Illuminate the Hidden Pain in Our Hearts——Analysis of the Image of “Aunt” in Mo Yan’s Novel Frog

Frog is a long-form masterpiece created by Mo Yan with the great concentration that touches the most painful part of the Chinese soul. The novel consists of four long letters and a drama written by the playwright Tadpole to the Japanese writer Sugitani. It is about the life experience of an “aunt”, a Chinese rural obstetrician and gynecologist, with vivid and touching details showing the sixty years of undulating birth history in rural China.

Neurology, psychiatry and the chess game: a narrative review

The chess game comprises different domains of cognitive function, demands great concentration and attention and is present in many cultures as an instrument of literacy, learning and entertainment. Over the years, many effects of the game on the brain have been studied. Seen that, we reviewed the current literature to analyze the influence of chess on cognitive performance, decision-making process, linking to historical neurological and psychiatric disorders as we describe different diseases related to renowned chess players throughout history, discussing the influences of chess on the brain and behavior.

Against the Führerprinzip: For Collective Leadership

The Führerprinzip has not been confined to Nazi Germany. The cult of the strong leader thrives in many authoritarian regimes and has its echoes even in contemporary democracies. The belief that the more power a president or prime minister wields the more we should be impressed by that politician is a dangerous fallacy. In authoritarian regimes, a more collective leadership is a lesser evil than personal dictatorship. In countries moving from authoritarian rule to democracy, collegial, inclusive, and collective leadership is more conducive to successful transition than great concentration of power in the hands of one individual at the top of the hierarchy. Democracies also benefit from a government led by a team in which there is no obsequiousness or hesitation in contradicting the top leader. Wise decisions are less likely to be forthcoming when one person can predetermine the outcome of a meeting or foreclose the discussion by pulling rank.

Neonatal and pediatric intensive care in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil: an analysis of bed distribution, 1997 and 2007

The objective of this study was to describe the characteristics of neonatal and pediatric intensive care units (ICU) and beds in Rio de Janeiro, correlating with population demands in 1997 and 2007. All neonatal and pediatric ICUs were visited, identifying the availability and type of beds. Comparisons were made between: supply and demand using projected need for beds for the population; public and private ICUs; and geographical regions. In 2007, 95 units were included totaling 1,094 beds (74 units and 1,080 beds in 1997): 51% public and 48% private (47% and 52% in 1997); 47% neonatal, 18% pediatric and 35% mixed units. Most units were located in the metropolitan area. The distribution of public and private beds was similar in the metropolitan area in both periods; in the interior, public beds tripled. Access has improved, mainly in the interior, but there is still no equity in the distribution of and accessibility to the available beds, with a shortage in the public sector, an excess in the private sector, and a great concentration in the metropolitan area.

Towards a Model of Describing Humour Translation

Being rooted in a specific cultural and linguistic context, humour can pose significant problems to translation. This paper will discuss data collected from films in the light of a suggested framework based on script theory of humour initially proposed by Attardo and specifically adapted here for subtitling. The data include such categories as wordplay, where a more ‘semiotic’ approach is employed, comparisons, parody, disparagement and register humour. These data were culled from two films translated into Greek: Airplane! (1980), directed by David Zucker and Jim Abrahams and The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad (1988), directed by David Zucker, which exhibit a great concentration of verbal humorous sequences and inventive puns. It will be suggested that there was leeway to creatively solve linguistically/culturally based translation problems, although inconsistencies were to be observed.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF POTASSIUM AND CAESIUM-137 IN THE CALF AND THE PIG

Using a scintillation spectrometer, measurements have been made of the distribution of potassium and radioactive caesium in the bodies of the cow and the pig as a result of the ingestion of these materials. The results of these experiments, which are based on measurements of the radioactivity normally found in foodstuffs and in animals, agree with those of earlier experiments in that there is no great concentration of Cs137 apparent in any one organ. However, there is evidence for preferential concentration in the kidney and testes.

Philosophy in Italy

There has lately been published a posthumous work on “pure realism” by an Italian philosopher who died a little while ago at an early age. He had been working on the book for some time with great concentration of energy, but did not live to finish it. In the form in which it has been edited for publication some parts of it have been developed almost to completion, while others are mere sketches and notes—though not wanting in interest, for they reveal the author's method of working, and expose doubts and difficulties in the immediate form in which they presented themselves to his mind and found the way to a solution. The most complete section is one dealing with the critique of idealism, a critique which, while it is not devoid of ingenuity, is in the main stringent and vigorous, and deserves particularly the consideration of idealists. The principal thesis is that there are two possible solutions of the problem of consciousness. It admits the possibility either that consciousness itself creates its own world, endowing it, thanks to the action of the mind on its own images, with those physical attributes that make it appear external to the subject or independent of the activity by virtue of which it is formed (idealism); or that consciousness is the immediate revelation of the world itself to itself, a revelation that can only consist in a unique act whereby the world establishes itself as identical with itself and as different from itself, as internal and external knowing and known, spirit and nature (realism). At the basis of idealism, according to Ranzoli, is the implied presupposition (of the philosophy of Empedocles) that like is conscious only of like, and at the basis of realism is the Anaxagorean presupposition that opposite is conscious of opposite.