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Typification of the snow-bank Peziza nivalis
No full textTypification plays a crucial role in mycological taxonomy as it ensures nomenclatural stability and anchors species names to clearly defined reference material. This is particularly critical when original material is incomplete, poorly preserved, or lacks molecular data, since reliable reference points are essential for accurate species delimitation and consistent phylogenetic interpretation. Here, typifications are proposed for two nivicolous Peziza species. For Galactinia nivalis R. Heim & L. Rémy, a lectotype is designated from the original illustrations, and the holotype of Peziza fortoulii Donadini, a later synonym, serves as a supporting epitype. For Peziza heimii Pfister, the holotype in the MNHN herbarium (PC) is unsuitable for genetic characterization, and thus a supporting epitype is designated. In both cases, sequences from the epitypes are already available. These typifications strengthen nomenclatural stability and provide a robust foundation for future taxonomic, morphological, and molecular studies on nivicolous taxa within Peziza
First report and new host record of Verruciconidia persicina from the beetle gut in India
No full textFungi associated with beetle guts represent an important but underexplored source of microbial diversity and ecological interactions. Such associations may contribute to host nutrition, defence, or adaptation to specific environments. During a survey of beetle gut-associated fungi, a fungal strain was isolated from the gut of Platynotus excavatus collected in Junnar, India. Based on morphological characteristics and multigene phylogenetic analysis of ITS (Internal transcribed spacer), LSU (Large Submit Unit), TEF-1α (translation elongation factor 1-alpha), and RPB2 (RNA polymerase II) sequences, the isolate was identified as Verruciconidia persicina. The strain (MCC 9995) clusters with the ex-type strain V. persicina (CBS 310.59) with 97% bootstrap support but exhibited slightly wider hyphae (up to 4.5 µm vs. 3.5 µm). This represents the first report of the genus Verruciconidia from an insect gut and its first record from India
Patterns in Morphological Evolution: Comparing Changes in Six Medieval City-Centres in the Low Countries (1720-2020)
No full textTo the perceptive observer, similarities in the urban structures and architecture of medieval city centres in the Netherlands, Belgium, and a strip of North-Western France will stand out. Indeed, they have been part of the Low Countries for a long time until separation led them to be governed by different institutional regimes for the past few centuries. This paper offers a novel qualitative method to examine the evolution of urban form through time, based on Kevin Lynch’s urban form elements. It systematically compares the changes in the morphology of the historical centres over the past three centuries with the help of digitised maps. Changes in Lynch’s morphological elements (nodes, edges, landmarks, and paths) are analysed to understand the characteristics of the urban evolution in six cities. In this contribution, we have studied three large cities (Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Lille) and three mid-sized ones (Leiden, Leuven, and Arras), all of which have well-preserved city centres. Our findings are based on a unique way of using well-developed historical cartography for mapping the morphological evolution over time and allow for further in-depth investigation of which trends and events cause these changes
Labour Rights in Global Trade: The Lost Consensus
No full textThe article explores the relationship between trade practices and labour rights throughout the history of the 20th century and demonstrates that the lack of mention of labour standards in the GATT rules was neither natural nor inevitable. Beginning with the laissez-faire era, it illustrates how unregulated competition created harsh working conditions and prompted early demands for international labour rules. It then examines the role the ILO was expected to play within the planned International Trade Organization under the Havana Charter, where fair labour standards were recognized as essential to prevent social dumping. The Charter’s failure left international trade without this social dimension. The paper argues that the later emergence of labour clauses in free trade agreements and GSP schemes simply reflects the intrinsic connection between labour standards and fair trade.  
Genre-dependent Discourse-Topic Persistence in English Inversion
No full textVariation in English constituent order is typically explained by information packaging and, with that, by the relation of the construction to the discourse preceding it. This paper presents an empirical approach to the study of the construction of English inversion, focusing on its role in subsequent discourse and its relation to the discourse topic. Building on work on other constructions that are commonly considered to be topic-marking, a dataset of inversions from two genres of the COCA corpus was investigated. The research questions addressed are (i) whether, in the sequence of the two constituents that are reversed by way of an inversion, the fronted, non-subject element or the grammatical subject of the sentence should be considered the topic of the sentence, and (ii) to what extent the topical structure following the inversion varies with the register or genre. Since genres typically differ in text structure, the second research question is also a reality check for the first. Outcomes show that looking at inversion from the point of view of discourse-level topic persistence rather than information packaging adds an important insight to an understanding of its function. In addition, an analysis with respect to discourse- rather than information structure helps to account for genre differences in the use of inversion across discourse types. On a methodological level, the paper illustrates an approach that operationalizes the retrieval of inversions from a corpus and the analysis of discourse-topic persistence
Amigoni Ferdinando, Altezza degli occhi. Corpi, lampi e spettri nel Photomatic, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2025
No full textResurgences of Women's Language in Japanese TV News: Shirabete Mitara and the Representation of Foreign Women
No full textThis study examines the representation of women’s language in Shirabete Mitara, a television segment aired by the Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV. Drawing on audiovisual translation research and recent developments in Japanese sociolinguistics and media studies, it explores the inter-indexical relations between the Japanese voice-over and interlingual subtitles used to translate the speech of foreign female speakers, and the ideological portrayals of femininity they construct. The analysis of interview segments reveals not only the discrepancy between the non-native speakers’ speech and that adopted by Japanese voice actresses, but also a process of hyperfeminization that indexes the metapragmatic stereotypes around which the so-called Japanese Women’s Language (joseigo) has crystallized. The study further shows how the speakers’ iconic bodies are instrumentalized as semiotic resources to convey specific ideologies of femininity, ultimately reinforcing gender-based discrimination deeply rooted in contemporary Japanese society
(Not) Becoming Mothers: Fertility Intentions and Reproductive Agency During the Three-child Policy in China
No full textThis paper examines Chinese women’s fertility intentions and attitudes toward motherhood following the implementation of the three-child policy announced in May 2021. Drawing on Minello’s theoretical framework for analyzing declining fertility, I argue that the reproductive choices of Chinese women are not influenced by the possibility of having additional children, but rather by the disjuncture between the structural and cultural dimensions of contemporary Chinese society. Market liberalization and the privatization of welfare services following the economic reforms of the 1980s created a disjuncture between the material needs of Chinese families and the traditional cultural assumptions regarding family and maternity, which was exacerbated by the introduction of the one-child policy and subsequently of the two-child policy. Against this background, the implementation of the three-child policy continues to stimulate forms of awareness and reflection concerning women’s bodily autonomy, reproductive agency, and fertility intentions. Employing social media posts as case studies, this paper aims not only to underscore how birth rates are increasingly affected by economic and political structures, but also to stimulate reflection on material concerns and forms of dissent that, despite their cultural specificity, can serve as a bridge toward broader, non-Eurocentric feminist analyses of motherhood
From Confucian Archetype to Neoliberal Resemantization: The Resurgence of the Ideal “Good Wife and Wise Mother” (Xiánqī Liángmǔ) in Contemporary China
No full textThis article traces the historical evolution and contemporary resemantization of the Virtuous Wife and Good Mother (xianqi liangmu 贤妻良母) ideal in China, from its origins as a Confucian archetype to its neoliberal resurgence under Xi Jinping. Ideologically rooted in Confucian texts such as the Book of Rites (Li Ji 礼记), the xianqi liangmu (XQLM) model has long functioned as a patriarchal mechanism confining women to the domestic (nei) sphere. Rejected as ‘feudal’ during the Maoist period, the ideal has since been revived and adapted to align with contemporary state policy and market imperatives. This study examines the nexus between the neoliberal resemantization of XQLM and traditional ethics, showing how it reasserts moral and structural constraints on women’s agency in private, professional, and familial domains. The article considers counter-discourses and emerging feminist subjectivities in art, literature, and activism — both within and beyond China — as sites of resistance against this coercive revival. The aim of this analysis is to bring to the foreground the discursive structures and traditional gender categories that, across centuries, have constrained women’s identity and agency, inscribing them within the boundaries of Chinese patriarchal tradition, leading to the formulaic expression of XQLM to its contemporary interpretations
Getting Gender Right in Video Games, Simplifying for Inclusivity
No full textThe video game industry’s meteoric rise since its birth in the 1970s has steadily increased the demand for professional localisers capable of dealing with “game crunch” (Brogan 2022) in what can only be described as “a double-blind process (no audiovisual context, no text linearity)” (Bernal-Merino 2013). Due to these working conditions, previous research in the field (Rivas Ginel 2021) has shown that the second most common error found by linguistic testers is mistranslations, a phenomenon that results from the above-mentioned constraints as well as the presence of variables. Variables, in the context of video games, are used to create the illusion of immersion by, for example, allowing the player to change the name (or gender) of the character. Therefore, translators are forced to find creative yet natural solutions to accommodate potential changes in the resulting sentence through simplification, neutralisation, and the use of controlled language. This article, the last of a series of papers analysing gender bias caused by machine translation in video games, aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the above-mentioned techniques used by translators to deal with gender when translating from English into French. We begin by providing a brief overview of the characteristics of video game localisation and their impact on the translators’ work. Afterwards, we discuss some examples of mistranslations found in other games and the output generated by state-of-the-art baseline machine translation systems (Rivas Ginel and Theroine 2022). Subsequently, we will analyse neutralisation and simplification techniques extracted from a parallel corpus compiled from already translated video games that include non-binary characters. Finally, we present some of the results of an ongoing project that aims at conceiving a neural machine translation (NMT) tool for English into French video game localisation specialised in neutralisation techniques.The video game industry’s meteoric rise since its birth in the 1970s has steadily increased the demand for professional localisers capable of dealing with “game crunch” (Brogan 2022) in what can only be described as “a double-blind process (no audiovisual context, no text linearity)” (Bernal-Merino 2013). Due to these working conditions, previous research in the field (Rivas Ginel 2021) has shown that the second most common error found by linguistic testers is mistranslations, a phenomenon that results from the above-mentioned constraints as well as the presence of variables. Variables, in the context of video games, are used to create the illusion of immersion by, for example, allowing the player to change the name (or gender) of the character. Therefore, translators are forced to find creative yet natural solutions to accommodate potential changes in the resulting sentence through simplification, neutralisation, and the use of controlled language. This article, the last of a series of papers analysing gender bias caused by machine translation in video games, aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the above-mentioned techniques used by translators to deal with gender when translating from English into French. We begin by providing a brief overview of the characteristics of video game localisation and their impact on the translators’ work. Afterwards, we discuss some examples of mistranslations found in other games and the output generated by state-of-the-art baseline machine translation systems (Rivas Ginel and Theroine 2022). Subsequently, we will analyse neutralisation and simplification techniques extracted from a parallel corpus compiled from already translated video games that include non-binary characters. Finally, we present some of the results of an ongoing project that aims at conceiving a neural machine translation (NMT) tool for English into French video game localisation specialised in neutralisation techniques.The video game industry’s meteoric rise since its birth in the 1970s has steadily increased the demand for professional localisers capable of dealing with “game crunch” (Brogan 2022) in what can only be described as “a double-blind process (no audiovisual context, no text linearity)” (Bernal-Merino 2013). Due to these working conditions, previous research in the field (Rivas Ginel 2021) has shown that the second most common error found by linguistic testers is mistranslations, a phenomenon that results from the above-mentioned constraints as well as the presence of variables. Variables, in the context of video games, are used to create the illusion of immersion by, for example, allowing the player to change the name (or gender) of the character. Therefore, translators are forced to find creative yet natural solutions to accommodate potential changes in the resulting sentence through simplification, neutralisation, and the use of controlled language. This article, the last of a series of papers analysing gender bias caused by machine translation in video games, aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the above-mentioned techniques used by translators to deal with gender when translating from English into French. We begin by providing a brief overview of the characteristics of video game localisation and their impact on the translators’ work. Afterwards, we discuss some examples of mistranslations found in other games and the output generated by state-of-the-art baseline machine translation systems (Rivas Ginel and Theroine 2022). Subsequently, we will analyse neutralisation and simplification techniques extracted from a parallel corpus compiled from already translated video games that include non-binary characters. Finally, we present some of the results of an ongoing project that aims at conceiving a neural machine translation (NMT) tool for English into French video game localisation specialised in neutralisation techniques