The results of the study showed that using function words method is superior to systemic functional approach alone in Persian author identification, however, simultaneous use of the two methods increases the effectiveness in comparison to each alone.
Introduction
Recently, automated author identification has become a key focus for forensic linguistics. Author identification involves determining the writer of a text from a set of potential authors. The text in question could be a threatening letter, an email, a literary work, or a scientific article or book. The basis for author identification rests on the idea that different authors may write about the same topic using overlapping, yet distinct, lexico-grammatical units—an issue referred to as idiolect (Coulthard, 2004).
The first significant attempt to identify writing styles was Mendenhall's study of Shakespeare's plays (1887). The play Henry VIII is widely recognized as a collaborative work, not solely authored by William Shakespeare. Plechac (2020) investigated the use of accent or stress to identify the contributions of other authors to the play.
In Persian, several studies have been conducted to determine authorship (Farahamandpour et al., 2013; Arefi et al., 2021). These studies utilized repetitive features, such as lexical richness, frequency of syntactic groups, collocations, and the relative frequency of punctuation marks, to detect writing styles. Measuring the frequency of function words is one valid method for author identification. Function words, which have limited meanings, indicate the functional relationships between components of a sentence. Golshaie (2019) and Dabagh (2007) applied the frequency of Persian function words to identify authors. This study aims to compare the efficacy of function word frequency with systemic functional grammar methods in automatically identifying writing styles.
Theoretical Framework
Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is a component of the social semiotic approach to language known as systemic functional linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). SFG conceptualizes language as a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for creating meaning. Since the 1960s, SFG has been applied in various contexts within computational linguistics (Matthiessen & Bateman, 1991; Teich, 1995). In SFG, the clause is considered the fundamental unit of language, and it is analyzed through three perspectives, defined as the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. The ideational function is further divided into the experiential and logical aspects (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014).
This study employs three system networks: conjunction, modality, and comment. These networks correspond to three types of adjuncts: conjunctive adjuncts, mood adjuncts, and comment adjuncts, respectively. In the systemic environment of conjunction, conjunctions function as conjunctive adjuncts within the clause structure. They establish relationships where one segment of text elaborates on, extends, or enhances another segment (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014).
Modal adjuncts express the speaker's or writer's judgment or attitude toward the content of the message. There are two types of modal adjuncts: (i) mood adjuncts and (ii) comment adjuncts. Mood adjuncts and comment adjuncts are categorized within the modality and comment adjunct system networks, respectively. Modality encompasses intermediate degrees between positive and negative poles, defining the region of uncertainty between 'yes' and 'no.' The modality system allows writers to qualify events or entities in terms of their probability, typicality, obligation, or inclination (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). The comment adjunct system provides a means for the writer to comment on the status of a message concerning the textual and interactive context of the discourse (Argamon et al., 2007). Comments can target either the ideational content of the proposition or the interpersonal aspects of the speech function (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014).
Method
A corpus was compiled from the works of seven contemporary Persian writers: Hoshang Golshiri, Bozorg Alavi, Ahmad Mahmoud, Mahmoud Dolatabadi, Nader Ebrahimi, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, and Gholamhossein Saedi, totaling 2,069,243 words. From this corpus, a list of 197 function words was extracted using the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) technique. Conjunction, modality, and comment adjunct system networks were then used to create a lexicon.
An author identification system was designed using machine learning techniques. The system tokenized the texts, extracted instances of lexical units specified in the lexicon, and computed the relative frequencies of semantic attribute values for each text, resulting in an overall "feature vector" that described each text. This approach was inspired by the method introduced by Argamon et al. (2007). For the learning phase, a multilayer perceptron classifier, a type of neural network, was utilized.
Results
To evaluate the system, the collected corpus was divided into five segments, and a 5-fold cross-validation method was applied. The 5-fold cross-validation demonstrated a satisfactory accuracy when focusing exclusively on function words. The combined use of function words and SFG methods achieved an accuracy of 74.47% for Persian author identification. Subsequent feature selection identified the most effective features for the machine learning phase. The results indicated that the relative frequency of function words outperformed SFG-based attributes in terms of effectiveness.
Discussion and Conclusions
The evaluation phase revealed that the function words-based method outperformed the systemic functional grammar (SFG) approach in identifying authors. However, the simultaneous use of both methods improved effectiveness compared to using either method alone. The superior performance of the function words-based method may be attributed to the high frequency of function words and the author’s unconscious control over their use.
Among the SFG-based features, the combination of top features—namely conjunctive, mood, and comment adjuncts—produced higher accuracy than any single system network alone. Additionally, the results from feature selection indicated that features derived from the modality system network were more effective than those from the conjunction and comment adjunct system networks for Persian author identification.
Overall, while the function words-based method proved to be highly effective on its own, integrating it with SFG-based methods provided a more comprehensive approach, enhancing the accuracy of author identification.
Seasoning his dialogues with politics, philosophy and various other subjects, Abbas Nalbandian presents his argument about the mirage of truth through poetic and literary expressions. Although Nalbandian has been influenced by Western philosophers and playwrights, he has been successful in localizing such influences in his works. Reading David and Uriah from the perspective of the Nietzschean Ubermensch shows that not only does Nalbandian transform this concept into an artistic work, but also he uses it both as an ideological springboard and a structural element in organizing his play. The present paper emphasizes the importance of reading David and Uriah through a Nietzschean interpretive framework and explores the role that Nietzsche’s thought plays in this work. The methodology is, therefore, comparative and interdisciplinary. We discuss the ways in which Nietzsche’s idea contributes to a new understanding of David and Uriah’s main character and the play’s artistic form. Moreover, the paper shows he ways inwhich this knowledge provides readers with a better understanding of the playwright as an artist and an individual. The findings of this study demonstrate how Nalbandian, by drawing on Nitzchean philosophy, has localized and appropriated the concept of Ubermensch in David and Uriah and, thus, enriched Persian literature.
Kate Atkinson in her first and fourth crime novels, Case Histories and Started Early, Took My Dog, rewrites Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and other Female Gothic narratives to ponder feminism’s failure to ‘arrive.’ Second-wave feminism asks women to retrieve the half-obliterated feminine subject and construct from the fragments an emancipated identity for themselves. In Atkinson’s first crime novel, the amateur detective and actress Julia Land must retrieve a vanished sister and, in the fourth, in her onscreen role as a forensic pathologist the identity of a mutilated sex worker. Yet Julia repeats Jane Eyre’s simultaneous search for a lost woman and complicity with patriarchy’s occlusion of her. Atkinson, it will be argued, signals that the contemporary literary female investigator and ultimately today’s women relive the gothic heroine’s dilemma: Susceptible to the myth of romantic love, they abort their feminist mission and collude with patriarchy’s obliteration of the feminine subject.
Some learners are more successful in foreign language mastering than others. Among the plausible explanations discussed in the literature (Carroll 1981; Skehan 1991; Dörnyei 2005; Stansfield & Reed 2019; Griffiths & Soruç 2020), the concept of foreign language aptitude (FLA) is regarded as one of the key factors that can influence or predict learners’ success in the process of foreign language acquisition. The present pilot quantitative study aims to assess the extent to which learners’ level of foreign language aptitude can be correlated to their general phonological ability based on the example of first-year MA English Philology students (N=10). To assess the students’ level of aptitude, the Polish adaptation of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT), called the Test of Aptitude for the Learning of Foreign Languages (Test Uzdolnień do Nauki Języków Obcych – TUNJO), was used. On the other hand, to measure their level of phonetic ability, the test, which focused on several chosen areas covered during practical and theoretical phonetics classes during the BA programme, was constructed and submitted to the group. The quantitative data gathered throughout those two stages were subsequently analysed and interpreted. The results obtained revealed no significant correlation between the students’ level of aptitude and their general phonetic ability. Other individual differences and affective factors in language learning, alongside the structure of the measuring tools and the measurement itself, may justify the apparent lack of correlation.
A search and analysis has been carried out of English-language 2005–2020 scientifi c literature devoted to methods of obtaining branched (co)polymers of acrylamide, acrylic acid and (met)acrylates in order to obtain novel materials with valuable properties. It has been found that modern methods of controlled radical polymerization are mainly used for this purpose, namely, atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT) and group transfer polymerization (GTP). In most cases, original synthesized compounds were the chain transfer agents in RAFT. Depending on the order of synthesis, a distinction is made between the “core–arms” and “arms–core” approaches. The prospects of using branched polymers of acrylamide, acrylic acid and (met)acrylates for bioconjugation, surface immobilization, tissue engineering, oil production enhancement, and fl occulation are estimated.
The BC TEAL Journal continues to strengthen the field of English as an additional language (EAL) teaching and learning as a space for authors, reviewers, editors, and readers to come together in ways that underscore the knowledge creation, theory building, and educational innovation taking place in EAL teaching and learning in British Columbia and the wider world. Taking the time to define epistemology as it relates to EAL teaching and learning, this editorial outlines how the articles in the current issue of the journal support that space. There are five articles in this issue spanning post-secondary and adult contexts. With topics related to testing, teaching methods, lesson planning, comparative education, and literacy education, the value of the journal as a venue for the dissemination of new knowledge is much in evidence.
Reprinted excerpt from Esther Leslie’s essay on Sean Bonney, Charles Baudelaire, and Anna Mendelssohn / Grace Lake, first printed as a pamphlet by Veer Books in November 2011. (The original can be purchased at the following link: https://www.veerbooks.com/Esther-Leslie-Bouleversed-Baudelairizing.)
Márcia Cristiane Araújo, Andréia de Sousa Costa, Cristien Martins Frota
et al.
Introdução: A análise dos diversos fatores genéticos, principalmente os relacionados aos polimorfismos de DNA, têm sido investigados na busca de uma melhor compreensão dos mecanismos relacionados à hipertrofia e força muscular. Dentre os diversos genes polimórficos relacionados ao tema estão a miostatina e o gene α-actinina-3 (ACTN3).
Objetivo: Avaliar a modulação do gene da miostatina na hipertrofia muscular esquelética e do gene ACTN3 na regulação dos níveis de força.
Métodos: Estudo de revisão integrativa no qual foram pesquisados artigos que tivessem avaliado a modulação genética da hipertrofia muscular esquelética e da força. Fizeram parte desta investigação estudos originais e de revisão, publicados em português, inglês e espanhol, entre os anos de 1995 a 2017, selecionados nas bases de dados SciELO e Pubmed, utilizando-se três conjuntos de intersecção de termos de busca bibliográfica em português: a) “miostatina” e “hipertrofia muscular esquelética” e/ou “genética”; e b) “exercício físico” ou “treinamento aeróbico” ou “treinamento de força” ou “rendimento esportivo” e “ACTN3” e/ou “força muscular” e/ou genética. Em inglês: a) “myostatin”and “skeletal muscle hypertrophy” and/or genetics; and b) “physical exercise” and “aerobic training”, strength training, sports performance) and “ACTN3” “muscular strength” and/or “genetic”. E em espanhol: “miostatina” y “hipertrofia muscular esquelética” y/o genética; y b) “ejercicio físico” o “entrenamiento aeróbico” o “entrenamiento de fuerza” o “rendimiento desportivo) y “ACTN3” o “fuerza muscular” y/o genética”.
Resultados e Discussão: Os estudos apontaram: a) associação do genótipo RR577 do ACTN3 com a força e o tamanho da área de secção transversa do músculo esquelético; b) correlação do alelo R com fibras glicolíticas de contração rápida e níveis médios de testosterona significativamente mais elevados; e c) o polimorfismo do ACTN3 está relacionado ao treinamento de alta intensidade. As evidências apontaram que a miostatina atua na inibição da hipertrofia muscular esquelética, e também pode ser modulada geneticamente pelo exercício físico.
Conclusão: A literatura aponta evidências de que o polimorfismo do ACNT3 está relacionado com o treinamento de alta intensidade, ressaltando que, segundo os resultados dos estudos, houve correlação do alelo R, com fibras glicolíticas de contração rápida e com os níveis de testosterona significativamente mais elevados. Sendo assim, o gene ACTN3 está correlacionado com o desenvolvimento da força muscular e a folistatina, proteína antagônica da miostatina, está associada ao aumento da massa muscular.
Genetic Modulation of Myostatin and Actn3 Gene in Muscular Hypertrophy and Force: an Integrative Review
Introduction: The analysis of several genetic factors, especially those related to DNA polymorphisms, has been investigated in the search for a better understanding of the mechanisms related to hypertrophy and muscle strength. Among the several polymorphic genes related to the subject are myostatin and ACTN3.
Objective: To evaluate the modulation of the myostatin gene in skeletal muscle hypertrophy and the ACTN3 gene in the regulation of strength levels.
Methods: An integrative review study in which articles were searched that assessed the genetic modulation of skeletal muscle hypertrophy and strength. Original and review studies, published in Portuguese, English and Spanish, between 1995 and 2017, selected in the SciELO and PubMed databases, were carried out using three sets of intersection of bibliographic search: In English: a) “myostatin” and “skeletal muscle hypertrophy” and/or genetics; and b) “physical exercise” and “aerobic training”, strength training, sports performance) and “ACTN3” “muscular strength” and/or “genetic”. In Portuguese: a) “miostatina” e “hipertrofia muscular esquelética” e/ou “genética”; e b) “exercício físico” ou “treinamento aeróbico” ou “treinamento de força” ou “rendimento esportivo” e “ACTN3” e/ou “força muscular” e/ou genética. And in Spanish: “miostatina” y “hipertrofia muscular esquelética” y/o genética; y b) “ejercicio físico” o “entrenamiento aeróbico” o “entrenamiento de fuerza” o “rendimiento desportivo) y “ACTN3” o “fuerza muscular” y/o genética”.
Results and Discussion: Studies indicated: a) association of RR577 genotype of ACTN3 with the strength and size of the cross-sectional area of skeletal muscle; b) correlation of the R allele with fast contracting glycolytic fibers and significantly higher mean levels of testosterone; and, c) ACTN3 polymorphism is related to high intensity training. Evidence has pointed out that myostatin acts on inhibition of skeletal muscle hypertrophy, as well as being genetically modulated by physical exercise.
Conclusion: The literature showed evidence that the ACNT3 polymorphism is related to the high intensity training, emphasizing that according to the results of the studies, there was a correlation of the R allele with fast contracting glycolytic fibers and with testosterone levels higher. Thus, the ACTN3 gene is correlated with the development of muscle strength and follistatin, an antagonistic protein of myostatin, is associated with increased muscle mass. Keywords: hypertrophy, muscle strength, myostatin, polymorphism.
Ana Raquel Mendes dos Santos, Penélopy Dabbicco, Hemília Gabrielly de Oliveira Cartaxo
et al.
Objectives: To identify and analyze the determining religious factors in the adoption of an active lifestyle through a systematic review. Methods: The research was performed in the LILACS, MEDLINE / PubMed, SciELO, CINAHL, SPORTDiscus and SocINDEX databases using the following descriptors and keywords: “religion”, “religiosity”, “spiritual”, “spirituality”, “physical activity” and “physical exercise”. The selection of articles had the following inclusion criteria: fully available original articles published between 2002 and 2011 in Portuguese and English. Literature reviews, theses, dissertations and monographs were excluded. Results: The sample consisted of ten articles. It could be identified from their analysis that in groups based on faith, holy scriptures and/or sacred teachings, the messages transmitted by the religious leaders and the level of religiosity are the main factors for adopting an active lifestyle. Conclusion: Religiosity appeared as an important aspect for the incorporation of physical activity in one’s life, thus improving their quality of life.
doi:10.5020/18061230.2013.p419