Omnilingual Aspirations: The Case of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most widely translated document. However, versions in 419 languages are not conceived as translations but equivalences, alternate embodiments of identical tenets. The Bible has been rendered into numerous languages, but the Hebrew and Greek originals possess authority that English, Bengali, and Xhosa derivatives do not. The Bible is translated, but the UDHR is, through the theology of international governance, transubstantiated into multiple tongues. No version has priority; each is equally valid, transparent, and interchangeable. The utopian premise is not only that all humans possess inalienable rights but also that all languages express the same principles. The document’s title, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, might seem a solecism, a misplaced modifier. Surely, it is human rights that are universal, not the declaration. However, the UN insists that all versions (at least in the original official languages) are equally binding. It rejects Whorfian notions that particular languages enable particular thoughts and embraces languages as neutral tools whose specific manifestation is irrelevant. Arguments against imprisoning writers in Burma could appeal equally to the authority of either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme or Всеобщую декларацию прав человека or la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos or 世界人权宣言. Rather than the Babelian myth of an Ur-Sprache before hubris scattered us into mutual unintelligibility, the UDHR endorses a Chomskyan belief that all languages can express the same thoughts. Yet differences among versions of Article 1 (“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”) are not trivial; dignity is incommensurable with Würde, αξιοπρέπεια, dignidade, waardigheid, or достоинства. The UDHR is a translingual text shaped by the languages of framers and translators.

Digital well-being theory and research

Digital well-being concerns individuals’ subjective well-being in a social environment where digital media are omnipresent. A general framework is developed to integrate empirical research toward a cumulative science of the impacts of digital media use on well-being. It describes the nature of and connections between three pivotal constructs: digital practices, harms/benefits, and well-being. Individual’s digital practices arise within and shape socio-technical structural conditions, and lead to often concomitant harms and benefits. These pathways are theoretically plausible causal chains that lead from a specific manifestation of digital practice to an individual well-being-related outcome with some regularity. Future digital well-being studies should prioritize descriptive validity and formal theory development.

Semantic relation priming is not constituent-specific: Evidence from ERP

It is humankind's unique wisdom to compose a limited number of words together through specific rules to convey endless information. Researchers have found that this composition process also plays a vital role in the comprehension of compounds. The specific manifestation is relation priming; that is, the previously used relation will promote subsequent word processing using the same relation. This priming phenomenon is bound to morpheme repetition (modifier or head). This study combines a self-paced priming paradigm with electrophysiological technology to explore whether relation priming will occur without sharing morphemes and its time course. We found that relation priming can occur independently of morpheme-repetition, which shows an independent representation of relation information. And it has been activated at a very early stage (about 200ms). As the word processing progresses, this activation gradually strengthens, indicating that the relation's role is slowly increasing in the process of compound word recognition. It may first be used as a kind of context information to help determine the constituent morphemes' meaning. After the meaning access of the constituent morphemes, they begin to play a role in the semantic composition process. This study uses electrophysiological technology to precisely describe the representation of relation and its time course for the first time. Which gives us a deeper understanding of the relation priming process, and at the same time, sheds light on the meaning construction process of compounds.

Graded conjunction “not only” and its correlates

The subject of this research is the functionality of conjunction “not only” with its various correlates. The author establishes its peculiarities that distinguish it from other graded conjunctions: meaning, relation to pretext, variety of correlates, and typical absence of correlate. The relevance of the selected topic is substantiated by its inclusion in the study of linguistics of the text, and namely linguistic units that fulfill connecting function in the text. The goal lies in determination of peculiarities of the conjunction “not only” and its correlates. The article employs introspective-inductive and descriptive methods. The research presses need to continue studying the text, methods of achieving its cohesion, and expressive means in the context. The conclusion is made that the conjunction “not only” can be qualified as binary graded conjunction with certain peculiarities. Its uniqueness lies in specific manifestation of the gradation meaning; textual character (reference to pretext); instability of its composition; absence of correlate characteristic to this conjunction. Thus, “not only” performs the function of a conjunction and a text bond. The novelty of this research consists in describing the functionality of conjunction “not only” with its various correlates.

Giant Melon seed Bodies in Painless Shoulder Swelling

Melon seed bodies are a non-specific manifestation of chronic synovial inflammation associated with various arthritides such as tubercular, rheumatoid, and seronegative arthritis. Characteristic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appearance of these bodies differentiates them from other differential diagnoses (such as synovial chondromatosis and pigmented villonodular synovitis). Ultrasonography and MRI, in combination with clinical and laboratory details, can suggest the possible etiology. Medical management of the underlying cause, along with arthroscopic removal of pathognomonic bodies, is the preferred treatment.

Emotionally Informed Hate Speech Detection: A Multi-target Perspective

Hate Speech and harassment are widespread in online communication, due to users' freedom and anonymity and the lack of regulation provided by social media platforms. Hate speech is topically focused (misogyny, sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.), and each specific manifestation of hate speech targets different vulnerable groups based on characteristics such as gender (misogyny, sexism), ethnicity, race, religion (xenophobia, racism, Islamophobia), sexual orientation (homophobia), and so on. Most automatic hate speech detection approaches cast the problem into a binary classification task without addressing either the topical focus or the target-oriented nature of hate speech. In this paper, we propose to tackle, for the first time, hate speech detection from a multi-target perspective. We leverage manually annotated datasets, to investigate the problem of transferring knowledge from different datasets with different topical focuses and targets. Our contribution is threefold: (1) we explore the ability of hate speech detection models to capture common properties from topic-generic datasets and transfer this knowledge to recognize specific manifestations of hate speech; (2) we experiment with the development of models to detect both topics (racism, xenophobia, sexism, misogyny) and hate speech targets, going beyond standard binary classification, to investigate how to detect hate speech at a finer level of granularity and how to transfer knowledge across different topics and targets; and (3) we study the impact of affective knowledge encoded in sentic computing resources (SenticNet, EmoSenticNet) and in semantically structured hate lexicons (HurtLex) in determining specific manifestations of hate speech. We experimented with different neural models including multitask approaches. Our study shows that: (1) training a model on a combination of several (training sets from several) topic-specific datasets is more effective than training a model on a topic-generic dataset; (2) the multi-task approach outperforms a single-task model when detecting both the hatefulness of a tweet and its topical focus in the context of a multi-label classification approach; and (3) the models incorporating EmoSenticNet emotions, the first level emotions of SenticNet, a blend of SenticNet and EmoSenticNet emotions or affective features based on Hurtlex, obtained the best results. Our results demonstrate that multi-target hate speech detection from existing datasets is feasible, which is a first step towards hate speech detection for a specific topic/target when dedicated annotated data are missing. Moreover, we prove that domain-independent affective knowledge, injected into our models, helps finer-grained hate speech detection.

Characteristics and Prognostic Value of Pleural Effusion in Secondary Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis

Background: Secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (sHLH) is a pathologic immune activation syndrome characterized by immune-mediated multiple organ system damage. Pleural effusion can occur as a specific manifestation of sHLH, however, has rarely been evaluated. This study aimed to describe the clinical characteristics of pleural effusion in sHLH and assesse whether it affects prognosis.Methods: We retrospectively analysed 203 newly diagnosed sHLH patients from July 2015 to July 2019 according to the HLH-2004 protocol. Baseline characteristics, laboratory results, and imaging materials were reviewedResults: Pleural effusion was found in 58.6% of the studied sHLH population, and imaging findings were characterized by minimal amounts and bilaterality. Multivariate analyses showed that sCD25 level and PLT ≤65×109/L were significant risk factors for developing pleural effusion in sHLH. Regarding prognostic value, survival analysis showed a lower survival probability for patients with pleural effusion than for those without pleural effusion (median OS, 90 vs. 164 days, p = 0.028). In the multivariate analysis, pleural effusion was an independent prognostic factor for OS (HR = 2.68; 95% CI 1.18–6.11, p = 0.019). Conclusions: Pleural effusion is frequently found in patients with sHLH and is associated with a higher inflammatory state and worse outcomes.

The influence of intermittent hypoxia, obesity and diabetes on male genitourinary anatomy and voiding physiology

We used male BTBR mice carrying the Lepob mutation, which are subject to severe and progressive obesity and diabetes beginning at 6 weeks of age, to examine the influence of one specific manifestation of sleep apnea, intermittent hypoxia, on male urinary voiding physiology and genitourinary anatomy. A custom device was used to deliver continuous normoxia (NX, control) or intermittent hypoxia (IH) to wild type and Lepob/ob (mutant) mice for 2 weeks. Intermittent hypoxia was delivered during the 12-hour inactive (lighted) period in the form of 90 sec of 6% O2 followed by 90 sec of room air. Continuous room air was delivered during the 12-hour active (dark) period. We then evaluated genitourinary anatomy and physiology. As expected for the type 2 diabetes phenotype, mutant mice consume more food and water, weighed more, and voided more frequently and in larger urine volumes. They also have larger bladder volumes but smaller prostates, seminal vesicles, and urethras than wild type mice. IH decreases food consumption and increases bladder relative weight independent of genotype and increases urine glucose concentration in mutant mice. When evaluated based on genotype (NX+IH), the incidence of pathogenic bacteriuria is greater in mutant than wild type mice, and among mice exposed to IH, bacteriuria incidence is greater in mutant than wild type mice. We conclude that IH exposure and type 2 diabetes can act independently and together to modify male mouse urinary function.

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis in Harlequin ichthyosis, a rare combination or the clinical spectrum of the disease? Report of a child treated with etanercept and review of the literature

Background Harlequin ichthyosis (HI) is the most severe phenotype of autosomal recessive congenital ichthyosis. Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) represents a heterogenous group of disorders all sharing the clinical manifestation of chronic arthritis. Association of HI and chronic arthritis has been reported in few cases. Case presentation We report the case of a child with HI who developed a severe form of chronic polyarthritis during the first years of life, treated with repeated multiple joint injections, methotrexate and etanercept with good response and without any adverse events. Conclusion The reported case and the literature review highlighted the presence of a peculiar severe seronegative polyarthritis with early onset in a series of patients with HI, suggesting that polyarthritis may be a specific manifestation of HI, rather than a rare combination of two separate conditions.

What are Governmental Human Rights Focal Points?

This Special Issue aims at raising understanding of governmental human rights focal points (GHRFPs). It forms part of a renewed attention to the importance of domestic-level institutions within the international human rights regime. GHRFPs have emerged as a key recommendation of UN bodies, and a defined trend in setting up such State structures is observed in practice. Addressing GHRFPs as a single field of inquiry, this introductory article presents a common analytical approach, which makes it possible to analyse various forms of GHRFPs, with a view to generalising findings and enriching each type of GHRFP with the experiences and lessons learned of others. Hereby, the Special Issue consolidates and structures a research agenda on GHRFPs around key attributes identified in a preliminary manner, in order to spark some critical and constructive analysis of this specific manifestation of the domestic institutionalisation of human rights.