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For a µ;n dichotomic systems generalization of Palmer's lemma was proved. Necessary and sufficient conditions of the existence of bounded on the whole axis solutions and quasisolutions that minimize the residual norm were obtained. Index of the corresponding operator was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While addressing the decolonial critique of Eurocentric modernity and the call for alternative cosmo-visions, this article retraces Juri Lotman's culturological exploration towards the concept of ternarity [mephaphocmb]: the scrutiny of the so-called binarism is what connects - without overlapping - the two perspectives. This long-distance dialogue will be built starting with the key notion of binary opposition, which will be analysed as a decolonial problem (Part I) and as a culturological problem (Part II). The analysis will focus on two central issues that stem from the either-or logic: the "othering mindset", and the culture-nature dualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is monoracialism un/learned from generation to generation? In this duoethnography, the co-authors engage in reflexive letter writing to purposefully connect their personal relationships with Aeriel's daughter, Azaelea, to their academic ideas as poststructural scholars. In doing so, they practice letting go of inherited dichotomies (such as mother versus scholar), lean into expansive ontoepistemological possibilities informed by their both/and positionalities as mama-scholar and auntie-scholar, in order to dream of expansive, healing, and liberatory futures that can emerge from connecting across difference, listening with raw openness, and pursuing radical interrelatedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manuscript presents a review of the theoretical perspectives on intersections and crossings which have opened up discussion on intersections, hybridities, mixtures and fluidities. To the existing field of gender studies, we propose to add the theoretical trajectories of crossing in order to open them up to dialogue, and to apply them in dialogue critically and creatively. We review intelectual proposals from different areas of knowledge: Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Néstor García Canclini, Hommi Bhabha and Nancy Fraser; our aim is to tension the sex-gender normativities which prevail in our cultural order, and which are the basis on which the pluralities which form a part of social life are excluded. The works referred to share this critical attitude to binary thinking: a de-idealisation of the pure, the native, identity, fixedness, the monolithic subject. They do not believe in the fixed categories of modernity, but share the perspective of dynamism, flows and the permanent reconfiguration of otherness/alterity. Our reading of intellectuals translates into some proposals --and questions-- to extend the theoretical-conceptual corpus in the field of gender studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, it is often thought that the decision of whether to impose a constructive trust invariably attracts the exercise of remedial discretion. This article argues that, in reality, the exercise of discretion is highly circumscribed. Further, where such discretion is exercised, it is useful to distinguish between cases where judges take into account factors affecting justice inter partes, and those where judges also take third party considerations into account. The latter sort of discretion has, to date, only been exercised systemically in one factual scenario. This revelation provides reason to reflect on the status of certain High Court dicta, the relevance of the 'institutional'-'remedial' constructive trust dichotomy, and the relationship between rights and remedies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay looks at the relationship between art and witnessing, focusing on two works which take the Vietnam War as their subject: the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien (1990), and the photograph, Saigon Execution, by Eddie Adams (1968). It is proposed that the works' nature as aesthetic objects compromises their status as historical representation. In each instance, the stylistic devices that the medium make available are invariably serviced for purposes of effect rather than those of document. In this pursuit of effect, impact is realized according to an invocation of the binary oppositions that determine logocentric hierarchies. Contrived in such a manner, the works fail to testify to the historically unique event, instead they merely render confirmation of a conventional and privileged centrality. Their operations appear incapable of extending beyond the closed aesthetic circuit of their genre and medium. As such, it is suggested that the genre of testimony-as-art bears no uniquely proximal relationship to historical reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Holocaust literature has often been described as producing disruption and estrangement. As the Holocaust challenges traditional forms of expression, writers have used alternative techniques, sometimes blurring genres and registers. This is the case with Holocaust narratives that rewrite fairy tales or use fairy-tale motifs and structures: they produce an estrangement effect in that their intertexts are defamiliarised as a strategy for opening up the possibilities of representation. This article focuses on three works of this kind, by authors Lisa Goldstein, Louise Murphy and Rachel Seiffert. Specifically, it considers how they constitute an alternative to the sanctioned metanarrative of the Holocaust, which is victim centred and facilitates the reader's empathy. Indeed, the works discussed here complicate the categories of victim and perpetrator, thus problematising our engagement with the characters in a way that furthers the abovementioned estrangement effect. Attention is paid to the role played by secrecy in each narrative, as I contend that it is the secret and its effects in the diegesis that keep the characters at a distance, "estranged" from the reader. This distance precludes easy identification and invites critical discussion on the limitations of familiar categories and binaries, such as the victim/victimiser opposition and the public/secret dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the representations of the Araucanian world in Lucio V. Mansilla’s Una excursión a los indios ranqueles, a travel story published in Buenos Aires in 1870. Drawing on a discursive and argumentative approach, the article analyses and explores how, via the different ethos set out in the story, e.g. that of the ethnographer, the philologist, the politician, the soldier and the literary man; as well as through his description of the indigenous world, Mansilla tries to denounce the dichotomy barbarism-civilization. Based on his own experience with the Ranquele Indians, Mansilla establishes a series of analogies between the discursive interactions of the Ranqueles and the political modalities of the “civilized” world, that reveals a subtle understanding of all the language dimensions. In his description, which could be that of a contemporary discourse analyst, the Ranqueles are portrayed as being on par with any Argentinean politician. However, Mansilla’s discursive universe, which is that of a cultured and literate politician of his time, and the mixed audience he targets, result in a rather heterogeneous vision of the indigenous world whose impending extermination he is trying to prevent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to increase our knowledge of the phenomenon whereby some nouns with conceptual meaning are used as (or give rise to) units suitable for quantifying purposes to a greater or lesser extent. We are interested in describing its several manifestations and phases, and especially in showing the difference between: a) the cases where the association of a quantitative meaning with the expression of a conceptual noun ultimately depends on the context, irrespectively of whether it is more or less conventionalized, and b) the cases where that bond has become stable, so that there is a new sign which is an inherent quantifier but not a nominal one despite its appearance. This syntax-based division is consistent with some differences of substance on the content plane, which have to do with the (im)purity of the quantitative value on the examined units, that is, with the fact that they superimpose (or not) qualitative features on the quantified noun. We also provide some notes on the lexical characteristics that nouns taking part in this phenomenon usually present, as well as some reflections on the position which the resulting quantifiers take in the lexicon/grammar dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an examination of the psychology of oppression in To Every Birth Its Blood by Mongane Serote, and thus, it looks at the novel's bipartite structure as portraitures of the psychologies of oppression and liberation respectively. Also, the paper works to deconstruct the seemingly binarist/structuralist orientation of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that geographies of welcome complicate simple binary oppositions between fully enfranchised citizenship and what is often theorized as the 'bare life' of refugee rejection in 'spaces of exception'. Ranging from sanctuary cities and squats to clinics, classrooms, kitchens and gardens, spaces of welcome instead offer islands of limited enfranchisement, agency and hope amidst seas of sub-citizenship, subjugation and fear. The concept of sub-citizenship can be used thus to elucidate how welcome and its suppression create a spectrum of intermediate experiences between the abstract poles of biopolitical belonging and necropolitical rejection. Geographies of welcome thereby become legible as in-between spaces in which the damage done by the suppression of welcome is contested and countered, however incompletely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I raise the question of how the concepts of speaker commitment and speaker involvement can be applied to evidential expressions. I therefore explore the distinction between commitment and non-commitment as a binary opposition (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989; Kissine, 2008 ) and show that a choice for a binary opposition leads to a clear differentiation of epistemic and evidential markers. Speaker involvement is different from speaker commitment, in that it is gradable. This notion will be relevant at both a propositional and an interactional level of analysis. At the propositional level, I claim that speaker involvement refers to the speaker’s processing of the evidential qualification when presenting a state of affairs. At the interactional level, speaker involvement will be shown to play a role in the online planning of the flow of discourse. In my corpus analysis of the Spanish evidential adverbials al parecer ‘apparently’ and por lo visto ‘seemingly’, I will argue that the coparticipant’s reply to evidentially qualified propositions is an important methodological tool to examine speaker involvement. Moreover, the monitoring of the evidential dimension in interaction will shed new light on non-commitment (cf. Déchaine et al., 2017 ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the perceptions and the preferences of the upper-secondary school students, teachers, parents and administrators of the native speaking (NS) and non-native speaking (NNS) English teachers as well as investigating the variables affecting these preferences and perceptions, this study explores whether or not the native speaker myth is still prevalent. Contrary to common assumptions with regard to student and parent preferences being in favour of NS English teachers, this study purports that English as a foreign language (EFL) students who have participated in this study which is conducted in the Turkish Cypriot context favour the English teachers with good teaching skills, regardless of their NS/NNS status. The students' perceptions and preferences are compared with those of their parents, teachers and administrators. The data are collected from 185 students, 86 parents, 18 teachers and two administrators, and analysed adopting a mixed-methods research design, being predominantly quantitative. Overall, mother tongue and grade are found to be the two variables that influence the participants' perceptions and preferences with regard to the NS and NNS English teachers. Significant differences are found between student and teacher responses and between parents' and teachers' perceptions and preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying function of binary oppositions still remain actual in modern world, since binary oppositions are used in meaning-making and construction of sign processes. This study aims to examine binary oppositions, which form the basis of ethnic world-view of Japanese and Kazakh people. The research is based on semiotics approach, which considers language and culture as a single text formed by binary oppositions and contain “universal code” of national self-consciousness. In this study, binary oppositions are referred to as means that create culturally codified texts, where cognitive and conceptually significant relationship between cultural concepts, denoted by lexical antonyms, reflect language picture of the world as well as the world model of Japanese and Kazakh people. Sampling of binary oppositions was made on the basis of analysis of mythology and key cultural concepts of both nations. The results of comparative study made it possible to define core elements of ethnic culture of Japanese and Kazakh people that constitute fundamental factor in self-identification of both nations, and help to reconstruct their world model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study intends to map the meandering expression of otherness when womanhood constructs an epiphanic encounter with time and fortune. Hereinafter, hegemonic, oppressive masculinity meets peripheral, prophesying femininity in an intricate exercise of doing and becoming Shakespeare's Weird Sisters, forming a complex mythological construction, whose uniqueness arises from the duality of their personae, reflection of displaced femininity, somewhat grotesque, peripheral within the realm of marginality itself. They are not only weird expressions of the Other, they are the other self of themselves, as alter ego expressions. There is a constant, minutely woven border crossing that does not only (re)define the geometry of becoming, but it also permeates gender constructions, making femaleness look androgynous and ruthless. Foretelling dreams of glory, mightiness or summoning lost humanity, these three Parcae rewrite the myth of the androgynous and its story about the quest of the Other. It is this Other that will be explored from a variety of angles that speak of masculinity, femininity, sanity, irrationality, consciousness, unconsciousness, freewill and fate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White dwarf stars have been used as flux standards for decades, thanks to their staid simplicity. We have empirically tested their photometric stability by analysing the light curves of 398 high-probability candidates and spectroscopically confirmed white dwarfs observed during the original Kepler mission and later with K2 Campaigns 0-8. We find that the vast majority (>97 per cent) of non-pulsating and apparently isolated white dwarfs are stable to better than 1 per cent in the Kepler bandpass on 1-hr to 10-d time-scales, confirming that these stellar remnants are useful flux standards. From the cases that do exhibit significant variability, we caution that binarity, magnetism and pulsations are three important attributes to rule out when establishing white dwarfs as flux standards, especially those hotter than 30 000 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A ratio-dependent diffusion predator-prey system with free boundary is investigated to understand the impact of free boundary on spreading-vanishing dichotomy and a long time behavior of species. The existence and uniqueness of solutions are verified and the behavior of positive solutions is considered for this system. Moreover, the criteria for spreading-vanishing dichotomy are also derived. The results show that if the length of the initial occupying area is longer than a critical size for the predators or the length of the initial occupying area is shorter than a critical size, but the moving coefficient of free boundary is relatively big, then the spreading of predators always happens under relatively small rate of death for the predator. On the other hand, it is found that if the initial value of free boundary is smaller than a threshold value and the moving coefficient of free boundary is relatively small depending on initial size of predator or the rate of death is relatively big, the predators fail in spreading to new environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the results of a search for amplitude modulation of pulsation modes in 983 δ Sct stars, which have effective temperatures between 6400 ≤ Teff ≤ 10 000 K in the Kepler Input Catalogue and were continuously observed by the Kepler Space Telescope for 4 yr. We demonstrate the diversity in pulsational behaviour observed, in particular non-linearity, which is predicted for δ Sct stars. We analyse and discuss examples of δ Sct stars with constant amplitudes and phases; those that exhibit amplitude modulation caused by beating of closefrequency pulsation modes; those that exhibit pure amplitude modulation (with no associated phase variation); those that exhibit phase modulation caused by binarity; and those that exhibit amplitude modulation caused by non-linearity. Using models and examples of individual stars, we demonstrate that observations of the changes in amplitude and phase of pulsation modes can be used to distinguish among the different scenarios.We find that 603 δ Sct stars (61.3 per cent) exhibit at least one pulsation mode that varies significantly in amplitude over 4 yr. Conversely, many δ Sct stars have constant pulsation amplitudes so short-length observations can be used to determine precise frequencies, amplitudes and phases for the most coherent and periodic δ Sct stars. It is shown that amplitude modulation is not restricted to a small region on the HR diagram, therefore not necessarily dependent on stellar parameters such as Teff or log g. Our catalogue of 983 δ Sct stars will be useful for comparisons to similar stars observed by K2 and TESS, because the length of the 4-yr Kepler data set will not be surpassed for some time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The native speaker fallacy has been identified as one of the most prevailing and harmful language ideologies to affect non-native speaker teachers (NNSTs) around the world. By examining how participants' self-perceived nonnativeness shape their self-images as prospective English teachers in Colombia, this mix-method study seeks to contribute to expand this body of research in the Latin American context. Findings in this study revealed a dichotomy in participants' self-perceptions: though they do not regard their non-nativeness as a potential problem in their future careers because of their ongoing education and their advantages as NNSTs, they see themselves in an unfavorable position compared to native speaker teachers concerning their "non-ideal language ability and cultural knowledge." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An overview is presented of issues relevant for cross-cultural research in Romanian psychology. It is first observed that Romania is not well presented in large-scale cross-cultural studies such as studies on (workrelated) values and that the scarce data do not present a consistent picture. The paper then continues by presenting relevant topics for the fledgling cross-cultural research in psychology in Romania. The first is the need to go beyond the emic--etic dichotomy; the second is the seemingly ubiquitous presence of response styles in self-reports in cross-cultural studies; the third refers to acculturation psychology. It is concluded that cross-cultural psychology is relevant for three domains in cross-cultural psychology in Romania: the place of Romania in the psychological map of the world, Romanians in the Diaspora, and diversity (multiculturalism) within Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I will discuss two different attitudes of traveling in mid-nineteenth century Greece, at a crucial time for the 'western' or 'eastern' orientation of the Greek state. To capture this I will demonstrate aspects of the travel writing of two Finnish travelers in nineteenth century Greece. The first recognized in modern Greece the light of classical antiquity and the importance of its conveying to the west, the second focused on contemporary Greece and its connection with the east. The two travelers, with a common starting point and at about the same time, traveled in a very different way in nineteenth century Greece and with their different skills 'opened' different ideological horizons in a place that they both 'loved' and 'hated' for different reasons. How does the binary 'east/west?' relate to the travelers' expectations and predispositions at a time of the development of modern Greek identities and consciousness? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new adaptive binarization method for the degraded document images. Variable background, non-uniform illumination, and blur caused by humidity are the addressed degradations. The proposed method has four steps: contrast analysis, which calculates the local contrast threshold; contrast stretching, thresholding by computing global threshold; and noise removal to improve the quality of binarized image. Evaluation of proposed method has been done using optical character recognition, visual criteria, and established measures: execution time, F-measure, peak signal-to-noise ratio, negative rate metric, and information to noise difference. Our method is tested on the four types of datasets including Document Image Binarization Contest (DIBCO) series datasets (DIBCO 2009, H-DIBCO 2010, and DIBCO 2011), which include a variety of degraded document images. On the basis of evaluation measures, the results of proposed method are promising and achieved good performance after extensive testing with eight techniques referred in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hermeneutical project of this essay is to identify the priorities of a classical female Hindu poet-saint through analysis of her poetry and comparative analysis of an authoritative biography of her, composed subsequently by a male court minister. That her poetry survived may be directly related to his identification of her as a saint, and yet his biography has also served to marginalize her poetry since it is only his work that is widely known. The argument in this essay is that these two compositions, while they overtly seek to define and describe the nature of devotion to Śiva, are centrally, and divergently, concerned with a woman's ability to speak authoritatively. Through this analysis, Pechilis argues that both the poet-saint and her biographer belong within a genealogy of feminism; the inclusion of these authors from remote history challenges any perceived dichotomy between the history of feminism and women's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from a February 13-14, 2014 conference in Berlin, Germany on theoretical historical consciousness. Topics of discussion included individualism in the teaching of historical consciousness in schools, binaries in the national identification of native Germans and immigrants, and racism in history education.

More than any other politician in current Hungarian politics, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán refers to "east" and "west" in his public addresses as symbols of antithetical political cultures and cultural value systems. Of course, he is by no means the first Hungarian statesman to do so. From the Middle Ages, references to the Asian origins of the nation were mobilized by chroniclers and statesmen to characterize the national character and Hungary's place in the European Christian political community. During the Enlightenment, the embracing of a perceived cultural hierarchy between west and east entered the Hungarian public discourse, and from the Reform Era the two intellectual streams shaped modern Hungarian identity discourse equally. This paper describes the national identity discourse that emphasizes the Asian origins of the nation through the lens of what I call "self-Orientalism." Whereas Orbán's political addresses can be viewed as a continuation of the self-Orientalizing language, the examination of the ways in which he breaks from the tradition of self-Orientalism teaches even more important lessons about the viability of the reference to the east-west dichotomy in the global political arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on an ecclesiastical institution as a spatial panoptic structure which domesticates representational space as a hierarchy of power devoid of a sensitivity for the 'human Other' (Autrui). The notion of heterotopia is promoted to deconstruct spatiality and linearity (time) as theological binary concepts. Being church as heterotopia does not deny the desire for the utopian dimension in religious thinking but holds on to utopian thinking amidst adversity and diversity. Therefore the concept of heterotopia is used to describe reconciliatory diversity, which is characteristic of an inclusive postmodern church which is a space where unity is not threatened by diversity, where the one is not afraid of the Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers of mind typically group experiential states together and distinguish these from intentional states on the basis of their purportedly obvious phenomenal character. Sytsma and Machery (Phil Stud 151(2): 299-327, ) challenge this dichotomy by presenting evidence that non-philosophers do not classify subjective experiences relative to a state's phenomenological character, but rather by its valence. However we argue that S&M's results do not speak to folk beliefs about the nature of experiential states, but rather to folk beliefs about the entity to which those experiential states are attributed. In two experiments, we demonstrate that ordinary attributions of subjective experiences (of smell and felt emotions) to a simple robot are not sensitive to valence, but instead respond to functional assumptions about the entity to which the states are (or are not) attributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the notion of communicative action on the basis of Alfred Schutz' writings. In Schutz' work, communication is of particular significance and its importance is often neglected by phenomenologists. Communication plays a crucial role in his first major work, the Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt from 1932, yet communication is also a major feature in his unfinished works which were later completed posthumously by Thomas Luckmann: The Structures of the Life World (, ). In these texts, Schutz sometimes refers to 'communicative action,' and he comes to ascribe a crucial role to communication within the domain of the life world he calls everyday life. Based on Schutz' texts, I shall first attempt to critically reconstruct the defining features of his notion of communication and communicative action. As a result, it emerges that Schutz' notion of communication, particularly in its early incarnation, seems to be, at first glance, characterized by a dichotomy between virtual communication, that is communicative action in a narrow sense, and non-virtual communication. As I want to show with respect to the seemingly established dichotomous distinction between 'mediated' and 'immediate social action,' Schutz himself started to overcome this dichotomy. Based on this thesis, I will try to sketch a basic outline of a theory of communicative action, a theory less formulated by Schutz' than built on Schutz' writings. As the idea of communicative action, and particularly the transgression of the distinction between mediated and immediate action, affects the very structures of the life-world described by Schutz and Luckmann, I will ultimately demonstrate that any mundane phenomenology of the life-world requires a triangulatory method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I aim both to elucidate and to problematize Adorno's reading of Beethoven's middle and late styles as essentially dichotomous. Specifically, Adorno holds that the middle-style works express the utter interdependency of the subjective and objective spheres in their emphasis upon organic wholeness and totality. By contrast, the late-style works express the alienation of subject from object in isolating and laying bare musical conventions. Yet middle Beethoven, as Adorno himself intimates, often calls organic unity into question, especially with respect to the recapitulation and coda in a sonata-form piece. Moreover, although Adorno does not seem to acknowledge it, the middle style exhibits fragmentation both in partitioning the sonata principle into subprinciples and, more concretely, in partitioning a theme into various subcomponents. Conversely, using Schenkerian techniques, one can expose subthematic unity underlying foreground fragmentation in the late works (as demonstrated by Daniel Chua and Kevin Korsyn). Drawing on Schenker's reading, I use Beethoven's Piano Sonata in A, op. 101 as a case study. In the second half of the essay I confront the political connotations of Adorno's argument, again problematizing particular stylistic binarisms with respect to issues of freedom, solidarity, and hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A consolidated approach to the study of the mental representation of word meanings has consisted in contrasting different domains of knowledge, broadly reflecting the abstract-concrete dichotomy. More fine-grained semantic distinctions have emerged in neuropsychological and cognitive neuroscience work, reflecting semantic category specificity, but almost exclusively within the concrete domain. Theoretical advances, particularly within the area of embodied cognition, have more recently put forward the idea that distributed neural representations tied to the kinds of experience maintained with the concepts' referents might distinguish conceptual meanings with a high degree of specificity, including those within the abstract domain. Here we report the results of two psycholinguistic rating studies incorporating such theoretical advances with two main objectives: first, to provide empirical evidence of fine-grained distinctions within both the abstract and the concrete semantic domains with respect to relevant psycholinguistic dimensions; second, to develop a carefully controlled linguistic stimulus set that may be used for auditory as well as visual neuroimaging studies focusing on the parametrization of the semantic space beyond the abstract-concrete dichotomy. Ninety-six participants rated a set of 210 sentences across pre-selected concrete (mouth, hand, or leg action-related) and abstract (mental state-, emotion-, mathematics-related) categories, with respect either to different semantic domain-related scales (rating study 1), or to concreteness, familiarity, and context availability (rating study 2). Inferential statistics and correspondence analyses highlighted distinguishing semantic and psycholinguistic traits for each of the pre-selected categories, indicating that a simple abstract-concrete dichotomy is not sufficient to account for the entire semantic variability within either domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heidegger's critique of metaphysics is central to his attempt to re-instantiate the question of being. This paper examines Heidegger's critique of metaphysics by looking at the relationship between metaphysics and thought. This entails an identification of the intimate relationship Heidegger maintains exists between philosophy and metaphysics, an analysis of Heidegger's critique of this association, and a discussion of his proposal that philosophy has been so damaged by its association with metaphysics that it must be replaced with meditative thinking. It is not quite clear, however, how the overcoming of metaphysical thinking is to occur especially given Heidegger's insistence that relying on human will to effect an alteration in thinking simply re-instantiates the metaphysical perspective to be overcome. While several critics have argued Heidegger has no solution to this issue, instead holding that thought must simply be open to being's 'self'-transformation if and when it occurs, I turn to Heidegger's notion of trace and a number of scattered comments on the relationship between meditative thinking and willing as non-willing to show Heidegger: (a) was aware of this issue; and (b) tried to resolve it by recognising a reconceptualised notion of willing not based on or emanating from the aggressive willing of metaphysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper addresses the need for an ontology- and meaning-based approach for natural-language-understanding and information-processing computational systems. After a discussion of an oft-ignored form/content dichotomy that offers an explicit understanding of what meaning is and is not, a specific approach, the Ontological Semantic Technology, is introduced and several aspects of meaning representation are addressed in its terms, including how the 1977 Tenerife fatal aircrash could have been prevented with its help. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Three works by contemporary Serbian female composers, although disparate as to the manner of their realization, do have some similarities. An affinity can be perceived by analysing the poetical planes supporting the textual bases of these compositions, as well as their relationships with the musical component. The intersections can be found in the specific attitude towards the subject and the subject's identity, problematized in the librettos, as well as in the issue of the time/space dichotomy within the narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors historicise, contextualise and debate the values and problems of both disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. Their aim is not to posit one as superior to the other, nor to suggest that the two are mutually exclusive. Instead, they seek to break down the oppositional dichotomy in which the concepts are often placed, and, further, to propose a 'symbiotic academy' in which the two can exist to their mutual benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "cultural identity" has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as "race", "ethnicity", even "nationality" in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination. The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lot man as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become an ideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida's and Lotman's concepts of "mirror structure", "binarism", "numerousness", "textuality" and "semiosphere". An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman's "translation of the untranslatable" (or "dialogue") and Derrida's dyfférance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

S. Huang and M. Tanangkingsing found that six Western Austronesian languages share the common property of giving greater attention to path information than to manner. They proposed that Proto-Austronesian was probably path-salient. In order to ascertain the validity of their hypothesis, this study compares the motion events in a Yami Frog story with six Western Austronesian languages, followed by a research design using VARBRUL (a logistic regression analysis program) to analyze the factors that account for the variation between path and manner verbs in 20 Yami texts. In the process, a clear set of operational definitions is proposed. Our quantitative analysis indicates that Yami is a path-salient language in that (i) path verbs are more frequent than manner verbs, (ii) path verbs favor cooccurrence of figure and ground even more than manner verbs, and (iii) manner is usually not expressed after the path verb. If it is expressed, it is coded as a serial verb construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We consider a set of finite structures such that all members of have the same universe, the cardinality of which approaches as . Each structure in may have a nontrivial underlying pregeometry and on each we consider a probability measure, either the uniform measure, or what we call the dimension conditional measure. The main questions are: What conditions imply that for every extension axiom , compatible with the defining properties of , the probability that is true in a member of approaches 1 as ? And what conditions imply that this is not the case, possibly in the strong sense that the mentioned probability approaches 0 for some ? If each is the set of structures with universe , in a fixed relational language, in which certain “forbidden” structures cannot be weakly embedded and has the disjoint amalgamation property, then there is a condition (concerning the set of forbidden structures) which, if we consider the uniform measure, gives a dichotomy; i.e., the condition holds if and only if the answer to the first question is ‘yes’. In general, we do not obtain a dichotomy, but we do obtain a condition guaranteeing that the answer is ‘yes’ for the first question, as well as condition guaranteeing that the answer is ‘no’; and we give examples showing that in the gap between these conditions the answer may be either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This analysis is made for both the uniform measure and for the dimension conditional measure. The later measure has a closer relation to random generation of structures and is more “generous” with respect to satisfiability of extension axioms. Random -coloured structures fall naturally into the framework discussed so far, but random -colourable structures need further considerations. It is not the case that every extension axiom compatible with the class of -colourable structures almost surely holds in an -colourable structure. But a more restricted set of extension axioms turns out to hold almost surely, which allows us to prove a zero–one law for random -colourable structures, using a probability measure which is derived from the dimension conditional measure, and, after further combinatorial considerations, also for the uniform probability measure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for the binarization of degraded document images. We map the image into a 2D feature space in which the text and background pixels are separable, and then we partition this feature space into small regions. These regions are labeled as text or background using the result of a basic binarization algorithm applied on the original image. Finally, each pixel of the image is classified as either text or background based on the label of its corresponding region in the feature space. Our algorithm splits the feature space into text and background regions without using any training dataset. In addition, this algorithm does not need any parameter setting by the user and is appropriate for various types of degraded document images. The proposed algorithm demonstrated superior performance against six well-known algorithms on three datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We give some reductions among problems in (nonnegative) weighted #CSP which restrict the class of functions that needs to be considered in computational complexity studies. Our reductions can be applied to both exact and approximate computation. In particular, we show that the recent dichotomy for unweighted #CSP can be extended to rational-weighted #CSP. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The rule of rescue describes the powerful human proclivity to rescue identified endangered lives, regardless of cost or risk. Deciding whether or not to perform a decompressive craniectomy as a life-saving or 'rescue' procedure for a young person with a severe traumatic brain injury provides a good example of the ethical tensions that occur in these situations. Unfortunately, there comes a point when the primary brain injury is so severe that if the patient survives they are likely to remain severely disabled and fully dependent. The health resource implications of this outcome are significant. By using a web-based outcome prediction model this study compares the long-term outcome and designation of two groups of patients. One group had a very severe injury as adjudged by the model and the other group a less severe injury. At 18 month follow-up there were significant differences in outcome and healthcare requirements. This raises important ethical issues when considering life-saving but non-restorative surgical intervention. The discussion about realistic outcome cannot be dichotomised into simply life or death so that the outcome for the patient must enter the equation. As in other 'rescue situations', the utility of the procedure cannot be rationalised on a mere cost -- benefit analysis. A compromise has to be reached to determine at what point either the likely outcome would be unacceptable to the person on whom the procedure is being performed or the social utility gained from the rule of rescue intervention fails to justify the utilitarian value and justice of equitable resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study, part of a wider research project, aims at reinterpreting I.L. Caragiale's drama - both his comedies and tragedies - from a non-mimetic perspective. Centering on the idea of the labyrinth, Caragiale's drama outlines a space for searching signs that establish the synonymity of reality and truth. Created by a mauvais demiurge author in a space of illusion, the characters from Caragiale's drama, produce their own worlds empty of meaning, but with a strong effect of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production and comprehension of human language is thought to involve a network of frontal, parietal, and temporal cortical loci interconnected by two dominant white matter pathways. These two white matter bundles, often referred to as the dorsal and ventral processing tracts, are hypothesized to have markedly different language functions. The dorsal tract is thought to process phonological processing, while the ventral tract is considered to abet semantics. This proposed functional differentiation of tracts is similar to the ventral and dorsal dichotomy proposed for the visual and auditory systems. The present study evaluated this characterization of the language system in the context of various components involved in its function. Twenty-four chronic stroke patients completed a battery of 10 language tests designed to measure performance on the comprehension and production of phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. The patients also completed diffusion MRI scanning. Lesions were confined to the left hemisphere, but the size and location of the insult varied so that patients had damage to a single tract, both tracts, or neither tract. IndividualFAmaps were generated, and focal areas of hypointensity served as markers of white matter damage. Whole-brain voxel-by-voxel correlations revealed that only phonological and semantic tasks fit into the dual-stream model, while syntax and morphology involved both pathways. ROI analyses of the arcuate fascicle and extreme capsule supported this finding. These data suggest that natural language function is more likely to reflect a synergistic system rather than a segregated dual-stream system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the social functions of codeswitching (CS) between Standard Arabic (SA) and Dialectal Arabic (DA). The data came from thirty-five audio and video recordings in the domains of religious lectures, political debates, and soccer commentaries. The findings suggest that speakers create a functional division between the two varieties by designating issues of importance, complexity, and seriousness to SA, the High code, and aligning less important, less serious, and accessible topics with DA, the Low code. The CS patterns therefore reproduce the unequal social values and distribution of SA and DA in the Arabic sociolinguistic landscape and simultaneously call for a reconceptualization of the notion of diglossia as presented in Ferguson's (1959) work. Other functions of CS as a marker of speakers' attitudes and as an index of pan-Arab or Muslim identities are discussed. (Arabic, bidialectal codeswitching, High/Low dichotomy, functional diglossia, identity, language attitudes)* [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a more pluralistic perspective for the study of agency in strategic management field, through the use of co-determination concept, aiming to contribute to overcome certain limitations its literature. The historical reasons that led the field of strategy to focus on the individual are addressed in the paper, putting focus on the prevalence of specific perspectives that address the relationship between individual-organization-environment. The authors argue that a substantial part of its literature is focused on a particular representation of organization and management (i.e. large corporations, managerial capitalism and its "visible hand"); it has generated over the past decades false dichotomies (micro/macro, voluntarism/determinism) and promoted a conflation between the individual's agency and the organization's agency. In order to overcome these false dichotomies and address the agency's study, the authors revisit the development of some perspective that sought in the last decade to approximate to some important debates produced in organizational studies field, particularly in Europe. The article gives prominence to the perspective that considers the strategy as a social practice (S-as-P), mainly that related to Structuration Theory due to its extensive use. In Brazil, there is a growing interest in the S-as-P perspective and the concepts of strategizing, organizing e micropractices -- as suggested in European literature --; nevertheless the agency concept remains inadequately addressed despite the significant progress made. The authors of this paper propose a perspective -- based upon the concept of co-determination -- in which the agency is constituted throughout processes of horizontal and vertical interaction, comprising actors and mechanisms that lie at micro-individual, meso-organizational and macro-structural levels. Co-determination' potentiality is recognized in order to accomplish in S-as-P a "stratified analysis" of agency and reveal the layers of influences deriving from different levels. Finally, the authors delineate some considerations about the viability of more plural perspectives to the study of agency in S-as-P and its importance to counterbalance the dominant literature and increase the relevance of the studies in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mojeño Trinitario shows a split-intransitivity system combined with a differential marking pattern for third-person A/S. The pronominal system of the A/S paradigm is quite complex. There are five markers for third person, specified for humanness, number, gender, and speaker's gender. Interestingly, these markers compete with another marker for third person, the prefix ty-, which is semantically unspecified. The most important factor in the distribution of the two alternatives for third-person A/S marking is transitivity. The transitivity of a construction cannot be determined just by the valence of the root (the number of participants) but depends also on other parameters such as the semantic characteristics of the participants and the discourse function of the utterance. As a consequence, transitivity must be seen as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Since most roots are ambitransitive, transitivity is a category of the utterance level rather than the lexical level. This fluid transitivity is an essential characteristic of Mojeño Trinitario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deutsch's octave illusion occurs when two tones that are spaced an octave apart are repeatedly presented in alternation; the sequence is presented to both ears simultaneously but offset by one tone, so that two dichotic chords are repeatedly presented in alternation. The most common illusory percept consists of an intermittent high tone in one ear alternating with an intermittent low tone in the other ear. The aim of this study was to investigate whether, once the illusory percept has emerged, the illusion will persist when the original sequence is followed by another sequence consisting of the repeated presentation of one of the two dichotic chords. Forty naïve subjects were tested with stimuli consisting first of a priming sequence containing dichotic octaves alternating between ears followed immediately by a test sequence consisting of a single dichotic octave presented repeatedly. The durations of the priming and test sequences were manipulated. The findings showed that the illusory percept is maintained after the switch from alternation to repetition and that the relative length of the priming and test sequences has a negligible influence on the persistence of the illusory percept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comments below are meant to show that considerations of public and private realms and the tension between these realms arise in a natural and persistent way in discussions connected with semiotics. In particular, they arise out of the themes of body and sociocultural mathematical meaning-making, which are recurring themes of the papers in this volume. The public-private dichotomy is related to other dichotomies such as those between outer and inner and collective and individual. For educators, such dichotomies are important in that they reflect the division between students' own inner and individual understandings of mathematical ideas and their functioning within a shared sociocultural world of mathematical meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]