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The concept of authenticity has received much discussion in applied linguistics and educational studies. Valuable insights have been gained into how authenticity is problematised in language teaching and how to improve the situation by engaging learners with better-designed materials and activities. These achievements notwithstanding, empirical evidence remains insufficient to understand learners’ meaning-making endeavours in real-life learning scenarios. The current study attempts to examine authenticity in additional language learning from a semiotic perspective, which may shed new light on the complex cognitive process of beginner learners’ first encounter with a new language and how this process could be motivated and facilitated by teachers in a classroom setting. Evidence of semiotic articulation and production of authenticity from a low-pressure Spanish classroom is analysed focussing on cultural authenticity, interactive authenticity and authenticity of behaviour and engagement. The evidence is discussed to find how semiotic resources in combination with lived experiences may help learners’ comprehension and appreciation of the target language and its culture. These findings reveal the relevance and value of semiotic approaches to language teaching research and provide practical implications for exposing pre-tertiary young learners to languages other than English for more diverse and extensive learning experiences.

Poetry is often seen as the ultimate challenge for a literary translator. Why it is so and how in reality translators manage to accomplish this feat remain to be explored. This article contributes a new way of understanding poetry translation by re-theorizing the practice with reference to the concept of blank-sign. In the light of the blank-sign, we see poetry as a genre rich with meaning-charged blank-signs and poetry translation as a “blank-filling” endeavour to seek relevance for the poem in the target sociocultural context while craftily leaving its overall poetic “blankness” intact for meaningful reading and contemplation. We illustrate this idea with the Spanish translation of two contemporary Chinese poems, with a focus on discussing the challenges with regard to communicating the culture-laden images and the intertextual connections in the original poem. Based on our preliminary findings, we highlight the value of the study of blank-signs in poetry translation and the need for translators to draw insights from cross-linguistic analysis to inform their practice. This semiotic account offers insights into how poetry translation can be alternatively conceptualised and has implications for practitioners involved in poetry and translation.

Whipple pneumonia is a rare, chronic, multiorgan disease, with symptoms including arthritis, diarrhea, and weight loss. Diagnosis is traditionally confirmed by a histologic examination of a small bowel biopsy (1). [...]

Abstract Background Despite considerable progress in the development of anticancer therapies, there is still a high mortality rate caused by cancer relapse and metastasis. Dormant or slow-cycling residual tumor cells are thought to be a source of tumor relapse and metastasis, and are therefore an obstacle to therapy. In this study, we assessed the drug resistance of tumor cells in mice, and investigated whether vaccination could promote survival. Methods The mouse colon carcinoma cell line CT-26 was treated with 5-fluorouracil to assess its sensitivity to drug treatment. Mice with colon tumors were immunized with inactivated slow-cycling CT-26 cells to estimate the efficacy of this vaccine. Results We identified a small population of slow-cycling tumor cells in the mouse colon carcinoma CT-26 cell line, which was resistant to conventional chemotherapy. To inhibit tumor recurrence and metastasis more effectively, treatments that selectively target the slow-cycling tumor cells should be developed to complement conventional therapies. We found that drug-treated, slow-cycling tumor cells induced a more intense immune response in vitro. Moreover, vaccination with inactivated slow-cycling tumor cells caused a reduction in tumor volume and prolonged the overall survival of tumor-bearing mice. Conclusions These findings suggest that targeting of slow-cycling tumor cells application using immunotherapy is a possible treatment to complement traditional antitumor therapy.

The synthesis of ammonia (NH3) via the Haber–Bosch process is energy-intensive and environmentally challenging, necessitating the development of sustainable alternatives. Herein, we report a directed etch template strategy to create atomically dispersed Ru–N4 active sites within layered porous carbon (NC@Ru) for efficient electrochemical nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR). The removal of the MgO template results in an interconnected carbon network with hierarchical porous structures, significantly enhancing the accessibility and mass transfer of the active sites. The NC@Ru catalyst demonstrated superior NRR performance, achieving an ammonia yield rate of 196.2 μg h–1 mgcat.–1 and a Faradaic efficiency of 43.8%. In situ electrochemical mass spectrometry was employed to analyze NRR kinetics, while density functional theory calculations were utilized to elucidate the NRR mechanism and identify the rate-determining step. The work introduces a novel high-performance catalyst for electrocatalytic NRR and provides a practical strategy for optimizing active-site microenvironments, laying the groundwork for future commercial applications of electrocatalytic NRR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]