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Though much time and energy are spent expanding foreign language programs, students are often unable to use a language in its environment. This article stresses the need for a sociolinguistic framework in foreign language teaching to correct this situation, suggesting ways to incorporate linguistic competence and performance awareness in language instruction. (CLK)

Sociolinguistic patterns of India are discussed. (LG)

Sociolinguistics is a multidisciplinary field that studies language in temporal and spatial contexts, and observes language functions, identity and design, and considers the process of language learning and social controls on language. (CK)

To keep the balance between internal and external needs in a modern world regional languages should be used as the media of instruction at the elementary level. Standardized link languages should be introduced at some point in the secondary level to ease the transition from monolingualism to multilingualism. Available from Humanities Press, Inc., Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716. (TL)

Under the influence of the purists' tradition in philology and in pedagogy, agencies concerned with social planning analyze linguistic heterogeneity as a serious problem of human adjustment. Viewing language in monolithic terms, there has been a traditional bias that language diversity is a problem. Constituting the mother tongue as a cult and marker of identity, many linguists and language agencies since the European Renaissance have joined nationalists (taking language as a defining characteristic of ‘nation-state’) in isolating bilinguals as being ‘rootless’ and of ‘dubious loyalty’ to the nation. In recent years, however, there has been more lip service paid to language pluralism. The characteristic of maintaining of two (or more) mother tongues is a notable feature of plurilingual India. Contemporary disciplines do not take cognizance of multiple languages existing side by side, and a speech community continues to be identified according to homogeneous constructs, in terms of formal structures and monistic values, attitudes and usage. The local and the global, the particular and the universal should be viewed, as two sides of the same coin rather than competing with each other. In the light of this, we look for new paradigms in applied linguistics so as to effectively arrest the trends of large scale commodification and homogenization pertaining to language development and make transparent the qualities of communication for an integral and sustainable development of social diversity.

The case of recidivous sexual offender with genetically caused mental retardation and primary hypogonadism (Klinefelter's syndrome with karyotype 48, XXXY) is described. He was examined after sadistic abuse of a boy aged 13 that he had committed 19 years after performed testicular pulpectomy. Plasmatic level of testosterone was found 4x higher than mean level in men after orchidectomy. Histological examination of residual scrotal tissues proved that the source of androgens were hyperplastic nodules of extratesticular Leydig cells.

Three months of tamoxifen treatment of 43 men with idiopathic oligozoospermia, out of which 20 completed the study, resulted in a significant enhancement of sperm motility, but the improvement of sperm parameters was in no relation to the FSH response to short time tamoxifen treatment. There was a significant increase of testosterone, estradiol, LH, FSH, SHBG, 17 alpha-hydroxy-progesterone and also of 11 beta-hydroxyandrostenedione, an androgen of exclusively adrenal origin, during the treatment and (with the exception of the latter), on the first week after discontinuation of the therapy. Significantly elevated testosterone and SHBG concentrations were retained still 9 weeks after finishing of the therapy. The results confirm that tamoxifen treatment provides conditions more favourable for conception and demonstrate that also adrenal steroidogenesis is positively influenced by this antiestrogen.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Ruminant livestock are important sources of human food and global greenhouse gas emissions. Feed degradation and methane formation by ruminants rely on metabolic interactions between rumen microbes and affect ruminant productivity. Rumen and camelid foregut microbial community composition was determined in 742 samples from 32 animal species and 35 countries, to estimate if this was influenced by diet, host species, or geography. Similar bacteria and archaea dominated in nearly all samples, while protozoal communities were more variable. The dominant bacteria are poorly characterised, but the methanogenic archaea are better known and highly conserved across the world. This universality and limited diversity could make it possible to mitigate methane emissions by developing strategies that target the few dominant methanogens. Differences in microbial community compositions were predominantly attributable to diet, with the host being less influential. There were few strong co-occurrence patterns between microbes, suggesting that major metabolic interactions are non-selective rather than specific., We thank Ron Ronimus, Paul Newton, and Christina Moon for reading and commenting on the manuscript. We thank all who provided assistance that allowed Global Rumen Census collaborators to supply samples and metadata (Supplemental Text 1). AgResearch was funded by the New Zealand Government as part of its support for the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases. The following funding sources allowed Global Rumen Census collaborators to supply samples and metadata, listed with the primary contact(s) for each funding source: Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación, Martín Fraga; Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, Canada, Tim A. McAllister; Area de Ciencia y Técnica, Universidad Juan A Maza (Resolución Proy. N° 508/2012), Diego Javier Grilli; Canada British Columbia Ranching Task Force Funding Initiative, John Church; CNPq, Hilário Cuquetto Mantovani, Luiz Gustavo Ribeiro Pereira; FAPEMIG, Hilário Cuquetto Mantovani; FAPEMIG, PECUS RumenGases, Luiz Gustavo Ribeiro Pereira; Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (project number PJ010906), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea, Sang-Suk Lee; Dutch Dairy Board & Product Board Animal Feed, André Bannink, Kasper Dieho, Jan Dijkstra; Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Vahideh Heidarian Miri; Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ilma Tapio; Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Argentina (Project PNBIO1431044), Silvio Cravero, María Cerón Cucchi; Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Alexandre B. De Menezes; Meat & Livestock Australia; and Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry (Australian Government), Chris McSweeney; Ministerio de Agricultura y desarrollo sostenible (Colombia), Olga Lucía Mayorga; Montana Agricultural Experiment Station project (MONB00113), Carl Yeoman; Multistate project W-3177 Enhancing the competitiveness of US beef (MONB00195), Carl Yeoman; NSW Stud Merino Breeders’ Association, Alexandre Vieira Chaves; Queensland Enteric Methane Hub, Diane Ouwerkerk; RuminOmics, Jan Kopecny, Ilma Tapio; Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government and the Technology Strategy Board, UK, R. John Wallace; Science Foundation Ireland (09/RFP/GEN2447), Sinead Waters; Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación, Mario A. Cobos-Peralta; Slovenian Research Agency (project number J1-6732 and P4-0097), Blaz Stres; Strategic Priority Research Program, Climate Change: Carbon Budget and Relevant Issues (Grant No.XDA05020700), ZhiLiang Tan; The European Research Commission Starting Grant Fellowship (336355—MicroDE), Phil B. Pope; The Independent Danish Research Council (project number 4002-00036), Torsten Nygaard Kristensen; and The Independent Danish Research Council (Technology and Production, project number 11-105913), Jan Lassen. These funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Education planners in the contemporary South Asian context have, by and large, committed themselves to education for all without seriously questioning the elitist framework of education inherited from the colonial set up; it does not take into account the complexity of speech variation across dialects in flux (and in plurilingual societies, often across languages) at the grassroots level. Examining the linguistic-cultural landscape of South Asia, this article critically addresses pragmatic issues concerning the scope of the ‘mother tongue medium’ stretched over the entire education career. The study takes afresh look at the phenomenon of education in a multilingual world, and discusses an alternate paradigm making education relevant to the communication ethos as prevailing in plurilingual societies. Taking its cue from Gandhian thinking on Basic Education, it lays stress on integrating education with work experience and also bearing in mind the specific needs of different cultures. The study brings into focus the complementary roles played by standard languages backed bytradition and contact languages shaped by the environment (such as the lingua francasHindustani, and Angrezi in the post-colonial context). In this endeavour, the State can actas an honest facilitating agent to provide an infrastructure where individual groups can exercise the choice of a particular medium, of phasing the shift and/or combining the mediums of instruction.