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Does grammatical gender influence the meaning of inanimate nouns? We examined word embeddings from distributional semantics models, representing meanings in a vector space. In 26 gendered languages and non-gendered English, we measured the meaning similarity of inanimate nouns to gendered anchor nouns like 'male' and 'female.' In gendered languages, noun meanings aligned more with the anchor noun congruent with grammatical gender. This effect persisted when comparing the same nouns across languages (e.g., 'cucchiaio' vs 'cuchara' vs 'spoon'). We propose that grammatical gender introduces a gender bias into lexical semantics through distributional similarities with anchor words, revealing masculine/feminine features even without direct sensorimotor experience. This suggests that embodiment in language processing may become statistically embedded in word usage patterns.

BackgroundAntibody-mediated rejection is a significant cause of kidney transplant failure. Recent studies have shown that the MHC class I MICA gene influences the transplantation outcome. However, the role of the primary MICA receptor, NKG2D, has yet to be explored.AimWe aimed to investigate the correlation between recipient/donor MICA allele matching and NKG2D genotype with the risk of antibody-mediated rejection and their potential clinical effects and implications for organ maintenance therapy.MethodsOf the 524 patients who underwent transplantation, 387 were eligible for the study. Complete MICA allele and two functional polymorphisms of NKG2D (rs1049174C>G and rs2255336G>A) were analyzed in 148 transplanted patients and 146 controls.ResultsIncreased recipient/donor MICA allele mismatches correlate with an elevated risk of antibody-mediated rejection (X2 = 6.95; Log-rank=0.031). Notably, the rs1049174[GG] genotype contributes to a significantly increased risk of antibody-mediated rejection (X2 = 13.44; Log-rank=0.001 and X2 = 0.34; Log-rank=0.84). The combined effect of two MICA allele mismatches and rs1049174[GG] genotype shows the highest risk (X2 = 23.21; Log-rank

Cultured Meat, Climate Mitigation, and Collective Narratives: The Italian Case The climate crisis has revealed the connections between some practices considered harmless or inconsequential on a global scale and the dramatic changes affecting the climate and environment. This paper explores the different impacts of certain dietary patterns (carnism, vegetarianism, and veganism), potential mitigation scenarios, and the collective narratives about food and our relationship with it that hinder the shift towards more sustainable eating habits. Specifically, the case of the ban on the production and consumption of cultured meat in Italy is examined, with an analysis of the narratives supporting it.

Prediction is one characteristic of the human mind. But what does it mean to say the mind is a "prediction machine" and "inherently forward looking" as is frequently claimed? In natural languages, many contexts are not easily predictable in a forward fashion. In English, for example, many frequent verbs do not carry unique meaning on their own but instead, rely on another word or words that follow them to become meaningful. Upon reading "take a" the processor often cannot easily predict "walk" as the next word. But the system can "look back" and integrate "walk" more easily when it follows "take" a (e.g., as opposed to *"make"|"get"|"have a walk"). In the present paper, we provide further evidence for the importance of both forward and backward-looking in language processing. In two self-paced reading tasks and an eye-tracking reading task, we found evidence that adult English native speakers' sensitivity to word forward and backward conditional probability significantly predicted reading times over and above psycholinguistic predictors of reading latencies. We conclude that both forward and backward-looking (prediction and integration) appear to be important characteristics of language processing. Our results thus suggest that it makes just as much sense to call the mind an "integration machine" which is inherently backward 'looking.'

As highlighted by the last IPCC report on climate change (IPCC 2022), in addition to mitigation strategies relying on technological innovation and national and international policies, a relevant way to deal with the climate crisis is through personal behaviours such as shifting to sustainable diets. Despite being described as strategies relying on individual choices, however, the need for a global dietary change is hindered by some common narratives about food that have a relevant social dimension. Among them, the most entrenched and troublesome are those related to the idea of «freedom of choice» or «consumer autonomy» (Korthals 2004; Kaplan 2019), which have at their core the idea that humans should always be free to choose their foods. The realisation of a shift from the actual diets, which in developed countries has an extremely high environmental impact, to more sustainable ones, helpful in reaching mitigation targets, seems therefore to require an examination and change in the collective stories we tell about food and, especially, an adjustment of those “freedom narratives” about our relationships with it. In this paper I first suggest that freedom narratives are misleading because the right to food choice is conflated with the right to adequate (quantity and quality of) food. Then, I show that freedom narratives are too narrow because they imply a too narrow view of human rights and lack contextual depth. Novel narratives about food should therefore be broader and should offer deeper knowledge about the relationships between humans, food and the environment. In the frame of these novel, wider stories about food, individual shifts toward sustainable lifestyles will be easier, and these achievements might be able to benefit both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Milena Agus est considérée comme l’une des voix de la nouvelle vague littéraire sarde, une expression utilisée pour désigner un certain nombre d’écrivains contemporains qui proposent, entre autres, de nouvelles formes de bilinguisme et de diglossie. Son dernier roman, Un tempo gentile (2020) est l’histoire d’une rencontre entre deux communautés malheureuses et oubliées : les habitants d’un petit village reculé de la Sardaigne et un groupe de migrants qui se retrouvent catapultés dans cette réalité à la fois hostile et solidaire. Notre analyse se concentrera sur la dimension linguistique de ce roman : la langue est-elle un moyen pour exprimer l’hybridation et la transculturalité ?

Changes in medical education demand efficient professionals in their teaching. In this sense, education in the nursing career must be exercised with a broad pedagogical culture, which is achieved through academic growth that prepares the individual to be flexible in dealing with constant social, institutional and curricular variations. The epistemological referents on this subject reveal a limited systematization of such improvement in nursing teachers with respect to the development of their teacher training. This article briefly outlines the stages of the development of the growth, as well as the inadequacies that were presented in each one of them. Finally, some elements of professional development and pedagogical culture are described, which argue the transcendence of both in the formative process of nursing teachers.

Syntactic priming in dialogue occurs when exposure to a particular syntactic structure implicitly induces a speaker’s subsequent preference for the same syntactic structures in their own speech. Here, we asked whether this priming effect is boosted when individuals are primed by several different speakers as opposed to one. In an initial baseline session involving a picture description task, we assessed adult participants’ production of double object/DO (vs. prepositional/PO) dative and passive (vs. active) transitive structures. Subsequently, participants played a picture description and verification game, in turns, with six other players (confederates). During verification turns, confederates primed participants by using DO and passive utterances. Crucially, participants were primed either by a single confederate (single-speaker priming condition, SSP) or by five confederates (multi-speaker priming condition, MSP). Across conditions, the same priming stimuli were presented in the same order, leaving speaker source/variation as the only different feature. The degree to which participants were primed for the target structures compared to baseline was measured. Results indicated a robust priming effect in both conditions. Nevertheless, the increase in the target structures’ use did not differ significantly between the SSP and MSP conditions, suggesting that speaker variation did not promote stronger priming.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 762 million people to date and has caused approximately 7 million deaths all around the world, involving more than 187 countries. Although currently available vaccines show high efficacy in preventing severe respiratory complications in infected patients, the high number of mutations in the S proteins of the current variants is responsible for the high level of immune evasion and transmissibility of the virus and the reduced effectiveness of acquired immunity. In this scenario, the development of safe and effective drugs of synthetic or natural origin to suppress viral replication and treat acute forms of COVID-19 remains a valid therapeutic challenge. Given the successful history of flavonoids-based drug discovery, we developed esters of substituted cinnamic acids with quercetin to evaluate their in vitro activity against a broad spectrum of Coronaviruses. Interestingly, two derivatives, the 3,4-methylenedioxy 6 and the ester of acid 7, have proved to be effective in reducing OC43-induced cytopathogenicity, showing interesting EC50s profiles. The ester of synaptic acid 7 in particular, which is not endowed with relevant cytotoxicity under any of the tested conditions, turned out to be active against OC43 and SARS-CoV-2, showing a promising EC50. Therefore, said compound was selected as the lead object of further analysis. When tested in a yield reduction, assay 7 produced a significant dose-dependent reduction in viral titer. However, the compound was not virucidal, as exposure to high concentrations of it did not affect viral infectivity, nor did it affect hCoV-OC43 penetration into pre-treated host cells. Additional studies on the action mechanism have suggested that our derivative may inhibit viral endocytosis by reducing viral attachment to host cells.