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Language has proven to possess tremendous power: words not only reflect our perception of the world, but they also have an impact on other people's ideas (Foucault, 2002; Fairclough, 2003; Koller, 2017). This is especially significant in the case of health communication, which, in the last few years, has raised a particular interest as a result of the number of health-related discourses that have emerged on the Internet (Harvey, 2013; Brookes and Hunt, 2021). Exchanging information has become so easy and quick now that more and more people are starting to share their stories of illness, raising awareness and seeking for emotional support, which has highlighted the therapeutic role of storytelling (Conti, 2019). Given that cancer is the leading cause of death in the world (WHO, 2022), and considering the growing trend towards storytelling and the extraordinary power of language, the aim of this paper is to analyse how cancer patients use language in their narratives when describing their illness experiences. To conduct our analysis, we compiled a corpus of cancer narratives written in English and used corpus linguistic tools (McEnery and Hardie, 2012) such as Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014) to explore how cancer, illness, health, life and death are represented. Preliminary findings show that, although the word 'cancer' seems to be commonly used by English-speaking cancer patients, they do not often talk about death, especially about their own, suggesting that death may still be a taboo in our society. In addition, as reflected in their narratives, patients seem to change their life expectations, values and priorities after living with cancer. Furthermore, our findings suggest that patients may understand certain issues such as 'being healthy' differently from the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION "Pizza, por favor." These three simple words recently caused an uproar when Dallas-based pizza chain, Pizza Patron, launched a new promotion: free pepperoni pizza if you order in Spanish. [...]

The prevalence of antisocial behavior in school settings is still discouraging. Students that often engage in aggressive acts may lack in the ability to appreciate the emotional consequences of their behaviors and share others' emotions. The Children's Empathic Attitudes Questionnaire (CEAQ) is one of the questionnaires used to assess empathy in children and early adolescents. This study is aimed to validate the Spanish version of CEAQ. The sample comprised 297 children (50% males), aged from 7 to 12 years (M = 9.53, SD = 1.2), from Madrid. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated an excellent fit for a unidimensional model, χ2(89) = 110.702, p = .059; CFI = .972; RMSEA = .029, 95% CI [.000, .045]. Multigroup invariance analysis showed no significant gender-related differences in all levels. Results also referred an acceptable reliability (ω = .824, r = .610). These results provide psychometric support for the use of the Spanish version of CEAQ as a valid and reliable instrument to assess empathy in children and youth population, especially for school-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The propensity to capture and mobilize gene fragments by the highly abundant Helitron family of transposable elements likely impacts the evolution of genes in Zea mays. These elements provide a substrate for natural selection by giving birth to chimeric transcripts by intertwining exons of disparate genes. They also capture flanking exons by read-through transcription. Here, we describe the expression of selected Helitrons in different maize inbred lines. We recently reported that these Helitrons produce multiple isoforms of transcripts in inbred B73 via alternative splicing. Despite sharing high degrees of sequence similarity, the splicing profile of Helitrons differed among various maize inbred lines. The comparison of Helitron sequences identified unique polymorphisms in inbred B73, which potentially give rise to the alternatively spliced sites utilized by transcript isoforms. Some alterations in splicing, however, do not have obvious explanations. These observations not only add another level to the creation of transcript diversity by Helitrons among inbred lines but also provide novel insights into the cis-acting elements governing splice-site selection during pre-mRNA processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To investigate the use of instruments from the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) to obtain data on hearing disability (HD)., Research Strategies: We conducted searches in the PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, Lilacs databases and the grey literature. The software "The State of the Art through Systematic Review" and "Mendeley" were used to assist in the bibliographic reference organization, selection, and storage., Selection Criteria: we followed the guidelines proposed by the "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis" and we selected studies that met the following inclusion criteria: written in English or Portuguese, within the period of 2001 to 2017 and have used the WG hearing disability question., Data Analysis: The variables analyzed into the studies were: WG module, country and year of data collection, sample size and composition, objective of the study, publication journal, HD estimate of prevalence and accuracy measures., Results: Sixty-five studies are included in the review, conducted with data from 30 countries. The WG Short Set of question was the most often used. Hearing disability prevalence ranged from 0.2 to 2.3% and only three studies estimated the accuracy of the instrument to identify HD., Conclusion: The hearing disability question of WG has been used worldwide and mainly in developing countries. The short variation in the estimated prevalence measurements within studies seems favorable to the WG's goal of generate estimates that allow international comparison. However, the shortage of validity studies indicates the need for further investigations with this purpose.

The homoaldol condensation product of pyruvate, 2-methyl-4-oxopent-2-enedioic acid (OMPD), has been recently implicated as a catabolic intermediate in the bacterial degradation of lignin and previously identified from other biological sources in reports ranging over 60 years. Yet, while a preparation of the pyruvate homoaldol product precursor, 4-hydroxy-4-methyl-2-oxoglutaric acid (HMOG/Parapyruvate), was first reported in 1901, there has not been a complete published synthesis of OMPD. Analyses of reaction mixtures have helped identify zymonic acid, the lactone of HMOG, as the direct precursor to OMPD. The reaction appears to proceed through an acid- or base-mediated ring opening that does not involve formal lactone hydrolysis. In addition to a preparative protocol, we provide a proposed mechanism for the formation of methylsuccinic acid that arises from the nonoxidative decarboxylation of OMPD. Finally, we calculated the relative stability of the isomers of OMPD and found Z-OMPD to be the lowest in energy. These computations also support our observations that Z-OMPD is the most abundant isomer across a range of pH values., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society.)