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In this contribution the derivational morpheme -pulleŋ in Cholón, a nearly extinct language of the northeastern Peruvian Andes, is analyzed as creating what is called dyadic kin terms in the typological literature. Such morphemes derive kinship terms which denote the dyadic union of consanguineal or affinal kin—for instance, father and son, or husband and wife. This type of morpheme is common in Australia, but it is not frequently reported from the Americas, and there is little clear evidence so far for it in South America. This renders its attestation in Cholón not only of anthropological interest, as such terms normally reflect the social and reproductive life of the speakers of the respective languages, but also for areal linguistic typology. The article discusses the morphosyntactic properties and the semantic functions of the morpheme in question from descriptive, comparative and etymological points of view, taking into account elements with similar function in varieties of the neighboring Quechuan family and the typological situation. This shows that in all respects, the behavior of the morpheme -pulleŋ seems to display some unusual traits, in particular an obligatory third person possessor.

While research on possible adaptive processes in language history has recently centered mostly on phonological variables, here, I return the focus on the lexicon in two different ways. First, I take up the familiar theme of the responsiveness of language structure to the local conditions at different elevations of the earth’s surface by exploring further the idea that language communities at high altitudes may tend not to distinguish lexically, as, e.g., English does, between “cloud” and “fog.” Analyses of a global dataset of languages as well as in-depth study of the languages of the Central Andes are consistent in showing a wide spread of colexification of “cloud” and “fog” across elevations, whereas distinguishing languages tend more to be spoken at lower elevations. Statistically, there is global support for the idea that colexification is triggered by high elevation, but a closer look, in particular at the Andean dataset, paints a more nuanced picture. Concretely, it shows that in some language families, there are consistent preferences for either colexifying or distinguishing between “cloud” and “fog.” In particular, the behavior of the large Quechuan family, which ranges across high- and low-elevation environments but still is consistently colexifying, shows no evidence for adaptive processes within language families. This result is open to various interpretations and explanations, for they suggest lineage-specific preferences for or against colexification that run counter to global trends. It is also at odds with the notions of “efficient communication” and “communicative need” as far as they relate to lexical categories and bars mechanistic or deterministic views on the processes in which the categories of languages are molded.

Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) is a phenomenon known for more than 100 years, which arises from the interaction of light with metallic nanoparticles. In recent years, the field of LSPR sensing has become increasingly important in bioanalytics. Herein, a simple and robust device setup to perform time‐resolved LSPR measurements with inexpensive array sensor chips is presented. For this purpose, gold nanoparticles are spotted onto glass substrates under different conditions (droplet size/number, temperature, and humidity) to achieve an optimal signal‐to‐noise ratio. To verify the setup and the spotted sensor chips, bulk sensitivity measurements with solutions of varying refractive index and surface sensitivity measurements with layer‐by‐layer (LbL) deposition are performed. It is shown that slower drying minimizes the edge effects of ring‐like deposits (coffee ring effect) and that the spots with higher particle densities are more suitable for sensor applications. In general, the use of six light‐emitting diode (LEDs) enables a simple centroid calculation as well as an evaluation via individual LED intensities. The presented cost‐effective system allows parallel reading of more than 100 spots in a label‐free platform, and together with the optimized low‐cost sensors, it provides an interesting alternative for the development of future on‐site diagnostics.

This article provides a list of 125 words of the Mochica language. Created in 1865 on the initiative of Santiago C. Montjoy, then United States consul in Lambayeque, the list was discovered in the 1970s among the dispatches of the Lambayecan consuls, which are archived in the National Archives of the United States by archeologist James B. Richardson III. The list responds to a call from the American Ethnological Society, which, in its first circular that was issued in 1863, invited respondents to submit the equivalents of 180 English words in the indigenous languages of the Americas. This article discusses the circumstances of the elaboration of the list and presents a transcription of its contents and associated materials. In addition, it provides a comparison of the words with their representation in other sources and a philological analysis of selected aspects of the material. In spite of the unsystematic orthography, which one usually finds in this type of source, the wordlist offers new interpretative avenues regarding the phonetics and phonology of 19th century Mochica and the possibility of deepening our understanding of the language.

La presente contribución concierne de nuevo el nombre de Chan Chan, la ciudad prehispánica más grande en toda América. Recientemente, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino sostuvo que el nombre debe ser etimologizado a través de una combinación de material quechua, que tuvo una presencia tenue y efímera en la costa norte peruana, y aimara, una lengua que no cuenta con ninguna presencia conocida allá en absoluto. Además de esta falla básica, discuto otros aspectos problemáticos de la propuesta. Cada uno de estos bastaría para poner en duda la etimología propuesta, pero en conjunto aconsejan rechazarla rotundamente. En su lugar, sigo defendiendo una postura metodológicamente conservativa y cautelosa que ya había propugnado en mi anterior contribución a la temática.

Aunque el autor de la primera documentación gramatical y lexicográfica del quechua, Domingo de Santo Tomás, en ningún lugar de sus extensas obras menciona la base dialectal y geográfica de su trabajo, comúnmente se asume que se trata de un extinto dialecto quechua de la costa central del Perú. En esta contribución, reviso los argumentos en favor de la identificación dialectal y anoto algunos aspectos problemáticos que, aunque ya conocidos, merecen ser enfatizados. En este marco, ofrezco una discusión exhaustiva del Lexicon, o Vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú de Santo Tomás, específicamente del vocabulario relacionado con el mar. Sobre la base de la amplia documentación de expresiones pertenecientes al campo semántico marino (referencias al mar, la vida marina, los peces, la pesca, la náutica) que se encuentra en el Lexicon, o Vocabulario..., se puede derivar que el quechua descrito por Santo Tomás se había adaptado léxicamente a un ámbito costeño. Las propiedades de las expresiones relevantes, que con frecuencia parecen ser adaptaciones semánticas de palabras quechuas heredadas a este ámbito, o neologismos, o préstamos de otras lenguas costeñas, sugieren, sin embargo, que un porcentaje significativo del vocabulario fue adicionado relativamente tarde al fondo léxico. Esto, a su turno, es una prueba que avalaría la idea de que el dialecto costeño se originó fuera de la costa. Se discute la relevancia de esta observación en relación con teorías que sitúan la cuna de la familia lingüística quechua en la costa central, las cuales harían esperar un vocabulario marítimo con raíces más profundas en el léxico.

Background: The Lung, hEart, sociAl, boDy (LEAD) Study (ClinicalTrials.gov; NCT01727518; http://clinicaltrials.gov) is a longitudinal, observational, population-based Austrian cohort that aims to investigate the relationship between genetic, environmental, social, developmental and ageing factors influencing respiratory health and comorbidities through life. The general working hypothesis of LEAD is the interaction of these genetic, environmental and socioeconomic factors influences lung development and ageing, the risk of occurrence of several non-communicable diseases (respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic and neurologic), as well as their phenotypic (ie, clinical) presentation. Methods: LEAD invited from 2011–2016 a random sample (stratified by age, gender, residential area) of Vienna inhabitants (urban cohort) and all the inhabitants of six villages from Lower Austria (rural cohort). Participants will be followed-up every four years. A number of investigations and measurements were obtained in each of the four domains of the study (Lung, hEart, sociAl, boDy) including data to screen for lung, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, osteoporosis, and cognitive function. Blood and urine samples are stored in a biobank for future investigations. Results: A total of 11.423 males (47.6%) and females (52.4%), aged 6–80 years have been included in the cohort. Compared to governmental statistics, the external validity of LEAD with respect to age, gender, citizenship, and smoking status was high. Conclusions: In conclusion, the LEAD cohort has been established following high quality standards; it is representative of the Austrian population and offers a platform to understand lung development and ageing as a key mechanism of human health both in early and late adulthood.

This contribution theorizes the historical dynamics of so-called language isolates, languages which cannot be demonstrated to belong to any known language family. On the basis of a qualitative review of how isolates, language families or their branches lost territory to other languages through time, I develop a simple model for the genesis of isolates as a function of proximity to major geographical barriers, and pit it against an alternative view that sees them as one manifestation of linguistic diversity generally. Using a variety of statistical techniques, I test both accounts quantitatively against a worldwide dataset of language locations and distances to geographical barriers, and find support for the position that views language isolates as one manifestation of linguistic diversity generally. However, I caution that different processes which are not necessarily mutually exclusive may have shaped the present-day distribution of language isolates. These may form elements of a broader theory of language isolates in particular and language diversity in general.

At the eve of Spanish conquest, Northern Peru is thought to have been home to a multitude of languages of relatively modest geographical extension, especially when compared with the widespread Quechuan and Aymaran languages. In this contribution, I suggest the possibility that a language or several languages relatively closely related to Cholón were spoken in a much wider part of Northern Peru than that in which Cholón is historically attested. A prior “Cholonoid” area might have covered not only the western part of today’s San Martín department, but also almost the entire department of Cajamarca as well as parts of La Libertad and Amazonas. This interpretation results from a triangulation of three independent lines of evidence, namely the toponymic record, substrate lexis in the local variety of Quechua at Chachapoyas, and typological properties of the extinct northern Peruvian languages.

The first decades of the 21st century have witnessed a renewed interest in the relationship between language structure and the various social and ecological niches in which the languages of the world are used and against the background of which they evolved. In this context, Everett (2013) argued for direct geographical influences on the sound structure of languages. It was observed that ejective consonants, produced with a sudden burst of non-pulmonic air to a salient acoustic effect, tend to occur in high-altitude environments in which these sounds may be adaptive due to a reduced articulatory effort and/or to prevent desiccation. Here, we evaluate this claim and at the same time place it into a broader context. We observe that the distribution of another class of typologically unusual sounds, uvulars, is highly similar to that of ejectives, but that the proposed explanations are not available to account for the similar geographical patterning of uvulars. Hence, we test an alternative explanatory account that would posit indirect rather than direct environmental influences on language structure that are mediated by anthropological factors, in particular the relative sociolinguistic isolation of speech communities at the highest altitudes. Applying Bayesian Logistic Mixed Effects Regression to a large database of phonological inventories of the world's languages, however, we do not find strong support for either a correlation of ejectives or uvulars with high-altitude environments, though the association is somewhat stronger for ejectives than uvulars. A phylogenetic exploration of the development of both classes of sounds in two large language families spoken in widely different environments, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan, together with a qualitative assessment of the dedicated literature, in contrast, suggests a strong role of language contact rather than environmental factors.

Label-free and gentle separation of cell stages with desired target properties from mixed stage populations are a major research task in modern biotechnological cultivation process and optimization of micro algae. The reported microfluidic sorter system (MSS) allows the subsequent investigation of separated subpopulations. The implementation of a viability preserving MSS is shown for separation of late stage 1 Haematococcus pluvialis (HP) cells form a mixed stage population. The MSS combines a three-step flow focusing unit for aligning the cells in single file transportation mode at the center of the microfluidic channel with a pure hydrodynamic sorter structure for cell sorting. Lateral displacement of the cells into one of the two outlet channels is generated by piezo-actuated pump chambers. In-line decision making for sorting is based on a user-definable set of image features and properties. The reported MSS significantly increased the purity of target cells in the sorted population (94%) in comparison to the initial mixed stage population (19%).

Este artículo facilita comentarios onomásticos y etimológicos acerca de la ciudad prehispánica de Chan Chan en la costa norte peruana. El escrito se centra específi camente en los nombres propios Chan Chan y Chimú, que de modo parcial compiten uno con el otro. Se discute ambas denominaciones desde sus aspectos formales, semánticos y etimológicos. Luego, el artículo también considera un nombre posible de una de las estructuras arquitectónicas dentro del complejo urbano.

In this article, I offer a contribution to the philological study of premodern materials of languages of South America that have already become extinct. I am concerned with the Yurumanguí language, whose speakers were encountered in the 18th century in the western lowlands of Colombia by a Spanish expedition. This encounter resulted in the production of a short collection of words and phrases by a priest which is analyzed here anew. Problems of inconsistent and likely highly inadequate orthographic representation of the speech of the Yurumanguí informants and other problems, in this case, make it highly difficult to arrive at consistent analyses, as I show throughout my highly tentative discussion of nominal and verbal morphosyntax. I also offer external comparisons for some of the available Yurumanguí lexical material. Far from being able to demonstrate the genetic connections of the language, such comparisons do allow to identify items the Yurumanguí language shared with neighboring languages and hence to situate it within the former linguistic ecology of this part of South America.

This paper makes accesible a new transcription of Richard Spruce’s vocabulary of the Sechura language. Collected in the mid-19th century by the British botanist, it constitutes one of only two sources of data for this language of northernmost Peru. A comparison of the original with previously published versions shows serious errors in transcription, in particular in those of Otto von Buchwald and Jacinto Jijón y Camaaño. The article also discusses the probable circumstances of data collection and the publication history of the hitherto known version, and concludes with some first observations on the significance of Spruce’s wordlist for elucidating the linguistic history of the region, in particular with regard to the question of the linguistic situation at Olmos.

In clinical practice, patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-rearrangement–positive non–small-cell lung cancer commonly receive sequential treatment with ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The third-generation agent lorlatinib has been shown to inhibit a wide range of ALK resistance mutations and thus offers potential benefit in later lines, although real-world data are lacking. This multicenter study retrospectively investigated later-line, real-world use of lorlatinib in patients with advanced ALK- or ROS1-positive lung cancer. Fifty-one patients registered in a compassionate use program in Austria, who received second- or later-line lorlatinib between January 2016 and May 2020, were included in this retrospective real-world data analysis. Median follow-up was 25.3 months. Median time of lorlatinib treatment was 4.4 months for ALK-positive and 12.2 months for ROS-positive patients. ALK-positive patients showed a response rate of 43.2%, while 85.7% percent of the ROS1-positive patients were considered responders. Median overall survival from lorlatinib initiation was 10.2 and 20.0 months for the ALK- and ROS1-positive groups, respectively. In the ALK-positive group, lorlatinib proved efficacy after both brigatinib and alectinib. Lorlatinib treatment was well tolerated. Later-line lorlatinib treatment can induce sustained responses in patients with advanced ALK- and ROS1-positive lung cancer.

Novel point-of-care compatible methods such as colorimetric assays have become increasingly important in the field of early pathogen detection. A simple and hand-held prototype device for carrying out DNA-amplification assay based on plasmonic nanoparticles in the colorimetric detection is presented. The low-cost device with two channels (sample and reference) consists of two spectrally different light emitting diodes (LEDs) for detection of the plasmon shift. The color change of the gold-nanoparticle-DNA conjugates caused by a salt-induced aggregation test is examined in particular. A specific and sensitive detection of the waterborne human pathogen Legionella pneumophila is demonstrated. This colorimetric assay, with a simple assay design and simple readout device requirements, can be monitored in real-time on-site.

Among the most intriguing oral testimonies of the late pre-Hispanic cultures of the Peruvian North Coast are the legends of origin that the Spanish were still able to record. In this article, we explore the names of the (mythological) first rulers and their associates which figure in one particularly famous North-Coast legend, that of Ñaimlap, the mythological founder of Lambayeque. We show that the name of Ñaimlap, as well as those of his courtiers and successors, can be attributed to the Mochica language. We also provide, to the extent possible, etymologies. Two names of the Ñaimlap dynasty, those of the dynastic founder Ñaimlap himself and his grandson Escuñain, reveal avian associations, while that of one of his officers, Ñina Cala, shows maritime connections. Both aspects match the structure of the Ñaimlap myth, in which the ruler arrives from a foreign land via a sea route.