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SÁ-CARNEIRO, Mário de (2021). Seven Songs of Decline and Other Poems. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Ana Luísa Amaral. Edited by Ricardo Vasconcelos. London: Francis Boutle Publishers. [ISBN 978 1 8380928 49]

This paper focuses on five problems all translators of Fernando Pessoa’s poetry into English must grapple with. The first is whether or not to distinguish the poetry of Pessoa (orthonym), Álvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis through the use of stylistic and lexical markers. The second is: to what degree should the translator imitate Pessoa’s occasional labyrinthine constructions? Third, every translator must decide at the outset whether or not to use rhyme and meter, where these occur in Pessoa’s poetry. The final two problems concern Portuguese grammar: how to translate the pretérito perfeito do indicativo [simple past tense], which lends itself in English to both simple past and present perfect tenses; and how to translate the personal infinitive, a form unique among all languages for handling a change in subject within a sentence.

MONTEIRO, George (2018). From Lisbon to the World: Pessoa’s Enduring Literary Presence. Brighton; Chicago; Toronto: Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-938-8

Brazilian concrete poetry can teach us to see, where the language is materialized, the concrete in Pessoa’s writings. To do this is to see Pessoa as a precursor of the Brazilian concrete poets. But precursor-ship is not the only link between them. In the case of the founding group of concrete poetry, the work of Pessoa traverses the whole of their critical and creative journey and is present from their first books up until their digital animations and last poems. I read Pessoa’s work through the lens of concrete theory in order to reveal him as a concrete poet in his own right. I examine Pessoa’s pervasive presence in the work of Augusto de Campos, the last surviving founder of concrete poetry and the one in whose work the critical and creative assimilation of Pessoa is most marked.

To use Fausto’s metaphors, the absence of any “forma” grounded in, or grounding, the intrinsic nature of things entails a situation in which all—mind, matter, self, world—is “informe” (Pessoa, 2018: 181). Pessoa’s struggle—and it is in this, I argue, that the drama of Fausto consists—is thus to find forms for the formlessness of the self and the world. The goal of this article is to investigate this paradox at the level of language and style. The ways in which words are used in Fausto to in-form the informe constitute, paradoxically, Pessoa’s grand style.

Hubert Jennings's Lisbon memoirs bring something new to the study of Fernando Pessoa. This article reads Pessoa through the eyes of Jennings and situates both in the context of British decolonization, Portuguese colonial warfare, Commonwealth immigration, and 1960s political upheavals – in order to better understand their differential implication in imperialist ideologies. Close reading of these memoirs reveals a Jennings who identifies himself with Pessoa's ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, and writing. These multiple convergences in effect bear out Pessoa's prophecies of the coming of a new Portuguese cultural empire that would spread across the globe. At the same time, Jennings's residence in Lisbon, in an era when the British and Portuguese empires were receding, triggered nostalgia for the imperial England of his youth. An unpublished short story by Jennings and Chapter V of his memoirs are presented as annexes.

In two studies, we explored the associations among situational reading-related competence beliefs and task value, inference strategies, comprehension during reading, and foundational skills in college age students. In Study 1, 93 participants from a community college completed assessments of comprehension and two types of inference strategies (elaboration and bridging), each immediately followed by a survey of their competence beliefs and task value regarding the task. Results showed that competence beliefs and task value related positively to reading comprehension. In addition, task value was positively associated with both elaborating and bridging inferences, and competence beliefs correlated positively with bridging inferences. In Study 2, we investigated these associations further in a group of 418 students studying at three different colleges. Participants completed the same assessments for competence beliefs, task value, and inference strategies, as well as assessments of comprehension and foundational reading skills. Study 2 analyses revealed that foundational reading skills were a strong predictor of both types of inferencing and also comprehension. Further, when controlling for foundational reading skills, task value predicted elaboration and bridging inferences, whereas competence beliefs did not predict inferencing, but were trending as a predictor of comprehension. Finally, we created a path model to explore mediational effects, and found that task value positively predicted comprehension performance through increased elaborations while thinking aloud.

BackgroundMajor advances in selection progress for cattle have been made following the introduction of genomic tools over the past 10-12 years. These tools depend upon the Bos taurus reference genome (UMD3.1.1), which was created using now-outdated technologies and is hindered by a variety of deficiencies and inaccuracies.ResultsWe present the new reference genome for cattle, ARS-UCD1.2, based on the same animal as the original to facilitate transfer and interpretation of results obtained from the earlier version, but applying a combination of modern technologies in a de novo assembly to increase continuity, accuracy, and completeness. The assembly includes 2.7 Gb and is >250× more continuous than the original assembly, with contig N50 >25 Mb and L50 of 32. We also greatly expanded supporting RNA-based data for annotation that identifies 30,396 total genes (21,039 protein coding). The new reference assembly is accessible in annotated form for public use.ConclusionsWe demonstrate that improved continuity of assembled sequence warrants the adoption of ARS-UCD1.2 as the new cattle reference genome and that increased assembly accuracy will benefit future research on this species.

Natural killer (NK) cells are a diverse population of lymphocytes with a range of biological roles including essential immune functions. NK cell diversity is in part created by the differential expression of cell surface receptors which modulate activation and function, including multiple subfamilies of C-type lectin receptors encoded within the NK complex (NKC). Little is known about the gene content of the NKC beyond rodent and primate lineages, other than it appears to be extremely variable between mammalian groups. We compared the NKC structure between mammalian species using new high-quality draft genome assemblies for cattle and goat; re-annotated sheep, pig, and horse genome assemblies; and the published human, rat, and mouse lemur NKC. The major NKC genes are largely in the equivalent positions in all eight species, with significant independent expansions and deletions between species, allowing us to propose a model for NKC evolution during mammalian radiation. The ruminant species, cattle and goats, have independently evolved a second KLRC locus flanked by KLRA and KLRJ, and a novel KLRH-like gene has acquired an activating tail. This novel gene has duplicated several times within cattle, while other activating receptor genes have been selectively disrupted. Targeted genome enrichment in cattle identified varying levels of allelic polymorphism between the NKC genes concentrated in the predicted extracellular ligand-binding domains. This novel recombination and allelic polymorphism is consistent with NKC evolution under balancing selection, suggesting that this diversity influences individual immune responses and may impact on differential outcomes of pathogen infection and vaccination.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine if surface electromyography (sEMG) demonstrates differences in muscle activation between normal and dogs recovering from spinal cord injury due to intervertebral disk extrusion. Animals: Two groups of client-owned small-breed chondrodysplastic-type dogs were tested. Group 1 consisted of seven ambulatory paraparetic dogs that had undergone a hemilaminectomy procedure in the T3-L3 region for intervertebral disk extrusion 1 month prior. Group 2 was made up of seven normal dogs that had no history of intervertebral disk disease or spinal surgery. Procedures: Each subject walked 10 feet on a nonslip surface for at least five gait cycles for the sEMG to capture muscle activation of the vastus lateralis and gluteus medius, bilaterally. Muscle activation was quantified as the total myoelectric output area under the curve, averaged across all gait cycles. Results: Muscle activation was significantly greater in the post-operative hemilaminectomy group (p = 0.012). There was a significant difference in muscle activation between each hindlimb in the post-operative hemilaminectomy group, but not in the normal group. The muscle activation was significantly lower on the side that underwent surgery compared to the opposite limb (p = 0.0034). Conclusion and clinical importance: Post-operative hemilaminectomy dogs have greater hindlimb muscle activation compared to normal dogs, which likely represents a lack of descending inhibition secondary to upper motor neuron syndrome. The side of surgery is correlated with decreased muscle activation. Surface EMG can be used to evaluate muscle activity in dogs recovering from spinal decompression surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]